BRAZIL
Court orders magnate freed
A court on Monday ordered the release of a meatpacking magnate arrested days ago as part of the wide-ranging “Operation Car Wash” investigation into corruption. Nefi Cordeiro, a judge at the Superior Court of Justice, ruled that it was excessive to hold Joesley Batista in prison pending further investigation. Batista and his brother Wesley own the world’s biggest meatpacking company, JBS. The judge also ordered the release of 16 other people arrested on Friday along with Batista, including two former agriculture ministers. Two others also arrested then were released on Sunday. Investigators have said JBS bribed agriculture ministry officials through political intermediaries to obtain benefits from industry regulations and the attribution of commercial licenses. These bribes gave JBS advantages over its competition and the possibility to build a market monopoly, police said.
CHILE
Chileans to leave Venezuela
Minister of Foreign Affairs Roberto Ampuero on Monday confirmed that an air force plane would late this month transport the first group of Chileans who have sought government help to return home from Venezuela. More than 200 Chileans have indicated that they wish to return from Venezuela, where annual inflation is running at about 149,000 percent amid widespread food and medicine shortages. During Chile’s right-wing military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s and 1980s, Venezuela gave sanctuary to thousands of exiled Chileans. “Given the grave difficulties that they are up against to live there, they want to return to our country and we will help them come back to Chile,” the minister wrote in a press release. The government last week initiated a program aimed at helping Haitian migrants return home, with 176 people flown to Port-Au-Prince aboard the same aircraft that is to be dispatched to Venezuela. President Sebastian Pinera’s administration is considering whether to broaden the measure assisting the Haitian returnees to other nationalities wishing to return to their home countries. Chile, a nation with a population of about 18 million, has about 1 million immigrants.
UNITED STATES
Corsi to face charges
An associate of President Donald Trump’s longtime confidant Roger Stone on Monday said that he expects to face charges in the special counsel’s Russia investigation. Conservative conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi said on his YouTube show that negotiations fell apart with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and he expects in the coming days to be charged with making false statements. “I’m going to be indicted,” Corsi said on his show. “That’s what we were told. Everyone should know that, and I’m anticipating it.” The Associated Press could not immediately confirm Corsi’s claims that charges against him are forthcoming. Corsi’s attorney, David Gray, declined to comment. A spokesman for the special counsel’s office also declined to comment. Corsi is one of several Stone associates who have been questioned by investigators as Mueller probes Stone’s connections with WikiLeaks. Intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian agents were the source of hacked material released by WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. Corsi, the former Washington bureau chief of the conspiracy theory outlet InfoWars, said he had no recollection of ever meeting WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange. Corsi said that he has been cooperating with the Mueller investigation since receiving a subpoena in late August.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not