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.
Continue reading...Dozens of people also injured after mudslide in mountainous area on road connecting major cities
The death toll from a mudslide in western Colombia has risen to 34, authorities have said.
The mudslide struck a busy municipal road on Friday in a mountainous area connecting the cities of Quibdó and Medellín.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Extreme cold warning issued in Canada as US forecasters warn of wind chills in Texas and major snow in midwest and east coast
A “bitter” blast of cold Arctic air is set to bring dangerously frigid temperatures to swaths of North America, forecasters have warned.
In Canada, frigid Arctic air is being pushed from the Northwest Territories down into the province of Alberta, where Environment Canada has issued an extreme cold warning. The largest city, Calgary, could see temperatures plummet to -34.6F (-37C) on Friday, reaching a daytime high of -23.8F (-31C). This would mark the coldest January day in two decades for the city. Over the weekend, strong winds could make temperatures feel closer to -58F (-50C). In these conditions, experts say exposed skin can succumb to frostbite in less than a minute.
Continue reading...Human Rights Watch’s annual report highlights politicians’ double standards and ‘transactional diplomacy’ amid escalating crises
Human rights across the world are in a parlous state as leaders shun their obligations to uphold international law, according to the annual report of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
In its 2024 world report, HRW warns grimly of escalating human rights crises around the globe, with wartime atrocities increasing, suppression of human rights defenders on the rise, and universal human rights principles and laws being attacked and undermined by governments.
Continue reading...Daniel Noboa designates nearly two dozen gangs as terrorist groups after wave of violence across country
Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, said on Wednesday that his country was “at war” with drug gangs who are holding more than 130 prison staff hostage and who briefly captured a TV station live on air, in a wave of violence that has left city streets deserted.
At least 10 people have been killed, including police officers, in the attacks.
Continue reading...President declares state of ‘internal armed conflict’ as gang leader escapes from jail and gunmen invade TV studio
Few Ecuadoreans were prepared for just how swiftly and steeply the security situation in their country could plummet. Murder and violence linked to drug trafficking has soared, as the country has become one of the most dangerous in Latin America.
Until just a few years ago, Ecuador was a corner of relative peace sandwiched between the world’s two biggest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, which have recently seen their own violent internal conflicts between security forces and nominally leftist rebels linked to the lucrative drugs trade.
Continue reading...Ecuador’s president has declared a state of “internal armed conflict”. How did the country find itself in the grip of armed gangs?
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Good morning. At about 2pm local time yesterday, a live news broadcast on an Ecuadorian TV channel was interrupted by a group of masked men carrying guns, grenades, and dynamite. The intruders pointed guns at employees and made them lie on the floor. “Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot!” one person shouted. One of the attackers said the attack was the result of “messing with the mafias”. The TC Televisión broadcast continued for at least 15 minutes. Then the signal was cut off.
Some 13 gunmen were later arrested, and the hostages taken to safety. The astonishing scenes in the city of Guayaquil were part of a series of audacious coordinated attacks by members of Ecuadorian gangs that have killed at least 10 people. They follow the escape from prison of the country’s most feared gang leader, Adolfo Macías, and new president Daniel Noboa’s subsequent declaration of a state of emergency. And while the situation is evolving rapidly, it appears to represent a declaration of war on the country’s fragile democratic institutions.
Post Office Horizon scandal | The former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells is to hand back her CBE over the wrongful prosecution of hundreds of staff, with over 100 more potential victims having come forward in recent weeks. Vennells said on Tuesday she was “truly sorry for the devastation caused to the sub-postmasters and their families”.
Israel-Gaza war | The British government has accepted that Israel as an occupying power had a legal duty to provide basic supplies to the people of Gaza. David Cameron, the foreign secretary, told MPs that Israel should remove barriers on the delivery of humanitarian aid that were risking “real, widespread hunger”.
Climate crisis | 2023 has smashed the record for the world’s hottest year by a huge margin. The planet was 1.48C hotter in 2023 compared with the period before the mass burning of fossil fuels ignited the climate crisis, scientists have said.
Child protection | Boys are watching violent porn on their smartphones then going on to attack girls, police have said, as new data showed children are now the biggest perpetrators of sexual abuse against other children. Overall, the data shows a quadrupling of sexual offences against children.
