Category Archives: Americas

Ann Wilson, frontwoman of Heart, diagnosed with cancer

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Chart-topping singer cancels remainder of 2024 tour dates but says she hopes to return next year

Ann Wilson, the lead singer of rock band Heart, has announced that she has been diagnosed with cancer.

The 74-year-old wrote in an Instagram post: “I recently underwent an operation to remove something that, as it turns out, was cancerous. The operation was successful & I’m feeling great but my doctors are now advising me to undergo a course of preventive chemotherapy & I’ve decided to do it. And so my doctors are instructing me to take the rest of the year away from the stage in order to fully recover.”

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Four dead as category 5 Hurricane Beryl wreaks havoc across Caribbean

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With winds up to 160mph, the monster storm pushed through Grenada and is on track for Jamaica and the Yucatán peninsula

At least four people have died after Hurricane Beryl wreaked “almost complete destruction” on small and vulnerable islands in the Caribbean.

The monster hurricane, which is now barrelling towards Jamaica, has strengthened to category 5 status, which means it can achieve wind speeds of over 157mph (253km/h).

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New Cuban radar site near US military base could aid China spying – report

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CSIS calls site near Guantánamo a ‘powerful tool’ that will be able to monitor air and maritime activity of US military

Satellite images appear to show that Cuba is building a new radar site likely to be capable of spying on the US’s nearby Guantánamo Bay naval base, in the latest upgrade to the country’s surveillance capabilities long thought to be linked to China.

The base, under construction since 2021 but previously not publicly reported, is east of the city of Santiago de Cuba near the El Salao neighborhood, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said in a report published on Monday and later referenced by the Wall Street Journal.

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Argentina’s president butts heads with South American leftist leaders

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Turning from his ferocious attacks on domestic opponents, Javier Milei aims his scorn at the heads of Brazil and Bolivia

On the campaign trail, Argentina’s showman president, Javier Milei, brandished a chainsaw to highlight plans for ferocious spending cuts. In office, the rightwinger has apparently decided to take the power tool to foreign relations as well.

In recent days, Milei has busied himself losing friends and alienating people with a series of verbal attacks on the leftwing leaders of Argentina’s two biggest neighbours, Bolivia and Brazil.

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Why Hurricane Beryl foretells a scary storm season

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Hot sea temperatures are fuelling explosive growth of first ever category 4 storm in June

Hurricane Beryl’s explosive growth into an unprecedented early whopper of a storm shows the literal hot water the Atlantic and Caribbean are in – and the kind of season ahead, experts said.

Beryl smashed multiple records even before its major-hurricane-level winds approached land. The powerful storm is acting more like monsters that form in the peak of hurricane season thanks mostly to water temperatures as hot or hotter than the region normally gets in September, five hurricane experts told the Associated Press.

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Panama to shut down Darién Gap route in deal that will see US pay to repatriate migrants

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New president José Raúl Mulino has vowed to close the route through which thousands of migrants travel to the US every year

The US will cover the costs of repatriating migrants who enter Panama illegally, under a deal agreed with the Central American country’s new president who has vowed to shut down the treacherous Darién Gap used by people travelling north to the United States.

In his first address as president, José Raúl Mulino promised to seek international assistance to find solutions to what he described as a costly “humanitarian and environmental crisis”.

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Air Europa plane diverts to Brazil after severe turbulence injures dozens

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About 40 passengers taken to hospitals after flight from Madrid to Montevideo forced to make emergency landing

An Air Europa flight from Madrid to Montevideo has been forced to make an emergency landing at a Brazilian airport due to “severe turbulence”, the airline said.

About 40 passengers, mostly with minor injuries, were taken to hospitals in Natal, the capital of Rio Grande do Norte state after the plane was diverted early on Monday.

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Adoptee stolen at birth sues Chile over thousands of dictatorship-era thefts

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Jimmy Lippert Thyden González alleges country engaged in plan to steal babies from perceived enemies in 70s and 80s

A Chilean-American man raised in the United States has filed a criminal complaint against the Chilean state, alleging that it engaged in a systematic plan to steal thousands of babies from perceived enemies of the state in the 1970s and 1980s.

The case filed by Jimmy Lippert Thyden González, 43, aims to advance the task of Chilean prosecutors and human rights groups working on accountability for crimes committed under Gen Augusto Pinochet.

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‘Extremely dangerous’ Hurricane Beryl makes landfall in Grenada

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Roofs blown off by 150mph winds and thousands hunkered down as hurricane reaches Caribbean island of Carriacou

Hurricane Beryl has made landfall on the Caribbean island of Carriacou after becoming the earliest storm of its strength to form in the Atlantic, fueled by record warm waters.

Carriacou is one of the islands of Grenada, where officials said winds increased up to 150mph (240km/h), blowing off roofs and causing other damage.

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Belize crackdown on gang-related killings leads to dozens of arrests

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State of emergency imposes curfew on young people and gives police powers to detain suspects for up to 90 days

A controversial state of emergency in Belize to crack down on a surge of gang-related murders and other violent crimes has led to the arrest of nearly a hundred people.

The order, announced on Tuesday, gives police the power to search homes without a warrant and detain suspects for up to 90 days. Originally implemented for 30 days, the government announced on Friday that it was increasing its length to maximise its effectiveness.

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Bolivia’s president accused of plotting coup against himself to boost popularity

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Opponents say abortive raid on palace by angry ex-army chief was a stunt to bolster support

It was the armoured vehicles circling the Plaza Murillo - the normally tranquil central square in historic downtown La Paz – that initially set Bolivians on edge on Wednesday afternoon. By the time a phalanx of troops had marched on the presidential palace, the sense of collective confusion and shock was at fever pitch.

