Police in Canada have made their first arrest in the case of a missing Chinese student, who was abducted in an armed kidnapping at the weekend.
Wanzhen Lu, 22, has not been seen since Saturday when three masked attackers attacked him with a stun gun in the city of Markham, Ontario, north of Toronto. A fourth person waited in a nearby vehicle.
Continue reading...A recent protest by street vendors was met with a violent crackdown – but was their eviction necessary to ‘order’ the city’s public space?
An unsettling quiet has fallen over a stretch of the usually noisy Feria de San Telmo Sunday market. Artisans should be lining these cobbled streets selling intricate macrame jewellery and Argentinian leather purses to crowds of tourists from all over the world. Deafening percussion bands, accompanied by dancers, and street vendors selling empanadas and arepas should be making their way up the road.
The market is one of the largest handicrafts and antiques fairs in Buenos Aires, popular with tourists and locals alike, and runs the length of Defensa, the main thoroughfare in the barrio of San Telmo.
Continue reading...Government invades modern-day gold-rush town in Amazon in its biggest ever raid on illegal gold mining
Located along a jungle highway in the Amazon around 60 miles from the nearest city, La Pampa was a place you entered at your own risk. At night it was a riot of neon lights and pulsating cumbía music from “prostibar” brothels, frequented by roaming groups of men flush with cash. Neither authorities nor outsiders – and particularly not journalists – were welcome.
This modern-day gold-rush town, home to about 25,000 people, was both a hub for organised crime and people trafficking and a gateway into a treeless, lunar landscape pocked with toxic pools created by illegal gold mining, stretching far into one of the Amazon’s most treasured reserves.
Continue reading...Embattled president hints that Juan Guaidó and allies are in his sights
Venezuela’s opposition is bracing for a severe political crackdown after Nicolás Maduro lashed out at the “diabolical pro-imperialist puppets” he claimed were trying to remove him from the presidency and vowed to imprison them all.
The struggle between Maduro and his challenger, Juan Guaidó, escalated dramatically last week with the detention of Guaidó’s right-hand man, Roberto Marrero.
Continue reading...Mining giant Vale raised level of risk at a dam in Barão de Cocais to highest alert meaning rupture is imminent
The Brazilian mining giant Vale said on Saturday that communities in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais had been ordered to evacuate after independent auditors found that one of its dams could collapse at any moment.
On Friday, the company raised the level of risk at a mining waste dam in the city of Barão de Cocais to three, the highest grade. According to Brazil’s mining and energy secretary, level three means that “a rupture is imminent or already happening”.
Continue reading...Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, who crashed truck into bus carrying junior hockey team, pleaded guilty to 29 counts of dangerous driving
The driver who caused the deaths of 16 people on a rural Canadian road in Saskatchewan after crashing his truck into a bus transporting a junior hockey team has been sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison, Canadian media reported.
Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, 30, pleaded guilty in January to 29 counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death or bodily harm, saying he did not want to make things worse by proceeding with a trial.
Continue reading...Maduro’s interior minister alleged a cache of ‘weapons of war’ had been apprehended with Roberto Marrero as face-off escalates
The face-off between Nicolás Maduro and his US-backed challenger Juan Guaidó has escalated dramatically after Venezuelan intelligence agents seized Guaidó’s chief of staff and accused him of leading a “terrorist cell” plotting a wave of political assassinations.
Related: Juan Guaidó's chief of staff arrested by Venezuelan agents
Continue reading...Leftist politicians refuse to attend lunch in honor of Brazil’s far-right leader after instruction for women to wear ‘short dress’
At the end of his first state visit to Washington DC this week, Jair Bolsonaro hailed his meeting with Donald Trump as a “historic moment”, claiming he was returning home with a sensation of “mission accomplished”. Today, Brazil’s far-right leader begins his second official trip – to Chile, where he is poised to receive a much less warm welcome.
Related: Fox News, nepotism and bigotry: Bolsonaro brings his Trump act to DC
Continue reading...Economically destroyed, socially unstable and now hungry, Venezuela is undergoing turbulent times. Photographer Ignacio Marín has been covering the crisis since May 2018. He talks about his images and his experience
For a time the “Saudi Arabia” of South America, today Venezuela more closely resembles Syria. Economically destroyed and socially unstable, the country is now fighting an ever more alarming spectre: hunger. In the slum of Petare in the metropolitan area of the capital, Caracas, refrigerators remain empty, supermarket queues grow longer and the necessity of procuring something to eat drives young people to violence.
Continue reading...Temer arrested as part of Operation Car Wash, which led to the convictions of numerous members of Brazil’s political elite
Brazil’s former president Michel Temer – who played a key role in the 2016 impeachment of his rival Dilma Rousseff – has been arrested by federal policewhile driving in São Paulo.
Judge Marcelo Breitas issued arrest warrants on Thursday for Temer and 11 others in “Operation Radioactivity” – part of Operation Car Wash, the country’s largest ever corruption investigation, which has led to the convictions of numerous members of Brazil’s political elite.
Continue reading...Jane Philpott, who resigned in protest earlier this month, hints at more pain for embattled PM and says Canadians deserve the truth
A Canadian cabinet minister who had quit in protest over the government’s handling of a corruption scandal said she and others had more to say about the matter, indicating more pain to come for the embattled prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
Trudeau has been on the defensive since February over allegations top officials working for him leaned on the former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to ensure the construction firm SNC-Lavalin avoided a corruption trial.
