Maxima Ccalla, 60, an indigenous Quechua woman, has spent her life tilling the harsh soil in Peru’s Andean highlands, resigned to a fate far removed from the vast riches buried deep beneath her feet in seams of copper, zinc and gold.
 
The Andean communities in Ccalla’s home region of Puno and beyond have long clashed with the mining companies that dig mineral wealth out from the ground.
 
In recent interviews, many said they felt discriminated against and marginalized, and accused mining companies of polluting their water and soil.
 
But in a country still under the shadow of a colonial past, the rise of an outsider politician, the son of peasant farmers, is sparking hopes of change. It has also thrown a spotlight on stark divides between the rural Andean highlands and remote Amazon settlements, and the wealthier — and whiter — coastal cities.
 
Pedro Castillo, who wears a straw farmers hat and plays up his humble village roots, has pledged to give a voice to Peru’s “forgotten” rural groups and redistribute mineral wealth in the world’s second largest producer of copper.
 
“The looting is over, the theft is over, the assault is over, the discrimination against the Peruvian people is over,” he said at a speech in Cuzco.
 
The socially conservative leftist is on the cusp of being confirmed president after firing up the rural and indigenous vote, including in mineral-rich regions like Puno.
 
“So long, governments have promised to solve our problems, but nothing has changed,” Ccalla said in Quechua through a translator while working in the fields surrounding her home in the community of Carata.
 
“Now, hopefully, he will fulfill his promises.”
 
Ccalla is one of millions of mostly poor, rural Peruvians who voted for Castillo in the June 6 run-off election.
 
Wearing a colorful, traditional Montera hat against the sun, Ccalla’s demands are simple: she wants safe drinking water.
 ‘One of us’
 
Castillo holds a slim lead, which is being scrutinized after legal pressure from his right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori who has alleged fraud and wants to disqualify some votes from rural areas.
 
Election observers said the vote was carried out cleanly.
 
The tension over the count has exposed a racial and socio-economic divide in the country.
 
More than a dozen leaders and activists from Quechua and Aymara communities, scattered across the Andes, and others deep in the Amazon rainforest hundreds of miles north, spoke to Reuters candidly about the discrimination they face.
 
In Puno, the region where Carata is located, Castillo scored some 90% of the total vote count. His party logo, a yellow pencil on red background, had been painted on walls of lone houses – the only splashes of bright color for miles around.
 
Though Castillo does not identify as a member of an indigenous community, those who spoke to Reuters overwhelmingly said they could relate to him “as one of us” because of his humble upbringing and his background as a farmer.
 
As with Bolivia’s Evo Morales a decade ago, they hoped he would give greater representation to marginalized groups, and a more state-led approach to mining to drive higher social spending.
 
“Now we see a lot of possibilities for the future – he’ll be a good president,” said Rene Belizario, 34, a Quechua. But, he added, “this is our opportunity and if he doesn’t deliver, the people will rise. There’ll be protests.”
 
Belizario, a father of three young boys, said he hoped Castillo would “recover” mines in the area operated by private companies to redistribute profits and generate jobs.
 
Mining is a key driver of Peru’s economy. Metals are the country’s largest export and Castillo, even with his plans to shake things up, will need to negotiate his way forward.
 
And what farming-based indigenous communities want in development terms rarely tallies with the ideas of the government in distant Lima, said Vito Calderon, an Aymara who took part in a 2011 protest against a mining project.
 ‘Our land has been stolen’
 
Castillo is not Peru’s first indigenous leader.
 
Alejandro Toledo, a Quechua who was president in the early 2000s, had sparked hopes among Andean groups that he would give them more profile, though left them largely disappointed.
 
More recently, leftist president Ollanta Humala also promised dialogue with indigenous groups but was criticized for pushing oil interests over preserving their land rights.
 
Indigenous leaders told Reuters that they had decided to support Castillo after he met with them to hear their demands and pledged to protect indigenous lands and push for a new constitution.
 
Melania Camales, who represents indigenous women in the Amazon, is among those who met him. She has hopes for him as president but knows it won’t be easy.
 
“For decades, our land has been stolen by private companies, concessioned by the government,” she said. Some 200 years of “colonialist, racist, classist and male chauvinist education” will be difficult to undo, she added.
 
“We know he could betray us and power could go to his head. But the last thing we as indigenous communities should lose is hope.”
 
Long feeling discriminated against because of their social and economic status or skin color, many told Reuters the problem had become even more evident during the election.
 
AIDESEP, an umbrella organization for Peru’s indigenous communities in the Amazon rainforest, slammed attempts to annul rural votes as “denying our existence.”
 
“They don’t understand that our country, Peru, is plurinational — it’s not just the capital Lima,” said Lourdes Huanca, an Aymara and rights activist at another organization, FENMUCARINAP.
 
Discrimination was systematic, she said. “To them, we are not capable; to them, we don’t know how to think; according to them, we can’t make decisions.”
 
Back in Carata, thin cows with prominent ribs grazed on herbs burnt by the highland sun; the potato harvest was laid out to freeze dry in the cold night air; barefoot children, with red cheeks, wrapped newborn lambs in blankets for the cold.
 
For Ccalla and others, the fear was that development is eroding a way of life – much older than the 200 years of Peru.
 
“We feel vulnerable and discriminated but we are so worried about contaminated water and soil, we can’t fight for a bigger cause,” she said.
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Tropical Storm Elsa swept along Cuba’s southern coast early Monday, and forecasters said it could make landfall on the island’s central shore by midafternoon.    By Sunday, Cuban officials had evacuated 180,000 people as a precaution against the possibility of heavy flooding from a storm that already battered several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people. Most of those evacuated stayed at relatives’ homes, others went to government shelters, and hundreds living in mountainous areas took refuge in caves prepared for emergencies.      Elsa was forecast to cross over Cuba by Monday night and then head for Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 15 counties, including in Miami-Dade County, where a high-rise condominium building collapsed last week.      Late Sunday, Elsa’s center was about 440 kilometers southeast of Havana and moving northwest at 24 kph. Its maximum sustained winds had strengthened a bit to about 100 kph, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.     The center said the storm was likely to gradually weaken while passing over central Cuba. “After Elsa emerges over the Florida Straits and the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, some slight re-strengthening is possible,’” it said.     Rain fell intermittently in Cuba’s eastern provinces throughout Sunday as the storm passed by to the south.     “So far it’s a soft, serene rain. There are no downpours. The streets are not overflowing,” Yolanda Tabio, a 73-year-old retiree living in Santiago, told The Associated Press. “I thought it could be worse.”     Rafael Carmenate, a volunteer for the local Red Cross who lives facing the beach in Santa Cruz del Sur, told the AP by telephone: “We have a little water – showers. The sea has not intruded. It’s cloudy and gusty.”      The storm killed one person on St. Lucia, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. A 15-year-old boy and a 75-year-old woman died Saturday in separate events in the Dominican Republic after walls collapsed on them, according to a statement from the Emergency Operations Center.     Elsa was a Category 1 hurricane until Saturday morning, causing widespread damage on several eastern Caribbean islands Friday as the first hurricane of the Atlantic season. Among the hardest hit was Barbados, where more than 1,100 people reported damaged houses, including 62 homes that collapsed.     Downed trees also were reported in Haiti, which is especially vulnerable to floods and landslides because of widespread erosion and deforestation. Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency said Sunday that three people had been injured by downed trees.     A tropical storm warning was in effect for western Cuba and for the Florida Keys from Craig Key westward to the Dry Tortugas. Cuba’s government posted a hurricane warning for Cienfuegos and Matanzas provinces.     Elsa is the earliest fifth-named storm on record and also broke the record as the tropic’s fastest-moving hurricane, clocking in at 50 kph Saturday morning, said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.     Portions of Cuba were forecast to get rainfall of 13 to 25 centimeters through Monday, with isolated spots getting up to 20 centimeters. Jamaica expected a total of 10 to 20 centimeters, with maximum totals of 38 centimeters.
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Cuba evacuated 180,000 people amid fears Sunday that Tropical Storm Elsa could unleash severe flooding after battering several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people.The Cuban government had opened shelters and moved to protect sugarcane and cocoa crops ahead of the storm. Most of those evacuated went to relatives’ homes, while some people sheltered at government facilities. Hundreds living in mountainous areas took refuge in natural caves that had been prepared for the emergency.  The storm’s next target was Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 15 counties, including in Miami-Dade County where the high-rise condominium building collapsed last week.  On Sunday afternoon, Elsa was about 65 kilometers (40 miles) south-southeast of Cabo Cruz, Cuba and was heading northwest at 22 kph (14 mph). It had maximum sustained winds of about 95 kph (60 mph), according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.The center said the storm is expected to gradually weaken Monday as it moves across Cuba.A man secures the roof of his house in preparation for Tropical Storm Elsa, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, July 3, 2021.”After Elsa emerges over the Florida Straits and the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, some slight restrengthening is possible,” it said.The storm killed one person in St. Lucia, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. Meanwhile, a 15-year-old boy and a 75-year-old woman died Saturday in separate events in the Dominican Republic after walls collapsed on them, according to a statement from the Emergency Operations Center.Elsa was a Category 1 hurricane until Saturday morning, causing widespread damage in several eastern Caribbean islands on Friday as the first hurricane of the Atlantic season. Among the hardest hit was Barbados, where more than 1,100 people reported damaged houses, including 62 homes that completely collapsed as the government promised to find and fund temporary housing to avoid clustering people in shelters amid the pandemic.  Downed trees also were reported in Haiti, which is especially vulnerable to floods and landslides because of widespread erosion and deforestation.Elsa is the earliest fifth-named storm on record and also broke the record as the tropic’s fastest-moving hurricane, clocking in at 50 kph (31 mph) on Saturday morning, according to Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.
 
