US president also insists delayed tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico will go into effect on 4 March
Donald Trump has threatened China with an additional 10% tariff on its exports to the US, setting the stage for another significant escalation in his trade war with Beijing.
The US president also claimed that he plans to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting next Tuesday, having delayed their imposition last month following talks with his counterparts.
Continue reading...Electricity restored to almost all affected regions as investigation under way into how outage occurred
Power has been restored to most of Chile’s 19 million people after the country’s most disruptive blackout in 15 years, the government said, as authorities lifted a strict curfew imposed when the outage left 98% of the population without electricity.
Chilean interior minister Carolina Tohá said on Wednesday that electricity had largely returned to Chile’s 14 afflicted regions, although 220,000 residents remained without power.
Continue reading...Ruling party was deeply unpopular but threat of US tariffs combined with prospect of new leader spurs rise in polls
Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls.
An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed the left-leaning Liberals have 38% public support and the official opposition right-of-center Conservatives have 36%. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, to Donald Trump.
Continue reading...The Ontario premier says he’s ready to stand up to Trump over tariffs – will that yield a third straight election win?
The day Donald Trump won the United States presidential election was a happy one for Doug Ford.
The conservative politician who oversees Canada’s most populous province – and its largest economy – made the admission to caucus and supporters, in off-the-cuff remarks accidentally caught by a nearby microphone.
Continue reading...Exclusive: The bloody foundering of President Gustavo Petro’s ‘Total Peace’ strategy is a ‘national failure’, says Juan Manuel Santos, who ended war with Farc guerrillas in 2016
Colombia risks sliding back into its violent past as armed groups exploit the stumbling peace strategy of President Gustavo Petro, the architect of its landmark 2016 peace deal has told the Guardian.
In a rare interview, former president Juan Manuel Santos warned that gains from the peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) are quickly being undone as armed factions exploit negotiation efforts to recruit new combatants and seize control of new land.
Continue reading...State of emergency and overnight curfew declared after blackout strands commuters and knocks out traffic lights
Authorities in Chile have declared a state of emergency and overnight curfew after a sweeping blackout stranded commuters, knocked out traffic lights, paralyzed countless businesses and left millions of people in the South American country without electricity.
The National Electrical Coordinator, Chile’s grid operator, said a disruption had occurred in a high-voltage transmission line that carries power from the Atacama Desert of northern Chile to the capital of Santiago in the country’s central valley.
Continue reading...Distinctive, slender deep-sea creature, also known as ‘doomsday’ fish, seen wriggling on Baja California beach
A shimmery, slinky oarfish – a deep-sea creature that is rarely seen near the surface – was spotted in Baja California Sur, along Mexico’s Pacific Coast, this month. A group of people visiting the area noticed the shiny, wriggling fish along the beach, and tried to guide it back into the water.
The slender creatures live at depths between 660 and 3,280ft underwater, and on the rare occasions that they have been seen by humans, they have usually been dead – washed ashore after storms. In Baja California Sur, Robert Hayes of Idaho, who was visiting the beach with his wife, saw a live fish and quickly began filming it.
Continue reading...Parliamentary petition launched due to billionaire’s link to Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to conquer Canada
More than 200,000 people from Canada have signed a parliamentary petition calling for their country to strip Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship because of the tech billionaire’s alliance with Donald Trump, who has spent his second US presidency repeatedly threatening to conquer its independent neighbor to the north and turn it into its 51st state.
The British Columbia author Qualia Reed launched the petition in Canada’s House of Commons, where it was sponsored by the New Democrat parliamentary member and avowed Musk critic Charlie Angus, as the Canadian Press first reported over the weekend.
Continue reading...John Feeley launches stinging critique of US president’s bully-boy approach to Latin America
The former US ambassador to Panama has launched a stinging critique of Donald Trump’s approach towards Latin America, comparing his conduct to that of the ruthless and egotistical fictional mob boss Tony Soprano.
In the first month of his presidency, the US president has shocked some observers with his aggressive focus on a region many expected him to largely ignore. Early steps have included threatening to “take back” the Panama Canal, accusing Mexico’s government of being in cahoots with narco-traffickers, sending an envoy to meet the Venezuelan dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and clashing with Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, over deportation flights.
Continue reading...Cúcuta imposes curfew as National Liberation Army (ELN) clashes with army in province bordering Venezuela
Residents of a violence-torn province in northern Colombia are bracing for further bloodshed as a conflict between rival armed groups spread to a regional capital in scenes residents said they had not witnessed since the cartel unrest of the 1990s.
The mayor of Cúcuta imposed a 48-hour curfew on the population of 1 million inhabitants in the hope of regaining control of the city after combatants of Colombia’s largest armed group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), attacked police stations with assault rifles and grenades and destroyed toll booths with car bombs.
