VENEZUELA
Alleged US spy charged
Chief prosecutor Tarek Saab on Monday announced charges of terrorism and weapons trafficking against alleged US “spy,” Matthew John Heath, who was detained last week. Saab said Heath was plotting attacks against the nation’s oil industry and electricity system. He also claimed that Health was carrying a “coin” linking him to the CIA. Three local citizens, including one member of the military, were also charged with treason as part of the plot, Saab said.
BRAZIL
Lula faces new charge
Car Wash corruption investigation prosecutors on Monday charged former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva with money laundering. Prosecutors said Lula received bribes from construction giant Odebrecht disguised as donations to the institute that carries his name between December 2013 and March 2014 in exchange for granting contracts with state-run oil company Petrobras. Attorneys for the ex-president said they were surprised by the charges and that prosecutors have no evidence to back them. Prosecutors also charged Lula’s first finance minister and the head of his institute, Paulo Okamotto.
COLOMBIA
Ex-rebel leaders apologize
Eight former commanders of the demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas on Monday asked forgiveness for kidnappings committed by the rebels and said they regretted the grave error. It is the first time since the November 2016 peace deal between the government and FARC that a group of former commanders, including leader Rodrigo Londono, have asked for forgiveness and accepted they had made mistakes. “We are here to publicly ask forgiveness of all our victims and their families from the bottom of our hearts,” the members of the FARC political party said.
UNITED STATES
Hysterectomies condemned
Human rights organizations on Monday denounced the number of hysterectomies carried out on immigrant women at the privately run Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia, after one detainee described it as like “an experimental concentration camp.” Information about the operations emerged after a whistle-blower revealed practices, where some detainees are held under Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. “When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp. It was like they’re experimenting with our bodies,” said one detainee interviewed by the Project South organization, which filed a complaint to the government. The whistle-blower, a nurse at the facility, said that detainees told her they did not fully understand why they had to have a hysterectomy.
UNITED STATES
‘Deer crash’ victim human
South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg reported hitting a deer with his vehicle on Saturday night last week, when he had actually struck and killed a pedestrian whose body was not found until the next day, authorities said on Monday. Ravnsborg said in a statement that he was cooperating with the investigation and offered his sympathies to family of the dead man, 55-year-old Joseph Boever. Ravnsborg, who was driving home alone from a Republican fundraiser, reported to police at about 10:24pm that he had been involved in a “car-deer crash,” authorities said. Boever’s family voiced fears that the case would be covered up, including a possible hit-and-run.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
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
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