Category Archives: Americas

Archaeologists use AI to discover 303 unknown geoglyphs near Nazca Lines

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Newly discovered figures dating back to 200BCE nearly double the number of known geoglyphs at enigmatic site

Archaeologists using artificial intelligence (AI) have discovered hundreds of new geoglyphs depicting parrots, cats, monkeys, killer whales and even decapitated heads near the Nazca Lines in Peru, in a find that nearly doubles the number of known figures at the enigmatic 2,000-year-old archaeological site.

A team from the Japanese University of Yamagata’s Nazca Institute, in collaboration with IBM Research, discovered 303 previously unknown geoglyphs of humans and animals – all smaller in size than the vast geometric patterns that date from AD200-700 and stretch across more than 400 sq km of the Nazca plateau.

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Mexico’s snub to King Felipe rekindles colonialism row with Spain

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President-elect refuses to invite Spanish king to her inauguration after lack of apology for crimes of conquest

A festering diplomatic row between Mexico and Spain has been reopened after the Latin American country’s leftwing president-elect refused to invite King Felipe to her inauguration because of his failure to apologise for crimes committed against Mexico’s Indigenous people during the conquest 500 years ago.

In 2019, Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador wrote to King Felipe and Pope Francis, calling for them to apologise for the “abuses” of the conquest and the colonial period.

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Justin Trudeau survives confidence vote but other problems still loom

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Main political rival of Canada’s prime minister fails to gather enough support to end nine years of Liberal rule

Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, has easily survived a vote of confidence after his main political rival failed to muster enough support to end nine years of Liberal party rule.

Legislators in the House of Commons voted 211-120 to defeat a motion by the official opposition Conservative party declaring a lack of confidence in Trudeau’s minority Liberal government.

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Canada’s Tories target Trudeau as they seek seismic shift in political landscape

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Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to introduce motion of non-confidence in long-shot bid to force an election

Canada’s Conservative party will make its first bid to unseat prime minister Justin Trudeau this week, the latest attempt in its decade-long aim of restoring the Tories to power.

Buoyed by favourable polls, a cost of living crisis and an increasingly unpopular prime minister, the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, will introduce a motion of non-confidence in the minority government: a long-shot bid to force the government to call an election.

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Two die in mudslide as Hurricane John makes landfall in Mexico

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Tropical storm intensified to category 3 hurricane before weakening as slow pace threatens severe flash flooding

Two people have died after former hurricane John barreled into Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, blowing tin roofs off houses, triggering mudslides and toppling scores of trees.

It came ashore near the town of Punta Maldonado late on Monday as a category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 120mph (190km/h). It weakened back to tropical storm status early on Tuesday with maximum sustained wind speeds of 50mph (85km/h) and was expected to weaken rapidly.

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Michael Kovrig: detention by China amounted to psychological torture, Canadian says

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Former diplomat Michael Kovrig, who was taken into custody in December 2018, says he spent months in solitary confinement and was interrogated daily

A former Canadian diplomat detained by China for more than 1,000 days said he was placed in solitary confinement for months and interrogated for up to nine hours every day, treatment he said amounted to psychological torture.

Michael Kovrig, speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp in his first major interview since his release, also said he had missed the birth of his daughter and met her for the first time when she was two-and-a half years old.

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Hurricane John poised to slam Mexico’s Pacific coast with 100mph winds

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Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero brace for impact as ‘life-threatening’ category 2 storm to make landfall Tuesday

Mexico’s southern coast was bracing for flash floods and storm surges as Hurricane John quickly intensified into a category 2 storm on Monday afternoon.

Originally forecast as a tropical storm, Hurricane John “rapidly strengthened” into a category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 100mph (160kmh), according to the US National Hurricane Center, which warned of “damaging hurricane-force winds, life-threatening storm surge and flash flooding”.

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Elon Musk backs down in his fight with Brazilian judges to restore X

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The platform agrees to appoint a legal representative in Brazil, pays fines and takes down user accounts that the court had ordered removed

Elon Musk fought the law. The law appears to have won.

X, Musk’s social media platform, has backed down in its fight with the Brazilian judiciary, after complying with court orders that had blocked users in the country from accessing X.

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‘It’s guerrilla warfare’: Brazil fire teams fight Amazon blazes – and the arsonists who start them

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Firefighters and police in Rondônia battle fires intensified by both the climate crisis and a criminal assault on the rainforest

The occupants of the vinyl-coated military tents at this remote jungle camp in Brazil’s wild west compare the hellscape surrounding them to catastrophes old and new: the extinction of the dinosaurs, the bombardment of Gaza, the obliteration of Hiroshima during the second world war.

“It’s as if a nuclear bomb has gone off. There’s no forest. There’s nothing. Everything’s burned. It’s chaos,” said Lt Col Victor Paulo Rodrigues de Souza as he gave a tour of the base on the frontline of Brazil’s fight against one of its worst burning seasons in years and a relentless assault on the greatest tropical rainforest on Earth.

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Violent protests erupt in Martinique over high cost of living with 14 injured

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French Caribbean island sees scenes of vehicles engulfed in flames and gutted buildings as officials impose curfew

Officials in the French Caribbean island of Martinique have imposed a 9pm to 5am curfew in parts of its capital to quell escalating violent protests over the high cost of living.

According to Radio France International (RFI), at least 14 people, including 11 police, have been injured – some by firearms – as alarming scenes on social media showed vehicles engulfed in flames, gutted buildings and heavily geared riot police marching towards the protests.

