Category Archives: Americas

Canada Conservative leader resigns amid reports he used party funds for private school

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Andrew Scheer announced intention to step down shortly before reports he used funds for his children’s eduction

The leader of Canada’s Conservatives has resigned, following mounting frustration over a disappointing performance in October’s general election and reports that he used party funds to help pay for his children’s private school education.

Andrew Scheer announced his intention to step down at an emergency caucus meeting on Thursday morning. Shortly after news of his resignation broke, however, Global News reported that he had used party funds to pay for his children’s private school education – allegedly without knowledge or approval from the funding board.

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The race to lay claim on the Bering Strait as Arctic ice retreats

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Melting sea ice is prompting fevered dreams of ever-easier access, and a renewed jockeying among Arctic nations for status, profit and ownership

I could not keep my eyes off the graves, could not stop staring at them even as I walked away, turning repeatedly to look over my shoulder at them as I slogged my way across the gravel-strewn shore of Beechey Island until they disappeared from view.

It was profoundly saddening to contemplate their presence on a low-lying, windswept outpost of the Canadian Arctic, to imagine the fear and loneliness those buried here must have felt as they faced death in the harshest of conditions, thousands of miles and a world removed from their homes. And yet, they were the lucky ones, the first casualties of an expedition that vanished 173 years ago while searching for the fabled Northwest Passage between Atlantic and Pacific, whose remaining members met their doom after their ships became frozen in never-yielding sea ice, who perished one by one waiting for a summer that never came.

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Outrage after Colombia riot police force young woman into unmarked car

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  • Protester freed after members of public give chase
  • Video of incident adds to criticism of police tactics

Outrage has erupted in Colombia after a young woman participating in anti-government protests was grabbed by riot police in body armour, forced into an unmarked vehicle and driven away.

Video of the incident showed the woman sobbing and screaming “Help! The police have kidnapped me!” through the window of the black Chevrolet sedan as it drove away from the demonstration near the National University in Bogotá on Wednesday night.

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World’s first fully electric commercial aircraft takes flight in Canada

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Company hails start of the ‘electric aviation age’ after 15-minute test flight in Vancouver

The world’s first fully electric commercial aircraft has taken its inaugural test flight, taking off from the Canadian city of Vancouver and flying for 15 minutes.

“This proves that commercial aviation in all-electric form can work,” said Roei Ganzarski, chief executive of Australian engineering firm magniX.

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Architect of Mexico’s war on drugs held in Texas for taking cartel bribes

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Genaro García Luna, who ran Mexico’s federal police for six years, charged with accepting briefcases of cash to protect Sinaloa cartel

A former minister who was considered an architect of Mexico’s war on drugs has been arrested on charges that he allowed the Sinaloa cartel to operate with impunity in exchange for briefcases stuffed with cash.

Genaro García Luna, who oversaw the creation of Mexico’s federal police, was arrested in Texas on Monday.

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Greta Thunberg labelled a ‘brat’ by Brazil’s far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro

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  • Swedish activist tweeted about murders of indigenous people
  • President laments press attention for ‘pirralha [little brat]’

Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has derided Greta Thunberg​ after the teenage climate activist added her voice to growing international condemnation of a surge of anti-indigenous violence in the Amazon.

Related: Amazon indigenous leaders killed in Brazil drive-by shooting

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EU trade deals must not contradict climate goals, says MEP

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Pascal Canfin says he cannot back deal with South American bloc owing to ‘political context’

The EU’s trade deal with four South American countries will not be ratified in its current form because it contradicts Europe’s plans to confront the climate emergency, a leading MEP has said.

Pascal Canfin, a Frenchman who chairs the European parliament’s environment committee, said he could not vote in favour of the EU trade deal with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay (the bloc known as Mercosur).

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Josep Borrell: can EU’s new diplomat- in-chief strengthen bloc’s global standing?

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The veteran Spanish socialist has a reputation for plain speaking, and a brief to build a more assertive EU

It has been called Europe’s “valley of tears”. But it isn’t in National Geographic; rather it is the monthly pilgrimage of the European Union’s 28 foreign ministers to Brussels or Luxembourg to discuss the woes of the world.

And the man who coined the phrase, Josep Borrell, a socialist veteran of Spanish politics, was not paying a compliment. He described the EU foreign affairs council as “more a valley of tears than a centre of decision-making” because “it’s where all the open sores of humanity come. They tell us their sufferings, we express our condolences and concern … but no capacity for action comes out of it and we just move on to the next one.”

