Category Archives: Americas

Trump’s new Cuba crackdown puts US at odds with Canada and Europe

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US will allow lawsuits against firms using property nationalised by the revolution, cap remittances and restrict ‘non-family’ travel

Donald Trump has taken another step towards reversing Barack Obama’s historic rapprochement with Cuba with a measure that earned swift criticism from allies in Canada and Europe.

The US announced on Wednesday that it would enable lawsuits against foreign companies that use properties nationalised by the communist government after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

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Teenage girls most at risk amid rising sexual violence in El Salvador – report

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Study reveals 31% increase in sexual attacks since 2017, with many related to gang culture

Rates of sexual violence in El Salvador rose by a third last year, with the majority of cases involving teenage girls.

More than 60% of the 4,304 cases of sexual violence recorded in 2018 involved 12- to 17-year-olds, according to a report published this week by the Organisation of Salvadoran Women for Peace (Ormusa).

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Canada’s legal weed struggles to light up as smokers stick to black market

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Six months after legalisation, licensed producers are unable to keep up with the demand or quality of neighborhood dealers

When Melissa, a resident of Halifax, Nova Scotia, went to one of Canada’s first government cannabis stores, she wasn’t impressed. “You can’t look at what they have. You can’t smell the product,” she said. “It’s too expensive.”

And so she, like tens of thousand of other Canadians, went back to their old habits: buying from neighbourhood dealers.

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‘For me, it was everything’: the trailblazing school for trans people | Natalie Alcoba

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At 15, bigotry drove Viviana Gonzalez from school. Decades on, a dedicated school in Buenos Aires is putting wrong to right

Viviana Gonzalez vividly remembers her first day of high school.

She was 12, and imagined a future as a doctor, a teacher or an artist. But the school administrator in her home town in Argentina looked at her long hair, noticed the boy’s name on her ID and kicked her out “like a dog”, admonishing her for wearing “a costume”. She refused to cut her hair and wear a tie. “I was already Viviana. I didn’t want to dress up like a boy.”

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Portable kit to treat babies with jaundice goes on trial in Peru

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Jaundice affects 60% of babies. Left untreated it can be life-threatening. But treatment has always been difficult to access in rural Peru

Health workers in a remote province high in the Peruvian Andes are trialling a revolutionary method to treat babies with jaundice – with nothing more than a colour-coded ruler, blood reader and carrycots.

Their goal is to screen, diagnose and treat jaundice in 12,000 newborns over the next two years in a country where 90% of the public health facilities lack the capability to adequately diagnose or treat it in newborns.

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How Scotland erased Guyana from its past

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The portrayal of Scots as abolitionists and liberal champions has hidden a long history of profiting from slavery in the Caribbean.

The mangrove-fringed coast of Guyana, at the north-eastern tip of South America, does not immediately bring to mind the Highlands of Scotland, in the northernmost part of Great Britain. Guyana’s mudflats and silty brown coastal water have little in common with the lush green mountains and glens of the Highlands. If these landscapes share anything, it is their remoteness – one on the edge of a former empire burnished by the relentless equatorial sun and one on the edge of Europe whipped mercilessly by the Atlantic winds.

But look closer and the links are there: Alness, Ankerville, Belladrum, Borlum, Cromarty, Culcairn, Dingwall, Dunrobin, Fyrish, Glastullich, Inverness, Kintail, Kintyre, Rosehall, Tain, Tarlogie, a join-the-dots list of placenames (30 in all) south of Guyana’s capital Georgetown that hint of a hidden association with the Scottish Highlands some 5,000 miles away.

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Canada: police hunt fake deliveryman who shot woman with crossbow

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Suspect injured woman with a crossbow in a ‘premeditated, targeted’ attack, police say, in November 2018

Police in Canada are hunting a suspected hitman who they say disguised himself as a delivery person to carry out a “premeditated, targeted and isolated attack” on a woman, gravely injuring her with a crossbow.

Details of a brazen murder attempt were released to the public Monday morning by police in Mississauga, Ontario. The attack on the 44-year-old woman occurred late on 7 November 2018 in an area north of Toronto.

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Letters support claim Assange would not face death penalty

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UK foreign secretaries wrote to assure Ecuador president over WikiLeaks founder’s extradition

Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, was assured by two British foreign secretaries that Julian Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face the death penalty, according to letters seen by the Guardian.

Letters signed by the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and his predecessor Boris Johnson, dated 7 March 2018 and 10 August 2018 respectively, confirm a person cannot be extradited if they could face the death penalty, according to British legislation.

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Alberta election is key test for Rachel Notley and Canada’s carbon tax

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The Liberal party ended 40 years of conservative rule in the oil-rich province four years ago but an energy crisis could change that

When Canada’s leftwing New Democratic party launched a manifesto promising carbon taxes, coal plant closures and welfare spending in the heartland of country’s oil industry, few thought they could win.

But in 2015, the party ended 40 years of conservative rule in the province of Alberta with an unexpected victory that seemed to mark a seismic shift in Canadian politics.

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Assange tried to use embassy as ‘centre for spying’, says Ecuador’s Moreno

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Exclusive: President says he has it in writing from UK that WikiLeaks co-founder’s rights will be respected

Julian Assange repeatedly violated his asylum conditions and tried to use the Ecuadorian embassy in London as a “centre for spying”, Ecuador’s president has said in an interview with the Guardian.

Lenín Moreno also said he had been given written undertakings from Britain that Assange’s fundamental rights would be respected and that he would not be sent anywhere to face the death penalty.

