Peru's congress ready to replace scandal-tainted president

March 23, 2018

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peru's congress is expected to vote Friday to accept President Pedro Pablo Kuczysnki*s resignation and swear in as his replacement a politician who the vast majority of voters never even heard of until recently.

Vice President Martin Vizcarra flew back to Lima on Thursday from Canada, where he had been serving as ambassador, amid one of the most politically turbulent periods in Peru's recent history. Efforts to oust the unpopular Kuczynski led by the daughter of former strongman Alberto Fujimori have been building for months. But the campaign went into overdrive this week after the emergence of secretly shot videos showed allies of Kuczynski, including Fujimori*s son, allegedly attempting to buy the support of an opposition lawmaker to block the president's impeachment.

To stem off an even more disgraceful exit, Kuczynski delivered a resignation letter to congress Wednesday, blaming relentless attacks by his opponents for making it impossible to govern. During a heated debate that ran far into Thursday night, lawmakers appeared to be leaning toward accepting the offer, although some parties on the left argued the body should instead hold impeachment proceedings.

Kuczynski's downfall was his association with Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction giant that has admitted to spreading some $800 million in bribes to officials across Latin America, including $29 million in Peru.

For months, even as three of his predecessors became ensnared in the bribery scandal, Kuczynski vehemently denied having any business or political ties to the company. But documents presented by Keiko Fujimori's Popular Force party showed his consulting firm had received $782,000 in payments from Odebrecht a decade ago, some of them when he was a government minister.

The former Wall Street investor said he wasn't then managing the day-to-day affairs of his consulting business and denied any wrongdoing. Stepping into the void left by Kuczynski is Vizcarra, whose name wasn't recognized by 81 percent of Peruvians in a March poll by Ipsos. His only previous experience in public office before becoming vice president in 2016 was as governor of Peru's second-least populated province.

While Vizcarra is expected to continue Kuczynski*s pro-business agenda, he will face a tough challenge building consensus with a hostile congress and growing public anger at Peru's political class. Protesters scuffled with police Thursday night while calling for new elections for both president and congress.

The new president's first test on the international stage will come in three weeks when he is expected to host President Donald Trump and other Western Hemisphere leaders at the Summit of the Americas in Lima.

Paraguay ruling party candidate wins presidential election

April 23, 2018

ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) — The son of a former dictator's top aide won the presidential election in Paraguay on Sunday, helped by a booming economy under his party. Mario Abdo Benitez of the governing Colorado Party had 46.5 percent of the votes, with 96 percent of 21, 000 polling stations reporting, electoral officials said. Efrain Alegre of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party finished second with 42.7 percent of the ballots. Eight other candidates finished far out of the running.

Both candidates are conservatives and the election was closer than the 20-point edge that opinion polls had given Abdo going into the election. Alegre, a 55-year-old lawyer who also finished second in the last presidential election, declined to concede, saying he would wait for the final count, though electoral officials said there were not enough ballots left to be counted to change the result.

The new president begins a five-year term Aug. 15. Abdo, a 46-year-old marketing expert, campaigned on a promise to continue the business-friendly policies of outgoing President Horacio Cartes and he played down any fears of a return to the heavy-handed past of dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled from 1954 to 1989. Abdo's father was Stroessner's private secretary.

After the results were announced, Abdo promised an "unwavering commitment" to being a good manager of the government. "We built an electoral project with a dialogue of reconciliation and pardon among all Paraguayans," he said.

The top two candidates had similar platforms, promising to attract foreign investment to create jobs in an economy that has been one of the fastest-growing in the region but that still suffers from high poverty levels, extreme inequality and endemic corruption.

Both also are social conservatives who criticized sex education and abortion rights. The Colorado Party has led Paraguay with only a few interruptions since the mid-20th Century. The landlocked nation of about 7 million people borders Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil.

Election officials reported no serious disturbances during the balloting, though a woman was detained for hitting Abdo in the shoulder while he was at the polling place. Police said her motive was unclear.

Sunday's voting also elected all seats in Congress and 17 governorships nationwide.

Brazil's top court rules against da Silva on prison

April 05, 2018

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil's top court voted narrowly in the early hours Thursday to turn down an attempt by former President Luiz Inacio da Silva to stay out of jail while he appeals a corruption conviction, a decision that will have widespread implications in this polarized nation.

