Category Archives: Americas

Jair Bolsonaro: tens of thousands attend rally in support of Brazil’s former president

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The former president called for amnesty for rioters who took part in an alleged coup, during his speech in São Paulo

Tens of thousands of supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro have rallied in the country’s biggest city, in a show of strength against legal challenges that could put him in jail.

The far-right former president, who called the rally in São Paulo after being targeted by a police raid earlier this month investigating an alleged coup attempt, spoke for about 20 minutes to defend himself, while reminiscing about his time in power.

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Canada’s assisted dying laws in spotlight as expansion paused again

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Canada has one of the highest rates of euthanasia in the world, with 4.1% of deaths aided by doctors, but moves to make it more accessible are being questioned

When Canada’s justice minister announced plans to legalise medically assisted dying nearly a decade ago, she acknowledged the proposed law might prove divisive. “For some, medical assistance in dying will be troubling,” Jody Wilson-Raybould told reporters in 2016. “For others, this legislation will not go far enough.”

A fresh delay in expanding the scope of who can access a medically assisted death has once again put a spotlight on the system, which critics and advocates agree is one of the most liberal in the world. But the two groups remain sharply divided on what that means for improving the quality of life – and death – in the country.

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Canadian university vending machine error reveals use of facial recognition

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University of Waterloo dispenser displays facial recognition message despite no prior indication it was monitoring students

A malfunctioning vending machine at a Canadian university has inadvertently revealed that a number of them have been using facial recognition technology in secret.

Earlier this month, a snack dispenser at the University of Waterloo showed an error message – Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognition.App.exe – on the screen.

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Biden officials play down report of US investigation into Mexican president

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US looked into claims that Andrés Manuel López Obrador allies took money from cartels, according to a New York Times report

Officials with the justice department and the Biden administration have downplayed a report that US law enforcement spent years looking into allegations that allies of Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, were investigated for taking millions of dollars from drug cartels after the president took office.

López Obrador, who denied the report, also reacted to the New York Times report on Thursday by revealing the contact details of the journalist at its Mexico bureau, Natalie Kitroeff, including her telephone number – which Mexico’s freedom of information body (INAI) immediately said it would launch an investigation into.

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Weather tracker: Contrasts in cold and heat break records in China

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Xinjiang in north-west recorded minus 52.3C, while Badu in south recorded 38C – the largest temperature contrast recorded in a single country

China’s Xinjiang region, in the far west of the country, experienced record-breaking low temperatures of -52.3C on 18 February, surpassing a 64-year-old record for the region. The figure was just shy of the lowest national temperature of -53C, which was recorded in the Heilongjiang region in January last year.

The extreme weather has caused big disruption after the lunar new year celebrations, with blizzards and ice leaving people stranded on roads and railways. On the same day, Badu in the south of China recorded a maximum temperature of 38C, meaning there was a staggering temperature difference of 90.3C across the country. This is the largest temperature contrast ever recorded for a single country, surpassing the US in January 1954 by a whole degree Celsius.

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Colombia vows to put nature at the heart of global environmental negotiations

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The environment minister Susana Muhamad says nature is a ‘pillar’ of fighting the climate crisis

The next round of global biodiversity negotiations will put nature at the heart of the international environment agenda, Colombia’s environment minister has said, as the country prepares for the Cop16 summit.

Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, who is expected to be the Cop16 president, said the South American country would use the summit to ensure nature was a key part of the global environmental agenda in the year building up to the climate Cop30 in the Brazilian Amazon in 2025, where countries will present new plans on how they will meet the Paris agreement.

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Repression in Venezuela intensifying ahead of elections, rights groups say

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Fears Maduro government is trying to shut down scrutiny after lawyer is arrested and UN human rights office shut down

Human rights groups are calling for the Venezuelan government to halt a crackdown on civil society after it jailed a prominent lawyer and then banished a UN human rights office from Caracas for criticising her arrest.

The arrest of the 57-year-old lawyer and military expert Rocío San Miguel has shocked observers, who say Venezuela is entering a darker phase of state oppression intended to crush government opposition in the lead-up to elections expected later this year.

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Ex-Honduran leader praised by Trump faces trial in US for running ‘narco-state’

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Juan Orlando Hernández stands trial in a New York courtroom on Monday accused of taking millions in bribes from drug traffickers

Five years after he was lavished with praise by Donald Trump for “stopping drugs at a level that has never happened” – and two years after he was extradited in shackles to the US – the former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández is to stand trial in New York on Monday, accused of overseeing a “narco-state” and accepting millions in bribes from drug traffickers, including the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Hernández is the first former head of state to face drug trafficking charges in the United States since another former US ally, the Panamanian strongman Gen Manuel Noriega, over 30 years ago.

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Assassinated Haitian president’s widow among dozens indicted over his death

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Martine Moïse alleged to have conspired with former PM to kill president and replace him herself

A Haitian judge in charge of the investigation into the assassination in 2021 of the country’s last president, Jovenel Moïse, has charged 50 people including his widow and a former prime minister, according to a document leaked to local media.

According to the 122-page document from Judge Walther Wesser Voltaire, made public by AyiboPost, the president’s widow, Martine Moïse, conspired with the former prime minister Claude Joseph to kill the president in order to replace him herself.

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British Museum’s Instagram flooded with calls to return Easter Island statue

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Chilean social media users target institution, forcing it at one point to close comments on posts

The British Museum is tackling an influx of social media trolls from Chile, who have flooded the museum’s Instagram posts calling for the return of a moai statue, one of the stone monuments from Easter Island.