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Back to the border of misery: Amexica revisited 10 years on

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A decade after publishing his vivid account of the places and people most affected by the US-Mexican ‘war on drugs’, Ed Vulliamy returns to the frontline to see how life has changed

If you drink the water in Ciudad Juárez, there you’ll stay, goes the saying – Se toma agua de Juárez, allí se queda. It’s not a reference to the quality of drinking water (about which polemic abounds because it is so dirty) but to the beguiling lure of this dusty and dangerous yet strong and charismatic city. It’s a dictum that might be applied to the whole 2,000-mile Mexico-US borderland of which Juárez and its sister city on the US side, El Paso, form the fulcrum.

Ten years ago, I returned from several months’ immersion along that frontier, reporting on a narco-cartel war for this newspaper and eventually writing a book, Amexica, about the terrain astride the border, land that has a single identity – that belongs to both countries and yet to neither. A frontier at once porous and harsh: across which communities live and a million people traverse every day, legally, as do hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of goods annually.

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Sick of corruption, Haiti looks back to its revolutionary hero for hope

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As conflict racks the nation and anger at a political scandal grows, Haitians are rallying to the country’s founding father more than 200 years after his assassination

On the walls across Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, a stencilled image can be found. Depicting a figure in a Napoleonic-era cocked hat and military frock coat, it first emerged amid the country’s long-running political and security crisis that began last year.

The man portrayed is Jean-Jacques Dessalines – Emperor Jacques I of Haiti – the rebel general who defeated French forces at the battle of Vertières to found the state of Haiti in 1804. And it is not only in graffiti that Dessalines’s two centuries-old legacy has been seen in the recent months of political turmoil that has gripped the country.

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‘Just leave’: Delhi, Beijing and Mexico City residents on how to cope with pollution

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As air quality plummets on the Australian east coast as a result of devastating bush fires, residents of cities clogged with smog share their coping strategies

The east coast of Australia is in the grip of a bushfire and air pollution crisis. But plummeting air quality levels are a regular occurrence in cities in India, Latin America and China. Here, residents and experts from Delhi, Beijing and Mexico City explain how they survive the smog.

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Evo Morales heads to Cuba amid talk of an eventual comeback

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Bolivia’s toppled president flies out of Mexico for what his former health minister says is a medical appointment

Bolivia’s recently toppled president, Evo Morales, has left Mexico for Cuba as part of what some observers suspect is the first step in a bid to stage a dramatic political comeback.

On Friday night, less than a month after being forced into exile in Mexico, Morales flew out of the country on a plane bound for Havana.

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‘A rapist in your path’: Chilean protest song becomes feminist anthem – video

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A Chilean protest song about rape culture and victim shaming has become an anthem for feminists around the world.

Un Violador en Tu Camino (A Rapist in Your Path) was first performed in late November as Chile’s nationwide uprising against social inequality entered its second month.

Here's a look at how the song, and its accompanying dance moves, have spread across Latin America and the world.

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Bees in Amazon ‘are greatest ally to halt rainforest destruction’

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Stingless insects also improve livelihoods of rainforest’s people, say environmentalists

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Under an Amazonian canopy of guava and Xylopia trees, Neida Pereira lifts the lid of a beehive, gently lowers an unprotected hand into the swarm, and smiles as she lifts it out unscathed but covered in pollinators and honey.

For the 49-year-old educator and environmentalist, the stingless Amazonian insects are the greatest ally she has found in a decades-long campaign to halt the destruction of the rainforest and improve the livelihoods of its people.

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The Guardian view on Bolivia: respect the people | Editorial

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Those who ousted Evo Morales insisted their priority was defending democracy. They should live up to those words

The crisis that toppled Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, last month has – for now, at least – settled into a political conflict rather than a struggle on the streets. But Bolivia’s prospects depend upon the rightwing interim government’s swift delivery of free and fair elections and its willingness to reach out to all communities.

Though the government has now pulled back to some degree, its initial actions instead made its leading figures and supporters look vindictive, ruthless and bigoted. Interim president Jeanine Áñez vowed to unify the country when she took power – but packed the cabinet with members of the conservative elites and boasted that “God has allowed the Bible back into the palace” of a secular country. She exempted the military from criminal prosecution when maintaining public order; at least 17 indigenous protesters died after security forces opened fire. Police cut the indigenous Wiphala flag from their uniforms and anti-Morales demonstrators set fire to it. The interior minister has vowed to jail Mr Morales, in exile in Mexico, for 30 years for terrorism and sedition.

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Miami mural of Rio police abuse painted over after officers complain

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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.”

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Colombia: thousands take to the streets in third national strike in two weeks

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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.

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Long-term damage from logging hits ability of Canada’s forests to regenerate

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  • ‘Logging scars’ blight up to 25% of formerly logged areas
  • Canada partly relies on forests to capture carbon

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

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Aladdin star Mena Massoud: ‘I haven’t had a single audition since film was released’

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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.”

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‘Hate is infectious’: how the 1989 mass shooting of 14 women echoes today

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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

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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'

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