Voters’ emphatic rejection of separation strengthens Mark Carney’s energy strategy in the face of a US trade war and threats

Canadians are proving to be a voice of sanity. In roundly rejecting the idea of separating from Canada, voters in the oil- and gas-rich province of Alberta sensibly backed the nation-building strategy of the prime minister, Mark Carney. He has put Alberta at the centre of his plan to make Canada an energy superpower that is “much less dependent on the United States”.

Donald Trump’s trade war and threats last week to make Canada the 51st US state were a fillip for Mr Carney in Alberta, a landlocked western province where Liberal prime ministers have historically been unpopular. The stakes were high: a successful separatist campaign would have handed Mr Trump leverage over Canada’s resource belt. The result instead lets Mr Carney cast Alberta’s mineral wealth as a national asset, rather than allow separatists to define it as a regional grievance.

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Far-right presidential candidate’s TV debate swipe at rival backfires as people take to social media to parody it

To Flávio Bolsonaro and his publicists, it must have seemed an ingenious idea that would expose his rival’s supposed crookedness on the eve of Brazil’s presidential election.

But the far-right politician’s decision to attend a primetime television debate against his leftwing opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with the word “corrupto” (corrupt) written on the palm of his hand has backfired.

Researchers say almost 90% of participants in unconditional basic income scheme in Peru adopted environmentally beneficial practices

A pioneering project to provide Indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon with an unconditional basic income has contributed to the protection of the rainforest, according to a study.

The analysis from the University of Bath is expected to contribute to a growing debate about the role of direct payments to communities that maintain globally important ecosystems.

Brazil’s famously outspoken fandoms have near-unanimously rallied behind the leftwing presidential candidate. On the streets of São Paulo, they explain their mission

Earlier this month, Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva led a rally in São Paulo, as he aims to be re-elected to a fourth presidential term, and faces serious opposition from right-winger Flávio Bolsonaro. Taking the mic before a crowd on Avenida Paulista that organisers put at more than a million, the former union leader began: “I’m not sure whether to open this speech with ‘comrades’ or ‘fandoms from all over Brazil’.” The rally was organised by Lula’s Workers’ party (PT) and a string of other leftwing groups – but the spark came from pop music fandoms.

More than 600 Brazilian fanbase groups for Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Katseye, Demi Lovato, Harry Styles, Katy Perry, Selena Gomez, as well as Brazilian stars such as Anitta, Marina Sena and Ludmilla among others, all came together to back Lula, waging an intense online campaign as soon as Lula’s rival, son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro, came out on top in the first round on 4 October. Neither candidate earned more than 50% of the vote, so a runoff is now scheduled for 25 October to decide between the two.

Failed rains and a dire El Niño threaten the waterway that sustains the country, with farmers selling cattle to survive

The cattle should be ambling, grazing contentedly, through Robert Delgado’s fields. Instead, the animals slump in the shade, tongues lolling, in futile attempts to avoid the blistering heat. Soon it will matter little whether their appetite returns, for there will be no grass left to graze.

In Azuero, an agricultural region in Panama’s Arco Seco (Dry Arc), the summer is generally relentless and unforgiving. But this year, the crucial rainy season that precedes it – typically from May to December – has brought little rain to parched fields. The watering holes, streams and rivers that farmers rely on have not been replenished, and pastures – the vital source of animal feed during the dry months – have not regenerated themselves.

A Belgian criminal organisation’s links with a Brazilian cocaine gang have been the focus of a major trial in Brussels, where smuggling links have been alleged between European players and the drug cartels of Latin America

In the early hours of 7 September, a convoy of heavily armed police swept through the sleeping streets of central Brussels towards the Haren district, on the city’s north-eastern outskirts. They made their way to 22 Avenue du Bourget, a militarised bunker-like complex that was the former headquarters of Nato.

The modernist complex, with its austere and functional architecture, was hastily built in 1967 and houses the Justitia courtroom, where Belgium’s federal trials are now held. It was here that the perpetrators and accomplices of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks and the 2016 Brussels attacks were tried in 2022.

