Category Archives: Americas

Judges ban Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years over ‘appalling lies’

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Former far-right leader will only be able to seek elected office again in 2030, when he will be 75

The political future of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has been cast into doubt after electoral judges banned him from running for office for eight years for abusing his powers and peddling “immoral” and “appalling lies” during last year’s acrimonious election.

Five of the superior electoral court’s seven judges voted to banish the far-right radical, who relentlessly vilified the South American country’s democratic institutions during his unsuccessful battle to win a second term in power. Two voted against the decision.

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German travel agency criticized for tour of Panama’s deadly jungle migrant zone

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Travel startup says it doesn’t ‘holiday where people suffer’ but offers trek in Darién Gap known for dangerous migration routes

“We go where no one goes,” is Wandermut’s tagline, but one of the German tour agency’s packages has left people asking whether some places are better left unexplored.

The travel startup’s 10-day Panama Jungle Tour has been criticised across Latin America in recent weeks for offering tour packages in a region which is home to one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes.

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Hipólito Mora, vigilante crusader against Mexico’s drug cartels, killed in ambush

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One of the leaders of the violence-scarred country’s ‘self-defense’ movement was cut down in rural Michoacán

One of the founders of Mexico’s “self-defense” movement, the lime farmer turned vigilante crusader Hipólito Mora, has been murdered in an ambush – the latest macabre chapter in the country’s unabating crime conflict.

Guillermo Valencia, a politician from the violence-stricken state of Michoacán, where Mora helped launch a rural revolt against narco-traffickers 10 years ago, announced the news on Twitter.

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Inquisitive, beloved Canadian sex educator Sue Johanson dies aged 93

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Johanson was venerated as a forthright educator who filled voids left by the absence of sex ed curricula at US and Canadian schools

Sex educator Sue Johanson, who once declared that “horny is a beautiful thing”, has died at the age of 93 after more than two decades of giving frank advice to audiences in Canada and the US.

Johanson gained an international audience with her plainspoken guidance to Canadians on her radio and TV programme Sunday Night Sex Show – and then Americans on her Talk Sex programme.

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Suspect charged in hate-motivated stabbing in Canada university gender issues class

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Professor and two students were stabbed in attack on class on Wednesday at University of Waterloo

A suspect has been charged in the stabbing of a professor and two students during a class on gender issues at Canada’s University of Waterloo in what police are calling a hate-motivated attack.

Waterloo regional police said Geovanny Villalba-Aleman, an international student who had been studying at the University of Waterloo, faces three counts of aggravated assault, four counts of assault with a weapon and two counts of possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose.

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Many people in Mexico without power as deadly heat leads to strain on grid

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Climate change has made high temperatures more common in the country, which has already surpassed peak energy demand of 2022

When Raquel Rubio’s 13-month baby developed a 102F fever last week, she rushed to the doctor. Her son, Liam, had been in Rubio’s apartment without air conditioning for several hours; Nuevo León, the Mexican state where she lives, had reached 109F that day.

The doctor confirmed Rubio’s suspicions that the heat was driving her son’s temperature, and instructed her to bathe Liam and keep him hydrated. But Rubio couldn’t go back home; she had been dealing with power shortages for the past two weeks and didn’t want to take her son back into the blistering heat.

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UK foreign secretary calls for expansion of UN security council

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James Cleverly says global south deserves more powerful voice at top table and review needed into five permanent members’ veto

The global south deserves a more powerful voice at the world’s top table by expanding the UN security council, the UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has said.

Cleverly also called for a review of the use of the veto by the council’s five permanent members, adding that the world’s poorest countries feel their voice is not heard even on issues of direct concern to them.

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UN expert calls for arms embargo on Haiti amid gang violence

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William O’Neill says ‘survival of a nation’ is at stake and also calls for deployment of an international force

A UN official has called for an immediate arms embargo for Haiti and an intervention force to combat endemic gang violence in the Caribbean state, after the killings of more than 200 gang members in recent months.

William O’Neill, who was appointed in April as an expert on human rights in Haiti, added his voice to growing calls for an international intervention in the country, which has descended into crime-fuelled anarchy since the murder of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021.

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Skin disease in orcas off North American coast concerns scientists

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Lesions found on 99% of southern resident orcas studied on Pacific north-west coast

Scientists studying an endangered population of orcas resident off the Pacific north-west coast of Canada and the US have recorded a “strong increase” in skin lesions on the animals’ bodies, which they believe is owing to the decreasing ability of their immune systems to deal with disease.

The lesions appear on the whales as grey patches or targets, or black pin points. Some resemble tattooed skin. Their presence on the animals’ graphically black and white bodies is “increasing dramatically”, according to Dr Joseph K Gaydos of the SeaDoc Society at the school of veterinary medicine at the University of California, lead author of the scientific paper.

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Mexico police station attacked as search continues for 14 missing employees

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Assailants threw explosives at police station in state of Chiapas, following abduction of employees at gunpoint on highway

Assailants have thrown explosives at a police station in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas, as a massive search continued on Wednesday for 14 police employees abducted at gunpoint on a local highway.

The attacks highlight a new turf battle between cartels for control of drug and immigrant trafficking in the state, which borders Guatemala.

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Rights to Jorge Luis Borges’s work go to his wife’s nephews

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Widow of great Argentinian writer did not leave a will, which put the rights in limbo

A court has granted the rights to the works of the late Jorge Luis Borges, considered Argentina’s most internationally significant author of the 20th century, to five nephews of the author’s widow, who died in March.