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Cuba prepared to evacuate people along the island’s southern region on Sunday amid fears that Tropical Storm Elsa could unleash heavy flooding after battering several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people. The government opened shelters and moved to protect sugarcane and cocoa crops ahead of the storm, whose next target was Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 15 counties, including in Miami-Dade County where the high-rise condominium building collapsed last week. Elsa was located about 175 miles (280 kilometers) east-southeast of Montego Bay, Jamaica, and was speeding west-northwest at 17 mph (28 kph). It had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (100 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The storm killed one person in St. Lucia, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. Meanwhile, a 15-year-old boy and a 75-year-old woman died Saturday in separate events in the Dominican Republic after walls collapsed on them, according to a statement from the Emergency Operations Center. Elsa was a Category 1 hurricane up until Saturday morning, causing widespread damage in several eastern Caribbean islands on Friday as the first hurricane of the Atlantic season. Among the hardest hit was Barbados, where more than 1,100 people reported damaged houses, including 62 homes that completely collapsed as the government promised to find and fund temporary housing to avoid clustering people in shelters amid the pandemic. Downed trees also were reported in Haiti, which is especially vulnerable to floods and landslides because of widespread erosion and deforestation. Antony Exilien secures the roof of his house in response to Tropical Storm Elsa, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Saturday, July 3, 2021. Elsa brushed past Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Saturday.A tropical storm warning was in effect for Jamaica and from the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince to the southern border with the Dominican Republic. A hurricane watch was issued for the Cuban provinces of Camaguey, Granma, Guantanamo, Holguin, Las Tunas, and Santiago de Cuba. Some of those provinces have reported a high number of COVID-19 infections, raising concerns that the storm could force large groups of people to seek shelter together. Elsa is the earliest fifth-named storm on record and also broke the record as the tropic’s fastest-moving hurricane, clocking in at 31 mph on Saturday morning, according to Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami. It is forecast to drop 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) of rain with maximum totals of 15 inches (38 centimeters) across portions of southern Hispaniola and Jamaica. 
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Tropical Storm Elsa left three people dead Saturday as it downed trees and blew off roofs in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The storm, which had been a Category 1 hurricane, weakened and it now heads for Cuba and Florida.One death was reported on St. Lucia, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, and two deaths were reported in the Dominican Republic, according to the Emergency Operations Center.Elsa was still a hurricane when it damaged several Caribbean islands, with Barbados among the hardest hit.More than 1,100 people reported damaged houses, including 62 homes that collapsed. Schools and government offices were also damaged, and hundreds were without power Saturday, according to the Associated Press.”This is a hurricane that has hit us for the first time in 66 years,” Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said Saturday, according to the AP. “There is no doubt this is urgent.”Haitian authorities used social media to alert the population about the storm, urging those living near water or mountainsides to evacuate. Downed trees have been reported there.Late Saturday, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm was about 280 kilometers east-southeast of Montego Bay, Jamaica, and was moving west-northwest at 28 kph with maximum sustained winds of 100 kph.Elsa is forecast to strike Cuba next and then Florida. The Hurricane Center’s forecast shows it bearing down on the west coast of Florida as a tropical storm by Tuesday morning. Other tracking models, though, would have the storm moving into the Gulf of Mexico or up along the Atlantic Coast.Information from the Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report. 
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Protests against President Jair Bolsonaro spread across Brazil on Saturday, a day after a Supreme Court justice authorized a criminal investigation into his response to allegations of potential corruption involving a vaccine deal.Demonstrators gathered by the hundreds or thousands in more than 40 cities to demand Bolsonaro’s impeachment or greater access to vaccines against COVID-19.”If we have a minute of silence for each COVID death, we would be quiet until June 2022,” read a poster held aloft by a man in Belem, the capital of Para state. More than half a million Brazilians have died, by official count.In Friday’s decision, Supreme Court Justice Rosa Weber said the investigation is supported by recent testimony in a Senate committee investigating the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.Prosecutors will investigate whether Bolsonaro committed the crime of “prevarication,” which entails delaying or refraining from action required as part of a public official’s duty for reasons of personal interest. Weber didn’t rule out the possibility other potential wrongdoing could be investigated.The inquiry comes after Luis Ricardo Miranda, the chief of the Health Ministry’s import division, said he faced undue pressure to sign off on the import of 20 million vaccine doses from Indian pharmaceutical Bharat Biotech. He said there were irregularities in the invoices, particularly a $45 million upfront payment to a Singapore-based company.Demonstrators march on Paulista Avenue to demand that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro resign, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, July 3, 2021.Miranda testified before the Senate committee June 25 along with his brother, Luis Miranda, a lawmaker who until recently was allied with Bolsonaro. The Mirandas said they took their concerns directly to Bolsonaro, who assured them he would report the irregularities to the Federal Police.However, the Federal Police never received any request to investigate, a Federal Police source with knowledge of investigations told The Associated Press. He spoke anonymously for lack of authorization to speak publicly.The secretary-general of the presidency, Onyx Lorenzoni, confirmed Bolsonaro met with the Mirandas, but claimed they presented fraudulent documents. Bolsonaro ordered the brothers investigated, he said.Bharat has denied any wrongdoing with respect to vaccine supply. Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of corruption and told reporters on June 28 he can’t know what transpires within his ministries.The Supreme Court decision greenlighting an investigation came in response to a request filed by three senators. A majority of senators on the investigating committee previously told the AP that, once their inquest concludes, they would vote to recommend Bolsonaro be indicted for prevarication.The crime carries with it a prison term of three months to a year, plus a fine.In Rio de Janeiro’s protest, 63-year-old retiree Terezinha Zanata said the government had mismanaged violence, the environment and Indigenous rights.”This in addition to the disregard for the pandemic issue,” she said, complaining of a sluggish vaccine campaign and a president who long minimized the seriousness of the disease.
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Six people, including two American missionaries, were killed when a private airplane crashed southwest of Port-au-Prince, local authorities said Saturday.The aircraft had taken off from the city’s airport at 6:57 p.m. (2257 GMT) on Friday and should have arrived at Jacmel, on Haiti’s southern coast, around an hour later, according to the National Civil Aviation Office (NCAO).”The plane crashed en route with six people on board,” an NCAO incident report said.Gutenberg Destin, the coordinator of civil protection for Haiti’s Ouest Department, confirmed to AFP that all six people on board had been killed.The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately clear.The U.S.-based missionary organization Gospel to Haiti said on its Facebook page that Americans Trent Hostelter, 35, and John Miller, 43, were among the victims.They were part of a larger group making the trip in two planes, with Hostelter’s wife and children on the first flight.”When the second plane didn’t show up, they were very concerned and soon heard that the plane had gone down somewhere near Leogane,” Gospel to Haiti said.”A search team was formed and sent out and they located the plane early this morning and confirmed that all six people were killed, including Trent and John.”Hostetler and his wife worked for the missionary organization, while Miller was volunteering for a short period, according to GoFundMe pages opened to support of their families.With heavily armed gangs controlling the main land route from Port-au-Prince to the southern half of Haiti, charter flights to Jacmel have become increasingly popular — among the tiny number of Haitians able to afford them.
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The World Food Program says it has delivered a first batch of food for thousands of school children in Venezuela.The delivery follows a deal concluded earlier this year between the U.N. food agency and the government of Venezuela. Schools in Venezuela currently are closed.  So, World Food Program spokesman Tomson Phiri says his agency will provide take-home rations, which families will pick up at the schools where the children are enrolled.”Our plan is to start, is to reach gradually 185,000 people, including children under the age of six and school staff by the end of the year,” Phiri said. “The ration that I have spoken about is enough to cover a child for 30 days, which is a month.”   World Food Program to Give Daily Meals for 185,000 Venezuelan ChildrenWFP aims to expand operation over two years to reach 1.5 million students with daily mealsThe WFP says 42,000 food packages have arrived at its logistics hub in Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second largest city.  Each package contains more than 11 kilograms of food, including rice, lentils, iodized salt, and vegetable oil.Venezuela’s once prosperous economy has been in free-fall since President Nicolas Maduro came to power more than eight years ago.  The United Nations says more than 5.3 million people have fled the country because of political repression and harsh economic conditions.Official figures about the health status of Venezuelans are not available.  A WFP study in 2020 suggests, however, one in three Venezuelans do not have enough nutritious food to eat daily.A study by the Swiss charity Caritas of five Venezuelan states and the capital, Caracas, found 16 percent of children under five suffer from acute malnutrition.  The condition can cause stunting, wasting, cognitive difficulties and even death.The WFP says its work in Venezuela will focus on the provision of nutritious school meals, the rehabilitation of school canteens, and the training of school staff to observe and implement the highest food safety practices.The agency says it hopes to expand its school feeding program to include 1.5 million children and school personnel by the end of the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Hurricane Elsa is hurtling Saturday toward Haiti and the Domincan Republic, raising fears of flooding and mudslides in those countries before slamming Cuba and Florida.   Haitian authorities used social media to alert the population about the hurricane, urging those living near water or mountain sides to evacuate.The National Hurricane Center in Miami says the Category 1 storm was located about 635 kilometers east-southeast of Isla Beata, Dominican Republic, and was moving  west-northwest at 48 kilometers per hour with maximum sustained winds of 140 kilometers per hour. Elsa is expected to weaken to a tropical storm after striking Cuba, and the Hurricane Center’s long-term forecast shows it bearing down on Florida as a tropical storm by Tuesday morning. Other tracking models, though, would have the storm blowing into the Gulf or up along the Atlantic Coast.NHC: Hurricane Elsa to Weaken ‘A Little,’ Then Regain StrengthElsa to move across Caribbean Sea on SaturdayHurricane warnings are in effect Saturday for the southern coast of the Dominican Republic from Punta Palenque to the border with Haiti; the southern portion of Haiti from Port Au Prince to the southern border with the Dominican Republic; and in Jamaica beginning Sunday.  
 
