Category Archives: Americas

Mexico experts say body parts dumped in well come from 41 individuals

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  • Tests continue on contents of 119 plastic bags found in Jalisco
  • Clandestine burial sites have become common during drug war

Forensic examiners in western Mexico have pieced together 41 bodies from bags full of body parts found in a well earlier this month.

The examiners in the western state of Jalisco said tests were continuing on the grisly contents of 119 plastic bags dumped in a well near the city of Guadalajara. Authorities had to call in backhoes to fully excavate the pit.

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Canada’s intelligence service: theft of information is ‘potentially devastating’

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Theft of classified information by a senior intelligence officer could ‘cause grave injury to Canada’s national interests’

The theft of classified information by a senior intelligence officer could be “devastating” to Canada’s national security, the country’s spy service has warned, as concern over the security breach continues to grow.

In a series of internal documents obtained by the CBC, Canada’s intelligence service outlined fears that details of the country’s spycraft could have been comprised after the theft of sensitive information by Cameron Ortis, 47, a director general with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s intelligence unit.

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Canada: arrest of ex-head of intelligence shocks experts and alarms allies

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Police say charges of stealing covert information against Cameron Ortis pose ‘potential risk’ for US, UK, New Zealand and Australia

Canada and its allies are scrambling to assess the damage inflicted by what experts believe could be the largest security breach in the country’s history after a senior federal intelligence official was arrested on charges of stealing covert information.

Following a lengthy investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted police, Cameron Ortis – the leader of the police force’s own intelligence unit – was charged on Friday with leaking or offering to share covert information.

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‘Caught defenseless in the crossfire’: Rio families cope with deaths by police violence

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Rio de Janeiro police have killed a record number of people in the name of Wilson Witzel’s war on drugs, and many say it’s civilian lives being lost

Night has fallen on Rio de Janeiro’s Albert Schweitzer hospital, and in its 11th-floor intensive care unit Enzo Coutinho dozes in his aunt’s lap.

“Sometimes it takes a mountain to trust and believe in you,” Merielle Ventura, a 24-year-old nursery teacher, sings gently into her nephew’s ear.

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Reporting on Hurricane Dorian: ‘It was a scene of complete devastation’

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New York reporter recalls challenges of covering a disaster as huge as the category 5 storm that ripped through the Bahamas

How do you start an interview with someone who has just lost everything?

With the floodwaters just receded, the stench of mould beginning to creep into the hollowed-out buildings that survived two days of pummelling winds, and bloated corpses still being recovered, that was a question I was forced to grapple with last week in the Bahamas.

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Bahamas: new storm threatens Hurricane Dorian relief efforts

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Tropical Storm Humberto expected to drop up to 15cm of rain as operation to provide food and shelter continues

A tropical storm carrying heavy rain and strong winds is nearing the already devastated Bahamas, threatening to complicate Hurricane Dorian recovery efforts as the UN secretary general arrived in the islands in a show of support.

The new weather system, known as Tropical Storm Humberto,is expected to drop up to 15cm (6 inches) of rain through the weekend in areas of the islands inundated by Dorian, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Centre.

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Venezuela’s Guaidó pictured with members of Colombian gang

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Opposition leader plays down images but analysts say they could prove highly damaging

Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan politician fighting to topple Nicolás Maduro, is facing awkward questions about his relationship with organised crime after the publication of compromising photographs showing him with two Colombian paramilitaries.

In an interview on Friday, Guaidó played down the significance of the pictures, in which he posed alongside two members of the Colombian criminal gang the Rastrojos identified as El Brother and El Menor.

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Reclaimed lakes and giant airports: how Mexico City might have looked

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The Mexican capital was founded by Aztecs on an island in a vast lake. No wonder water flows through so many of its unbuilt projects

Ever since Mexico City was founded on an island in the lake of Texcoco its inhabitants have dreamed of water: containing it, draining it and now retaining it.

Nezahualcoyotl, the illustrious lord of Texcoco, made his name constructing a dyke shielding Mexico City’s Aztec predecessor city of Tenochtitlan from flooding. The gravest threat to Mexico City’s existence came from a five-year flood starting in 1629, almost causing the city to be abandoned. Ironically now its surrounding lake system has been drained, the greatest threat to the city’s existence is probably the rapid decline of its overstressed aquifers.

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Twitter blocks accounts of Raúl Castro and Cuban state-run media outlets

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Mariela Castro and state media journalists were also blocked in move Cuban Union of Journalists called ‘massive censorship’

Twitter has blocked the accounts of the Cuban Communist party leader Raúl Castro, his daughter Mariela Castro and Cuba’s top state-run media outlets, a move the Cuban Union of Journalists denounced as “massive censorship”.

Related: Cuba is driving dissidents off island with threats of violence and jail, report finds

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Mexico boasts of crackdown but smugglers say migrant flow continues

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President Amlo says his new immigration plan is working, but huge numbers still travel north – aided by smugglers’ bribes

Mario Rosales is organising travel arrangements for his latest clients, a Honduran woman and her two primary school-aged children hoping to reach the United States.

