Secretive leader of Jalisco New Generation cartel, who seeks treatment for kidney disease, currently seen as ‘public enemy No 1’
One of Mexico’s most wanted drug lords, El Mencho, is reported to have built his own private hospital in the western state of Jalisco.
Related: 'The only two powerful cartels left': rivals clash in Mexico's murder capital
Continue reading...Top investment house delists world biggest meat producer over lack of commitment to sustainability issues
The investment arm of northern Europe’s largest financial services group has dropped JBS, the world’s biggest meat processer, from its portfolio. The Brazilian company is now excluded from assets sold by Nordea Asset Management, which controls a €230bn (£210bn) fund, according to Eric Pedersen, its head of responsible investments.
The decision was taken about a month ago, over the meat giant’s links to farms involved in Amazon deforestation, its response to the Covid-19 outbreak, past corruption scandals, and frustrations over engagement with the company on such issues. “The exclusion of JBS is quite dramatic for us because it is from all of our funds, not just the ones labelled ESG,” Pedersen said.
Continue reading...The fleet, found just outside a protected zone, raises the prospect of damage to the marine ecosystem
Ecuador has sounded the alarm after its navy discovered a huge fishing fleet of mostly Chinese-flagged vessels some 200 miles from the Galápagos Islands, the archipelago which inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
About 260 ships are currently in international waters just outside a 188-mile wide exclusive economic zone around the island, but their presence has already raised the prospect of serious damage to the delicate marine ecosystem, said former environment minister Yolanda Kakabadse.
Continue reading...Lawyers for the Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou have demanded the release of unredacted Canadian spy service documents they say would reveal a plot between the FBI and Canada to “trick” their client.
Meng, the Chinese telecom giant’s chief financial officer, was arrested on a US warrant in December 2018 during a stopover in Vancouver. She is charged with violating US sanctions against Iran, and has been fighting extradition ever since.
Continue reading...Photographs by employee appear to show company trucks being used to transport cattle from allegedly prohibited cattle farm
New evidence appears to connect JBS, the world’s biggest meat company, to cattle supplied from a farm in the Brazilian Amazon which is under sanction for illegal deforestation.
This is the fifth time in a year that allegations have surfaced connecting the company to Amazon farmers linked with illegal deforestation.
Continue reading...More than 160,000 people have died but from Mexico to Brazil, social networks are awash with quack cures and conspiracies
For months Gustavo Andrade has been battling to convince his parishioners to take Covid-19 seriously.
Related: Desperate Bolivians seek out toxic bleach falsely touted as Covid-19 cure
Continue reading...Footage of Niagara Falls tour boats highlights the stark differences in physical distancing between Canadian and US-managed companies.
Canadian tour company Hornblower Niagara Cruises's ships can carry up to 700 people but Ontario’s strict rules to prevent the spread of coronavirus have permitted them to carry only six passengers at a time.
In contrast, the US-owned Maid of the Mist boats, which usually carry around 500 people, are operating at 50% capacity
The country performs just three tests per 100,000 people, with explanations ranging from cost-cutting to a push for herd immunity
Before travelling to Washington to meet Donald Trump earlier this month, the Mexican president took a coronavirus test.
Until then, Andrés Manuel López Obrador had never been tested, arguing that there was no need for it – even though several cabinet members had become infected with Covid-19.
Continue reading...New York state boats have ferried many more tourists than their Ontarian counterparts, where distancing has been far stricter
Every day, Mory DiMaurizio looks out his window at Niagara Falls and sighs in frustration.
Not at the sight of the falls – one of the most stunning natural wonders of the world – but rather at the prospect of US tour boats with blue-ponchoed Americans.
Continue reading...The mayor of Naples has joined human rights groups in calling for “truth and justice” following the death of an Italian United Nations volunteer who had been on a peace mission in Colombia.
Mario Paciolla, 33, from Naples, was found dead on 15 July at his home in San Vicente de Caguán, a town in Colombia’s southern jungle long used as a strategic rearguard for rebel groups and drug traffickers.
Continue reading...The Triunfo de la Cruz region has been embroiled in a struggle to save their ancestral land from developers and drug traffickers
Fears are growing for the safety of five black indigenous men in Honduras who were abducted from their homes last weekend by heavily armed gunmen in police uniforms.
The victims are Garifuna fishermen from the town Triunfo de la Cruz on the north coast – a region where communities are embroiled in a longstanding struggle to save their ancestral land from drug traffickers, palm oil magnates and tourism developers aided by corrupt officials and institutions.
Continue reading...Martín Vizcarra announced emergency decree putting health ministry in charge of system after Celia Capira chased his truck
As the presidential motorcade pulled away from the main hospital in Peru’s second city – fleeing an angry protest by medical staff and relatives of Covid-19 patients – one woman broke away from the crowd.
