Brazilian president meets Cristina Fernández de Kirchner at her flat in Buenos Aires after regional summit
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has eschewed a one-on-one meeting with the Argentinian president, Javier Milei, during a trip to Buenos Aires, instead opting to visit Milei’s political rival, former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is under house arrest.
Lula was in the Argentinian capital on Thursday to attend the Mercosur summit.
Continue reading...New court documents allege physical and psychological torture at Cecot in one of first looks at conditions in prison
Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador and detained in one of that country’s most notorious prisons, was physically and psychologically tortured during the three months he spent in Salvadorian custody, according to new court documents filed Wednesday.
While being held at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in El Salvador, Ábrego García and 20 other men “were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM”, according to the court papers filed by his lawyers in the federal district court in Maryland.
Continue reading...President exceeded his authority and his proclamation of an ‘invasion’ at southern border is unlawful, court rules
A federal court has ruled that Donald Trump’s proclamation of an “invasion” at the US-Mexico border is unlawful, saying that the president had exceeded his authority in suspending the right to apply for asylum at the southern border.
As part of his crackdown on immigration, Trump abruptly closed the southern border to tens of thousands of people who had been waiting to cross into the US legally and apply for asylum, signing a proclamation on the day of his inauguration that directed officials to take action to “repel, repatriate, or remove any alien engaged in the invasion across the southern border of the United States”.
Continue reading...Program mirrors earlier successful mission to fight new world screwworm fly, whose larvae can infest living tissue
The US government is preparing to breed billions of flies and dump them out of airplanes over Mexico and southern Texas to fight a flesh-eating maggot.
That sounds like the plot of a horror movie, but it is part of the government’s plans for protecting the US from a bug that could devastate its beef industry, decimate wildlife and even kill household pets. This weird science has worked well before.
Continue reading...Homeland security secretary attempting to end legal status for approximately 521,000 Haitian immigrants
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s bid to end temporary deportation protections and work permits for approximately 521,000 Haitian immigrants before the program’s scheduled expiration date.
Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded Joe Biden’s extension of temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians through 3 February. It called for the program to end on 3 August, and last week pushed back that date to 2 September.
Continue reading...Trump officials hail U-turn as Mark Carney says decision to rescind digital services tax means revival of trade talks
The United States has said that Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney “caved” to demands from the White House after his government abruptly scrapped their digital services tax on US technology companies, which was set to go into effect on Monday.
“It’s very simple. Prime minister Carney and Canada caved to president [Donald] Trump and the United States of America,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a daily briefing.
Continue reading...Grisly finding comes at end of worst month in war between Sinaloa factions as government tries to stop killings
Mexican authorities have found 20 bodies in the state of Sinaloa, a region gripped by a war between factions of the Sinaloa drug cartel that is reaching new heights of violence.
The state prosecutor’s office said on Monday that four of the victims had been decapitated and their bodies had been found hanging from a bridge on a main road near Culiacán, the state capital.
Continue reading...Former labor minister, 61, won primary for leftwing parties with over 60% of vote ahead of November election
The Chilean communist Jeannette Jara, the country’s former labor minister, has won the primary election for leftwing parties with surprising ease, beating out a more moderate rival to clinch over 60% of the vote.
The decisive upset makes Jara, 51, the candidate representing Chile’s beleaguered incumbent government in November elections, set to face off against center-right and far-right contenders who have surged in the polls.
Continue reading...Prosecutor says the bodies in Ciudad Juarez had not been cremated, and that relatives of the dead have been given ‘other material’
Police have found 381 corpses piled up in a private crematorium in northern Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez, the local prosecutor’s office has said , attributing the grisly find to negligence.
“Preliminarily, we have 381 bodies that were deposited irregularly in the crematorium, which were not cremated,” Eloy Garcia, spokesperson for the Chihuahua state prosecutor’s office, told AFP.
Continue reading...No trace has ever been found of Michael Woodward, but almost two years since Chile assumed responsibility for finding victims, cautious progress is being made
In the weak winter sunshine forensic investigators in white suits cast long shadows as they stepped between gravestones at Playa Ancha cemetery in the Chilean coastal city of Valparaíso.
But as the rhythmic click of spades and the throb of an excavator faded, a third search for the remains of Michael Woodward reached a frustrating conclusion.
Continue reading...Hacker working for cartel run by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was also able to access phone records of an FBI legal attaché at the US embassy in Mexico City
A hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel was able to obtain an FBI official’s phone records and use Mexico City’s surveillance cameras to help track and kill the agency’s informants in 2018, according to a new US justice department report.