A hurricane watch is in effect for the Cuban provinces of Camaguey, Granma, Guantanamo, Holguin, Las Tunas, and Santiago de Cuba.   
 
Meanwhile, a tropical storm warning is in effect for the coast of Haiti north of Port Au Prince and the south coast of the Dominican Republic, east of Punta Palenque to Cabo Engano.  
 
The hurricane center said the outer rain bands associated with Elsa will affect Puerto Rico with rainfall totals of up to seven centimeters, with amounts as much as 12 centimeters possible through Saturday. This rain could lead to isolated flash flooding and minor river flooding, along with the potential for mudslides, the center said.     
 
Across portions of southern Hispaniola and Jamaica, rainfall of 20 centimeters with higher isolated maximum amounts possible Saturday into Sunday, possibly leading to scattered flash flooding and mudslides.  
 
The Hurricane center said there is an increasing risk of storm surge, wind and rainfall beginning Monday in the Florida Keys. The impacts could be felt northward along the Florida peninsula through Tuesday.  However, the center emphasizes there is still significant uncertainty about the Florida portion of its forecast.  
 Information from the Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report.
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Swimming caps designed for natural Black hair won’t be allowed at the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, with the sport’s world governing body saying they are unsuitable due to them not “following the natural form of the head.”The British brand Soul Cap sought to have its products officially recognized by FINA, the federation that administers international competitions in water sports, but its application submitted last year was rejected. The company makes extra-large caps designed to protect thick, curly, and voluminous hair.The caps were barred by FINA on the grounds that to their “best knowledge, the athletes competing at the international events never used, neither require to use, caps of such size and configuration.”FINA described the swim caps as unsuitable due to them not “following the natural form of the head.”The Switzerland-based governing body said Friday that it is currently reviewing the situation with Soul Cap and similar products while “understanding the importance of inclusivity and representation.”FINA said in the statement that it is committed to ensuring all aquatics athletes have access to appropriate swimwear for competition as long as such swimwear doesn’t provide a competitive advantage.“We don’t see this as a setback, but a chance to open up a dialogue to make a bigger difference in aquatics,” Soul Cap cofounders Toks Ahmed-Salawudeen and Michael Chapman tweeted. “A huge thanks to all who have supported us and our work so far.”The men founded the company in 2017 after meeting a woman with natural Black hair who struggled with her swim cap. According to the company’s website, it has shipped over 30,000 swim caps to customers worldwide.“For younger swimmers, feeling included and seeing yourself in a sport at a young age is crucial,” Ahmed-Salawudeen said in an online post. “There’s only so much grassroots and small brands can do — we need the top to be receptive to positive change.”Alice Dearing, who will compete in marathon swimming in Tokyo as the only Black swimmer for Britain, endorses the company’s caps.“People used to tell me my hair was ‘too big’ for the cap — never that the cap was too small for my hair,” she said in a blog post on the company’s website.FINA pointed out Friday that there is no restriction on Soul Cap usage for recreational and teaching purposes. It said it appreciates the efforts of the company and other suppliers in making sure people have a chance to enjoy the water.FINA said it would speak with Soul Cap officials about using the company’s products at its development centers located in Dakar, Senegal, and Kazan, Russia. 
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The National Hurricane Center said late Friday that a reconnaissance aircraft has determined that Hurricane Elsa has weakened “a little” but is expected to restrengthen by late Saturday.Elsa is slated to cross the central Caribbean Sea on Saturday and move near the southern coast of Hispaniola late Saturday or Saturday night, according to the hurricane center.   Elsa is predicted to be near Jamaica and portions of eastern Cuba by Sunday, and portions of central and western Cuba by Sunday night or Monday.Hurricane warnings are in effect Saturday for the southern coast of the Dominican Republic from Punta Palenque to the border with Haiti; the southern portion of Haiti from Port Au Prince to the southern border with the Dominican Republic; and in Jamaica beginning Sunday.A hurricane watch is in effect for the Cuban provinces of Camaguey, Granma, Guantanamo, Holguin, Las Tunas, and Santiago de Cuba.Meanwhile, a tropical storm warning is in effect for the coast of Haiti north of Port Au Prince and the south coast of the Dominican Republic, east of Punta Palenque to Cabo Engano.The hurricane center said the outer rain bands associated with Elsa will impact Puerto Rico with rainfall totals of 2.5-7.5 centimeters with amounts as much as 12.5 centimeters possible through Saturday. This rain could lead to isolated flash flooding and minor river flooding, along with the potential for mudslides, the center said.Across portions of southern Hispaniola and Jamaica, rainfall of 10-20 centimeters with isolated maximum amounts of 38 centimeters is possible Saturday into Sunday, possibly leading to scattered flash flooding and mudslides.The hurricane center said there is an increasing risk of storm surge, wind and rainfall beginning Monday in the Florida Keys. The impacts could be felt northward along the Florida peninsula through Tuesday.  However, the center emphasizes there is still significant uncertainty about the Florida portion of its forecast. 
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Venezuelan rights group Fundaredes said Friday authorities had arrested its director and two other activists who have lifted the lid on fighting near the border with Colombia.Director Javier Tarazona and two others were taken by Venezuelan intelligence services, the NGO said on Twitter.A fourth activist was arrested but released eight hours later, the group said, adding that the other three were transferred to Caracas.Fundaredes had reported on the presence of Colombian dissident guerrillas on Venezuelan territory and criticized the response of the government, which it accused of harboring the fighters.It reported on the fighting that broke out on March 21 before the government did. Clashes have since displaced thousands of civilians.Venezuela does not name the armed groups it blames for the unrest, apart from calling them “terrorists” or linking them to drug trafficking or to Colombian President Ivan Duque.However, security sources in Colombia say they are likely dissidents of the now-disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group, an analysis Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro has conceded was possible.Bogota has long accused Venezuela of shielding members of the FARC and armed rebel group ELN on its soil — a charge Maduro denies.Some FARC fighters who refused to join Colombia’s peace process have continued their struggle, while also mixing with and battling drug traffickers.Venezuela and Colombia, which share a 2,200-kilometer border, severed diplomatic ties in January 2019, after Bogota recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the leader of Venezuela over Maduro following a disputed election.
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A fire on the ocean surface west of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula early Friday has been extinguished, state oil company Pemex said, blaming a gas leak from an underwater pipeline for sparking the blaze captured in videos that went viral.Bright orange flames jumping out of water resembling molten lava was dubbed an “eye of fire” on social media due to the blaze’s circular shape, as it raged a short distance from a Pemex oil platform.The fire took more than five hours to fully put out, according to Pemex.The fire began in an underwater pipeline that connects to a platform at Pemex’s flagship Ku Maloob Zaap oil development, the company’s most important, four sources told Reuters earlier.Ku Maloob Zaap is located just north of the southern rim of the Gulf of Mexico.Pemex said no injuries were reported, and production from the project was not affected after the gas leak ignited around 5:15 a.m. local time. It was completely extinguished by 10:30 a.m.The company added it would investigate the cause of the fire.Pemex, which has a long record of major industrial accidents at its facilities, added it also shut the valves of the 30-centimeter-diameter pipeline.Angel Carrizales, head of Mexico’s oil safety regulator ASEA, wrote on Twitter that the incident “did not generate any spill.” He did not explain what was burning on the water’s surface.Ku Maloob Zaap is Pemex’s biggest crude oil producer, accounting for more than 40% of its nearly 1.7 million barrels of daily output.”The turbomachinery of Ku Maloob Zaap’s active production facilities were affected by an electrical storm and heavy rains,” according to a Pemex incident report shared by one of Reuters’ sources.Company workers used nitrogen to control the fire, the report added.Details from the incident report were not mentioned in Pemex’s brief press statement and the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
