Work by Panmela Castro of woman held in headlock was removed after managers at events space told her police complained
A mural depicting police abuse in a Rio de Janeiro favela has been removed from the walls of a Miami events space after local police reportedly complained.
The work, by the Brazilian artist Panmela Castro, showed a black woman being held in a headlock, with the caption: “Woman who filmed abused [sic] by police officers is beaten and arrested.”
Continue reading...Protests put more pressure on unpopular president Iván Duque, who is engaged in a ‘national dialogue’ with strike organisers
Colombians have taken to the streets for a third national strike in two weeks, piling more pressure on the unpopular rightwing president, Iván Duque, and his proposed tax reforms.
Thousands thronged the streets of Bogotá, the capital, shutting down much of the city’s historic centre, indicating that the unrest will continue while Duque engages in a “national dialogue” with strike organisers.
Continue reading...Canada’s logging industry has a larger and more damaging impact on forest health than previously thought, a new report has found, casting doubt on the sustainability of forestry management in the country.
Related: The last great tree: a majestic relic of Canada's vanishing rainforest
Continue reading...As the Disney movie earns $1bn at the global box office, the actor says ‘I feel like I’m going to be overlooked and underestimated for a long time’
Mena Massoud, the Egyptian-Canadian actor who played Aladdin in the recent Disney live-action remake, has said he hasn’t had a single audition since its release.
Massoud told the Daily Beast: “I’m kind of tired of staying quiet about it … I want people to know that it’s not always dandelions and roses when you’re doing something like Aladdin. ‘He must have made millions. He must be getting all these offers.’ It’s none of those things. I haven’t had a single audition since Aladdin came out.”
Continue reading...The massacre at Montreal’s Polytechnique school, fueled by misogyny, is not a horrifying memory confined to a bygone era – rather it seems like a foretelling of things to come
Late in the afternoon on 6 December 1989, a young man walked into Montreal’s Polytechnique engineering school with a semi-automatic rifle and killed 14 women, injured 14 others (including four men), then killed himself.
Related: Toronto van attack suspect says he was 'radicalized' online by 'incels'
Continue reading...Sentencing in environmental activist’s death comes more than a year after guilty verdict
The seven men found guilty of killing the Honduran indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres have been sentenced to 30 to 54 years.
Cáceres, a winner of the Goldman prize for environmental defenders, was shot dead late at night on 2 March 2016 – two days before her 45th birthday – after a long battle to stop construction of an internationally financed hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River.
Continue reading...Suspected cartel members shot at Villa Unión’s mayor’s office before being chased by police
Security forces have shot dead seven more suspected cartel gunmen after a weekend attack on a northern Mexican town, according to authorities, bringing the death toll to 21 and adding fuel to a debate about whether the gangs should be deemed terrorists.
The government of Coahuila state said 10 gunmen and four police were killed in shootouts on Saturday in Villa Unión, days after Donald Trump fanned bilateral tensions by saying he would designate cartels as terrorists.
Continue reading...Record numbers across Asia and Americas infected as rising temperatures extend disease to places once seen as safe
Rising temperatures across Asia and the Americas have contributed to multiple severe outbreaks of dengue fever globally over the past six months, making 2019 the worst year on record for the disease.
In 1970 only nine countries faced severe dengue outbreaks. But the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes that can only survive in warm temperatures, is now seen in more than 100 countries. There are thought to be 390 million infections each year.
Continue reading...Desi Bouterse found guilty by military court over abduction and murder of 15 government critics in wake of coup
A court in Suriname has convicted the country’s president, Desi Bouterse, of murder for the execution of 15 opponents in 1982 following a coup. The man who has dominated the former Dutch colony’s recent history was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Opposition parties called for the resignation of Bouterse, who was in China on an official visit when the sentence was handed down on Friday.
Continue reading...Rightwing leader imprisoned for more than a year pending corruption trial says release corrects a ‘process full of abuse and arbitrariness’
The Peruvian opposition leader Keiko Fujimori has walked free after being jailed for more than a year pending a trial over allegations she accepted illegal campaign contributions from the Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht.
Fujimori, leader of the powerful rightwing Popular Force party, left prison in the Chorrillos district of the capital, Lima, according to a Reuters witness at the scene, where hundreds of supporters gathered outside in anticipation of her release.
Continue reading...Jair Bolsonaro falsely accuses actor of funding deliberate destruction of rainforest
Brazil’s president has falsely accused the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio of bankrolling the deliberate incineration of the Amazon rainforest.
Jair Bolsonaro – a populist nationalist who has vowed to drive environmental NGOs from Brazil – made the claim on Friday, reportedly telling supporters: “This Leonardo DiCaprio’s a cool guy, isn’t he? Giving money for the Amazon to be torched.”
Continue reading...The American was abseiling in El Potrero Chico near Monterrey when he plunged about 300m to his death
One of the world’s most renowned rock climbers, the American Brad Gobright, has died after falling off a mountain in Mexico.
