Category Archives: Americas

Benito the giraffe begins long journey for better weather in central Mexico

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Conditions at Ciudad Juárez zoo on US-Mexico border not suitable so container takes Benito to conservation park 1,000 miles away

A giraffe named Benito has started a 50-hour road trip to leave behind the cold and loneliness of Mexico’s northern border city of Ciudad Juárez to find warmth – and maybe a mate – in his new home 2,000km (1,200 miles) to the south.

A campaign by animal rights activists won the four-year-old giraffe a transfer to an animal park in Puebla state in central Mexico, where he will join a group of resident giraffes and enjoy a more suitable climate.

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Haiti: residents trapped as armed gangs target key pocket of Port-au-Prince

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Thick smoke rises above strategic neighbourhood of Solino as frantic residents call into radio stations for help

Gang members have targeted a strategic neighbourhood in Haiti’s capital, in a four-day attack which has left residents trapped in their homes by flaming barricades and automatic gunfire.

Shots echoed throughout Solino on Thursday as thick columns of black smoke rose above the once peaceful neighborhood, as frantic residents called radio stations appealing for help.

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Dominican officials arrest Tekashi 6ix9ine on domestic violence charges

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US rapper scheduled to appear in court on Thursday and is being held in a Santo Domingo jail

Authorities in the Dominican Republic have arrested the US rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine, who is scheduled to appear in court on Thursday on charges of domestic violence.

The rapper, whose real name is Daniel Hernández, is being held at a jail in the capital, Santo Domingo, where he was arrested on Wednesday, officials said.

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Nova Scotia man charged with starting province’s largest-ever wildfire

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Dalton Clark Stewart, 22, accused of lighting Canada’s Barrington Lake fire, which burned for one month in 2023

A Nova Scotia man has been charged for allegedly starting the eastern Canadian province’s largest-ever wildfire.

The charges against Dalton Clark Stewart, 22, come only days after a Quebec man, inspired by conspiracy theories, pleaded guilty to 14 charges of arson after deliberately lighting forest fires.

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Brazilian police arrest man in connection with killing of US art dealer

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Brent Sikkema, co-owner of a prominent New York art gallery, found dead with 18 stab wounds in his Rio de Janeiro apartment

Police in Brazil have arrested a man in connection with the killing in Brazil of an American art dealer who was the co-owner of a prominent gallery in Manhattan, police said on Thursday.

Brent Sikkema, 75, was found dead on Monday with 18 stab wounds in his Rio de Janeiro apartment.

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Ecuador prosecutor investigating gang attack on TV station shot and killed

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Police arrest two after César Suárez killed in brazen daylight attack in Guayaquil amid dramatic recent surge in violence

The public prosecutor who was leading the investigation into the on-air assault on an Ecuadorian television station has been shot and killed in a brazen daylight attack in the crime-ridden city of Guayaquil.

César Suárez, who focused on cases involving organized trans-national crime in Guayas province – one of the country’s most violent areas – was ambushed in the north of the city on Wednesday afternoon.

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Cocaine, gangs and murder: Ecuador’s 10 days of terror – podcast

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Just a few years ago it was one of the most peaceful countries in Latin America. But last week drug gangs stormed a live TV broadcast and unleashed a wave of terror. Tom Phillips reports

Compared with its fellow Latin American countries Colombia and Mexico – which for decades have been destabilised by violent drug gangs – Ecuador was calm and peaceful. But a wave of terror last Tuesday showed just how quickly things have changed.

After the prison break by an infamous drug baron, chaos erupted. Masked men and boys interrupted a live TV broadcast and held journalists at gunpoint. Elsewhere, police officers and prison guards were taken hostage, explosions were heard and violence spread.

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Suspect allegedly involved in shooting of Spain Vox party co-founder is arrested in Colombia

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Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a former vice-president of the European parliament and co-founder of Spain’s Vox party, was shot in the head in Madrid last year

Colombian police say they have arrested a Venezuelan suspected of involvement in the alleged attempted assassination in Madrid last year of a co-founder of Spain’s far-right Vox party.

Greg Oliver Higuera Marcano was wanted in connection with last year’s shooting of Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a former leader of Spain’s main rightwing political party in Catalonia who went on to co-found Vox, and is a former vice-president of the European parliament.

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Mexican activist who searched for disappeared brother now missing after attack

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Lorenza Cano seized by gunmen in Guanajuato state after her husband and son shot dead in attack

A Mexican woman who spent five years looking for her disappeared brother has herself been abducted in an attack in which her husband and son were shot dead.

Lorenza Cano, one of Mexico’s many volunteer searchers trying to find the country’s 114,000 desaparecidos, was seized late on Monday by a group of gunmen who burst into her home in the northern city of Salamanca.

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Four-day work week to be trialled in Dominican Republic

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Employees will earn same salary but hours will be reduced from 44 to 36 hours as part of national voluntary trial, says government

Companies in the Dominican Republic are preparing for a voluntary six-month pilot of a four-day work week, the first move of its kind for the Caribbean country.

