Category Archives: Americas

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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Canadian Michael Kovrig goes on trial in China

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Canadian official is denied court access as former diplomat faces accusations of espionage in case described by Ottawa as ‘hostage diplomacy’

The second of two Canadians detained in China for more than two years, Michael Kovrig, has gone on trial on espionage charges, days after the United States raised its concerns over the cases during tense US-China talks in Alaska.

One senior Canadian diplomat said he had been denied access to the court in Beijing on Monday, echoing the scenes on Friday, when Michael Spavor was tried in secret in a court process that lasted only a few hours.

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Olympic surfing hopeful Katherine Diaz killed by lightning while training

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  • Twenty-two year-old killed near home in El Salvador
  • Diaz was preparing for ISA World Surf Games

El Salvador’s top surfer, who had been preparing fo the sport’s Olympic debut this summer, has been struck and killed by lightning during a training session.

“A great athlete who has represented our country has left us,” the Salvadoran Surf Federation said in a post paying tribute to Katherine Diaz on social media. “See you soon, great warrior. El Salvador is in mourning.”

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Canadian Conservative party votes not to recognize climate crisis as real

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  • Delegates vote 54%-46% against policy change request
  • Leader O’Toole has sought ambitious climate change agenda

Canada’s main opposition Conservative Party members have voted down a proposal to recognize the climate crisis as real, in a blow to their new leader’s efforts to embrace environmentally friendly policies before a likely federal election this year.

Related: 'Climate facts are back': EPA brings science back to website after Trump purge

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‘Blindsided’: Biden faces tough test in reversing Trump’s cruel border legacy

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As unaccompanied children reach the US, Republicans seek political gain. The White House has a fight on its hands

Lauded for his human touch, Joe Biden is facing an early political and moral test over how his government treats thousands of migrant children who make the dangerous journey to America alone.

Related: Is there a crisis at the border? Advocates in Texas say it's 'political manipulation'

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Trudeau condemns closed-door espionage trial of Canadian in China

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Michael Spavor has been detained in China since 2018 in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of a Huawei executive

Justin Trudeau has reacted angrily to the closed-door trial of a Canadian man detained in China for more than two years on espionage charges, dismissing it as “completely unacceptable”.

Businessman Michael Spavor, whose hearing finished after less than three hours on Friday, is one of two Canadians detained, in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest on a US extradition warrant of the Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, and formally charged last June with spying.

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‘Things are desperate’: Brazil’s Covid intensive care units are almost all at capacity

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The country’s sceptic president and his allies continue to downplay the coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 287,000

Brazil’s healthcare system has been plunged into the most severe crisis in its history, with doctors overwhelmed and patients dying while they wait for intensive care beds as the country’s Covid-sceptic president, Jair Bolsonaro, continued to spurn calls for a lockdown that would save lives.

As the daily number of infections and deaths soared to new heights this week, researchers from Brazil’s leading healthcare institute, Fiocruz, said South America’s biggest country faced an unparalleled “catastrophe”.

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Mexico ambush: 13 state police killed in attack on convoy

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Attacks on police have become routine as the country fights drug cartels and organised crime

Thirteen Mexican police officers and investigators have been killed in an ambush as they travelled through a rural region – marking the latest attack on law enforcement by brazen criminal groups.

Eight state police officers and five members of the state’s investigative police force died in the ambush in the municipality of Coatepec Harinas, 125km (78 miles) south-west of Mexico City in Mexico state on Thursday afternoon, according to officials.

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US to send 4m AstraZeneca vaccine doses to Mexico and Canada

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Biden administration has come under pressure to share vaccine, which has been authorized in other countries but not yet in US

The United States plans to send roughly 4m doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine that it is not using to Mexico and Canada in loan deals with the two countries.

Mexico will receive 2.5m doses of the vaccine and Canada will receive 1.5m doses, the official said.

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‘Judith never came home’: deadly fate of ‘disappeared’ women in Peru

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Policeman accused of sex trafficking, while 12,000 women and girls vanish in ‘shadow pandemic’

Judith Machaca was last seen on her way home from work in her home town of Tacna in southern Peru. The environmental engineering student had been working part-time at a mobile phone shop and would always send a message if she was going to be late.

The last text message from her phone was sent at 11pm on 28 November and the next day her distraught father reported the 20-year-old’s disappearance to the police. They sent him away, saying that she was probably with a boyfriend and would show up soon enough.

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Activists demand sexual violence against Argentina’s indigenous people be classified a hate crime

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The attacks are common in northern Argentina against women and children – including one victim who was just four years old

Ana* was on her way home from school with her young cousin when it happened. “She managed to run away, but I didn’t,” she said, her voice trembling. “They put me in a car. They were white men. And they raped me.”

Ana’s ordeal wasn’t an isolated incident, but part of a horrific pattern of brutal sexual violence inflicted on indigenous children and women in northern Argentina by non-indigenous men, often in groups.