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Officials on Friday hunted for any missing residents of a British Columbia town destroyed by wildfire as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered federal assistance.The province’s Coroner’s Service said it had received reports of two deaths related to the fire but had not been able to send coroners in to confirm because “the area is still unsafe to attend.” It said it planned to send them in on Saturday.The roughly 1,000 residents of Lytton had to abandon their homes with just a few minutes’ notice Wednesday evening after suffering the previous day under a record high of 49.6 Celsius (121.2 Fahrenheit).Officials said it was unclear whether anyone remained in the village 150 kilometers (95 miles) northeast of Vancouver because cell service was out and it wasn’t safe to enter most of the area.”We do know there are some people who are unaccounted for,” said Mike Farnworth, the province’s public safety minister, though he said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Red Cross were working to locate people.The main wireless provider for the area, Telus Corp., said Friday that it had deployed emergency communications equipment to help authorities and emergency crews dealing with the wildfires.Meanwhile, a woman who escaped the fire said she didn’t even have time to put shoes on before fleeing.Fast flamesThe Canadian Press reported that Noeleen McQuary-Budde said her husband stepped out of the house and returned moments later, screaming that a fire was upon them and they had to leave.She said black smoke was pouring down the village’s main street and fire seemed to be coming from all directions as they drove out of town with 11 other people piled in the back of their pickup.”The whole village of Lytton went up in, I would say, 10 minutes,” she said. “We were watching it burn and just thanking Creator that we got out.”The couple spent the night on the field of a recreation center in nearby Lillooet with their dog, Daisy.In Ottawa, Trudeau pledged that the federal government would “help rebuild and help people come through this.”Trudeau said he had spoken with British Columbia Premier John Horgan and John Haugen, acting chief of the Lytton First Nation, and planned to convene an emergency response group.Another wildfire threat at Kamloops, 355 kilometers (220 miles) northeast of Vancouver, forced an evacuation of about 200 people Thursday night, but officials said they could return Friday.Kamloops recorded a record high temperature this week of 47.3 Celsius (117 Fahrenheit) but it had cooled to around 32 (90) on Friday.”I can’t imagine what the firefighters are going through working in these conditions,” said Noelle Kekula, a fire information officer for the British Columbia Wildfire Service. “We are up for a real battle.”The Wildfire Service said at least 106 fires were burning across the province, including dozens that started within just the past two days.
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Elsa strengthened into the first hurricane of the Atlantic season on Friday as it battered the eastern Caribbean, where officials closed schools, businesses and airports, and it appeared headed eventually for Florida or the U.S. Gulf Coast.Heavy rains and winds lashed Barbados as the Category 1 storm headed for islands including St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which are struggling to recover from recent massive volcanic eruptions.Elsa was located about 75 miles (120 kilometers) east of St. Vincent and was moving west-northwest at 28 mph (44 kph). It had maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.”That level of sustained wind can blow down a lot of buildings and cause a lot of damage,” said St. Vincent Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves. “I am pleading with you. Let us not take this hurricane lightly. This is not the time to play the fool.”A hurricane warning was in effect for Barbados, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.The long-term track showed the storm rolling toward the Dominican Republic and Haiti as a hurricane before weakening back to tropical storm force and potentially heading in the direction of Florida by early Tuesday.  Authorities opened dozens of shelters in St. Vincent and urged people to evacuate if they lived near a valley, given the threat of flash flooding, mudslides and lahars, especially in the northern part of the island where La Soufrière volcano is located.”Do not wait until it’s too late to go to a shelter,” Gonsalves said.He said 94 shelters are open, a smaller number than in previous years because some 2,000 people remain in other shelters following massive volcanic eruptions that began in early April.A tropical storm warning was in effect for Martinique, the southern coast of Dominican Republic from Cabo Engano to the border with Haiti and the entire coast of Haiti. A tropical storm watch was in effect for Grenada, Saba, Sint Eustatius, Dominica and Jamaica, while a hurricane watch was in effect for Haiti’s southern region from the capital, Port-au-Prince, to the southern border with the Dominican Republic.Elsa is the earliest fifth-named storm on record, beating out last year’s Eduardo which formed on July 6, according to Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach.Elsa was expected to pass near the southern coast of Hispaniola, which is shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, on Saturday. The storm was then expected to move near Jamaica and portions of eastern Cuba on Sunday.The storm was forecast to bring 3 to 6 inches (7 to 15 centimeters) of rain with maximum totals of 10 inches (25 centimeters) inches on Friday across the Windward and southern Leeward Islands, including Barbados. The rain could unleash isolated flash flooding and mudslides.
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Many of the dead were found alone, in homes without air conditioning or fans. Some were elderly — one as old as 97. The body of an immigrant farm laborer was found in an Oregon nursery.As forecasters warned of a record-breaking heat wave in the Pacific Northwest and western Canada last weekend, officials set up cooling centers, distributed water to the homeless and took other steps. Still, hundreds of people are believed to have died from Friday to Tuesday.An excessive heat warning remained in effect for parts of the interior Northwest and western Canada Thursday.The death toll in Oregon alone reached 79, the Oregon state medical examiner said Thursday, with most occurring in Multnomah County, which encompasses Portland.  In Canada, British Columbia’s chief coroner, Lisa Lapointe, said her office received reports of at least 486 “sudden and unexpected deaths” between Friday and Wednesday afternoon. Normally, she said about 165 people would die in the province over a five-day period.She said it was too soon to say with certainty how many deaths were heat related, but that it was likely the heat was behind most of them.More Than 100 Deaths May Be Tied to Heat Wave in NW North AmericaCanada recorded its all-time high temperature of 47.9 degrees MondayWashington state authorities have linked more than 20 deaths to the heat, but authorities said that number was likely to rise.In Oregon’s Multnomah County, the average victim’s age was 67 and the oldest was 97, according to county Health Officer Jennifer Vines.In a telephone interview Thursday, Vines said she had been worried about fatalities amid the weather forecasts. Authorities tried to prepare as best they could, turning nine air-conditioned county libraries into cooling centers.  Between Friday and Monday, 7,600 people cooled off amid the stacks of books. Others went to three more cooling centers. Nearly 60 teams sought out homeless people, offering water and electrolytes.“We scoured the county with outreach efforts, with calls to building managers of low-income housing to be checking on their residents,” Vines said.  But the efforts weren’t enough, she said: “It’s been really sobering to see these initial (fatality) numbers come out.”Oregon Office of Emergency Management Director Andrew Phelps agreed. “Learning of the tragic loss of life as a result of the recent heat wave is heartbreaking. As an emergency manager – and Oregonian – it is devastating that people were unable to access the help they needed during an emergency,” he said.Among the dead was a farm laborer who collapsed Saturday and was found by fellow workers at a nursery in rural St. Paul, Oregon. The workers had been moving irrigation lines, said Aaron Corvin, spokesman for the state’s worker safety agency, Oregon Occupational Safety and Health, or Oregon OSHA.Oregon OSHA, whose database listed the death as heat-related, is investigating labor contractor Andres Pablo Lucas and Ernst Nursery and Farms, which did not respond to a request for comment. Pablo Lucas declined to comment Thursday.Farm worker Pedro Lucas said the man who died was his uncle, Sebastian Francisco Perez, from Ixcan, Guatemala. He had turned 38 the day before he died.Lucas, who is cousins with the labor contractor, was summoned to the scene. But by the time he arrived, his uncle was unconscious and dying. An ambulance crew tried to revive him but failed. Lucas said Perez was used to working in the heat and that the family is awaiting an autopsy report.Reyna Lopez, executive director of a northwest farmworkers’ union, known by its Spanish-language initials, PCUN, called the death “shameful” and faulted both Oregon OSHA for not adopting emergency rules ahead of the heat wave, and the nursery.Corvin said Oregon OSHA is “exploring adopting emergency requirements, and we continue to engage in discussions with labor and employer stakeholders.”He added that employers are obligated to provide ample water, shade, additional breaks and training about heat hazards.An executive order issued in March 2020 by Oregon Gov. Kate Brown would formalize protecting workers from heat, but it is coming too late for the dead farmworker. Brown’s order focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and also tells the Oregon Health Authority and Oregon OSHA to jointly propose standards to protect workers from excessive heat and wildfire smoke.  