President accused of ignoring China-produced Covid vaccine because of political expediency
Jair Bolsonaro is facing a furious backlash over what critics are calling his “homicidally negligent” failure to prepare a coherent coronavirus vaccination programme as Brazil’s death toll again soars.
More than 181,000 Brazilians have died from the disease the president calls “a little flu”, with Latin America’s biggest economy now careering into a painful second wave.
Continue reading...The hardline Tory Brexiter’s family made a fortune from their Caribbean plantations where thousands died. Now he faces urgent calls for reparations
Drive into Dorset on the A31 and you roll past a high brick wall butted up tight to the road that seems to go on for ever. Every so often it doglegs at a monolithic gateway crowned by either a lion or a stag. This is the “great wall of Dorset” that runs for three miles, contains some 2m bricks and shields Charborough Park from the outside world. The wall creates an air of foreboding about what might lie inside. This is home to Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, the Conservative MP for South Dorset, who lives in the palatial Grade I-listed Charborough House, hidden from public view within the 283-hectare (700-acre) private grounds.
The park, with its outstanding garden and ancient deer park, is just a part of the 5,600 hectares of Charborough estate that makes Drax and his family the largest individual landowners in Dorset. The mainly 17th-century mansion, with its 36-metre (120ft) folly tower, is the model for Welland House in the Thomas Hardy novel Two on a Tower.
Continue reading...New sections of the tower at the capital’s Templo Mayor Aztec site include 119 skulls of men, women and children
Archaeologists have unearthed new sections of an Aztec tower of human skulls dating back to the 1400s beneath the center of Mexico City.
The team has uncovered the facade and eastern side of the tower, as well as 119 human skulls of men, women and children, adding to hundreds previously found, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (Inah) announced on Friday.
Continue reading...If bill approved in senate Argentina would join Cuba and Uruguay as only Latin American countries where abortion is legal
Lawmakers in Argentina’s lower house have passed a bill that would legalise abortion in most cases, in a big step forward for the legislation that could set the tone for a wider shift across Latin America.
The landmark bill, which needs approval from the country’s senate in a debate expected before the end of the year, allows for voluntary abortions to be carried out up to the 14th week of pregnancy.
Continue reading...Companies respond as investigation finds videos of rape and revenge pornography
Mastercard and Visa said on Thursday they would block their customers from using the credit cards to make purchases on Pornhub following accusations the pornographic website showed videos of child abuse and rape.
They reacted following an investigation by the opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times that also alleged the site depicts revenge pornography and video taken without the consent of participants. Pornhub has denied the allegations.
Continue reading...Brazilian airline Gol has resumed commercial flights using the plane grounded globally since March 2019
Commercial passenger flights have resumed on Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft for the first time in 20 months, after Brazilian airline Gol resumed operations using the plane.
The aircraft was grounded globally in March 2019 after two fatal plane crashes in the space of six months, which killed a total of 346 people.
Continue reading...Many of the weapons used in the murders of 119 journalists were imported – and Mexico’s laws and culture make tracing them impossible
It was around daybreak when Mexican crime reporter Luis Vallejo received a call from a local police officer telling him that a bag of human remains had been found in the city of Salamanca where he lives.
Vallejo had become accustomed to calls like this: in recent years, violence in Guanajuato, the surrounding region, has spiraled to unprecedented levels amid bloody turf wars between rival cartels.
Continue reading...A pro-abortion movement, symbolized by a green handkerchief, has swept through Latin America, where abortion is punishable by law
Belén ended up in jail after suffering a spontaneous miscarriage. Unaware that she was pregnant, the 25-year-old went to seek medical care at a hospital in Argentina’s northern province of Tucumán when she suffered abdominal pain.
In accordance with Argentina’s stringent anti-abortion legislation, Belén (not her real name) was reported by the hospital to the authorities and sentenced to eight years in prison for homicide. She did not regain her freedom until almost three years later, in 2017, after a feminist lawyer who took up her case convinced the Tucumán supreme court to overturn her conviction.
“There are many Beléns in Argentina and this madness will continue until abortion is legalized,” said Ana Correa, pro-abortion campaigner and author of the book Somos Belén (We Are Belén).
That long-awaited moment may be about to arrive.
Argentina is expected to move one step away from becoming the first major Latin American nation to legalize abortion on Thursday, when the lower house of congress votes on a legal abortion bill sponsored by president Alberto Fernández. The president holds a majority in the lower house, and a government source said the senate could vote the move into law as soon as next week.
The push for reform in Argentina is part of a pro-abortion “green wave” sweeping through Latin America, symbolized by the green handkerchief that has become the campaign’s instantly-recognizable flag across the entire region.
“The women of Argentina now enjoy the encouragement of all Latin America, where the green handkerchief is being raised up high from north to south,” said Claudia Piñeiro, an Argentinian author who has spent years campaigning for legal abortion.
Drugs bust in India sheds light on how adaptable cartels have come to dominate the lucrative trade in the powerful synthetic opioid
Carlos is a Mexican businessman employed by an import-export company that specializes in the trade of tequila and agricultural and chemical products. But in January 2016, he was a long way from his home in Culiacán, capital of Sinaloa state.
Two associates accompanied him as he travelled from Shanghai to Hong Kong, Japan, and finally, India.
Continue reading...Shooting of cousins aged just four and seven, allegedly by police, heightens calls for national reckoning over ‘genocide’
The shooting of two young black girls – who had between them enjoyed fewer than 11 years of life – has sparked outrage in Brazil and intensified the debate over police violence and structural racism in a country still grappling with the legacy of slavery.
Emily Victoria Moreira dos Santos and Rebeca Beatriz Rodrigues Santos, cousins aged four and seven, were killed on Friday night as they played outside their grandmother’s home in Barro Vermelho, a redbrick favela on Rio’s rundown northern fringe.
