Category Archives: Americas

Puerto Rico thrown into turmoil as supreme court ousts new governor

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  • Move clears way for justice secretary Wanda Vázquez to succeed
  • Pedro Pierluisi was appointed by disgraced Ricardo Rosselló

Puerto Rico’s supreme court on Wednesday overturned the swearing-in of Pedro Pierluisi as the island’s governor less than a week ago, clearing the way for the justice secretary, Wanda Vázquez, to take up the post after weeks of turmoil. The unanimous ruling said Pierluisi must step aside immediately.

The high court’s decision, which cannot be appealed, was expected to unleash new demonstrations and deepen the tumult because many Puerto Ricans have said they do not want Vázquez as governor.

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Bolsonaro rejects ‘Captain Chainsaw’ label as data shows deforestation ‘exploded’

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Data says 2,254 sq km cleared in July as president says Macron and Merkel ‘haven’t realized Brazil’s under new management’

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon “exploded” in July it has emerged as Jair Bolsonaro scoffed at his portrayal as Brazil’s “Captain Chainsaw” and mocked Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel for challenging him over the devastation.

Speaking in São Paulo on Tuesday, Brazil’s president attacked the leaders of France and Germany – who have both voiced concern about the surge in destruction since Bolsonaro took office in January.

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Thieves strike gold after taking $2.5m in coins from open vault at Mexican mint

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The brazen theft of more than 1,500 ‘centenarios’ in Mexico City comes amid alarm at rising crime

Armed robbers have stolen more than $2m worth of gold coins from a vault that had been left open at a mint in Mexico City.

The daylight robbery was the latest high-profile crime to hit the capital city amid record levels of lawlessness across the country.

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Should a notorious Buenos Aires slum become an official neighbourhood?

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Turning Villa 31 into a barrio will bring greater stability and prosperity, say city authorities, but the plan is stirring deep resentments about ownership and identity

For many Argentinians, especially those from Buenos Aires, Villa 31 is a household name. It is the most famous – and notorious – slum in Buenos Aires, synonymous with poverty and violence (it has the second-highest murder rate in the city), and with the narcotráficantes (organised drug gangs) and paco, a cocaine paste that destroys communities in Argentina.

As inflation climbed to 55% last year and the national poverty rate crept to 32%, the neighbourhood lurched further into the grip of gangs, such as the Sampedranos. Murder stories from the villa dominate headlines, the most recent one being the discovery of a woman’s dismembered corpse in March.

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Canada manhunt: police find several items linked to murder suspects

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The find in northern Manitoba during search for Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmeglsky follows discovery of a rowing boat

Canadian police have found “several items directly linked” to two teenage boys suspected in the killings of an Australian man, his American girlfriend and a Canadian university lecturer.

The pair, Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, both from Port Alberni, British Columbia, have been on the run for nearly three weeks with no confirmed sightings since 22 July.

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‘It will not work’: experts question Venezuela sanctions as Bolton touts them

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Bolton claimed Trump’s measures will help end Maduro’s reign, but some fear they will make Venezuela’s economic meltdown worse

US national security adviser, John Bolton, has insisted Venezuela’s “tired dictator” was at “the end of his rope”, as he opened another front in the White House’s economic blitz on Nicolás Maduro by freezing all Venezuelan government assets in the United States.

Addressing a summit on Venezuela’s crisis in Peru’s capital, Lima, Bolton pronounced Maduro’s “dying regime” doomed – even though a seven-month US-backed campaign has so far failed to topple Hugo Chávez’s authoritarian successor.

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Brazil gang leader found dead in cell after masked jailbreak attempt

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Clauvino da Silva’s death days after escape bid dressed up as his daughter seen as humiliation for overcrowded jail system

The Brazilian gang leader whose attempt to escape prison dressed as his daughter made global headlines has been found dead in his cell in Rio de Janeiro.

The state prison service, Seap, said officers found the body of Clauvino da Silva, 42, on Tuesday morning at the high security prison complex he had attempted to flee. It added that he appeared to have taken his own life.

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Trump freezes all Venezuelan government assets in US

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Executive order says assets may not be ‘transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn’, as tensions with President Maduro escalate

The Trump administration has frozen all Venezuelan government assets in a significant escalation of tensions with socialist leader Nicolás Maduro. It places Washington’s trade relations with the South American country on a par with Cuba, Syria, Iran and North Korea.

The ban on Americans doing business with Venezuela’s government takes effect immediately.

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Jair Bolsonaro says criminals will ‘die like cockroaches’ under proposed new laws

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Brazil’s president calls for security forces and citizens who shoot alleged offenders to be shielded from prosecution

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has said he hopes criminals will “die in the streets like cockroaches” as a result of hard-line legislation he is pushing to shield security forces and citizens who shoot alleged offenders from prosecution.

In an interview broadcast on Monday, Bolsonaro said he hoped Congress would approve his controversial plans to expand the so-called excludente de ilicitude – an article in Brazil’s criminal code that makes some normally illegal acts permissible.