They had until June 30 to submit the proposals, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, the two agencies requested the deadline be pushed back to September.In Bend, Oregon, a scenic town next to the snowy Cascade Range, the bodies of two men were found Sunday on a road where dozens of homeless people stay in trailers and tents.  Volunteer Luke Richter said he stepped into the trailer where one of the men, Alonzo “Lonnie” Boardman, was found.“It was very obviously too late. It was basically a microwave in there,” Richter told Oregon Public Broadcasting.  Cooling stations had been set up at the campsite on Saturday, with water, sports drinks and ice available.  Weather experts say the number of heat waves are only likely to rise in the Pacific Northwest, a region normally known for cool, rainy weather, with a few hot, sunny days mixed in, and where many people don’t have air conditioning.“I think the community has to be realistic that we are going to be having this as a more usual occurrence and not a one-off, and that we need to be preparing as a community,” said Dr. Steven Mitchell of Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center, which treated an unprecedented number of severe heat-related cases. “We need to be really augmenting our disaster response.”This week’s heat wave was caused by what meteorologists described as a dome of high pressure over the Northwest and worsened by human-caused climate change, which is making such extreme weather events more likely and more intense.  Seattle, Portland and many other cities broke all-time heat records, with temperatures in some places reaching above 46 Celsius. 
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More than 100 deaths in the Pacific Northwest of North America may have been caused by hyperthermia, authorities in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia said, as the region experienced record-shattering high temperatures this week.Oregon officials said Wednesday that at least 63 people throughout the state — 45 of them in Multnomah County — died in connection to the high temperatures.According to the county’s health officer, Multnomah County, which includes Portland, the state’s largest city, recorded only 12 deaths from hyperthermia between 2017 and 2019.Portland and Seattle both recorded temperatures as high as 46 degrees Celsius since Friday.In Vancouver, Canada, police said they had responded to at least 65 sudden deaths since Friday. Authorities across the region have warned that death tolls could rise as investigations continue into the causes.On Sunday, Lytton, British Columbia, set Canada’s all-time high temperature, 46.6 degrees Celsius, only to see it broken less than 24 hours later, hitting 47.9 C Monday.Though temperatures in larger coastal cities had cooled Wednesday, residents inland were seeing less of a decline.The U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization said the extreme heat was caused by “an atmospheric blocking pattern,” which had led to a “heat dome” — a large area of high pressure trapped by low pressure on either side. The organization had said the temperatures would likely peak early this week on the coast and by the middle of the week in the interior of British Columbia. Afterward, the baking heat was expected to move east toward Alberta.By late Wednesday afternoon, Vancouver, B.C., was at a much cooler 24 C.As extreme temperatures have increased fears of wildfires this week, President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that western U.S. states suffering from drought will receive more help from the federal government.This article contains information from The Associated Press.  
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A Canadian Indigenous group said Wednesday a search using ground-penetrating radar has found 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site near a former Catholic Church-run residential school that housed Indigenous children taken from their families.The latest discovery of graves near Cranbrook, British Columbia, follows reports of similar findings at two other such church-run schools, one of more than 600 unmarked graves and another of 215 bodies. Cranbrook is 843 kilometers east of Vancouver.The Lower Kootenay Band said in a news release that it began using the technology last year to search the site close to the former St. Eugene’s Mission School, which was operated by the Catholic Church from 1912 until the early 1970s. It said the search found the remains in unmarked graves, some about a meter deep.It’s believed the remains are those of people from the bands of the Ktunaxa nation, which includes the Lower Kootenay Band, and other neighboring First Nation communities.Chief Jason Louie of the Lower Kootenay Band, which is also a member of the Ktunaxa Nation, called the discovery “deeply personal” since he had relatives attend the school.”Let’s call this for what it is,” Louie told CBC radio in an interview. “It’s a mass murder of Indigenous people.””The Nazis were held accountable for their war crimes. I see no difference in locating the priests and nuns and the brothers who are responsible for this mass murder to be held accountable for their part in this attempt of genocide of an Indigenous people.”From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend state-funded Christian boarding schools in an effort to assimilate them into Canadian society. Thousands of children died there of disease and other causes, with many never returned to their families.Nearly three-quarters of the 130 residential schools were run by Roman Catholic missionary congregations, with others operated by the Presbyterian, Anglican and the United Church of Canada, which today is the largest Protestant denomination in the country.A vigil takes place where ground-penetrating radar recorded hits of what are believed to be 751 unmarked graves near the grounds of the former Marieval Indian Residential School on the Cowessess First Nation, Saskatchewan, June 26, 2021.The Canadian government has acknowledged that physical and sexual abuse was rampant in the schools, with students beaten for speaking their native languages.Last week the Cowessess First Nation, located about 135 kilometers east of the Saskatchewan capital of Regina, said investigators found “at least 600” unmarked graves at the site of a former Marieval Indian Residential School.Last month, the remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, were found buried on the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school near Kamloops, British Columbia.Prior to news of the most recent finding, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he has asked that the national flag on the Peace Tower remain at half-mast for Canada Day on Thursday to honor the Indigenous children who died in residential schools.On Tuesday, it was announced that a group of Indigenous leaders will visit the Vatican later this year to press for a papal apology for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in residential schools.The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said Indigenous leaders will visit the Vatican from Dec. 17-20 to meet with Pope Francis and “foster meaningful encounters of dialogue and healing.”After the graves were found in Kamloops, the pope expressed his pain over the discovery and pressed religious and political authorities to shed light on “this sad affair.” But he didn’t offer the apology sought by First Nations and the Canadian government.The leader of one of Canada’s largest Indigenous groups says there are no guarantees an Indigenous delegation travelling to the Vatican will lead to Pope Francis apologizing in Canada.FILE – In this June 6, 2021, photo, Pope Francis speaks from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican to a crowd of faithful and pilgrims gathered for the Sunday Angelus noon prayer.Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde confirmed that assembly representatives will join Metis and Inuit leaders making the trip to the Vatican in late December.”There are no guarantees of any kind of apology” from the pope, said Bellegarde.”The Anglican Church has apologized,” he told a virtual news conference. “The Presbyterian Church has apologized. United Church has apologized.””This is really part of truth and part of the healing and reconciliation process for survivors to hear the apology from the highest position within the Roman Catholic Church, which is the pope.”Louie said he wants more concrete action than apologies.”I’m really done with the government and churches saying they are sorry,” he said. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”A papal apology was one of 94 recommendations from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but the Canadian bishops conference said in 2018 that the pope could not personally apologize for the residential schools.Since the discovery of unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools, there have been several fires at churches across Canada. There has also been some vandalism targeting churches and statues in cities.Four small Catholic churches on Indigenous lands in rural southern British Columbia have been destroyed by suspicious fires and a vacant former Anglican church in northwestern B.C. was recently damaged in what RCMP said could be arson.On Wednesday, Alberta’s premier condemned what he calls “arson attacks at Christian churches” after a historic parish was destroyed in a fire.”Today in Morinville, l’église de Saint-Jean-Baptiste was destroyed in what appears to have been a criminal act of arson,” Kenney said in a statement.RCMP said officers were called to the suspicious blaze at St. John Baptiste Parish in Morinville, about 40 kilometers north of Edmonton, in the early hours of Wednesday. 
