Pastor Sam Nadakumar's Retirement Service 3

Pastor Sam Nadakumar's Retirement Service 2

Pastor Sam Nadakumar's Retirement Service

Brasilian Surfer Rodrigo Koxa Rides World's Biggest Wave

https://www.yahoo.com/news/big-wave-brazilian-surfer-koxa-credited-world-record-022053020.html

Peru: Preventative Prison

PERU

Preventive Prison

Peru’s top court ordered the release from jail of former President Ollanta Humala and his wife, warning against the excessive use of so-called “preventive prison,” or lengthy periods of pretrial detention.

Humala and his wife, who both say they’re innocent, have been behind bars for nine months awaiting trial on money laundering charges, Reuters reported.

“Preventive prison is not the general rule but an exception,” said judge Ernesto Blume. The court “must guarantee the right to personal liberty as well as the presumption of innocence.”

Humala and former first lady Nadine Heredia are among various other politicians, former government officials and business leaders who have been jailed pending trial in connection with the Odebrecht corruption case. The Brazilian construction firm has admitted to paying hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes across Latin America.

Former Presidents Alejandro Toledo and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and opposition leader Keiko Fujimori face similar allegations.

The Tough Road Ahead In Brasilian Politics

https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/brazil-presidential-election-lula-da-silva-congress?id=743c2bc617&e=1bd154cf7d&uuid=281054e4-6123-4e3f-8168-0ef029f8e067&utm_source=Topics%2C+Themes+and+Regions&utm_campaign=62c08fd77e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_04_25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_743c2bc617-62c08fd77e-53655957&mc_cid=62c08fd77e&mc_eid=[UNIQID]

Marijuana Vanishes In Argentina

Blame Game Eight Argentine police officers are in hot water after sticking to an alibi akin to the “dog ate my homework” excuse. Except in this case, the dog was a pack of rodents – and the homework was a large quantity of marijuana. When more than a half-ton of marijuana mysteriously vanished from a guarded evidence facility in Pilar, Argentina, not far from the capital city of Buenos Aires, the eight officers were dismissed after claiming that mice ate the drugs, the Guardian reported. During an inspection, officials noticed a shortfall from the amount originally registered – more than six tons of cannabis – and questioned former Police Commissioner Javier Specia, who had originally handled the inventory. Testifying before a judge, Specia and three of his subordinates claimed that mice had munched on the drugs, a statement that was rebuked by forensic experts in court. “Buenos Aires University experts have explained that mice wouldn’t mistake the drug for food, and that if a large group of mice had eaten it, a lot of corpses would have been found in the warehouse,” said a spokesperson for Judge Adrian Gonzalez Charvay. Ingesting marijuana can be toxic to animals since they digest the drug differently from humans, NPR recently reported. With their alibi debunked, the officers face more questioning next month, when the judge will seek to decide whether the missing evidence resulted from “expedience or negligence.”

Mexico: Declaring Peace

MEXICO

Declaring Peace

As the Trump administration reinvigorates the US war on drugs, Mexican leaders are increasingly looking at other ways to reduce gang-related violence south of the border – including legalization.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox on Wednesday proposedlegalizing the farming of opium poppies as a strategy to curtail profits for the drug cartels and reduce violence, while tourism minister Enrique de la Madrid said Mexican states should move toward legalizing marijuana to match similar measures in the US, Reuters reported.

Outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto has said Mexico and the United States should not pursue diverging policies on marijuana, the agency noted. Fox, who was president from 2000-2006, has also advocated for the legalization of that drug in the past.

Drug policy is a major campaign issue in Mexico’s July 1presidential election, with the front-runner, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, suggesting an amnesty program for gang members to break the cycle of violence.

Latin America-Summit Snubs

LATIN AMERICA

Summit Subs

Neither US President Donald Trump nor Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro will attend the Summit of the Americas in Lima this week – in a development that pundits say speaks volumes about Trump’s frustration with the region and the rudderless nature of the event.

