IMF accused of ‘reckless lending’ to debt-troubled states

Jubilee Debt Campaign says the Fund broke its own rules by not ensuring sustainable debt burden

Debt campaigners have accused the International Monetary Fund of encouraging reckless lending by extending $93bn (£75bn) of loans to 18 financially troubled countries without a debt restructuring programme first.

In advance of the IMF’s annual meeting in Washington next week, the Jubilee Debt Campaign (JDC) said the the Fund was breaking its own rules by providing financial support without ensuring that the debt burden was sustainable.

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The big picture: boy with balloons in Santiago, Chile

Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey pays homage to Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive moment’

David Alan Harvey’s photograph of a boy with balloons on a street in Santiago, Chile, was taken in 1997. It is included in Streetwise, a new collection of pictures from the archives of the Magnum agency. The Magnum name became synonymous with street photography in the 1950s and 1960s under the guiding influence of co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson. The current volume pays homage to Cartier-Bresson’s black-and-white “decisive moments” and examines the way that that spirit has been taken forward, particularly after advances in digital photography and printing enabled a revolution in colour in the 1980s.

Harvey was elected into the agency – there is a voting process among the membership – in the year that this picture was taken. By then, as a staff photographer for National Geographic, he had been taking pictures for more than three decades. A principle subject was the Hispanic diaspora on both sides of the Atlantic – the “divided soul”, as he terms it, of Latin culture.

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Public invited to 100-year-old Jamaican war veteran’s funeral

Oswald Dixon served in RAF in second world war and died at care home in Salford

A care home is inviting members of the public to attend the funeral of a second world war veteran from Jamaica with no family in the UK.

Oswald Dixon died on 25 September aged 100 after living his last four years at a home for retired service personnel in Salford, Greater Manchester.

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Trudeau appeal could block billions in compensation to Indigenous children

Government to appeal ruling that found youth were ‘wilfully and recklessly harmed’ under welfare system

The government of Justin Trudeau will appeal a court ruling that found Indigenous youth were “wilfully and recklessly” harmed under national child welfare policies, in a move that could block billions of dollars in compensation.

In September, the Canadian human rights tribunal found that the federal government’s on-reserve child welfare system unfairly discriminated against Indigenous youth, severely underfunding their care.

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Thatcher sent Pinochet finest scotch during former dictator’s UK house arrest

  • New revelation adds colour to close relationship between pair
  • Pinochet oversaw death and torture of thousands of Chileans

While he was under house arrest in Surrey in 1999, the former Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet received a fine malt from an old friend.

Related: 'Where are they?': families search for Chile’s disappeared prisoners

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Ecuador declares state of emergency over violent fuel price protests – video

Police in Quito have used teargas and horses to quell a violent protest over rising fuel prices, which triggered transport disruption nationwide. Taxi, bus and truck drivers blocked the streets during the demonstration, which was supported by indigenous groups, students and trade union members.

Ecuadorians were angered by President Lenín Moreno's decision to end subsidies for fuel after 40 years. Diesel and petrol prices are expected to more than double

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Jair Bolsonaro pictured with second accused in Marielle Franco murder case

Photos of Brazil’s president with a suspect in the killing of a Rio councillor have emerged – seven months after a similar incident

Brazilian opposition figures and human rights observers are seething after a photo emerged of the country’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, grinning and giving the thumbs up alongside a man arrested in connection with the murder of the Rio de Janeiro city councillor Marielle Franco.

It was the second time the president has been photographed alongside a suspect in Brazil’s most high-profile political murder in a decade.

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Prosecutors say ex-Taliban hostage intentionally tried to mislead court

Prosecutors say Joshua Boyle, Canadian man on trial for assaulting his wife, advanced a narrative that’s ‘incompatible with reality’

The testimony of Joshua Boyle, the former Afghanistan hostage on trial for assaulting his wife, was intentionally crafted to mislead the court, prosecutors have argued in closing arguments.

Crown lawyers once again took aim at Joshua Boyle’s credibility on Wednesday, suggesting he had manipulated his testimony for self-serving ends.

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‘War for survival’: Brazil’s Amazon tribes despair as land raids surge under Bolsonaro

Activists say onslaught has intensified as illegal loggers and land-grabbers take the president’s verbal offensive against indigenous communities as a green light to act

More than 30 bullet holes told Awapu Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau a sinister tale.

“Their message is that they’re going to finish us off, isn’t it?” the village chieftan said as he examined the pockmarked sign warning outsiders to stay off the giant Amazon reserve he calls home.

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‘We live for gravity biking’: deadly sport is way of life in Medellín

The risky hillside pastime – which sees people hurtle down steep inclines on weighted bikes at up to 77 mph – is providing kids in downtrodden areas of Colombia’s second city with an escape from their troubles

As the cable cars that connect downtown Medellín – Colombia’s second city – to the hillside slums pass overhead, a band of teenage cyclists have gathered at the side of the road. Vallejuelos is a downtrodden neighbourhood, rife with crime and unemployment, but “gravity biking” is helping some kids escape their troubles.

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Family feud sparks hunt for Mexican singer’s body among morgues of Miami

José José’s two elder children say their half-sister won’t reveal where the body is, while the showbiz media stokes the feud

Mexican crooner José José specialized in heart-wrenching ballads which turned him into an icon of extreme Latin American romanticism. Since his death on Saturday, a bitter family battle for control of his body has converted his afterlife into a telenovela.

