PARAGUAY
Justice minister sacked
President Mario Abdo Benitez on Tuesday sacked his justice minister and the director of a women’s prison for allowing a coffin with the body of a slain guerrilla leader into a jail where the man’s sister is serving a sentence. “The Minister of Justice (Edgar Taboada) and the director of the Good Shepherd prison were dismissed,” the president’s office said in a statement. Osvaldo Villalba, leader of the Marxist-Leninist Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP) was killed on Sunday by the military in the northeast of the country, along with two comrades, police said. His coffin was taken to the women’s prison by his relatives so that his convicted sister — a cofounder of the EPP — could say goodbye. The family “arrived unexpectedly at the women’s prison, [the coffin] came as a surprise,” the justice minister said a couple of hours before being removed. The minister said that the remains of the 39-year-old Villalba, who had a US$150,000 reward on his head, had already been delivered to a cemetery next to the prison, and that his relatives then came and took it to the prison itself. Accompanied by dozens of riot police, it was allowed into the prison where his sister Carmen, 50, was given five minutes to say her final farewells.
UNITED STATES
Congress invites Herzog
Israeli President Isaac Herzog has been invited to address a joint meeting of Congress as Israel prepares to celebrate the 75th anniversary of its founding, which congressional leaders called a “historic and joyous milestone.” House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer issued the invitation to Herzog in a joint letter on Tuesday. They said the two nations have shared “an unbreakable bond rooted in common security, shared values and friendship.” The date for Herzog’s address has not been set. The state of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948. Then-US president Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation the same day. In their letter, Pelosi and Schumer said Truman’s swift action “has always been a point of pride for our country.” “Across the decades, the United States Congress has been proud to stand in solidarity with Israel on a bipartisan and bicameral basis,” Pelosi and Schumer wrote. Herzog began a two-day visit to Washington on Tuesday, meeting with Pelosi and with Secretary of State Antony Blinken among other US officials. He was scheduled to meet with President Joe Biden yesterday.
JAPAN
Plastic tarts sold by mistake
The country’s plastic food samples are a multimillion-dollar industry, but one pastry shop’s fake egg tarts are so lifelike that its staff unwittingly sold five to customers. Plastic food samples, known as shokuhin sampuru, are made in painstaking detail to look as realistic as possible, from moisture droplets on a chilled glass of beer to the glistening surface of a bowl of ramen. The plastic pastries at Osaka-based Andrew’s Egg Tart are so convincing that even staff could not tell the difference and unwittingly sold five of them on Saturday to two unsuspecting customers at a pop-up stand near a station in Tottori. “We are very sorry that we mistakenly sold the samples,” a company representative told reporters yesterday. A clerk realized the mistake soon after the sale and the customers luckily returned the fake tarts to the stand before taking a potentially painful first bite.
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
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