After nearly 11 hours of often heated debate, the justices of the Supreme Federal Tribunal voted 6-5 to deny da Silva's preventative habeas corpus request to stave off a 12-year jail sentence while he fights a conviction in a case that he argues was nothing more than a ploy to keep him off of October's presidential ballot.

Despite the conviction and several other corruption charges pending against him, da Silva leads all preference polls for the election. The decision means he will likely be jailed soon, though probably not until at least next week thanks to various technicalities.

Within minutes of the decision, da Silva's Workers' Party, which held Brazil's presidency from 2003 to 2016, put out a tweet that foreshadowed the struggles to come. "The Brazilian people have the right to vote for Lula, the candidate of hope," it read. "The Workers' Party will defend this candidacy on the streets and in every court until the last consequences."

The court's debate underscored how fraught the matter is at a time of high tension and angst in Brazil, which is struggling to emerge from a crippling recession and is four years into a major corruption scandal that has ensnared much of the country's elite, including da Silva.

"The constitution secures individual rights, which are fundamental to democracy, but it also assures the exercise of criminal law," said Chief Justice Carmen Lucia, who cast the deciding vote after spending much of the session being criticized by colleagues.

Justice Gilmar Mendes, traditionally a critic of da Silva, voted in favor of the former leader's petition to stay out of jail, challenging his colleagues to buck pressure from society. "If a court bows (to pressure), it might as well not exist," said Mendes.

Justice Luis Roberto Barroso argued that the integrity of the justice system was at stake. "A penal system that doesn't work with minimal effectiveness leads to an instinct for taking justice into one's own hands," said Barroso, who voted against the petition.

Justice Rosa Weber, who legal analysts predicted would be key because there was much doubt about her position on the matter, voted against da Silva. In one of several brisk exchanges, after Weber's vote, justice Marco Aurelio Mello accused Lucia of plotting against da Silva's case. Mello said limiting the vote just to the habeas corpus petition and not the larger question of when a convict should be forced to begin serving a sentence helped sway Weber's vote.

"I want this to be registered in the court's records," Mello told Lucia, who responded by saying "yes" to the request. The session reflected the debate happening across Brazil as millions tuned into the televised session. When the decision was leveled, fireworks and yells could be heard and seen in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, two of the nation's most important cities.

Da Silva was once wildly popular after his two terms as president from 2003 to 2010, but he has become a polarizing figure amid the "Car Wash" corruption scandal that has roiled Brazil the last several years and made average citizens furious with the political class.

Da Silva was convicted in July of helping a construction company get sweetheart contracts in exchange for the promise of a beachfront apartment. He denies any wrongdoing in that case or in several other corruption cases that have yet to be tried. An appeals court upheld the conviction in January, and the three reviewing magistrates even lengthened the sentence to 12 years and one month.

Technically, the Supreme Federal Tribunal's decision doesn't keep da Silva off the ballot. The country's top electoral court makes final decisions about candidacies beginning in August, but it has been expected to deny da Silva's candidacy under Brazil's "clean slate" law, which disqualifies people who have had criminal convictions upheld.

Thursday's decision was about much more than the future of a once towering politician trying to make a comeback. Many legal observers had said that allowing da Silva to stay out of jail could have a big impact on all the other cases related to "Car Wash" and other white-collar criminals with the means to continue appealing.

Congressman Jair Bolsonaro, a right-leaning legislator who is running second in the polls behind da Silva, summed up what many da Silva detractors were likely thinking. "Brazil hopes that after today's vote Sergio Moro is able to order his arrest to show corruption doesn't work," Bolsonaro said while demonstrating outside Congress in Brasilia during the session. "We should never do politics like this again. Crooks should not have votes. They should have a cell."

Argentina pays homage to Brit who recovered Falklands dead

March 24, 2018

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — They looked eye-to-eye and shed tears together: On one side the families of Argentine soldiers killed in the 1982 war with Britain, across the table the former British army officer who helped recover and rebury their loved ones.

A forensic study recently identified the remains of 90 Argentine soldiers buried in a Falkland Islands cemetery after the war. The families of the fallen troops will travel next week to the faraway graves on a lonely hillside in the South Atlantic, where until now gravestones have read: "Argentine soldier known only to God."

The identification process was led by the International Red Cross under an agreement between the two nations. But it was only possible thanks to the efforts of Geoffrey Cardozo, who is a retired British colonel.

