Vote in border city of Mexicali is unlikely win for farmers and activists over wealthy maker of Corona, Modelo and Pacifico
Voters in a Mexican border city have rejected the construction of a massive, US-owned brewery in an arid region rife with water shortages – an improbable victory for a collective of farmers and activists over a deep-pocketed company backed by state and local officials.
Related: Fate of US brewery in drought-hit Mexico goes to Amlo poll
Continue reading...As evangelical Christians use their influence with Brazil’s government to cast their net ever wider, indigenous people vulnerable to common diseases face a growing threat
A radical group of evangelical Christian missionaries set on converting every last tribe on Earth has raised fears that deadly diseases – and even the coronavirus – will spread in the Brazilian Amazon. The group has based its newly bought helicopter right beside a reserve with the world’s highest concentration of isolated indigenous groups, who have little resistance to common illnesses.
There are more than 100 isolated indigenous groups in Brazil, all highly vulnerable to common diseases such as measles and flu, and 16 of them live in the same reserve in the Javari Valley, a vast, remote area the size of Austria. Covid-19 could wipe out any of them.
Continue reading...More than 80 prisoners injured in protests against sanitary conditions in jail
A prison riot in Colombia’s capital Bogotá left 23 prisoners dead and 83 injured, the country’s justice minister said on Sunday, as detainees protested about sanitary conditions amid the global outbreak of coronavirus.
Thirty-two injured prisoners had been hospitalised, justice minister Margarita Cabello Blanco said in a video, while seven prison guards were also injured. Two guards were in a critical condition.
Continue reading...Citizens make anger known by hitting pots and pans from their windows and balconies
Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, is facing an intensifying public backlash after his muddled reaction to the coronavirus crisis sparked five successive nights of protests and predictions that his political authority had sustained a potentially fatal blow.
Brazil has recorded 1,128 coronavirus cases and 18 deaths, with the country’s health minister last week saying the public health system was likely to collapse by the end of April.
Continue reading...South American country closed borders a week ago in attempt to stop spread of coronavirus, stranding 400 British citizens
Hundreds of Britons stranded in Peru due to the coronavirus pandemic could be flown home early next week, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has said.
More than 400 British and Irish citizens are believed to be in the Andean nation and have been unable to leave following a 15-day government lockdown imposed since Monday.
Continue reading...After the 2010 Haitian earthquake, we saw the US military in action as a humanitarian force. They can do this
In 2010, a devastating earthquake hit Haiti. In three minutes it killed more than 200,000 people and displaced two million more.
Our humanitarian aid organization, the Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE), was on the ground in Haiti. In Haiti – as well as on the front lines of other disasters, like Hurricane Florence in North Carolina and Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas just a few months ago – we saw how dangerous inaction and political paralysis can be, and how rapid mobilization saves lives. In a crisis, every minute – every second – counts.
Continue reading...Canada’s largest airline plans to cut more than 5,000 jobs in the coming weeks as the coronavirus forces it to ground hundreds of international and domestic flights.
Air Canada is cutting 3,600 employees from its banner company and 1,549 from its discount carrier Rouge. The cuts, which make up nearly 60% of the company’s flight staff, will come in April.
Continue reading...Authorities in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil have stopped a plane from landing by blocking its airport runway with trucks, cars and motorcycles. The Iberia plane had flown from Madrid to repatriate Spaniards after Ecuador closed its borders to foreign travellers. Guyaquil's mayor, Cynthia Viteri, called the repatriation effort ‘criminal’. ‘How is it possible that you were going to permit this crew to stay in the city with the most coronavirus cases?’ she said. Almost half of Ecuador’s 260 confirmed cases of Covid-19 were registered in Guayaquil
Continue reading...At least 83 murdered in 2012-2019, with a third of attacks targeting opponents of energy mega-projects
At least 83 Mexican land and environment defenders were murdered between 2012 and 2019, while hundreds more were threatened, beaten and criminalized, according to a new report.
Latin America is the most dangerous continent in the world to defend environmental, land and human rights, with Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala ranking worst.
Continue reading...President continues direct democracy drive that critics say is skewed towards his desired outcome
The fate of a giant US brewery under construction in Mexico’s parched borderlands will be put to a vote this weekend in the latest attempt at direct democracy by the country’s populist president.
The brewery in Mexicali has provoked controversy in a region where the climate crisis has already caused droughts, and where farmers and residents have taken exception to a US company, Constellation Brands, extracting water to produce beer for export.