Trump cited more pressing concerns in Syria for his absence and Maduro was disinvited. Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Vice President Mike Pence will step in to fill the void April 13-14.

But Trump’s absence means the meeting is less likely to overcome differences related to trade and immigration, or to come up with a coherent strategy for dealing with Venezuela, Peter Hakim and Michael Shifter opined in the New York Times.

Interestingly, Trump becomes the first US president to skip the summit at a time when attending might well suit his deal-making agenda, Alvaro Vargas Llosa argues in the Hill. The decline of the Latin American left offers an opportunity to bring the meeting back to its original focus – creating the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas, he writes.

Brasil Soy Bean Growers Are In For A Chinese Boom

https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/brazil-china-soybeans-united-states-trade-war?id=743c2bc617&e=1bd154cf7d&uuid=16e9839e-0cba-4aa9-9706-1f7d9841a46e&utm_source=Topics%2C+Themes+and+Regions&utm_campaign=cf83593cd4-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_04_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_743c2bc617-cf83593cd4-53655957&mc_cid=cf83593cd4&mc_eid=[UNIQID]

An Email To My Son About Ex-President Lula and Brasilian Politics

Dear Pedro:

     You talked about the complexity of the Lula situation in particular and Brasilian politics in general.

       Today I had lunch with a man from Goiania. He started life in a favela. He now has an MBA from San Jose State University. On the face of things, you would see him as a Lula supporter.

        Here is a recap of what he told me over lunch as follows:

1) Judge Moro has six more criminal cases against Lula including one where he got a luxury fazenda as a gift from a constituent.

2) As Lula made cosmetic efforts to uplift the poor, he was helping the rich lavishly.

3) Lula played "a shell game" to make it appear that Brasil was experiencing an unprecedented economic boom. International investors believed this and poured massive sums of money into Brasil.

4) He briefed me on the political parties and the political structure. It would appear that the only president in recent history with honesty was Cardoso.

    In the US, there is a saying about lawyers as follows: "A law license is a license to steal." In Brasil, one could say: "Election to public office is a license to steal."

    Most sad is that very little is being done to help the truly poor.

With kindest regards,

Chile And Argentina Start Projects To Find Oil and Gas Off the Southern Tip of South America

Chile and Argentina open offshore project to increase gas, oil production

SANTIAGO – The state-run energy firms of Chile and Argentina have inaugurated a US$ 354 million project to increase production of natural gas off the southern tip of South America.

The project, east of Magellan Strait, operated by Chile’s state-run ENAP in partnership with YPF, will boost production of natural gas to 4 million cubic meters daily from the current 2.4 million, while increasing petroleum production by nearly 25% at the site, the firms said in a statement.

“This ambitious project contributes to the supply of energy in Argentina and bolsters regional integration,” ENAP General Manager Marcelo Tokman said in the statement.

YPF’s Pablo Bizzotto said the project is part of the company’s strategic project “providing funds, technology and innovations with the purpose of achieving the maximum energy development for Argentina”

The project, which includes five oil platforms, is at the Faro Virgenes zone, in the mouth of the eastern end of the Strait of Magellan in Argentina’s Santa Cruz province.

Chile’s Hydrocarbons secretary Marcos Pourteau was present at the inauguration ceremony together with Santa Cruz province governor, Alicia Kirchner, YPF Upstream Operations chief Pablo Bizzotto, ENAP’s General manager Marcelo Tokman and the General Manager of ENAP Argentina, Eduardo Tapia.

As part of the ceremony officials from both countries were flown by helicopter to one of the oil rigs, 18 kilometers offshore, for a tour of the facilities. Precisely one of the rigs is connected to land deposits in Faro de Virgenes via an 18km pipeline at the bottom of the sea.

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Former President Lula Is Resisting Arrest In Brasil. Get Ready For Violence!!!