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Who polices the cultural appropriation gatekeepers? | Kenan Malik

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Indigenous musicians in Canada are at one another’s throats over the Cree artist Cikwes’s use of a traditional Inuit singing technique

Another week, another row over cultural appropriation. But this one is different. It’s not a white artist being accused of appropriating the cultural forms of a minority community but an Indigenous Canadian artist being condemned for using the musical style of another Indigenous community.

Connie LeGrande, who performs under the name Cikwes, was nominated at the Canadian Indigenous Music awards in the best folk album category. LeGrande is a Nehiyaw, or Cree, one of Canada’s First Nations. On her album Isko, she uses katajjaq, a style of throat singing culturally and historically linked to Inuit groups. First Nations are Indigenous groups south of the Arctic Circle, Inuits those who live in the Arctic.

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Swedish man jailed in Ecuador over alleged WikiLeaks involvement

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Authorities investigating whether Ola Bini was working with WikiLeaks and Assange as part of attempt to ‘destabilise’ Ecuador


A judge in Ecuador has jailed a Swedish software developer whom authorities believe is a key member of WikiLeaks and close to Julian Assange, while prosecutors investigate charging him with hacking as part of an alleged plot to “destabilise” the country’s government.

Ola Bini, 36, was ordered to held in preventive detention on Saturday pending possible cyber-attack charges and his bank accounts were frozen. Prosecutors were examining dozens of hard drives and other material he had in his possession, according to local media reports.

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Red Cross aid to Venezuela to triple as Maduro stance softens

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International Committee of the Red Cross to increase budget to $24m after president approves humanitarian assistance

The International Committee of the Red Cross is to triple aid to Venezuela, a day after the crisis-riven country’s leader approved the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

The organisation announced the increase in the face of mounting calls for the UN to recognise the scale of the crisis facing Venezuela, and amid continued moves by the Trump administration to persuade other countries to back its calls for the removal of President Nicolás Maduro.

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Julian Assange faces US extradition after arrest at Ecuadorian embassy

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WikiLeaks founder’s removal from London embassy brings seven-year diplomatic stalemate to an end

Julian Assange is facing extradition to the United States and up to five years in prison after he was forcibly dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday, bringing an extraordinary seven-year diplomatic stalemate to an end.

After 2,487 days in the embassy, the 47-year-old was arrested after Ecuador revoked his political asylum and invited Metropolitan police officers inside their Knightsbridge premises, where he has stayed since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations which Assange has always denied.

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Brazilian comedian gets jail sentence for video attacking leftwing politician

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Danilo Gentili, a conservative known for his aggressive attacks on the left, was tried over a 2017 clip he shared on social media

A row over free speech has erupted in Brazil after a foul-mouthed conservative comedian was given a six-month jail sentence for abusing a leftwing politician.

Known for his aggressive attacks on the Brazilian left, Danilo Gentili, 39, was sentenced by a judge in São Paulo on Tuesday for his comments about Maria do Rosário, a congresswoman for the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. He remains free pending appeal.

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‘Rude, ungrateful and meddling’: why Ecuador turned on Assange

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Minister lists reasons for Assange’s eviction from London embassy, including threats, skateboarding and health concerns

Ecuador’s decision to allow police to arrest Julian Assange inside its embassy on Thursday followed a fraught and acrimonious period in which relations between the government in Quito and the WikiLeaks founder became increasingly hostile.

In a presentation before Ecuador’s parliament on Thursday, the foreign minister, José Valencia, set out nine reasons why Assange’s asylum had been withdrawn. The list ranged from meddling in Ecuador’s relations with other countries to having to “put up with his rudeness” for nearly seven years.

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Julian Assange ‘further arrested’ on behalf of the US after extradition request, police say – live updates

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Assange arrested following the withdrawal of asylum by the Ecuadorian government


Assange gave photographers a thumbs up as he was driven a way in a police van from the embassy.

A scuffle broke out outside the Ecuadorian embassy between embassy security and a reporter from Chile’s el Ciudadano who tried to challenge the ambassador as he was taken into a car.

Patricio Mary, the reporter, said he had wanted to ask ambassador, Jaime Martín, about promises he had made to respect Assange’s asylum.

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Spanish police ‘recover Julian Assange surveillance footage’

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Material that originated from Ecuadorian embassy was reportedly offered for sale

WikiLeaks has said it has uncovered a surveillance operation against Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy and that images, documents and videos gathered have been offered for sale.

Spanish police were said to have mounted a sting operation against unnamed individuals in Madrid who offered the material for sale in what lawyers and colleagues of Assange said on Wednesday was an attempt at extortion.

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Mexico battles over legacy of revolutionary Emilano Zapata

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As country marks centennial of Zapata’s death, government’s agenda makes ‘mockery’ of insurgent’s ideals, grandson says

Sitting back in the shade of a sapodilla tree, Jorge Zapata González takes a slow drag on his cigarette and tells a cautionary tale of revolution and betrayal.

His grandfather, the Mexican insurgent Emiliano Zapata, rallied poor campesinos under the battle cry “land and liberty” a century ago – only to be double-crossed by a former ally and murdered.

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In the land of El Dorado, clean water has become ‘blue gold’

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The misty páramos in the Andes that supply water to tens of millions of people are under threat. Now their mystery could be solved

In the land where the legend of El Dorado began, the race is on to solve the mystery of a vital 21st-century treasure – the water that tens of millions of people rely upon across northern South America. “It’s blue gold, and we are looking for it,” says Mauricio Diazgranados, a Colombian botanist.

The misty and marshy páramo landscapes that sit above the tree line and below the snow caps of the soaring Andes peaks are known as the living factories that ensure a steady flow of clean water to the region’s growing population.

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