In incident filmed by security cameras in Rio de Janeiro, group of attackers beat animal with sticks and iron bars
Police in Rio de Janeiro have arrested eight people for brutally beating a capybara – the world’s largest rodent.
Resembling a giant guinea pig, the light brown capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) is often seen roaming the Brazilian city, particularly near streams and lagoons.
Continue reading...Solange Tremblay was ejected over 100 metres from the plane after collision at LaGuardia airport, her daughter says
A flight attendant on the Air Canada Jazz flight that collided with a fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia airport on Sunday survived in what her daughter called a “complete miracle”, when she was ejected more than 100 metres from the plane while still strapped to her seat.
The CRJ-900 jet, operated by Jazz Aviation, collided with a fire truck as it landed, killing both the pilot and co-pilot. Nine people were sent to the hospital with injuries, including Solange Tremblay, a flight attendant.
Continue reading...Tania Warner and Ayla, her seven-year-old with autism, sent to notorious Texas detention center and told to ‘self-deport’
A Canadian woman and her seven-year-old daughter with autism who have been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for nearly a week have been transferred to a notorious detention center and asked to “self-deport”, according to her husband, who said the pair had been “traumatized” by the experience.
Tania Warner and her daughter Ayla Luca, originally from British Columbia, moved to the US five years ago, when Warner married Edward Warner, a US citizen.
Continue reading...The insects covered its largest area since 2018, despite threats from habitat loss, climate crisis and pesticides
The population of monarch butterflies in Mexico increased 64% this winter, compared with the same period in 2025, offering a glimmer of hope for an insect considered at risk of extinction.
The figures, released this week by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Mexico, showed that the area occupied by monarchs expanded to 2.93 hectares (7.24 acres) of forest from 1.79 hectares (4.42 acres) the previous winter, the largest coverage since 2018.
Continue reading...Interim president announces changes after firing defence minister, who was close to Maduro, the leader ousted by US
Venezuela’s interim president has said she has replaced all her senior military commanders, the latest in a flurry of changes since the US ousted Nicolás Maduro.
Delcy Rodríguez announced the changes in a social media post a day after firing the long-serving defence minister, who had been close to Maduro, and replacing him with a former intelligence chief.
Continue reading...Mother and child held in notorious Rio Grande Valley detention centre despite presenting visa, family says
A Canadian mother and her seven-year-old daughter, who has autism, have been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Texas since Saturday, family members have said.
Relatives of Tania Warner and her daughter Ayla Lucas say they were detained unlawfully. They are uncertain about what problem ICE found with their immigration paperwork.
Continue reading...Discovery at Monte Verde puts north-to-south expansion theory back at centre of heated debate on continent’s human history
A groundbreaking new study may have once again upended our understanding of human prehistory in the Americas.
For years, the predominant theory of how humans arrived in the western hemisphere centred around the Clovis culture, which crossed the Beringia land bridge from Asia between 13,400 and 12,800 years ago, and spread south.
Continue reading...Foreign minister Anita Anand says she has drafted principles to reduce risk of regional spillover and wider shocks
Canada is pushing for a collective G7 and Middle East approach to de-escalating the Iran war, including off ramps that could bring an end to the conflict, the Canadian foreign minister, Anita Anand, has said.
In London to meet the UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, after talks with the her Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, Anand told the Guardian she hoped a G7 meeting chaired by France, this year’s president of the group, might start to build a broader collective approach to the crisis.
Continue reading...National power outage is making life extremely difficult and may force Havana into biggest economic changes in 67 years
Just a few hours after a nationwide electricity blackout struck Cuba, Donald Trump hinted at an even darker future for the island’s rulers.
The country’s entire electricity system had collapsed on Monday afternoon, leaving about 10 million people without power. Emergency teams were still struggling to restore it when the US leader made his latest threat.
Continue reading...Charges follow discovery of body of Masood Masjoody, who was a critic of the Tehran regime and the exiled shah
Two people have been charged with the murder of an Iranian activist in Canada, in a case which has intensified fears over transnational repression of critics of the regime in Tehran.
Masood Masjoody, a former university maths teacher, went missing in early February in the city of Burnaby, British Columbia. He had been critical of Iran’s theocratic regime and the exiled family of the former shah.
Continue reading...Britons learn about the country’s involvement ‘almost as a self-congratulatory narrative’, says historian Joseph Mulhern
In 1845 British citizens and companies were already legally prohibited from owning or buying enslaved people overseas, yet that year 385 captives were “transferred” to a British mining company in Brazil named St John d’El Rey.
Despite a global campaign waged by the UK against slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, the move was not technically illegal because the enslaved people were not sold but “rented” – a practice permitted overseas under the 1843 Slave Trade Act.
Continue reading...Ten million people left without power in latest of outages that sparked violent protest last weekend
Cuba’s national electric grid has collapsed, the country’s grid operator has said, leaving approximately 10 million people without power amid a US-imposed oil blockade that has crippled the island’s already obsolete generation system.
The grid operator, UNE, said on social media on Monday that it was investigating the causes of the blackout, the latest in a series of widespread outages that last for hours or days and that last weekend sparked a rare violent protest in the communist-run country.
