Category Archives: Americas

Chile’s drastic anti-obesity measures cut sugary drink sales by 23%

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Experts welcome example of nation once drinking more per head than any other

The world’s toughest controls over the promotion of sugary drinks, brought in by a nation beset by obesity, have cut purchases by nearly a quarter in two years, research has shown.

Instead of a sugar tax, which the UK and other countries have chosen to impose, Chile has banned sales in schools and adopted stark black and white labels aimed at warning and educating families about the health dangers of junk food and drinks for their children.

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Trump puts Cuban doctors in firing line as heat turned up on island economy

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After US allies expel foreign health missions, Havana warns that patients will pay the highest price for campaign against its scheme

A Cuban medical programme that has helped some of the world’s poorest communities has become the latest target of the Trump administration’s escalating attempts to pressure Havana’s faltering economy.

Dubbed “Cuban doctors”, the celebrated – if controversial – humanitarian medical mission was founded more than half a century ago in the aftermath of Fidel Castro’s revolution, in part to enhance the country’s international influence.

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Appeal court gives 11th-hour reprieve to detainees due to be sent to Jamaica

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Court of appeal orders Home Office not to remove anyone scheduled to be deported from two detention centres on 6.30am flight

A group of about 50 people due to be deported to Jamaica on Tuesday morning won a last-minute reprieve on Monday night following an emergency ruling by the court of appeal.

The court ordered the Home Office not to remove anyone scheduled to be deported from two detention centres near Heathrow on the 6.30am flight to Jamaica – “unless satisfied [they] had access to a functioning, non-O2 sim card on or before 3 February”.

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Canada: Wetʼsuwetʼen activists vow to continue pipeline fight after arrests

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  • Indigenous groups fighting construction of 670km gas pipeline
  • Chiefs say they never ceded land and thus still control it

Indigenous activists in Canada have vowed to continue their fight against a multibillion-dollar pipeline project across their traditional territory after three female leaders were arrested by police early on Monday.

Freda Huson, Brenda Michell and Karla Tait were among seven people detained when Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers – backed by helicopters, heavy machinery and dogs – moved in on the remote camp in north-western British Columbia.

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‘Reaper of death’: scientists discover new dinosaur species related to T rex

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Species is thought to be the oldest member of the T rex family yet discovered in northern North America

Scientists in Canada have announced the discovery of a new species of dinosaur closely related to Tyrannosaurus rex that strode the plain of North America about 80m years ago.

Related: Dinosaurs had feathers ruffled by parasites, study finds

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Jamaican-born deportees mount last-minute challenges against Home Office

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Up to 50 people are due to be forcibly returned to Jamaica on a flight leaving this week

Dozens of Jamaicans in the UK are mounting last-minute legal challenges to try to halt their deportation on a Home Office charter flight scheduled for Tuesday.

Up to 50 people are due to be put on the flight, which is only the second the Home Office has chartered to Jamaica since the Windrush scandal broke. A group legal action and a flurry of individual legal actions are under way.

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Critic accidentally destroys $20,000 artwork at Mexico fair

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Avelina Lésper said it was almost as if Gabriel Rico’s piece knew how much she disliked it

An art critic has destroyed a contemporary piece at Mexico’s premiere art fair, sparking a debate about what constitutes art.

Critic Avelina Lésper said she accidentally shattered the installation on Saturday at the Zona Maco art fair in Mexico City when she placed an empty soda can near it to express her disdain for the piece: a sheet of glass with a stone, soccer ball and other random objects suspended inside.

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Hitman linked to Marielle Franco’s murder killed by police

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Some suspect Adriano da Nóbrega was ‘key piece’ in discovering who ordered Franco’s killing

Friends and relatives of the murdered Brazilian politician Marielle Franco are demanding answers after Adriano da Nóbrega – a notorious hitman, whose gang of contract killers is suspected of involvement in her assassination – was gunned down by police in the north-east of the country.

Nóbrega, an ex-special forces police captain, also had close links to the family of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. Nóbrega was killed by police on Sunday in Bahia state where he had been on the run.

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Fear in Mexico as twin deaths expose threat to monarch butterflies and their defenders

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The deaths of two butterfly conservationists have drawn focus to a troubling tangle of disputes, resentments and violence

The annual migration of monarch butterflies from the US and Canada is one of the most resplendent sights in the natural world – a rippling orange-and-black wave containing millions of butterflies fluttering instinctively southward to escape the winter cold.

The spectacle when they reach their destination in central Mexico is perhaps even more astonishing. Patches of alpine forest turn from green to orange as the monarchs roost in the fir trees, the sheer weight of butterflies causing branches to sag to the point of snapping. Tens of thousands of the insects bounce haphazardly overhead, searching replenishment from nearby plants.

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His master’s voice? Jair Bolsonaro posts video of himself watching Trump rant

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Brazil’s president was accused of kowtowing with his 73-minute Facebook live stream but some see method in his obsequiousness

He has long styled himself as a tropical Trump – a socialist-skewering hard man fighting Brazilian carnage.

But in recent weeks Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has taken his fixation with the US leader to new heights, livestreaming himself on Facebook as he watched his political idol in action.

