Leo, who has criticized Trump’s hardline immigration policy, selected Evelio Menjivar-Ayala as state’s new bishop

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Pope Leo XIV has appointed a man who had once entered the United States as an undocumented immigrant, hidden in the trunk of a car, as the new bishop of West Virginia.

The pope approved the resignation of Bishop Mark E Brennan of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, and selected Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, 55, of Washington to take his place, reported OSV News.

Human rights groups have warned that the collective prosecutions violate due process and block defendants from accessing legal counsel

A Salvadoran court on Tuesday began a collective trial of 486 alleged gang members, in one of the biggest mass trials under president Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on gang violence through controversial emergency powers.

Prosecutors say the charges against alleged members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, span more than 47,000 crimes committed between 2012 and 2022, including a weekend that was El Salvador’s bloodiest since its civil war.

Petition seeks accountability from Salvadorian authorities over human rights violations at notorious Cecot facility

A group of 18 Venezuelan men whom the US expelled a notorious Salvadorian mega-prison are demanding that Salvadorian authorities be held internationally accountable for violation of human rights – detailing new allegations of torture, sexual assault and medical neglect.

A new petition, filed on Thursday before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleges that El Salvador violated the human rights of these men, who were expelled to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) last year without charge.

Fearing that extreme weather threatened its epic breaks, Oriente Salvaje is piloting the first surf insurance policy to protect livelihoods and ecosystems

In the late 1990s in El Salvador, Rodrigo Barraza went in search of every surfer’s dream: a pristine wave, far from the crowds. Down a rough dirt track hours from any city, he found it: a little-known surf spot on the country’s eastern shores, where long lines of waves form a crisp right-hand break, surrounded by thousands of hectares of tropical forest.

“I fell in love with the place,” says Barraza. In 2004, he opened a small hotel there, and along with some surfing friends, founded a tourism association. They developed sustainable tourism standards and committed to protect the surrounding biodiverse ecosystem of rare dry tropical forest, rivers and mangroves. They called it Oriente Salvaje – the “wild east”.

Oriente Salvaje is known by surfers for its world-class breaks, Las Flores and Punto Mango

Experts documented murder, torture and disappearances under Nayib Bukele’s policy targeting gangs

The draconian mass incarceration policy of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, may have led to crimes against humanity, according to a new study by legal experts.

By locking up 1.4% of the population without due process, Bukele turned El Salvador from one of Latin America’s most violent countries into one of its least violent – but at the cost of human rights and the rule of law.

Family-run farms in El Salvador and Honduras face mounting losses, rising costs – and the need to adapt or be left behind

• Read more of our Coffee crisis series here

On a steep hillside in western El Salvador, Oscar Leiva watches rainfall in December, a month that once marked the start of the dry season. During this harvest cycle, flowering came early and then stalled. A heatwave followed. What remains of the crop is uneven, lower in quality and more expensive to produce than the last.

For Leiva and his family, coffee has never been just a crop. His mother, Esperanza Marinero, remembers when the rains arrived on schedule and the harvest could be planned months in advance. Today, the calendar no longer holds. Decisions about pruning, fertilising and hiring labour feel like educated guesses. Each mistake carries a cost the family cannot afford.

In Miami, president calls for regional cooperation to counter Chinese economic and political interests

Donald Trump changed the channel from Iran to the western hemisphere on Saturday, convening a gathering of Latin American leaders at his Miami-area golf club to discuss regional interests and establishing what he called a “counter-cartel coalition”.

“Just as we formed a coalition to eradicate Isis, we now need a coalition to eradicate the cartels,” he told 12 regional leaders gathered at what the White House called the “Shield of the Americas” summit.

Trump administration accused Luis Muñoz Pinto of being part of the Tren de Aragua gang. Now living in Colombia he hopes to clear his name and study engineering in the US

It was the busiest hour of the evening in Bolivar Square, one of the most iconic spots in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital. Amid the buzz of smiling tourists, however, Luis Muñoz Pinto sat very still, his head in his hands, as memories of his deportation from the United States to a Salvadorian prison flooded back.

Muñoz Pinto, 27, was one of more than 250 Venezuelan men accused by the Trump administration of being part of the dangerous Tren de Aragua gang and deported from the US to the brutal terrorism mega-prison called Cecot in El Salvador last March.

Years of campaigning led to the release of 81 women imprisoned under the country’s strict reproductive laws, but the suspension of civil rights by President Nayib Bukele is fuelling a new wave of criminalisation

Her ordeal began with stomach cramps; 19 years old and training to be a nurse, she knew something was wrong. At the hospital she waited for hours in the emergency department. She had suffered an obstetric emergency.

Under El Salvador’s legal framework, emergencies including miscarriages and stillbirths place women under criminal suspicion. She lost the baby and doctors alerted the police. She was arrested and handcuffed.

Five countries responsible for 75% of world’s coffee supply record average of 57 extra days of coffee-harming heat a year

In Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, more than 4m households rely on coffee as their primary source of income. It contributes almost a third of the country’s export earnings, but for how much longer is uncertain.

“Coffee farmers in Ethiopia are already seeing the impact of extreme heat,” said Dejene Dadi, the general manager of Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperatives Union (OCFCU), a smallholder cooperative.

Trump might not embody Christian values yet is the religious right’s chosen instrument to turn the tide against liberal, godless America

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They had come to say a prayer for the father, the son and the holy ghost.

The father was Donald Trump, who, despite sending federal militias to roam Minneapolis, threatening to invade Greenland and telling lies by the dozen, remains the lord and saviour of the religious right.

Segment that Bari Weiss had removed provides in-depth look at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo prison

A 60 Minutes episode investigating a brutal prison in El Salvador, which CBS News’s editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, pulled from the air on Sunday, appeared online on Monday after appearing on a Canadian TV app.

The segment, which runs for nearly 14 minutes and was viewed by the Guardian, provides an in-depth look at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Cecot) prison in El Salvador. It opens with footage of the mega-prison and shows detainees being shackled upon arrival in El Salvador.

Attorney general’s office also says 10 people received prison terms from 463 to 958 years amid crackdown on gangs under state of emergency

El Salvador has announced prison sentences for hundreds of gang members, with some of the convicted receiving terms of hundreds of years.

The attorney general’s office posted on X that 248 members of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) street gang had received “exemplary sentences” for 43 homicides and 42 disappearances, among other crimes.