Venezuela primary results suspended in latest blow directed at opposition

María Corina Machado was overwhelmingly elected to take on Nicolás Maduro in presidential election expected next year

Venezuela’s supreme court has suspended the results of the political opposition’s primaries after María Corina Machado was overwhelmingly elected last Sunday to take on President Nicolás Maduro in a presidential contest expected for 2024.

The court – which is stacked with Maduro’s allies – also ratified bans on running for office which had been slapped on Machado and two others.

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Deforestation has big impact on regional temperatures, study of Brazilian Amazon shows

Research highlights benefits forests bring surrounding regions in terms of cooler air and more rainfall

Deforestation has a far greater impact on regional temperatures than previously believed, according to a new study of the Brazilian Amazon that shows agricultural businesses would be among the biggest beneficiaries of forest conservation.

The research has important political implications because farmers in Amazonian states have, until now, led the way in forest destruction on the assumption that they will make money by clearing more land.

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Disabled man drags himself off plane after Air Canada fails to offer wheelchair

Airline was forced to apologize to Rodney Hodgins who flew to Las Vegas with his wife to celebrate their anniversary in August

Air Canada has been forced to apologize after a man with spastic cerebral palsy was forced to drag himself off a plane when the flagship carrier failed to provide a wheelchair for him.

Rodney Hodgins, 49, a hardware salesman from British Columbia who requires the use of a motorized wheelchair, flew to Las Vegas with his wife, Deanna, to celebrate their anniversary in August.

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Acapulco: nearly 100 dead and missing after Hurricane Otis, officials say

Governor of Guerrero state says 45 confirmed dead and 47 others missing after ferocious storm hit Mexican city on Wednesday

The number of people dead and missing due to Hurricane Otis, a category 5 storm which hammered the Mexican Pacific resort city of Acapulco last week, has risen to close to 100.

Otis battered Acapulco with winds of 165mph (266km/h) on Wednesday, flooding the city, tearing roofs from homes, hotels and other businesses, submerging vehicles and severing communications as well as road and air connections.

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Acapulco death toll rises to 43 after Hurricane Otis batters resort city

Guerrero state governor says officials assessing damage after unprecedented 165mph storm hit Mexico’s Pacific coast

The death toll from a devastating hurricane that hit the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco last week has risen to 43, the governor of Guerrero state has said.

Evelyn Salgado added that electricity had been restored to 58% of Acapulco and that officials had visited 10,000 families there and the nearby city of Coyuca de Benitez for a census to evaluate damages.

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‘There was no one better’: Peruvian singer finally takes her place among all-time greats

Lucha Reyes was compared to Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf. Now, fifty years after her death, her songs are released for a new audience

On a late spring morning 50 years ago this week, 30,000 people gathered outside the baroque facade of the church of San Francisco in central Lima to weep, sing and say goodbye to the young woman whose coffin was hoisted on to the crowd’s shoulders and carried, for three hours, to El Ángel cemetery a few kilometres away.

Lucha Reyes, who had died the previous day from a heart attack brought on by diabetes, knew her end was approaching. In keeping with the raw and pained songs and performances that had made her Peru’s darling, the 37-year-old singer had even commissioned a valedictory waltz. Called Mi última canción, or My Last Song, it was written in a funeral parlour.

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Colombian ex-army officer gets life in prison for killing of Haiti president Jovenel Moïse

Retired army officer Germán Alejandro Rivera García, 45, is second of 11 suspects detained and charged in Miami

A retired Colombian army officer has been sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 2021 assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse, which caused unprecedented turmoil in the Caribbean nation.

Germán Alejandro Rivera García, 45, is the second of 11 suspects detained and charged in Miami to be sentenced in what US prosecutors have described as a conspiracy hatched in both Haiti and Florida to hire mercenaries to kidnap or kill Moïse, who was slain at his private home near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on 7 July 2021.

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Buffy Sainte-Marie denies allegations she misled public about Indigenous ancestry

Singer calls allegations ‘deeply hurtful’ after documentary questions ‘shifting narrative’ surrounding her Cree roots

Folk singer and social justice advocate Buffy Sainte-Marie has denied allegations that she misled the public about her Indigenous ancestry, after a Canadian documentary questioned the “shifting narrative” surrounding her Cree roots.

