Category Archives: Americas

First two Brazilian judges vote to convict Jair Bolsonaro in coup plot trial

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Three more supreme court justices to cast their votes in coming days, with verdict expected by Thursday

Jair Bolsonaro led a criminal organisation that sought to plunge Brazil back into dictatorship with a murderous power grab involving special forces assassins and a vast disinformation campaign, the supreme court judge presiding over the former president’s trial has claimed as he voted for Bolsonaro’s conviction.

Alexandre de Moraes was the first supreme court justice of five to announce his decision on Tuesday, as the trial of Bolsonaro and seven alleged co-conspirators – including four senior members of the military and the former head of Brazil’s answer to MI6 – entered its final stretch.

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Canadian apiary store owner foils honey heist by marauding swarm of ‘robber bees’

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Raids by rival hives aren’t rare after a dry, hot summer, but Christine McDonald was surprised to find her store besieged

A Canadian beekeeper has described fending off thousands of “robber bees” as they raided her shop in a brazen attempt to steal honey.

Christine McDonald, who owns Rushing River Apiaries in the British Columbia city of Terrace, said she entered her shop to find it overrun by the swarm.

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Boris Johnson was paid £240,000 after Maduro meeting, invoice shows

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Johnson’s office sent invoice to hedge fund manager, which was paid, weeks after meeting Venezuelan leader last year

From a private jet somewhere over the Caribbean Sea in February last year, Boris Johnson called his old political adversary David Cameron, then the foreign secretary, to notify him of a visit.

Johnson had taken a day out from a family holiday in the Dominican Republic for an unlikely meeting with the leftwing president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, a man whom Johnson, when in office, had likened to a “dictator of an evil regime”.

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Republican condemns Vance for ‘despicable’ comments on Venezuelan boat strike

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Rand Paul decries ‘thoughtless’ comment after vice-president defends strike against alleged drug traffickers

The Republican senator who heads the homeland security committee has criticized JD Vance for “despicable” comments apparently in support of extrajudicial military killings.

“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” the vice-president said in an X post on Saturday, in defense of Tuesday’s US military strike against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean Sea, which killed 11 people the administration alleged were drug traffickers.

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LGBTQ+ Americans consider move to Canada to escape Trump: ‘I’m afraid of living here’

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LGBTQ+ people in the US contemplate heading north as they wrestle with the president’s assault on the community

The number of LGBTQ+ Americans inquiring about moving to Canada has soared since Donald Trump’s re-election, campaigners have said, as people across the US wrestle with the fallout of rising anti-gay rhetoric, anti-trans executive orders, and the more than 600 bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights.

“So much is happening in the US right now and a lot of it is terrifying,” said Latoya Nugent of Rainbow Railroad, a North American charity that helps LGBTQI+ individuals escape violence and persecution in their home countries.

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Judge blocks ending of legal protections for 1m Venezuelans and Haitians in US

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Homeland security had tried to end temporary protected status granted by the Biden administration

A federal judge on Friday ruled against the Trump administration from ending temporary legal protections that have granted more than 1 million people from Haiti and Venezuela the right to live and work in the United States.

The ruling by US district judge Edward Chen of San Francisco for the plaintiffs means that 600,000 Venezuelans whose temporary protections expired in April or whose protections were about to expire on 10 September have status to stay and work in the United States.

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Trump sends 10 stealth fighter planes to Puerto Rico amid war on Caribbean drug cartels

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Move comes after accusing Venezuela of buzzing US warship and a deadly US missile strike in Caribbean Sea

Donald Trump is sending 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico to bolster US military operations against drug cartels in the Caribbean region, it was reported on Friday.

If follows a deadly US missile strike on Tuesday on a boat in the Caribbean Sea that the Trump administration insisted was carrying 11 Venezuelan drug traffickers, and comments by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Wednesday that such attacks “will happen again”.

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Canada’s Mark Carney signals austerity measures as government shifts focus from Trump to economy

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Prime minister cautions Canadians as Ottawa moves to curb spending to balance near-record military expenditures

Mark Carney has told Canadians to prepare for austerity measures and his finance minister warned of “tough choices” in the coming months, as the government attempts to balance near-record defence spending, cuts to government programs and a trade war with the United States.

Carney, the former central banker and economist turned politician, has been meeting senior ministers before the fall budget, and hinted cuts were coming to the federal bureaucracy.

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Canada: one person killed and six injured in stabbing in remote First Nation community

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Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the suspect who attacked Hollow Water First Nation has also died

One person has been killed and six others injured in a mass stabbing in an Indigenous community in central Canada, according to federal police who said that the the suspect also died in the incident.

The violence occurred in Hollow Water First Nation, a remote community with about 1,000 residents, 217km (135 miles) north of Manitoba’s provincial capital, Winnipeg, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told AFP.

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New ‘golden triangle’ of fentanyl and guns spans US-Mexico border

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Report links Arizona-Sonora smuggling to rising homicide and overdose deaths in both countries

A new “golden triangle” of fentanyl and gun trafficking between Mexico and the US ties together the homicide and overdose crises of the two countries, according to a a new study.

The triangle spans Baja California, Sinaloa and Sonora – the three states where almost all fentanyl seizures in Mexico take place – and connects to Arizona through a quieter part of the US-Mexico border that has become a hotspot for trafficking in both directions.

