MONTEVIDEO: Uruguay’s former president Jose “Pepe” Mujica, a guerrilla fighter and hero of the Latin American left, has died at the age of 89, the government in Montevideo said Tuesday.
“With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of our comrade Pepe Mujica. President, activist, guide and leader. We will miss you greatly, old friend,” the country’s current president, Yamandu Orsi, said on X.
Mujica won fame as the “world’s poorest president” for giving away much of his salary to charity, during his 2010-2015 presidency.
In May 2024, he was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus, which later spread to his liver.
His wife Lucia Topolansky said this week he was receiving palliative care.
The man who made Uruguay into a paragon of progressive politics by legalizing abortion, gay marriage and the use of recreational cannabis, campaigned for the left until the end.
In a November 2024 interview with AFP he described the presidential victory of his political heir, history teacher Orsi, as “a reward” at the end of his career.
The blunt-spoken, snowy-haired politician was a fierce critic of consumer culture.
As president he walked the talk by actively rejecting the trappings of office.
He attended official events in sandals and continued living on his small farm on the outskirts of Montevideo, where his prized possession was a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle.
Tupamaros movement
In the 1960s, he co-founded the Marxist-Leninist urban guerrilla movement Tupamaros, which started out robbing from the rich to give to the poor but later escalated its campaign to kidnappings, bombings and assassinations.
During those years, Mujica lived a life of derring-do. He sustained multiple gunshot wounds and took part in a mass prison breakout.
But when the Tupamaros collapsed in 1972, he was recaptured and spent all of Uruguay’s 1973-1985 dictatorship in prison, where he was tortured and spent years in solitary confinement.
After his release, he threw himself into politics and in 1989 founded the Movement of Popular Participation (MPP), the largest member of the leftist Broad Front coalition.
Elected to parliament in 1995, he became a senator in 2000 and then agriculture minister in Uruguay’s first-ever left-wing government.
He served just one five-year term as president, in line with Uruguay’s term limits.
Mujica had no children and is survived by fellow ex-guerrilla Topolansky.
Uruguay’s ex-president Jose ‘Pepe’ Mujica dead at 89
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Uruguay’s ex-president Jose ‘Pepe’ Mujica dead at 89
- Jose 'Pepe' Mujica was a guerrilla fighter and hero of the Latin American left
- Mujica won fame as the 'world’s poorest president' for giving away much of his salary to charity
Slightly radioactive Fukushima soil is used at Japanese prime minister’s office to prove safety
- Officials say the soil meets safety standards set by the Environment Ministry and the International Atomic Energy Agency
- The government hopes this move will reassure the public of its safety as it seeks to reduce the massive volume of contaminated soil stored near the nuclear plant
TOKYO: Decontaminated but slightly radioactive soil from Fukushima was delivered Saturday to the Japanese prime minister’s office to be reused in an effort to showcase its safety.
This is the first soil to be used, aside from experiments, since the 2011 nuclear disaster when the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant suffered a cataclysmic meltdown following an earthquake and tsunami that left large amounts of radioactive materials spewing out from the facility, polluting surrounding areas.
The government is desperate to set people’s minds at ease about recycling the 14 million cubic meters of decontaminated soil, enough to fill 11 baseball stadiums, collected after massive clean-ups and stored at a sprawling outdoor facility near the Fukushima plant. Officials have pledged to find final disposal sites by 2045.
The Environment Ministry said the 2 cubic meters, now at Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s office complex in Tokyo, will be used as foundation material in one section of the lawn garden, based on the ministry’s safety guidelines endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The soil does not include any from inside the plant.
Despite assurances, there has been much public unease. The government has already been forced to scrap a plan to experiment using some of the soil in flower beds at several public parks in and around Tokyo following protests.
One dead, three missing after South Korea landslide
- Sancheong county told all residents Saturday to ‘evacuate immediately to a safe area’
- South Korea is regularly hit by flooding during the summer monsoon period, but is typically well-prepared
SEOUL: A landslide triggered by torrential rain killed at least one person in South Korea, the national fire agency said Saturday.
Three people were also missing after the landslide buried two houses in a village in southern Sancheong county, officials said, as heavy rain continued to pound the country.
“At least three people have been reported missing and we have recovered one body,” an official at Sancheong county fire station said.
The official said that one person in their twenties, and a couple in their seventies were reported missing.
Sancheong county told all residents Saturday to “evacuate immediately to a safe area.”
The county has a population of some 34,000 people.
South Korea typically experiences monsoon rains in July, but the country’s southern regions saw some of the heaviest hourly downpours on record this week, official weather data showed.
The Ministry of Interior and Safety said Saturday at least four people have been killed in rain-related accidents and more than 7,000 forced to evacuate their homes.
South Korea is regularly hit by flooding during the summer monsoon period, but is typically well-prepared and the death toll usually relatively low.
Scientists say climate change has made weather events around the world more extreme and frequent.
The country endured record-breaking rains and flooding in 2022 which killed at least 11 people.
Former South Korea president Yoon indicted again as martial law investigation continues
- The new charges include obstruction of the exercise of others’ rights by abuse of authority, ordering the deletion of records and blocking the execution of arrest warrants
- The impeached and deposed former leader has been jailed at Seoul Detention Center since earlier this month
SEOUL: South Korea’s jailed ex-President Yoon Suk Yeol was indicted on additional charges on Saturday as a special prosecutor continues investigating him for his short-lived declaration of martial law in December.
