PERU
PM pledges free markets
Prime Minister Anibal Torres on Wednesday pledged to pursue free-market policies in his first public remarks a day after a new Cabinet was formed by President Pedro Castillo. Torres also told a government news conference that the administration would promote a strong government that can prevent monopolies and other concentrations of economic power. “Our policy is the free market, free economic enterprise, free business, but with the participation of the state to control monopolies, oligopolies and [other] dominant positions,” Torres said.
UNITED STATES
Soup gaffe draws ridicule
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on Wednesday found herself the object of online ridicule after accusing Democratic leaders of “gazpacho” tactics on Capitol Hill, apparently conflating Nazi secret police with the Spanish soup. In an appearance on Tuesday on One America News, Greene described the Washington jail housing Capitol riot suspects as a “DC Gulag,” and denounced House of Representatives Speaker “Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress.” Greene later offered some self-mockery. “No soup for those who illegally spy on Members of Congress, but they will be thrown in the goulash,” she wrote on Twitter.
UNITED STATES
Assassin seeker sentenced
A Louisiana man has received the maximum 10-year sentence for trying to hire an assassin to kill his ex-wife while he was jailed on charges of sexually assaulting her two young daughters. District Judge Terry Doughty on Tuesday sentenced Steven Marcus Kelley, 48, of West Monroe, on a charge of using the mail to commission a murder for hire in December 2019. Kelley was in the Ouachita Parish jail awaiting trial on charges involving the rape and molestation of the girls, aged eight and 12, prosecutors said in October last year. Another inmate had recommended the person whom Kelley offered US$10,000 to shoot his ex-wife, prosecutors said. The person who had been recommended by the inmate brought the letter to police the morning after it arrived, they said.
UNITED STATES
Saget’s death explained
Bob Saget’s death last month stemmed from an accidental blow to the head, his family said in a statement on Wednesday. The comedian and Full House star was found dead on Jan. 9 in a Florida hotel room. He had performed in the area the night before as part of a stand-up tour. “The authorities have determined that Bob passed from head trauma,” the Saget family said. “They have concluded that he accidentally hit the back of his head on something, thought nothing of it and went to sleep. No drugs or alcohol were involved.”
UNITED STATES
Betty Davis dies
Pioneering funk singer, model and songwriter Betty Davis, who was credited with inspiring then-husband Miles Davis’ landmark fusion of jazz and more contemporary sounds, has died. She was 77. Davis died on Wednesday after a brief illness, said Danielle Maggio, a singer, adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh and associate producer of the 2017 documentary Betty: They Say I’m Different. Davis was the rare woman to make funk albums in the 1970s. “The reach of her influence & sonic lineage is immense,” author and critic Hanif Abdurraqib wrote on Twitter. “You’ve heard her, even if you think you’ve never heard her. I’m glad we got her at all.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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