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Big cats and exotic birds: Colombia’s rescued animals – in pictures

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Most of the animals at the Santa Cruz Foundation in San Antonio, Colombia, have been rescued from traffickers and circuses. The multimillion-dollar illegal wildlife trade is the fourth-largest in the country after drugs, guns and human trafficking

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Environmental activist murders double in 15 years

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Death toll almost half that of US troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, data shows

Killings of environmental defenders have doubled over the past 15 years to reach levels usually associated with war zones, according to a study that reveals how murders of activists are concentrated in countries with the worst corruption and weakest laws.

At least 1,558 people in 50 states were killed between 2002 and 2017 while trying to protect their land, water or local wildlife, says the analysis, which calculates the death toll is almost half that of US troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

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Brazil gang leader dresses up as teenage daughter in jailbreak attempt

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Rio tabloids mock Clauvino da Silva’s botched escape, which also left his daughter, 19, inside

When Mexico’s “Shorty” – the drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán – made his cinematic 2015 jail-break it required a mile-long tunnel, a multimillion dollar bribe and even a private plane that whisked him to freedom in the mountains of Sinaloa.

El Chapo’s Brazilian namesake hoped to achieve the same using just a silicone mask, a black bra and wig, and a skin-tight T-shirt emblazoned with three pink doughnuts.

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Mexican media call for more protection after three killings in a week

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Journalists say blame lies in ‘grey zone’ between organised crime and authorities

Journalists in Mexico have said the new government is failing to protect them after three reporters were murdered in less than a week.

Jorge Ruiz Vázquez, a reporter with the Gráfico de Xalapa newspaper, was the latest victim, shot dead late on Friday night in Actopan, in Veracruz state. He was supposed to have received protection from state security forces but this was missing on the night of the killing.

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Canada murders: abandoned rowboat provides new lead in manhunt

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Underwater team being sent to search river in Gillam after ‘significantly damaged’ rowboat discovered

Canadian police are sending an underwater search team to northern Manitoba after a rowboat that detectives believe triple murder suspects Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, may have used to evade a manhunt was discovered on a river.

The boat was spotted on Friday afternoon on the Nelson river near the town of Gillam where the search for the pair had been concentrated, the Globe and Mail reports. “It had gone through some rapids and had been significantly damaged,” a police inspector told the Globe. A water jug was found nearby.

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Third Mexican journalist killed in a week amid record murder rate

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A journalist shot in his own home despite being offered official protection reflects Mexico’s struggle with rising violence

An investigation has been launched into the death of a reporter in the Mexican state of Veracruz after he became the third journalist to be murdered in a week.

As the country grapples with a record murder rate, Mexican officials in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz where Jorge Ruiz Vazquez worked for the Grafico de Xalapa newspaper in Veracruz’s capital, said the investigation would examine why procedures to protect him failed.

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Indigenous Contemporary Scene review – resistance, revenge and jolly cabaret

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Songs in the Key of Cree, Deer Woman and Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools, three shows by Canada’s Indigenous artists, are presented at the Edinburgh festival

This summer, Canada’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls revealed “staggering” rates of violence and lay the blame at “persistent and deliberate human and Indigenous rights violations and abuses” . For decades, Indigenous women have been murdered or gone missing and, for decades, the problem has been ignored.

The scandal is shocking in its own terms, but for many of those affected, it stands for an even broader malaise. They see the abuse as an expression of colonialism and link it not only to the excesses of capitalism but also the resultant climate emergency; all are about taking what doesn’t belong to you.

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Running dry: the water crisis driving migration to the US – podcast

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Nina Lakhani explores how drought and famine are fuelling the wave of migration from Central America to the US. Plus: Emma Graham-Harrison on China and the Hong Kong protests

Victor Funez walks to a cemetery in Nejapa, El Salvador, every day and fills a three-gallon plastic pitcher with water before trudging home. He repeats this several times a day – it’s his family’s only source of water. The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani met him as part of an investigation into how a lack of access to clean water is a major driver of migration from Central America to the US.

She tells India Rakusen that rising sea levels are destroying coastal towns in Honduras and how drought and famine have prompted a mass exodus from Guatemala. In El Salvador, meanwhile, corporate interests, corruption and gangs worsen the problems caused by the lack of clean water.

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Amazon deforestation: Bolsonaro government accused of seeking to sow doubt over data

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Ministers look at setting up alternative monitoring scheme as existing system shows alarming rise in clearance rates

The Amazon forest is being burned and chopped down at the most alarming rate in recent memory, but the Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro is focused on reinterpreting the data rather than dealing with the culprits, monitoring groups have said.

At a clearance rate equivalent to a Manhattan island every day, deforestation in July was almost twice as fast as the worst month ever recorded by the current satellite monitoring system, which is managed by the government’s National Institute for Space Research.

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Puerto Rico’s ousted governor names Pedro Pierluisi as next leader

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Pierluisi is a member of the disgraced leader Ricardo Rosselló’s pro-statehood New Progressive party

Puerto Rico’s ousted governor, Ricardo Rosselló, announced his intended successor on Wednesday morning, two days before the disgraced leader of the US territory is due to resign. He named Pedro Pierluisi as the next head of the island’s government.

Pierluisi served as Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner in Washington between 2009 and 2017, and before that was the US territory’s justice secretary. The position of resident commissioner holds a non-voting seat in the US House of Representatives. He is a member of Rosselló’s pro-statehood New Progressive party (PNP) and served as justice secretary under the administration of Pedro Rosselló, the current governor’s father.

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