A magnitude 6.0 earthquake shook Puerto Rico on Saturday, causing further damage on the island’s southern coast, where recent quakes have toppled homes and schools.
The US Geological Survey said the 8.54am quake hit eight miles south of Indios at a shallow depth of six miles.
Continue reading...Ukrainian president also calls for full admission of guilt, justice and compensation
Iran’s admission that it accidentally shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane has been met with international demands for a full investigation into the disaster, in which 176 people died during a period of soaring tensions between Tehran and Washington.
A statement carried on Iran’s official IRNA news agency on Saturday morning said the military had made an “unforgivable mistake” in targeting Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 shortly after it took off from Tehran’s international airport on Wednesday. It was followed by condolences from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and an apology from the country’s president, Hassan Rouhani.
Continue reading...Calls for justice have continued to grow in Canada amid repeated denials from Iran that its missiles brought down a passenger jet which crashed near Tehran, killing 176 people – most of whom were traveling to Canadian cities.
Canadian officials and members of the country’s transportation safety board are due to travel to Tehran to investigate the crash, although it remained unclear how much access they would be granted to the site.
Continue reading...At least two people have been killed and six injured after an 11-year-old boy entered a school in northern Mexico with two handguns and opened fire.
The shooting took place on Friday morning in the city of Torreón, in Coahuila state.
Continue reading...As president and foreign minister, we always advocated peace. In war, all victories are pyrrhic ones
The assassination of Qassem Suleimani by drone bombs, at the express request of the president of the United States, has thrown the Middle East – and the world – into the most serious global security crisis since the end of the cold war. By unilaterally ordering the execution of a senior Iranian military on Iraqi soil, Donald Trump violated international law and took a reckless and dangerous step in escalating conflict, with potential impact all over the planet.
Related: Justin Trudeau calls for investigation into Iran plane crash as Canada mourns
Continue reading...Fallout continues over royal couple’s decision to ‘step back’ from monarchy
The Duchess of Sussex was back in Canada on Friday as royal officials tasked with hammering out new roles for her and Prince Harry were said to be “progressing well”.
As Meghan turned to her friends for support, the Queen, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge were said to be adopting a pragmatic approach to the couple’s bid to become hybrid royals.
Continue reading...Rio judge’s ruling follows complaint that the ‘honour of millions of Catholics’ was hurt by The First Temptation of Christ
A Brazilian judge on Wednesday ordered Netflix to stop showing a Christmas special that some called blasphemous for depicting Jesus as a gay man and which prompted a bomb attack on the satirists behind the programme.
The ruling by a Rio de Janeiro judge, Benedicto Abicair, responded to a petition by a Brazilian Catholic organisation that argued the “honour of millions of Catholics” was hurt by the airing of The First Temptation of Christ. The special was produced by the Rio-based film company Porta dos Fundos, whose headquarters was targeted in the Christmas Eve attack.
Continue reading...In Venezuela, hospitals lack the basics and medicine shortages are common, forcing humanitarian groups to pick up the slack
Feliciano Reyna masterminds a drug running network that spans Venezuela. His organisation moves substances through ports, trucks them across the country, and deliver them into customers’ hands. But he is not on any DEA watchlist.
“I am the biggest dealer in Venezuela,” says Reyna – though he is quick to qualify the remark – “If we’re talking about legal drugs.”
Continue reading...Homes collapsed, power was knocked out and at least one person died after Tuesday’s 6.4-magnitude quake and powerful aftershocks. The south of the island was worst hit
Continue reading...Island rocked by hundreds of earthquakes in recent weeks, killing at least one person and prompting power and water outages
Puerto Rico’s governor, Wanda Vázquez, declared a state of emergency and activated the national guard on Tuesday after a series of earthquakes including one of magnitude 6.4 that was the most powerful to strike the Caribbean island in 102 years.
The quakes killed at least one person, provoked a protective power outage across the entire island and cut off drinking water to 300,000 customers, Vázquez told a news conference.
Continue reading...She was ignored for decades, but now Suter has been rediscovered as a pioneering eco-artist. We meet her, and her 97-year-old collagist mum, in the wilds of Guatemala
A large dog romps across a blue and white canvas, leaving a trail of brown paw prints. “Oh well,” shrugs Vivian Suter. “They’re part of the work now. I don’t think anyone will mind.” I realise Bonzo – one of three Alsatian crossbreeds that shadow the artist wherever she goes in her Guatemalan home – has just put the finishing touches to an artwork that will shortly be on public display thousands of miles away.