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The U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Tuesday called the heatwave hitting the Pacific Northwest corner of the United States “exceptional and dangerous,” and says it could last at least another five days. Speaking to reporters from Geneva, a WMO spokeswoman said while records have fallen in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington, western Canada has seen extreme heat as well. Extreme #heat hits Northwest USA and Western Canada, which saw new record temperature of 47.9°C
Many parts of northern hemisphere have seen exceptionally high temperatures#Climatechange ➡️more frequent and intense heatwaves
Roundup is here https://t.co/qI0ncloKpd
Graphic @ecmwfpic.twitter.com/fposUALIMU
— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) People look for ways to cool off at Willow’s Beach during the ‘heat dome,’ currently hovering over British Columbia and Alberta as record-setting breaking temperatures scorch the province and in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, June 28, 2021.The WMO said the extreme heat is caused by “an atmospheric blocking pattern,” which has led to a “heat dome” — a large area of high pressure — trapped by low pressure on either side. The organization said the temperatures would likely peak early this week on the coast and by the middle of the week in the interior of British Columbia; afterward, the baking heat is expected to move east toward Alberta. The U.S. National Weather Service in Portland, Oregon, on its Twitter account late Monday, reported cooler air was already in the region along the coastline. In a tweet Sunday, the Oregon Climate Service said the climate system is no longer in a balanced state, and such heat events “are becoming more frequent and intense, a trend projected to continue.”
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Demonstrations by opponents of the government of conservative President Ivan Duque, marked by clashes with the security forces, took place on Monday in several cities in Colombia for the two months of the social protest that left more than 60 dead in the country.The country has known since April 28 a social crisis that started against a plan to raise taxes, since withdrawn, and has turned into a mass movement with almost daily demonstrations.The demonstrators are calling for police reform and more social justice in the face of the consequences of the pandemic which has caused an increase in the poverty rate among the 50 million inhabitants of the country, from 37% to 42%.The riot police intervened Monday “on twenty occasions in several cities,” the director general of police, General Jorge Vargas told the media. A dozen public transport vehicles were also “vandalized,” he said.Protesters attacked police facilities in Bogota, Medellin (North West) and Pereira (West) and a statue of Christopher Columbus was knocked down by protesters in Barranquilla (North).In Medellin, demonstrators were beaten back harshly by water cannons and riot control forces.In the capital, dozens of people drew silhouettes of civilians murdered by soldiers during the five decades of armed conflict between the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and the government, which resurfaced despite the 2016 peace agreement.The National Strike Committee, at the initiative of social mobilization, announced in mid-June a temporary suspension of demonstrations until July 20. But it does not represent all the sectors involved in the movement.At least 61 people have died, including two police officers, since the start of the protests, according to the authorities and the People’s Defense, a public body responsible for ensuring respect for human rights.The United States, the European Union and the UN have denounced the excessive use of force by the police since the start of the protest.According to Human Rights Watch, there are “credible allegations” of the deaths of 34 people directly linked to the protests. Among them, 20 died as a result of police actions, 16 of which were shot with the intention of “killing,” estimates the NGOThe government assures us that underground groups involved in drug trafficking and the National Liberation Army (ELN), the last active guerrilla in the country, have infiltrated the demonstrations in order to sow chaos.In power since 2018, President Duque, whose helicopter came under fire on Friday near the Venezuelan border, will step down in 2022 and cannot be re-elected for a second term.
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It was around 10:30 p.m. on a Sunday when journalist Verónica Chávez heard a loud noise as she put her son to bed. She looked out to see her husband, Miguel Mora, frantically trying to open the door to their home as members of Nicaragua’s police tried to kick it in. Mora, a presidential hopeful and the former director of the news outlet 100% Noticias, shouted for the police to stop kicking so he could open the door for them.  “They were shouting, kicking, and Miguel was trying to open the door and was saying ‘Here I am,'” Chávez said through tears. “They said, ‘Come out,’ but as he was going to open, they didn’t stop kicking the door.”  FILE – Nicaraguan journalist Miguel Mora speaks to the press after his release from prison, at his home in Managua, Nicaragua, June 11, 2019.Mora was arrested in 2018, as well, and jailed for nearly six months as Ortega’s government violently put down street protests that he says were an attempted coup. During the past month, Ortega’s police have rounded up some 20 opposition figures, including five presidential hopefuls like Mora, and raided the homes of others. Often the police would arrive at night with overwhelming force — in Mora’s case, seven to 10 patrol vehicles — insult their targets and their families, break windows and doors. They grabbed electronics: cellphones, computers, external memory drives, cameras.  Families are not told where the detainees are taken. They are not given access to lawyers. Most of the charges concern vague allegations of crimes against the state, usually involving the acceptance of foreign funding. In most cases, the police put out public statements about the latest arrest, and the intimidation and fear spread.  A week before police grabbed Mora, Víctor Hugo Tinoco had gone out to dinner with two of his children at the Galerias mall in Managua. Around 9 p.m., he was getting into his car when police descended on them. FILE – Opposition legislator Victor Hugo Tinoco, of the Sandinista Renewal Movement, gestures in Managua, Nicaragua, Jan. 28, 2014.”Ten masked men grabbed him, put him in a truck and took him,” his daughter Arlen Tinoco said. Police snatched her cellphone and threatened to hit her as she tried to film the arrest. Three days later, police came to Tinoco’s home. “They wanted to jump the gates. They shouted and threatened to break them down,” said Deyanira Parrales, Tinoco’s wife. She asked them to be respectful and not be violent.  Two of their daughters received police in the house praying and holding up a crucifix. “San Miguel archangel, drive away evil demons,” Parrales said her daughters chanted. The police did not damage their home. Still, Parrales said, “Those were the worst hours of my life.”  FILE – Former Sandinista revolutionary commander Dora Maria Tellez, president of the Sandinista Renewal Movement, speaks during the party meeting in Managua, Nicaragua, Aug. 21, 2005.When the police came for Dora María Téllez and Ana Margarita Vijil, two leaders of the opposition party, Unamos, there were more than 60 riot police securing the perimeter, according to a statement from relatives. Police broke down doors and roughly handled the women. Téllez had been a Sandinista guerrilla with Ortega before splitting with him years ago. “The logic in democratic countries is that first they investigate and then they arrest, but we’re getting closer and closer to Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea,” said lawyer and opposition figure José Pallais, after the initial arrests early this month. On June 9, police arrested Pallais at his home in Leon. The police did not find former Education Minister Humberto Belli when they broke through his home’s front gate and disabled the home’s security cameras, according to an account he published Monday in La Prensa. His wife told them he was out of the country and prayed while police searched the house for the next four hours. The next day, Belli’s wife and daughter were sleeping when the dog barked. His daughter opened a door to let it out and at that moment, at least six men dressed in black and wearing masks forced their way inside. One carried a rifle, the others, knives, according to Belli. Again, they asked for Belli. Then they asked where he had his guns. His wife told them the police had already searched the house, and one of the men said this was a “second operation.” The men forced the women to hand over all of their jewelry and cellphones. They ransacked the house. At one point, one man tried to rape Belli’s daughter but was stopped by another. After an hour and a half, as Belli’s wife began to tremble, the men left.  “I am aware that what my family suffered pales beside what many others have suffered, but I think it is important to document the tribulations that so many families in today’s Nicaragua continue suffering,” Belli wrote. “To remain silent could be a way to lie and rig the abuses.” 
 