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Drought and hunger: why thousands of Guatemalans are fleeing north

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The threat of famine and the battle for dwindling natural resources are increasingly being recognised as major factors in the exodus

Martina García grinds just enough maize kernels to make a handful of tortillas which she serves to her children and grandson for breakfast with a sprinkling of salt.

García, 40, must ration the family’s last few sacks of tiny corncobs after drought and prolonged heatwaves linked to the climate emergency devastated crops across Guatemala.

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Brazil: judge dismisses cybercrimes accusations against Glenn Greenwald

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Prosecutors had accused the journalist of helping a group hack into the phones of local authorities

A Brazilian judge has rejected charges against the US journalist Glenn Greenwald stemming from his role in producing a series of damaging political exposés involving the celebrity justice minister of Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.

Federal prosecutors last month accused Greenwald – a staunch Bolsonaro critic – of being part of a “criminal” group of hackers which had allegedly pilfered messages from the mobile phones of Brazilian prosecutors and judges.

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Sun! Samba! Street crime! Red-faced Rio highlights the negative

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Instagram post about being robbed in the city is accidentally shared by tourist agency

When marketing Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s national tourism agency typically focuses on the city’s world-class beaches, samba-filled music scene and caipirinha-fueled parties.

Violent crime is rarely listed among the attractions.

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Hundreds of Salvadorans deported by US were killed or abused, report reveals

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Human Rights Watch says 138 Salvadorans were murdered from 2013 to 2019 and 70 others were abused or sexually assaulted

At least 200 Salvadoran migrants and asylum seekers have been killed, raped or tortured after being deported back to El Salvador by the United States government which is turning a blind eye to widely known dangers, a new investigation reveals.

Related: How the US helped create El Salvador’s bloody gang war

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Canadian court upholds Trans Mountain pipeline expansion approval

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Federal court of appeals in a 3-0 decision rejected four challenges from First Nations to government’s approval of the project

Canada’s federal court of appeal has dismissed legal objections to the contentious Trans Mountain pipeline expansion that would nearly triple the flow of oil from the Alberta oil sands to the Pacific coast.

In a 3-0 decision, the court rejected four challenges from First Nations in British Columbia to the federal government’s approval of the project.

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Air Canada plane makes emergency landing in Madrid

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Boeing 767-300 suffers engine and tyre damage on takeoff from Barajas airport

An Air Canada Boeing 767 with 128 passengers onboard has made an emergency landing in Madrid due to technical problems after taking off from the city’s Barajas airport.

The Toronto-bound flight AC837 departed from the Spanish capital early on Monday afternoon but had to request an emergency return after one of its two engines was damaged and a tyre ruptured during takeoff. There was no immediate information as to what had caused the malfunction.

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Scenes from Santiago: Chile’s protests spill from streets to stage

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The city’s theatre is emotional, indignant and polemical finds our critic on a whirlwind trip through a dozen shows

The sparky young performers on stage thank us for coming out tonight. There are so many other things we could have been doing, they tell us, before launching into their show, Too Much Sexual Freedom Will Turn You Into Terrorists. “Burning subways” gets the biggest laugh. We are, after all, in Santiago, where only three months ago people took to the streets and did exactly that. Even now, in spite of soaring summer temperatures, Chileans continue to protest every weekend. Their list of complaints ranges from inadequate private pensions to an out-of-touch president.

The graffiti creeping across every surface calls for an end to police violence, for the renationalisation of water and for the indigenous Mapuche people to fight back. Sprayed everywhere is the figure 6% – President Sebastián Piñera’s popularity rating.

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El Chapo’s daughter is married at majestic Mexican cathedral

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Ostentatious wedding to groom with underworld links is seen as reminder of bride’s family’s power

It was the society wedding of the year in Mexico’s drug cartel heartland: Alejandrina Gisselle Guzmán, daughter of the convicted kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, tied the knot with the kin of another member of Mexico’s underworld.

And in the ostentatious style of a family accustomed to getting its way, they were married in a closed-door ceremony in the cathedral of Culiacán – the city at the centre of the Sinaloa cartel’s criminal empire.

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Devon museum in repatriation dispute over indigenous relics

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Efforts to recover the 19th-century regalia of a Blackfoot Nation leader began in 2008

A British museum is resisting attempts from Canada to secure the repatriation of sacred relics of a 19th-century indigenous chief because the centre where his descendants want to locate them is not an accredited museum, but the final decision lies with local councillors in England.

In an increasingly acrimonious dispute, backers of the campaign to repatriate regalia belonging to Crowfoot of the Blackfoot Nation were told by officials at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) in Exeter that “no one wants to get their hands dirty” when it came to the sensitive question of repatriating looted artefacts held in UK arts institutions.

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Brazilians stranded in Wuhan issue plea to Bolsonaro for rescue

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Citizens post video appealing for evacuation from city at centre of coronavirus outbreak

Brazilian citizens trapped in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, have issued an urgent plea to their president, Jair Bolsonaro, for them to be evacuated.

In a six-minute YouTube video the Brazilians noted how other countries – including the US, the UK, France, Japan and Italy – had already taken steps to rescue their citizens from the city.

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