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Nicole strengthens into tropical storm as it churns toward the northwestern Bahamas and Florida’s Atlantic coastline
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Tag: Latin America and Caribbean
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Nicole strengthens, threatens Bahamas and Florida coastline
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MIAMI — Subtropical Storm Nicole began strengthening and transitioning into a tropical storm early Tuesday as it churned toward the northwestern Bahamas and Florida’s Atlantic coastline, forecasters said.
“There are indications in the satellite imagery and recognizance aircraft that the system may be trying to evolve into a more classic tropical cyclone and could become a full-blown tropical storm later today,” Jack Bevin, a senior hurricane specialist at the Miami-based National Hurricane Center, told The Associated Press on Tuesday morning.
A range of warnings and watches remain in place. Many areas are still reeling from damage caused by Hurricane Ian, which hit Florida’s southwestern Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm in late September, before dumping heavy amounts of rain across much of central part of the state.
Hurricane warnings were in effect for the Abacos, Berry Islands, Bimini and Grand Bahama Island, the advisory said. Other areas of the Bahamas, including Andros Island, New Province and Eleuthera remained under a tropical storm warning.
The hurricane center said the storm’s track shifted slightly north overnight, but the exact path remains uncertain. It was expected to make landfall along Florida’s coast as a Category 1 hurricane late Wednesday or early Thursday.
In the U.S., tropical storm warnings and hurricane watches were issued for much of Florida’s Atlantic coastline north of Miami, to Altamaha Sound, Georgia. The warning area stretches inland, covering Florida’s Lake Okeechobee, with tropical storm watches in effect on the state’s Gulf Coast — from Bonita Beach in southwest Florida to the Ochlockonee River in the Panhandle.
Bevin said the storm has a “very large cyclonic envelope,” meaning that even if it makes landfall along the central Florida coastline, the effects will be felt into Georgia.
However, the storm was not expected to have any impact on voting in Florida on Tuesday, Bevin said.
Officials in the Bahamas opened more than two dozen shelters across the archipelago on Tuesday as they closed schools and government offices in Abaco, Bimini, the Berry Islands and Grand Bahama.
Authorities warned that airports and seaports will close as the storm nears and not reopen until Thursday as they urged people in shantytowns to seek secure shelter.
Communities in Abaco are expected to receive a direct hit from Nicole as they still struggle to recover from Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm that hit in 2019.
“We don’t have time to beg and plead for persons to move,” said Capt. Stephen Russell, emergency management authority director.
The difference between a subtropical and tropical storm is largely academic. A subtropical storm is a non-frontal low-pressure system that has characteristics of both tropical and extratropical cyclones and tend to have a larger wind field, extending much farther from their centers.
At 7 a.m., the storm was about 385 miles (615 kilometers) east northeast of the northwestern Bahamas and moving at 8 mph (13 kph), with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph (80 kph).
The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30. The last storm to hit Florida in November was Tropical Storm Eta, which made landfall in Cedar Key, on the state’s Gulf Coast, on Nov. 12, 2020.
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Walker reported from New York City. Associated Press reporter Danica Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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Botched autopsy in Mexico killing leads to cover-up charge
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MEXICO CITY — The killing of a young woman in Mexico City brought accusations Monday that authorities in a neighboring state intentionally botched her autopsy to cover up for the killer.
The death of Ariadna López, 27, brought up all the issues that have enraged women in Mexico: officials blaming the victim, poor police investigation and misconduct that has led to a growing number of unsolved killings of women.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum alleged that the prosecutor of Morelos state, just south of the capital, had ties to the woman’s alleged killer though she refused to describe their purported links.
“It is clear that the prosecutor of Morelos state tried to cover up for the killer of a woman because of his ties to the killer,” Sheinbaum said.
The woman’s body was found last week in Morelos, so officials there initially investigated.
Morelos state prosecutor Uriel Carmona said a state forensic exam showed López choked on her own vomit as a result of intoxication. But officials in Mexico City said Sunday that they had evidence she was slain in the capital.
Carmona’s office did not comment on Sheinbaum’s accusation that the autopsy was botched or that it was part of a cover-up.
On Sunday, Mexico City prosecutor Ernestina Godoy said a new autopsy carried out by Mexico City experts found “several lesions caused by blows” on López’s body and listed the cause of death as “multiple traumas.”
López was found dead on the side of a road last week in Morelos state, home to the city of Cuernavaca, a frequent weekend getaway for Mexico City residents. She had vanished after visiting a restaurant with the suspect and his girlfriend and later visiting his apartment, Mexico City authorities sid.
On Monday, Sheinbaum showed an image from the apartment building’s security cameras purportedly showing the suspect walking through a basement garage with the inert body of a woman over his shoulder.
The suspect, who was apparently a friend of the victim, turned himself in to prosecutors in the northern city of Monterrey on Monday and said he was innocent of the killing. His girlfriend was arrested in Mexico City.
