Abelardo de la Espriella, promising an iron-fist approach to crime, leads polls in Colombia’s presidential runoff election

• Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email

Abelardo de la Espriella, the far-right lawyer who is leading the polls ahead of Colombia’s presidential runoff election, has marketed his rum, wine and menswear brands – as well as his novels and albums on which he croons popular classics – under the label “de la Espriella style”.

His shift from business suits to T-shirts, baseball caps and a meticulously trimmed beard suggest the influence of El Salvador’s populist autocrat Nayib Bukele.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

The move deals an embarrassing blow to the Trump administration, which made the Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the face of its deportation campaign.

© Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

Andry José Hernández Romero was deported from the US to El Salvador’s notorious Cecot prison before he was allowed to return to Venezuela

One of the Venezuelan men sent from the US to El Salvador’s most notorious prison by Donald Trump has moved to Spain to request asylum after concluding that he did not feel safe back home and did not trust US authorities sufficiently to return to fight his legal case.

Andry José Hernández Romero left Venezuela for Spain in early February and is due for his first asylum hearing in court there in a few days, hoping that the country’s liberal approach to immigration will afford him kinder treatment than the US or his own country had provided him, he revealed to the Guardian in his first interview since leaving for Europe.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images

© Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images

© Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images

José Callejas hat eine Frau, drei Kinder und ein Haus – in Houston, Texas. Bis dieses Leben, für das er Jahrzehnte lang geschuftet hat, an einem Dienstagabend im November jäh endet.

The Right Rev Evelio Menjivar-Ayala vows to ‘keep talking’ as West Virginia bishop, amid tension between Trump and the Vatican

The new bishop appointed to lead West Virginia Catholics has pledged to continue speaking up for immigrants in the mould of Pope Leo, who appointed him last week amid ongoing tension between Donald Trump and the Vatican.

The Right Rev Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, 55, is not planning to hide his views after being elevated from assistant bishop in Washington DC to lead the diocese that covers West Virginia – the first Latino American bishop from El Salvador, who left Central America as a teenager and arrived in the US smuggled in the trunk of a car.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Mihoko Owada/Catholic Standard

© Photograph: Mihoko Owada/Catholic Standard

© Photograph: Mihoko Owada/Catholic Standard

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

• Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox

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.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Sarah L Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images

© Photograph: Sarah L Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images

© Photograph: Sarah L Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The Trump administration has sought to end protections for people from 13 of the 17 countries that had the status.

Designed to help people from troubled nations stay and work in the United States, T.P.S. has been a target of the Trump administration.

© Giorgio Viera/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: El Salvador Attorney General's Office/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: El Salvador Attorney General's Office/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: El Salvador Attorney General's Office/AFP/Getty Images

The agency had been seeking him in Northern California, saying he was wanted for questioning in that country. On Wednesday, his lawyer said he was a victim of bad law enforcement work.

© Andy Alfaro/The Modesto Bee, via ZUMA Press Wire

Lawyers for a fired Justice Department lawyer say the agency’s inspector general appears to have ignored at least 20 different requests to scrutinize misconduct.

© Eric Lee for The New York Times

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.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: José Cabezas/Reuters

© Photograph: José Cabezas/Reuters

© Photograph: José Cabezas/Reuters

Shalom Baranes, who arrived in the U.S. as a Libyan refugee and went on to renovate the Pentagon, is baffling fellow architects for accepting the job. But he said some of his previous projects have drawn outrage too.

© Doug Mills/The New York Times

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

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Angelo Picardo

© Photograph: Angelo Picardo

© Photograph: Angelo Picardo

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.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Alex Pena/Anadolu via Getty Images

© Photograph: Alex Pena/Anadolu via Getty Images

© Photograph: Alex Pena/Anadolu via Getty Images

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.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Camilo Freedman/The Guardian

© Photograph: Camilo Freedman/The Guardian

© Photograph: Camilo Freedman/The Guardian

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.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

© Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

© Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

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.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Nathalia Angarita/The Guardian

© Photograph: Nathalia Angarita/The Guardian

© Photograph: Nathalia Angarita/The Guardian

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.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Tariq Zaidi

© Photograph: Tariq Zaidi

© Photograph: Tariq Zaidi

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.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images