Category Archives: Americas

Venezuela accuses El Salvador of human trafficking as prisoners caught in row between authoritarians

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Nayib Bukele offered to exchange 252 Venezuelan migrants deported to El Salvador for 252 prisoners in Venezuela

Venezuela’s chief prosecutor has accused El Salvador’s president of being a “tyrannical” human trafficker after Nayib Bukele offered to exchange the 252 Venezuelan migrants deported to his country’s prisons by Donald Trump for the same number of political prisoners in Venezuela.

Bukele made the offer on Sunday night in a message addressed directly to his authoritarian counterpart Nicolás Maduro. “I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and delivery of an identical number … of the thousands of political prisoners that you hold,” El Salvador’s leader posted.

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Indigenous river campaigner from Peru wins prestigious Goldman prize

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Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari led a successful legal battle to protect the Marañon River in the Peruvian Amazon

An Indigenous campaigner and women’s leader from the Peruvian Amazon has been awarded the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activists, after leading a successful legal campaign that led to the river where her people, the Kukama, live being granted legal personhood.

Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari, 57, from the village of Shapajila on the Marañon River, led the Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana (HKK) women’s association, supported by lawyers from Peru’s Legal Defence Institute, in a campaign to protect the river. After three years, judges in Loreto, Peru’s largest Amazon region, ruled in March 2024 that the Marañon had the right to be free-flowing and free of contamination, respecting an Indigenous worldview that regards a river as a living entity.

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Grassroots activists who took on corruption and corporate power share 2025 Goldman prize

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Seven winners of environmental prize include Amazonian river campaigner and Tunisian who fought against organised waste trafficking

Grassroots activists who helped jail corrupt officials and obtain personhood rights for a sacred Amazonian river are among this year’s winners of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.

The community campaigns led by the seven 2025 Goldman prize winners underscore the courage and tenacity of local activists willing to confront the toxic mix of corporate power, regulatory failures and political corruption that is fuelling biodiversity collapse, water shortages, deadly air pollution and the climate emergency.

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El Salvador’s president proposes swapping US-deported Venezuelans with Maduro’s ‘political prisoners’

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Venezuela’s chief prosecutor hits back at ‘cynical’ offer by ‘neofascist’ Salvadoran leader and demands rights for Venezuelan prisoners

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has proposed sending 252 Venezuelans deported from the US and imprisoned in his country to Venezuela, in exchange for “political prisoners” held by Venezuela.

On Sunday, Bukele asked that the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, hand over 252 “of the political prisoners you are holding” under his proposed deal.

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Senator says trip to El Salvador was to support Kilmar Ábrego García’s due process

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Chris Van Hollen says ‘if we deny constitutional rights of this one man, it threatens constitutional rights of everyone’

Senator Chris Van Hollen, who travelled to El Salvador last week to meet Kilmar Ábrego García, the man at the center of a wrongful deportation dispute, said on Sunday that his trip was to support Ábrego García’s right to due process because if that was denied then everyone’s constitutional rights were threatened in the US.

The White House has claimed Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 gang though he has not been charged with any gang related crimes and the supreme court has ordered his return to the US be facilitated.

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Dramatic rise in fake political content on social media as Canada prepares to vote

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Report finds over a quarter of Canadians exposed to ‘more sophisticated and more politically polarizing’ fake content

More than a quarter of Canadians have been exposed to fake political content on social media that is “more sophisticated and more politically polarizing” as the country prepares to vote in a federal election, researchers have found, warning that platforms must increase protections amid a “dramatic acceleration” of online disinformation in the final weeks of the campaign.

In a new report released on Friday, Canada’s Media Ecosystem Observatory found a growing number of Facebook ads impersonating legitimate news sources were instead promoting fraudulent investment schemes, often involving cryptocurrency.

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‘We’re going to stand up to Trump,’ says Mark Carney in second Canadian election debate

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PM focuses on threat from across the border as most polls show his Liberals leading Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party in tight race

Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, faced sustained attacks from his Conservative rival at an election debate on Thursday but the Liberal leader sought to focus attention on what he calls Canada’s top threat: Donald Trump, the US president.

Most opinion polls show Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party trailing Carney’s Liberals ahead of the 28 April vote for Canada’s federal government.

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Maryland senator meets Kilmar Ábrego García in El Salvador amid battle over US return

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Chris Van Hollen posts photo on X but does not provide update on status of man wrongly deported from US

The Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen met in El Salvador with Kilmar Ábrego García, a man who was sent there by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.

Van Hollen posted a photo of the meeting on X, saying he also called Ábrego García’s wife “to pass along his message of love”.

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Video shows Ice agents smashing car window to detain asylum seeker

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Lawyer says officials were looking for someone else while taking Juan Francisco Mendez in Massachusetts on Monday

A Massachusetts family is demanding answers from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), complaining its agents smashed a car window with a large hammer and detained a man whom they say had applied for asylum.

A lawyer for the family also claims agents were not looking for the man in the car, Juan Francisco Mendez, when they grabbed him on Monday in New Bedford while he was driving to a dental appointment. He is now believed to have been taken into Ice detention.

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Cory Booker to visit El Salvador in effort to return wrongly deported man to US

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Democrats press Trump administration to follow supreme court order to bring back Kilmar Ábrego García

Cory Booker plans to travel to El Salvador, a source familiar with the New Jersey senator’s itinerary said, as Democrats seek to pressure the Trump administration to return a wrongly deported Maryland resident.

Booker’s trip to the Central American country would come after the Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen traveled there this week to meet with his constituent Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadorian national deported last month in what the Trump administration acknowledged was an “administrative error”. Despite a supreme court ruling saying his administration must “facilitate” Ábrego García’s return, Trump has refused to take steps to do so, and El Salvador’s government on Wednesday denied Van Hollen a meeting with the deportee.