Some saw suggestions of police incompetence from the start. López disappeared from a trendy central Mexico City neighborhood Oct. 30. Her body was not found until days later when cyclists discovered her on a path that leads from Mexico City to Morelos.
Her body was identified by relatives only because the cyclists took photos of the victim’s tattoos and posted them online in an attempt to help identify her.
On Monday, dozens of women and their supporters marched in downtown Mexico City to demand justice in López’s case.
“We feel enraged, impotent, above all, mad,” said Omar Rodríguez Díaz, the victim’s brother. “They treat us like garbage and that is sad.”
“We want justice done and prosecutor Uriel Carmona to pay the consequences of his words. He made a mockery of Mexico and of all women,” Rodríguez Díaz said.
Sheinbaum is considered a leading contender to replace President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2024 elections. The dispute Monday sets up a conflict with the governor of Morelos state, who is an ally of López Obrador but not a member of his Morena party.
Mexico City has its own problems with women’s killings. A young woman, Lidia Gabriela, apparently threw herself from a taxi and died on a Mexico City street Wednesday. Witnesses said Gabriela thought the taxi driver was trying to kidnap her and so she leaped from the vehicle
Morelos state has also had a particularly bad stretch of women’s killings.
On Friday, the bodies of five women were found in the Morelos city of Cuautla just south of Mexico City. The bodies were found at two different spots in the city, known as a weekend getaway for Mexico City residents.
The prosecutor in Morelos state said the killings appeared to have been carried out by a drug gang, possibly as part of some sort of dispute. Carmona said the bodies were found near a hand-lettered sign of the kind often used by drug gangs.
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Insider Q&A: Kind Founder Lubetzky on entrepreneurship
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To entrepreneur Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of Kind snacks, kindness means more than just being nice.
“If somebody is nice, they’re not going to bully. But if they’re kind, they’re going to stand up to the bully,” he said. “Kindness requires the strength of action.”
It’s a lesson Lubetzky learned from his father, a Latvian Jew who survived the Holocaust. Lubetzky’s father was deeply touched by small acts of kindness, like the German soldier who snuck him a potato or the care shown by the Japanese-American soldiers who liberated him.
Lubetzky, who was born in Mexico and is fluent in Spanish, French, Hebrew and English, also has a passion for bridging cultures. One of his first ventures, PeaceWorks, sold products made jointly by Israelis and Palestinians; this year, he helped fund scholarships for Ukrainian students to study in the U.S.
Lubetzky launched Kind in 2004, honoring his father with the name. The health-conscious brand helped transform the snack category; Lubetzky sold it to Mars in 2020 for an estimated $5 billion.
Lubetzky has invested that into new food brands like Somos Foods, which aims to bring authentic Mexican products to U.S. groceries. He’s also launched charitable foundations and nonprofits like Starts with Us, which tries to overcome political and cultural division.
Lubetzky discussed his career, and what motivates him, with The Associated Press. His comments have been edited for length.
Q. How do you describe yourself?
A. I think of myself as a serial social entrepreneur, meaning someone that loves noticing opportunities for how to create stuff in society that doesn’t already exist that will be both economically sustainable and socially impactful. I think that tends to be one common thread in a lot of the ventures that I do: ventures that use business as a force for having a social impact and doing it in a way that the products can defend themselves and win on the merits of that. First and foremost, this is a business. But there’s an added reason for being. It’s not just to make money. It’s also to try to have a positive impact in society, however small that may be.
Q. What makes a successful entrepreneur? Is it a certain personality type?
A. You have to have the creative vision to identify a problem that has not been solved and come up with a creative idea for how to solve it. That’s No. 1. And then the execution, wherewithal, guts and chutzpah to just go out and do it. And that’s a very hard combination. If you have the first but not the second, you can be an inventor. Inventors are great at coming up with ideas, but they don’t execute on them as well. If you have the second, to execute but not the creativity to invent, you could be a good business manager. If you have both, you can be an entrepreneur.
Q. You tend to tackle really intractable issues, like the U.S. culture wars or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Why?
A. The way we’re educated, we’re taught to process and to become factory line workers and to become professionals. But we’re not encouraged to dream about what’s possible and to recognize our power to do things that people thought were not possible. We’re not taught enough about Gandhi, about bring the change you want to see in the world. We’re not smart enough about all these approaches that are essential in society. What’s happening in our country today affects every single person, and it’s going to require every single one of us to be part of the solution.
Q. You’ve worked with a lot of entrepreneurs through your incubator, Equilibra, and elsewhere. What is your advice to them?
