Mexicans woke up to the spectacular sight of fiery red ash rising from the Popocatepetl volcano. In the capital city, models huddled to stay warm before hitting the runway, while angry parents of the 43 missing rural college students urged the country not to abandon them. El Salvadorans paid tribute to slain Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who will be beatified later this year.

In Chile, the only object not coated in brown sludge from flooding was the mattress a woman rested on, while deadly flooding forced thousands to evacuate their homes and businesses. Tragedy also hit Peru on a coastal highway where the jumbled seats of passenger busses littered the roadway. Three passenger busses and a truck crashed, killing at least three dozen people and injuring around 80. Also in Peru, illegal loggers built yet another base camp where they continued to cut down trees.

Tourists in Cuba took photos of themselves sucking on cocktails through straws at a bar made famous by the late American novelist Ernest Hemingway, while penguins continued to be the star attraction for tourists in Antarctica, and Iguazu Falls awed visitors on the border of Brazil and Argentina.

A boat dumped oil in Brazil's Guanabara Bay, the same bay authorities said they wanted to clean up before the Olympic sailing events are held there. Animal tracks graced Rio de Janeiro's controversial Olympic golf course, partially carved out of a nature reserve ahead of the 2016 games. Also in Brazil, protesters carried oversized bags of fake money to protest the private financing of political campaigns, leaving them outside Congress.

An alligator was spotted on the surface of the Panama Canal, while in Argentina archaeologists working inside a nature reserve were surprised by a Nazi swastika on a 1938 German coin among the dilapidated jungle buildings they stumbled upon. Researchers think it might have been a planned hideout for top Nazi officers.

Murals in Colombia contrasted against the capital's gray skies and monochromatic red brick architecture.