Continue reading...Even in a country long-used to violence, the cowardly 2017 murder of the Mexican journalist Javier Valdez prompted outrage: reporters held protests, news outlets stopped publishing for a day and the then president, Enrique Peña Nieto, promised that the crime would not go unpunished.
But barely 10 days after Valdez was pulled from his car and shot dead, his widow Griselda Triana was targeted for surveillance with spyware which had been purchased by the Mexican government.
Continue reading...Benjamín Sánchez lost sight of his mother while playing hide-and-seek on visit to El Salado, a semi-desert region
A five-year-old boy who was lost for 22 hours in an Argentinian mountain wilderness inhabited by dangerous snakes, cougars and scorpions has been reunited with his family.
Benjamín Sánchez lost sight of his mother while playing hide-and-seek on a visit to El Salado, a semi-desert region of the province of San Juan in western Argentina.
“My mother was chasing me and I started to run,” he told the Clarín newspaper after his rescue. “I could hear her at first but then I got lost. I leaned on a rock. I started to call her but she couldn’t hear me.”
Continue reading...First visit to the US had all the drama of a soap opera – intrigue, betrayal, family, controversy – and left Brazilians divided
Jair Bolsonaro’s first official visit to the US had all the drama of a Brazilian soap opera – intrigue, betrayal, family, controversy.
But viewers back home in Brazil were left divided: a disastrous interview with Fox News prompted starkly contrasting verdicts, captured in the two trending hashtags: #BolsonaroShamesBrazil (#BolsonaroEnvergonhaOBrasil) and #Bolsonaro Pride of Brazil” (#BolsonaroOrgulhoDoBrasil).
Continue reading...Global policy on drug control is unrealistic, and has taken a harsh toll on millions of the world’s poorest people
Drug control efforts across the world are a threat to human dignity and the right to life.
In 2017, more than 70,000 people died from a drug overdose in the US. Among the reasons for these deaths are the lack of access to health and harm-reduction services, as well as the fear of legal repression, which often dissuades people who use drugs from asking for help.
Continue reading...Latest incident raises concerns about Brazil’s nuclear security in a state struggling with violent crime
A convoy of trucks carrying nuclear fuel came under armed attack on a highway in Rio de Janeiro state on Tuesday as it drove past a community controlled by a drug gang. Gang members armed with rifles opened fire on the convoy, Rio’s O Globo newspaper said.
Armed police escorting the convoy exchanged fire with armed gang members as the trucks carrying uranium continued to a nearby nuclear plant. The attack is the latest of several violent incidents in the area where Brazil has two nuclear reactors and has raised concerns about its nuclear security in a state struggling with high levels of violent crime.
Continue reading...Brazil president endorses hardline US immigration policy, saying ‘Vast majority of … immigrants do not have good intentions’
Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has endorsed Donald Trump’s immigration agenda on the eve of their first meeting at the White House, saying he supports a wall on the US-Mexico border and that most immigrants to the United States wish to do harm.
Bolsonaro, a far-right congressman who rode to the presidency with a brash, anti-establishment campaign modeled on Trump’s 2016 run, has pledged a new era of pro-American policy in the southern hemisphere’s second-largest country.
Continue reading...Michael Wernick to resign as clerk of the privy council as Trudeau battles allegations he and his aides pressured ex-attorney general
Canada’s top civil servant – a central figure in the political crisis that continues to damage the prime minister, Justin Trudeau – has resigned from his post, following allegations of political bias from parliamentarians.
Related: Trudeau scandal: PM's party blocks ex-attorney general from testifying again
Continue reading...Ballet and film complement each other perfectly in a biopic of the superstar dancer that captures life under Castro’s rule
Dance on film can have many functions. It might act as a showstopping decoration to the drama (most movie musicals), a shorthand for its protagonist’s obsession or madness (Black Swan, The Red Shoes) or a blunt tool for illustrating cultural difference (Step Up, Save the Last Dance and every other ballet-girl-meets-hip-hop-boy movie). But, aside from Jerome Robbins’ masterpiece West Side Story, it doesn’t often work as a narrative device – an alternative script. That’s how it functions in Yuli, a new biopic of Cuban ballet star Carlos Acosta, by Spanish director Icíar Bollaín and writer Paul Laverty (I, Daniel Blake).
In Yuli (the title is Acosta’s father’s nickname for him), the concept sounds overcomplicated: a biopic played in flashbacks, mixed with real footage of the dancer on stage, framed by the conceit that “current” Carlos is creating an autobiographical dance piece in which he also performs as his own father. But it works. It really works.
The author on the builders who inspired his new book, Trump’s appeal and the energising power of young people
Dave Eggers is a writer, publisher and humanitarian campaigner. He has written 14 books, including A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, What Is the What, The Circle and Heroes of the Frontier. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the writer Vendela Vida, and their two children. His new novel, The Parade, tells the story of the role played by two visitors in a nation’s fragile peace.
Where did the idea for The Parade come from?
Back in 2006, I was in [what is now] South Sudan with Valentino Achak Deng [the refugee whose life story Eggers told in What Is the What] and we were near Aweil, driving on some pretty rough dirt roads, when we came upon a giant six-lane highway being built, connecting Aweil to Khartoum. We were surprised to see it was being built by a Swedish company. That stuck in my mind a bit, the oddity of this Scandinavian crew building a road in a post-conflict zone – a road that might some day be used to facilitate military incursions. After that, whenever I saw foreign contractors in post-conflict zones, I was fascinated by their role and what kind of awareness or sense of responsibility they might have toward the implications of their projects.