The initiative would launch in February, with employees earning the same salary, the Dominican government said, and the standard work week reduced from 44 hours to 36 hours, Monday through to Thursday.

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Canadian man who claimed wildfires were a federal conspiracy admits arson

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The country saw record-breaking blazes during the summer and Brian Paré pleaded guilty to lighting more than a dozen fires

A Canadian man who claimed forest fires were the result of a government conspiracy has pleaded guilty to lighting more than a dozen blazes during the country’s record-breaking wildfire season, as nearly 100 fires persist in drought-stricken regions.

Brian Paré admitted to 13 counts of arson and one count of arson with disregard for human life at the courthouse in central Quebec, an act that drew away key firefighting resources from nearly 700 fires in the province last summer.

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Scores of hostages released from gang-controlled prisons, Ecuador government claims

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Presidency makes announcement nearly a week after wave of violence hit South American country

Scores of hostages have been released from Ecuador’s gang-controlled prisons, the government has claimed, nearly a week after the South American country was shaken by a massive wave of violence.

“All of the hostages have been freed,” the Ecuadorian presidency announced on social media on Saturday night.

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‘We are at war’: Ecuador’s president vows to crack down on gangs behind week of violence

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After criminals storm TV station and take prison guards hostage, Daniel Noboa pledges to stop his country becoming a narco-state

Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has denied that his government is embarking on an indiscriminate campaign to hunt down and kill gang members, as the South American country continues to reel from a week of chaos and deadly violence that he has classified as a war.

In his first interviews since the turmoil began last Monday, Ecuador’s 36-year-old leader said he was determined to stop his country becoming a “narco-state” and believed the only way to do so was with a hardline crackdown on the organised crime groups bringing “terror” to its prison system and streets.

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Quaker Oats expands recall of granola bars and cereals for salmonella risk

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At least 24 reports of adverse events related to products recalled in December but no illnesses confirmed linked to foods, FDA says

The Quaker Oats Company has added two dozen additional types of granola bars, cereals and snack foods to a December recall over possible salmonella contamination.

The company, which is owned by PepsiCo, announced the additional recall in the US and Canada on Thursday.

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Former Suriname dictator missing after failing to turn himself in to prison

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Wife of Dési Bouterse, sentenced last month to 20 years for 1982 killings of opponents, says ‘he’s not going to turn himself in’

Surinamese authorities are searching for ex-president Dési Bouterse after he failed to turn himself in to start a prison sentence for involvement in the murder of 15 political opponents in 1982, the prosecutor general’s office said on Friday.

Bouterse was ordered this week to report to jail, but his wife, Ingrid Bouterse-Waldring, told journalists outside their home early on Friday: “He’s not going to turn himself in.”

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‘This used to be a calm place’: killing continues in Ecuador’s week of chaos

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As cartels and crime syndicates flock to Ecuador for cocaine trade profits, its murder rate has soared, with a TV station assault the crescendo of a week of bloodshed

Political upheaval and street protests, gun battles and floods. José Luis Calderón has seen it all during his 23 years as one of Guayaquil’s top television journalists. Never had the Ecuadorean reporter been the story himself.

That changed just after lunch last Tuesday when the 47-year-old reporter heard shouts and the sound of people running in the corridors of TC Televisión, the channel where he works. “At first … we thought it was a fight,” he remembered. But as the yelling intensified, it became clear it was not.

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Italy refuses to extradite priest accused of murder and torture to Argentina

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Rev Franco Reverberi is accused of crimes against humanity during country’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s

Italy’s justice minister has refused Argentina’s request to extradite a priest accused of crimes against humanity during the country’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Rev Franco Reverberi, 86, who served as military chaplain during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military regime, faces charges related to the alleged murder in 1976 of the 20-year-old political activist José Guillermo Berón, and his alleged participation in torture.

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Valley of lost cities that flourished 2,000 years ago found in Amazon

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Laser-sensor technology reveals network of earthen mounds and buried roads in rainforest area of Ecuador

Archaeologists have uncovered a cluster of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest that was home to at least 10,000 farmers about 2,000 years ago.

A series of earthen mounds and buried roads in Ecuador was first noticed more than two decades ago by archaeologist Stéphen Rostain. But at the time, “I wasn’t sure how it all fit together,” said Rostain, one of the researchers who reported on the finding in the journal Science on Thursday.

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Ecuador’s biggest city ‘a desert’ as state tries to restore order after gang violence

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Guayaquil eerily quiet as armed forces patrol in wake of stunning wave of arson, bombings and prison riots that killed as many as 15

Ecuador’s largest city has been transformed into a virtual ghost town by a stunning wave of criminal violence that prompted the South American country’s recently elected president to declare his country was in “a state of war”.

On Thursday, the streets of Guayaquil – a normally teeming port city of about 3 million residents – remained eerily quiet after a succession of arson attacks, car bombings, shootings and prison riots in different parts of the country claimed as many as 15 lives.

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