Projection delivers a victory for prime minister Mark Carney and supporters of Canadian unity

Voters in Canada’s Alberta have overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to begin a process toward independence, the national broadcaster CBC has projected, delivering a victory for the prime minister, Mark Carney, and supporters of Canadian unity.

With more than 1m votes counted early on Tuesday, about 76% supported remaining in Canada, compared with 23% who backed beginning a process that could lead to separation. About a third of ballots had been counted.

Twenty years ago, Germán Flores founded a refuge for donkeys that faced abandonment, exploitation or slaughter, in memory of Roberto, a working donkey from his childhood. Once synonymous with the country, Mexico’s donkey population has plummeted in recent years. Burrolandia was founded in response to these dwindling numbers to provide dignified living conditions to about 100 ‘burritos’ who have suffered exploitation and abuse around Mexico

Twenty years ago, Germán Flores decided to start preserving the Mexican donkey, an endangered species with about 300,000 remaining in the whole country. Flores was inspired to take care of donkeys after learning that the donkey population in Mexico had decreased by about 60% between 1994 and 2010.

It was a natural decision for him: the donkeys are part of the identity of his town, Otumba in Mexico State. But while the annual national donkey fair purports to celebrate the animal, around the country they are also routinely mistreated.

Flores carries a young donkey at his sanctuary

Voters to be asked whether province should remain part of Canada or hold second binding independence vote

Albertans are going to the polls to decide their place in Canada, in a referendum that has exposed deep divisions within the province, not least in the separatist movement itself.

On Monday, voters will respond to the question of whether Alberta should remain in Canada, or hold a second binding independence referendum.

Facing a slump in the polls, Argentina’s president is making economic attacks on the islands’ oil industry, and suggesting its key fisheries industry could be next

A dozen local people and a uniformed military police officer (“Do you mind if I sit in?”) took their seats at the back of the handsome wood-panelled courtroom that doubles as the Falkland Islands’ legislative assembly. Outside, it was a typically blowy early evening. It may nominally be spring in the south Atlantic, but Stanley harbour, with its dark grey water speckled with historical shipwrecks, was a cauldron of swells and churn.

Six of the assembly’s eight members – five men, one woman – waited patiently at a row of desks and microphones. The heating had been turned up to just short of uncomfortable. Behind them, a portrait of King Charles. From the other walls, dusty photographs of governors peered down on the scene.

Prime minister Mark Carney describes blaze as ‘one of the worst tragedies for the forces on Canadian soil in peacetime’

Four people have been killed and dozens more seriously injured after a “violent, fast-moving” fire tore through one of Canada’s busiest military training bases in Alberta, the country’s prime minister said on Sunday.

Mark Carney called the incident “one of the worst tragedies for the forces on Canadian soil in peacetime”.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara tells of the reality of prison, drinking whisky with his captors, and being painted by George W Bush

When Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was pushed into the back of a police car on 11 July 2021, during the biggest protests Cuba had seen in nearly three decades, he expected to be in custody for “one, maybe two days”. Instead five years would pass before he was free, and only then after he’d agreed to exile.

“I remember that Sunday,” he says as he opens a beer in El Espacio 23, an art gallery in the Allapattah neighbourhood of Miami. “I was at my girlfriend’s. Friends started writing to tell me there were demonstrations in the streets. It felt like the day we all longed for had arrived – the end of the dictatorship – and I went out into the street.”

Modern politicians play on tales of empire to exaggerate what Britain left behind, but the monarch should consider a historical speech on imperial plunder

For us in the Caribbean, there is something surreal about Britain’s renewed nostalgia over empire. As Britain’s monarch prepares to visit the Caribbean, and at a time when we in the former colonies are demanding to have a serious reckoning with slavery and reparations, UK politicians are invoking a dumbed-down distortion of history.

