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.

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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.

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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.

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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

Florida judge sets 2027 trial in Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against BBC

A federal judge in Florida has scheduled February 2027 for the trial in the lawsuit filed by U.S. President Donald Trump against the BBC, in which he is seeking $10 billion in damages for defamation.

Trump accuses the British broadcaster of airing a misleading edit of a speech he delivered on January 6, 2021, which, he says, made it appear that he explicitly urged his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

The president filed the suit in December in federal court in Florida, alleging defamation and violations of a law governing business practices when the program was broadcast ahead of the 2024 election.

Trump is seeking $5 billion in damages for each of the two claims.

Lawyers for the BBC unsuccessfully asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing that Trump had not suffered a “legally recognizable harm,” since the investigative program Panorama, which included the edited footage, aired outside the United States.

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International

Head-of-state diplomacy key to guiding China–U.S. ties, Beijing says

Head-of-state diplomacy plays an irreplaceable strategic guiding role in China–United States relations, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on Thursday during a regular press briefing, when asked about high-level exchanges between the two sides.

Lin added that in a recent phone call, U.S. President Donald Trump once again expressed his intention to visit China in April, while Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated his invitation.

Both sides remain in communication regarding the matter, the spokesperson said.

Lin noted that the essence of China–U.S. economic and trade ties lies in mutual benefit and win-win outcomes.

“Both parties should work together to implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, injecting greater certainty and stability into China–U.S. economic and trade cooperation, as well as into the global economy,” he said.

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International

Trump administration to end special immigration operation in Minnesota

The administration of Donald Trump is bringing to a close its special operation targeting illegal immigration in the northern state of Minnesota, border czar Tom Homan announced Thursday, following weeks of unrest and the fatal shootings of two activists by federal agents.

Thousands of federal officers had been deployed to Minnesota in December to carry out large-scale raids against undocumented immigrants.

The operations triggered strong reactions from residents and advocacy groups, leading to daily confrontations and the deaths of two people who were shot by federal agents.

“I proposed, and President Trump agreed, that this special operation should end in Minnesota,” Homan said during a press conference in the state capital, Minneapolis.

“A significant drawdown began this week and will continue into next week,” he added.

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Homan indicated that similar enforcement efforts could be launched in other cities.

“Next week we will redeploy the agents currently here back to their home stations or to other parts of the country where they are needed. But we will continue to enforce immigration laws,” he said.