Continue reading...Chilean lawmakers have voted to postpone a much-anticipated referendum on a new constitution as safety concerns around the coronavirus outbreak take precedence over politics.
The vote on rewriting the country’s Pinochet-era constitution was originally due to take place on 26 April – a date that the country’s health ministry now predicts will be the height of the virus outbreak in the country.
Continue reading...Covid-19 struck 44 guests at a glamorous wedding after a designer attended despite having had a fever and just arriving from Spain
It was supposed to be a highlight of the social season in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo: but a glamorous wedding celebration in the upmarket neighbourhood of Carrasco has gained a different kind of notoriety after it emerged that 44 guests contracted the coronavirus at the party.
Related: Bolsonaro’s son enrages Beijing by blaming China for coronavirus crisis
Continue reading...Thousands of travellers frantically trying to fly back to Australia after government warning over coronavirus pandemic
• Australia coronavirus live: NSW now has 307 confirmed cases, up 40 since yesterday
More than 170 Australians trapped in locked-down Peru have been advised by the government to find a commercial charter flight to get out of the country.
Some passengers have been able to get on chartered flights to the US, while others have been offered a dedicated charter flight from Lima to Sydney, but at a cost of more than $5,000.
Continue reading...Oxen are replacing tractors as the island gets by on just 30% of petroleum deliveries thanks to Trump-ordered measures
Justo Rodríguez mashes through the mud, whipping the two oxen that guide his iron plough as it slowly carves a furrow in the dry soil.
In normal times Rodríguez, 60, uses a tractor to plough these fields. But for months, the farm where he works 12 miles east of Havana, hasn’t had any diesel.
Continue reading...Researchers believe the calf was born in January and a second may be on its way
Hopes for a recovery of Brazil’s most endangered ecosystem have been given a boost by the first birth of a wild tapir in Rio de Janeiro’s Atlantic Forest for more than a century.
Scientists said video clips of the baby tapir proved the initial success of a re-introduction strategy for the threatened mammal, which is often described as “a forest gardener” because it plays a vital role in the dispersal of seeds.
Continue reading...Continuing chaotic sitation under Nicolás Maduro leaves hospitals and health services desperately unprepared
There is no ideal time for a pandemic, but fewer countries are less equipped to deal with the Covid-19 outbreak than crisis-ridden Venezuela, warn doctors and public health experts.
Bed shortages, a lack of isolation areas and short supplies of soap are already a daily reality at one hospital in Ciudad Guayana, a city in the country’s east. There is a nearby centre set up for the pandemic response but workers there say there are not enough ambulances to ferry patients.
Continue reading...Holiday for minimum security prisoners is cancelled because of outbreak, so many simply run off
Hundreds of prisoners have escaped from four semi-open prisons in São Paulo state in the south-east of Brazil after Easter prison holidays were cancelled and restrictions on visitors tightened because of coronavirus.
Videos showed dozens of prisoners fleeing down a street near one coastal prison and flooding across a soccer pitch on a beach.
Continue reading...Thousands in limbo around the world as vessels seek a port at which to dock
As countries scramble to close their borders in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic, thousands of cruise ship passengers are stranded on the high seas while their vessels seek a port at which to dock.
The Norwegian Jewel, sailing under the flag of the Bahamas, has been refused permission to dock in French Polynesia, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia, and is piloting to American Samoa to refuel.
Continue reading...Growing demand for cuy meat, which has long been a national delicacy in Peru, is providing rural women with livelihoods
The growing popularity of guinea pig meat in high-end restaurants in Peru is helping to usher in the return of a traditional, and environmentally friendly, industry led by women.
Top chefs in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia have brought traditional cuy meat back in popularity with roasted, curried and even sweetened versions appearing on menus.
Continue reading...When cholera broke out just months after a devastating earthquake, Haiti’s health system was pushed to the brink. The extraordinary rearguard action that followed offers an object lesson in dealing with a public health crisis
Marie Millande Tulmé was at work in a prison when she received a call confirming her fears: the gruesome sickness spreading rapidly across her nation was indeed cholera.
The head nurse for Haiti’s Central Plateau region at the time, Tulmé was investigating rumours that prisoners were getting violently ill and that two had died. “I thought: ‘Haiti will perish,’” she says, recalling her reaction when Haiti’s national laboratory phoned with the news. “Because I knew that cholera was grave. That it spreads easily.”
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