Category Archives: Americas

Bahamas re-elects Progressive Liberal party’s Philip Davis as prime minister

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Davis is the country’s first leader to serve a second consecutive term in nearly 30 years

The Bahamas prime minister, Philip Davis, and his ruling Progressive Liberal party (PLP) have been re-elected, making him the country’s first leader to serve a second consecutive term in nearly 30 years.

“The Bahamian people have spoken, and I receive their verdict with humility and gratitude,” Davis told Reuters. “This victory is a mandate to keep moving the Bahamas forward, to expand opportunity, strengthen security, ease the pressure on families, and deliver progress across our islands.”

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Drug gang attacks ‘force hundreds of Indigenous families to flee’ in Mexico

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Violence in Guerrero state has driven as many as 1,000 households from their homes, rights group says

Hundreds of Indigenous families have been forced to flee their homes in the mountains of central Mexico by intense attacks from a local criminal group, including drone bombings, an Indigenous rights organisation said on Monday.

A gang known as Los Ardillos has been carrying out attacks in Guerrero state for years, but they started to intensify last week. Villages were subjected to eight hours of bombings on Saturday, the National Indigenous Congress said, forcing between 800 to 1,000 families to flee to other towns.

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Six people found dead inside train car at rail yard near Texas-Mexico border

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Discovery was made by Union Pacific employee inspecting stopped train at the yard in Laredo before it continued its journey north

Rail workers in Texas found six people dead inside a boxcar at a yard close to the Mexican border on Sunday afternoon, officials said.

The discovery was made by a Union Pacific employee inspecting the stopped train at the yard in Laredo before it continued its journey north, a spokesperson for the Laredo police department said, citing the railroad freight company.

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Chicago teen who pushed for parents’ release from ICE custody dies of cancer

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Kevin González, 18-year-old who had terminal colon cancer, died shortly after reuniting with his parents in Mexico

A Chicago-born teen who advocated for his parents’ release from US immigration authorities’ custody while fighting terminal cancer has died shortly after reuniting with them in Mexico, his family has told media outlets.

The parents of 18-year-old Kevin González had been taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in Arizona in mid-April after they crossed the US border from Mexico without permission in an attempt to see him in Chicago as his health waned. González since then traveled to be with relatives in Mexico, and in recent days he had publicly pleaded for them to be released from ICE custody so they could be with him as he battled metastatic stage four colon cancer.

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Sharp drop in ‘forever chemicals’ in seabird eggs hailed as win for regulation

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Levels of Pfas in northern gannet eggs in Canada fell up to 74% over 55-year period of study

Levels of some of the most dangerous Pfas compounds have dramatically fallen in Canadian seabird eggs, which the authors of a new peer-reviewed study say illustrates how regulations are effective.

Researchers looked at Pfas levels in the eggs of northern gannets in the St Lawrence Seaway basin over a 55-year period. Pfas levels shot up from the 1960s through the peak of the chemicals’ use in the late 1990s and early aughts, then fell.

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‘Truly terrifying’: Alberta voter data breach raises fears for Canada’s electoral integrity

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Debates over secession overshadowed by revelations separatist-linked group gained access to list of electors

The illegal use of voter information by rightwing separatists in the province of Alberta has raised fresh fears over Canada’s electoral integrity by making valuable and “incredibly confidential” personal data easily accessible to malicious actors, security experts have warned.

The data breach, one of the largest in Canadian history, has prompted warnings of a “truly terrifying” new battleground over information, persuasion and foreign interference in already weakened democratic systems.

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‘Amazon of America’: film paints vision of a post-coup Brazil giving up rainforest

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Vitória Régia imagines rightwing Bolsonaro plot succeeded with US help – and highlights threats facing Indigenous peoples

The year is 2025 and far-right coup plotters have annihilated Brazil’s democracy, assassinating the president, closing the national congress and surrendering the Amazon rainforest and its untold riches to the United States.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Amazon of America,” a thick-accented North American soldier tells a group of journalists being taken on a propaganda tour of an oil refinery in the newly annexed jungle realm. Nearby, a replica of the Statue of Liberty has been carved out of the wilderness to celebrate Washington’s tutelage over more than half of Brazil.

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Argentina in spotlight over hantavirus as authorities retrace footsteps of ship’s passengers

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Thirty years after first person-to-person transmission was documented in Patagonia, scientists say global heating could increase world’s exposure

An outbreak in rural communities 30 years ago in the Patagonia area of Argentina led scientists, for the first time, to document person-to-person transmission of hantavirus, which until then had been known only to spread through contact with rodents.

Nearly a decade ago another outbreak, also in Patagonia, provided detailed evidence of inter-human transmission when an infected 68-year-old rural worker attended a birthday party in a small village. The infection spread and resulted in 11 deaths.

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Four south Florida men convicted in Haitian president’s assassination

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Men were convicted in Miami federal court for plotting to kill Jovenel Moïse at his Port-au-Prince home in 2021

Four south Florida men were convicted on Friday of plotting to kill the Haitian president, Jovenel Moïse, in 2021 by hiring mercenaries to assassinate him at his Port-au-Prince home, court records show.

Prosecutors argued during the nine-week trial in a Miami federal court that the men assembled two dozen former Colombian soldiers and supplied them with money, guns, ammunition and tactical vests in a conspiracy to kill Moïse. The 53-year-old president was shot dead in July 2021 at his private residence in the hills above Port-au-Prince, a killing that left a gaping political vacuum in the Caribbean nation and emboldened powerful gangs.

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Frustrated by Iran, Trump at last seizes enriched uranium – but from Venezuela

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US energy department says 13.5kg of uranium taken from reactor in Caracas – a fraction of the 408kg held by Tehran

Donald Trump has succeeded in removing a country’s stash of highly enriched uranium – although that country is not Iran.