Continue reading...Democrat says Congress ‘doing nothing’ may embolden president to attack countries such as Cuba and North Korea
Democratic US senator Cory Booker has criticized both his own political party as well as its Republican counterpart for being “feckless” in ceding congressional war powers to Donald Trump, saying that their decision could embolden the president to unilaterally attack Cuba, North Korea and other countries.
“I’m going to be one of those Democrats [who] say I think both parties have been feckless in allowing the growth of the power of the presidency,” Booker said on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
Continue reading...Rare action began peacefully but ‘degenerated into vandalism’ according to state-run newspaper
Five people have been arrested in Cuba for acts of “vandalism” after a small group of protesters broke into a provincial office of the Cuban Communist party and set fire to computers and furniture.
The incident, which also affected a pharmacy and another shop, took place in the town of Moron, a little more than 300 miles (500km) east of Havana.
Continue reading...Negotiations aimed to ‘find solutions to the bilateral differences’ between the countries, Miguel Díaz-Canel said
Cuban officials have held talks with the US government, the country’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, confirmed on Friday, amid growing pain inflicted by a punishing US fuel blockade and frequent power failures.
“These talks have been aimed at finding solutions through dialogue to the bilateral differences we have between the two nations,” Díaz-Canel said in a prerecorded statement to senior Communist officials.
Continue reading...Joey Pete of Sunchild First Nation said king seemed ‘committed to learning’ after meeting Indigenous leaders
King Charles has expressed concern over a simmering separatist movement in western Canada, according to Indigenous leaders who met the head of state at Buckingham Palace.
Members of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations travelled to London from their territories in the province of Alberta to raise the alarm over the secessionist movement, arguing that it ignores key agreements signed between First Nations and the crown nearly 150 years ago.
Continue reading...Oscar, Ana and their children fled violence for safety in the US. Now Oscar, afraid and alone, is back in Honduras – ‘at the mercy of God and his will’
As soon as Oscar’s deportation flight landed at the La Lima airport in Honduras, he put on his baseball cap. On the airport shuttle toward the terminal, he pulled his cap even lower – trying to obscure his face at various police checkpoints.
His parents picked him up in a car, and drove him to a lodging they had arranged for him – miles away from his family home. He has hardly stepped outside since. “Because I can’t trust anyone – not the authorities, not the government, not a police officer,” he said. He has visited his mother a handful of times since the US deported him three weeks ago, and only under the cover of night. “They will kill anyone here. There is death everywhere.”
Continue reading...Company that runs the sites says it has ‘no reason to believe there is a correlation between the donors’ passing and plasma donation’
Two people have died in Canada after donating plasma at a chain of clinics that has been under scrutiny by federal inspectors for failing to keep accurate records, screen donors or maintain its machines.
While experts say the deaths are exceedingly rare, critics say Canada’s embrace of private companies to handle blood products reflects a “slow collapse of a system that has been the envy of the world”.
Continue reading...Global heating linked to rising risk of extreme rain that causes devastating landslides and rising coffee prices
The record floods that have brought death and destruction to the heartland of Brazil’s coffee industry are expected to intensify if people continue to burn fossil fuels, analysis has shown.
Dozens of residents in the state of Minas Gerais have been buried alive in landslides or swept away as roads turned into rivers over the past month. Thousands more have been forced to evacuate their homes, while the wider, longer-term effects are likely to include higher prices for coffee across the world.
Continue reading...Decision to shield pro-Bolsonaro truck driver sentenced for 8 January 2023 attack could inflame Brazil election politics
Argentina has granted asylum to a Brazilian fugitive convicted for his role in 2023 pro-Bolsonaro riots – a decision that analysts say could reverberate in Brazil’s upcoming presidential election.
A week after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, took office, hundreds of people ransacked Brazil’s congress building, presidential palace and supreme court on 8 January 2023, in an attempt to overturn former president Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral defeat. Investigators later concluded the attacks were the culmination of a broader plot aimed at staging a coup.
Alongside Bolsonaro and members of his inner circle, who were convicted for their role in the plot, hundreds of rioters were given sentences of up to 17 years in prison for vandalism and insurrection. Dozens fled to Argentina after Javier Milei, a rightwing libertarian, took office in December 2023.
In 2024, Brazil requested the extradition of 61 of its citizens. Argentine federal police arrested five of them, and in December, a federal judge ordered their extradition.
But this week, one of them – Joel Borges Correa, 47, was informed that Argentina’s refugee commission (Conare) – which operates under the security ministry – ruled that he should be granted asylum.
Borges Correa had applied for asylum in 2024, one of 196 Brazilians who sought refugee status in Argentina that year, according to official data. In his testimony, he said he had gone to the government buildings carrying a Brazilian flag to protest against “Lula’s projects in favour of abortion and the legalisation of drugs” – policies that have not been enacted. He was arrested inside the Planalto presidential palace, the president’s official workplace, and later sentenced to 13 years and six months in prison.
In April 2024, attempting to avoid arrest, Borges Correa cut off his ankle monitor and drove to the Argentine border with three other convicted fugitives. Conare concluded that Borges Correa faced discrimination and persecution because of his political opinions, which it said could be “inferred from his participation in the mobilisation on 8 January”, and that the “Brazilian state is the main persecuting agent”.
“There is a very evident human rights issue, a matter of political persecution,” said Pedro Gradin, Borges Correa’s lawyer. “With asylum granted, he will regularise his immigration status. Now they must release him and remove his ankle monitor so that he can live his life like any other citizen.”