European leaders on Friday threatened to tear up a trade deal with South America, reflecting growing international anger at Brazil as a record number of fires in the Amazon rainforest intensified an unfolding environmental crisis. Amid a global chorus of concern and condemnation, Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro pledged in an address to the nation […]

As global concerns rise over raging fires in the Amazon, Brazil’s government has complained that it is being targeted in smear campaign by critics who contend President Jair Bolsonaro is not doing enough to curb widespread deforestation. The threat to what some call “the lungs of the planet” has ignited a bitter dispute about who […]

Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has seen a record number of fires this year, according to new data from the country’s space research agency. The National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) said its satellite data showed an 83% increase on the same period in 2018. It comes weeks after President Jair Bolsonaro fired the head of the […]

A Mexican judge has granted two people the right to recreational cocaine use, in the first ruling of its kind, the organisation behind the cases said. The court said it would allow the claimants to “possess, transport and use cocaine” but not sell it, according to Mexico United Against Crime (MUCD). MUCD, which seeks to […]

More than 200,000 people have been killed or have disappeared since Mexico’s government declared war on organised crime in December 2006. The military offensive has led to the destruction of some drug gangs, splits within others and the emergence of new groups. With widespread corruption and impunity exacerbating Mexico’s problems, there is no end in […]

An armed man is holding a number of passengers hostage on a commuter bus in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. Footage shot from a helicopter shows the bus stopped across two lanes on the bridge connection Rio with the city of Niterói. Military police officers, ambulances and a special operations team are at […]

A mural thought to be 3,800 years old has been revealed by archaeologists in Peru. The wall, unveiled on Monday, was found inside a public ceremonial building at the Vichama site, north of Lima. The complex carved scene depicts iconography including a human-like toad and representations of people. Dr Ruth Shady Solís, director of the […]

Twenty-five-year old Carmen Guadalupe Vasquez Aldana laughs when she tells me she does not want to leave it too late to become a mother. It would be an unremarkable statement for a woman of her age in conservative El Salvador, were it not for the story she has just told me. At the age of […]

Three people have been killed and about 10 injured in rioting between fans of rival football clubs in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. The violence broke out ahead of a planned game between the Motagua and Olimpia clubs on Saturday evening. It began when crowds threw stones at the Motagua team bus, injuring three players with […]

Argentina’s economy minister Nicolas Dujovne has resigned amid a financial crisis exacerbated by the president’s defeat in a primary poll. The country’s peso shed 20% of its value against the US dollar after President Mauricio Macri suffered the resounding loss last Sunday. In a letter to the president, Mr Dujovne said he had given his […]