A. I do recommend they think about how they see the world from their vantage point, what’s missing, whether it’s a social element that they want to fix if they’re social entrepreneurs or whether there’s a business opportunity or product or service. What doesn’t satisfy them? What’s missing? What’s not being done well enough? And that’s only the beginning of the journey. If you identify what’s not working, then you need to look at the underlying reason why that’s not working. And then you need to target that and say, “Can I do it better?” It’s an incredible ride, but it’s a roller coaster ride. The highs are higher, the lows are lower, and you need to be comfortable with that. You need to have a temperament where you’re not going to easily give up.
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German customs officials seize cocaine valued at $44.3M
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BERLIN — German customs officials have seized 635 kilograms of cocaine among bananas shipped from Ecuador, authorities said Monday.
The cocaine, compressed into blocks and wrapped in plastic film, was found Oct. 27 in several packages in Duisburg in western Germany, the customs office in nearby Essen said.
The packages were wedged between bananas in a container shipped from Ecuador that had arrived in Germany via the Dutch port of Vlissingen. Employees at the company the bananas were delivered to noticed the packages and notified customs.
Authorities put the street value of the cocaine at about 44.5 million euros ($44.3 million), German news agency dpa reported.
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Fireworks injure 17 at Mexico town’s Day of Dead celebration
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MEXICO CITY — A fireworks explosion at a Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico injured 17 people, authorities said Sunday.
The accident occurred Saturday in the township of Huejutla in Mexico’s Gulf coast region known as the Huasteca.
The Huejutla municipal government said residents of the village of Tehuetlan were celebrating the end of Xantolo, which is the Huasteca regional variant of the Day of the Dead. Its celebrations last beyond the normal Nov. 1-2 observance.
A pile of fireworks were set alight in the street and exploded, showering the surrounding crowd in sparks and explosions, the government said.
The township said two pregnant women and three children were among the injured. One of the girls suffered second-degree burns.
Fireworks accidents are not uncommon in Mexico.
In September, one person died and 39 were injured when fireworks exploded during a festival in a town festival just west of Mexico City.
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Monarch butterflies return to Mexico on annual migration
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MEXICO CITY — The first monarch butterflies have appeared in the mountaintop forests of central Mexico where they spend the winter, Mexico’s Environment Department said Saturday.
The first butterflies have been seen exploring the mountaintop reserves in th states of Mexico and Michoacan, apparently trying to decide where to settle this year.
The monarchs have shown up a few days late this year. Normally they arrive for the Day of the Dead observances on Nov. 1 and Nov. 2. Mountainside communities long associated the orange-and-black butterflies with the returning souls of the dead.
The department said the butterflies were seen around their three largest traditional wintering grounds — Sierra Chincua, El Rosario and Cerro Pelón in Michoacan state.
The main group of butterflies is expected to arrive in the coming weeks, depending on weather conditions, the department said in a statement.
It is too early to say how big this year’s annual migration from the United States and Canada will be. Those counts are usually made in January, when the butterflies have settled into clumps on the boughs of fir and pine trees.
The annual butterfly count doesn’t calculate the individual number of butterflies, but rather the number of acres they cover when they clump together.
Last year, 35% more monarch butterflies arrived compared to the previous season. The rise may reflect the butterflies’ ability to adapt to more extreme bouts of heat or drought by varying the date when they leave Mexico.
Each year, generally in March, the monarchs migrate back to the United States and Canada.
Drought, severe weather and loss of habitat north of the border — especially of the milkweed where the monarchs lay their eggs — as well as pesticide and herbicide use and climate change all pose threats to the species’ migration. Illegal logging and loss of tree cover due to disease, drought and storms plague the reserves in Mexico.
This year, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature added the migrating monarch butterfly to its “red list” of threatened species and categorized it as “endangered” — two steps from extinct.
The group estimates the population of monarch butterflies in North America has declined between 22% and 72% over 10 years, depending on the measurement method.
The monarchs’ migration is the longest of any insect species known to science.
After wintering in Mexico, the butterflies fly north, breeding multiple generations along the way for thousands of miles. The offspring that reach southern Canada begin the trip back to Mexico at the end of summer.
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US supports calls for external ethics probe into OAS chief
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MIAMI — The head of the Organization of American States is facing growing calls, including from the Biden administration, for an external probe into possible misconduct tied to his intimate relationship with a subordinate.
The Washington-based group’s own inspector general in a memo this week said it is in the organization’s “best interest” to hire an outside firm to investigate allegations that Secretary General Luis Almagro may have violated the ethics code.
The inspector general’s recommendation was based on a report by The Associated Press finding that Almagro carried on a relationship with a Mexican-born staffer described online, including on the organization’s own website, as “head adviser” to the secretary general.
The inspector general said the AP report followed a loosely detailed, anonymous whistleblower complaint forwarded to his office by Almagro himself on June 3.
The peace and democracy-building organization’s ethics code prohibits managers from supervising or participating in decisions that benefit individuals with whom they are romantically involved.