On Friday, the US Department of Energy announced that “thanks to President Trump’s decisive leadership” 13.5kg (about 30 pounds) of uranium had been removed from a legacy research reactor in Venezuela.

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Canadian high school where deadly mass shooting occurred to be torn down

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Tumbler Ridge secondary school was site of February mass shooting in which nine were killed and dozens injured

The school that was the site of one of Canada’s deadliest mass shootings will be torn down, officials have announced.

The decision to demolish the Tumbler Ridge secondary school came after meetings between the school board and survivors, family and community members, said the British Columbia premier, David Eby.

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Up to 2cm a month: Nasa keeps track as Mexico City sinks into the ground

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Powerful radar system is providing new data on city’s subsidence, which experts hope will draw more attention to it

Walking into Mexico City’s sprawling central Zócalo is a dizzying experience. At one end of the plaza, the capital’s cathedral, with its soaring spires, slumps in one direction. An attached church, known as the Metropolitan Sanctuary, tilts in the other. The nearby National Palace also seems off-kilter.

The teetering of many of the capital’s historic buildings is the most visible sign of a phenomenon that has been ongoing for more than a century: Mexico City is sinking at an alarming rate.

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Argentina races to find origins of cruise ship hantavirus outbreak, amid reports some passengers have returned to US

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Argentina, where the MV Hondius cruise departed, consistently ranked by WHO as having highest incidence of hantavirus in region

Officials and experts in Argentina are scrambling to determine if their country is the source of a deadly hantavirus outbreak that has gripped an Atlantic cruise ship, amid reports that a number of passengers have already returned to their home countries.

Argentina, where the cruise to Antarctica departed, is consistently ranked by the World Health Organization (WHO) as having the highest incidence of the rare, rodent-borne disease in Latin America. Investigators there are working to contact trace the source of contamination.

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US says migration has made Europe an ‘incubator’ for terrorism in new counter-terrorism strategy

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The 16-page report was led by Trump-ally Sebastian Gorka, and places drug cartels in the Americas at the centre of counter-terrorism efforts

The Trump administration has accused Europe of being an “incubator” for terrorism fuelled by mass migration, in a new counter-terrorism strategy unveiled on Wednesday.

The strategy also focuses on rooting out “violent left-wing extremists” including “radically pro-transgender” groups, as Trump’s conservative administration steps up its political attacks on opponents.

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Mexico nightclub’s $300 cover charge for US citizens captures popular mood

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Owner of Japan nightclub says ‘This is a response to a year of insults directed at us – as a country – by the United States’

A Mexico City nightclub has gone viral for charging Americans a nearly $300 cover charge, while citizens from any other country pay just $20 for access, and Mexicans and other Latin Americans pay only $14.

The Instagram announcement from the nightclub Japan in the Roma Norte neighborhood has been liked over 26,000 times and received more than 200 comments, mostly supporting the policy as part of a broader revolt in the capital against what many see as a US takeover.

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Search called off for Australian hiker missing in rugged Canadian national park

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Police suspend ‘extensive’ six-day air and ground search in Nova Scotia, citing ‘no new information’

Teams in eastern Canada have called off an “extensive” six-day air and ground search of a rugged park for a missing Australian hiker.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said this week it had suspended operations after an effort involving dogs, 100 people, aircraft and ground crews yielded “no new information” in the whereabouts of Denise Ann Willams.

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Alberta separatists submit 300,000 signatures to push independence referendum

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Authorities investigate leak of 2.9 million voters’ details, adding to turmoil around independence push

Alberta separatists have delivered more than 300,000 signatures to elections officials in western Canada, in support of their attempt to force an independence referendum in Canada’s oil-rich province.

But the effort stumbled immediately as a separatist-linked group posted the personal data of nearly three million residents online in one of the largest data breaches in Canadian history, fomenting fears of a possible political interference crisis.

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Carney appoints former war crimes prosecutor as Canada governor general

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Louise Arbour will serve as Canada’s representative of King Charles and carry out ceremonial and constitutional duties

Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has appointed a former supreme court justice and war crimes prosecutor as the country’s new governor general, saying her appointment would reflect the importance of global institutions.

Louise Arbour, a celebrated jurist, served as United Nations commissioner and prosecuted war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, will serve as Canada’s representative of King Charles III.

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Canadian fiddler sues Google after AI Overview wrongly claimed he was a sex offender

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Ashley MacIsaac, who is seeking $1.5m in civil lawsuit, says inaccurate information led to concert cancellation

An acclaimed Canadian fiddle player has launched a $1.5m civil lawsuit against Google, alleging that the online giant defamed him by falsely identifying him as a sex offender in an AI-generated summary of his life and career.

Ashley MacIsaac, a three-time Juno award-winning musician, filed the claim in the Ontario superior court of justice, asserting that Google was liable for the “foreseeable republication” of its AI-generated Overview feature, which previously published defamatory claims that he had been convicted of multiple criminal offences, including the sexual assault of a woman, internet luring involving a child with the intention of sexual assaulting the child, and assault causing bodily harm.

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Canada to be first non-European nation at EPC summit as Carney seeks allies

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PM’s attendance at European Political Community meeting in Yerevan seen as part of effort to build new ties after US rupture

Canada is to become the first non-European country to attend a meeting of the European Political Community when the prime minister, Mark Carney, joins Monday’s summit of the 48-plus nation grouping in Yerevan, Armenia.

Carney has said he is determined to build a new network of trade and diplomatic alliances after the loss of US markets under Donald Trump. His presence will also represent a show of western support for Armenia in its efforts to distance itself from Russia at a time when Washington’s approach to Moscow’s opponents, such as Ukraine, is at best ambiguous. Canadian diplomats have rejected suggestions Ottawa might seek EU membership.

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