UNITED STATES
Venezuelans charged
Prosecutors on Monday formally charged the former head of Venezuela’s National Guard and a former anti-drug official there with colluding with cocaine traffickers. An indictment unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn accuses Nestor Reverol and Edilberto Molina of taking bribes in exchange for helping the traffickers by tipping them off about future raids. It also alleges that from January 2008 to December 2010, they deliberately allowed cocaine shipments to leave Venezuela and returned seized drug money to them. Reverol, 51, once ran the Venezuelan National Guard, which is charged with securing the country’s borders, and had been a spokesman for Venezuela’s anti-drug efforts. He also is the former head of the country’s anti-drug agency and ally of late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Reverol has denied the US accusations, which were first reported late last year.
VENEZUELA
Animals are fed: government
The government on Monday denied that zoo animals were dying of starvation amid a national food shortage, saying they were being lovingly treated “like family.” Minister for Ecosocialism and Water Ernesto Paiva toured Caricuao zoo in Caracas, where a union leader last week said 50 animals including Vietnamese pigs, tapirs, rabbits and birds had starved to death in the past six months. “The animals are very dear, treated as if they were family, in fact they all have names,” said Paiva, adding that they were being seen by nutritionists to ensure they had an adequate diet. A union leader for employees of state parks agency Inparques, which oversees zoos, and sources at various facilities have said animals are suffering across the country, with lions being fed mangoes instead of meat and bears receiving less than half of their required intake.
BOLIVIA
Drug shipment seized
Police have seized 7.5 tonnes of cocaine and arrested three Bolivians in a massive bust of drugs headed for Honduras and likely eventual sale in the US, a government official said on Monday. The haul, which was hidden in a cargo of minerals, would be worth over US$160 million in Honduras and US$350 million in the US, Bolivian interior minister Carlos Romero said at a news conference. Romero said the cocaine had been intercepted in trucks carrying borates along a remote mountain pass that connects Bolivia with Chile’s sea ports. In May, Colombian police confiscated 8 tonnes of cocaine, which officials described as one of the largest in the history of the country.
BRAZIL
Security guard arrested
A private security guard at Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic Park has been arrested after allegedly sexually assaulting a female firefighter while she slept, police said on Monday. “A security agent from a company working at the velodrome in the Olympic Park was caught red-handed” on Sunday, the police statement said. He was accused of molesting the woman while she slept “and could not offer resistance.” The man faces between two and six years in prison if found guilty, police said. Security is a major concern at the Rio Olympics, the first held in South America, which open on Friday. About 85,000 police and soldiers, as well as thousands of private guards, have been deployed — double the number used at the 2012 London Games. Brazil suffers high levels of violence against women, with statistics suggesting that in 2014 a sexual assault took place on average every 11 minutes.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of