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.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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