The proposal to hire an outside firm to look into Almagro’s behavior is scheduled to be discussed Wednesday at the next meeting of the 34-member organization’s permanent council.
The U.S. — which has contributed about half of the organization’s $100 million in funding this year — has already expressed support for an external probe ahead of the meeting.
“We take these allegations seriously,” a State Department spokesperson told the AP in an email, adding that any ethics violation “should be investigated in a fair and impartial manner by an appropriate external investigative entity.”
But at least four members — Almagro’s native Uruguay, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize and St. Lucia — have publicly backed draft resolutions that raise concerns about the cost of an external investigation at a time when the 600-employee hemispheric body is under pressure to cut spending.
Their benchmark is a recent investigation into similar misconduct allegations against the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, Mauricio Claver-Carone, who was accused of having a long-running relationship with his chief of staff. The months-long probe by American law firm Davis Polk determined that Claver-Carone had violated ethics rules by favoring the aide, paving the way for the president’s removal.
Repeated requests for Almagro’s comment on the possibility of an external probe sent to the secretary general’s press office went unanswered.
But unlike Claver-Carone, who went down denying he ever had a relationship with his aide, Almagro has said only that he never supervised the staffer or participated in any employment-related decisions like authorizing a pay increase. He previously has vowed to cooperate fully with any investigation by the organization’s top oversight authority.
Almagro faces criticism on other administrative matters as well.
Mexico this week slammed Almagro for allegedly betraying members’ wishes by renewing a contract for the OAS’ ombudswoman, Neida Perez, days before a long-discussed plan to implement an open and competitive process for the leadership post was approved at the organization’s annual meeting.
Almagro in September unilaterally extended Perez’s contract by four years and Mexico complained it was an attempt to preempt those new procedures.
“Unfortunately this isn’t an isolated act,” Mexico’s delegation said in a written statement at a Nov. 1 meeting on administrative matters. “It fits into a pattern of conduct in which the will of the states is disregarded and the OAS’ institutions are violated.”
Perez — whose contract was set to expire Oct. 21, two weeks after the new procedures were adopted — was recently reprimanded by the OAS’ top review panel for neglecting her duty to serve as an impartial arbiter of workplace disputes.
That rebuke was in response to Perez’s role facilitating Almagro’s 2020 removal of the head of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights — an independently run body. The commission´s executive secretary was himself facing workplace complaints but nonetheless enjoyed the unanimous support of the watchdog’s seven commissioners.
Almagro, 59, was elected as head of the OAS in 2015 with near unanimous support after having served as foreign minister in Uruguay’s leftist government.
But once installed in Washington, he made common cause with the U.S. in opposing leftist leaders in Cuba and Venezuela, once even echoing President Donald J. Trump’s line that he wouldn’t rule out using military force to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
He was reelected in 2020 with the support of 23 of 34 member states. More recently, as the left has regained power across Latin America, calls for his removal have been growing louder.
Last month, members of the Puebla Group — an organization of former presidents and political leaders from 16 countries — issued a statement calling for Almagro’s removal, criticizing his “amoral” firing of the rights watchdog and his intervention following messy elections in Bolivia that led to President Evo Morales’ resignation and replacement by a U.S.-backed conservative government.
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Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report from Washington.
Follow Goodman on Twitter: @APJoshGoodman
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Tourists on Peru riverboat freed after pollution protest
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LIMA, Peru — An Indigenous leader in Peru’s Amazon region said Friday that his community had released 98 riverboat passengers — 23 of them foreign tourists — who had been detained overnight as a protest to demand government attention to complaints of oil pollution.
Wadson Trujillo said the passengers, including citizens of Germany, Great Britain, Spain and France as well as Peru, set off along the Maranon River at 1:45 p.m. local time aboard the vessel named Eduardo 11, which had been held since the day before by residents of Cuninico. The passengers were en route from Yurimaguas to Iquitos, the main city in Peru’s Amazon region.
But he said the people of Cuninico would continue protests — and blocking the passage of boats — until the government gives them concrete help.
“We have seen ourselves obliged to take this measure to summon the attention of a state that has not paid attention to us for eight years,” he told The Associated Press by telephone.
He asked the government of President Pedro Castillo to declare an emergency in the area to deal with the effects of oil pollution.
Trujillo said oil spills in 2014 and again in September this year “have caused much damage” to people who depend on fish from the river as a significant part of their diet.
“The people have had to drink water and eat fish contaminated with petroleum without any government being concerned,” he said.
He said the spills had affected not only the roughly 1,000 inhabitants of his township but nearly 80 other communities, many of which lack running water, electricity or telephone service.
Peru’s Health Ministry took blood samples in the region in 2016 and found that about half the tests from Cuninico showed levels of mercury and cadmium above levels recommended by the World Health Organization.
“The children have those poisons in their blood. The people suffer from stomach problems — that is every day,” Trujillo said.
