Inside the Americas

US President Joe Biden has tasked Kamala Harris with addressing the root causes of migration from Central America. Harris will be in Guatemala and Mexico next week for her first foreign trip as vice president. Illegal crossings into the US have been on the rise this year, hitting their highest level in 20 years. Our correspondents Fanny Allard and Kethevane Gorjestani report from Texas.

The United States is preparing to remember the Tulsa race massacre. It was 100 years ago when a White mob set fire to the town and bombed a prosperous Black neighbourhood from the air in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing an estimated 300 Black men, women and children. There are a few survivors left but they appeared before the US Congress this week. We take a closer look.

As tensions between Israel and Hamas mount in the Middle East, pressure is growing on the US president to issue calls for a ceasefire. Progressives in the Democratic Party say it’s time the nearly $4 billion in aid to Israel came with strings attached. We take a closer look.

The most tragic Covid-19 legacy in Canada will be the deaths of the elderly in nursing homes. Seven out of 10 fatalities occurred in Canadian care homes used to house senior citizens, almost 30 percent more than in other nations. The worst-hit provinces were Ontario and Quebec. But as our correspondents Gloria Henriquez and François Rihouay report, not all the deaths were directly from Covid-19.

The United Nations has denounced the excessive use of force by security officers in Colombia after numerous deaths were reported during days of anti-government protests. Since last week, hundreds have also been injured since clashes broke out over a proposed tax reform. The demonstrations have since morphed into broader protests against the government of Ivan Duque. We take a closer look.

This week, Joe Biden marks a milestone in every American president's legacy: his first 100 days. There's nothing specific in US law saying what a president needs to accomplish in that time-frame, but decades of traditions have made it the standard used to judge just how well a new president is faring.

This week, we're focusing on the Covid-19 crisis in Brazil. The country has seen more than 14 million cases and 370,000 deaths since the pandemic began. But despite that being one of the highest rates in the world, there's still no national lockdown. The Brazilian P1 variant of the virus is causing particular concern and is affecting younger people in Brazil, with more than half the patients in intensive care now under 40 years old. We bring you reports from our team on the ground and hear from neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis.

The 9/11 era could finally be drawing to a close. This week, US President Joe Biden said the US would fully pull out of Afghanistan by this coming September 11, a highly symbolic date for America. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks that were coordinated from Afghanistan.

This week, we take a magical look at a forest in Mexico that's turned orange thanks to the migration of millions of Monarch butterflies. The beautiful creatures have seen a drastic decline over the past 20 years, with some 90 percent of them now gone.

In a setback for transgender rights, the Senate in the US state of Arkansas has approved a ban on gender-conforming treatments for minors. If enacted, the bill would prohibit doctors from providing gender-conforming drugs or surgery to minors. The move comes as lawmakers in more than 20 states have moved to ban transgender women and girls from female sports this year, with Republican governors in three states – Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi – signing them into law. For more on this story, we speak to FRANCE 24's Olivia Salazar-Winspear.