Category Archives: Americas

Brazil’s former president arrested and ordered to begin prison sentence

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Fernando Collor, who led the country from 1990 to 1992, was sentenced in 2023 after being convicted for corruption

Brazil’s former president, Fernando Collor, has been arrested early and ordered to begin serving a prison sentence stemming from his 2023 conviction for corruption.

Collor was convicted of receiving 20m reais ($3.5m) to facilitate contracts between BR Distribuidora, a fuel distributor formerly controlled by the state-owned oil company Petrobras, and construction firm UTC Engenharia for the construction of fuel distribution bases. In return, he offered political support for the appointment of executives at BR Distribuidora when it was still state-owned.

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Green groups decry plan to list world’s biggest meatpacking company on NYSE

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Critics fear decision to list Brazil-based firm JBS, long linked to Amazon’s deforestation, will add to the climate crisis

Environmental groups are outraged that the world’s biggest meatpacking company, JBS, which has long been linked to Amazon’s deforestation, has received approval from US authorities to list on the New York Stock Exchange.

The decision, announced on Tuesday by the Securities Exchange Commission, follows reports that JBS subsidiary Pilgrim’s was the biggest donor to the inauguration committee of Donald Trump. Since taking power, Trump has reduced the independence of the SEC and other agencies, demanding their work be “controlled” by the president.

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Trump is jailing immigrant families again. A mother, father and teen tell of ‘anguish on a daily basis’

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Family incarceration has been revived after Biden – and Jade, Jason and Gabriela are speaking out about their distressing treatment in Texas

When Jade and her family first arrived at the detention facility in Karnes county, Texas, she wasn’t really sure what to think.

“I guess I was confused and scared,” said the 13-year-old. Her parents were doing their best to reassure her that everything would be OK, but she knew they were in danger of being deported.

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‘Morally repugnant’: Brazilian workers sue coffee supplier to Starbucks over ‘slavery-like conditions’

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Brazil has been the world’s leading coffee producer due to the forced labour of enslaved Africans and Afro-Brazilians

“John” was just days from turning 16 when he was allegedly recruited to work on a Brazilian coffee farm that supplies the global coffeehouse chain Starbucks.

Soon after his birthday, he embarked on a 16-hour bus journey to the farm in the state of Minas Gerais – only to discover that none of what he had been promised would be fulfilled.

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Colombian ex-minister accuses the country’s president of drug abuse

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Gustavo Petro hits back after Álvaro Leyva accused him of going awol during official visit to France

A prominent Colombian politician and former minister has accused the country’s president, Gustavo Petro, of being a drug addict who allegedly went awol during an official visit to France.

In a damning letter to the South American leader, the former foreign minister Álvaro Leyva painted a dire picture of his one-time boss and ally, later publishing the text on his official X account.

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Families of detainees in El Salvador and Venezuela decry Bukele’s prisoner swap offer

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Salvadorian president denounced as ‘tyrannical’ as he floats trading 252 prisoners with fellow authoritarian regime

The families of prisoners being held by the authoritarian governments of El Salvador and Venezuela have condemned President Nayib Bukele’s offer to swap 252 Venezuelan detainees sent to his jails by the Trump administration for the same number of political prisoners incarcerated by Nicolás Maduro’s regime.

Nelson Suárez, whose brother was among the Venezuelan immigrants sent from the US to a notorious maximum-security jail in El Salvador last month, said he was desperate for the release of his brother, from whom he has heard nothing in five weeks.

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Canada election sees record high early voting, figures show

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About 7.3m people have cast ballots over four days of advanced voting in sign of elevated interest in 28 April poll

A record 7.3 million people have cast their ballots over four days of advanced voting in Canada’s election, official figures showed on Tuesday, in a possible sign of elevated interest in the 28 April poll.

Elections Canada said its estimated tally for voting from Friday through Monday marked a 25% increase over the 5.8m advanced ballots cast in the 2021 vote.

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Brazilian judges accept coup plot charges against more Bolsonaro allies

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Panel unanimously accepts charges against six more key allies of ex-president over alleged plan to keep him in office

A panel of Brazil’s supreme court justices has unanimously accepted criminal charges against six more key allies of former president Jair Bolsonaro over an alleged coup plot to keep him in office after his 2022 election defeat.

Last month, the panel unanimously accepted charges against Bolsonaro and seven close allies over the alleged coup plot following his loss to current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and ordered the former rightwing leader to stand trial.

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‘He listened to everyone’: Buenos Aires remembers pope as voice for the poor

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Locals hail pontiff’s work in city’s poorest neighbourhoods – but express sadness that he never came back as pope

Before he left Argentina and moved to Italy to become pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio would visit the country’s villas miserias, not in a car flanked by security guards, but by bus – and this is what his people remember.

“He would come here, kiss our feet, the feet of the people,” said Aida Bogarin, aged 44. “It was everything to us.”

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Venezuela accuses El Salvador of human trafficking as prisoners caught in row between authoritarians

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Nayib Bukele offered to exchange 252 Venezuelan migrants deported to El Salvador for 252 prisoners in Venezuela

Venezuela’s chief prosecutor has accused El Salvador’s president of being a “tyrannical” human trafficker after Nayib Bukele offered to exchange the 252 Venezuelan migrants deported to his country’s prisons by Donald Trump for the same number of political prisoners in Venezuela.

Bukele made the offer on Sunday night in a message addressed directly to his authoritarian counterpart Nicolás Maduro. “I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and delivery of an identical number … of the thousands of political prisoners that you hold,” El Salvador’s leader posted.

