President says Venezuelan counterpart ‘doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States’
Donald Trump used an expletive to threaten the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, on Friday, claiming that the leftist autocrat had offered major concessions to appease the US.
The US president was speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday during a meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Continue reading...In the six attacks on similar vessels launched by Trump, this is the first where any survivors have been reported
The US has seized survivors of a military strike on a suspected drug-carrying vessel in the Caribbean, the first since Donald Trump began launching deadly attacks in the region last month, according to officials in Washington.
Trump later confirmed the attack, telling reporters that the targeted vessel was a narco-submarine.
Continue reading...The disease was eliminated across the Americas in 2024, but urgent vaccination drives are now under way as cases rise from Mexico to Bolivia after outbreaks farther north
Governments across Latin America are stepping up efforts to vaccinate their populations against measles, as outbreaks in North America drive a 34-fold increase in the number of cases reported in the region this year.
Measles cases have surged worldwide to a 25-year high, due to low vaccine coverage and the spread of misinformation about vaccine safety. However, there is added concern in parts of Latin America over unequal access to healthcare and the worrying situation in the US, which is facing its worst measles outbreak in decades following a reversal of vaccine policy led by Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Continue reading...Demonstrators clashed with police outside congress building amid public anger at crime crisis days after José Jerí assumed power
Peru is set to declare a state of emergency after at least one person was killed and dozens of police officers were injured in widespread protests against President José Jerí who assumed power just days ago.
Prime minister Ernesto Alvarez said late on Thursday that the government would declare the state of emergency in Lima within hours and is preparing a package of measures to tackle rising insecurity.
Continue reading...It is unknown whether US military rendered aid to survivors after attack on suspected ‘narcoterrorist’ vessel
The US military carried out a new strike on Thursday against a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean, and in what is believed to be the first such case, there were survivors among the crew, a US official told Reuters.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not offer additional details about the incident, which has not been previously reported. But it raises new questions, including whether the US military rendered aid to the survivors and whether they are now in US military custody.
Continue reading...Critics say referendum on rewriting country’s eco-friendly constitution is president’s latest pro-extractivist move
Indigenous and environmental leaders in Ecuador say they are facing a wave of state intimidation ahead of a national referendum next month on whether to rewrite the world’s only constitution that recognises the rights of nature.
The pressure is being applied by the rightwing president, Daniel Noboa, who has begun his second term with a Trumpian agenda of consolidating power and sweeping away legal and social barriers to extractivist businesses, such as mining.
Continue reading...Rule would require adopted children born abroad to prove ‘substantial connection’ to Canada to pass on citizenship
Canadian parents of children adopted abroad say a proposed citizenship bill represents a “shocking and unconscionable” erosion of their children’s rights by the governing Liberals.
The federal government is in the midst of overhauling the Citizenship Act so Canadians born abroad can pass citizenship to further generations born abroad. The bill would also restore or grant citizenship descendants who were excluded under older citizenship laws.
Continue reading...Move marks escalation in Maduro pressure campaign as president says US mulling strikes on Venezuelan territory
Donald Trump said on Wednesday he had authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in his administration’s pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro’s government.
Trump further suggested he was considering strikes on Venezuelan territory, a dramatic step that would go beyond a series of recent lethal attacks on boats in the Caribbean, which Democrats and United Nations experts have forcefully condemned as unlawful.
Continue reading...Jean Laprade ordered to pay $3,500 in legal saga of ‘hijacked planes’, Interpol red alerts and ‘inappropriate use’ of AI
A Quebec man has been ordered to pay C$5,000 (US$3,562) for submitting artificial intelligence hallucinations as part of his legal defense, a move the judge warned was “highly reprehensible” and threatened to undermine integrity in the legal system.
Justice Luc Morin of Quebec superior court levied the fine on Jean Laprade in a decision released on 1 October, capping a legal saga the judge said “contains several elements worthy of a successful movie script”, including a “hijacked plane passing through several complacent airports”, Interpol red alerts and the “inappropriate use of artificial intelligence” by Laprade.
Continue reading...Habit of rising early for live streams growing rapidly, suggesting Brazil is testing ground for religious influencers
Psychologist Cláudia Rodrigues de Oliveira Barbosa, 54, needs to be at work by 7.40am, but she wakes up at 3.40am – not because she has a lengthy commute, but to watch a “dawn prayer” livestream on YouTube.
She is one of the millions of Brazilians who tune in to the 4am sermons of Catholic friar Gilson da Silva Pupo Azevedo, 38, known as Frei Gilson, who has recently averaged an impressive 2m daily views for each video.
