Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
The government of El Salvador sent 10,000 soldiers and police to seal off a town on the outskirts of the nation's capital Saturday to search for gang members.
The operation was one of the largest mobilizations yet in President Nayib Bukele's nine-month-old crackdown on street gangs that long extorted money from businesses and ruled many neighborhoods of the capital, San Salvador.
The troops blocked roads going in and out of the township of Soyapango, checking people's documents. Special teams went into the town looking for gang suspects.
"Starting now, the township of Soyapango is completely surrounded," Bukele wrote in his Twitter account. He posted videos showing ranks of rifle-toting soldiers.
More than 58,000 people have been jailed since a state of emergency was declared following a wave of homicides in late March. Rights groups have criticized the mass roundups, saying they often sweep up young men based on their appearance or where they live.
It was part of what Bukele had called in late November "Phase Five" of the crackdown. Bukele said such tactics worked in the town of Comasagua in October.
In October, more than 2,000 soldiers and police surrounded and closed off Comasagua in order to search for street gang members accused in a killing. Drones flew over the town, and everyone entering or leaving the town was questioned or searched. About 50 suspects were detained in two days.
"It worked," Bukele said. The government estimates that homicides dropped 38 per cent in the first 10 months of the year compared to the same period of 2021.
Bukele requested Congress grant him extraordinary powers after gangs were blamed for 62 killings on March 26, and that emergency decree has been renewed every month since then. It suspends some Constitutional rights and gives police more powers to arrest and hold suspects.
Under the decree, the right of association, the right to be informed of the reason for an arrest and access to a lawyer are suspended. The government also can intervene in the calls and mail of anyone they consider a suspect. The time someone can be held without charges is extended from three days to 15 days.
Rights activists say young men are frequently arrested just based on their age, on their appearance or whether they live in a gang-dominated slum.
El Salvador's gangs, which have been estimated to count some 70,000 members in their ranks, have long controlled swaths of territory and extorted and killed with impunity.
But Bukele's crackdown reached another level earlier this month when the government sent inmates into cemeteries to destroy the tombs of gang members at a time of year when families typically visit their loved ones' graves.
Nongovernmental organizations have tallied several thousand human rights violations and at least 80 in-custody deaths of people arrested during the crackdown.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.