José José – known as El Príncipe de la Canción, or the Prince of Song – died in Miami on Saturday. He was 71 and was known to have pancreatic cancer.

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‘Based in hatred’: violence against women standing in Colombia’s elections

Killing of Karina García reflects targeting of female contenders, amid mounting security concerns

The body of mayoral candidate Karina García was found shot and incinerated in her car in the Cauca department of southern Colombia, on 1 September.

For weeks, García had reported receiving threats and asked the government for increased protection during campaigning for the local and departmental elections at the end of the month.

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Haitians urge judges to find UN culpable for cholera outbreak that killed thousands

  • Supreme court consider whether to take up Laventure v UN
  • UN peacekeepers introduced disease after 2010 earthquake

Victims of the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti, which killed at least 10,000 people and infected hundreds of thousands more, are petitioning the US supreme court on Tuesday to hold the UN accountable for having brought the disease to the stricken country.

The nine supreme court justices will meet in conference to discuss whether to hear Laventure v UN as one of their cases of the new term. The petition goes to the heart of the question: should the world body be answerable in domestic courts for the harm it causes people it is there to serve?

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‘We’ve been taken hostage’: African migrants stranded in Mexico after Trump’s crackdown

Hundreds of migrants from Africa are stuck in Tapachula because of Mexico’s willingness to bow to Trump and stem the flow of migrants

Neh knew she was taking a risk when she got involved with English-language activists in mostly-Francophone Cameroon.

She had no way of know that her decision would eventually force her to flee her country, fly halfway across the world and then set out on a 4,000-mile trek through dense jungle and across seven borders – only to leave her stranded in southern Mexico, where her hopes of finding safety in the US were blocked by the Mexican government’s efforts to placate Donald Trump’s anti-migrant rage.

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Canadian murder suspects recorded themselves talking about killings, say police – video

The two fugitives responsible for a manhunt across Canada recorded video confessions for the murders of three people – and planned for more victims before killing themselves, police revealed on Friday. At a press conference in Vancouver, the Royal Canadian Mounted police released a 13-page report detailing key findings of the extensive investigation, including the recovery of six videos and three images from a camera. They said they had decided not to release the videos of the killers themselves because the suspects 'may have made them for notoriety' and their release could  sensationalise their actions. 

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Canada murders: fugitives who killed three planned for more victims, say police

Killers recorded video confessions of murders of Australian tourist, his American girlfriend and Canadian professor

The two fugitives responsible for a frantic manhunt across Canada recorded video confessions for the murders of three people – and planned for more victims before killing themselves, police revealed Friday.

At a press conference in Vancouver, the Royal Canadian Mounted police released a 13-page report detailing key findings of the extensive investigation, including the recovery six videos and three images from a camera.

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Greta Thunberg meets Justin Trudeau amid climate strikes: ‘He is not doing enough’

Teen has private meeting with Canadian prime minister, who later says he ‘agrees with her completely’

The teen activist Greta Thunberg has urged Justin Trudeau and other world leaders to do more for the environment as she led half a million protesters in Montreal as part of a global wave of “climate strikes.”

The 16-year-old Swede met privately with the Canadian prime minister but later told a news conference with local indigenous leaders that he was “not doing enough” to curb greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

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‘We have made history’: Mexico’s Oaxaca state decriminalises abortion

Lawmakers voted to scrap restrictions on abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy in a win for reproductive rights advocates

Women’s rights activists in Mexico are celebrating after the southern state of Oaxaca decriminalised abortion in a move that activists hope signals broader reforms to ensure reproductive rights in what is still a conservative and deeply Catholic country.

Lawmakers voted 24-10 on Wednesday to scrap restrictions on abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, despite vocal opposition from the Catholic Church. Opponents – including priests and the religious – screamed “killers!” at the lawmakers as the vote occurred, while women in the green handkerchiefs of the pro-choice movement chanted, “Yes we can!”

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Is a huge Montreal building project pushing out Trudeau’s poorest constituents?

Residents of city’s Parc-Ex district, one of Canada’s poorest areas, and part of Justin Trudeau’s own electoral district, say a new university campus is driving them out

Parc-Extension in Papineau, Quebec, is one of Canada’s most ethnically diverse neighbourhoods. Of the approximately 30,000 people who live in Parc-Ex, 61% were born outside Canada. The area is one of the country’s poorest: 43% of households live below the poverty line, perhaps a somewhat surprising fact given that it is also part of the riding (electoral district) represented by the Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau .

Despite being located in the centre of bustling Montreal, Parc-Ex feels isolated and is physically closed off from the rest of the city by borders on all sides. There’s a highway to the north, a large park to the east, train tracks to the south and a fence to the west, built by a posher neighbouring borough.

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Canada’s Green Party alters photo of leader using single-use cup

Image of Elizabeth May manipulated to make it seem as if she was using a reusable cup and metal straw instead of a disposable cup

Canada’s Green party has admitted to manipulating a photograph on its website to make it seem as if the party leader was using a reusable plastic cup and metal straw instead of a disposable paper cup.

The image shows Elizabeth May, smiling and holding a plastic cup emblazoned with the Green party logo and with a metal straw inserted in its cover.

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