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Critics condemn ‘reckless and cruel’ expulsions and say deportees likely to be targeted by armed gangs who control much of countryMore than 70 Haitians expelled from the United States have been flown back to Haiti on the first deportation flight since heavily armed gangs launched a bloody insurrection which has paralysed the capital and forced the prime minister from office.The flight, which landed in...

Relief had been granted after president Nicolás Maduro promised to hold free and fair elections this yearThe Biden administration has reimposed crushing oil sanctions on Venezuela, admonishing the president Nicolás Maduro’s attempts to consolidate his rule just six months after the US eased restrictions in a bid to support now fading hopes for a democratic opening in the Opec nation.A senior US official, discussing...

Patrice Runner, 57, of Canada was convicted in June of multiple counts of defrauding ‘millions of older and vulnerable Americans’A Canadian conman, who swindled more than US$175m (C$241m) from his North American victims through “a massive psychic mass-mailing fraud scheme” has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.Patrice Runner, 57, who holds citizenship with both Canada and France, was convicted by a jury in...

Manuel Rocha, 73, will also pay a $500,000 fine after pleading guilty to conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign governmentA former career US diplomat was sentenced Friday to 15 years in federal prison after admitting he worked for decades as a secret agent for Cuba, in a plea agreement that leaves many unanswered questions about a betrayal that stunned the US...

Almost 32 million people in the path of totality as moon’s shadow crossed the Mexico-Texas border and then traversed 15 statesIf you missed the total solar eclipse just wait … until 2044Total solar eclipse over Mexico, US and Canada – in picturesThe ethereal spectacle of a total solar eclipse swept across North America on Monday afternoon, giving tens millions of people in Mexico, the...

‘If the United States threatened to suspend aid, maybe my son would be alive today,’ John Flickinger told the US secretary of stateWhen the US’s top diplomat called with condolences over the killing of John Flickinger’s son in the Israeli airstrikes on a World Central Kitchen aid convoy in Gaza, Flickinger knew what he wanted to say.The grieving father told Antony Blinken, the US...

Rare celestial event on Monday will see the moon block out the sun for a few minutes and day turn to night, with fans hoping the clouds don’t spoil the viewAcross the US, Mexico and Canada, people have rushed to stake out spots to witness a rare total solar eclipse, while forecasts for cloudy skies worry some hopeful spectators.The phenomenon happens when the moon...

Total solar eclipse on 8 April will be first to touch province since 1979, and Niagara Falls is declared one of the best places to viewThe region of Canada surrounding the city that contains a side of – and shares a name with – Niagara Falls has declared a state of emergency as it prepares to welcome up to a million visitors for the...

The Republican challenger to Democrat Sherrod Brown for US Senate in Ohio has made dubious claims in his campaignBernie Moreno, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Ohio who expected to mount a stern challenge to Sherrod Brown, the incumbent leftwing Democrat, says his family fled socialism when they came to the US from Colombia in 1971, when he was four years old.Though such...

Six men presumed dead reportedly were construction workers from Latin American countries, including a father of threeThe six men presumed dead in the Baltimore bridge collapse on Tuesday all appeared to be construction workers originally from Latin American countries, according to reports, including a father of three, Miguel Luna, from El Salvador, as authorities said they had recovered the black box recorder from the...

State department organizes evacuation after nearly 1,600 US citizens ask for help amid reports of continuing violence in capitalThe United States has said it was starting to evacuate its citizens out of Haiti by helicopter, amid reports of fresh fighting in the Caribbean country’s gang-dominated capital, with particularly fierce gunfire in some of the city’s wealthiest enclaves.A state department spokesperson, Vedant Patel, told reporters...

US embassy says ‘absurd’ to suggest Washington behind protests in Santiago de Cuba led by parents struggling to feed their childrenThe Cuban government has summoned the US ambassador, Benjamin Ziff, to its foreign ministry, accusing Washington of stoking a protest which saw hundreds of people take to the streets in the island’s second city of Santiago de Cuba.The demonstration late on Sunday was a...

