UN forecasters warn of worsening conditions in 45 countries currently experiencing severe food insecurity
About 50 million people are likely to be pushed into acute hunger before the end of next year by the rapidly developing El Niño weather system, according to forecasting.
This is in addition to the hundreds of millions of people already facing dangerous levels of hunger, owing to years of drought in parts of Africa and pressure on food prices from the war in Iran.
Continue reading...Move is retaliation for Lula’s government refusal to approve Trump’s nominee for ambassador in Brasília
Donald Trump’s administration has revoked the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to the US in a sharp escalation of a diplomatic feud with the country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The US state department said Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti’s visa had been cancelled in retaliation for Brazil’s refusal to approve Trump’s nominee for ambassador in Brasília and its decision last month to deny visas to two US diplomats seeking to visit ahead of an October election.
Continue reading...Luis Carlos Rúa revealed himself to be Elefante blanco just three days before election for ‘his own safety’. Now he is tackling graft from senate floor
When 102 senators were sworn in for Colombia’s latest parliamentary session, they included 32 women, 69 men – and one cartoon elephant.
He had some difficulty making his way down the narrow central aisle of Congress’s ceremonial chamber, weaving past fellow senators in sharply tailored suits and dresses, before taking the oath in his pot-bellied white plush costume.
Continue reading...Aircraft crashes into field after departing from nearby city of Pisco, according to local authorities
Police in Peru report that 13 people, among them foreign tourists, have been killed in a plane crash in southern Peru, near the Nazca Lines.
Local authorities in Nazca confirmed that 11 tourists and two pilots died when the Cessna Grand Caravan crashed in Pueblo Viejo, approximately 4 miles (6km) from the city of Nazca and roughly 12km from the Nazca Lines site.
Continue reading...US employers and Haitian immigrants live in constant uncertainty as status of work permits remains in limbo
For more than a month, Bobby Kuchinsky arrived at his Florida restaurant each morning worried about whether he still had enough staff or if this might be the last shift for some of his Haitian workers, who have spent more than a decade as cooks, busboys and oyster shuckers.
On Tuesday, he suspended six of them after they lost authorization to work in the US.
Continue reading...Data shows Canadians have replaced US vacations with other international trips in apparent rebuke to Trump
Canadians spent $3.3bn less on travel to the US in 2025 than in the previous year, as Donald Trump’s hostile policies towards his northern neighbour continue to incur an economic cost, new government data shows.
The research also indicates that Canadians are not bucking travel overall and instead have replaced US vacations with other international destinations, in a rebuke to Trump’s tariff regime and the president’s continued musings on annexing Canada.
Continue reading...Three years after Maui wildfires many still struggle with ‘biological, emotional and social consequences’, study says
A spate of ferocious wildfires across North America and Europe, worsened by the climate crisis, has incinerated homes and forests and forced thousands of people to flee. Previous fires suggest the effects of these blazes may linger for years to come.
The current fires and their plumes of smoke can appear to be a temporary, if immediate, crisis. Nearly 1,000 fires have sprung into life in the boreal forests of Canada, causing the evacuation of towns and toxic smoke to waft into major Canadian and US cities, prompting threats of retribution from Donald Trump, who bizarrely accused Canada of “poisoning” his country’s air.
Continue reading...Nelson Haase Mazzei was sentenced for murdering Jara in 2023, but fled from authorities in Chile
More than 50 years after the murder of the Chilean folk singer Víctor Jara, the last man wanted in connection with his death has been tracked down and brought to justice.
Nelson Haase Mazzei, a retired colonel, fled from authorities in 2023 after he and six other retired soldiers were sentenced in absentia for murdering Jara and another man.
Continue reading...Exclusive: CSI Aviation and GlobalX accused of violating civil rights as part of Trump immigration crackdown
Venezuelan men sent last year to a notorious Salvadorian terrorism prison by the Trump administration are suing the US aviation companies that transported them there.
A lawsuit filed this week in federal court in Washington DC accuses the companies CSI Aviation and GlobalX of violating the Venezuelans’ civil rights, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and other violations, for their role in flying the three planes that took the men to El Salvador.
Continue reading...At least 90 active blazes in British Columbia in what PM says is one of the country’s most intense seasons on record
Fresh wildfires have broken out in western Canada and forests continued to burn in Ontario as the country battled what the prime minister, Mark Carney, called one of the most intense wildfire seasons on record.
Nearly 34,000 lightning strikes over the past week led to a series of fires and evacuation orders in southern British Columbia. There were 25 evacuation orders and 90 active wildfires in the province as of Friday morning, and authorities said warming and drying conditions could cause them to grow.