Lula has taken shelter in a union hall outside of Sao Paulo and refused to be taken to prison.

The Brasilian Federal Police are intimidated by the crowd that has assembled to protest his imprisonment. Many of the people in the crowd sincerely believe that the criminal case against Lula is a fabrication just to get him out of the political arena.

          I am a man with experience in war and social unrest all over the world. What is going to happen is that the Brasilian Army will appear with full battle dress, automatic weapons, and heavy vehicles. This will not intimidate the crowd. It will enrage them. Many of the soldiers will have sympathy with the protesters. A riot will break out. People will be seriously injured and die. Lula will either be taken into custody or die as a martyr.

          That will only be the beginning of the problem. Riots will break out all over Brasil. The social unrest will get unpleasant. Who knows what kind of extremists will win the presidential election

           This is a vision of what will happen when Trump is removed from office. Elena says that it will spark a right-wing revolt. I see the same sort of confrontation and violent social unrest happening in the United States. You're fortunate to be in Canada.

Brasil: Do Not Pass Go

BRAZIL

Do Not Pass Go

Brazil’s Supreme Court rejected former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s plea to avoid jail while he appeals against a 12-year sentence on corruption charges, setting the stage for the popular politician to spend the rest of the ongoing presidential election behind bars.

The court rejected by 6-5 Lula’s lawyers’ request for a preventative habeas corpus, Bloomberg reported. It’s now up to Sergio Moro, the judge who prosecuted Lula, to decide whether to jail him immediately or follow standard procedure and delay for one or two weeks.

Lula was already banned from running in the ongoing election due to the corruption conviction. But Brazil has allowed exceptions to that rule in the past, and Lula was nevertheless polling ahead of all the other candidates. Some analysts expect stocks to get a bump when the market reopens today due to the easing of fears he’d undo recent pro-market reforms.

It remains to be seen whether putting him behind bars rallies his supporters or hurts the fortunes of his Workers’ Party, which said it would continue to push for his candidacy in the October polls.

Venezuela: Blame Game

VENEZUELA

Blame Game

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro rejected claims that pro-government “colectivos” were behind an attack on opposition presidential hopeful Henri Falcon’s campaign on Monday and said 17 people have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the incident.

“If someone says they are ‘chavista’ or a member of a ‘colectivo’ and does what that group did yesterday in Catia, in Caracas, then they’re not ‘chavista,’” Reuters quoted Maduro as saying during a speech on state television. “It could be an infiltrator on the right-wing’s payroll.”

The embattled president – whom Peru’s foreign minister reiteratedon Tuesday is not welcome at the upcoming Summit of the Americas April 13-14 – didn’t provide any further details about the arrests.

Falcon’s security chief reportedly suffered a “severe” head injury. Separately, the head of his campaign claimed to have secured the backing of the other opposition leaders comprising the Democratic Unity Roundtable, or MUD – though some are worried the former member of Maduro’s party may be a government stooge running to legitimize an unfair election.

Mexico-Traffic Jam

MEXICO

Traffic Jam

Mexico stopped and screened hundreds of mostly Central American migrants heading toward the United States to determine whether they have the right to stay in Mexico or will be returned to their countries of origin.

Aimed at breaking up the so-called “caravan” that has attracted the ire of US President Donald Trump, the move could prove problematic for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), as many Mexicans are sympathetic to the plight of the migrants and angry over Trump’s proposed border wall and other threats, Reuters reported.

The Mexican government said on Monday evening around 400 people in the caravan had already been sent back to their home countries. Having threatened to link Mexico’s response to negotiations over revising the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Trump on Tuesday said he might deploy the US military to guard America’s border with Mexico, though statistics show the number of people crossing illegally into the US at the lowest level since 1971.

Latin America's Burning Question-What To Do About Venezuela

https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/latin-americas-burning-question-what-do-about-venezuela-colombia-brazil-duque-petro-Bolsonaro-Lima