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Brazil top judge accuses X of ‘willful’ circumvention of court-ordered block

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Justice Alexandre de Moraes imposes $900,000 daily fine on banned social media platform in dispute with Elon Musk

In the latest round of the dispute between Elon Musk and Brazil’s top court, a senior judge has accused X of a “willful, illegal and persistent” effort to circumvent a court-ordered block – and imposed a fine of R$5m ($921,676) for each day the social network remains online.

The social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which has been banned by court order since 30 August, on Wednesday became accessible to many users in Brazil after an update that used cloud services offered by third parties, such as Cloudflare, Fastly and Edgeuno.

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Former CIA officer sentenced to 30 years for sexually assaulting scores of women

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Brian Jeffrey Raymond of California was found guilty of drugging and raping women in his government apartments

A former CIA officer who drugged and sexually assaulted dozens of women was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Wednesday, the Department of Justice announced.

Brian Jeffrey Raymond, 48, of La Mesa, California, drugged more than two dozen women and performed nonconsensual sexual acts or made sexual contact with at least 10 women, the justice department said in a press release.

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Elon Musk’s X circumvents court-ordered block in Brazil

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Social media platform routes internet traffic outside of Brazil using a communications network update

Social media platform Twitter/X became accessible to many users in Brazil on Wednesday as an update to its communications network circumvented a block order by the country’s supreme court.

The X update used cloud services offered by third parties, allowing some Brazilian users to take a route outside of the country to reach X, even without a virtual private network, according to Abrint, the Brazilian Association of Internet and Telecommunications Providers.

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Venezuela opposition leader says he was forced to sign letter accepting Maduro victory

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Edmundo González says he signed election letter under duress as condition for allowing him to flee to Spain

Venezuela’s opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, has said he was coerced into signing a letter recognizing Nicolás Maduro as the winner of the country’s disputed election as a condition for letting him flee to Spain.

The revelation of the letter is the latest strain to the country’s political crisis, which was exacerbated by the disputed election results and González’s recent departure for exile in Spain.

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Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira: murder charge dropped against one of three suspects

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Activists greet decision over killings of British journalist and Brazilian Indigenous expert with ‘indignation’

Appeal judges in Brazil yesterday upheld charges against only two of the three men accused of murdering Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips, in a decision “received with indignation” by Indigenous activists.

The three judges ruled that there was “insufficient evidence of authorship or participation” by Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, a fisher, in the 2022 deaths of the Brazilian Indigenous expert and the British Guardian journalist.

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London’s fourth plinth artwork aims to ‘unite trans community around the world’

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Trafalgar Square piece by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles is made of masks depicting faces of transgender and non-binary people

A towering cuboid made of more than 300 masks depicting the faces of transgender and non-binary people, this year’s fourth plinth artwork, has been described as a piece designed to “unite the trans community around the world”.

The Mexican artist Teresa Margolles was flanked by members of her country’s trans community as Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant) was unwrapped in Trafalgar Square on Wednesday.

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Justin Trudeau’s future in doubt as party loses crucial Montreal election

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Victory by separatist Québécois candidate in once-safe Liberal seat puts pressure on Canadian PM to quit

Canada’s ruling Liberal party has lost a once-safe seat in Montreal, a result that is likely to put more pressure on the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to quit.

Elections Canada said that with 100% of the votes counted in the parliamentary constituency of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, the separatist Bloc Québécois candidate, Louis-Philippe Sauvé, had beaten the Liberal candidate, Laura Palestini, by a whisker: 28% to 27.2%. The New Democratic party (NDP) candidate received 26.1%.

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US rejects claims of CIA involvement in alleged plot to kill Maduro after Venezuela arrests six

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State department says allegations of American collusion are ‘categorically false’ as US navy member identified among foreign citizens detained

The US state department rejected wild allegations of CIA involvement in an alleged assassination plot against Nicolás Maduro after Venezuelan officials announced the arrest of three Americans, two Spaniards and a Czech on Saturday.

The claims of a plot against Maduro – the Venezuelan president, whose recent re-election is contested – were made on state television by Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister. Cabello said the foreign citizens including a US navy member were part of a CIA-led plot to overthrow the Venezuelan government and kill several members of its leadership. In the television programme, Cabello showed images of rifles that he said were confiscated from some of the alleged plotters.

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‘Transformative, for better and for worse’: what’s the legacy of Peru’s Alberto Fujimori

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Despite his convictions for corruption and human rights abuses, many see the president who has died at 86 as the country’s greatest leader

At 11.45 on Thursday morning, six white-gloved pallbearers carried a coffin holding the body of the most divisive, beloved and reviled Peruvian politician of the last four decades. They passed the mourners, the cameras and the flag-topped lances of the Húsares de Junín cavalry regiment, and set it down in the hall of Lima’s brutalist culture ministry.

Behind the coffin, holding hands and dressed in black under a pale but warm spring sky, came its occupant’s eldest daughter and youngest son. A crowd of ministers, political allies and military top brass awaited them at the ministry.

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Canadian military admits new sleeping bags are not suited to Canadian winters

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Soldiers who used bags, which cost army C$34.8m, reportedly found ‘several critical issues … related to lack of warmth’

The Canadian military has admitted that new sleeping bags issued to troops last year were not suited to “typical Canadian winter conditions”.

According to a briefing note obtained by the CBC, the army issued the new sleeping bags in the autumn of last year in Alberta, where several hundred troops were preparing for a joint Canada-US exercise in Alaska.

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