Continue reading...Of the estimated 179 people aboard, 76 were rescued as efforts continue to salvage the ship and recover all bodies
The confirmed death toll from the recent capsizing of a state ferry off Guyana’s coast has risen to 72, with more bodies recovered as a multinational team struggle to salvage the partially submerged vessel.
Of the estimated 179 people aboard, 76 people were rescued. The government has estimated that 100 may have died in the accident, which would make it the worst marine tragedy on record for the South American nation.
Continue reading...US agency is to pay Canadian media company US$125m for use of investigative database to detect ‘immigration fraud’
A Canadian federal opposition party leader has called on Mark Carney’s government to block the latest data-sharing deal between US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Canadian media company Thomson Reuters.
Avi Lewis, the federal leader of the New Democratic party (NDP), demanded on Tuesday that Ottawa address the contract and further restrict Canadian corporations from doing business with ICE, after Canada’s National Observer news website reported on the deal.
Continue reading...Delegation sent to Brasília after gunmen from organised crime group enter homes in western Amazon Forest
Indigenous leaders on the Brazil-Peru border say their communities are being “taken hostage” by organised crime groups who are running rampant across the region, destroying Amazon Forest, building roads and trafficking drugs.
Earlier this month, masked men armed with semi-automatic weapons entered homes in Apiwtxa, a village in the Kampa do Rio Amônia Indigenous Territory, intimidating people and searching for targets.
Continue reading...Valentín Lavín Romero is the 14th mayor to be murdered since Claudia Sheinbaum became president in 2024
A mayor was shot dead on Wednesday in the Mexican state of Morelos after having survived a previous assassination attempt earlier this year. He is the 14th mayor to be murdered since Claudia Sheinbaum became president in October 2024.
Valentín Lavín Romero, who was from the Green party, an ally of the ruling leftwing Morena party, was wounded at the end of January when hitmen shot him at a petrol station on a motorway.
Continue reading...US secretary of state says international community should ‘join forces’ against authoritarian Ortega regime
Nicaragua’s congress, controlled by the country’s long-serving president, Daniel Ortega, has announced a “work plan” to implement the authoritarian leader’s order that the country should no longer hold elections.
The UN and the US strongly condemned Sunday’s announcement by Ortega, who has been in power since 2007 and, after a controversial constitutional change last year, now governs alongside his wife, Rosario Murillo, as “co-president”.
Continue reading...The ribbon-cutting celebration of the Gordie Howe International Bridge is no longer taking place after Trump announced a 50% tariff on Canadian goods
A planned joint US-Canada ceremony Friday celebrating the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, is no longer expected to take place after Donald Trump announced a 50% tariff on most Canadian goods.
In announcing the tariffs, the president accused Canada of unfairly discriminating against US automobiles, alcohol and dairy products, escalating tensions with one of the United States’ closest allies.
Continue reading...Meliá group says Donald Trump’s sanctions make it ‘impossible’ to keep any of its 34 sites open
A Spanish hotel chain is to cease all operations in Cuba at the end of the week due to “major difficulties” in doing business on the island under growing pressure from Washington.
The latest US sanctions make it “impossible, de facto and de jure, to maintain even minimal operational stability”, the Meliá group explained in a statement on Tuesday to the Spanish stock market regulator.
Continue reading...State department’s 100-page report is latest push in Trump administration campaign to bring down government
The US government’s latest allegations that Cuba is behind “many of the most significant upheavals in recent American political history” and that its leaders pose “a unique threat to American homeland security” have come as startling revelations to those living under the six-month-long US oil blockade in Havana, where desperate people search through piles of uncollected rubbish for food, or else swelter at home in 24-hour-plus blackouts.
The unsigned 100-page report, Cuba: Capital of 21st-Century Communism, published by the US state department on Monday, blames Havana for everything from “the George Floyd riots to the rise of antifa to the explosion of pro-terrorist activism on American college campuses”.
Continue reading...Chiefs in Ontario say they were left to self-evacuate before homes burned to ground, after being told there was no imminent threat
Fast-moving wildfires have burned two First Nations communities in Canada to the ground, as members said they were left to self-evacuate without government help or emergency alerts.
Thirteen communities in Ontario province have been ordered to evacuate because of wildfires, most of them First Nations. The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, told reporters on Monday that close to 2,000 people had been evacuated so far to cities including Toronto and Niagara Falls.
Continue reading...Global hunger declined for the third year in a row in 2025 but experts call for action to bring down costs of fruit, vegetables and dairy as report shows 2.69bn people can’t afford to eat well
One in three people cannot afford to eat a healthy diet, a new report has found, prompting calls for urgent action on food affordability.
There are 2.69 billion people unable to afford a diverse diet that meets their energy and nutrient needs, and it will take “immense” amounts of work to achieve the global target of zero hunger by 2030, the annual report from five UN agencies warned.
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