Canadian PM’s office says in statement that pair ‘remain a close family’ and have signed a legal agreement
Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, are separating, the couple have announced on Instagram, with a statement that appeared to mark the end of their 18-year marriage.
Trudeau, 51, and Grégoire Trudeau, 48, were married in late May 2005.
Continue reading...Marina Silva welcomes progress but says climate crisis means upcoming regional summit needs to produce real action
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by at least 60% in July compared to the same month last year, the environment minister, Marina Silva, has told the Guardian.
The good news comes ahead of a regional summit that aims to prevent South America’s largest biome from hitting a calamitous tipping point.
Continue reading...Fossils found in Peru from extinct species show it may have had body mass of 85-340 tonnes – heavier than blue whales
The fossilised bones of an ancient creature that patrolled coastal waters 40m years ago belong to a newly discovered species that is a contender for the heaviest animal ever to have existed on Earth.
Fossil hunters discovered remnants of the enormous and long-extinct whale in a rock formation in the Ica desert of southern Peru. Fully grown adults might have weighed hundreds of tonnes, researchers believe.
Continue reading...Six months after Lula’s government cracked down on garimpeiros, a legacy of malnutrition and malaria is taking its toll on Yanomami
Six months after the Brazilian government launched an operation to turf out illegal miners from the country’s largest Indigenous reserve, the Yanomami population there continues to live in fear, battling a legacy of violence, destruction and disease.
A new report released by three Indigenous organisations on Wednesday, applauds the success of the government’s crackdown but highlights the challenges that lie ahead in fully addressing the humanitarian crisis caused by the invasion of wildcat miners during the Jair Bolsonaro years.
Continue reading...Four men traveled about 5,600km before being rescued by Brazilian federal police in south-eastern port of Vitória
On their 10th day at sea, the four Nigerian stowaways crossing the Atlantic in a tiny space above the rudder of a cargo ship ran out of food and drink.
They survived another four days, according to their account, by drinking the sea water crashing just meters below them, before being rescued by Brazilian federal police in the south-eastern port of Vitória.
Continue reading...Move comes in response to Canadian legislation requiring internet giants to pay news publishers
Meta has begun the process to end access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada, the company said on Tuesday.
The move comes in response to legislation in the country requiring internet giants to pay news publishers.
Continue reading...Fines of up to £55,000 could be imposed on musicians who sing songs deemed to promote violence against women
Authorities in the north-western Mexican state of Chihuahua have banned artists from singing misogynist lyrics in live music venues.
Chihuahua, the capital city of the state, which borders the US, has passed a measure to prohibit musicians from performing songs that promote violence against women.
Continue reading...Brazil authorities call for investigation after hundreds of police officers were deployed in response to the killing of an officer
Authorities in Brazil have called for an investigation after a police operation on the coast of São Paulo state left at least eight people dead, in an apparent act of retaliation.
About 600 police officers have been deployed across the Baixada Santista region in response to the killing of an officer by drug traffickers in the city of Guarujá last Thursday.
Continue reading...Nicolás Petro held as part of investigation into funds he allegedly collected from drug traffickers during 2022 election campaign
The son of the Colombian president has been arrested as part of a high-profile money-laundering investigation into funds he allegedly collected from convicted drug traffickers during last year’s presidential campaign.
The president, Gustavo Petro, a former rebel who rose through Colombia’s political ranks as an anti-corruption crusader, said he would not interfere with the investigation.
Continue reading...Data counts 1.3m quilombola, historically excluded population whose communities were founded by fugitive enslaved people
More than 1.3 million Brazilians who identify as descendants of Africans who escaped slavery have finally gained recognition in official statistics, marking a victory for this historically excluded population.
The groundbreaking data was released on Thursday as part of Brazil’s 2022 census, during which the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) for the first time counted and mapped the country’s quilombola population – members of often remote Afro-Brazilian communities that were traditionally founded by fugitive slaves.
Continue reading...Congress passes bill that could allow 900 people to be tried together if they are accused of being in the same criminal group
Nayib Bukele’s government has already locked up 2% of El Salvador’s adult population and built the largest prison in the Americas to house the 70,000 alleged gang members he has imprisoned.
