Category Archives: Americas

Indigenous lawyer to head Mexico’s supreme court after direct election

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Hugo Aguilar, who has links to governing party, topped unprecedented and controversial popular vote

An Indigenous lawyer from the state of Oaxaca is set to become the president of Mexico’s supreme court following the country’s unprecedented elections to appoint its entire judicial system by popular vote.

Activists hailed the election of Hugo Aguilar, a member of the Mixtec Indigenous group, as a symbolic victory – while noting that Aguilar, who topped the poll of candidates for the supreme court, had long since shifted from his own roots as an activist to a figure much more closely aligned with the state, and involved in controversial mega-projects such as the Maya Train.

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Caribbean beaches blighted by record masses of stinking seaweed

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Scientists puzzled by huge amounts of prickly sargassum suffocating shorelines from Puerto Rico to Guyana

A record amount of sargassum has piled up across the Caribbean and nearby areas in May, and more is expected this month, according to a new study.

The brown prickly algae is suffocating shorelines from Puerto Rico to Guyana and beyond, disrupting tourism, killing wildlife and even releasing toxic gases that forced one school in the French Caribbean island of Martinique to temporarily close.

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Outrage over Peru’s decision to nearly halve protected area near Nazca Lines

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Shock decision has raised fears ancient site with almost 2,000-year-old geoglyphs will be exploited by illegal miners

Archeologists and environmentalists have expressed their outrage at a shock decision by Peru’s culture ministry to cut by nearly half the protected archaeological park around the iconic Nazca Lines, excluding an area nearly the size of urban Lima, the country’s capital city.

The Unesco world heritage attracts thousands of tourists to see the massive hummingbird, monkey and whale figures in the desert in Peru’s second-biggest tourist attraction after Machu Picchu. Last year, archaeologists using AI discovered hundreds of new geoglyphs dating back more than 2,000 years, predating the famous lines in the sand.

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Mexican president hails ‘complete success’ after just 13% vote in judicial elections

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Claudia Sheinbaum defends decision to put 2,600 judges’ posts to vote despite record low turnout

Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum has defended the country’s unprecedented judicial elections after just 13% of Mexicans turned out to vote, a record low in a federal election.

Roughly 2,600 posts, from local magistrates to supreme court justices, were up for grabs on Sunday, as an entire judicial system was put to the vote for the first time in the world.

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Thousands evacuated in three Canadian provinces as wildfires continue

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Most evacuated residents are from Manitoba, which declared a state of emergency last week

More than 25,000 residents in three provinces have been evacuated as dozens of wildfires remain active and diminish air quality in parts of Canada and the US, according to officials.

Most of the evacuated residents were from Manitoba, which declared a state of emergency last week. About 17,000 people there were evacuated by Saturday, along with 1,300 in Alberta. About 8,000 people in Saskatchewan had been relocated as leaders there said the number could climb.

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Brazil: outcry after funk singer arrested for allegedly inciting crime in lyrics

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Artists and legal experts are outraged over MC Poze do Rodo’s detention over supposed non-violent offences

The arrest of a well-known Brazilian funk singer on charges of allegedly inciting crime in his lyrics and an alleged connection to a major criminal gang has sparked outrage among artists, intellectuals and legal experts.

MC Poze do Rodo, 26, who has 5.8 million monthly listeners on Spotify, was arrested early on Thursday at his home in a luxury condominium in Rio de Janeiro’s west zone.

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Supreme court allows White House to revoke temporary protected status of many migrants

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Ruling reverses hold on Trump administration’s ending humanitarian parole of Venezuelan migrants and others

The US supreme court on Friday announced it would allow the Trump administration to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants living in the United States, bolstering the Republican president’s drive to step up deportations.

The court put on hold Boston-based US district judge Indira Talwani’s order halting the administration’s move to end the immigration humanitarian “parole” protections granted to 532,000 people by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, potentially exposing many of them to rapid removal from the country, while the detailed case plays out in lower courts.

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Google and Home Depot drop Pride Toronto sponsorship amid Trump’s DEI war

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Organizer points to president’s anti-diversity push as companies join Adidas and Clorox in withdrawing support

In another blow to one of the largest celebrations of LGTBQ+ people in North America, Pride Toronto has unexpectedly lost two more major corporate sponsors, just weeks before the festival in a setback the festival’s organizer says is direct result of Donald Trump’s campaign to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the US.

Google and Home Depot both announced their plans to abandon the festival in the form of one-line emails, said Kojo Modeste, the executive director of the Canadian event.

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Over a barrel: lack of sugar throws Cuba’s rum industry into crisis

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This year’s tiny harvest casts doubt on the spirit’s recent resurgence, once a bright spot in the island’s economy

It’s a crisis that would have sent a shiver down Ernest Hemingway’s drinking arm. Cuba’s communist government is struggling to process enough sugar to make the rum for his beloved mojitos and daiquiris.

As summer rains bring the Caribbean island’s 2025 harvest to an end, a recent analysis by Reuters suggests that Cuba’s state-run monopoly, Azcuba, is likely to produce just 165,000 metric tonnes of sugar this year. That compares with harvests of 8m in the late 1980s.

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Canada wildfires: thousands in Manitoba ordered to evacuate as state of emergency declared

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There are more than 130 active wildfires across the country, half of which are considered out of control

More than 17,000 people in Canada’s western Manitoba province were being evacuated on Wednesday as the region experienced its worst start to the wildfire season in years.