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Canada: top female soldier quits over military’s failures on sexual misconduct

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Lt Col Eleanor Taylor says in resignation letter: ‘On the issue of addressing harmful sexual behaviour, we have lost all credibility’

One of the most senior female soldiers in Canada has resigned after a string of allegations of sexual misconduct among top brass, saying she was “sickened” by the military’s repeated failures to tackle the abuse.

In a letter sent to her superiors, Lt Col Eleanor Taylor announced her resignation late on Tuesday, in the latestblow to an institution already in crisis.

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Two notorious Colombian warlords to face off in truth commission hearing

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Rodrigo Londoño led the leftwing Farc guerrillas, while Salvatore Mancuso was head of a rightwing death squad during the civil war

Two of Colombia’s most notorious warlords will appear together before a truth commission on Thursday, in the latest move to shed light on crimes committed during decades of bloody civil war.

Rodrigo Londoño, better known by his wartime alias Timochenko, once led the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), in a bloody struggle against the Colombian state that left 260,000 dead.

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Cycle of retribution takes Bolivia’s ex-president from palace to prison cell

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Jeanine Áñez’s government once sought to jail the country’s former leader Evo Morales for terrorism and sedition – now she faces the same charges

It was November 2019, just days after Evo Morales had abandoned Bolivia’s presidency and fled into exile, and the country’s newly installed interior minister was making no effort to hide his glee.

“Any terrorist should spend the rest of their life in prison,” Arturo Murillo gloated during an interview in his recently occupied chambers, vowing to put the runaway leftist behind bars for the next 30 years.

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Special brew: eco-friendly Peruvian coffee leaves others in the shade

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The Mayni people are harvesting shade-grown coffee from under the canopy of mature trees, with huge benefits for wildlife and the community

Deep within the Peruvian cloud forests, a six-hour drive from the town of Satipo, the remote Mayni community is busy growing organic coffee beneath the canopy of the native forest in order to preserve the rich mosaic of life there.

Most of the forest is kept intact, with just a little undergrowth cleared to plant Coffea arabica trees. Dahlia Casancho, who is leading the Mayni in their eco-friendly coffee-growing endeavours, sees shade-grown coffee farming as a positive development for the community, who traditionally believe in a forest god and river god. “Nature is our home. Nature gives us water, feeds us and also allows us to grow our coffee,” she says. “That’s why we take great care of our forest and we want it to be sustainable so that our children can also enjoy it.

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Brazil set to lose its third health minister amid pandemic as Covid death toll rises

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Eduardo Pazuello expected to depart after 10 months as coronavirus fatalities near 280,000

The Brazilian health minister, Eduardo Pazuello, is set to be sacked after an inglorious 10-month tenure during which more than 260,000 Brazilians have been killed by a coronavirus outbreak that his government stands accused of catastrophically mismanaging.

Related: 'Covid is taking over': Brazil plunges into deadliest chapter of its epidemic

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Canadian lobbyists attack Netflix children’s film for ‘anti-oil propaganda’

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Canadian Energy Centre, funded by Alberta government, says Bigfoot Family ‘brainwashes’ youngsters and ‘peddles lies’

The animated film Bigfoot Family has come under fire in Canada – but not because of its stilted dialogue or confusing plot.

Instead, a government-funded lobbying group has targeted the movie – a fantasy epic featuring a human family whose father is Bigfoot – on the grounds that it “peddles lies” about the oil and gas industry.

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While We Are Here review – enigmatic study of romance is hard to love

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There is an avant-garde bravery to this international love story – but how can we invest in protagonists we never see?

Here is a thought-experiment of a movie from Brazilian film-makers Clarissa Campolina and Luiz Pretti: it’s a dramatic essay, or docu-fictional romance, or perhaps the cinematic equivalent of an epistolary novel, and it has been much admired on the festival circuit.

Related: Streaming: indie films from Latin America

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‘It opens a window of hope’: case will potentially set precedent for sexual violence survivors in Colombia

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Jineth Bedoya, who’s been seeking justice since she was kidnapped, tortured and raped in 2000, to testify before international court

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights will hear testimony on Monday from a Colombian journalist who was kidnapped, tortured and raped while reporting on her country’s civil war, in a case which could set a precedent for thousands of survivors of sexual violence in the Andean nation.

Jineth Bedoya, who has been pursuing justice for more than 20 years and now campaigns against sexual violence, has so far seen only three of her attackers sentenced.

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Bolivia’s ex-interim president arrested in opposition crackdown

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Jeanine Áñez’s arrest is part of restored leftist government’s pursuit of those involved in the ousting of socialist leader Evo Morales

Bolivia’s conservative ex-interim president, who led the country for a year, has been arrested as officials of the restored leftist government target those who helped oust socialist leader Evo Morales in 2019.

Jeanine Áñez, who Morales supporters say was part of a coup, was detained early on Saturday morning in her home town of Trinidad and was flown to the capital, La Paz, where she appeared before a prosecutor.

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