Borges’s wife, María Kodama, had devoted much of her life to fiercely protecting his legacy and it surprised many in Argentina’s literary circle that she did not leave a will, even though she had breast cancer.

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Amazon facing ‘urgent’ drug crisis after gutting of protections, says narcotics chief

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Brazilian government warning comes as UN report says that flourishing organized crime groups are driving a boom in environmental devastation

The Brazilian government’s drug policy chief has admitted that the rapid advance of drug factions into the Amazon rainforest has produced a “a very difficult situation” in the region, as a UN report warned that flourishing organized crime groups were driving a boom in environmental devastation.

Marta Machado, the national secretary for drug affairs, said the previous administration’s intentional dismantling of Brazil’s environmental and Indigenous protection agencies had created a dangerous vacuum in the Amazon which had been occupied by powerful crime syndicates from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

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Canada’s wildfire carbon emissions hit record high in first six months of 2023

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This year’s wildfire season is already worst on record as nearly 600m tonnes of carbon has been released since early May

Wildfires raging across Canada, made more intense by global warming, have released more planet-warming carbon dioxide in the first six months of 2023 than in any full year on record, according to the EU’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service.

This year’s wildfire season is the worst on record in Canada, with some 76,000sq km (29,000sq miles) burning across eastern and western Canada. That is already greater than the combined area burned in 2016, 2019, 2020 and 2022, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

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Olivia Chow wins election as Toronto’s first Chinese-Canadian mayor

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Progressive political leader vowed to raise low property taxes and support people facing unaffordable housing

A woman who arrived in Canada as a 13-year-old immigrant has been elected as the first Chinese-Canadian mayor of Toronto, vowing to pursue a more progressive approach in Canada’s largest city after ending more than a decade of conservative rule.

Olivia Chow, 66, emerged victorious from a record field of 102 candidates after promising to raise the city’s low property taxes and do more to support tenants facing a housing affordability crisis.

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Current heatwave across US south made five times more likely by climate crisis

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Latest ‘heat dome’ event over Texas and Louisiana, plus much of Mexico, driven by human-cause climate change, scientists find

The record heatwave roiling parts of Texas, Louisiana and Mexico was made at least five times more likely due to human-caused climate change, scientists have found, marking the latest in a series of recent extreme “heat dome” events that have scorched various parts of the world.

A stubborn ridge of high pressure has settled over Mexico and a broad swath of the southern US over the past three weeks, pushing the heat index, a combination of temperature and humidity, to above 48C (120F) in some places.

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Destruction of world’s pristine rainforests soared in 2022 despite Cop26 pledge

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An area of primary rainforest the size of Switzerland was felled last year suggesting world leaders’ commitment to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 is failing

An area the size of Switzerland was cleared from Earth’s most pristine rainforests in 2022, despite promises by world leaders to halt their destruction, new figures show.

From the Bolivian Amazon to Ghana, the equivalent of 11 football pitches of primary rainforest were destroyed every minute last year as the planet’s most carbon-dense and biodiverse ecosystems were cleared for cattle ranching, agriculture and mining, with Indigenous forest communities forced from their land by extractive industries in some countries.

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Honduras starts El Salvador-style crackdown on gangs after massacres

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Police investigating possibility pool hall shooting that killed 11 could be revenge for massacre of 46 female inmates at prison

Authorities in Honduras have launched an El Salvador-style crackdown and arrested a suspect in a pool hall shooting on Saturday that killed 11 people.

Police said they were investigating the possibility the pool hall shooting could be revenge for last week’s gang-related massacre of 46 female inmates, the worst atrocity at a women’s prison in recent memory.

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Guatemala election takes unexpected turn as centrist claims place in runoff

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Bernardo Arévalo will face off for presidency against Sandra Torres, a veteran politician who has faced corruption accusations

Guatemala’s presidential election has thrown up a major surprise with the centrist Bernardo Arévalo claiming a spot in the second round amid growing anger over political corruption and the erosion of democracy in Central America’s most populous nation.

Alongside El Salvador and Nicaragua, Guatemala is one of several Central American countries which has taken an alarming authoritarian turn in recent years, with activists denouncing growing attacks on the media and more than two dozen judges and prosecutors forced into exile.

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Brazil: all-female sambistas tackle sexism of male-dominated genre

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Groups such as Samba Que Elas Querem, whose rewrite of a samba classic prompted a legal tussle, are taking on the patriarchy

It was a typical Friday night at the Beco do Rato, a samba club tucked down a dark alleyway in Rio de Janeiro’s nocturnal Lapa district. A group of musicians beat their tantãs, tambourines and agogô bells to an audience of sweaty samba lovers who sang along.

Yet something about this scene was different: the band’s nine musicians were all women, and the crowd was also overwhelmingly female.

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Lima’s Central restaurant named world’s best in boost for Peruvian cuisine

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Peruvian eateries have been a fixture in top 50 list for close to a decade and now one has claimed the crown

While Peru’s archeology heritage began in the 20th century to attract millions of tourists to locations such as Machu Picchu and the Nazca Lines, the country’s cuisine remained one of South America’s best-kept secrets.

But in the last two decades, Peru’s food – a product of its rich range of crops, ecosystems and a particular history – has become a global brand, with restaurants opening in cities from San Francisco to Sydney.

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