The incident was disclosed in a justice department inspector general’s audit of the FBI’s efforts to mitigate the effects of “ubiquitous technical surveillance”, a term used to describe the global proliferation of cameras and the thriving trade in vast stores of communications, travel, and location data.
Continue reading...Hugo Carvajal faces narco-terrorism and weapon charges amid accusations he helped lead a drug-trafficking group
A former top Venezuelan military intelligence chief has pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal court to narco-terrorism conspiracy, drug-trafficking and weapons charges, piling further US pressure on the government of Nicolás Maduro.
Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, AKA “El Pollo” or “The Chicken”, was the director of Venezuela’s military intelligence under presidents Hugo Chávez and Maduro. On Wednesday, days before his trial was set to begin, he pleaded guilty to four federal counts, related to accusations that he helped lead a drug-trafficking group within the Venezuelan government.
Continue reading...Trump administration revokes temporary protected status for citizens of country racked by deadly violence
More than half a million Haitians are facing the prospect of deportation from the US after the Trump administration announced that the Caribbean country’s citizens would no longer be afforded shelter under a government program created to protect the victims of major natural disasters or conflicts.
Haiti has been engulfed by a wave of deadly violence since the 2021 murder of its president, Jovenel Moïse. Heavily armed gangs have brought chaos to its capital, Port-au-Prince, since launching an insurrection that toppled the prime minister last year. On Tuesday, the US embassy in Haiti urged US citizens to abandon the violence-stricken Caribbean country. “Depart Haiti as soon as possible,” it wrote on X.
Continue reading...Pact will help international students finish their studies amid Harvard’s legal battle with Trump administration
Harvard University and the University of Toronto and have announced a plan that would see some Harvard students complete their studies in Canada if visa restrictions prevent them from entering the United States.
The pact between the two schools reflects the tumultuous and “exceptional” politics of the postsecondary world during the second term of Donald Trump.
Continue reading...Johnny Noviello was detained by US immigration in Florida over a 2023 conviction and died while awaiting deportation
Authorities in Canada are seeking information about the death of a 49-year-old Canadian man who died while in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody in Florida this week.
In a statement, Ice, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said Johnny Noviello, 49, died on 23 June after being found unresponsive at a federal detention center in Miami, where he was being detained “pending removal proceedings” from the US.
Continue reading...Key takeaways from two weeks of negotiations aimed at setting out stall for November’s Cop30 in Brazil
Two weeks of negotiations on the climate crisis have just concluded in Bonn in preparation for the Cop30 summit taking place in Brazil this November. What did we learn?
Continue reading...The Argentinian composer also wrote the scores for Cool Hand Luke and Dirty Harry, and wrote one of the biggest-selling works in the history of classical music
Lalo Schifrin, the composer who wrote the endlessly catchy theme for Mission: Impossible and more than 100 other arrangements for film and television, has died aged 93.
Schifrin’s sons, William and Ryan, confirmed the composer died on Thursday of complications from pneumonia.
Continue reading...Hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were shipped to the Caribbean island when it was a colony of the UK
Jamaica will ask King Charles to request legal advice on the issue of slavery reparations from the judicial committee of the privy council, the final court of appeal for UK overseas territories and some Commonwealth nations.
Under the Judicial Committee Act of 1833, the king, who remains Jamaica’s head of state after the country gained independence from Britain in 1962, has the authority to refer matters to the council for consideration.
Continue reading...White House must return Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, who was deported less than 30 minutes after his removal was barred
An appeals court has ordered the Trump administration to return a man wrongfully deported to El Salvador to the US and to explain how it is complying in a ruling apparently designed to break a pattern of apparent government defiance of judicial orders.
The US court of appeals for the second circuit in New York also required the government to provide a declaration of the current whereabouts and custodial status of Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, who was deported on 7 May less than half an hour after the court had expressly barred his removal.
Continue reading...Amid Trump’s disrespect of old allies, EU and Canada vow more support for Ukraine and joint work on climate crisis
Canada has signed a wide-ranging defence pact with the EU, as Donald Trump and global instability prompt traditional US allies to deepen their alliances.
Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, on Monday joined European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and head of the European Council, António Costa, in Brussels, where they signed a security and defence partnership, pledged more support for Ukraine, as well as joint work on issues from the climate crisis to artificial intelligence.
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