International
Pablo Neruda’s nephew says lab report reveals poisoning
February 15 |
The nephew of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Rodolfo Reyes, said Monday that the forensic report on the cause of death of the Nobel Prize in Literature indicates that he would have been poisoned with a botulinum bacterium in September 1973, a few hours before a flight that would have taken him to exile in Mexico.
This conclusion would dismantle the official thesis that he died of metastatic prostate cancer.
The affirmation of Reyes, who besides being a nephew is a lawyer in the judicial case of Neruda’s death, is known a couple of days before a group of forensic experts from Canada, Chile and Denmark deliver a report that will establish if the poet was poisoned or if he died of cancer, which is the official explanation that was delivered in September 1973, 12 days after the military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende.
The results of the forensic expertise were to be released at the beginning of February, but the convocation was suspended due to connection problems of the specialists.
Reyes, interviewed by AP, said that the forensic report from laboratories in Canada and Denmark indicates the presence in Neruda’s remains of “a large amount of Clostridium botulinum, which is incompatible with human life”, a fact that the relative first confirmed to the Spanish news agency EFE.
The botulinum toxin is produced by a bacterium that can cause problems to the nervous system and even death.
According to Reyes, as a lawyer in the court case, he had access to the results of the tests of the laboratories in Canada and Denmark, which were made after the same forensic group indicated in 2017 that other experts had already pointed to the presence of the toxin in the bone remains and in a molar of the poet.
Reyes stated that the laboratory reports ratified that “there was no external contamination, that the Clostridium botulinum was endogenous”, that is, internal, and that it would have been given to the poet “while he was alive”.
He added that the only reports missing in the case investigated by Judge Paola Plaza are those elaborated by a couple of experts from each of the laboratories, which would be received tomorrow or the day after.
The first to affirm that the poet was poisoned was his driver, Manuel Araya, who has reiterated to AP that while Neruda was hospitalized in the private clinic, an alleged doctor gave him an injection in his stomach while he and the poet’s wife, Matilde Urrutia, were carrying out some of the poet’s errands in Isla Negra, 110 kilometers northwest of the Chilean capital. He said that the version was given to him by a nurse.
Urrutia and Araya hospitalized him while waiting for the plane to take him to his exile in Mexico. In a telephone conversation with AP, the Mexican ambassador at the time, Gonzalo Martínez Corbalá, said that on Saturday, September 22, he went to pick him up at the clinic to take him to the airport, but the poet postponed the trip to Monday and died on Sunday.
The conversation with Martínez was in 2017, shortly before his passing.
Neruda was a lifelong militant of the Communist Party, which after several years accepted the driver’s complaint and in 2011 filed a lawsuit to investigate what killed him.
The Nobel’s remains were exhumed in April 2013 and, seven months later, the same experts indicated that no “relevant chemical agents” were found that could be related to his death.
However, at that time the Chilean forensic institute lacked the latest technology to detect a poisoning that could have occurred 40 years earlier.
In 2017, they announced the presence of the toxin and requested genetic tests to “confirm or exclude the action of third parties in the poet’s death.”
International
Study finds COVID-19 vaccines prevented 2.5 million deaths worldwide
COVID-19 vaccines prevented an estimated 2,533,000 deaths worldwide between 2020 and 2024, according to an international study led by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy and Stanford University in the United States, published in the journal JAMA Health Forum. Researchers calculated that one death was prevented for every 5,400 doses administered.
The analysis also found that the vaccines saved 14.8 million years of life, equivalent to one year of life gained for every 900 doses given.
The study, coordinated by Professor Stefania Boccia, revealed that 82% of the lives saved were people vaccinated before becoming infected with the virus, and 57% of deaths avoided occurred during the Omicron wave. In addition, 90% of the beneficiaries were adults over 60 years old.
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International
Trump administration blasts judge’s ruling reinstating TPS for Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump criticized a federal judge’s ruling on Friday that reinstated Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua, stressing that the immigration program was never intended to serve as a “de facto asylum system.”
On Thursday, Judge Trina Thompson extended protections for about 7,000 Nepalese immigrants, whose TPS was set to expire on August 5. The ruling also impacts roughly 51,000 Hondurans and nearly 3,000 Nicaraguans, whose TPS protections were scheduled to end on September 8.
Immigrants covered by TPS had sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), alleging that the program’s termination was driven by “racial animus” and stripped them of protection from deportation.
DHS Deputy Undersecretary Tricia McLaughlin issued a statement saying the decision to end TPS was part of a mandate to “restore the integrity” of the immigration system and return the program to its original purpose.
“TPS was never conceived as a de facto asylum system; however, that is how previous administrations have used it for decades,” McLaughlin emphasized.
She also criticized Judge Thompson, calling the ruling “another example” of judges “stirring up claims of racism to distract from the facts.”
McLaughlin added that DHS would appeal the decision and take the legal battle to higher courts.
The Trump administration has also terminated TPS protections for approximately 160,000 Ukrainians, 350,000 Venezuelans, and at least half a million Haitians, among other immigrant groups.
International
Trump to build $200M ballroom at the White House by 2028
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The announcement was made by Karoline Leavitt, the administration’s press secretary, during a briefing in which she explained that the expansion responds to the need for a larger venue to host “major events.”
“Other presidents have long wished for a space capable of accommodating large gatherings within the White House complex… President Trump has committed to solving this issue,” Leavitt told reporters.
The project is estimated to cost $200 million, fully funded through donations from Trump himself and other “patriots,” according to a government statement. Construction is scheduled to begin in September and is expected to be completed before Trump’s term ends in 2028.
The Clark Construction Group, a Virginia-based company known for projects such as the Capital One Arena and L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C., has been selected to lead the project.
The new ballroom will be built on the East Wing of the White House, expanding the iconic residence with a space designed for state dinners, official ceremonies, and large-scale events.
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