Continue reading...National assembly was only institution not commanded by ruling Socialist party
Nicolás Maduro tightened his grip over Venezuela on Sunday in legislative elections that some believe effectively marked the end of Juan Guaidó’s US-backed campaign to topple the South American strongman.
The bulk of Venezuela’s beleaguered opposition boycotted the contest for the 277-seat national assembly, calling it a sham designed to lend Maduro’s authoritarian regime an air of democratic legitimacy.
Continue reading...The 2012 killing of Regina Martínez, who was investigating links between organised crime and politics, began a wave of violence in the most dangerous country to be a reporter
Regina Martínez Pérez was considered an enemy of the state. The 48-year-old journalist had made powerful foes investigating allegations of collusion between political leaders, security forces and narcotraffickers in the Mexican region of Veracruz.
She was a source of irritation for four consecutive state governors, highlighting violence, abuses of power and cover-ups in the pages of Mexico’s foremost investigative news magazine, Proceso.
Continue reading...First official explanation of illness that affected US diplomats in Cuba says ‘pulsed’ energy may have led to unexplained symptoms
The mysterious symptoms that have afflicted American diplomats stationed in Cuba, puzzling scientists and intelligence agencies alike, are most likely to have been caused by “directed, pulsed radio frequency energy”, according to a report commissioned by the US government.
Those suffering from Havana syndrome, as the condition has become known, have complained of headaches, nausea, dizziness, blurred vision and other ailments.
Continue reading...The prize-winning author’s life is now an episode of Steve McQueen’s hit series Small Axe. He talks about working on the project and his latest novel, based on a Jamaican slave uprising
Amid the brunchtime clatter of a busy south London cafe, Alex Wheatle is talking about how, lately, he has been considering 1970s pop culture and the way it has shaped and warped his perception of self. “I grew up with Tarzan on TV; Tarzan beating up all the black guys he came across and being able to talk to the animals while the black people couldn’t,” he says. “And I hate to admit it, but when I was 10 or 11, I actually cheered for Tarzan when he was fighting with a so-called ‘savage’. It was only later that I thought: ‘I think I’ve got that wrong.’”
In many ways, Wheatle’s 20-year writing career has been about correcting that wrong. Because if the focus of the author’s extraordinary early years was on mistruths around his heritage – about its history, its value, its implicit inferiority to a loin-clothed white saviour – then the intervening period has been all about creating the depictions of nuanced black heroism he was denied as a child.
Continue reading...Astonishing rock paintings discovered in Colombia hold a lesson for today’s rainforest
In the past week, remarkable images of ancient cave art have hit the headlines: rock paintings made in South America around 12,000 years ago. The art, created on rock faces in the Serranía de la Lindosa, on the northern edge of the Colombian Amazon, is a riot of ochre-coloured geometrical pattern, handprints, and images of animals and humans. Until recent excavations, the works of art had been unknown to the international community. Their exuberant creativity will soon be revealed to a broad audience in the UK thanks to the Channel 4 series Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon.
The people who made these works of art were, it is believed, among the earliest humans to occupy the region, after migrations across what is now the Bering Strait some 25,000 years ago. Preliminary study of the iconography of the art has led scholars to speculate that among the deer, tapirs, alligators, bats, serpents, turtles and porcupines, long-extinct megafauna are also represented: mastodons, American ice-age horses, giant sloths, camelids.
Continue reading...India has summoned Canada’s top diplomat to protest at comments by Justin Trudeau on recent mass protests by farmers in the country. Indian officials warned that continued “interference” in domestic affairs could harm relations between the two countries.
Related: Indian farmers march on Delhi in protest against agriculture laws
Continue reading...US prosecutors are discussing a deal with lawyers for the Huawei finance chief, Meng Wanzhou, to resolve criminal charges against her, a person familiar with the matter said, signaling a potential end to a case that has strained ties between the United States, China and Canada.
Negotiations between Meng’s attorneys and the US justice department picked up after the US presidential election a month ago, the person said, but it is still unclear what kind of deal could be struck.
Continue reading...Brian Pallister, the premier of Manitoba, has urged people not to get together this Christmas, as lockdowns in the province continue amid a surge in coronavirus cases. Speaking to the press on Thursday, he said: ‘I’m the guy who’s stealing Christmas to keep you safe because you need to do this now.’ Pallister has repeatedly faced criticism during the pandemic, reportedly vacationing in Costa Rica during the early stages and being accused of rushing to reopen Manitoba’s economy
Continue reading...The city’s plan to reduce overdose deaths needs support from Canada’s government – but Justin Trudeau is likely to be reluctant
Vancouver has set the stage for a showdown with Canada’s federal government by moving to become the first city in the country to decriminalize street drugs – setting itself on a collision course with Justin Trudeau, who has so far declined to pursue the option.
The city’s council voted unanimously last week to ask the federal government in Ottawa for an exemption to the country’s criminal code, which, if granted, would remove the threat of criminal sanctions for possessing small amounts of street drugs for personal use within a city.
Continue reading...This convention-defying horror has Guillermo del Toro’s vision and David Lynch’s dreamlike logic. But what does it all mean?
Internal affairs takes on new meaning in this distinctively involuted Argentine thriller about a spate of gruesome decapitations in an Andes backwater. Police officer Cruz (Victor Lopez) is already on the case when his lover Francisca (Tania Casciani) becomes the next to have her head apparently chewed off, a mysterious green goo smeared on the stump. Her hollow-eyed husband David (Esteban Bigliardi) is suspect numero uno: he is found naked in the vicinity of the victims and, after later being carted off to an asylum, testifies to a strange voice in his head that whispers: “Murder me, monster.”
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