Category Archives: Americas

Trump’s latest tariffs ‘are real’ unless deals improve, economic adviser says

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Kevin Hassett says talks are ‘ongoing’ after US president announced 30% tariffs on goods from EU and Mexico

Donald Trump has seen some trade deal offers and thinks they need to be better, Kevin Hassett, the White House economic adviser, said on Sunday, adding that the president will proceed with threatened tariffs on Mexico, the European Union and other countries if they don’t improve.

“Well, these tariffs are real if the president doesn’t get a deal that he thinks is good enough,” Hassett told ABC’s This Week program. “But you know, conversations are ongoing, and we’ll see where the dust settles.“

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Donald Trump announces 30% tariffs on goods from the EU and Mexico

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The president made the announcement on social media, even as the EU was hoping for a trade agreement

Donald Trump announced on Saturday that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% US tariff rate starting 1 August, in letters posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The tariff assault on the EU came as a shock to European capitals as the European Commission and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer had spent months hammering out a deal they believed was acceptable to both sides.

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Ana Maria Gonçalves becomes first Black woman in Brazil’s literary academy

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Author of Um defeito de cor wins seat in 128-year-old institution long dominated by white men

Brazil has elected its first Black woman to the Brazilian Academy of Letters, founded in 1897 and modelled on the Académie Française.

Ana Maria Gonçalves, 54, is one of Brazil’s most acclaimed contemporary authors, and her election on Thursday is being widely celebrated by writers, activists, literary scholars and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

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Sports CEO Timothy Leiweke charged in Texas arena bid-rigging scheme

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Leiweke, ex-president of Denver Nuggets and former CEO of MLSE, which owns Toronto’s major sports franchises, indicted over $388m arena

A prominent sports executive has been criminally charged with organising a conspiracy to ensure his own company won the bid to build a $388m sports arena in Texas.

Timothy Leiweke, the former president of the Denver Nuggets basketball team and former CEO of MLSE, which owns Toronto’s major sports franchises including the Leafs and Raptors was charged on Wednesday by a federal grand jury. He resigned as chief executive of the company at the center of the case, Oak View Group (OVG), after the announcement.

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High-risk HIV groups facing record levels of criminalisation as countries bring in draconian laws

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Curbs on LGBTQ+ rights and a halt to US funding may reverse decades of progress in fight to end Aids epidemic, warns UNAids

People at higher risk of HIV, such as gay men and people who inject drugs, are facing record levels of criminalisation worldwide, according to UNAids.

For the first time since the joint UN programme on HIV/Aids began reporting on punitive laws a decade ago, the number of countries criminalising same-sex sexual activity and gender expression has increased.

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Lobbyists linked to Donald Trump paid millions by world’s poorest countries

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Somalia, DR Congo and Yemen among states forced to sign deals and barter their minerals for aid or military support

Some of the world’s poorest countries have started paying millions to lobbyists linked to Donald Trump to try to offset US cuts to foreign aid, an investigation reveals.

Somalia, Haiti and Yemen are among 11 countries to sign significant lobbying deals with figures tied directly to the US president after he slashed US foreign humanitarian assistance.

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Trump announces 50% tariff on Brazil, citing a ‘witch-hunt’ against Bolsonaro

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Latest threats heighten fears that the president’s erratic trade strategy risks exacerbating inflation across the US

Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that his administration will hit Brazil with a 50% tariff on products sent to the US, tying the move to what he called the “witch-hunt” trial against its former president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Posting letters on Truth Social, the US president had earlier in the day targeted seven other countries – the Philippines, Brunei, Moldova, Algeria, Libya, Iraq and Sri Lanka – for stiff US tariffs on foreign exports starting on 1 August.

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Canadian couple’s message in a bottle found 13 years later in Irish bay

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Facebook post helps track down Anita and Brad, who had been dating for a year at time of message and wed in 2016

In September 2012, a young couple capped a romantic date in Newfoundland, on Canada’s eastern tip, by putting a message in a bottle and dropping it into the Atlantic.

“Anita and Brad’s day trip to Bell Island. Today, we enjoyed dinner, this bottle of wine and each other, at the edge of the island,” it said. It asked whomever might find the message to “please call us”, followed by a scribbled number.

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Firefighters from Mexico aid Texas flood search and rescue: ‘There are no borders’

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Team of firefighters and first responders volunteer along Guadalupe River after mass flooding in show of solidarity

A contingent of firefighters and first responders from Mexico arrived in Texas over the weekend to aid in search and rescue efforts following the devastating flooding of the Guadalupe River in a show of solidarity with their northern neighbors.

“When it comes to firefighters, there’s no borders,” Ismael Aldaba, founder of Fundación 911, in Acuña, Mexico, told CNN on Tuesday. “There’s nothing that’ll avoid us from helping another firefighter, another family. It doesn’t matter where we’re at in the world. That’s the whole point of our discipline and what we do.”

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Canadian police seize largest ever weapons cache in terrorism inquiry

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RCMP arrested and charged four people who were trying to form an ‘anti-government militia’ and capture land

Police in Canada have arrested and charged four people, including active military members, who they allege were “planning to create anti-government militia” and to “forcibly take possession of land” in the province of Quebec.

The scope of material uncovered by police, including explosives and assault rifles, marks the largest weapons cache ever seized as part of terrorism investigation.