The fall occurred on Wednesday on an almost sheer face known as El Sendero Luminoso on the El Toro mountain in the El Portrero Chico area near the northern city of Monterrey, civil defense officials said.
Continue reading...It has been a bad week for Beijing, with new support for pro-democracy protesters and detailed evidence of the repression in the north-western region
Beijing was never going to welcome the news that the US had passed a law backing pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. But its anger today at Donald Trump’s signing of a bill it condemns as “full of prejudice and arrogance” perhaps had extra bite. This was its third blow in a week. On Monday, leaders woke up to a pro-democracy landslide in Hong Kong’s local elections, and the publication of leaked documents exposing the workings of internment camps in Xinjiang, where at least a million Uighurs and other Muslims are believed to be detained.
China’s bullishness has already been challenged by the trade war and slowing economic growth, now at a 27-year low. Mr Trump has previously made it clear that he regards Hong Kong’s protesters as leverage, and has shown he does not want this law to hinder a trade deal that both sides need and appear to be close to agreeing. China is hoping he will not implement the law, which enables sanctions on individuals and the revocation of the region’s special trade status if annual reviews find that it has not retained sufficient autonomy.
Continue reading...Analysts say designation would be largely cosmetic as the already illegitimate groups are driven by money, not politics
Mexican drug cartel thugs have hanged bodies from bridges, set fire to crowded buildings and tossed hand grenades into crowds.
But Donald Trump’s decision to designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs) has been questioned by experts, who argue that the move’s main impact would be cosmetic – although it might provide a pretext for possible US military incursions.
Continue reading...Raid and arrests of four volunteer firefighters were a politically-motivated attack, indigenous associations and campaigners say
The headquarters of an award-winning Brazilian NGO which works with remote communities in the Amazon has been raided by police, who also arrested four volunteer firefighters and accused them of starting wildfires to raise international funding.
At dawn on Tuesday, heavily armed police raided the offices of the Health and Happiness Project, (known by its Portuguese initials as PSA) in Alter do Chão in the Amazon state of Pará, seizing computers and documents.
Continue reading...Events in Bolivia – including the killing of indigenous protesters – contain echoes from Bolivia’s past dictatorships
Indian massacres have returned to Bolivia. There is a history — a blood feud, to be precise — behind this tragedy. The self-declared “presidency” of Jeanine Áñez has revived the old oligarchy’s race hatred and the barbaric practice of Indian killing, the collective punishment of the nation’s Indigenous majority for daring to defy a centuries-old racial order of apartheid and oppression. Since the ousting of Bolivia’s first Indigenous president Evo Morales, security forces have carried out at least two massacres of Indigenous people protesting the military coup.
Only two weeks since seizing state power, the evidence is clear: this is a rightwing, military dictatorship. The telltale sign for a country like Bolivia is the outright Indian killing.
Continue reading...3,200 Canadian National workers walked out last week, paralyzing freight traffic and prompting fears of a heating gas shortage
Canada’s largest rail strike in more than a decade has paralyzed much of the nation’s freight traffic and prompted fears of a heating gas shortage as winter sets in.
Nearly 3,200 workers at Canadian National, the country’s largest rail operator, walked off the job on 19 November, to protest against chronic overwork and unsafe conditions.
Continue reading...Court convicts two priests and former gardener at school for deaf students on counts of sexual abuse and corruption of minors
A court in Argentina has convicted two Roman Catholic priests and the former gardener of a church-run school for deaf students on 28 counts of sexual abuse and corruption of minors, in a case that has shaken the church in Pope Francis’s homeland.
A three-judge panel in the city of Mendoza sentenced Nicola Corradi to 42 years and Horacio Corbacho to 45 years for abusing children at the Antonio Provolo Institute for Deaf and Hearing Impaired Children in Lujan de Cuyo, a municipality in north-western Argentina.
Continue reading...Ousted Bolivian president says he renounced his candidacy ‘in the name of peace’
Bolivia’s ousted and exiled president, Evo Morales, says he has ruled out standing in his country’s next elections to stop the existing crisis sliding into a broader civil or ethnic conflict.
He told the Guardian: “This is what I am afraid of and it is what we have to avoid, which is why I am renouncing my candidacy. In the name of peace, sacrifices have to be made and I am sacrificing my candidacy even though I have every right to it.”
Continue reading...Rightwing government claims former president is guilty of terrorism and sedition
The interior minister of Bolivia’s rightwing interim government has vowed to jail the former president Evo Morales for the rest of his life, accusing the exiled leftist of inciting anti-government protests that he claimed amounted to terrorism.
In an interview with the Guardian, Arturo Murillo claimed that Morales had been orchestrating efforts to “strangle” Bolivian cities by ordering followers to erect roadblocks that would starve its residents of fuel and food.
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