Rewriting the facts: the Reform MP Robert Jenrick has argued that colonies owed Britain a “debt of gratitude” for the institutions empire bequeathed them. Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former minister in a Conservative government, has described British colonialism as “one of the greatest civilising, prosperity-creating forces the world has ever seen”. The opposition leader, Kemi Badenoch, has disputed colonialism’s contribution to Britain’s prosperity. Then there is Suella Braverman. The Reform MP suggested in July that rather than Britain paying reparations, former colonies should repay Britain for the investment and infrastructure provided under empire. This prompted Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, to call that proposition “asinine”. At best it is historical amnesia. At its worse it is an insidious misrepresentation of facts.

Australian ​brothers Jake ​and Callum Robinson, and ​their ‌American friend Carter Rhoad, were killed while on a surf trip in Baja California in 2024

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A Mexican ⁠judge ⁠has sentenced ​three men to 158 years ⁠and nine months in prison each for ⁠the murder of ​two Australian ‌brothers ‌and their American friend during ‌a 2024 surf trip to the state of Baja California.

The ‌defendants were declared guilty a week ​ago of homicide, aggravated robbery, robbery with violence and vehicle theft ⁠with violence, crimes committed against ​Australian ​brothers Jake ​and Callum Robinson, and ​their ‌American friend ​Carter Rhoad.

Forest clearance at smallest total since records began in 1988 in success for Lula ahead of presidential run-off

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen to its lowest level since records began, new government data shows.

But whether this globally important success is maintained or reversed is on a knife edge ahead of a presidential election run-off on 25 October between two candidates with sharply different visions for the future of the rainforest and how that affects relations with the US under Donald Trump.

Lula reverses position on age of responsibility for ‘heinous’ crimes in what many see as a desperate electoral gambit

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has announced that he now supports lowering the age of criminal responsibility for “heinous” crimes from 18 to 16, reversing a longstanding policy in what is widely seen as a desperate electoral gambit.

The U-turn, which Lula announced during a Thursday night interview with TV Globo, comes with the presidential runoff in just over a week. The incumbent faces an uphill battle to overturn the first-round victory of his opponent, the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who remains slightly ahead at the polls.

As violent spirits are unleashed in Sky’s Possession, observers see confident creatives reclaiming the island’s narratives in a form of ‘cultural reparation’

A woman opens a 300‑year‑old box, unleashing a violent spirit – it is the spirit of colonialism and oppression roaring back to life. It is a pivotal scene in Sky’s supernatural series Possession and symbolises a wider shift in Jamaica’s film industry, where directors are increasingly using the landscape to tell Jamaican stories – including those that confront enslavement, trauma and historical memory.

The series is about a biracial British lawyer who travels to Jamaica to investigate a multimillion-pound inheritance dispute, only to uncover a dark, vengeful spirit tied to the plantation’s brutal colonial past.

Iguazu Falls, an Unesco world heritage site, has reached a record water flow after heavy rains across the river basin. El Niño weather patterns are said to have driven the water flow to hit 10 times the normal amount. Usually the water flow is 1.5m litres per second, but local government registered a flow of 15m litres of water per second.

• Argentina temporarily closes Iguazu Falls after El Niño-fuelled surge in water levels

Rewritten indictment accuses ex-Venezuela president and wife Cilia Flores of leading campaign of torture

Nicolás Maduro insisted on Thursday during an appearance in a New York court that torture allegations in a rewritten drug trafficking indictment against the deposed Venezuelan president and his wife were “false accusations”.

Maduro, shackled at the ankles, was brought to court to face the new charges accusing the couple of leading a state-sponsored campaign of repression that tortured scores of victims, including three Americans.

Families in Vaca Muerta, the centre of Patagonia’s shale operation, report cancers, miscarriages and pollution

In Allen, a small town in Argentine Patagonia, many people living on the same street ended up falling ill. For some, it was severe migraines, nausea or skin irritation. For others, cancers, congenital abnormalities, miscarriages or stillbirth seemed to affect foetuses or children. People say it all started 13 years ago – when a well was drilled near their homes to extract gas and oil.

