Former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro insisted in court on Thursday that newly unsealed torture allegations against him and his wife were “false accusations”. Maduro and Cilia Flores, both shackled at the ankles, were brought to court to face a rewritten indictment that expands from an initial set of drug trafficking charges to accuse them of leading a state-sponsored repression campaign that tortured scores of victims, including three Americans. Maduro twice defied a judge’s request that...

Costa Rica, considered for decades a peaceful enclave in turbulent Central America, has now made fighting drug trafficking one of its main goals. And it is turning to one of its Central American neighbours for inspiration in its hardline crackdown. On Wednesday, President Laura Fernandez inaugurated a mega-prison that emulates the Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) that has become a symbol of Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele’s security strategy. Bukele has managed to reduce murders to a...

US stocks dropped to their worst day since July on Wednesday, following the latest signal that inflation is getting worse. The S&P 500 sank 1.1 per cent for a fifth loss in the six days since setting its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 48 points, or 0.1 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite slid 1.9 per cent as stocks in the artificial-intelligence industry led the way lower. Stocks felt pressure from rising yields in the bond market, where worries grew after a report said US...

US President Donald Trump said that “massive” oil, gas and mineral exploration is set to begin in “our new and beautiful Greenland”, though it was not clear what developments he was referring to on an island where resource extraction has stymied companies for decades. Despite Trump’s optimism, the harsh climate of Greenland – a self-governing territory of Denmark, rather than a part of the United States – as well as a lack of infrastructure have foiled all previous attempts to extract so-called...

The head of the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday that the US and other wealthy nations needed to urgently tackle mounting global debt levels that were weighing heaviest on low-income countries and straining the global financial system. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that while US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other US leaders recognised that the federal deficit and national debt had grown too high, just trying to grow the US economy out of its more than US$40...

German authorities opened an investigation into possible sexual harassment after a robot controlled by two young men touched the buttocks of a 16-year-old girl and made thrusting movements toward her, police said. Police in the western city of Cologne responded after the incident overnight Saturday to Sunday in which the robot’s suspected 16-year-old owner and a 19-year-old companion were said to have filmed the alleged assault. They were said to have streamed the incident and commentated on it...

The US Treasury Department said on Tuesday that it was imposing US$1.2 billion in fines on Bank of America for allegedly violating anti-money-laundering and sanctions laws. The fines on America’s second-biggest bank amount to the third-largest in the department’s history. “When a bank of this size fails to meet its anti-money-laundering and sanctions obligations, the consequences extend far beyond its own walls, exposing the entire US financial system to significant illicit finance risks,”...