Continue reading...US president says ‘we will not be generous’ if leader fails to win key midterms after promising $20bn to prop up struggling economy
Donald Trump has warned he could cut financial aid to Argentina if his ally Javier Milei loses crucial legislative elections later this month.
“If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina,” the US president said as Milei visited the White House to seek the Republican’s political and economic support. “I’m with this man because his philosophy is correct. And he may win and he may not win – I think he’s going to win. And if he wins we are staying with him, and if he doesn’t win we are gone.”
Continue reading...UN has condemned US strikes on small boats it believes to be trafficking drugs as extrajudicial executions
Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the United States has struck another small boat that he accuses of carrying drugs in waters off the coast of Venezuela, killing six people aboard.
“The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike,” Trump said in a statement on his Truth Social social media platform. “No U.S. Forces were harmed.”
Continue reading...The administration’s sweeping visa cancellations extend to Mexico’s political elite, alarming allies and rivals alike
The US government has revoked the visas of at least 50 politicians and government officials in Mexico amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on drug cartels and their suspected political allies, according to two Mexican officials.
The move has sent quiet shock waves through Mexico’s political elite, who regularly travel to the US. It also marks a significant broadening of US anti-narcotics action, with the Trump administration targeting active politicians usually seen as too diplomatically sensitive.
Continue reading...María Corina Machado’s Nobel award puts focus on country but analysts doubt it will produce democratic change
In March 2019 as a nationwide blackout plunged Venezuela into darkness, hundreds of citizens huddled on a basketball court in the city of Maracaibo to hear their leader promise to guide them out of the gloom.
“We are, quite literally, living through our darkest hour. But these are also the brightest of times,” María Corina Machado told supporters as they used mobile phones to illuminate the night.
Continue reading...Opponent of Maduro regime receives award and praise for keeping ‘flame of democracy burning’
The Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado has won the Nobel peace prize for her dogged struggle to rescue the South American country from its fate as “a brutal, authoritarian state”.
Machado, 58, a conservative often described as Venezuela’s Iron Lady, has spent the last year living in hiding after her political movement was widely believed to have beaten the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in the July 2024 presidential election.
Continue reading...Congress leader José Jerí sworn in as interim president as majority of lawmakers initiate impeachment against Boluarte
Lawmakers in Peru have voted to remove the president, Dina Boluarte, whose term has been marked by protests and accusations of failing to stem crime.
Boluarte refused to appear before Congress on Friday for an overnight hearing after a majority of lawmakers, including some once loyal to her, voted to initiate impeachment proceedings.
Continue reading...Court in Buenos Aires sentences Fernando Sabag Montiel and accomplice over 2022 incident in which gun was pointed at former president but did not go off
A court in Argentina has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison after finding him guilty of attempting to kill former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
The court in Buenos Aires also sentenced the man’s accomplice to eight years in prison, capping a dramatic case that has captivated the country since 2022, when the main defendant, Fernando Sabag Montiel, squeezed through a crowd outside the ex-president’s home, thrust a loaded gun at her face and pulled the trigger.
Continue reading...First vote in Congress on military campaign that White House says has hit four vessels and killed at least 21 people
Senate Republicans voted down legislation Wednesday that would have put a check on Donald Trump’s ability to use deadly military force against drug cartels after Democrats tried to counter the administration’s extraordinary assertion of presidential war powers to destroy vessels in the Caribbean.
The vote fell mostly along party lines, 48-51, with two Republicans, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski, voting in favor and the Democrat John Fetterman voting against.
Continue reading...Armed criminal groups tear down precious rainforest to capitalise on record gold prices, report finds
An illegal gold rush has cleared 140,000 hectares of rainforest in the Peruvian Amazon and is accelerating as foreign, armed groups move into the region to profit from record gold prices, according to a report.
About 540 square miles of land have been cleared for mining in the South American country since 1984, and the environmental destruction is spreading rapidly across the country, Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) and its Peruvian partner organisation, Conservación Amazónica, found.
Continue reading...Presidents spoke on a video call as expert speculates that Haiti could be an area where the two leaders can cooperate
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has urged Donald Trump to scrap tariffs on his country’s imports and sanctions against its officials, as the two men held what the Brazilian presidency called a “friendly” video call, swapping phone numbers after months of friction.
Ties between the US and Brazil have nosedived as a result of Trump’s campaign to pressure Brazilian authorities into abandoning the coup trial of his far-right ally, Jair Bolsonaro.
Continue reading...