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Indigenous river campaigner from Peru wins prestigious Goldman prize

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Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari led a successful legal battle to protect the Marañon River in the Peruvian Amazon

An Indigenous campaigner and women’s leader from the Peruvian Amazon has been awarded the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activists, after leading a successful legal campaign that led to the river where her people, the Kukama, live being granted legal personhood.

Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari, 57, from the village of Shapajila on the Marañon River, led the Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana (HKK) women’s association, supported by lawyers from Peru’s Legal Defence Institute, in a campaign to protect the river. After three years, judges in Loreto, Peru’s largest Amazon region, ruled in March 2024 that the Marañon had the right to be free-flowing and free of contamination, respecting an Indigenous worldview that regards a river as a living entity.

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Grassroots activists who took on corruption and corporate power share 2025 Goldman prize

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Seven winners of environmental prize include Amazonian river campaigner and Tunisian who fought against organised waste trafficking

Grassroots activists who helped jail corrupt officials and obtain personhood rights for a sacred Amazonian river are among this year’s winners of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.

The community campaigns led by the seven 2025 Goldman prize winners underscore the courage and tenacity of local activists willing to confront the toxic mix of corporate power, regulatory failures and political corruption that is fuelling biodiversity collapse, water shortages, deadly air pollution and the climate emergency.

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El Salvador’s president proposes swapping US-deported Venezuelans with Maduro’s ‘political prisoners’

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Venezuela’s chief prosecutor hits back at ‘cynical’ offer by ‘neofascist’ Salvadoran leader and demands rights for Venezuelan prisoners

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has proposed sending 252 Venezuelans deported from the US and imprisoned in his country to Venezuela, in exchange for “political prisoners” held by Venezuela.

On Sunday, Bukele asked that the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, hand over 252 “of the political prisoners you are holding” under his proposed deal.

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Senator says trip to El Salvador was to support Kilmar Ábrego García’s due process

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Chris Van Hollen says ‘if we deny constitutional rights of this one man, it threatens constitutional rights of everyone’

Senator Chris Van Hollen, who travelled to El Salvador last week to meet Kilmar Ábrego García, the man at the center of a wrongful deportation dispute, said on Sunday that his trip was to support Ábrego García’s right to due process because if that was denied then everyone’s constitutional rights were threatened in the US.

The White House has claimed Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 gang though he has not been charged with any gang related crimes and the supreme court has ordered his return to the US be facilitated.

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Dramatic rise in fake political content on social media as Canada prepares to vote

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Report finds over a quarter of Canadians exposed to ‘more sophisticated and more politically polarizing’ fake content

More than a quarter of Canadians have been exposed to fake political content on social media that is “more sophisticated and more politically polarizing” as the country prepares to vote in a federal election, researchers have found, warning that platforms must increase protections amid a “dramatic acceleration” of online disinformation in the final weeks of the campaign.

In a new report released on Friday, Canada’s Media Ecosystem Observatory found a growing number of Facebook ads impersonating legitimate news sources were instead promoting fraudulent investment schemes, often involving cryptocurrency.

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‘We’re going to stand up to Trump,’ says Mark Carney in second Canadian election debate

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PM focuses on threat from across the border as most polls show his Liberals leading Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party in tight race

Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, faced sustained attacks from his Conservative rival at an election debate on Thursday but the Liberal leader sought to focus attention on what he calls Canada’s top threat: Donald Trump, the US president.

Most opinion polls show Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party trailing Carney’s Liberals ahead of the 28 April vote for Canada’s federal government.

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Maryland senator meets Kilmar Ábrego García in El Salvador amid battle over US return

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Chris Van Hollen posts photo on X but does not provide update on status of man wrongly deported from US

The Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen met in El Salvador with Kilmar Ábrego García, a man who was sent there by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.

Van Hollen posted a photo of the meeting on X, saying he also called Ábrego García’s wife “to pass along his message of love”.

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Video shows Ice agents smashing car window to detain asylum seeker

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Lawyer says officials were looking for someone else while taking Juan Francisco Mendez in Massachusetts on Monday

A Massachusetts family is demanding answers from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), complaining its agents smashed a car window with a large hammer and detained a man whom they say had applied for asylum.

A lawyer for the family also claims agents were not looking for the man in the car, Juan Francisco Mendez, when they grabbed him on Monday in New Bedford while he was driving to a dental appointment. He is now believed to have been taken into Ice detention.

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Cory Booker to visit El Salvador in effort to return wrongly deported man to US

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Democrats press Trump administration to follow supreme court order to bring back Kilmar Ábrego García

Cory Booker plans to travel to El Salvador, a source familiar with the New Jersey senator’s itinerary said, as Democrats seek to pressure the Trump administration to return a wrongly deported Maryland resident.

Booker’s trip to the Central American country would come after the Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen traveled there this week to meet with his constituent Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadorian national deported last month in what the Trump administration acknowledged was an “administrative error”. Despite a supreme court ruling saying his administration must “facilitate” Ábrego García’s return, Trump has refused to take steps to do so, and El Salvador’s government on Wednesday denied Van Hollen a meeting with the deportee.

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Kilmar Ábrego García’s wife rejects Trump officials’ depictions of him as ‘violent’

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Jennifer Vasquez Sura criticizes DHS’s attempt to smear her wrongly deported husband over 2021 civil protective order

The wife of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man unlawfully deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador, has strongly criticized the Trump administration’s attempt to smear his character, saying a temporary restraining order against him was “out of caution” and that “he is a loving partner and father” who is being denied justice.

Jennifer Vasquez Sura said she “acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar” when she got the civil protective order in 2021, according to a statement emailed to the Baltimore Sun.

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