Rosales, 47, a coyote, or people smuggler, sends their photos via WhatsApp to his contact in the Mexican National Immigration Institute (INM) in order to obtain fake identity cards – all part of the family’s travel package, which costs $1,800 per person to traverse about half (1,750km) of the region’s most dangerous migration route.

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‘Irrelevant’: report pours scorn over Google’s ideas for Toronto smart city

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Independent panel criticises Sidewalk Labs over ‘frustratingly abstract’ proposals for new tech-oriented neighbourhood

A controversial smart city development in Canada has hit another roadblock after an oversight panel called key aspects of the proposal “irrelevant”, “unnecessary” and “frustratingly abstract” in a new report.

The project on Toronto’s waterfront, dubbed Quayside, is a partnership between the city and Google’s sister company Sidewalk Labs. It promises “raincoats” for buildings, autonomous vehicles and cutting-edge wood-frame towers, but has faced numerous criticisms in recent months.

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Polarised Canada to fire starting gun for October general election

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  • Justin Trudeau to request dissolution of parliament
  • ‘Divisions have never been starker’ before 21 October polling day

Campaigning for Canada’s federal election on 21 October will formally begin on Wednesday, as Justin Trudeau seeks a second parliamentary majority amid an increasingly divided electorate.

The prime minister will meet the governor general, Julie Payette, at 10am EST to officially request the dissolution of parliament and commence the country’s election, sending party leaders on the gruelling task of crisscrossing the vast country to pitch to voters.

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How will John Bolton’s dismissal affect US foreign policy?

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Trump’s anti-interventionist instincts likely to come to the fore in flashpoint countries

Donald Trump’s abrupt dismissal of John Bolton, his national security adviser, may reflect the near breakdown in personal relations between the two men, as well as Bolton’s rivalry with the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, but it will also have implications for US foreign policy in a range of flashpoints.

Related: John Bolton fired as Trump's national security adviser – live news

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Man held hostage by Taliban-linked group says wife is ‘incompetent mother’

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Joshua Boyle, charged with sexual assault, tells court estranged wife Caitlan Coleman was unfit to parent the their four children

The Canadian man who spent five years held hostage in Afghanistan with his American wife has accused her of “incompetence” as a mother as his trial for sexual assault nears its conclusion.

Related: Canadian man held hostage by Taliban denies assaulting wife after release

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Hundreds of Bahamian evacuees ordered off boat due to lack of US visas

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Crew said people without visas must disembark ferry to Florida because of CBP’s ‘last-minute call’ that they would not be admitted

More than a hundred Bahamian citizens desperate to escape the devastation of Hurricane Dorian were ordered off a ferry to Florida, sparking a dispute between US immigration officials and the operator of the vessel.

Related: Search for survivors of Hurricane Dorian continues in Bahamas

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‘Chaos, chaos, chaos’: a journey through Bolsonaro’s Amazon inferno

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A 2,000km road and river odyssey in Brazil reveals consensus from all sides: Bolsonaro has ushered in a new age of wrecking

From afar it resembles a tornado: an immense grey column shooting thousands of feet upwards from the forest canopy into the Amazonian skies.

Up close it is an inferno: a raging conflagration obliterating yet another stretch of the world’s greatest rainforest as a herd of Nelore cattle looks on in bewilderment.

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Bahamas sends 900 security personnel to hurricane-hit islands

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  • Government acts to avert profiteering in wake of disaster
  • Officials still trying to reach areas cut off by floods and debris

The government of the Bahamas has sent 900 police and military personnel to the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama hardest hit by Hurricane Dorian, while taking action to stave off any profiteering by private sector rescue missions amid signs of chaos in some of the aid operations.

The destruction caused by the hurricane was still unfolding as a humanitarian and environmental disaster a week after it landed in the northern reaches of the Bahamas as a category 5 tempest.

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Brazil paper publishes gay kiss illustration in censorship row

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Folha de S.Paulo aims dig at evangelical Rio mayor after he tried to ban a Marvel comic

Brazil’s biggest newspaper has printed an illustration from a Marvel comic of two men kissing on its front page to attack an attempt at censorship by the evangelical mayor of Rio de Janeiro.

Marcelo Crivella attempted to ban copies of the graphic novel Avengers: The Children’s Crusade from appearing at a book fair on the grounds that it included content unsuitable for children.

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Paraguay investigates human remains found on ex-dictator’s former property

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Bones of an estimated four people found under bathroom of house that once belonged to Alfredo Stroessner

Authorities in Paraguay have launched an investigation after human remains were found at a property once owned by the former rightwing dictator Alfredo Stroessner, during whose 35-year authoritarian rule at least 423 people were killed or forcibly disappeared.

Bones belonging to an estimated four people were found under a bathroom in the house near Ciudad del Este, Paraguay’s second-largest city. Local media reported that members of families who had been squatting in the building were digging in search of buried treasure – a widespread activity in Paraguay – when they made the discovery.

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