The painting lies on the floor of her “laager” – a storage barn open to the elements, apart from a metre-high stone wall, which you have to clamber over with the help of a rickety chair. The wall is to guard against mudslides, she explains, gesturing at a ghostly tideline that rings the interior. Most of her works hang from a rack; the piles on the floor are for three upcoming exhibitions in Berlin, London and Madrid. Having just opened a 53-piece installation at Tate Liverpool, Suter is halfway through choosing the 200 works that will feature in her Camden Arts Centre exhibition, which opens next week.
Continue reading...Venezuela also in top five as IRC’s David Miliband warns of devastating impact from war, floods, droughts and disease
Yemen has topped an annual watchlist of countries most likely to face humanitarian catastrophe in 2020, for the second year running.
Continued fighting, economic collapse and weak governance mean that more than 24 million Yemenis – about 80% of the population – will be in need of humanitarian assistance this year, according to analysis by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which found that another five years of conflict could cost $29bn (£22bn).
Continue reading...Mexican authorities admit the number is far higher than previously estimated as murders continue to rise
The devastating human toll of Mexico’s security crisis was laid bare on Monday as authorities admitted nearly 62,000 people had vanished since the start of its catastrophic war on drugs in 2006.
The figure – far higher than a previous estimate of about 40,000 – spoke to the scale of the challenge facing Mexico’s leftist leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took power in December 2018 vowing to pacify his country.
Continue reading...Troops blocked presidential rival from entering the parliament building in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas
Venezuela’s opposition has accused president Nicolás Maduro of masterminding an illegal parliamentary “coup” after an apparent bid to decapitate the challenge from his presidential rival Juan Guaidó by replacing him as head of the country’s opposition-controlled parliament.
Guaidó shot to international prominence last January after he was elected president of Venezuela’s national assembly and used that position to declare himself the country’s legitimate interim leader.
Continue reading...Project part-funded by Global Greengrants Fund UK provides economic incentive to protect forest
From space, the Amazon rainforest resembles a giant dark-green lung veined with blue rivers that is steadily succumbing to the disease-like spread of grey fires, orange roads and square-cut farms. What the satellite images cannot show is how most of the remaining bands of verdant, healthy foliage are defended on the ground by forest dwellers who act as antibodies to drive out malignant invaders.
Among the most impressive of these is the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve in the state of Para in northern Brazil, where residents are trying to bolster their economic resistance with a series of new agro-forestry and solar power projects.
Continue reading...Graffiti, cooking and breakdancing are some of the attractions bringing visitors to Medellin’s once-feared district
Continue reading...The Senakw development aims to ease the city’s chronic housing crisis – and to challenge the mindset that indigeneity and urbanity are incompatible
The scrubby, vacant patch beneath the Burrard Street Bridge in Vancouver looks at first glance like a typical example of the type of derelict nook common to all cities: 11.7 acres of former railway lands, over which tens of thousands of people drive every day.
This is not any old swath of underused space, however. It’s one of Canada’s smallest First Nations reserves, where dozens of Squamish families once lived. The village was destroyed by provincial authorities more than a century ago.
Continue reading...Authorities are expanding the Remain in Mexico program, which critics say puts migrants into dangerous border towns
The US government has started sending asylum seekers back to Nogales, Mexico, to await court hearings that will be scheduled roughly 350 miles (563 kilometers) away in Ciudad Juárez.
Authorities are expanding a program known as Remain in Mexico that requires tens of thousands of asylum seekers to wait out their immigration court hearings in Mexico. Until this week, the government was driving some asylum seekers from Nogales, Arizona, to El Paso, Texas, so they could be returned to Juárez.
Continue reading...While the far-right president has trashed norms the lower ranks of his administration have shown jaw-dropping offensiveness
Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his gun-loving sons have hogged the headlines during his first year in power with their incendiary declarations, social media meltdowns and scandal-hit lives.
Endless column inches have also been devoted to the eccentricities and extremist ideas of his top lieutenants, including the foreign minister who insists climate change is a Marxist plot and the education minister who enjoys tweeting about his dog’s habit of defecating on Brazil’s top newspapers.
Continue reading...Antofagasta, situated on the edge of the Atacama Desert, relies on a vast desalination plant which provides the city with drinking water – but the waste brine is killing wildlife, say fishermen
As Eduardo Muñoz drifts his ageing skiff into Antofagasta’s harbour, flecks of paint peeling from its prow, he looks disconsolate.
“I used to get twice as many clams from every dive,” he mutters bitterly, hauling two large sacks of shellfish on to the dock and ruffling the salt from his hair.
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