Calle Ciega 10 [Dead-end Street 10] lies on the eastern edge of Vaca Muerta, a vital area for Argentina’s economy, home to the world’s second-largest reserve of shale gas and fourth-largest reserve of shale oil. The region has more than 2,600 active wells, including one on this small street where about 20 families live, most of them seasonal workers on fruit farms.

Congress approves constitutional amendment that bans six-day workweeks, which could effect up to 30 million

Brazil’s congress has approved a constitutional amendment to shorten the working week to a maximum of 40 hours, a move that could affect 30 million workers and that will hand a political victory to the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of the presidential runoff in under two weeks.

In an attempt to overturn the first-round lead secured by his opponent, far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, Lula has strongly championed the amendment, which will give some workers an extra day off each week.

Bárbara Mori stars in tepid tale of a high-society wife who opens a restaurant in her home after her husband leaves her

What you expect from a film about a fancy high-end restaurant is a certain amount of heat: the roiling intensity of staff pushed to their absolute limits in the pursuit of gastronomic perfection. But this 1960s-set Peruvian drama instead maintains a gentle simmer, sedate and elegant. Perhaps it’s too elegant given the circumstances of its chef-proprietor, a high-society trophy wife with no catering experience who makes a high-stakes gamble on opening a successful restaurant.

Bárbara Mori is Norma, a glacial beauty who cultivates a kind of Jackie Onassis chic: huge sunglasses, massive blow-dry, makeup thickly applied like armour. One night, Norma’s husband humiliatingly leaves her for a beauty queen. You’d be sympathetic if Norma wasn’t so foul to the staff, lashing out at housekeeper Rosa (Hermelinda Luján) and chauffeur Oscar (Cesar Ballumbrosio). It’s Oscar (who is a bit in love with Norma) who suggests she opens a restaurant in the house to pay the mortgage. Norma’s father was the French ambassador to Peru, and she has picked up his passion for gastronomy. Although the script is a bit inconsistent on this, since Oscar also says he’s never seen her so much as light the oven.

Canada-born singer-songwriter, 82, posts footage of citizenship ceremony to Instagram

Joni Mitchell has become a US citizen, after first moving to the country in the mid-1960s. The Canada-born singer-songwriter, 82, posted footage of her citizenship ceremony on her Instagram account, along with a photo of her next to an American flag, accompanied by the caption: “A journey that began 62 years ago.”

It means that Mitchell can now vote in US elections, something that she had complained she wasn’t able to do.

Exclusive: Caution urged over Javier Milei government’s ‘red notice’ requests for arrest of individuals linked to oil project

Britain has appealed to Interpol to reject Argentina’s requests for the arrest of individuals involved in a large oil project off the Falkland Islands.

With tensions over the sovereignty of the British overseas territory reaching levels not seen since the war with Argentina in 1982, UK officials have sought urgent assurances from the international organisation.

The judge who helped convict Jair Bolsonaro is caught up in a crisis that could benefit his son and damage Lula

• Marina Silva on Flávio Bolsonaro: He will try to finish his father’s ‘perverse project’ to destroy the Amazon

Thundering to a crowd of thousands of far-right supporters in São Paulo on 7 September, Brazil’s Independence Day, the senator Flávio Bolsonaro focused less on his opponent in the presidential election, the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, than on someone who is not running at all.

“Whoever votes for Lula is voting for Alexandre de Moraes,” Bolsonaro shouted, referring to the shaven-headed supreme court justice once described as “Voldemort” by Elon Musk.

The pioneering computer scientist on why Trump is using ‘superintelligence’ wrong, whether AI could wipe out humanity – and how our biggest challenge will be accepting we’re not the only intelligent beings

Donald Trump is a “corrupt, senile felon” whose fixation on the term superintelligence proves he knows nothing about AI, said Geoffrey Hinton, “godfather” of the technology, in a wide-ranging interview where he doubled down on recent warnings that AI models pose an existential threat to humanity and scoffed at claims the industry could regulate itself.

