Category Archives: Americas

Trudeau pledges tax on ‘extreme wealth inequality’ to fund Covid spending plan

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PM says government will invest billions in housing, health and jobs, but dismissals from rival parties prompt election speculation

Justin Trudeau’s government has announced ambitious plans to spend billions on childcare, housing and healthcare – partly financed by taxing “extreme wealth inequality” – as Canada braces for an economically devastating second wave of coronavirus.

Related: 'It's like night and day': Trudeau's and Trump's Covid-19 responses fuel wildly different outcomes

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Battle of billboards rages between Jair Bolsonaro’s foes and followers

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The arm-wrestle underscores Brazil’s bitter political rupture over a leader critics consider an abomination and supporters a corruption-busting champion

A giant image of Jair Bolsonaro stared down from billboards in the Brazilian town of Ourinhos. “We believe in God and we value the family,” its slogan proclaimed.

But within days of being erected, local dissidents had taken spray cans to the hoardings, dousing Brazil’s nationalist leader with black paint and using their graffiti to declare him a fascist.

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Long live Barbados as a republic, soon to be free of tarnished ‘global Britain’ | Guy Hewitt

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The decision to drop the Queen had long been planned, but the shameful Windrush scandal altered perceptions of the ‘mother country’

Barbados’s recent announcement that it will become a republic, ending the tenure of the Queen as head of state by November 2021, is noteworthy not only for what is said about the island but also about changes in perception of Britain and its monarchy.

There is legitimacy in the stance taken by the prime minister, Mia Amor Mottley. A toddler in 1966 when “Little England” (as Barbados was referred to) achieved independence, this highly regarded Caribbean leader has strong nationalist and regional instincts. With many leading Commonwealth Caribbean countries already republics, she, like others born in the independence era, sees republicanism as a coming of age.

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Number of new weekly coronavirus cases at record high, says WHO

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Announcement comes as Covid deaths increased by 27% in Europe week on week

The weekly number of new recorded coronavirus infections worldwide was last week at its highest level to date, the World Health Organization has announced, as deaths from Covid-19 in Europe increased by more than a quarter week on week.

Almost 1 million people have now died from the coronavirus since it emerged in China at the beginning of the year.

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Colombia: spying on reporters shows army unable to shake habits of dirty war

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More than 130 journalists – including at least three US reporters – surveilled in a country where media has long been targeted

María Alejandra Villamizar has had a front row seat of Colombia’s civil conflict. Over a 25-year career, she has reported from rebel-held jungles to territories controlled by violent drug cartels. She also worked as an adviser to several presidents during successive attempts to make peace.

But she recently discovered that her work had put her in the crosshairs of the military.

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Woman suspected of sending ricin to White House is arrested at Canada border

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Woman is also suspected of sending five similar poisoned envelopes to law enforcement agencies in Texas

A woman suspected of sending an envelope containing the poison ricin to the White House, has been arrested at the New York-Canada border and is also suspected of sending five similar poisoned envelopes to law enforcement agencies in Texas.

The letter was intercepted earlier this week before it reached the White House.

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‘We’re suddenly drowning in people’: Argentinians flock to Uruguay amid pandemic

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About 15,000 to 20,000 Argentinians are estimated to have moved to Uruguay since the pandemic began

Agustina Valls’ phone is ringing off the hook.

“It started as a trickle when the pandemic first hit Argentina, but now we’re getting over 20 calls a day,” she said from her office in Uruguay’s luxury beach resort of Punta Del Este.

Valls runs a thriving business guiding well-off Argentinians through the red tape of acquiring Uruguayan residence – a skill she learned arranging her own residency application after marrying a Uruguayan lawyer last October.

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Global preparation: how different countries planned for the second wave of Covid-19

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Lockdowns brought temporary relief to some but, everywhere, test and trace is key

The first wave of coronavirus swept through a world unprepared. Authorities struggled to test for the disease, and didn’t know how to slow the spread of Covid-19.

Lockdowns brought the virus under temporary control in some places, including the UK, buying a window for the revival of education and the economy, and time to prepare for future waves that epidemiologists said were almost inevitable.

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Wild plants of Barbados illustrated on plantation ledgers – in pictures

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Artist Annalee Davis was walking in fields once used for sugarcane in her Barbados homeland when she spotted unfamiliar plants. “I was taught to see them as weeds but now I understand their value offering biodiversity to exhausted land and their historical use in bush medicine.” Davis started pressing and using specially mixed Victorian paint to draw these plants on old plantation ledger pages. Colonialism wiped out Barbados’s biodiversity in the 17th century by replacing local vegetation with the monoculture of intensively farmed fields of sugarcane, but wild plants are proliferating again. The series is now on show at Haarlem Artspace, Derbyshire, until 11 October as part of re:rural. “I want to use the plants to learn to listen to the land in another way and acknowledge its trauma,” she says.


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Covid warnings ring out as Latin America bids to return to normality

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The region has seen some of the longest lockdowns in the world but experts are urging countries not to reopen too soon

The scene in Rio de Janeiro was as though much of 2020 had never happened.

The beaches at Ipanema and Copacabana heaved with visitors, the white sand obscured by bronzed bodies, sun loungers and parasols, as locals enjoyed the blistering 38C heat.