Prime Minister Aníbal Torres said in response to Indigenous demands that the “evils of 200 years of republican life cannot be resolved in a day, in a few months or in a few years.”
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Argentina adds another exchange rate — for tourists only
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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — In recent years, a moment often came when a visitor to Argentina suddenly grasped they could have gotten a lot more bang for their bucks if only they had brought cash to buy pesos on the unofficial market.
A dollar sometimes would buy twice as many pesos in informal cash trading as the amount in pesos it would get in purchases using a credit or debit card covered by the official exchange rate.
“You can almost hear the blood drain out of their voice when they realize this,” said Jed Rothenberg, owner of a travel agency that specializes in trips to Argentina.
That should, at least in theory, be a thing of the past as of Friday. The government has implemented a new regulation allowing visitors using credit and debit cards to get more pesos than the official rate gives.
On Friday, one dollar was officially worth 157 Argentine pesos. But in the unofficial market, commonly referred to as the “blue dollar,” it could be worth as much as 285 pesos. And in the system that will now be used by credit card operators it was at 292.
The informal foreign currency traders became more ubiquitous after strict capital controls were put in place in 2019 in an effort to protect the local currency from a sharp devaluation amid the country’s high inflation.
The government hopes the new rule for credit and debit cards will discourage all-cash transactions that leave cash-laden tourists more vulnerable to robbers — and also often deprive the government of sales taxes that are frequently ignored if there is no electronic trail.
Rothenberg sought for years to explain Argentina’s different exchange rates and the difficulties that tourists faced in using credit and debit cards. He wasn’t always successful.
“The vast majority of people are just confused: ‘You mean there’s more than one exchange rate and that one of these can be as much as a double- or even triple-digit difference?’,” Rothenberg said.
The new rule won’t do much to reduce confusing complexities. It adds yet another exchange rate to the more than 10 that already exist in Argentina — a system that makes it impossible to say simply what a peso is worth.
The government also imposes different taxes on converting foreign currency depending on what it will be used for, leading to rates that have colloquial names like the “Qatar dollar” for travelers (a reference to the World Cup), the “Netflix dollar” for streaming services and the “Coldplay dollar” to book foreign artists to play in the country.
The reason why no one can really answer how much a peso is worth is because “it’s worth something different for each person,” said Martín Kalos, an economist who is a director at Epyca Consultores, a local consultancy.
“The government has been segmenting the market. There is no one value, there are multiple prices depending on who you are or what operation you want to do,” he said.
The government’s goal is to have a stronger peso to pay for the country’s imports in hopes of keeping prices rises from worsening. The economy registered an annual inflation rate of 83% in September.
Fernández’s administration “is implementing palliative measures, or patches, because it has elections a year from now” and any efforts to correct these distortions would likely cause economic pain that would be costly at the ballot box, Kalos said.
Argentina has gone through so many financial crises in recent decades that its citizens are distrustful of their currency, so those who earn enough to save usually do so in dollars or euros.
Even economically savvy Argentines are often confused.
Anyone who has not received subsidies from the state or who operates in certain financial markets can buy as much as $200 a month but must add an additional 65% tax to the official exchange rate.
Argentines who pay for foreign currency purchases on their credit cards pay a surplus of 75% over the official rate. But that is as long as they spend less than $300. If they spend more than that a month, the surplus increases to 100%.
Argentines can also buy dollars through the financial markets via operations through bonds or stocks but pay a peso price similar to that in the informal market. That is the system made available to credit card processing companies Friday.
Experts said they have to see how the new system for visitors is implemented before knowing whether it will be succesful.
But if implemented well, Rothenberg said the change could be a boon for tourists.
“They’re just using their credit card, they don’t care about the details,” he said. “If they actually make this work, Argentina could be one of the top tourist destinations within the next couple of years, especially with how expensive the U.S. and Europe are right now.”
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Tropical Depression Lisa crosses into southern Mexico
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MEXICO CITY — Tropical Depression Lisa moved into southern Mexico on Thursday, a day after making landfall as a hurricane near Belize City in the Central American nation of Belize and heading inland over northern Guatemala.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Lisa had maximum sustained winds of 30 mph (45 kph). The storm’s center was about 45 miles (70 kilometers) southwest of Ciudad del Carmen, on Mexico’s Gulf coast.
Lisa was moving west at 12 mph (19 kph) and was expected to cross into the Gulf of Mexico by Friday.
Belize’s National Emergency Management Organization said the storm came ashore Wednesday between the beach town of Dangriga and Belize City. It reported “significant damage, including dangerous debris, leaning lampposts and downed electrical lines.”
Local media in Belize reported some flooding as well as some homes that lost their sheet-metal roofs in the storm’s winds.
