Category Archives: Americas

Mexican criminal groups see Covid-19 crisis as opportunity to gain more power

Posted on by

Close to 200 active criminal groups act as guardians and protectors of communities while using extortion, kidnapping, and violence

Men with assault rifles stand guard as their colleagues hand out plastic bags of groceries from a pick-up truck to a crowd of mostly older women.

Off-screen, the man recording the mobile phone footage announces that the aid packages come from a local crime boss “who runs things here”, in the city of Apatzingán in Mexico’s western state of Michoacán.

Continue reading...

Mozambique expels suspected Brazilian drug lord

Posted on by

Gilberto ‘Fuminho’ Aparecido dos Santos arrested in international sting operation

Mozambique has expelled one of Brazil’s most wanted criminals, an alleged drug lord who has been on the run for two decades.

Gilberto “Fuminho” Aparecido dos Santos was sent home on a Brazilian air force plane that left Maputo at 1.30am on Monday with dozens of police officers onboard, the authorities said.

Continue reading...

Canada shooting: gunman kills 16 people after rampage in Nova Scotia

Posted on by

Gabriel Wortman suspected of shooting spree in the coastal town of Portapique before he died during standoff with police

A gunman in Canada posing as a police officer has killed 16 people after a 12-hour shooting rampage across Nova Scotia in the worst act of mass murder the country has seen in modern times.

Several bodies were found inside and outside one home in the small, rural town of Portapique, police said, and several homes were set on fire. Bodies were found at other locations and one police officer was also among the dead.

Continue reading...

Indigenous input helps save wayward grizzly bear from summary killing

Posted on by

When a bear starts feeding off garbage and loses its fear of humans it is quickly shot but an unlikely conservation partnership may be setting a different path

In early April, a young grizzly bear swam through the chilly waters off the western coast of Canada in search of food.

Related: Groggy grizzly bear caught emerging from hibernation in viral video

Continue reading...

Take me to your Lada: Cuba’s passion for a little Russian box

Posted on by

The rugged Soviet-era car is 50 years old – and in Havana, classic models still sell for the price of a house

Landy is a stylish man. He has an ageing crooner’s slicked-back hair, the short-sleeved cool of a Miami Beach architect, and a terrible, terrible Lada car.

He’s my go-to chofer in Havana, which sounds a little grand, but it’s more economical than buying one of these babies, which will set you back £15,000. It’s also why, despite the windows having no handles (a wrench is passed back) and the rear seat containing a loose spring like an unkind proctologist, Landy fusses over it like a baby.

Continue reading...

Trump is playing a deadly game in deflecting Covid-19 blame to China

Posted on by

As Mr ‘Total Authority’ keeps his focus firmly on re-election, he risks lives far beyond the United States

Many had wondered what would happen when Donald Trump, failed salesman and gameshow host, faced a real crisis. Now they know. The man who pledged to stop “American carnage” in his inaugural address now owns it. Covid-19 has crowned him lord of misrule.

That’s fitting for a man who last week claimed to exercise “total authority”. Andrew Cuomo, the New York governor who understands what leadership means, reminded him the US does not do kings. But Trump and America’s last monarch, George III, share much in common, tyranny-wise.

Trump is more instinctive dictator than democrat, in the style of his favourite potentate, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Just look at his recent threat to shut down Congress, and his enthusiasm for suppressing minority voter turnout.

It’s worth recalling that old King George became mentally ill, since Trumpism is clearly dangerous for your health. It’s beyond reasonable dispute that his coronavirus posturing, preening, prevarication and paranoia fatally hindered the early US response.

Continue reading...

Nobel laureates condemn ‘judicial harassment’ of environmental lawyer

Posted on by

Chevron’s treatment of Steven Donziger branded ‘an exceptionally bad case of intimidation’

Twenty-nine Nobel laureates have condemned alleged “judicial harassment” by Chevron and urged the release of a US environmental lawyer who was put under house arrest for pursuing oil-spill compensation claims on behalf of indigenous tribes in the Amazon.

The open letter signed by scientists, authors, environmentalists and human rights activists said the treatment of lawyer Steven Donziger, whose movements have been restricted for more than 250 days, was one of the world’s most egregious cases of judicial harassment and defamation.

Continue reading...

Ecuador’s death rate soars as fears grow over scale of coronavirus crisis

Posted on by

Mortalities in one province leap from 3,000 to 11,000 in six weeks, with health and mortuary services overwhelmed

New data suggests that Ecuador’s coronavirus toll may be much higher than previously indicated, after figures revealed a massive jump in deaths in the province at the centre of the country’s devastating outbreak.

Since the beginning of March six weeks ago, 10,939 people have died in Guayas province, which includes Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, according to figures released late on Thursday.

Continue reading...

‘Our heritage is abandoned’: burning of Haitian church fuels anger at politicians

Posted on by

Damage to part of Unesco world heritage site is emblematic of uncaring government, critics say

Cultural leaders in Haiti have described the gutting by fire of a celebrated 200-year-old church as an avoidable tragedy that highlights the fragility of the Caribbean nation’s patrimony – and the need to preserve its historical treasures.

The Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception church in the town of Milot is part of a Unesco world heritage site that includes the ruins of the Sans Souci palace and the Citadelle Laferrière, an imposing fort that looms over Haiti’s northern plains.

Continue reading...