The museum has two moai, which were taken from Rapa Nui (Easter Island) by British surveyors in 1868, and there have been longstanding demands for the British to return them to Rapa Nui, which is Chilean territory.

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St Vincent and the Grenadines court upholds laws criminalizing gay sex

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Activists decry ruling by top court as ‘a travesty of justice’ after two men sought to strike down colonial-era laws

A top court in St Vincent and the Grenadines has upheld laws that criminalize gay sex, in a blow to activists who have long decried the violence the LGBTQ+ community has faced on the conservative Caribbean archipelago.

The ruling on Friday by St Vincent’s high court stems from a 2019 case filed by two gay men from St Vincent who live in the UK and US. They sought to strike down colonial-era laws that call for 10 years in prison for anal intercourse and five years for “gross indecency” with another person of the same sex.

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Air Canada ordered to pay customer who was misled by airline’s chatbot

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Company claimed its chatbot ‘was responsible for its own actions’ when giving wrong information about bereavement fare

Canada’s largest airline has been ordered to pay compensation after its chatbot gave a customer inaccurate information, misleading him into buying a full-price ticket.

Air Canada came under further criticism for later attempting to distance itself from the error by claiming that the bot was “responsible for its own actions”.

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Venezuela closes UN human rights office citing ‘colonialist attitude’

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Foreign minister claims local office of UN high commissioner for human rights supported impunity for coup plotters

Venezuela’s government has ordered the local UN office on human rights to suspend operations, giving its staff 72 hours to leave, after accusing the office of promoting opposition to the South American country.

The foreign affairs minister, Yván Gil, announced the decision at a news conference in Caracas on Thursday. Gil’s announcement came on the heels of the detention of the human rights attorney Rocío San Miguel, which set off a wave of criticism inside and outside Venezuela.

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Heavy metals and E coli: raw sewage at US-Mexico border a ‘public health crisis’

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The Tijuana River flows through Mexico and empties off California, carrying pathogens and chemicals and threatening public health

Raw sewage and runoff in the Tijuana River is exposing communities at the US-Mexico border to an unusual and noxious brew of pathogens and toxic chemicals, according to a report released this week.

Billions of gallons of sewage flow through the river, which winds north from Mexico through California and empties into the Pacific Ocean, containing a mix of carcinogenic chemicals including arsenic, as well as viruses, bacteria and parasites, according to public health researchers at San Diego State University, who published the report.

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Tobago oil spill spreads to Grenada waters and could affect Venezuela

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Fuel continues to leak from overturned and abandoned barge as stain spreads into the Caribbean Sea

An oil spill that has stained Tobago’s coastline in the Caribbean is entering Grenada’s waters and could affect neighboring Venezuela, authorities have warned.

Eight days after Trinidad and Tobago’s coastguard first spotted the oil from an overturned and abandoned barge, the vessel continues to leak fuel, and portions of the stain have moved about 144km (89 miles) into the Caribbean Sea at a rate of 14km/h.

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‘Very afraid’: Colombian human rights lawyer loses security after winning prize

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Adil Meléndez Márquez received call from bodyguards 20 minutes after Sir Henry Brooke award from Alliance for Lawyers at Risk

“I’m very afraid,” says Colombian lawyer Adil Meléndez Márquez, the day after being presented with an award in London honouring human rights defenders.

Meléndez is no stranger to death threats, because of his work on cases related to Colombia’s decades-long civil war, environmental justice and corruption, but things have just got a lot scarier. With bitter irony, 20 minutes after receiving the Sir Henry Brooke award from the Alliance for Lawyers at Risk, his bodyguards called him to say that they had been stood down from, leaving him without protection.

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Paraguay senate expels one of few opposition members, sparking protests

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Kattya González, who had called out corruption and the country’s fall to organized crime, was dismissed from her post on Wednesday

Paraguay’s senate has expelled one of the few opposition voices in national politics, sparking protests in the capital Asunción and prompting concerns over the fragile state of the country’s democracy.

Senator Kattya González from the center-left National Meeting Party was dismissed from her position during an extraordinary session on Wednesday for the “misuse of influence” while in office.

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British Columbia bids to stop spread of fatal ‘zombie deer disease’

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Chronic wasting disease, which affects deer and other cervids, confirmed in Canada but experts divided over risk to humans

The Canadian province of British Columbia has released a strategy to combat the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) as the virus continues to move across North America.

Officials in the westernmost province this week ordered the testing of any road-killed deer, moose, elk and caribou after two cases were confirmed at the end of January. Both cases – in a mule deer and a white-tailed deer – were found in the Kootenay district. The province also placed restrictions on the movement and disposal of deer in the area.

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Amazon rainforest could reach ‘tipping point’ by 2050, scientists warn

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‘We need to respond now,’ says author of study that says crucial forest has already passed safe boundary and needs restoration

Up to half of the Amazon rainforest could hit a tipping point by 2050 as a result of water stress, land clearance and climate disruption, a study has shown.

The paper, which is the most comprehensive to date in its analysis of the compounding impacts of local human activity and the global climate crisis, warned that the forest had already passed a safe boundary and urged remedial action to restore degraded areas and improve the resilience of the ecosystem.

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Canadian federal police officer charged with passing information to a ‘foreign entity’

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Eli Ndatuje of Royal Canadian Mounted Police was charged with accessing police records and passing information to the Rwandan government

A member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been arrested and charged with accessing police records and passing information to the Rwandan government.

The federal police force said on Tuesday that its integrated national security enforcement team (Inset) had arrested Constable Eli Ndatuje, who was stationed in Alberta.

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