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Old master painting looted by Nazis recovered a week after being spotted in Argentinian property listing

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Portrait of a Lady by the Italian master Giuseppe Ghislandi handed over by daughter of the late Nazi financier Friedrich Kadgien

Authorities in Argentina have recovered an 18th-century painting stolen more than 80 years ago by the Nazis from a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam, a week after it was spotted by chance in a real estate listing.

The painting, the long-lost Portrait of a Lady (Contessa Colleoni) by the Italian master Giuseppe Ghislandi, was looted in the second world war. It was handed over on Wednesday to the Argentinian judiciary by the daughter of the late Nazi financier Friedrich Kadgien, Patricia Kadgien, who has been under house arrest with her husband since Tuesday.

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Top Obama-era Latin American expert warns of ‘disastrous’ US intervention in Venezuela

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US military buildup and attack on alleged narco boat spark fears of protracted guerrilla war in South America

The White House’s former top Latin America official has said he fears the US could stumble into a protracted guerrilla war in Venezuela after Donald Trump ordered a military strike on a boat in the Caribbean Sea, killing 11 alleged drug traffickers.

Tuesday’s controversial strike off the Venezuelan coast – which was reportedly carried out by an attack helicopter or Reaper drone – came after the US president ordered a major naval deployment to the region, ostensibly to combat South American drug traffickers.

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Jamaicans head to polls for election as ruling party faces corruption concerns

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Polls point to ‘very close election’ between the Jamaica Labour party and the opposition People’s National party

Jamaicans head to the polls on Wednesday for a closely fought general election which has been overshadowed by an investigation into potential corruption in the ruling Jamaica Labour party (JLP) which is seeking a third term in office.

The latest local poll put the opposition People’s National party (PNP) 3.1% lead over the JLP, but political analyst Damion Gordon cautioned that the lead was barely larger than the margin of error.

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Indonesia embassy official’s shooting in Lima probably a ‘contract killing’, says Peru government

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Interior minister says ‘they were waiting for’ official who was shot at point-blank range outside his home in killing that has shocked Peru

Peru’s government has said the fatal shooting of an Indonesian embassy official in Lima on Monday night was likely a “contract killing”.

Zetro Leonardo Purba, 40, an official at the Indonesian embassy in Peru, was shot dead outside his block of flats in Lima’s Lince neighbourhood while riding a bicycle home from work on Monday evening.

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US conducts ‘kinetic strike’ against drug boat from Venezuela, killing 11, Trump says

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Trump says ‘we took it out’ referring to the operation in international waters, amid US-Caracas tensions

The US military has killed 11 drug traffickers from Venezuela during a “a kinetic strike” in the Caribbean Sea, the US president, Donald Trump, has claimed amid growing tensions between Washington and Caracas.

Trump trailed the announcement during an address at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, telling reporters the US had “just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out … a drug-carrying boat”.

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Argentina couple under house arrest amid search for painting stolen by Nazis

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Daughter of former Nazi official and her husband to be questioned after raid on home failed to find masterpiece

A federal court in Argentina has ordered house arrest for the daughter of a former Nazi official and her husband after a raid failed to locate a painting stolen from a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam.

Authorities raided a home in the coastal city of Mar del Plata last week after a Dutch newspaper identified a painting seen in a real estate photo as an Italian masterpiece registered on a database of lost wartime art.

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Margaret Atwood releases short story critiquing book bans in Canada

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Author quipped she wrote ‘suitable’ piece after Alberta school ban included her novel The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood has released a new short story critiquing elected officials for a wide-ranging book ban in the Canadian province of Alberta. The controversial decision to remove books purportedly containing “explicit sexual content” has seen numerous works of literature swept up in the dragnet, including Atwood’s dystopian work The Handmaid’s Tale.

In a social media post, Atwood wrote that since her famed work was no longer permissible in Alberta schools, she had written a “suitable” short work for teens, adding the work was necessary because the province’s minister of education thought students were “stupid babies”.

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Jair Bolsonaro faces justice over alleged attempt to usurp Brazilian democracy

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Former president in court along with seven others accused of failed power grab after losing 2022 election

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro and seven of his allies, including four senior members of the military, have gone on trial for allegedly attempting to stage a coup – the first time in Brazilian history such powerful figures have faced justice for seeking to topple the country’s democracy.

Bolsonaro, a paratrooper turned far-right populist who governed from 2019 until 2023, stands accused of masterminding a failed power grab after losing the 2022 election to the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

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Archaeologists in Peru discover 3D mural that could date back 4,000 years

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The unprecedented find has shifted archaeological understanding about the first civilisations in the Americas

Archaeologists in Peru have discovered a multicoloured three-dimensional mural that could date back 4,000 years, in an unprecedented find that has shifted archaeological understanding about the first civilisations in the Americas.

The centrepiece of the three-by-six metre mural is a stylistic depiction of a large bird of prey with outstretched wings, its head adorned with three-dimensional diamond motifs that visually align the south and north faces of the mural. It is covered with high-relief friezes and features designs painted in blue, yellow, red and black.

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Guatemala says it is willing to receive hundreds of deported children from US

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Announcement comes a day after a US federal judge halted the deportation of 10 unaccompanied Guatemalan minors

Guatemala is ready and willing to receive about 150 unaccompanied children of all ages each week from the United States, the country’s president has said, a day after a US federal judge halted the deportation of 10 Guatemalan children.

Those children had already boarded a plane when a court responded to an emergency appeal on Sunday. They were later returned to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

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