Bits and Bites from Around the World > An Extraordinary Biblical Anecdote

 

Humpback whale gobbles up kayaker before spitting him back out

By Michelle Butterfield  Global News

Posted February 14, 2025 5:44 am

 Updated February 14, 2025 1:36 pm

 1 min read

In an astonishing moment caught on camera, a humpback whale briefly scooped up a kayaker in its mouth before quickly spitting the man back out.

Adrián Simancas was kayaking with his father, Dell Simancas, last Saturday in Chilean Patagonia when the whale surfaced, trapping the young man and his watercraft in its mouth for a few seconds before releasing him.

“I thought I was dead,” Adrián told the Associated Press, saying he initially thought he was being attacked by an orca. “I thought it had eaten me, that it had swallowed me.”

His father, who captured the whole incident on camera, can be heard coaching his 24-year-old son after the massive animal released him.

“Stay calm, stay calm,” his father said from behind the lens.

The harrowing encounter happened in Bahía El Águila, near the San Isidro Lighthouse in the Strait of Magellan.

And while Adrián said he felt “terror” for the first few seconds while he was in the whale’s mouth, the true fear set in after he was released. He told AP he was worried he might die in the icy waters or that the animal would turn on his father next.

“When I came up and started floating, I was scared that something might happen to my father, too, that we wouldn’t reach the shore in time, or that I would get hypothermia,” he said.

He was able to quickly make it over to his dad’s kayak and climb aboard before the two paddled back to shore, shaken but uninjured.

While whale attacks on humans are extremely rare in Chilean waters, whale deaths from collisions with cargo ships have increased in recent years, and strandings have become a recurring issue in the last decade.

Military Intervention in Venezuela ‘On the Table,’ Says OAS Secretary General

Is it time to overthrow another elected government in the name of democracy?

Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General Luis Almagro waves to people during his visit to the Colombia-Venezuela border at the Simon Bolivar international bridge in Cucuta, Colombia, September 14, 2018. © Carlos Eduardo Ramirez / Reuters

The head of the Organization of American States (OAS), accused by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of being a “CIA agent,” says military intervention against Caracas should not be ruled out as a response to the ongoing crisis.

OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro has hinted that the bloc may consider taking military action in Venezuela if it runs out of diplomatic options in its bid to alleviate the plight of people in the crisis-stricken country.

“With regards to a military intervention aimed at overthrowing the regime of Nicolas Maduro, I think we should not exclude any option,” Almagro said on Friday.

Venezuelans have been fleeing to neighboring countries in droves due to shortages of food and water, as well as soaring inflation and unemployment at home.

Almagro was wrapping up his three-day trip to Colombia, which has been heavily impacted by the inward movement of refugees from Venezuela. Some 3,000 Venezuelans are estimated to be crossing into the country every day. Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Chile have also been sharing the refugee burden, with Brazil deploying troops to the border to restore order in the borderline state of Roraima after fierce clashes erupted between locals and migrants.

Almagro has frequently traded verbal blows with Maduro. Speaking in the Colombian border city of Cucuta on Friday, the OAS chief called the Venezuelan leader a “dictator” and Cucuta “the city that best exemplifies the lies of Venezuela’s dictatorship.”

The comments come shortly after an explosive report in the New York Times, which claimed that the administration of US President Donald Trump has long conspired with a group of Venezuelan officers to depose Maduro. The clandestine negotiations, which involved US officials engaging with a military commander on their own sanctions list, reportedly kicked off in autumn 2017 and continued throughout last year.

According to the NYT, US officials eventually decided not to endorse the plotters, who had asked their US handlers to provide them with material supplies, including encrypted radios.

When confronted with the report, the White House did not outright deny that it had been engaged in secret talks with mutinous officers. “The United States government hears daily from the concerns of Venezuelans from all walks of life – be they members of the ruling party, the security services, elements of civil society or from among the millions of citizens forced by the regime to flee abroad,” the White House National Security Council (NSC) said in a statement.

Almagro and Maduro have been embroiled in a long-running war of words, exchanging insults and calling each other “traitors.” Back in 2016, Maduro accused Almagro of being a “CIA agent” and of turning the OAS into a US pawn. The OAS chief then fired back, denying that he was with the CIA and accusing Maduro of slander. “And your lie, even if it repeated a thousand times, will never be true,” he wrote at the time.

The US has been pushing for the suspension of Venezuela from the OAS, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging members to kickstart the procedure so it “would send a powerful signal to the [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro regime.”

At the organization’s 48th assembly in June, Washington failed to secure enough votes needed for the proposed suspension, which was celebrated as a victory by Caracas.

Venezuela, however, wants to leave the bloc on its own terms. Back in 2017, it formally started a withdrawal procedure and will cease to be a member by 2019.