By 2.30pm, a small tank was repeatedly ramming the gates of the neoclassical building known as Palacio Quemado until troops forced their way in and, in an extraordinary scene, the coup leader – disgruntled former army chief Juan José Zúñiga – faced off against the president, Luis Arce.

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Tropical Storm Beryl predicted to turn into first hurricane of season

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Storm is forecast to glance off Barbados on Sunday before heading through Caribbean and toward the Yucatán

Tropical Storm Beryl is forecast to become the first hurricane of the season before skirting the southern tip of Barbados in the south-eastern Caribbean on Sunday.

Beryl currently holds maximum sustained winds of 60mph (95km/h) and is traveling west at 21mph (34km/h), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center.

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Bolivia coup attempt: ex-army chief given six months ‘preventive detention’, says prosecutor

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Juan José Zúñiga Macías has been handed charges of terrorism and armed uprising, says prosecutor, as president again rejects claims of ‘self-coup’ to boost popularity

A Bolivian former army chief accused of leading a failed coup attempt has been given six months “preventive detention”, a top prosecutor said on Friday, as the president again denied the attack was a “self-coup” designed to boost his flagging popularity.

General Juan José Zúñiga Macías has been handed charges of terrorism and armed uprising, state prosecutor Cesar Siles said. Zúñiga has said he was following an order from the president, Luis Arce, following Wednesday’s fleeting insurrection in La Paz. In the moments before he was detained, the ex-army chief claimed: “The president told me the situation was fucked and that he needed something to boost his popularity.”.

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Canadian woman gets three years’ jail in first ever sentencing for a ‘Pretendian’

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Karima Manji, whose daughters accessed over C$150,000 in benefits for Inuit residents, pleaded guilty in February

A Canadian woman who fraudulently claimed her daughters were Inuit has been sentenced to three years in jail, in what is believed to be the first ever custodial sentence for a “Pretendian”.

Karima Manji, whose daughters accessed more than C$150,000 in benefits intended for Inuit, was sentenced on Thursday, after pleading guilty to fraud in February.

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Canadian man makes history after receiving zero election votes: ‘I am the true unity candidate’

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Félix-Antoine Hamel ran in federal election to protest the country’s lack of electoral reforms

A Canadian man has made history by receiving zero votes in a contested federal election, after running as part of a protest over the lack of electoral reforms in the country.

“When I saw the result, I was like: ‘Well, I am the true unity candidate. Everyone agrees not to vote for me,’” Félix-Antoine Hamel told CBC News.

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British Columbia investigates claims energy company ‘dramatically’ influenced climate policy

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Inquiry into possible violations of provincial law after TC Energy executive claims company influenced government

British Columbia’s attorney general has called for an investigation into possible violations of provincial law after a Canadian oil and gas executive claimed the company improperly used political connections to “dramatically’’ weaken the province’s environmental policies.

In leaked audio recordings first published by the Narwhal and heard by the Guardian, the executive, Liam Iliffe, claimed that TC Energy, a Calgary-based pipeline company with operations spanning the continent, had ghostwritten ministerial briefing notes and planted employees “next to the strawberries or the romaine lettuce” at a Costco supermarket to choreograph seemingly impromptu meetings with senior bureaucrats in order to push the company’s agenda.

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Former heads of Bolivia’s army and navy arrested over failed coup

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Minister says alleged putschists will be charged with crimes after apparent mutiny in volatile country

The former heads of Bolivia’s army and navy are among a dozen people so far arrested for their alleged roles in a seemingly bungled military coup designed to topple the South American country’s leftwing president, Luis Arce.

Speaking on Thursday morning, just over 12 hours after the fleeting insurrection in La Paz, Bolivia’s minister of government, Eduardo Del Castillo, accused the former army chief Gen Juan José Zúñiga Macías and the former head of the navy R Adm Juan Arnez Salvador of leading a group of putschists who had “conspired to bring down a democratically elected government”.

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Canada’s 2023 wildfires created four times more emissions than planes did last year – report

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Months-long fires spewed about the same amount of carbon dioxide that 647m cars put in the air in a year, data shows

Catastrophic Canadian warming-fueled wildfires last year pumped more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air than India did by burning fossil fuels, setting ablaze an area of forest larger than the US state of West Virginia, new research has found.

Scientists at the World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland calculated how devastating the impacts of the months-long fires in Canada in 2023 that sullied the air around large parts of the globe. They figured it put 3.28bn tons (2.98 metric tons) of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air, according to a study update published in Thursday’s Global Change Biology. The update is not peer-reviewed, but the original study was.

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‘We cannot deny history again’: Brazil floods show how German migration silenced Black and Indigenous stories

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The promotion of European immigration was linked to the idea of ‘whitening the Brazilian population’, say historians

Dominga Menezes was only 12 years old when she danced for a dictator.

It was 25 July 1974, and São Leopoldo, a medium-sized city in Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, was celebrating both the anniversary of its founding and 150 years of German immigration to Brazil.

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Bolivia’s president sees off attempted coup after urging citizens to take to streets

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Luis Arce said the country’s democracy was at stake after army troops seized control of La Paz’s political heart and military police storm palace

Bolivia’s President Luis Arce appears to have seen off an attempt to topple his leftwing government after a dramatic afternoon in which heavily armed troops, seemingly commanded by a top army general, stormed the government palace before beating a retreat and seeing their alleged leader detained.

On Wednesday afternoon Arce urged citizens to take to the streets to defend the country’s democracy from an apparent coup attempt, after troops seized control of a central square in La Paz which houses government buildings.

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