Two new studies find no significant differences between US government officials suffering from condition and control groupTwo new medical studies have found that US government officials suffering from Havana syndrome symptoms did not show any discernible physical damage or alteration.One of the studies published on Monday by the federally funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) examined brain imaging, while the other looked at blood...

More than 30 Americans arrive in Miami from Cap-Haïten as US urges citizens to leave ‘as soon as possible’ amid gang violenceA charter flight carrying dozens of US citizens fleeing spiraling gang violence in Haiti landed on Sunday in Miami, state department officials said.More than 30 US citizens were on the government-chartered flight, officials said in a statement. It arrived in Miami’s international airport...

Experts say most guns smuggled from states with lax firearms laws such as Florida, Arizona and GeorgiaAs Haiti has again plunged into violent chaos, images of gang members bearing high-powered rifles, pump-action shotguns or automatic weapons in the streets of Port-au-Prince have become ubiquitous.But this weaponry is not made in Haiti, a country with no firearms or ammunition manufacturing capabilities. Continue reading...

Officials say marines deployed for night-time evacuation amid intense fighting in Port-au-Prince, while German and EU representatives also leaveThe US military has carried out an operation in Haiti to airlift non-essential embassy personnel from the country and added US forces to bolster embassy security, after dozens of heavily armed gang fighters tried to seize the political quarter of its capital, Port-au-Prince.The German foreign ministry...

Chopper in federal government’s border security mission went down near Rio Grande City, leaving two national guard soldiers and a border patrol agent deadA helicopter flying over the US-Mexico border in Texas has crashed, killing two national guard soldiers and a border patrol agent, the US military has said.Another soldier on board was injured.The UH-72 Lakota helicopter was assigned to the federal government’s border...

Juan Orlando Hernández, 55, once a US ally in the ‘war on drugs’, found guilty on three counts and faces 40 years in prisonThe former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández has been convicted of cocaine trafficking, securing a place in infamy for the one-time US ally in the war on drugs.Hernández is the first former head of state to be found guilty of...

Washington says no despite ‘frantic’ talks between diplomats, as bodies lie in street and army battles gun-toting gang membersWhat led to the Haiti jailbreak – and can democracy be restored?The United States has said it will not send troops to Haiti after a stunning eruption of gang violence seemingly designed to bring down the Caribbean nation’s enfeebled government and its unpopular prime minister, Ariel...

Manuel Rocha was arrested for allegedly engaging in ‘clandestine activity’ on the communist country’s behalf since at least 1981A former career US diplomat told a federal judge on Thursday he will plead guilty to charges of working for decades as a secret agent for communist Cuba, an unexpectedly swift resolution to a case prosecutors called one of the most brazen betrayals in the history...

Ralph Hendry, 66, and Kathy Brandel, 71, probably dead after catamaran was seized by escaped prisoners in Caribbean last weekA US couple whose catamaran was hijacked last week in the Caribbean by three escaped prisoners were probably thrown into the ocean and died, according to police in Grenada.The announcement is a blow to those who were independently helping search for Ralph Hendry, 66, and...

US looked into claims that Andrés Manuel López Obrador allies took money from cartels, according to a New York Times reportOfficials with the justice department and the Biden administration have downplayed a report that US law enforcement spent years looking into allegations that allies of Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, were investigated for taking millions of dollars from drug cartels after the president...

Juan Orlando Hernández stands trial in a New York courtroom on Monday accused of taking millions in bribes from drug traffickersFive years after he was lavished with praise by Donald Trump for “stopping drugs at a level that has never happened” – and two years after he was extradited in shackles to the US – the former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández is to...

Haitian American Joseph Vincent, who admitted to helping plot assassination of Jovenel Moïse, is among 11 people accusedJoseph Vincent, a former informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), was handed a life sentence by a US court on Friday for his role in the 2021 assassination of Haiti’s president.A Haitian American national, Vincent admitted to helping plot to kill the Haitian president Jovenel...