Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Fabio Schvartsman and several other senior executives resigned on a “temporary” basis on Saturday after prosecutors recommended their dismissal. The move came after a leak of official documents suggested that Vale knew the dam was at a heightened risk of collapse.
Workers’ party leader serving 12 years for corruption
Lula reiterates his innocence, vowing: ‘I’m going to get out’
Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva left prison on Saturday to attend the funeral of his seven-year-old grandson, reiterating his innocence before political leaders and relatives who had gathered to mourn.
Lula, who is serving a 12-year sentence for corruption and money laundering, was released at 7am local time from a prison in the Paraná state capital, Curitiba. He flew to São Paulo before taking a helicopter to São Bernardo do Campo, where the funeral took place. He was scheduled to return to his cell later in the afternoon.
White spots eating away at the sculptures are softening them to a clay-like consistency and deforming their features
Within a century the emblematic stone figures that guard remote Easter Island could be little more than weathered rectangular blocks, conservation experts are warning – but Britain could be part of the fix.
The giant heads, carved centuries ago by the island’s inhabitants, represent the living ancestors of Easter Island’s Polynesian people – the Rapa Nui – and have brought it Unesco world heritage site status in its Pacific location more than 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile.
Freelance photographer Kate Stanworth has been following a Buenos Aires murga group for 10 years, as they perform in an energetic street carnival that is little known beyond Argentina
Argentina’s charismatic capital, Buenos Aires, might be more famous for tango, steak and football than colourful carnival parades. However, murga – a feisty, home-grown form of street dance and percussion performed during carnival season, once unfairly thought of as only performed by drop-outs and drunks – has flourished in recent years, providing a source of pride, happiness and salvation for the predominantly working class families that dedicate their lives to it.
Campaigners condemn authorities who ignored girl’s plea ‘to remove what the old man put inside me’
An 11-year old girl who became pregnant after being raped was forced to give birth after Argentine authorities refused to allow her the abortion to which she was entitled.
The authorities ignored repeated requests for an abortion from the child, called “Lucía” to protect her identity, as well as her mother and a number of Argentine women’s right activists. After 23 weeks of pregnancy, she had to undergo a caesarean section on Tuesday. The baby is unlikely to survive.
Jody Wilson-Raybould: I was ‘barraged’ by senior officials
Former justice minister testifies on Canadian bribery scandal
PM says staff acted properly
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has rejected calls to resign over a scandal that is engulfing his administration, saying he and his staff always acted properly and that Canadians will get to have their say on the matter at the federal election in October.
His comments came after Canada’s former minister of justice and attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould described a consistent, sustained and inappropriate effort by senior officials close to the prime minister who were attempting to dissuade her from prosecuting a Canadian engineering company accused of bribery.
Shipping containers positioned across Simón Bolívar bridge
Guaidó travels to Brazil to try to ramp up pressure on Maduro
Venezuelan authorities have blockaded a second bridge to Colombia amid fresh skirmishes between protesters and security forces loyal to embattled leader Nicolás Maduro.
UN security council officials clash over ‘politicised’ aid to troubled country as peace-building chief warns of ‘grim realities’
Infant mortality in Venezuela has soared by roughly 50% during the prolonged political crisis in the country.
Briefing the UN security council, the UN’s political and peace building chief, Rosemary DiCarlo, depicted a devastating collapse in Venezuela’s health system. She warned that 40% of medical staff had left the country and said hospital stocks of medicine had dwindled to 20% of the required level.
Jody Wilson-Raybould, Canada’s first indigenous attorney general, will testify over claims Trudeau aides pressured her to let a firm escape prosecution
In recent weeks, an archival clip from a 1983 constitutional conference on indigenous rights has circulated widely in Canada. The footage shows the Kwakwaka’wakw lawyer Bill Wilson sitting across from the then prime minister, Pierre Trudeau – the father of the country’s current leader.
Wilson tells Trudeau that both of his daughters want to become lawyers – and even prime minister. The audience – and Trudeau – laugh.
New education minister admits ‘mistake’ after asking schools to film students singing the national anthem and as slogan is read
Brazil’s new education minister has been forced into a humiliating retreat after he asked schools in the country to film students singing the national anthem in front of a Brazilian flag and being read the campaign slogan of new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.
“I recognised the mistake,” Ricardo Vélez Rodríguez said on Tuesday, a day after the education ministry emailed his instructions to schools across the country – and provoked a storm of outrage.