Guatemala’s disaster relief office reported no deaths or injuries from Lisa, but said 68 homes had suffered some damage,
The hurricane center warned of the danger of flooding and mudslides from heavy rains in Mexico. It said the storm could drop 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) of rain on the eastern portion of Mexico’s Chiapas state and the Mexican state of Tabasco.
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Miss Puerto Rico, Miss Argentina announce they are married
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HAVANA — Two former beauty queens, Fabiola Valentín of Puerto Rico and Mariana Valera of Argentina, announced this week that they had secretly married.
The joint Instagram post spurred celebration in LGBTQ communities across Latin America, a region that has historically lagged on gay rights but has made small steps in recent years.
“After deciding to keep our relationship private, we’re opening the doors on this special day, 28/10/22,” Valentín and Valera said in their announcement posted Sunday.
The post includes a video montage of their relationship, including the two on vacations, at bars and on the beach at sunset. There is a view of gold and silver balloons reading “Marry me?” and the two together after the proposal.
The video ends with Valentín and Valera dressed in white kissing outside the courthouse in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Once barred in the U.S. territory, same-sex marriage became legal in Puerto Rico in 2015 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such bans unconstitutional. In 2020, new codes came into place on the island adding additional LGBTQ protections.
The two women met at the Miss Grand International competition in Thailand in 2020, where they represented their countries. They continued to post on social media together since.
The marriage announcement was met with a swell of celebration on social media, which the couple responded to with enthusiam.
“Thank you for all the love! We’re very happy and joyful,” wrote Valera. “I am sending you all back the love you are giving us.”
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Officials: NYC cop drowns on vacation in his native Guyana
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GEORGETOWN, Guyana — A Guyana-born New York City police officer vacationing in his homeland drowned in fast-flowing waters in a jungle and mountain region near the border with Brazil, authorities said Wednesday.
Police said Gladstone Hayne, 43, and the mother of his children were swimming at the Orinduik Falls in the heavily forested Potaro Region when he was swept away Sunday.
Police spokesman Mark Ramotar said Hayne’s body was recovered by a search party Wednesday morning but he could give no more details.
Hayne was a 17-year veteran of the New York City police force and the son of a former Guyana police officer, officials said.
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Pepper balls launched at group crossing US-Mexico border
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EL PASO, Texas — U.S. Border Patrol agents launched pepper balls at a group of migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border along the Rio Grande in El Paso after the agency said one person threw a rock at one agent and another was assaulted with a flagpole.
Video captured Monday by the El Paso Times shows Border Patrol agents approaching the group, which included a man holding a very large Venezuelan flag, that had crossed the shallow river.
Border Patrol spokesperson Landon Hutchens said in a statement that as the group of Venezuelan nationals protested along the river, they tried to enter the U.S. illegally.
“One of the protesters assaulted an agent with a flag pole,” Hutchens said. “A second subject threw a rock causing injury to an agent at which time agents responded by initiating crowd control measures.”
Those measures included launching “less-lethal force” pepper balls, he said. He said the crowd then dispersed and returned to Mexico. Hutchens did not give details on the agents’ injuries.
Before the conflict at the river Monday, a group of migrants had marched in Juarez, across the border from El Paso, demanding an opportunity to cross the border, the newspaper reported.
According to a new Biden administration policy that took effect last month, which came in response to a dramatic increase in migration from Venezuela, Venezuelans who walk or swim across the U.S. border will be immediately returned to Mexico.
The Biden administration has agreed to accept up to 24,000 Venezuelan migrants at U.S. airports while Mexico has agreed to take back Venezuelans who come to the U.S. illegally over land.
Roberto Velasco, Mexico’s director for North American affairs, tweeted Monday that the Mexican government had requested information from its U.S. counterparts about the confrontation.
Jonathan Blazer, director of border strategies at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the footage “highly alarming.”
“People seeking asylum on U.S. soil should be screened for protection, not pushed back, especially through use of force,” Blazer said.
According to statistics from Customs and Border Protection, its officials used “less-lethal” force — such as batons, stun guns, tear gas and pepper spray — 338 times in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
Hutchens said the Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Professional responsibility will review Monday’s incident.
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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro does not concede election in 1st public speech since results released 2 days ago
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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro does not concede election in 1st public speech since results released 2 days ago
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With 50.9% of votes tallied in Brazil election, candidates very close with 50.3% for Bolsonaro, 49.7% for Lula da Silva
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With 50.9% of votes tallied in Brazil election, candidates very close with 50.3% for Bolsonaro, 49.7% for Lula da Silva
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Cuba says at least 5 dead after boat heading to US crashes
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HAVANA — A boat off northern Cuba traveling toward the United States sank Saturday after a collision with a Cuban coast guard ship, and at least five people died, Cuban officials said Saturday.
The craft reportedly flipped over after the crash near Bahía Honda, about two hours from the capital of Havana.
