The Week USA - August 24, 2019

8 NEWS The world at a glance ...

Silva: In costume

Moscow

Taking protesters’ baby: Russian authorities are seeking to strip

a mother and father of their parental rights because the couple

took their 1-year-old son to an unauthorized anti-Kremlin protest

in Moscow last month. Prosecutors say the couple endangered

the baby’s “health and life” by letting another person hold him at

the rally. The couple, Dmitry and Olga Prokazov, said they hadn’t

even been protesting but had simply stumbled across the demon-

stration, and that the man who held their child was Olga’s cousin.

By threatening parents, the Kremlin may hope to dissuade people

from demonstrating against the rigging of September’s Moscow

City Council election, from which all opposition candidates have

been barred. Prosecutors said they are also investigating other

adults with small children who attended recent protests.

Rio de Janeiro

Gang leader’s disguise: A Brazilian

gang leader who tried to escape

from prison by impersonating his

19-year-old daughter has been found dead by

suspected suicide in his cell. Clauvino da Silva,

42, staged the attempted jailbreak during a

visit by his daughter; as she sat in his cell, he

walked out wearing a pink T-shirt, black wig,

and elaborate latex mask. But guards saw through the disguise,

and Silva—who was serving a 73-year sentence—was made to

strip down in front of cameras before being placed in solitary

confinement. Authorities said he hanged himself with bedsheets

soon after. His daughter, Ana Gabriele, and eight other visitors are

being questioned for their part in the botched escape. Among the

suspected accomplices: a pregnant woman who authorities think

may have smuggled the mask into the prison under her belly.

Brasília

Amazon cover-up: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has fired

the head of a government agency that reported a huge increase

in deforestation in the Amazon rain forest. Satellite data from

Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) found that

some 1,814 square miles of rain forest were destroyed in the first

seven months of the year, nearly 40 percent more than during the

same period in 2018. Bolsonaro,

who took office in January pledg-

ing to open the Amazon to indus-

try, claimed in a press conference

that the agency had used false

figures with the aim of “harming

the name of Brazil and its govern-

ment.” Ricardo Magnus Osório

Galvão, the respected physicist

who led the INPE, was ousted the

next day.

Caracas

Total U.S. embargo: The Trump administration imposed

sweeping new sanctions on Venezuela this week, mea-

sures that the leftist regime of President Nicolás Maduro

denounced as “arbitrary economic terrorism against the

Venezuelan people.” The order signed by President Trump

freezes the Venezuelan government’s property and assets

in the U.S. and bars transactions with the authoritarian

regime. The new sanctions apply to all individuals, com-

panies, and countries that do business with Venezuela—

including Russia and China. America will use “every tool to end

the Maduro dictatorship in Venezuela,” said national security

adviser John Bolton. Only North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Cuba

have been sanctioned so extensively by the U.S.

Frankfurt, Germany

Migrant murder: An Eritrean-born man is being investi-

gated for murder after he allegedly pushed a German child and

his mother in front of a train at Frankfurt’s main station. The

mother rolled to safety, but the 8-year-old boy was killed instantly.

The suspect, 40-year-old Habte Araya, settled in neighboring

Switzerland in 2006. Authorities there said he was a model immi-

grant until a few months ago, when he began hearing voices and

acting violent. The far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD)

said the attack showed the need for tougher immigration policies.

“There are no border controls,” said AfD co-leader Alice Weidel.

Days later, some 50 members of the extremist group Brotherhood

Germany tried to protest the murder by storming a Düsseldorf

swimming pool used by migrants, but were blocked by police.

London

Horror at the Tate: A British teenager was

arrested this week for allegedly hurling a

French child off the 10th-floor viewing

platform at London’s Tate Modern art

gallery. The 6-year-old victim fell 100 feet

to the gallery’s fifth-floor roof and is in

critical condition with injuries to his

brain and fractures to his arms, legs,

and spine. Witnesses heard the boy’s

mother crying “My son, oh my son”

after the attack. The alleged 17-year-old perpetrator—who hasn’t

been named—had been following families around the viewing

platform and “acting weirdly” before the incident, said gallerygoer

Nancy Barnfield. Bystanders held down the suspect until police

arrived. The attack is similar to one in April, when a man threw a

child off a third-floor balcony in Minnesota’s Mall of America.

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Denouncing the sanctions

Site of the attack

Cutting down the rain forest