Category Archives: Americas

Brazil’s foreign minister, who bashed China and praised Trump, resigns

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Ernesto Araújo’s resignation ends the most calamitous chapter in the history of the country’s diplomacy, critics say

Jair Bolsonaro’s ultraconservative foreign minister has resigned after a rebellion from diplomats and lawmakers who accused him of demolishing Brazil’s international reputation and putting Brazilian lives at risk by vandalizing relations with China and the US during the coronavirus pandemic.

Ernesto Araújo, a 53-year-old career diplomat famed for his bashing of Xi Jinping’s China and devotion to Donald Trump, tendered his resignation on Monday, ending what critics call the most calamitous chapter in the history of Brazilian diplomacy.

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Chinese diplomat calls Justin Trudeau ‘running dog of US’ as tensions escalate

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China and Canada have clashed repeatedly in recent months over Beijing’s treatment of its Uighur minority

A Chinese diplomat has dismissed Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau as a “boy” in a social media attack marking a new low in the fractured relationship between the two countries.

China and Canada have clashed repeatedly in recent months, and last week the two countries imposed sanctions on each other in a growing row over Beijing’s treatment of its Uighur minority.

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Mexico: Tulum police accused of ‘murder’ over death of woman knelt on by officers

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Four officers in Mexican resort city charged with femicide after autopsy concluded that Victoria Salazar’s neck was broken

Four police officers in the Mexican resort city of Tulum have been charged with femicide after a Salvadoran woman died while being restrained.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador flatly described the incident as “murder”, telling reporters on Monday. Mexico’s president said: “She was brutally treated and murdered … It is an event that fills us with pain and shame.”

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Mafia fugitive caught after posting YouTube cooking video

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Marc Feren Claude Biart was betrayed by failing to hide his distinctive tattoos in the clip

A mafia fugitive has been caught in the Caribbean after appearing on YouTube cooking videos in which he hid his face but inadvertently showed his distinctive tattoos.

Marc Feren Claude Biart, 53, led a quiet life in Boca Chica, in the Dominican Republic, with the local Italian expat community considering him a “foreigner”, police said in a statement on Monday.

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Karol G: ‘Why should I limit how I express myself because I’m a woman?’

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The vastly popular Colombian singer is challenging outdated views of women in Latin pop – but her naive racial politics have sparked controversy

I catch Colombian singer Karol G in a rare moment of calm, while she is in a car on her way to a hotel. She has just landed in New York to film a music video, but home is Miami, she clarifies, the engine humming in the background. “I love it there because there are so many Latinos!”

Born Carolina Giraldo Navarro in Medellín, Karol G, 30, is one of Latin America’s biggest pop stars, an expressive performer who uses beautiful hooks for lyrics that explore female desire and sexual agency – a rarity in the male-dominated Latin music scene, where, she says, women have historically been treated like “products”.

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Schitt’s Creek motel for sale – minus the ‘Rosebud’ sign

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First the Rose family’s former mansion hit the real estate lists – now it’s the 10-room motel they called home

The motel home of the Rose family in the Emmy-sweeping Canadian TV series Schitt’s Creek is up for sale for C$2m.

The Hockley Motel in the Canadian town of Mono, Ontario, was a key filming location throughout the six seasons of the hit CBC sitcom.

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Chile imposes lockdowns to fight new Covid wave despite vaccination success

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Nearly half the population has received at least one vaccine dose but residents of the capital and other regions face strict new curbs

Despite mounting the world’s fastest per-capita Covid-19 vaccination campaign, Chile has been forced to announce strict new lockdowns as it plunges deeper into a severe second wave of cases which is stretching intensive care capacity.

Chile trails only Israel and the UAE in vaccine doses per 100 inhabitants worldwide, but new cases have risen quickly amid mixed health messaging, travel over the southern hemisphere summer holidays and the circulation of new variants.

Related: Chile emerges as global leader in Covid inoculations with 'pragmatic strategy'

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US and Canada hit back at China’s ‘baseless’ sanctions as Xinjiang row deepens

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Washington says Beijing’s tit-for-tat sanctions will only focus attention on its ‘genocide’ against Uighurs

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has warned that China’s tit-for-tat sanctions against two Americans in the growing dispute over Beijing’s treatment of Uighurs were “baseless” and would only shine a harsh spotlight on the “genocide” in Xinjiang.

“Beijing’s attempts to intimidate and silence those speaking out for human rights and fundamental freedoms only contribute to the growing international scrutiny of the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang,” Blinken said in a statement on Saturday.

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‘Reclaim These Streets’ and rubber duck rallies: human rights roundup – in pictures

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Coverage on recent struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cardiff Bay to Thailand

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Protests at ‘inhumane’ export of live horses to Japan for food

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Activists seek ban on flying horses to Japan with thousands sent every year from Canada and France

Tens of thousands of horses are being subjected to long-haul flights, confined in crates with no food or water, to meet demand for horsemeat in Japan.

Since 2013, about 40,000 live horses have been flown to Japan from airports in western Canada. Under Canadian regulations, the journey can stretch up to 28 hours, during which the animals are allowed to go without food, water or rest.

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Mexico bars candidate accused of rape from running on technical grounds

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Decision drew the wrath of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has defended candidate Félix Salgado

Mexico’s elections agency has withdrawn ballot registration for a ruling-party state candidate who was nominated despite accusations of rape against him – but the move was made on technical grounds and not because of the allegations.