Among the five known dead were a minor and three women, while about two dozen people were rescued, the state media outlet Cubadebate said.
Further details were not released, with Cuban officials telling the state channel that an investigation was underway.
The incident comes amid the biggest migratory flight from the Caribbean island in four decades, spurred by a deepening economic, political and energy crisis.
Cuba’s Interior Ministry threw blame on the U.S., saying the deaths were a “another consequence” of American policy toward Cuba, including the 60-year embargo.
Meanwhile, the U.S. sent condolences to the families of those deceased.
“As we expand safe and legal pathways for migration, we warn against attempting dangerous and sometimes fatal irregular migration,” said a tweet from the U.S. Embassy in Havana, which has yet to resume full operations on the island.
The vast majority of Cubans who are leaving go by plane to Nicaragua, then travel overland to the U.S. border, often in Texas and Arizona.
But a growing number have fled by boat on the dangerous 90-mile journey to the southern coast of the United States. Between October 2021 and August 2022, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted more than 4,600 Cubans traveling by boat, almost six times more than in all of 2020.
It is the largest exodus since 1980, when around 125,000 Cubans traveled by sea to the U.S. over six months, known as the Mariel crisis.
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Pakistan: Oldest prisoner freed from Guantanamo, back home
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ISLAMABAD — A 75-year-old from Pakistan who was the oldest prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center was released and returned to Pakistan on Saturday, the foreign ministry in Islamabad and the U.S. Defense Department said.
Saifullah Paracha was reunited with his family after more than 17 years in custody in the U.S. base in Cuba, the ministry added.
Paracha had been held on suspicion of ties to al-Qaida since 2003, but was never charged with a crime. Last year in May, he was notified that he had been been approved for release. He was cleared by the prisoner review board, along with two other men in November 2020.
As is customary, the notification did not provide detailed reasoning for the decision and concluded only that Paracha is “not a continuing threat” to the United States, according to Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, who represented him at his hearing at the time.
The DOD said in its Saturday statement that the U.S. appreciates “the willingness of Pakistan and other partners to support ongoing U.S. efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantanamo Bay facility.”
In Pakistan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said it had completed an extensive inter-agency process to facilitate Paracha’s repatriation.
“We are glad that a Pakistani citizen detained abroad is finally reunited with his family,” the ministry said.
Paracha, who lived in the United States and owned property in New York City, was a wealthy businessman in Pakistan. Authorities alleged he was an al-Qaida “facilitator” who helped two of the conspirators in the Sept. 11 plot with a financial transaction.
He has maintained that he didn’t know they were al-Qaida and denied any involvement in terrorism.
The U.S. captured Paracha in Thailand in 2003 and held him at Guantanamo since September 2004. Washington has long asserted that it can hold detainees indefinitely without charge under the international laws of war.
In November 2020, Paracha, who suffers from a number of ailments, including diabetes and a heart condition, made his eighth appearance before the review board, which was established under President Barack Obama to try to prevent the release of prisoners who authorities believed might engage in anti-U.S. hostilities upon their release from Guantanamo.
At the time, his attorney, Sullivan-Bennis, said she was more optimistic about his prospects because of President Joe Biden’s election, Paracha’s ill health and developments in a legal case involving his son, Uzair Paracha.
The son was convicted in 2005 in federal court in New York of providing support to terrorism, based in part on testimony from the same witnesses held at Guantanamo whom the U.S. relied on to justify holding the father.
In March 2020, after a judge threw out those witness accounts and the U.S. government decided not to seek a new trial, the younger Paracha was released and sent back to Pakistan.
In its statement on the elder Paracha’s repatriation, the DOD said 35 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay as of Saturday, and that of 20 of them are eligible for transfer.
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Associated Press writer Thomas Strong in Washington contributed to this report.
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Mexican artisans preserve Day of the Dead decorations
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XOCHIMILCO, Mexico — Mexican artisans are struggling to preserve the traditional manufacture of paper cut-out decorations long used in altars for the Day of the Dead.
Defying increasingly popular mass-production techniques, second-generation paper cutter Yuridia Torres Alfaro, 49, still makes her own stencils at her family’s workshop in Xochimilco, on the rural southern edge of Mexico City.
As she has since she was a child, Torres Alfaro punched stunningly sharp chisels into thick piles of tissue paper at her business, ‘Papel Picado Xochimilco.’
While others use longer-lasting plastic sheets, laser cutters or pre-made stencils, Torres Alfaro does each step by hand, as Mexican specialists have been doing for 200 years.
In 1988, her father, a retired schoolteacher, got a big order for sheets — which usually depict festive skeletons, skulls, grim reapers or Catrinas — to decorate city government offices.
“The business was born 34 years ago, we were very little then, and we started helping in getting the work done,” Torres Alfaro recalled.
