Author: attkley11

Reuters  —  El Salvador’s government moved thousands of suspected gang members to a newly opened “mega prison” on Friday, the latest step in a controversial crackdown on crime that has caused the Central American nation’s prison population to soar. “This will be their new home, where they won’t be able to do any more harm to the population,” President Nayib Bukele wrote on Twitter. Around 2,000 accused gang members were moved to the 40,000-person-capacity prison, considered to be the largest in the Americas, early Friday morning. In a video posted by Bukele, prisoners stripped down to white shorts, with their heads shaved, are seen running through the new prison into cells. Many bear gang tattoos. ...

The Guerrero Environment Department's Director of Wildlife Fernando Ruiz said in a news conference on Tuesday that records of Zoochilpan Zoo in Chilpancingo misrepresented its number of pygmy goats last summer, and accused former director José Rubén Nava Noriega of having some cooked -- a claim that Nava denied.There were "five females and five males of which the former director had four male specimens for use at the New Year's Eve dinner," Ruiz alleged."That is to say, those four specimens were sacrificed and cooked in the facilities of the same zoo and were used as food in the year-end celebration."He added that the health of those who ate the meal would have been put at risk because the animals were "not suitable for human consumption."In a statement, the Environment Department also det...

The 32,000-ton Sao Paulo carrier had been towed by a tug to Europe but did not get past the Gibraltar straits, and was returned across the Atlantic after Turkey decided it was an environmental hazard.The Navy said in a statement that the ship is taking on water and is at risk of sinking, so it has not been allowed to dock at Brazilian ports.Despite a request by Environment Minister Marina Silva not to sink the carrier, the Navy said it had no choice but to scuttle the ship in water about 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) deep 350 kilometers (217 miles) off-shore within Brazil's exclusive economic zone.The site is far from environmental protection areas and free of undersea communication cables, the Navy statement said."Given its deteriorating floating condition and the inevitability of uncontroll...

CNN  —  Amnesty International has accused Peruvian authorities of acting with “a marked racist bias” in its crackdown on protests that have roiled the country since December, saying “populations that have historically been discriminated against” are being targeted, according to a report released on Thursday. Drawing on data from the Peruvian Ombudsman’s Office, Amnesty says it “found that the number of possible arbitrary deaths due to state repression” were “disproportionately concentrated in regions with largely Indigenous populations.” Amnesty also says that areas with majority indigenous populations have accounted for the majority of deaths since the protests began. “While the regions with majority Indigenous populations represent only...