On Friday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s investigative wing, the Fifth Estate, published an investigation into the singer’s ancestry, alleging her life story is part of a broader narrative “full of inconsistencies and inaccuracies”.

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Clean up and damage assessments begin after Hurricane Otis rips through

Category 5 storm struck Acapulco and leveled homes, hotels and cut off communications as military called in to help with aid efforts

At least 27 people were killed and four remain missing after Hurricane Otis ripped through the beach resort city of Acapulco, leveling homes and hotels, submerging cars and cutting off communications.

The extent of the damage from the category 5 storm, which struck Mexico on Thursday with winds of 165mph, has started to become clear as thousands of first responders and military officers began to assess the damages. Nearly 8,400 members of Mexico’s army, air force and national guard were deployed to assist in cleanup efforts, the defense ministry said.

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BTS and Taylor Swift fans give Javier Milei and his running mate an earful

Argentinian Swifties say ‘Milei is Trump’ as devotees of BTS decry ‘hatred and xenophobia’ of Victoria Villarruel’s tweets about group

Weeks before Argentina’s run-off election, far-right populist Javier Milei and his running mate, Victoria Villaruel, have found themselves under pressure from an unexpected quarter: an alliance of Taylor Swift supporters and K-pop fans.

Milei, a radical libertarian who has proposed dollarizing Argentina’s economy and even legalizing the organ trade, topped the polls ahead of Sunday’s first round, but was beaten into second place by the centrist finance minister, Sergio Massa.

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Canada to have first majority-female supreme court following nomination

Justin Trudeau appoints Mary Moreau to bench of Canada’s top court, which will be made up of five women and four men

Justin Trudeau has nominated the Alberta judge Mary Moreau to Canada’s top court, setting up the first majority-female bench in the supreme court’s 148-year history.

The naming of Moreau will give Canada’s top court five female judges and four male judges. Moreau was most recently the chief justice of Alberta’s superior court, and has worked in that court for 29 years. She will fill a vacancy on the supreme court created by the resignation of Russell Brown in June.

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Environmental crime money easy to stash in US due to loopholes, report finds

Secrecy and lax oversight mean illegal loggers and miners in Amazon can park billions in real estate and other assets

Secrecy and lax oversight have made the US a hiding place for dirty money accrued by environmental criminals in the Amazon rainforest, a report says.

Illegal loggers and miners are parking sums ranging from millions to billions of dollars in US real estate and other assets, says the report, which calls on Congress and the White House to close loopholes in financial regulations that it says are contributing to the destruction of the world’s biggest tropical forest.

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At least 27 dead after Hurricane Otis smashes into Mexico’s Pacific coast

The resort city of Acapulco was devastated by the category 5 hurricane, with hundreds of windows blown out and electricity cut

At least 27 people died due to Hurricane Otis and four others were still missing, Mexico’s government said after one of the most powerful storms to hit the country smashed into the Pacific resort city of Acapulco a day before.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the government was working to re-establish power and clean up the devastation wrought by the category 5 hurricane that tore through the southern state of Guerrero, and left Acapulco incommunicado.

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Mario Vargas Llosa says latest novel will be his last

Nobel prize-winning Peruvian author still plans to write an essay on Sartre that ‘will be the last thing I write’

Peru’s best-known living writer, the Nobel prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, has announced that his seven-decade literary career is coming to an end and that his latest novel will be his last.

In a postscript to the new book, Le dedico mi silencio (I Give You My Silence), the 87-year-old novelist writes: “I think I’ve finished this book. I’d now like to write an essay on [Jean-Paul] Sartre, who was my teacher as a young man. It will be the last thing I write.”

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Javier Milei endorsed by defeated rival who once sued him for defamation

Move by Patricia Bullrich, who placed third in Argentina’s presidential election, is not backed by other parts of her alliance

The defeated Argentinian presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich, who came third in Sunday’s election, has endorsed the libertarian firebrand Javier Milei for next month’s runoff vote.