The decision drew the wrath of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has defended candidate Félix Salgado and criticized women’s groups who objected to his candidacy.

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Toronto: fare-beating beaver wandering in station disrupts morning commute

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‘Rascal’ or ‘Nickel’ who ended up in station after straying from a nearby marsh was captured and released safely

Lost and confused passengers are a common sight on the Toronto metro system, but a puzzled, fare-evading beaver wandering a subway station is probably a first for the city.

An underground station in Canada’s largest city was shut down on Thursday after a beaver unwittingly ended up on its terrazzo tile floors after straying from a nearby marsh.

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Haiti deportations soar as Biden administration deploys Trump-era health order

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There have been more ‘Title 42’ expulsions in the space of a few weeks than during an entire year of Trump’s administration, report says

The Biden administration has so far deported more Haitians in a few weeks than the Trump administration did in a whole year, with the use of a highly controversial Trump-era public health order denying asylum seekers basic legal rights, according to a new report.

The report, The Invisible Wall, due to be published on Thursday by a coalition of immigrant rights groups, focuses on Title 42, part of the 1944 Public Health Service Act invoked a year ago by the Trump administration as grounds for summary expulsion of migrants because of the supposed health risk they posed during the Covid pandemic.

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‘The Yanomami could disappear’ – photographer Claudia Andujar on a people under threat in Brazil

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Andujar lived with the tribe and fights for them. A timely show of her images comes to London soon


It is more than 50 years since Claudia Andujar began photographing the Yanomami, the people of the Amazon rainforest near Brazil’s border with Venezuela. Now 89, she is using her archive to increase their visibility, at a time when their survival is under renewed threat.

“The question of indigenous people should be more respected, more widely known. This is very important as it’s the only way the present [Brazilian] government will come to recognise their rights as human beings to occupy their land,” says Andujar, speaking from São Paulo. “This government isn’t interested in their rights.”

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‘Saddest March of our lives’: Brazilians lament Covid devastation as critics decry Bolsonaro

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As country reaches 300,000 fatalities, doctors condemn ‘politics of death’ but pledge to fight on

Like so many on Brazil’s left, Pedro Carvalho was certain Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency would prove a nightmare: for human rights, for the environment and for the national health system the 41-year-old doctor cherishes and serves.

“I felt this profound sadness, just utter, personal sadness,” Carvalho remembered of the fateful moment in October 2018 that the far-right populist was confirmed as his country’s new leader.

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Abandoned: gangs in Guatemala replace families – photo essay

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Decades of migration to the US left generations of children behind for whom gangs are substitute families

Photographs and text by Ignacio Marin

Since she arrived in Guatemala City a few decades ago, she has lived in the same humble home. Between bare concrete walls and under a tin roof, she raised three children. Now Berenice is raising her 15-year-old grandson since his mother left for the US and his father was murdered.

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The US has been silent on Honduras’s drug problem, but that might be about to change

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Analysis: The Biden administration is expected to take a cooler approach to President Hernández than Donald Trump did

For the US, this is a painfully embarrassing fortnight to count Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández as a key ally in Central America.

On Monday he was named in a New York federal courtroom as a co-conspirator in the conviction of his associate, Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez, for smuggling tons of cocaine into the US, and receiving a $250,000 bribe from Fuentes, an alleged drug kingpin.

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‘She’s representing all of us’: the story behind Deb Haaland’s swearing-in dress

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The skirt, a traditional Native garment, outshone everything in the Eisenhower building – and there is a story of empowerment and survival behind it

It was a dress that triggered a flood of headlines. Standing in front of Vice-President Kamala Harris with her right hand raised, Deb Haaland was sworn in last week as the secretary of the interior dressed in a long rainbow ribbon skirt adorned with a corn stalk, butterflies and stars.

Related: Making history in style: Deb Haaland wears Indigenous dress at swearing-in

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Joe Biden strikes new tone but Mexico remains US’s wall against migrants

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As senior US officials arrive in Mexico for talks experts say deal to send Covid vaccine shows that migrants are still a bargaining chip

Joe Biden took office promising to put a friendlier face on US immigration policy. He put an end to a scheme requiring asylum seekers to remain in Mexico, promised to restore the US asylum system and pledged to spend $4bn on addressing the root causes of migration in Central America.

But as ever-increasing numbers of unaccompanied minors arrive at the US southern border and create a domestic political crisis for the US president, he is turning to a tactic used by his predecessors – including Donald Trump: outsourcing immigration enforcement to Mexico.

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Scathing report lambasts Canada police for handling of Indigenous man’s killing

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  • Police told Colten Boushie’s grieving mother to ‘get over it’
  • Officers accused of discrimination in 2016 case

Police in Canada told a grieving Indigenous mother to “get over it” after delivering news that her son had been killed, according to a scathing watchdog report that accused officers of discrimination and inflaming racial tensions during their investigation.

Colten Boushie, 22, was shot and killed in August 2016 after he and four friends drove on to a farm looking for help with their flat tyre. Nearly two years later, an all-white jury found Gerald Stanley, 56, not guilty of second-degree murder amid racial tensions in the Canadian prairies and deficiencies in the justice system.

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