Now the populist leader has cleared the way for mass trials of hundreds of people at a time as he steps up his year-long crackdown on the country’s gangs which critics say is eroding the rule of law and leading to many innocent people being wrongly jailed.
Continue reading...Country failed to collect and share data, masking issues and inequalities, according to editorial in British Medical Journal
Prominent public health experts have called on Canada to launch an inquiry into its Covid response, arguing that the country’s failure to collect and share data masked issues and inequalities that – if properly addressed early on – could have saved lives.
The call to action came alongside a scathing editorial in the British Medical Journal, titled “The world expected more of Canada”, which argues that Canada’s “overall impression of adequacy” conceals important inequalities.
Continue reading...President Lasso imposes 60-day order and authorizes armed forces to retake control of country’s violence-plagued prisons
Ecuador’s president, Guillermo Lasso, has declared a 60-day state of emergency throughout the country’s prisons and authorized the armed forces to retake control of jails, following violence in the country’s most notorious prison that left 18 dead and a string of protests in which inmates took nearly 100 guards hostage.
The measure – the second state of emergency that Lasso has ordered in less than 24 hours – will be in effect for 60 days and orders the immediate mobilization of the military and police in an effort to regain control of the prisons.
Continue reading...Report finds army, navy, police and intelligence agencies knew, minute by minute, where the student teachers were
Mexican security forces at local, state and federal level were complicit in the 2014 abduction of 43 student teachers and concealed documents which showed where some of them were taken, a report prepared by an independent investigatory panel has concluded.
The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) tasked with investigating the case said in their findings that the Army, Navy, police and intelligence agencies knew, minute by minute, where the students were.
Continue reading...Salvatore Mancuso, who is imprisoned in US, is responsible for more than 300 killings and is accused of about 75,000 crimes
Salvatore Mancuso is one of the most notorious figures in Colombia’s six decades of conflict, responsible for some of the most heinous of crimes during the darkest chapters in the country’s history.
As a senior commander of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) – the country’s largest rightwing death squad – he ordered forced disappearances, sexual violence and massacres of civilians.
Continue reading...Two children among the missing when vehicles were submerged on road after more than 200m of rain pummeled some regions
The body of a 52-year old man and other human remains have been discovered by emergency teams searching for four people who went missing in historic flooding after more than 200mm (7.87in) of rain pummeled some regions of Nova Scotia at the weekend.
The man’s body was found near West Hants in Nova Scotia, on the south-eastern coast of Canada, where search and rescue teams were looking for two children, a youth and a man who were in two vehicles which became submerged in flood water.
Continue reading...Brazil federal police say Maxwell Simões Corrêa helped plan 2018 assassination; two former police officers are already awaiting trial
Brazilian police have arrested a new suspect over the killing of the Rio de Janeiro city councillor Marielle Franco, the first major development for some years in a murder case that shocked Brazil and prompted international outcry.
Franco, an outspoken defender of marginalised populations, was killed with her driver Anderson Gomes in a drive-by shooting in March 2018. Two former police officers accused of carrying out the murders were arrested a year later – but they are yet to stand trial by jury and an investigation into who ordered the assassination has dragged on slowly ever since.
Continue reading...Government claims 98% success rate for cloud seeding but critics urge improving irrigation and water supply systems
Amid a historic heatwave and months of drought, Mexico’s government has launched the latest phase of a cloud seeding project it hopes will increase rainfall.
The project, which began in July, involves planes flying into clouds to release silver iodide particles which then, in theory, will attract additional water droplets and increase rain or snowfall.
Continue reading...Twenty-five centimetres of rain fall on Nova Scotia in a day and state of emergency declared, but risk of dam breach recedes
The heaviest rains in more than 40 years badly damaged a city in Canada’s Atlantic region on Saturday but authorities are no longer concerned a dam may breach, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said.
Police reported that four people were missing, including two children.
Continue reading...Virus has spread around the world, with 200,000 wild birds dead in Peru alone and concerns Australia could be next
Millions of wild birds may have died from bird flu globally in the latest outbreak, researchers have said, as the viral disease ravages South America, with 200,000 deaths recorded in Peru alone.
The highly infectious variant of H5N1, which gained momentum in the winter of 2021, caused Europe’s worst bird flu outbreak before spreading globally. The disease reached South America in November 2022, and has now been reported on every continent except Oceania and Antarctica.
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