The pioneering computer scientist, whose work helped lay the foundations of modern AI, has since become one of the technology’s most vocal critics. His latest remarks come after a tumultuous month during which a growing list of senior AI scientists and researchers have joined Hinton in ringing the alarm about how the technology he helped create could ultimately escape human control, sparking an industry crisis, the hasty assembly of congressional meetings and a rare global consensus that something must be done.

Cocaine seizures in Europe are up more than fivefold in 10 years as a host of cartels take root. A four-month Guardian investigation reveals the true scale of a continent-wide shift

A four-month investigation by the Guardian has revealed that the surge in cocaine trafficking to Europe is directly linked to the expanding presence of Latin American criminal networks in Europe, where they have forged close ties with local mafia organisations.

The investigation, utilising databases, police and intelligence agencies, along with interviews with judges, prosecutors and experts from eight countries, shows that cartels and factions from Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico and the US are active in at least 12 European countries. Between 2014 and 2024, there was a 471% rise in the quantity of cocaine seized and more local laboratories processing cocaine derivatives were dismantled.

National park officials took the precautionary measure to limit tourist access after heavy rain caused the Iguazu River to flow at six times the normal rate

Heavy rainfall fuelled by a supersized El Niño weather pattern briefly forced Argentinian authorities to close tourist access to the famed Iguazu Falls, amid fears that rapidly rising water levels would cause the river to burst its banks.

National park officials took the precautionary measure on Monday when the Iguazu River’s flow exceeded 12,000 cubic metres per second – more than six times its average rate.

Leftist former leader accused of involvement in shooting of three Europeans in Santa Cruz and torture of two others

Bolivia’s attorney general has announced an investigation into leftist former president Evo Morales, alleging his involvement in the murder and torture of European citizens in 2009.

Seventeen years ago, police raided a hotel in the city of Santa Cruz, shooting dead Eduardo Rózsa Flores, a Bolivian-Croatian, Michael Dwyer, an Irishman, and Árpád Magyarosi, a Hungarian-Romanian.

Clear skies bring warm days and cold nights to Montenegro, while a low-pressure system moves towards Aegean Sea

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Temperatures fluctuated dramatically in the Balkans last week, with unusually large differences between daytime highs and overnight lows – known as the diurnal range.

An area of high pressure over the region brought prolonged sunshine during the day, while clear skies at night allowed temperatures to drop rapidly as heat escaped into the atmosphere without cloud cover to slow the cooling.

In the Atacama desert, the extraction of lithium – so crucial to addressing the climate crisis – comes with escalating social and environmental costs

A high-altitude desert plateau traverses Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. I am on the Chilean side, sitting in a Jeep along with two other researchers. The afternoon air is thin and brisk but the sun is piercing – a combination I am familiar with from years of living and travelling in South America’s Andean range.

The landscape is a study in contrasts and contours: broad basins suddenly cut off by sweeping curves; flat expanses sliced by near vertical ascents. The Licancabur volcano looms large above us. Vegetation and humidity levels change rapidly with the rising altitude, bringing cooler temperatures, wetter air and denser plant life.

Exclusive: Former Brazilian environment minister warns of destruction as far-right scion favourite to become president

The former Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva has said that if Flávio Bolsonaro becomes president he will seek to finish the “perverse project” of rampant rainforest destruction initiated by his jailed far-right father.

The Amazon was thrown into chaos during Jair Bolsonaro’s 2019-2022 presidency, when Brazil’s environment and Indigenous protection agencies were gutted and environmental criminals ran riot, causing surges in deforestation and violence.

Leftwing Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores beats far-right candidate in election in remote district of Andes

A businessman called Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores has been elected the mayor of a remote district in the Peruvian Andes, according to local election data.

The 45-year-old, who shares two of his names with the notorious European dictators, won the race for mayor of Queropalca, in Peru’s central Huánuco region, and will take office on 1 January.

Plans for a 200-room project on an unspoiled beach have pitted developers against the conservationists fighting for smaller-scale schemes to protect the island’s habitat

Visitors to Rocky Point in south-west Tobago are drawn to its sandy beach, fringed by coral reefs and dark rock formations and carpeted with the fruit-bearing trees found on Caribbean coastlines – almonds, sea grapes, coconuts, and the poisonous manchineel. The beach is part of Back Bay, a 500-metre swathe of land, and trekking through its undulating terrain, thickly covered in bush and shrubs, feels akin to walking through a rainforest.