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Marianela Rojas huddles in prayer with her fellow migrants, a tearful respite after trudging across a slow-flowing stretch of the Rio Grande and nearly collapsing onto someone’s backyard lawn, where, seconds before, she stepped on American soil for the first time.
“I won’t say it again,” interrupts a U.S. Border Patrol agent, giving orders in Spanish for Rojas and a dozen others to get into an idling detention van. “Only passports and money in your hands. Everything else — earrings, chains, rings, watches — in your backpacks. Hats and shoelaces too.”
It’s a frequent scene across the U.S.-Mexico border at a time of swelling migration. But these aren’t farmers and low-wage workers from Mexico or Central America, who make up the bulk of those crossing. They’re bankers, doctors and engineers from Venezuela, and they’re arriving in record numbers as they flee turmoil in the country with the world’s largest oil reserves and pandemic-induced pain across South America.
Two days after Rojas crossed, she left detention and rushed to catch a bus out of the Texas town of Del Rio. Between phone calls to loved ones who didn’t know where she was, the 54-year-old recounted fleeing hardship in Venezuela a few years ago, leaving a paid-off home and once-solid career as an elementary school teacher for a fresh start in Ecuador.
But when the little work she found cleaning houses dried up, she decided to uproot again — this time without her children.
“It’s over, it’s all over,” she said into the phone recently, crying as her toddler grandson appeared shirtless on screen. “Everything was perfect. I didn’t stop moving for one second.”
Last month, 7,484 Venezuelans were encountered  by Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border — more than all 14 years for which records exist.
The surprise increase has drawn comparisons to the midcentury influx of Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro’s communist rule. It’s also a harbinger of a new type of migration that has caught the Biden administration off guard: pandemic refugees.
Many of the nearly 17,306 Venezuelans who have crossed the southern border illegally since January had been living for years in other South American countries, part of an exodus of nearly 6 million Venezuelans since President Nicolás Maduro took power in 2013.
While some are government opponents fearing harassment and jailing, the vast majority are escaping long-running economic devastation marked by blackouts and shortages of food and medicine.
With the pandemic still raging in many parts of South America, they have had to relocate again. Increasingly, they’re being joined at the U.S. border by people from the countries they initially fled to — even larger numbers of Ecuadorians and Brazilians have arrived this year — as well as far-flung nations hit hard by the virus, like India and Uzbekistan.
U.S. government data shows that 42% of all families encountered along the border in May hailed from places other than Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — the traditional drivers of migratory trends. That compares with just 8% during the last sharp increase in migration in 2019. The Border Patrol recorded more than 180,000 encounters in May, a two-decade high that includes migrants’ repeated attempts to cross.
Compared with other migrants, Venezuelans garner certain privileges — a reflection of their firmer financial standing, higher education levels and U.S. policies that have failed to remove Maduro but nonetheless made deportation all but impossible.
The vast majority enter the U.S. near Del Rio, a town of 35,000 people, and they don’t try to evade detention but rather turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents to seek asylum.
Like many of the dozens of Venezuelans The Associated Press spoke to this month in Del Rio, 27-year-old Lis Briceno had already migrated once before. After graduating with a degree in petroleum engineering, she couldn’t get hired in the oil fields near her hometown of Maracaibo without declaring her loyalty to Venezuela’s socialist leadership. So she moved to Chile a few years ago, finding work with a technology company.
But as anti-government unrest and the pandemic tanked Chile’s economy, sales plunged and her company shuttered.
Briceno sold what she could — a refrigerator, a telephone, her bed — to raise the $4,000 needed for her journey to the U.S. She filled a backpack and set out with a heart lock amulet she got from a friend to ward off evil spirits.
“I always thought I’d come here on vacation, to visit the places you see in the movies,” Briceno said. “But doing this? Never.”
While Central Americans and others can spend months trekking through the jungle, stowing away on freight trains and sleeping in makeshift camps run by cartels on their way north, most Venezuelans reach the U.S. in as little as four days.
“This is a journey they’re definitely prepared for from a financial standpoint,” said Tiffany Burrow, who runs the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition’s shelter in Del Rio, where migrants can eat, clean up and buy bus tickets to Miami, Houston and other cities with large Venezuelan communities.
They first fly to Mexico City or Cancun, where foreign visitors are down sharply but nearly 45,000 Venezuelans arrived in the first four months of 2021. Smugglers promoting themselves as “travel agencies” have cropped up on Facebook, claiming to offer hassle-free transport to the U.S. in exchange for about $3,000.
“We’re doing things the way they do things here — under the table,” a smuggler said in a voice message a migrant shared with the AP. “You’ll never be alone. Someone will always be with you.”
The steep price includes a guided sendoff from Ciudad Acuna, where the bulk of Venezuelans cross the Rio Grande. The hardscrabble town a few hundred wet steps from Del Rio is attractive to both smugglers and migrants with deeper pockets because it had been largely spared the violence seen elsewhere on the border.
“If you’re a smuggler in the business of moving a commodity — because that’s how they view money, guns, people, drugs and everything they move, as a product — then you want to move it through the safest area possible charging the highest price,” said Austin L. Skero II, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector.
But the number of smugglers caught with weapons has recently increased in the area, and agents who normally hunt down criminals are tied up processing migrants.
The uptick in migrants crossing is “purely a diversion tactic used by the cartels” to carry out crime, Skero said as a group of Haitians carrying young children emerged from a thicket of tall carrizo cane on the riverbank.
Once in the U.S., Venezuelans tend to fare better than other groups. In March, Biden granted Temporary Protected Status to an estimated 320,000 Venezuelans. The designation allows people coming from countries ravaged by war or disaster to work legally in the U.S. and gives protection from deportation.
While new arrivals don’t qualify, Venezuelans requesting asylum — as almost all do — tend to succeed, partly because the U.S. government corroborates reports of political repression. Only 26% of asylum requests from Venezuelans have been denied this year, compared with an 80% rejection rate for asylum-seekers from poorer, violence-plagued countries in Central America, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