Continue reading...FBI says Aurora Phelps met men online for dating then drugged them and stole cars and money
A woman used online dating apps to lure at least four older men to meet her in person, drugged them with sedatives and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in a “sinister” romance scheme, FBI officials in Las Vegas said on Friday.
Three of the men died, authorities said, and she has been charged in one of their deaths.
Continue reading...Democrat Jasmine Crockett calls it ‘really wild’ that it is foreign leaders who are speaking truth to power
The congresswoman Jasmine Crockett has revealed she is “rooting” for Canada and Mexico over Donald Trump in their attempts to stand up to him, saying it is “really wild” to find herself in that position given he is the president of the US.
“They are really the ones that are speaking truth to power right now,” the Democratic representative from Texas said on Friday on the popular Breakfast Club podcast, alluding to the political feuds Trump has engaged in with the US’s two North American neighbors during the first month of his second presidency. “They can see what it is and they were like, ‘We are not messing with this crazy regime.’”
Continue reading...Charges of criminal negligence dropped against three key defendants over death of British singer in October
A court in Argentina has dropped charges of criminal negligence against three of the five people indicted in connection with the death of Liam Payne, the former One Direction singer who fell from a third-floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires last October.
In a decision issued Wednesday, the Argentine federal appeals court ordered the other two defendants in the case to remain in custody. They are facing prosecution on charges they supplied the famed British boy band star with narcotics.
Continue reading...Claudia Sheinbaum’s warning follows Washington designating Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations
Mexico will never tolerate an “invasion” of its national sovereignty by the United States, Claudia Sheinbaum has warned after Washington designated Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations.
“This cannot be an opportunity for the US to invade our sovereignty,” the Mexican president said. “With Mexico, it is collaboration and coordination, never subordination or interventionism, and even less invasion.”
Continue reading...Zheng Lijuan fled Panama City hotel as 170 of deported migrants were transported to dense, lawless region
Police are searching for a Chinese woman who escaped from a downtown Panama City hotel where she was being held following her deportation from the US under Donald Trump’s intensified campaign against immigrants.
Zheng Lijuan was one of 299 migrants – from China, Afghanistan, Iran and other countries with which the US lacks extradition agreements – who have been flown in shackles to Panama since last Wednesday. Panamanian authorities say they believe that Zheng was aided by locals who had been “prowling” outside the Decapolis hotel in the capital city where the deportees had been held.
Continue reading...‘In Brazil coup-mongers go to jail. In the US they get back into the White House,’ says one leading politician
Brazilian democrats have celebrated the strength of their country’s judiciary and institutions after the former president Jair Bolsonaro was left facing political oblivion and jail time for allegedly plotting a coup, in stark contrast to the US’s failure to bring Donald Trump to justice for his anti-democratic acts.
“In Brazil coup-mongers go to jail. In the US they get back into the White House,” said Marcelo Freixo, a leading leftwing politician on Wednesday after the attorney general formally accused Bolsonaro of engineering a sprawling conspiracy to cling to power following his defeat in the 2022 election.
Continue reading...Six cartels added to list as part of Trump’s plan to ‘wage war’ on drug trafficking groups to address fentanyl crisis in US
The US has added six Mexican cartels to its list of foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs), as it calls for the “total elimination” of the criminal groups trafficking drugs to the US.
Mexico’s two biggest organised crime groups, the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels, were among those added, as were Tren de Aragua and Mara Salvatrucha, groups with ties to Venezuela and El Salvador.
Continue reading...The ex-president faces charges of a murderous conspiracy while his US counterpart has surged back to power
At the height of Jair Bolsonaro’s haywire presidency, Brazilian activists projected their deepest desire on to the Tower of London, where Guy Fawkes once languished after plotting to blow up parliament and assassinate the king.
“Jail Bolsonaro,” their wordplay read.
Continue reading...Foreign correspondents’ association urges authorities to step up search for Charlotte Alice Peet, 32
A British journalist has been missing in Brazil for 11 days, a foreign correspondents’ association in the country said on Tuesday, urging authorities to step up their search efforts.
Charlotte Alice Peet, 32, last communicated with a friend on 8 February, according to a statement from the Rio de Janeiro-based Association of Foreign Press Correspondents (ACIE).
Continue reading...Former president has denied breaking the law, while attorney general alleges plot included a plan to poison Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has been charged with allegedly masterminding and leading a far-right conspiracy to cling to power through a military coup.
The South American country’s attorney general, Paulo Gonet, levelled the charges against the radical rightwing populist and several key allies on Tuesday night. He accused Bolsonaro and six key associates of leading a criminal organization with an “authoritarian power project”. The alleged plot, he wrote, included a plan to poison Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and shoot dead Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a foe of the former president.
Continue reading...