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Canada unveils ‘swirl, gargle and spit’ Covid test for school-aged children

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Test, which is only offered to children in British Columbia, involves gargling saline solution and spitting it into a tube

Authorities in Canada have unveiled a new non-invasive coronavirus test that avoids the need for intrusive nasal swabs, in a development which they hope will making testing easier and more accessible for students as they return to schools.

The new testing method, unveiled Thursday, is a significant departure from the standard – and often painful – nasopharyngeal swab, which remains the most common method of detecting Covid-19.

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‘Times have changed’: Barbadians in Reading welcome republic plans

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Caribbean island intends to remove Queen as head of state, 54 years after gaining independence

An old saying Peter Small learned from his father growing up on Barbados sprang to his mind this week as the Caribbean island declared its intention to remove the Queen as head of state: “Don’t give me a fish. Teach me how to fish.”

Fifity-four years after independence, Barbados stands ready to cast off the final vestige of its colonial past having learned much from its British overlords, Small believes. “The time is right. And the people are ready,” added the grandfather, 75, who lives at the heart of a close community of Barbadians in Reading, home to one of the largest diasporas outside of Barbados.

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Ontario announces new restrictions and steep fines amid Covid-19 surge

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Premier Doug Ford to limit size of indoor gatherings to 10, down from 50, saying ‘crisis is far from over’

Canada’s most populous province has announced new restrictions and steep fines amid a surge of Covid-19 infections that has prompted concerns the country is losing control of the virus.

Ontario premier Doug Ford on Thursday announced plans to limit the size of gatherings, reversing course on previous steps to reopen the province’s economy. The new rules reduce the size of indoor gatherings to 10, down from 50, and outdoor gatherings to 25, down from 100.

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Tesla driver found asleep at wheel of self-driving car doing 150km/h

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  • Man charged after car discovered speeding on Alberta highway
  • Police say ‘both front seats [were] completely reclined’

Police in Canada have charged a man with speeding and dangerous driving after he was found asleep at the wheel of his self-driving car as it travelled at 150km/h down a highway in the province of Alberta.

Related: Elon Musk becomes world's fourth richest man on Tesla boom

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Global report: China locks down border city in response to two Covid cases

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Checkpoints prevent anyone entering or leaving city of Ruili; WHO warns against swift reopening in Latin America; New Zealand in recession

China has locked down a city on its border with Myanmar and launched a campaign to test the city’s entire population of more than 200,000 people.

Officials in Ruili in Yunnan province said the city had entered a state of “wartime” defences against Covid-19 after two new cases emerged among travellers from Myanmar. Residents have been ordered to stay at home and authorities have set up checkpoints to prevent anyone entering or leaving Ruili and restricting access to border areas nearby. Most businesses have been closed.

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Southern hemisphere has record low flu cases amid Covid lockdowns

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Data offers hope as winter looms in north and raises viability of eliminating future flu pandemics

Health systems across the southern hemisphere were bracing a few months ago for their annual surge in influenza cases, which alongside Covid-19 could have overwhelmed hospitals. They never came.

Many countries in the southern half of the globe have instead experienced either record low levels of flu or none at all, public health specialists in Australia, New Zealand and South America have said, sparing potentially tens of thousands of lives and offering a glimmer of hope as winter approaches in the northern hemisphere.

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British Columbia pioneers programme to offer safer alternatives to street drugs

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The Canadian province, facing an epidemic of overdoses, is expanding ‘safer supply’ guidelines to let nurses prescribe opioids

In a North American first, Canada’s westernmost province has announced plans to provide more legal alternatives to street drugs like fentanyl for people at risk of an overdose, and will allow nurses to start prescribing them.

The new policies, announced on Wednesday, are aimed at providing greater access to pharmaceutical drugs like hydromorphone amid the worst spate of overdoses British Columbia has ever seen.

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Mexican women’s patience snaps at Amlo’s inaction on femicide

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Feminists seize human rights office to force President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to tackle grim toll of rape and murder

As Mexicans prepared to mark Independence Day celebrations on 15 September, a different kind of commemoration was held at the headquarters of the country’s human rights commission (CNDH).

Under a fluttering purple anarchy flag, women in black balaclavas lined the upstairs balconies of the 19th-century building – and speaker after speaker expressed their fury at the country’s crisis of violence against women.

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Barbados revives plan to remove Queen as head of state and become a republic

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The Caribbean island’s leader says its people want a ‘Barbadian head of state’ and aim to achieve the goal by November 2021

Barbados has announced its intention to remove the Queen as its head of state and become a republic by November 2021.

A speech written by its prime minister, Mia Mottley, quoted a warning by the Caribbean island nation’s first premier, Errol Barrow, against “loitering on colonial premises”.

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How about Jeffrey? Canada town of Asbestos reveals shortlist for new name

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Contenders to help the mostly French-speaking town in Quebec move on from its past include Phénix, Trois-Lacs and ... Jeffrey

A town in Quebec named after the deadly substance that was for years mined there – asbestos – has narrowed down to four a list of new names as it prepares to adopt a new identity.

The Canadian town’s four finalists, chosen from a list of 1,000 suggestions, include Phénix for the mythical bird reborn from fire (though asbestos exposure is often a concern after major fires). Another option is Apalone, after a species of turtle, or Trois-Lacs (three lakes), after a neighbourhood in the town. The final contender is simply “Jeffrey”, the name of what was until recently the town’s largest asbestos mine, the establishment of which was funded in 1880 by a W H Jeffrey, according to a local history website. Residents aged 14 or over are allowed to vote.

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