Anchor, who has reportedly been released, asked question embattled leader did not approve of, according to Univision executive
The Univision anchor Jorge Ramos has been detained in the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, the network announced on Monday evening.
The Mexican-born journalist was interviewing Venezuela’s embattled president Nicolás Maduro when he and his crew were detained after asking a question the combative Maduro did not approve of, according to a tweet by the network’s US president, Daniel Coronell. The team’s equipment had also been confiscated, Coronell said.
Mike Pence says ‘all options are on the table’ in effort to oust Maduro while key allies warn they would oppose sending troops
US vice-president Mike Pence has repeated a veiled threat of military intervention in Venezuela, but Washington appeared increasingly isolated in its willingness to contemplate using force to oust President Nicolás Maduro.
Both European powers and some of Donald Trump’s key Latin American allies – all of whom have recognised opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader – warned that they would oppose sending troops into the country.
Donald Trump has complained about a “racist hit” he said Spike Lee carried out on him at the Oscars.
The film-maker, 61, won his first competitive Academy Award, best adapted screenplay, for his film BlacKkKlansman, which was also nominated for best picture. Lee received an honorary Oscar in 2015.
A former staff member of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has filed a federal lawsuit against the president, claiming he kissed her without consent.
Alva Johnson, who served as Trump’s campaign’s director of outreach and coalitions in Alabama in 2016, told the Washington Post that Trump “grabbed her hand and leaned in to kiss her on the lips”, as the then-candidate exited an RV at a rally in Tampa on August 24 2016.
Johnson said she turned her head and the unwanted kiss landed on the side of her mouth, which she called “super-creepy and inappropriate.”
“I immediately felt violated because I wasn’t expecting it or wanting it,” she said. “I can still see his lips coming straight for my face.”
Spanish foreign minister says Madrid would not support military action to oust Nicolás Maduro
Spain has warned that it will not back any military intervention in Venezuela after the South American country’s opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, urged other nations to consider “all options” to remove the president, Nicolás Maduro, from power.
Guaidó is due to meet the US vice-president, Mike Pence, in Colombia on Monday amid ongoing speculation that the Trump administration could use force to oust Maduro.
After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on the planet. But its benefits mask enormous dangers to the planet, to human health – and to culture itself
In the time it takes you to read this sentence, the global building industry will have poured more than 19,000 bathtubs of concrete. By the time you are halfway through this article, the volume would fill the Albert Hall and spill out into Hyde Park. In a day it would be almost the size of China’s Three Gorges Dam. In a single year, there is enough to patio over every hill, dale, nook and cranny in England.
After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on Earth. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world with up to 2.8bn tonnes, surpassed only by China and the US.
Opposition leader set to meet Vice-President Mike Pence
Comments come a day after clashes that left four people dead
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó is set to meet US Vice-President Mike Pence on Monday, after asking other countries to consider “all options” to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power.
While the world watches supporters of Guaidó and Maduro at the Colombian frontier, a remote region sees days of drama and fear
On Saturday, presidents, music stars and activists backing the Venezuelan opposition’s attempt to break a government blockade and bring food and medical supplies into the country, and most of the journalists covering the showdown, clustered around the border with Colombia.
Conservative Christianity becomes a political force in referendum on state’s new constitution
A thousand parishioners gathered in the Methodist church in the Vedado district of Cuba’s capital on a recent Sunday morning. After the revival music and conga drums had faded, the dancers had come off stage and the faithful had lowered outstretched arms, Pastor Lester Fernández rounded off his sermon on the ruinous consequences that the legalisation of gay marriage would bring.
“The Cuban church, as an essential part of society, is worried, and therefore has a right to a public voice,” he hollered into his microphone. “Amen,” replied the flock.
Presidential challenger Juan Guaidó says he will urge foreign leaders to keep ‘all options open’ at a meeting on Monday
At least four people have been killed and hundreds injured in a wave of violence that convulsed Venezuela’s border regions on Saturday, as opposition activists tried to defy a government ban and bring food and medical supplies into the country.
After the failed attempt to breach government blockades, opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared the fight would continue, and said “we must keep all our options open for the liberation of our homeland”.
Refugee children from four months to 15 years old perished in as-yet unexplained blaze at their home in Halifax
Around 2,000 mourners attended the funeral on Saturday of seven children from a Syrian refugee family who died earlier this week in a house fire in Halifax, eastern Canada.
Ahmad Barho and siblings Rola, Mohammed, Ola, Hala, Rana and Abdullah – whose ages ranged from four months to 15 years – all perished in the as-yet unexplained blaze at their home on Tuesday.