The new charges include obstruction of the exercise of others’ rights by abuse of authority, ordering the deletion of records and blocking the execution of arrest warrants, the prosecutor’s office said in a briefing.
Yoon has been on trial on charges of insurrection, which is punishable by death or life imprisonment, facing additional charges since the special prosecutor was appointed in June to take over the cases against him.
Yoon has denied all wrongdoing. His lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new charges.
The impeached and deposed former leader has been jailed at Seoul Detention Center since earlier this month, and a court earlier this week rejected his request to be freed from detention.
Cuba ends maximum age limit of 60 for presidential candidates
- Communist-ruled island’s restriction of two five-year presidential terms and minimum age of 35 for candidates were left unchanged
- Cuba’s current president, 65-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel, was elected in 2018 and then re-elected in 2023
HAVANA: Cuba scrapped the maximum age limit of 60 for its presidential candidates as part of a constitutional reform approved Friday by parliament.
The communist-ruled island’s restriction of two five-year presidential terms and minimum age of 35 for candidates were left unchanged.
The measure, approved by the Council of State, imposes no age limits on people “in the full exercise of their physical and mental faculties, with... loyalty and revolutionary trajectory,” national assembly president Esteban Lazo said.
Former president Raul Castro, who at age 94 still holds a seat in the assembly, was the first to vote for the reform that will be on the books for the 2028 presidential elections.
Cuba’s current president, 65-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel, was elected in 2018 and then re-elected in 2023. No favored successor has been publicly designated.
The inclusion of term and age limits in the 2019 constitution marked a radical shift after the six decades in which Fidel Castro and his brother Raul were in power.
In 2016, Fidel had to hand over the reins to his brother due to health problems. He died later that year, after nearly half a century leading Cuba.
Raul Castro officially became president in 2008, at the age of 76. In 2021, he retired as Communist Party first secretary, handing over power to Diaz-Canel.
The nation of nearly 10 million people is suffering its worst economic crisis in three decades, with shortages of all kinds of supplies, power outages, and unprecedented emigration.
El Salvador frees jailed Venezuelan migrants in US prisoner deal
- The 252 men were accused – without evidence – of being gang members and flown to the notorious ‘anti-terror’ jail last March
- On Friday, after months of legal challenges and political stonewalling, the men arrived at an airport near Caracas
MAIQUETIA, Venezuela: Hundreds of Venezuelans swept up in Donald Trump’s immigration dragnet were abruptly freed from a maximum security Salvadoran jail and sent home as part of a prisoner swap Friday, ending a months-long high-profile ordeal.
The 252 men were accused – without evidence – of being gang members and flown to the notorious CECOT “anti-terror” jail last March.
There, they were shackled, shorn and paraded before cameras – becoming emblematic of Trump’s immigration crackdown and drawing howls of protest.
On Friday, after months of legal challenges and political stonewalling, the men arrived at an airport near Caracas.
The Trump administration said they were released in exchange for 10 Americans or US residents held in Venezuela, and an undefined number of “political prisoners.”
“Today, we have handed over all the Venezuelan nationals detained in our country,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said on social media.
The migrants’ return to Venezuela sparked tearful celebrations from family members who had heard nothing from them in months.
“I don’t have words to explain how I feel!” said Juan Yamarte. “My brother (Mervin) is back home, back in Venezuela.”
Mervin’s mother said she could not contain her happiness. “I arranged a party and I’m making a soup,” she said.
The men had been deported from the United States under rarely used wartime powers and denied court hearings.
Exiled Salvadoran rights group Cristosal believes that just seven of the 252 men had criminal records.
Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro thanked Trump for “the decision to rectify this totally irregular situation.”
In the United States, families were also excited to see their loved ones return. One had been imprisoned for nearly a year.
Global Reach, an NGO that works for wrongly detained Americans, said one of the men freed was 37-year-old Lucas Hunter, held since he was “kidnapped” by Venezuelan border guards while vacationing in Colombia in January.
“We cannot wait to see him in person and help him recover from the ordeal,” it quoted his younger sister Sophie Hunter as saying.
Uruguay said one of its citizens, resident in the United States, was among those liberated after nine months in Venezuelan detention.
Another plane arrived at Maiquetia airport earlier Friday from Houston with 244 Venezuelans deported from the United States and seven children who Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said had been “rescued from the kidnapping to which they were being subjected.”
The children were among 30 who Caracas says remained in the US after their Venezuelan parents were deported.
Clamping down on migrants is a flagship pursuit of Trump’s administration, which has ramped up raids and deportations.
It has agreed with Maduro to send undocumented Venezuelans back home, and flights have been arriving near daily also from Mexico, where many got stuck trying to enter the United States.
Official figures show that since February, more than 8,200 people have been repatriated to Venezuela from the United States and Mexico, including some 1,000 children.
The Venezuelans detained in El Salvador had no right to phone calls or visits, and their relatives unsuccessfully requested proof of life.
Bukele had CECOT built as part of his war on criminal gangs, but he agreed to receive millions of dollars from the United States to house the Venezuelans there.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have denounced the detentions as a violation of human rights.