Does that mean that the OAS will have to invade Venezuela before they cease membership in the organization? Or do they think they will have the right to afterward?

U.S., Russia - Long History of Election Interference

The U.S. is no stranger to interfering

in the elections of other countries

One professor's database cites 81 attempts by the United States to influence elections in other countries, notably in Italy, Iran, Guatemala and Chile.  

Nina Agrawal. L.A.Times

White House counter-terrorism and Homeland Security advisor Lisa Monaco speaks to reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. (Michael Bonfigli / Christian Science Monitor)

The CIA has accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by hacking into Democratic and Republican computer networks and selectively releasing  emails. But critics might point out the U.S. has done similar things. 

The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University.

That number doesn’t include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn’t like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. Nor does it include general assistance with the electoral process, such as election monitoring.

Levin defines intervention as “a costly act which is designed to determine the election results [in favor of] one of the two sides.” These acts, carried out in secret two-thirds of the time, include funding the election campaigns of specific parties, disseminating misinformation or propaganda, training locals of only one side in various campaigning or get-out-the-vote techniques, helping one side design their campaign materials, making public pronouncements or threats in favor of or against a candidate, and providing or withdrawing foreign aid.

In 59% of these cases, the side that received assistance came to power, although Levin estimates the average effect of “partisan electoral interventions” to be only about a 3% increase in vote share.

The U.S. hasn’t been the only one trying to interfere in other countries’ elections, according to Levin’s data. Russia attempted to sway 36 foreign elections from the end of World War II to the turn of the century – meaning that, in total, at least one of the two great powers of the 20th century intervened in about 1 of every 9 competitive, national-level executive elections in that time period.

Italy’s 1948 general election is an early example of a race where U.S. actions probably influenced the outcome. 

“We threw everything, including the kitchen sink” at helping the Christian Democrats beat the Communists in Italy, said Levin, including covertly delivering “bags of money”  to cover campaign expenses, sending experts to help run the campaign, subsidizing “pork” projects like land reclamation, and threatening publicly to end U.S. aid to Italy if the Communists were elected.

Levin said that U.S. intervention probably played an important role in preventing a Communist Party victory, not just in 1948, but in seven subsequent Italian elections.

Throughout the Cold War, U.S. involvement in foreign elections was mainly motivated by the goal of containing communism, said Thomas Carothers, a foreign policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The U.S. didn’t want to see left-wing governments elected, and so it did engage fairly often in trying to influence elections in other countries,” Carothers said.

This approach carried over into the immediate post-Soviet period. 

In the 1990 Nicaragua elections, the CIA leaked damaging information on alleged corruption by the Marxist Sandinistas to German newspapers, according to Levin. The opposition used those reports against the Sandinista candidate, Daniel Ortega. He lost to opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro.

In Czechoslovakia that same year, the U.S. provided training and campaign funding to Vaclav Havel’s party and its Slovak affiliate as they planned for the country’s first democratic election after its transition away from communism. 

“The thinking was that we wanted to make sure communism was dead and buried,” said Levin.

Even after that, the U.S. continued trying to influence elections in its favor.

In Haiti after the 1986 overthrow of dictator and U.S. ally Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the CIA sought to support particular candidates and undermine Jean-Bertrande Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest and proponent of liberation theology. The New York Times reported in the 1990s that the CIA had on its payroll members of the military junta that would ultimately unseat Aristide after he was democratically elected in a landslide over Marc Bazin, a former World Bank official and finance minister favored by the U.S.

Liberation theology - a movement in Christian theology, developed mainly by Latin American Roman Catholics, that emphasizes liberation from social, political, and economic oppression as an anticipation of ultimate salvation. Many a priest and Bishop was murdered for practicing such, like the Bishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero. Some estimate the number of priests and Bishops murdered for their theology to be in the hundreds. The U.S. was greatly opposed to liberation theology which it saw as Marxist and utterly unacceptable in the Americas, according to Noam Chomsky.

The U.S. also attempted to sway Russian elections. In 1996, with the presidency of Boris Yeltsin and the Russian economy flailing, President Clinton endorsed a $10.2-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund linked to privatization, trade liberalization and other measures that would move Russia toward a capitalist economy. Yeltsin used the loan to bolster his popular support, telling voters that only he had the reformist credentials to secure such loans, according to media reports at the time. He used the money, in part, for social spending before the election, including payment of back wages and pensions. And probably to buy a few dozen cases of vodka.

In the Middle East, the U.S. has aimed to bolster candidates who could further the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In 1996, seeking to fulfill the legacy of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the peace accords the U.S. brokered, Clinton openly supported Shimon Peres, convening a peace summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik to boost his popular support and inviting him to a meeting at the White House a month before the election.