When the war ended on June 14, 1982, most Argentine bodies were left untouched on the battlefield or in temporary graves during the southern winter. Britain tried for months to send them to Buenos Aires, but the ruling military junta said they were already in their homeland.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher finally agreed to build a cemetery. Cardozo, then a 32-year-old captain, was ordered in January 1983 to recover and rebury the dead. "They very quickly became my boys because they were orphans. Their mothers and fathers were not on the island and I was the only one who could look after them," Cardozo told The Associated Press. "And so I took great care to bury them, to look after them. And every step I took along the way with each body, I had in my mind their mothers, their families."

Cardozo assembled a team of British funeral directors that rappelled into minefields from helicopters and dug up mass graves to recover Argentine corpses. They carefully prepared each one for reburial in individual coffins.

On Friday, the families of the soldiers and Argentine officials paid homage to Cardozo at an emotional ceremony in Buenos Aires. "Today, I feel a great joy, a great tranquility," Cardozo told the relatives as they broke into tears.

A multinational team of 14 experts exhumed the remains last year. Tissues were analyzed and compared with DNA samples from family members of some of the dead soldiers at a laboratory in Argentina. Laboratories in Britain and Spain conducted quality control of the DNA analyses.

The Red Cross has said the identification process of the more than 120 graves was highly successful. "I would have never imagined 35 years later that we would achieve this kind of success," Cardozo said. "It's formidable, miraculous."

On Monday, Cardozo will join the families as part of the mission to the Falklands to explain how he organized the cemetery with its rows of white crosses and dark gray tombstones. "What will happen next Monday will bring a huge relief to these heavy hearts," he said.

Many families of the Argentine fallen troops had long distrusted the idea of sending experts to the islands to identify their war dead. "One day, my mom finally told me: 'Who am I to impede another mother from finding her son,'" said Maria Fernanda Araujo, who was 9 when her brother Eduardo was killed in the war. She now leads a group for the relatives of the fallen soldiers.

"We had to make other families understand that this was not impossible," she said. In all, 649 Argentines and 255 British soldiers died in the war. "The angels lined up — 649 of them — and Geoffrey was there. And we can all be friends," Araujo said as she turned to Cardozo, who was sitting next to her, and they embraced.

Ukrainian lawmaker arrested on alleged coup plot charges

March 23, 2018

MOSCOW (AP) — A Ukrainian court on Friday sanctioned the arrest of a celebrated former military pilot accused of plotting an attack on parliament with grenades and automatic weapons. Nadiya Savchenko, who has declared presidential ambitions, described the charges against her as an attempt by President Petro Poroshenko's government to get rid of a powerful challenger ahead of the next year's presidential vote.

The Shevchenko District Court in the Ukrainian capital on Friday ordered that she be kept behind bars for two months pending an official probe. The ruling followed parliament's vote to strip her of her immunity as a lawmaker.

Prosecutors have accused Savchenko of plotting a coup in collusion with Russia-backed rebels — a plan to attack parliament with hand grenades, automatic weapons and even heavy mortars. Savchenko said she talked about attacking parliament as a "surrealist political provocation" to mock the government because she knew she was being wiretapped.

Savchenko told the court Friday that her case was politically motivated. "When I said I would run for president I became dangerous for the authorities, and they sought to cast me in a negative light," she told the court.

She said she's going on a hunger strike to let the public realize that "the Ukrainian government is just as criminal as the Russian one." Savchenko became a national hero in Ukraine after spending years in a Russian prison. She was elected in absentia to parliament in 2014, months after she was captured by Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine while serving in a volunteer battalion. She then landed in a Russian prison.

In March 2016, a Russian court sentenced her to 22 years in prison, saying she acted as a spotter for mortar fire that killed two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine. During her trial she sang the national anthem and raised her middle finger in a show of contempt for Russian authorities.

Russian President Vladimir Putin pardoned her shortly afterward amid international outrage at her sentence, but after her return home, Savchenko quickly fell out with Poroshenko, whose government she has accused of corruption and incompetence.

Ukrainian lawmaker stripped of immunity on coup charges

March 22, 2018

MOSCOW (AP) — The Ukrainian parliament on Thursday stripped a celebrated former military pilot and presidential hopeful of her immunity as a lawmaker, sanctioning her arrest on charges of plotting an attack on parliament with grenades and automatic weapons.

Nadiya Savchenko was served a summons minutes after the parliamentary session, where she denounced the Ukrainian government for "killing and dividing" the Ukrainian people. A court was to consider putting her in custody later in the day.