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Kilmar Ábrego García’s wife rejects Trump officials’ depictions of him as ‘violent’

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Jennifer Vasquez Sura criticizes DHS’s attempt to smear her wrongly deported husband over 2021 civil protective order

The wife of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man unlawfully deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador, has strongly criticized the Trump administration’s attempt to smear his character, saying a temporary restraining order against him was “out of caution” and that “he is a loving partner and father” who is being denied justice.

Jennifer Vasquez Sura said she “acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar” when she got the civil protective order in 2021, according to a statement emailed to the Baltimore Sun.

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Macron announces joint commission with Haiti amid calls for reparations

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France imposed harsh ‘ransom’ after revolution that campaigners say stunted Caribbean country’s development

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has announced a joint commission with Haiti to examine the countries’ shared past as Haitian campaigners demand a reimbursement of billions of dollars worth of “ransom” paid to France.

Macron announced his intention to create the commission as campaigners renewed calls for reparations on the bicentenary of an agreement to pay 150m francs to France in 1825 to compensate slave-owning colonists after the Haitian Revolution.

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New daily weight-loss pill shows success at clinical trial

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Orforglipron also reduced blood sugar levels in participants with type 2 diabetes

A significant trial of a daily weight-loss pill has found that it helped people to shed the pounds and reduce their blood sugar levels, making it a contender to join the new wave of drugs that combat obesity and diabetes.

People who took a 36mg pill of orforglipron lost an average of 7.3kg (16lbs) over nine months, according to results from a phase 3 clinical trial reported by the drug’s manufacturer, Eli Lilly, on Thursday.

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‘Who is going to face Mr Trump’: Canada leaders’ debate dominated by US crisis

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Mark Carney’s Liberals have surged in the polls since Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada, scuppering Conservative calls for change after Trudeau era

Prime Minister Mark Carney said the key question in Canada’s upcoming election is who is best to deal with Donald Trump as he faced his Conservative rival in a French-language leaders’ debate on Wednesday.

Opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said during the debate Canada needs change after a decade of Liberal party rule and Carney is just like his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. Carney responded: “Mr Poilievre is not Justin Trudeau. I’m not Justin Trudeau either. In this election the question is who is going to face Mr Trump.”

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US senator says El Salvador denied request to meet Kilmar Ábrego García

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Chris Van Hollen condemns ‘unjust situation’ and says vice-president blocked access to wrongly deported man

Maryland’s Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen says the government of El Salvador has denied his request to visit Kilmar Ábrego García, his constituent who was wrongly deported to the Central American country last month.

Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday with the intention of meeting Ábrego García at the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), where US authorities have said that the Maryland resident is being held along with others deported at Donald Trump’s orders.

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US judge finds probable cause to hold Trump officials in contempt over alien act deportations

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Judge also warned he could name independent prosecutor if White House stonewalled contempt proceedings

A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that there was probable cause to hold Trump officials in criminal contempt for violating his temporary injunction that barred the use of the Alien Enemies Act wartime power to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.

In a scathing 46-page opinion, James Boasberg, the chief US district judge for Washington, wrote that senior Trump officials could either return the people who were supposed to have been protected by his injunction, or face contempt proceedings.

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Canada’s Green party removed at last minute from election debates

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Upheaval follows decision to shift timing of first debate over fears of clash with Montreal Canadiens ice hockey game

Canada’s Green party has been removed from the country’s two election debates amid accusations it would “undermine the integrity” of the events, just hours before leaders square off in Montreal.

The last-minute upheaval follows a decision to shift the timing of the first televised debate on Wednesday evening over fears the French language showdown would clash with a closely watched Montreal Canadiens ice hockey game.

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Ecuador’s VP accuses president of ‘violating democracy’ in election win

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Verónica Abad claims Daniel Noboa, her former running mate, used state power to tilt the vote

Ecuador’s vice-president, Verónica Abad, has accused the country’s president – her former running mate Daniel Noboa – of “violating the democratic code” by using the state apparatus to gain an advantage over the other candidates in the country’s runoff election.

In Sunday’s vote, the rightwing incumbent defeated the leftist Luisa González by a considerable margin after narrowly beating her in the first round.

Although Abad said she did not support the opposition’s claim that electoral fraud occurred during the vote, she argued that the election was unfair because Noboa refused to step down from office while running – as required by the constitution.

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The great Mississippi tops list of most endangered rivers amid fears over Trump rollbacks

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Cuts to disaster agency and deregulation of fossil fuels, plus rise of water-guzzling datacentres, highlighted in new report

The Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal climate disaster agency – and the full-throttle deregulation of fossil fuels and water-guzzling datacentres – could prove catastrophic for America’s endangered rivers, threatening the food, water and livelihoods of millions of people, according to a new report.

American Rivers’ annual most-endangered rivers list lays bare a myriad of human-made threats including floods, drought and other extreme weather events driven by the climate crisis, as well as industrial pollution and poor river management – all of which Trump’s regulatory rollbacks will almost inevitably make worse.

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Democratic senator heads to El Salvador to try to visit Kilmar Ábrego García

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Chris Van Hollen warns of ‘constitutional crisis’ and says he hopes to report back to family on Maryland man’s condition

Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland will travel to El Salvador on Wednesday and attempt to visit Kilmar Ábrego García, a constituent whose deportation and incarceration in the Central American country, he warns, has tipped the United States into a constitutional crisis.

In an interview with the Guardian on Tuesday, Van Hollen said he hopes to learn of Ábrego García’s condition and convey it to his family, who also live in the state he represents.

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