“Rats!” is a popular insult hurled at politicians thought to be corrupt in Colombia. But rather than shouting the word from the visitors’ gallery as protesters have before, an unidentified person threw live rodents onto conservative senators on Tuesday. The reaction to the rodents was varied. Some senators shrieked and laughed and took their mobiles […]

A gunman opened fire in a Catholic cathedral near Brazil’s most populous city, São Paulo, killing five people and wounding several others. The attack happened towards the end of a midday service in the Metropolitan Cathedral in Campinas city, police say. The gunman, carrying a revolver and a pistol, rose from his seat and started […]

The museum was gutted by fire in September, which destroying the vast majority of its 20 million piece collection. Researchers from Brazil’s National Museum said on Monday that they had recovered more than 1,500 pieces from the debris of the building following a massive fire. The September 2 blaze, which gutted one of the world’s […]

Power cuts are frequent in Venezuela. The eastern state of Táchira is one of the worst hit with residents complaining that they often spend up to eight hours without power. The state-run power corporation Corpoelec rarely gives reasons for the cuts, while the government has in the past blamed “saboteurs”. But on Sunday, Corpoelec was […]

It took Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva four attempts before he was finally elected as Brazil’s president in 2002. He came to office as the first leftist leader in Brazil in nearly half a century. And he left eight years later, after serving two terms as president, enjoying exceptionally high popularity ratings for a retiring […]

Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, says he was jailed to prevent him from winning the 2018 presidential election which saw far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro elected. In an exclusive interview with the BBC via letters from his cell, Lula said Judge Sergio Moro “did politics and not justice” when he sentenced him. Mr […]

A 59-year-old priest has been injured in an acid attack in the Nicaraguan capital, Managua. Miguel Guevara had just finished hearing confession in the Metropolitan Cathedral when a woman threw acid at him. Fr Guevara is being treated in hospital for serious burns to his face, arms and shoulders. Worshippers detained the woman and locked […]

At 35, Natalia Ponce de Leon is an expressive woman, with the vivid eyes of a person who once thought that she would lose her sight. Her mother’s home, where Natalia lives, is usually in half-light, because sunlight is not good for burns. She suffered them twice – serious ones. When she was three years […]

No matter how much you warn visitors to Cuba that they’ll be offline during their stay, they often won’t believe it until they actually arrive in Havana. On arrival, they find their iPads and smartphones suddenly only serve for taking photos which, to their dismay, can’t be immediately posted to their Instagram or Facebook accounts. […]

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has demanded that Saudi Arabia extradite the suspects in writer Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. Speaking after the G20 in Argentina, he said Khashoggi had not featured in the talks and only Canada’s Justin Trudeau had brought the subject up. Saudi Arabia has charged 11 people with the murder, but there is […]