Category Archives: Americas

Intense heatwave in southern Brazil forces schools to suspend return

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Record highs delay start of classes in Rio Grande do Sul, where floods linked to climate crisis left 180 dead last May

During historic floods last May that left more than 180 dead in Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, the water rose to the ceiling of the Olindo Flores school in the city of São Leopoldo, destroying furniture, books and parts of its infrastructure.

When classes resumed more than a month later, its 500 students had to be relocated to another school for months.

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US arrests in Mexico for cartel-related crimes soared under Amlo, study finds

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Sixfold rise from days of Peña Nieto suggests Americans have increasingly become pawns for criminal drug gangs

The number of Americans arrested in Mexico for offenses related to organized crime increased by 457% – or nearly sixfold – during the 2018-24 presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador compared to his predecessor, according to a new report.

Since the current president Claudia Sheinbaum took office in September, 185 US citizens have been arrested by the Mexican army on organized-crime related charges – an average of three a day.

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Ecuador’s presidential election goes to runoff after ‘statistical tie’

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Daniel Noboa fails to achieve anticipated victory over leftist rival Luisa González, forcing them to repeat 2023’s election

Ecuador’s conservative president, Daniel Noboa, will face the leftist former congresswoman Luisa González in an election runoff on 13 April after a better than expected first-round performance by his challenger.

With more than 92% of the ballot boxes counted, Noboa was on 44.31%, just ahead of González, with a difference of only 45,000 votes in an electorate of 13.7 million registered voters.

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Ecuador goes to the polls amid rise in drug-related gang violence

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Voters who have become victims of crime wave linked to cocaine trade will determine outcome of presidential election

Ecuadorians are voting in a presidential election that has shaped up to be a repeat of the 2023 race, when they chose a young, conservative millionaire over the former leftist president’s protege.

Luisa González and the incumbent, Daniel Noboa, are the clear frontrunners in the pool of 16 candidates. All have promised to reduce the widespread crime that pushed the country into an unnerving new normal four years ago.

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Why Trump blinked before imposing his ‘beautiful’ tariffs on Canada and Mexico

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Trump has teased two of the US’s biggest trading partners with levies but has moved the goalpost at least three times in two weeks

Donald Trump was in his element in the Oval Office this week. Surrounded by cameras, flanked by billionaire allies and confronted by a barrage of questions about whether he was really prepared to unleash a trade war on the US’s closest neighbors, the president talked tough.

By his telling, powerful economies were scrambling to bend to his will. Hours earlier, Mexico had announced a series of measures to shore up its border, prompting the White House to hastily postpone the imposition of 25% tariffs on all its goods; Canada would announce similar measures, and receive the same reprieve, later that day.

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Trump’s claim that Mexican cartels and government are allied is not reality

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Corruption in Mexico is a problem, experts say, but any claim the two are linked shows a lack of comprehension

Mexico breathed a sigh of relief this week when Donald Trump delayed his threatened tariffs by a month, apparently swerving away from an economic crisis at the last moment.

But one aspect of the spat still rankles: the Trump administration’s vague but shocking accusation of an “intolerable alliance” between Mexico’s government and organised crime.

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Trudeau says Trump is serious about wanting to annex Canada

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Prime minister says US president covets northern neighbour’s vast resources as Canadians rally against threat

Donald Trump’s recent fixation on absorbing Canada is “a real thing”, Justin Trudeau has told business leaders, warning that the US president wants access to his northern neighbour’s vast supply of critical minerals.

The outgoing prime minister was in Toronto for a hastily called summit of business and labour leaders, seeking to coordinate a response Trump’s looming threat of a 25% tariff on all Canadian imports.

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US-Panama relationship was ‘very strong’. Then Trump upended the diplomatic playing board

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US had made inroads against Chinese influence in Panama, but Trump’s demands could help Beijing expand its regional power

When Panama’s then president Juan Carlos Varela was invited to the White House in June 2017, Donald Trump said the Panama canal was doing “pretty well” and described the bilateral relationship as “very strong”.

Just days earlier, Varela had broken ties with Taiwan to establish diplomatic relations with China, but there was no indication that this snub to a key US ally had clouded the meeting.

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River near Buenos Aires turns bright red after suspected industrial dye leak

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Residents living near the Sarandí have long complained about pollution in the area

A small river in greater Buenos Aires was dyed a deep and worrying shade of red on Thursday after what is thought to have been a leak of dye from a nearby factory.

The violent hue of the Sarandí, which runs through the municipality of Avellaneda, six miles (9.6km) south of the Argentinian capital, alarmed local residents, who have long complained about industrial pollution in the area.

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Canada intercepts people trying to cross border in ‘incredibly cold’ conditions

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Nine Venezuelans including children found by police in Alberta with a second group apprehended in Manitoba

More than a dozen people have been caught making the hazardous crossing into Canada, renewing focus on the closely watched – and seasonally perilous – border with the United States.

Police in Alberta this week intercepted two groups attempting to cross into Canada illegally, including one which included five children who were ill-prepared for the cold which can plunge as low as -30C (-22F) at this time of year.

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Panama accuses US of peddling ‘intolerable falsehood’ about canal

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President José Raúl Mulino denies making a deal that US ships can transit the canal free of charge

The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, has accused the US of peddling a “quite simply intolerable falsehood” about the Panama canal, as Donald Trump’s pledge to “take back” the waterway continued to poison relations between the two countries and cause alarm around Latin America.