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Trump ends deportation protections for people from Honduras and Nicaragua

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DHS said it would terminate temporary protected status for an estimated 72,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans

The Trump administration has ended temporary protections for people from Honduras and Nicaragua in the latest phase of its effort to expel undocumented people from the US.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it would end temporary protected status (TPS) for an estimated 72,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans in moves that will come into effect in about 60 days.

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Trump says Bolsonaro ‘not guilty of anything’ amid Brazil coup trial

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President Lula rejects foreign ‘interference’ as Trump claims far-right former leader victim of ‘witch-hunt’

Donald Trump has issued his strongest defence to date of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, claiming the far-right leader is the victim of a “witch-hunt” in his home country.

Posting on his social media platform Truth Social on Monday, the US president claimed that Bolsonaro – often dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics” – is “not guilty of anything”, in an apparent reference to the legal cases Bolsonaro is facing in Brazil.

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Man kidnapped by Argentina’s military regime as baby is reunited with relatives

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Forty-nine-year-old is 140th child found by Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who search for people ‘disappeared’ under 1976-83 dictatorship

A man taken from his mother as a newborn by Argentina’s military has been reunited with his relatives after almost 50 years.

The man, 49, whose identity was not disclosed for privacy reasons, was identified after he took a DNA test.

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Bolsonaro wanted to exterminate us, claims Indigenous leader Raoni Metuktire

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Kayapó chief tells in memoir of seeing former president in his dreams and of warning Lula not to repeat past mistakes

Brazil’s most revered Indigenous leader, Raoni Metuktire, has said he believes that one of the former president Jair Bolsonaro’s goals while in office was to “exterminate” the country’s Indigenous peoples.

According to the Kayapó chief, the far-right populist “encouraged invasions, mining and deforestation” in order to hand Indigenous lands over to the kubẽ (non-Indigenous people).

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Boxer Julio César Chávez Jr was a cartel henchman, Mexican prosecutors claim

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Prosecutors say Chávez treated gang rivals ‘like a punchbag’ after Ice arrested the former world champion in California

The Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez Jr was a henchman for the Sinaloa drugs cartel and used his skills to pummel rival gang members “like a punchbag” before his recent arrest in the US, prosecutors in Mexico have alleged.

Chávez, 39, son of legendary world boxing champion Julio César Chávez Sr and himself a former middleweight titleholder, was arrested in California on Tuesday by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents, who cited cartel affiliations, multiple criminal convictions and an active arrest warrant in Mexico for weapons trafficking and organized crime.

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Alleged organiser of shooting of Colombian senator caught by police

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Elder José Arteaga Hernández in custody after the non-fatal attack on Miguel Uribe Turbay in a Bogotá park in June

The alleged mastermind behind the shooting of a conservative Colombian senator and presidential candidate has been taken into custody, almost a month after the attack, law enforcement authorities have said.

Elder José Arteaga Hernández, alias “Chipi” or “Costeño”, was arrested in the north-western part of the capital, Bogotá, on Saturday, national police director Maj Gen Carlos Fernando Triana told reporters. Authorities had previously accused him and other suspects of being near the Bogotá park where Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot on 7 June.

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Allez, allez, allez! Quebec gives go-ahead to cheer ‘go!’ in English at provincial sports games

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Province’s language police had a petite contretemps when it challenged Montreal transit agencies use of word on buses

Quebec’s mercurial and controversial language police have decided that using the word “go” is a legitimate way to cheer on sports teams in the province, paving the way for excited fans – and Montreal’s transit agency - to celebrate without fear of recrimination.

In new guidelines, the Office Québécois de la Langue Française (OQLF, the Quebec Board of the French Language) said that “go” was now “partially legitimized”, according to reporting by the Canadian Press, although the language watchdog says it prefers the French equivalent: allez.

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Suriname expected to elect first female president amid discovery of oil reserves

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Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, 71, will run unopposed as one of the poorest countries in the region eyes billions of dollars

Suriname is expected to elect its first female president this Sunday, the congresswoman and physician Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, 71, who will run unopposed after the ruling party decided not to field a candidate.

Geerlings-Simons will succeed current president Chandrikapersad Santokhi, 66, who has been in office since 2020 and was eligible for re-election – but whose party failed to secure the two-thirds parliamentary majority required in the country’s indirect voting system.

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El Salvador’s president denies that Kilmar Ábrego García was abused in notorious prison

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Nayib Bukele disputed claims of Ábrego García’s lawyers that he was tortured and deprived of sleep while in custody

The president of El Salvador has denied claims that Kilmar Ábrego García was subjected to beatings and deprivation while he was held in the country before being returned to the US to face human-smuggling charges.

Nayib Bukele said in a social media post that Ábrego García, the Salvadorian national who was wrongly extradited from the US to El Salvador in March before being returned in June, “wasn’t tortured, nor did he lose weight”.

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Countries must protect human right to a stable climate, court rules

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Costa Rica-based inter-American court of human rights says states have obligation to respond to climate change

There is a human right to a stable climate and states have a duty to protect it, a top court has ruled.

Announcing the publication of a crucial advisory opinion on climate change on Thursday, Nancy Hernández López, president of the inter-American court of human rights (IACHR), said climate change carries “extraordinary risks” that are felt particularly keenly by people who are already vulnerable.

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