But this still relatively unspoiled location is at the centre of a struggle between two opposing interests – those who see large-scale development as the most profitable path and those who believe smaller, incremental developments owned by the community would be best.

Dozens of CIA officers have been afflicted by debilitating symptoms over the past decade. Are they the result of ‘mass hysteria’? Or are they from attacks with an energy weapon and, if so, who is responsible? And has there been a cover-up?

Shortly after 1am one night in April 2019, a CIA officer on a work trip to London was jolted awake in his hotel room by the most intense head pain he had ever experienced. His body was soaked with sweat and he felt like his eyes were spinning in their sockets. He manoeuvred his way out of bed, hoping to make it to the bathroom to vomit, but found his sense of balance had deserted him. Eventually, he fell back into a fitful, shallow sleep.

The next day, arriving at the work meeting he had travelled for, the officer found he could not remember the names of colleagues in the room, people he knew well. As the meeting got under way, he could barely follow the discussion. Initially, he chalked it up to a terrible – if rather odd – case of food poisoning. But over subsequent weeks, worrying symptoms persisted: brain fog, loss of balance and increasingly harsh tinnitus.

Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson, 30 and 33, and friend Carter Rhoad, 30, were killed on a surfing trip in 2024

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The parents of Australian surfing brothers murdered in Mexico have said “no outcome can ever undo this tragedy” after three men were convicted of the 2024 killings.

Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson, aged 30 and 33 respectively, and their friend Carter Rhoad, 30, were on a surfing trip to Mexico’s Pacific coast when they were shot dead in Baja California state in a suspected robbery.

The quake caused buildings and roads to collapse but the country appeared to escape widespread destruction or deaths

A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck southern Panama on Friday, damaging buildings and sending thousands into the streets, but the country appeared to escape widespread destruction or deaths.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the ⁠earthquake hit at a depth of ⁠12.6km (7.8 miles), with an ​epicenter in a sparsely populated area about 200km (124 miles) from the capital, Panama City. It lasted about a minute.

Widespread blackouts have become increasingly common in Cuba since the US imposed energy sanctions in January. Outages frequently surpass 24 hours as the ageing grid fails. The Impulso theatre group has had to adapt as power cuts pose severe challenges for the performing arts

Installation of eight canopy bridges in Alta Floresta has enabled 15,000 safe crossings by animals including spider monkeys and marmosets – and more bridges are planned elsewhere

By about 7am, with dense fog blanketing the landscape, Gabriel Falquetto had already come across several road-killed animals along the ES-164 highway in Brazil’s Espírito Santo state. The biologist was on his way to Kaetés private natural heritage reserve (RPPN) in the Atlantic Forest, where he monitors wildlife and roadkill.

Then he spotted the lifeless body of a primate on the pavement. It was a buffy-headed marmoset (Callithrix flaviceps), a species listed as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list. An estimated 2,500 individuals remain in the wild, making it one of the world’s most threatened primates.

Species with leaves large enough to be seen from space is already critically endangered – and plans are afoot to protect it

A chance social media encounter has led to the race-against-time discovery of a new species of giant waterlily that has until now been hidden in the depths of Colombia’s jungle.

But the plant, which is so huge it is visible from space, is already considered critically endangered.

The incident is the latest to raise questions about the growing reliance on digital maps for wilderness navigation

The route up the Widowmaker Arete, a 1,700ft wall in British Columbia, is deceptively described as “mostly easy slab climbing”, interspersed with “short steep sections that can include finger cracks” and “blocky face climbing”. It requires careful planning, and the right equipment.

When 16-year-old Bryce Vincent Gowryluk found himself facing its sheer headwall last week, he had neither. He did, however, ask the AI chatbot Claude for directions.

Most prestigious literature prize goes to Canadian known for genre-crossing works such as Autobiography of Red

The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to the Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson, the Swedish Academy has announced.