Celia Capira ran sobbing after the truck carrying the president, Martín Vizcarra, yelling for him to go and see for himself the grim conditions at the hospital, where her husband was fighting for his life.
Continue reading...Unit recovers 420 bodies across La Paz and Santa Cruz, with most believed to have had virus
Bolivia’s plan to hold elections in September is increasingly in doubt amid rising coronavirus deaths, and reports that police have recovered the bodies of hundreds of suspected Covid-19 victims.
In the past five days, a special police unit had found 420 bodies in streets, vehicles and homes in the capital, La Paz, and in Bolivia’s biggest city, Santa Cruz, authorities said on Tuesday. Between 80% and 90% of them are believed to have had the virus.
Continue reading...Artefacts from central Mexico cave are strong evidence humans lived on continent 15,000 years earlier than previously thought
Tools excavated from a cave in central Mexico are strong evidence that humans were living in North America at least 30,000 years ago, some 15,000 years earlier than previously thought, scientists said on Wednesday.
The artefacts, including 1,900 stone tools, showed human occupation of the high-altitude Chiquihuite cave over a 20,000-year period, they reported in two studies published in the journal Nature.
Continue reading...An intergalactic refugee travels through time to modern-day Brazil in an eerie tale that has real-life corruption at its heart
Brazilian director Adirley Queirós here cobbles together something comparable, though far more lo-fi, to Wong Kar-wai’s 2046: a haunted, backwards-looking sci-fi assembled from textures of the past, which encourages you to pick through the wreckage of political ideology it strews in its wake. Wellington Abreu plays WA4, a Mad Max-style refugee from outer space who, as punishment for an illegal land occupation on his own planet, is sent to Earth to assassinate the real-life former Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek on the inauguration day of the capital city, Brasília, in 1961. But his ship crash-lands in the present day, in the satellite city of Ceilândia, an overflow enclave for the dispossessed that represents how the country’s utopia has been thwarted.
Continue reading...New figures reflect surge in violence against women during pandemic while government implements austerity measures
Violence against women has surged in Mexico since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but the country’s president has downplayed the problem and slashed the budgets of agencies charged with addressing women’s issues.
Figures released this week show that crimes such as femicides climbed 7.7% in the first half of 2020, when compared with the same period last year, and shelters have reported a sharp rise in the number of women attempting to flee domestic violence.
Continue reading...Alcoholism and depression ‘part and parcel’ for those who bury the bodies of Covid-19 victims – more than 80,000 so far
Miguel Braga has done many things in life: sold lollipops, hawked cleaning products, guarded cars. This year, as Covid-19 shook Brazil, he turned his hand to burying bodies.
“Someone has to do it,” said the 30-year-old father-of-two, who earns £200 ($250) a month carving 2m x 1m resting places into the caramel coloured soils of Latin America’s largest cemetery.
Continue reading...Some central American nations seeing highest weekly increase in cases; official UK death toll now stands at 45,422
The Nobel Foundation, which manages the Nobel Prizes, on Tuesday cancelled its traditional December banquet because of the coronavirus pandemic and said the award ceremonies would be held in “new forms”, AFP reports.
This is the first time since 1956 that the lavish banquet has been cancelled, according to the foundation. The event traditionally marks the end of the so-called Nobel Week, when the year’s prize-winners are invited to Swedish capital Stockholm for talks and the award ceremony.
Joe Biden, in a scathing speech in his campaign to become the next US president, said Donald Trump had ‘quit’ on US citizens and did not care about America.
In a speech on his plan for the economy, in which he promised to expand access to preschool for working families, directly linking the need for affordable childcare to America’s economic recovery, Biden said Trump was not taking the public health crisis seriously:
Continue reading...€750bn EU Covid-19 recovery plan agreed in early morning talks; Trump to resume daily briefings, backs face masks as ‘patriotic’; two Brazil ministers test positive. Follow latest updates
Passengers of China-bound flights must provide negative Covid-19 test results before boarding, China’s aviation authority has said.
The Chinese government has sought to reduce the risk of imported coronavirus cases as international travel resumes.
The €750bn deal is the “most important economic decision since the introduction of the euro,” according to the EU’s economy commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, who said the most difficult challenge for the commission starts now.
Il vertice infinito è finito con un’intesa. #NextGenerationEU è la più importante decisione economica dall’introduzione dell’euro. Per la Commissione, che ha proposto il piano, comincia la sfida più difficile. #21luglio L’Europa è più forte delle proprie divisioni.
Continue reading...Covid-19 has surged on farms that employ foreign workers, aided by a lack of legal protections and shoddy oversight
Early this year, months before the coronavirus outbreak had been declared a pandemic, Erika Zavala, 35, and Jesus Molina, 36, arrived in Canada. With few opportunities in Mexico, the couple had found jobs under a federal program for seasonal farm workers, and planned to send money home to their family.
Related: Canada: three killed in glacier tour bus crash in Alberta
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