What in the World?

Tommaso Nigra, Reporter

Brazil’s Ex-President Lula Charged With Corruption

Brazil’s Ex-President Luiz Inàcio Lula da Silva from the leftist Workers Party is being charged with corruption during the “Lava Jato” investigation on the Petrobras scandal. Lula, the man who led the country from 2003 to 2011, was accused of being the “headmaster” of the enormous system of kickbacks and illicit loans which allowed the directors of the giant oil company Petrobras to earn millions dollars in public funding. The firm used these kickbacks to pay politicians to obtain multi-million dollars worth of inflated contracts and build oil infrastructures in the Brazilian opensea. The Petrobras scandal is the biggest in Brazilian history; it involved most of Brazil’s politicians and caused the arrest and imprisonment of 40 of them since 2014. Lula, according to Brazilian prosecutors, knew about this money flow and, if incriminated, will be forced to stay out of the 2018 presidential elections.

Paralympic Games in Rio

In Rio de Janeiro, the fifteenth edition of the Paralympics, the games for athletes with disabilities, came to a conclusion on Sunday, Sept. 18. At the end of the competition, China led the medal count with 107 golds, 81 silvers, 51 bronzes, while U.S.A. (40 golds, 44 silvers, 31 bronzes) ended the game in the fourth place. The biggest surprise was probably the third place winner, Ukraine, while Great Britain reached an excellent second place, just as in the Olympic Games. The wonderful atmosphere of these games was in part subdued by the death of the Iranian cyclist Bahman Golbarnezhad, who had a heart-attack after a crash on Saturday, Sept. 17. The most outstanding performance of these games was definitely made by Algerian runner Abdellatif Baka, who won the men’s 1500m race, smashing Paralympic but also Olympic world record (3 minutes and 50 seconds), with the stunning time of three minutes and 48.29 seconds.

US airstrike hits Syrian soldiers

A week into U.S. and Russian ceasefire in Syria that started on September 12, the American Air Force bombed the Syrian government’s troops in Deir al-Zour, 280 miles to the northeast from the capital Damascus; the bombing killed 62 soldiers. The target, an army base on the near mountain of Al-Tharda, was thought to be controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The airstrike was immediately stopped when Russian commanders communicated to U.S. air force that the soldiers and vehicles hit could have been part of the Syrian government’s army. The White House declared that the attack on government forces wasn’t intentional, but Russia accused the U.S. of not having previously helped to separate the different forces of rebels and terrorists on the Syrian battlefield to conduct more accurate attacks. Russia also asked to call the United Nations Security Council into session. The President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, has also charged U.S. and its allies with helping the Jihadists, since he considered an accident to be impossible. This incident has caused an interruption of the diplomatic relationships between Washington and the Kremlin and has made the ceasefire in Syria harder to maintain.

New deal reached between US and Israel

The United States and Israel have signed a new huge pact for military aid. Israel will receive $38 billion in the next 10 years. According to CNN, this is the largest pledge of military assistance in U.S. history. Some important conditions are changed from the last deals: the Israeli government will have to buy the new armaments — for the Air Force in particular — only from American companies. The last pact allowed the Jewish state to spend 26 percent of the American financing for weaponry made in Israel.

Putin wins majority in Russian elections

According to CNN, Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia, has won the majority in the Russian parliamentary elections. The last exit polls reported the Russian premier’s victory with 343 of the 450 seats available (54.28 percent), followed by the Communist Party with 42 seats (13.54 percent), the Liberal Democratic Party with 39 and the Fair Russia Party with 23. United Russia has improved its result since 2011 (49 percent, 238 seats). This is probably due to Putin’s charismatic leadership of the country since 1999.