Chilean author, campaigner and escapee Luis Sepúlveda dies aged 70 of Covid-19

Posted on by

Dramatic career took in escapes from Pinochet’s regime in the 70s, sailing with Greenpeace and writing books including The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

The celebrated Chilean author Luis Sepúlveda, who was exiled by the dictator Augusto Pinochet in the 1980s, has died from Covid-19.

Best known for his 1992 novel The Old Man Who Read Love Stories and 1996’s The Story of a Seagull and The Cat Who Taught Her To Fly, Sepúlveda died in hospital on Thursday. He first began showing symptoms from coronavirus on 25 February, after returning to his home in Spain from a festival in Portugal. On 1 March, it was confirmed that Sepúlveda was the first case of Covid-19 in the Asturias region, where he had lived for 20 years.

Continue reading...

Returning Venezuelans in squalid quarantine face uncertain future

Posted on by

Migrants who lost their jobs in Colombia’s pandemic lockdown have been shocked by their confinement in a border town

When Jhoel Brito headed back to Venezuela last week he sought safe haven from an epoch-making global health emergency that has paralyzed scores of countries and claimed more than 120,000 lives.

After losing his job as a butcher in Colombia, the 25-year-old Venezuelan migrant believed he would be safer waiting out the coronavirus storm back home.

Continue reading...

Brazil congress demands Jair Bolsonaro release results of his Covid-19 tests

Posted on by

Brazil’s congress has given President Jair Bolsonaro an ultimatum to release the results of his coronavirus tests within 30 days, amid widespread speculation that he has been infected with Covid-19.

“Brazil needs the truth! Was the president infected?” said the motion proposed by the leftist congressman Rogério Correa and agreed by leaders of the chamber of deputies.

Continue reading...

Trudeau warns Canada’s coronavirus shutdown likely to remain for weeks

Posted on by

Prime minister said ‘we’re going to have to remain vigilant’ until vaccine is found as infections climb across the country

Justin Trudeau has warned that Canada’s economic shutdown is likely to remain in place for weeks, as coronavirus infections continue to climb across the country.

“I know people are interested in when things will go back to normal. The reality is, it’s going to be weeks still,” the prime minister said on Tuesday. “It is going to be important to get our economy going – but we’re going to have to remain vigilant until such a time as a vaccine is found.”

Continue reading...

Man believed to be Brazil’s biggest cocaine supplier arrested in Mozambique

Posted on by

Gilberto ‘Fuminho’ Aparecido dos Santos caught after more than 20 years on the run

One of Brazil’s most wanted people, an alleged drug baron accused of running international cocaine operations for the country’s biggest gang, has been arrested in Mozambique.

Gilberto “Fuminho” Aparecido dos Santos, believed to be the leader of the First Capital Command (PCC), was arrested in an international sting that included agents from Brazil, Mozambique and the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Mozambican police confirmed the arrest on Tuesday.

Continue reading...

‘We’re abandoned to our own luck’: coronavirus menaces Brazil’s favelas

Posted on by

Residents fearful how their families will cope as food runs out and Jair Bolsonaro undermines lockdown message

Renato Rosas knows what poverty feels like. The musician and biomedical salesman grew up in one of Brazil’s biggest favelas, in the Amazon city of Belém. Relatives still live in the wooden stilt houses that line the black, polluted rivers running into Guajará Bay.

“It is the most extreme poverty,” he said of the Baixadas da Estrada Nova Jurunas neighbourhood where floods, deadly sucuri snakes lurking in floating rubbish and armed drug gangs are among the challenges.

Continue reading...

Chile: Pinochet-era military agents could be freed from jail to slow Covid-19 spread

Posted on by

Inmates at Punta Peuco prison convicted of human rights violations could be included in bill to release low-risk offenders

Former Chilean military agents convicted of serious human rights violations under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet could be freed by a controversial new ruling that seeks to halt the spread of the coronavirus among the country’s prison population.

Related: Chile doctors fear complacency over Covid-19 after initial successes

Continue reading...

Brazil: Bolsonaro’s defiance of distancing criticized by health minister

Posted on by

Luiz Henrique Mandetta suggests Brazilians are confused by mixed messages from government and urges ‘single, united line’

Brazil’s health minister has publicly defied President Jair Bolsonaro over coronavirus, accusing him of sowing doubt in Brazilian minds over the need for physical distancing.

In a Sunday night interview with Brazil’s most-watched television network, Luiz Henrique Mandetta signalled that Bolsonaro’s insistence on snubbing health ministry distancing recommendations was confusing the country’s 210 million citizens.

Continue reading...

Bolsonaro dragging Brazil towards coronavirus calamity, experts fear

Posted on by

Concerns grow that by downplaying threat, Brazil’s president risks public health crisis

Medical experts have said they fear that Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, could be hastening the country’s march towards a devastating public health crisis like those to have hit northern Italy and New York by undermining social distancing measures.

Bolsonaro is one of just four world leaders still downplaying the threat of coronavirus to public health, alongside the authoritarian presidents of Nicaragua, Belarus and Turkmenistan.

Continue reading...

US’s global reputation hits rock-bottom over Trump’s coronavirus response

Posted on by

International relations expert warns policy failure could do lasting damage as president insults allies and undermines alliances

Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which he once dismissed as a hoax, has been fiercely criticised at home as woefully inadequate to the point of irresponsibility.

Yet also thanks largely to Trump, a parallel disaster is unfolding across the world: the ruination of America’s reputation as a safe, trustworthy, competent international leader and partner.

Call it the Trump double-whammy. Diplomatically speaking, the US is on life support.

Continue reading...