The US state department claimed late on Wednesday the Central American country had agreed to no longer charge US government vessels to pass through its canal – a move that would supposedly save Washington millions of dollars a year.

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El Salvador offers to hold deportees and incarcerated US citizens in its jails

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Human rights groups alarmed as Marco Rubio, US secretary of state, meets with Nayib Bukele during overseas trip

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has offered to accept deportees from the US of any nationality and hold them in his jails, including “dangerous American criminals”, Marco Rubio said on Monday.

The US secretary of state, who this week made his first overseas trip as the top US diplomat, visited El Salvador on Monday as part of a wider trip through Central America and the Caribbean.

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Trump administration says it has begun deporting migrants to Guantánamo Bay

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Press secretary says at least two deportation flights to Cuban base of undocumented immigrants ‘under way’

The Trump administration has begun flying undocumented immigrants from the US to a military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on Tuesday.

Leavitt told Fox Business Network that at least two deportation flights were “under way”, but gave no further details.

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Panama court is asked to cancel Hong Kong firm’s contract to run canal ports

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Complaint by local lawyers to supreme court follows US demands to reduce China’s alleged influence on waterway

Two Panamanian lawyers have lodged a lawsuit with the country’s supreme court in an attempt to cancel a Hong Kong-based company’s concession to operate two ports at either end of the Panama canal.

Their complaint – filed a day after the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, to reduce China’s alleged influence on the canal – argues that the contract for the two ports is unconstitutional.

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Ontario premier ‘ripping up’ contract with Musk’s Starlink over US tariffs

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Doug Ford says Canada will not work with ‘people hellbent on destroying our economy’, blaming failed deal on Trump

The leader of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, announced on Monday that he would be “ripping up” a contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink internet services in response to the US tariffs on Canada announced by Donald Trump.

The contract, first signed in November, aimed to provide high-speed internet access through Starlink’s satellite service to 15,000 eligible homes and businesses, notably those in remote, rural and northern communities of Canada, by June 2025.

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Mitch McConnell calls Trump tariffs ‘bad idea’ but most Republicans toe line

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Ex-Senate majority leader is one of few party members to criticize president’s trade war with US neighbors and China

Republicans on Capitol Hill have largely fallen in line with Donald Trump’s move to impose tariffs on the US’s biggest trading partners, with the notable exception of the former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who called it a “bad idea”.

With even Trump admitting that the tariffs – 25% on imports from Canada and Mexico and 10% on China – might cause “some pain”, there was mostly strong support from the president’s loyalists. Jason Smith, chair of the ways and means committee of the House of Representatives, said the tariffs would “send a powerful message that the United States will no longer stand by as other nations fail to halt the flow of illegal drugs and immigrants into our country”.

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Toronto Raptors fans boo US national anthem after Donald Trump tariffs

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  • Canadian NHL fans also booed Star-Spangled Banner
  • Applause breaks out during Canadian national anthem

Fans at a Toronto Raptors game on Sunday continued an emerging trend of booing the American national anthem at sporting events in Canada.

Fans of the NBA’s lone Canadian franchise booed the US anthem before the Raptors’ game against the Los Angeles Clippers at the Scotiabank Arena in downtown Toronto. Similar reactions broke out on Saturday night at NHL games in Ottawa and Calgary, where the Senators and Flames faced the Minnesota Wild and Detroit Red Wings respectively. Those games came hours after Donald Trump made his threat of import tariffs on Canada a reality.

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Trump revokes deportation protections for 300,000 Venezuelans in US – report

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Move comes as one-two punch for group already reeling from last week’s decision to rescind 18-month extension

The Trump administration has stepped up its attack on Venezuelans living in the US under temporary deportation protections, revoking the right to stay of more than 300,000 people.

The move, first reported by the New York Times, comes as a one-two punch for Venezuelans who were already reeling from last week’s decision to rescind an 18-month extension of temporary protected status (TPS) that had been introduced in the final days of the out-going Biden administration. Reversing the extension was a blow that affected more than 600,000 Venezuelans living in the US.

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Fury in Mexico over Trump’s ‘slanderous’ claim of cartel links

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President Sheinbaum and politicians across the spectrum condemn accusation, which follows imposition of US tariffs

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has hit back at Donald Trump’s “slanderous” claim that her government had joined forces with drug bosses, amid anger and incredulity at the US president’s attack on the leaders of Latin America’s second biggest economy.

Trump made the claim on Saturday as he announced 25% tariffs against Mexico that the US said were a response to illegal immigration and the “intolerable alliance” between drug trafficking organisations and Mexico’s government, which had allegedly offered safe haven to “dangerous cartels”.

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Wall Street Journal editorial calls Trump tariffs ‘dumbest trade war in history’

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Some US business leaders reacted neutrally, while JP Morgan CEO says tariff threats can be used effectively

US business leaders are offering a mixed reaction to the steep trade tariffs that Donald Trump’s administration has imposed on Canada, Mexico and China, as the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal called it “the dumbest trade war in history”.

Donald Trump hit Canada and Mexico with a 25% tariff on imports, and China with 10%, on Saturday in a move that launched a new era of trade wars between the US and three of its largest trading partners. The tariffs against Canada tax oil and energy products at 10%.

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