US news | A group of men belonging to a Hasidic Jewish community in New York were arrested on Monday amid a dispute over an illegal tunnel secretly dug into the side of a historic synagogue, which has since been closed. Action by law enforcement after the tunnel came to light led to a brawl with those who had created the passageway.
Continue reading...Lt Col Carlos Luis Malatto fled Argentina in 2011 and will be tried in Rome for premeditated killing of eight people in last military dictatorship
A judge in Rome has ordered Lt Col Carlos Luis Malatto, a former Argentine army officer accused of murder and forced disappearances during Argentina’s 1976-83 military dictatorship, to stand trial in Italy for the premeditated killing of eight people.
The former military officer is accused of crimes against humanity in Argentina, but he fled the country in 2011 and had been living in a tourist village in the province of Messina, Sicily. In a letter to the court of appeal in the Argentine state of Mendoza, Argentine prosecutors alleged that Malatto “actively participated in various detention procedures and is one of the most infamous perpetrators” of the dictatorship “for his participation in interrogations under torture”.
Continue reading...Gangsters unleashed wave of terror following move by President Daniel Noboa in response to gang leader’s prison escape
Heavily armed gangsters have stormed the studio of a major television station in Ecuador during a live broadcast, prompting the country’s president to declare a state of “internal armed conflict” amid a series of seemingly coordinated attacks across the South American country.
Police special forces later arrested all the masked gunmen who invaded the headquarters of the TC Televisión network in Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, at about 2pm local time on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Brazil president hosts summit amid criticism that easing of crackdown had allowed outsiders to return to forest areas
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has insisted his government must not lose the “war” against the environmental criminals devastating Indigenous lands in the Amazon after claims that thousands of illegal miners were resisting eviction from the country’s biggest such territory.
After taking power last January, Lula made expelling an estimated 20,000 gold and tin ore prospectors from the Yanomami Indigenous territory a top priority after four years of Amazon destruction under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. Environmental special forces and federal police teams were sent deep into the region’s remote jungles as part of a supposedly historic crackdown.
Continue reading...Maria Kartasheva’s in-absentia conviction over blogposts about Ukraine war threatened application for Canadian citizenship
Canada has reversed course after initially blocking a Russian anti-war activist from receiving citizenship because she had run afoul of Moscow’s harsh laws criminalizing dissent over the invasion of Ukraine.
Maria Kartasheva’s plight had baffled immigration lawyers and exposed the confusing reality of Canada’s immigration bureaucracy. Last year, the 30-year-old was charged and convicted by Russian prosecutors of violating a law barring criticism of the military. And even though her opinions mirrored Canada’s foreign policy, the conviction threatened to derail her application for Canadian citizenship.
Continue reading...Arctic Ice argues its rare, pure product can be part of Greenland’s green transition and greater independence
Frozen daiquiri anyone? Drinking a cocktail on top of a Dubai skyscraper may seem decadent enough, but a Greenland entrepreneur wants to add ancient glacier ice scooped from the fjords to the glass, for the ultimate international thrill.
Arctic Ice harvests ice from the fjords of Greenland, and then ships them to the United Arab Emirates to sell to exclusive bars. Using glacial ice in drinks is a common practice in Greenland, and, over the years, several entrepreneurs have unsuccessfully attempted to export it. Its co-founder Malik V Rasmussen said the ice, which has been compressed over millennia, is completely without bubbles and melts more slowly than regular ice. It is also purer than the frozen mineral water usually used in Dubai’s ice cubes.
Continue reading...Brazilian leaders mark first anniversary of insurrection in Brasília that saw Bolsonaristas attempt to topple new government
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has hailed the “victory of democracy over authoritarianism”, one year on from the 8 January insurrection in Brasília in which supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed government buildings in an attempt to topple the newly inaugurated leftist government.
Several hundred people gathered in the seat of Congress in Brasília on Monday afternoon for an event marking the first anniversary of what many see as the Brazilian version of the 6 January Capitol attack in the US. Leaders representing the three branches of government took to the stage under a screen emblazoned with the words “Democracy Unshaken” to celebrate the resilience of Brazilian democracy and unequivocally condemn the actions of the violent mob that rampaged through the capital a year ago after refusing to accept their leader’s electoral defeat.
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