Critics say the dramatic charges against Savchenko were part of authorities' efforts to get rid of a powerful challenger ahead of the next year's presidential vote. In Thursday's speech to lawmakers, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko accused Savchenko of plotting an attack on parliament with hand grenades, automatic weapons and even heavy mortars. Lutsenko claimed Savchenko was acting in cahoots with Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine to stage a "terrorist coup in the interests of Ukraine's enemies."

He presented wiretapped recordings in which Savchenko discussed smuggling weapons from the east and went over plans for the attacks. Savchenko said she was aware of being wiretapped, and that she talked about the attacks as a "surrealist political provocation" to mock the government that she said failed the public after Ukrainians staged huge protests that led to the ouster of its former Russia-friendly president in February 2014.

Russia responded to those developments by annexing Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula a month later and has supported a separatist insurgency fighting the government in eastern Ukraine since then. Savchenko, who has declared plans to run for president in the March 2019 election, is regarded by many as a national hero and a symbol of resistance against Russia.

She was elected in absentia to parliament in 2014, months after she was captured by Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine while serving in a volunteer battalion. She then landed in a Russian prison.

In March 2016, a Russian court sentenced her to 22 years in prison, saying she acted as a spotter for mortar fire that killed two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine. During her trial she sang the national anthem and raised her middle finger in a show of contempt for Russian authorities.

Russian President Vladimir Putin pardoned her shortly afterward amid international outrage at her sentence. She remains popular despite falling out with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's government, accusing it of corruption and incompetence.

"The Ukrainian government is the main evil in Ukraine," Savchenko told booing lawmakers Thursday. "The entire people of Ukraine think so." She accused Ukrainian authorities of profiting from the fighting in the east, saying that "Ukrainians on both sides want peace."

She also mocked lawmakers for making an about turn and casting her as an enemy, displaying her Hero of Ukraine's media, the nation's highest award. Shortly after the vote, Poroshenko thanked law-enforcement agencies in a Facebook statement for "preventing terror attacks and exposing the Russian special operation against Ukraine."

Volodymyr Fesenko, a Kiev-based independent political analyst, noted that Savchenko's arrest came amid exacerbating political tensions. "Savchenko is very charismatic and unmanageable, and it just so happened that she was isolated ahead of the start of the presidential campaign in which she could challenge many politicians," Fesenko said.

"The story of her plot is a clear symbol of the current anarchy which reflects our political tradition," he added.

Ukraine eyes new Spaceport downunder

Moscow (Sputnik)
Mar 13, 2018

The Ukrainian Space Agency has reportedly come up with an ambitious proposal to establish a spaceport some 11,500 km from home.

According to The West Australian newspaper, Kiev has been lobbying both Canberra and the northwestern Australian state government of Kimberley for two years now, with its proposals falling on deaf ears.

Ukraine's ambassador to Australia, Nikolai Kulinich, assured the newspaper that the proposal was "very realistic," adding that "Ukraine could launch tomorrow morning if we had a site. We offer our people and our expertise if Australia has land for use."

According to the Ukrainian Space Agency, it would require between 5,000 and 7,000 square kilometers of territory on a commercial lease. It would like to establish its space port near the Curtain Air Base, a Royal Australian Air Force airbase and civilian airport. A preliminary study could be completed for about half a million dollars, The West Australian says, with a study on construction and feasibility possible within two years.

The Ukrainian Space Agency envisions its Australian spaceport venture becoming Asia's key spaceport, with launches sponsored by Australian, Japanese, Singaporean, South Korean and Indonesian partners.

Private investments, as well as contributions from Australia's neighbors and allies, are expected to fund the construction of the spaceport, including its launch pads, hangars and support facilities.

Commenting on the ambitious plan, observers have pointed out that Ukraine's once-proud space industry is but a shadow of its former self following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine's space enterprises, including legendary enterprises like the Yuzhmash rocket plant and the Yuzhnoye design bureau have fallen on particularly hard times after the severing of space and rocketry industry cooperation with Russia in 2014, with many rocket scientists leaving Ukraine in pursuit of better opportunities elsewhere.

As to the potential costs of Ukraine's proposed space port idea, Moscow's experience with the construction of its Vostochny Cosmodrome has given some indication of the tremendous price tag attached to building a spaceport from scratch. Vostochny, expected to be completed later this year, has been estimated to cost upwards of $7.5 billion US.

Expert opinion aside, social media users aren't too thrilled about the idea either, hatching a series of memes about the lack of realism in Kiev's plan.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Ukraine_eyes_new_Spaceport_downunder_999.html.