“The Manitoba government has declared a province-wide state of emergency due to the wildfire situation,” Manitoba’s premier, Wab Kinew, told a news conference. “This is the largest evacuation Manitoba will have seen in most people’s living memory.”

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Eight Mexican soldiers killed by improvised explosive device

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The use of IEDs in a war between criminal groups in the Michoacán-Jalisco border region has increased drastically

Eight Mexican soldiers have died after triggering an improvised explosive device (IED) in the state of Michoacán, underlining the rising use of mines by organised crime factions.

The soldiers were on patrol in an armoured vehicle in the municipality of Los Reyes, near the border with the state of Jalisco, when the mine detonated on Wednesday. Six soldiers were killed instantly, while two more later died from their wounds, according to El Universal.

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RFK Jr offers to save Canadian ostriches with suspected bird flu and move them to US

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Trump officials offer to move 300 birds to Mehmet Oz’s Florida ranch after Canada’s kill order over avian flu fears

Senior officials in the Trump administration have intervened in attempt to save more than 300 ostriches on a farm in British Columbia which the Canadian government had ordered to be killed over fears the flock is infected with avian flu.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, and Mehmet Oz, a physician and former TV host appointed by Trump as the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, have offered to move the birds to Oz’s ranch in Florida – despite the kill order imposed by Canadian health authorities.

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World faces new danger of ‘economic denial’ in climate fight, Cop30 head says

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Exclusive: André Corrêa do Lago says ‘answers have to come from the economy’ as climate policies trigger populist-fuelled backlash

The world is facing a new form of climate denial – not the dismissal of climate science, but a concerted attack on the idea that the economy can be reorganised to fight the crisis, the president of global climate talks has warned.

André Corrêa do Lago, the veteran Brazilian diplomat who will direct this year’s UN summit, Cop30, believes his biggest job will be to counter the attempt from some vested interests to prevent climate policies aimed at shifting the global economy to a low-carbon footing.

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King Charles hails ‘strong and free’ Canada in speech to open parliament

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Monarch makes no direct mention of Trump amid US president’s threats to make Canada ‘51st state’

King Charles has said Canadians can “give themselves far more than any foreign power on any continent can ever take away” as he gave a rare speech in the country’s parliament that served as a rebuke of the US president, Donald Trump, and his threats to annex the country.

Charles, who serves as Canada’s head of state, is the first monarch since 1957 to preside over the opening of a new Canadian parliament.

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‘We carry on with the sadness’: new projects honor life and legacy of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira

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Friends and colleagues of Phillips, killed in the Amazon in 2022, completed his book, which coincides with launch of investigative Guardian podcast

Three years after the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira were murdered in the Amazon, two major new projects will celebrate their lives and work – and the Indigenous communities and rainforests both men sought to protect.

Friends of Phillips have completed the book he was writing at the time of his death – How to Save the Amazon – which will be published in the UK, the US and Brazil on 27 May.

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Crown questions to fore as king visits Canada amid tensions with Trump

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Charles to open parliament in show of support at a crucial time – but that has not quieted a chorus of critical voices

The decision by King Charles to formally open Canada’s parliament on Tuesday reflects his role as a “steadfast defender” of the country amid threats to its sovereignty, says prime minister Mark Carney.

But Indigenous leaders say the rare visit is also a reminder that Canada’s founding relationship between the monarchy and the country’s first peoples cannot ever be “forgotten or displaced or broken”.

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Sebastião Salgado, photographer known for Amazon rainforest images, dies aged 81

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Brazilian photographer’s work highlighted injustice and introduced rainforest to the world

The Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, who is best known for his dramatic black-and-white photographs that highlighted injustice and introduced the Amazon rainforest the world, has died. He was 81.

His death was confirmed by the Instituto Terra, the environmental restoration non-profit he founded with his wife of six decades, Lélia Wanick Salgado. In a post on Instagram, the institute described Salgado as “much more than one of the greatest photographers of our time”.

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Brazilian tribe sues New York Times for allegedly portraying members as porn addicts

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Defamation suit claims Marubo people were depicted as tech-addled and porn-obsessed after introduction of internet

An Indigenous tribe from the Brazilian Amazon has sued the New York Times, saying the newspaper’s reporting on the tribe’s first exposure to the internet led to its members being widely portrayed as technology-addled and addicted to pornography.

The Marubo tribe of the remote Javari valley, a community of about 2,000 people, filed the defamation lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages this week in a court in Los Angeles.

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Guyana president decries Venezuela’s plan to hold elections ‘in our territory’

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Irfaan Ali tells Guardian of ‘grave’ implications of move to elect officials in Essequibo, recognised as part of Guyana

Venezuela’s decision to elect officials to administer a swathe of Guyanese territory constitutes “a full-frontal assault on Guyana’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” that “undermines regional peace”, the country’s president, Irfaan Ali, has warned.

Venezuelans will head to the polls on Sunday to chose regional governors and lawmakers, including officials who would supposedly govern Essequibo, a territory which is internationally recognised as part of Guyana. The area is largely jungle but also rich in oil, gold, diamonds, timber and other natural resources.

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World’s seven wealthiest countries agree to counter China’s trade practices

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G7 finance ministers and central bank governors pledge to address ‘economic imbalances’, without naming China

Top finance officials from the world’s seven wealthiest democracies have set aside stark differences on US tariffs and agreed to counter global “economic imbalances”, a swipe at China’s trade practices.

Ahead of the meeting of G7 finance ministers and central bank governors there had been doubt about whether there would be a final communique, given divisions over US tariffs and Washington’s reluctance to refer to Russia’s war on Ukraine as illegal.

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