Begun in the 1800s, experts say ‘papel picado’ using tissue paper is probably a continuation of a far older pre-Hispanic tradition of painting ceremonial figures on paper made of fig-bark sheets. Mexican artisans adopted imported tissue paper because it was cheap and thin enough so that, with sharp tools, extreme care and a lot of skill, dozens of sheets can be cut at the same time.
But the most important part is the stencil: its design designates the parts to be cut out, leaving an intricate, airy web of paper that is sometimes strung from building or across streets. More commonly, it is hung above Day of the Dead altars that Mexican families use to commemorate — and commune with — deceased relatives.
The holiday begins Oct. 31, remembering those who died in accidents; it continues Nov. 1 to mark those died in childhood, and then those who died as adults on Nov. 2.
Traditionally, the bright colors of the paper had different meanings: Orange signified mourning, blue was for those who drowned, yellow was for the elderly deceased and green for those who died young.
But many Mexicans — who also use the decorations at other times of year, stringing them at roof-height along streets — now prefer to buy plastic, which lasts longer in the sun and the rain.
Still other producers have tried to use mass-produced stencils, which means that tens of thousands of sheets might bear exactly the same design.
“Stencils began to appear for making papel picado, because it is a lot of work if you have to supply a lot of people,” said Torres Alfaro, who still hand-cuts her own stencils with original designs.
“We wanted to keep doing it the traditional way, because it allows us to make small, personalized lots, and keep creating a new design every day,” she says.
Another rival was the U.S. holiday Halloween, which roughly coincides with Day of the Dead, Because it is flashier and more marketable — costumes, movies, parties and candy — it has gained popularity in Mexico.
“For some time now, there has been a bit more Halloween,” said Torres Alfaro. “We do more traditional Mexican things. That is part of the work, to put Mexican things in papel picado. If we do Halloween things, it’s only on order” from customers.
Still others have tried to use 21st-century technology, employing computer-generated designs and laser cutters.
But Torres Alfaro says that concentrating so much on the cutting leaves out the most important part: the delicate webs of paper left behind.
“There are some laser machines that are gaining popularity, but we have checked them and the costs are the same, the machines still cut hole-by-hole and they can’t cut that many sheets,” she said.
“The (ready-made) stencils and the laser machine have their downsides,” she said. “Papel picado is based on what can be cut, and what can’t, and that is the magic of papel picado.”
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Blinken in Canada: Haiti military force ‘work in progress’
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VANCOUVER, Canada — The U.S. and Canada will work together to “cut the insecurity knot” that has allowed gangs to create a humanitarian crisis in Haiti, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday.
But neither Blinken nor Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly committed their country to leading a military force to the Caribbean nation.
“This is a work in progress and we are continuing to pursue it,” Blinken told a news conference in Ottawa during his first visit to Canada.
Blinken said Canada and the U.S. agree that “more likely needs to be done” to support the Haitian national police to restore their grip on security.
“We’ve been talking about what that might look like,” said Blinken. “We have both been talking to a variety of countries to gauge their interest in and willingness to participate in that.”
Joly said Canada has sent an “assessment mission” to gather information to find the solutions that are supported by Hattians.
Haiti’s interim government has operated in chaos since the July 2021 assassination of former president Jovenel Moise.
Since September, armed gangs have been blockading fuel access, leading to a shortage of basic goods, clean water and medical services, all during a cholera outbreak.
Canada and the U.S. have sent tanks, and the United Nations is considering a military intervention to restore order, which has been endorsed by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Later, prior to a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Blinken said Canada and the U.S. “are the two most integrated countries in the world” and have a history of working together to solve issues.
“Not one of the problems that is having an effect on our own people or what we need to deal with around the world can be solved by one of us acting alone,” he said. “The more we find ways to cooperate, to work together, the more effective we’re going to be.”
During the news conference Blinken and Joly reiterated their support for Ukraine, condemned Iran for its treatment of women and for supplying drones to Russia, and pledged to work together to increase Arctic security.
Blinken called Russia’s use of Iranian drones to kill Ukrainian civilians and destroy infrastructure as “appalling.”
“We keep working with our allies and partners to deter and counter Iran’s provision of these weapons,” he said.
Joly said Canada said stands with the women and girls in Iran who are fighting against tyranny.
“Women’s rights are human rights,” she said. “We have a moral obligation to support the brave women of Iran and hold those persecuting them accountable.”
There have been protests across Iran sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini who died in police custody after being arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly”.
Blinken also touched on Canadian and U.S. citizens being held by other countries.
Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were held in China for over 1,000 days in what was seen as a retaliation for the arrest in Canada of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.
U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner is facing a nine-year jail term in Russia after being convicted of smuggling and possessing cannabis oil.
“We support Canada’s efforts to rally countries around the world in ending the unlawful practice of detaining innocent individuals and using them as political pawns,” said Blinken. “Both our countries have suffered from this.”
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