The academy cited the author’s “bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature”.

After a surprise first-round victory, critics suggest son of disgraced ex-president could seek to continue his father’s authoritarian project

• Flávio’s surprise first-round win highlights rapid rise of Brazil’s House of Bolsonaro

Flávio Bolsonaro, the far-right frontrunner to become Brazil’s next president, has vowed to “re-democratise” the South American country, increasing fears about a move into authoritarian rule if he wins power.

Brazil was re-democratised in the 1980s after a brutal 21-year dictatorship that Flávio’s father, the disgraced ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, has long praised.

Black communities across the globe have large and complex vocabularies to describe race, shaped by their specific cultures and histories

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One thing you might not know about this newsletter is how much it is shaped by behind-the-scenes chat. The Long Wave team, and its broader family at the Guardian, is a mini-diaspora in and of itself – one that is constantly in conversation. Often, during our meetings, someone will mention what was assumed to be a quirk of their specific background, only to discover that it is replicated almost entirely across the board. This week, we spoke about the fact that in many of our cultures, there is not just one word for “Black”.

“Green”, “red”, “yellow”, “blue”, “wheat”. These are some of the words many tribes in parts of Sudan use to describe complexion. There is no “Black”. I tripped over my words trying to explain to colleagues what these colours denoted – each category is infused with so much cultural depth. In fact, in some cases, they are not even descriptions of complexion, but of features, of broad ethnic background, and even of attractiveness. “Green” means dark, but also implies a sort of uniformity of colour, an even hue, and therefore almost a comeliness. Yellow is lighter, and comes with an unstated connotation of beauty. Blue is the darkest, and is sometimes pejorative, but other times just a description. “Wheat” is the one most likely to be a compliment, a shade that does not diverge too sharply into light or dark.

Born and raised in Valparaíso, JM is seen as one of the last of a golden generation after a late foray

At a concert hall in the Chilean capital, Santiago, an 80-year-old man edges unsteadily down a steep staircase. With one hand he grips the metal bannister, in the other he carries a mug of hot water with a slice of lemon, as if heading to bed.

But when the red stage curtain is pulled aside for him, Luis Gómez, or JM as he is universally known, transforms in an instant. He skips on to the stage to a roar from the crowd and launches into a bolero, punctuated by hip thrusts and shuffling two-steps.

Lack of majority for Parti Québécois puts any referendum in doubt, especially amid bruising trade war with Trump

The victory of the Parti Québécois in Monday’s election in Quebec might seem to bring its signature goal, of separating the French-speaking province from Canada, much closer – but Canadian unity may not be nearly as threatened as may first seem.

The PQ’s victory was both impressive and disappointing. The party added 56 seats to its roster and more than doubled its vote share compared with the 2022 election, giving it its first taste of power in 14 years. Crucially, however, it was left five seats short of a majority, making its promise to hold a referendum after Donald Trump leaves office in 2028 nearly impossible.

Justice department detained James Codey Bryant and allege he offered ‘technical advice’ to primary suspect

A surprise suspected accomplice has been arrested in connection with a mass school shooting in Canada that was made notorious after an 18-year-old allegedly killed six children after discussing it with the AI chatbot ChatGPT.

The US Department of Justice said Tuesday it had detained James Codey Bryant, 30, a resident of western Washington state, on a charge of conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country.

The country’s far-right president is courting billionaire investors by removing a block on foreign ownership of land and natural resources

On 19 September, Marta Sahores, an 84-year-old chemistry professor and activist who has mobilised against mega-mining projects for more than two decades, took to the streets in Argentina. Alongside workers, retirees, students, Indigenous groups and human rights organisations, Sahores was there to protest against the country’s far-right president, Javier Milei. During the marcha de la bronca – the “march of anger” – protesters held signs reading, among other rallying cries, “The land is not for sale”.

Marching in Esquel, a town nestled in the foothills of the Andes in Chubut province, she also held up a sign defending the country’s water resources against what she called the government’s “handover” to investors.