Bullrich took 23.8% of the vote in the first round, finishing third behind the surprise frontrunner – the economy minister, Sergio Massa, who won 36.7% – and Milei, who took just over 30%.

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Hurricane Otis rips through Acapulco as communications to city severed

Powerful category 5 storm hits Mexico’s coast leaving trail of destruction, though full scale of damage remains unclear

Hurricane Otis has smashed through the Mexican resort city of Acapulco as a category 5 storm, wrecking homes, hotels and hospitals, and leaving a trail of destruction, but with communications to the city still severed the full scale of the devastation remained unclear.

As dawn broke on Wednesday, photos and videos posted online showed wrecked buildings and cars partially submerged in floodwaters as authorities in the southern state of Guerrero attempted to take a measure of the damage.

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India resumes visa services in Canada after row over killing of Sikh separatist

Tensions between the two countries peaked after Hardeep Singh Nijjar was murdered in Canada earlier this year

India’s embassy in Ottawa has announced that it will reopen visa services for Canadians, a move that could reduce tensions in a bitter dispute over the killing of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil.

Relations between India and Canada plunged after Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, last month publicly linked Indian intelligence to the killing of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar, allegations New Delhi called “absurd”.

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Hurricane Otis: storm strengthens to Category 5 in a matter of hours as it nears Mexico

Hurricane Otis is forecast to make landfall near the Mexican resort of Acapulco, with the US National Hurricane Center warning of ‘nightmare scenario’

Hurricane Otis strengthened from a tropical storm to a dangerous Category 5 hurricane in a matter of hours on Tuesday as it approached Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, with the president urging residents to seek shelter.

The storm was forecast to make landfall near the resort of Acapulco early on Wednesday and the US National Hurricane Center warned it will cause catastrophic damage.

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Ancient rock carvings revealed by receding Amazon waters amid drought

Human faces and other figures believed to be up to 2,000 years old exposed as Brazil river level hits record low

Human faces and other figures etched in stone up to 2,000 years ago have been revealed on Amazon riverbanks as a historic drought in the Brazilian region has brought water levels to unprecedented lows.

The petroglyphs, which include animals and other natural forms, have been revealed on the shores of the Rio Negro, at an archeological site known as the Ponto das Lajes, or Place of Slabs.

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Tuesday briefing: How Argentina punctured far-right populism’s rise in South America

In today’s newsletter: Javier Milei was expected to top the first round of voting in the presidential election, but the country picked the centrist candidate

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Good morning. Today we’re heading to Buenos Aires, where left-wing and centrist Argentinians have taken to the streets celebrating that the country may be about to avoid electing a far-right president described by some as a mashup of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and The X-Men’s Wolverine – who describes himself as “anarcho-capitalist”.

Until the results of the first round of Argentina’s presidential election trickled out early yesterday morning, the polls and the pundits had predicted that eccentric far-right populist Javier Milei – whose signature mop of untamed hair and long sideburns is a professionally designed homage to Elvis and the aforementioned superhero – would probably become the country’s next president.

Israel-Hamas war | The US has said now is not the time for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, as the UN reports that some Palestinians who fled their homes in the north of Gaza have returned due to a lack of food and shelter in the south. On Monday, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told CNN that Israel still had “work to do to go after Hamas leadership”, echoing comments from the US president, Joe Biden, that any discussions of a ceasefire could only take place if Hamas freed all its hostages in Gaza.

Technology | Government officials are using artificial intelligence and algorithms to help decide everything from who gets benefits to who should have their marriage licence approved, according to a Guardian investigation. Kiran Stacey reports on the findings that shed light on the often uncontrolled ways cutting-edge technology is being used across Whitehall.

Protest | Downing Street has argued that police already have “extensive powers” to take action against demonstrators who chanted about “jihad” in London at the weekend, as Keir Starmer said ministers should plug any gaps in the law.

Crime | Lewis Edwards, a 24-year-old former police officer, incited more than 200 girls as young as 10 to share explicit images and videos of themselves with him via Snapchat, a court has heard.

Policing | A Metropolitan police officer is under criminal investigation over alleged racially aggravated assault after a woman was wrongly arrested for evading a bus fare. The incident was filmed and widely seen on social media.

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