BRAZIL
Bolsonaro protests trial
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday attended a public demonstration in Sao Paulo to protest against his ongoing Supreme Court trial in the South American country. A couple of thousand people gathered on Paulista Avenue, one of the city’s main locations, in a demonstration that Bolsonaro, before the event, called “an act for freedom, for justice.” Bolsonaro and 33 allies are facing trial over an alleged plot to overturn the 2022 Brazilian presidential election results and remain in power. They were charged with five counts related to the plan. The former president has denied the allegations and claims that he is the target of political persecution. He could face up to 12 years in prison if convicted. “Bolsonaro, come back!” protesters chanted, but the former president is barred from running for office until 2030.
Photo: AP
SERBIA
Student clashes escalate
Thousands of people on Sunday set up street blockades in Serbia, angry over the arrest of anti-government protesters who clashed with police at a massive rally a day earlier, demanding early elections. Protesters put up metal fences and garbage containers at various locations in the capital, Belgrade, also blocking a key bridge over the Sava River. Protesters in the northern city of Novi Sad pelted the offices of the ruling populist Serbian Progressive Party with eggs. Serbian media said similar protest blockades were organized in smaller cities in the Balkan country. Protesters demanded that authorities release dozens of university students and other protesters who were jailed for attacking the police or for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government at the rally Saturday in Belgrade. Tens of thousands of people attended the rally held after nearly eight months of persistent dissent that has rattled Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
CHILE
Communist wins primary
Chilean communist Jeannette Jara, the country’s former minister of labor and social welfare, won the primary election for left-wing parties on Sunday with surprising ease, beating a moderate rival to clinch more than 60 percent of the vote. The upset makes Jara, 51, the candidate representing Chile’s beleaguered incumbent government in November elections, set to face off against center-right and far-right contenders who have surged in the polls. Due to term limits, Chilean President Gabriel Boric, 39, cannot run for a second consecutive term. Jara, a lawyer and member of Chile’s Communist Party who was Boric’s labor minister before resigning to run for president, secured 60.5 percent of the vote. The runner-up, who had been considered a favorite — former minister of the interior Carolina Toha from the traditional Democratic Socialist party — took 27 percent.
INDIA
Snakes seized at airport
Indian customs officers in Mumbai said they have stopped a plane passenger arriving from Thailand with a wriggling cargo of live snakes, the third such seizure this month. “Customs officers ... foiled yet another wildlife smuggling attempt, 16 live snakes ... seized from a passenger returning from Thailand,” said customs officers at the airport in the Indian financial hub. The passenger, who arrived on Sunday, has been arrested, the customs agency said in a statement, with “further investigation underway.” The live snakes included reptiles often sold in the pet trade, and were largely non-venomous, or with venom too weak to affect people.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
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