Category Archives: Americas

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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Ex-president of Honduras sentenced to 45 years in US prison for drug trafficking

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Juan Orlando Hernández said all Honduran political parties accepted drug money, but denied taking bribes himself

Juan Orlando Hernández, the disgraced former president of Honduras, has been sentenced to 45 years in prison for enabling drug traffickers to use his military and national police force to help ship tons of cocaine into the United States.

US federal judge P Kevin Castel sentenced Hernández to 45 years in a US prison and fined him $8m. A jury convicted him in March in a Manhattan federal court after a two-week trial, which was closely followed in his home country.

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Toronto residents flood city lotteries amid ‘impossibly unaffordable’ housing

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Demand far outstripped supply for six lotteries amid rising rents in city with scarcity of affordable options

Toronto inhabitants fed up with rising rents are flooding city-run lotteries for affordable housing in new developments, but the chance of being selected for a subsidized unit is often less than 1%.

One new development in the city’s West End recently offered a random public draw to allocate 135 units with rents pegged to income ceilings that would cost hundreds of dollars less than market rates. Nearly 12,500 people entered the draw for the homes aimed at middle-income earners in the Galleria on the Park development.

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Haitians wary as Kenyan police arrive on latest US-backed mission

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First contingent of multinational team lands in operation to end chaos in gang-controlled country

Hundreds of Kenyan police officers have arrived in Haiti as part of a US-backed security intervention aiming to rescue the Caribbean country from a criminal insurrection that toppled the prime minister and brought death and chaos to the streets.

About 400 members of the Kenya-led multinational police operation stepped off a Kenyan Airways plane at Port-au-Prince’s international airport on Tuesday. The US president, Joe Biden, hailed their arrival as the start of “an effort that will bring much-needed relief to Haitians”.

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Protecting just 1.2% of Earth’s land could save most-threatened species, says study

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Study identifies 16,825 sites around the world where prioritising conservation would prevent extinction of thousands of unique species

Protecting just 1.2% of the Earth’s surface for nature would be enough to prevent the extinction of the world’s most threatened species, according to a new study.

Analysis published in the journal Frontiers in Science has found that the targeted expansion of protected areas on land would be enough to prevent the loss of thousands of the mammals, birds, amphibians and plants that are closest to disappearing.

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US inspections of Mexican avocados to resume after suspension over assault of inspectors

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US agricultural department employees were attacked and detained earlier this week in Michoacán state

US government inspections of avocados and mangoes in the Mexican state of Michoacán will gradually resume, the US ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, announced on Friday, a week after they were suspended over an assault on inspectors.

The US agriculture department inspectors “will gradually begin to return to the packing plants following recent aggression against them”, Salazar said in a statement. “However, it is still necessary to advance in guaranteeing their security before reaching full operations.

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Ancient Mayan vase purchased by US woman for $4 returned to Mexico

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Anna Lee Dozier bought ceramic vessel at Maryland thrift store but it will now reside in Mexico City’s main museum

Mexico has regained a lost ancient Maya vase because of a US woman who bought the artefact for less than $5 at a thrift store.

Anne Lee Dozier recently received an expression of gratitude from the Mexican embassy in her home town of Washington DC for her role in reuniting the 1,200-to 1,800-year-old vase with its motherland.

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Second Canadian scientist alleges brain illness investigation was shut down

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Exclusive: Prof Samuel Weiss said in leaked email that government halted efforts to tackle mystery illness

A senior Canadian federal scientist has alleged that the government shut down an investigation into a mystery brain illness in New Brunswick that he believes may have affected 350 people.

He is the second federal scientist to accuse the government of deliberately halting the investigation and to say that the caseload is higher than the government has acknowledged.

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