“I can write their asylum requests almost by heart,” said Jodi Goodwin, an immigration attorney in Harlingen, Texas, who has represented over 100 Venezuelans. “These are higher-educated people who can advocate for themselves and tell their story in a chronological, clean way that judges are accustomed to thinking.”
Even Venezuelans facing deportation have hope. The Trump administration broke diplomatic relations with Maduro when it recognized Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful leader in 2019. Air travel is suspended, even charter flights, making removal next to impossible.
Meanwhile, as the migrants leave Del Rio to reconnect with loved ones in the U.S., they are confident that with sacrifice and hard work, they’ll get an opportunity denied them back home.
Briceno said that if she had stayed in Venezuela, she would earn the equivalent of $50 a month — barely enough to scrape by.
“The truth is,” says Briceno, hustling to catch a bus to Houston where her boyfriend landed a well-paying oil industry job, “it’s better to wash toilets here than being an engineer over there.”
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Argentine prosecutors will on Monday question Diego Maradona’s personal physician, implicated with six other medical professionals in having neglected the ailing football icon in his final days.The appearance of Leopoldo Luque, 39, will close a two-week process of interrogating the seven, who appeared one-by-one to state their case.A judge will next decide whether to order a trial, in a process that could take years. The suspects risk between eight and 25 years in jail if found guilty.The seven were placed under investigation for manslaughter after a board of experts looking into Maradona’s death found he had received inadequate care and was abandoned to his fate for a “prolonged, agonizing period.”The sporting legend died of a heart attack last November at the age of 60, weeks after undergoing brain surgery for a blood clot.An investigation was opened following a complaint filed by two of Maradona’s five children against neurosurgeon Luque, whom they blame for their father’s deterioration after the operation.A panel of 20 medical experts convened by Argentina’s public prosecutor said last month that Maradona’s treatment was rife with “deficiencies and irregularities” and the medical team had left his survival “to fate.”The panel concluded he “would have had a better chance of survival” with adequate treatment in an appropriate medical facility.Instead, he died alone in his bed in a rented house in an exclusive Buenos Aires neighborhood where he was receiving home care.’I did my best’Luque has repeatedly denied guilt, and recently said “I’m proud of what I did,” to assist the patient, who he described as his friend.”I did my best. I offered Diego everything I could: some things he accepted, others not,” he said.The doctor is seeking a dismissal of the case and says Maradona had been depressed in his final days.”I know that the (coronavirus) quarantine hit him very hard,” Luque has said.He could on Monday decline to respond to questions and submit a written statement instead.Last week, a lawyer for co-accused nurse Dahiana Madrid, 36, told prosecutors the doctors in charge had “killed Diego.””In the end, there were many warning signs that Maradona was going to die, give or take a day. And none of the doctors did anything to prevent it,” attorney Rodolfo Baque said at the time.The other five people under suspicion are nurse Ricardo Almiron, 37; nursing coordinator Mariano Perroni, 40; medical coordinator Nancy Forlini, 52; psychologist Carlos Diaz, 29; and psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov, 36.All have denied responsibility for Maradona’s death.Cosachov, who appeared before prosecutors on Friday, denied that the psychiatric medicine she had prescribed could have contributed to Maradona’s heart condition.Maradona had battled cocaine and alcohol addictions for years.The former Boca Juniors, Barcelona and Napoli star was suffering from liver, kidney and cardiovascular disorders when he died.Maradona is an idol to millions of Argentines after he inspired the South American country to only their second World Cup triumph in 1986.His death shocked fans around the world, and tens of thousands queued to file past his coffin, draped in the Argentine flag, at the presidential palace in Buenos Aires amid three days of national mourning. 
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Thousands of Peruvians supporting socialist Pedro Castillo and right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori took to the streets Saturday amid swirling uncertainty over the result of a tight June 6 presidential election that has been held up by legal challenges.Castillo supporters marched in downtown Lima toward Plaza San Martín, a block from the headquarters of the electoral jury, with giant banners and photos of the socialist candidate, calling for his apparent election win to be confirmed.A few blocks away, thousands of others supporting Fujimori paraded with Peruvian flags and banners that read “no to fraud,” arriving at the Plaza Bolognesi, where a stage had been set up ahead of the expected arrival of the conservative.Castillo holds a slender 44,000-vote lead over Fujimori with all ballots counted. But his right-wing rival has sought to disqualify votes, largely in rural areas that backed the leftist, making claims of fraud with little evidence.Castillo’s Free Peru party has denied the allegations of fraud while international election observers have said the vote was carried out cleanly. The U.S. State Department described the process as a “model of democracy.”A supporter wears a shirt with an image of Peru’s presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori that reads, “Always with you,” in Lima, Peru, June 26, 2021.In Fujimori’s march were members of various right and center-right parties, as well as retired military personnel who have backed her fraud claims. Many had banners saying “no to communism,” a criticism they often aim at Castillo.In the rival camp, many wore the same wide-brimmed hats Castillo has used in the campaign. Some wore outfits from the country’s Andean regions and danced, while others carried whips as used by rural “ronderos,” or civil police.Castillo, 51, a former elementary school teacher and the son of peasant farmers, plans to redraft the country’s constitution to give the state a more active role in the economy and take a larger share of profits from mining companies.The already tense election process was plunged into disarray this week after one of the four magistrates on the jury reviewing contested ballots quit after clashing with the other officials over requests to nullify votes.Replacement sworn inOn Saturday the electoral jury swore in a replacement to allow the process to restart, key to restoring stability in the copper-rich Andean nation, which has been rattled by the tight vote.”Electoral justice cannot be paralyzed or blocked, much less in this phase of the process,” said the president of the National Elections Jury, Jorge Salas. “These interruptive arts will not prosper.”The election jury will restart its work reviewing contested ballots Monday, a spokeswoman for the body said. It must complete the review before an official result can be announced.The polarized election has deeply divided Peruvians, with poorer rural voters rallying behind Castillo and wealthier urban voters from Lima supporting Fujimori, the daughter of jailed ex-President Alberto Fujimori.The demonstrations came despite calls from health authorities to avoid crowds, with the country battling the most deadly per capita COVID-19 outbreak in the world.
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