“We were persuaded that if [Likud candidate Benjamin] Netanyahu were elected, the peace process would be closed for the season,” said Aaron David Miller, who worked at the State Department at the time.

In 1999, in a more subtle effort to sway the election, top Clinton strategists, including James Carville, were sent to advise Labor candidate Ehud Barak in the election against Netanyahu.

In Yugoslavia, the U.S. and NATO had long sought to cut off Serbian nationalist and Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic from the international system through economic sanctions and military action. In 2000, the U.S. spent millions of dollars in aid for political parties, campaign costs and independent media. Funding and broadcast equipment provided to the media arms of the opposition were a decisive factor in electing opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica as Yugoslav president, according to Levin. “If it wouldn’t have been for overt intervention … Milosevic would have been very likely to have won another term,” he said.

South American Socialist Hold-Outs Chile and Venezuela in Big Trouble, Especially Venezuela

Venezuela opposition accuse Maduro of 'coup'

after referendum quashed

© JUAN BARRETO, AFP | Supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro force their way to the National Assembly during an extraoridinary session called by opposition leaders, in Caracas on October 23, 2016

by NEWS WIRES

Venezuela is bracing for turbulence after the socialist government blocked a presidential recall referendum in a move opposition leaders are calling a coup.

The opposition is urging supporters to take to the streets, beginning with a march on a major highway Saturday led by the wives of jailed activists, while a leading government figure is calling for the arrest of high-profile government critics.

Polls suggest socialist President Nicolas Maduro would lose a recall vote. But that became a moot issue on Thursday when elections officials issued an order suspending a recall signature drive a week before it was to start.

"What we saw yesterday was a coup," said former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, who had been the leading champion of the recall effort. "We'll remain peaceful, but we will not be taken for fools. We must defend our country."

He had to say that they will remain peaceful or he would most likely have been arrested for treason and we would never hear from him again.

International condemnation was swift. Twelve western hemisphere nations, including the U.S. and even leftist-run governments such as Chile and Uruguay, said in a statement Friday that the suspension of the referendum and travel restrictions on the opposition leadership affects the prospect for dialogue and finding a peaceful solution to the nation's crisis.

In another sign of growing regional tensions, Colombia's flagship airline briefly grounded all flights to Caracas after a Venezuelan air force jet came close to an Avianca Boeing 787 with about 200 people aboard.

The commercial jet landed safely at its intended destination of Bogota 90 minutes later. The airline said Saturday that flights would be resumed Sunday following clarification from the two governments.

The socialists won power nearly two decades ago with the election of the popular former President Hugo Chavez, and for years enjoyed easy election victories. But with the economy in free fall, polls show most Venezuelans have turned against the party, and over the years, the administration has gradually become increasingly autocratic.

Critical television stations have been closed and several leading opposition activists have been imprisoned. The country's supreme court, packed with government supporters, has endorsed decree powers for Maduro and said he can ignore Congress following a landslide victory for the opposition in legislative elections.

The election commission, which has issued a string of pro-government rulings, halted the recall process on grounds of alleged irregularities in a first-round of signature gathering.

Polls suggest 80 percent of voters wanted Maduro gone this year, and the electoral council on Tuesday also ordered a delay of about six months in gubernatorial elections that were slated for year-end which the opposition was heavily favored to win. It gave no reason for the delay.

The opposition charges that the socialist party has simply decided to put off elections indefinitely in the face of overwhelming voter discontent.

The opposition coalition has called for a massive street protest Wednesday, on what would have been the start of the signature-gathering campaign.

Maduro was traveling outside the country, but in a televised address Friday he urged calm at home.

"I call on everyone to remain peaceful, to engage in dialogue, respect law and order and not to do anything crazy," he said.

Meanwhile, one of his most powerful allies, Diosdado Cabello, said top opposition leaders should be jailed for attempting election fraud. And opposition leaders said a local court blocked eight of their leaders from leaving the country.

Amid the rising tensions, former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero, who for months has been attempting to mediate dialogue between the two sides, is in Caracas and expected to meet Saturday with representatives of the opposition and the government.

The opposition had centered its energy on rallying Venezuelans to sign petitions next week demanding a referendum on Maduro's removal. That would require collecting and validating 4 million signatures from 20 percent of the electorate within three days in each of the country's 24 states.

But the campaign had already become mostly symbolic because the election board ruled in September that no vote would take place this year.

That timing is crucial. A successful vote to oust Maduro this year would have triggered a presidential election and given the opposition a good shot at winning power. If Maduro is voted out in 2017, though, his vice president will finish the presidential term, leaving the socialists in charge.

The electoral council said Thursday the decision was based on rulings by courts in four states that found there was fraud in the initial stage of the petition drive, when the opposition collected signatures from 1 percent of electorate.

The council itself had validated those signatures in August and allowed the process to move forward. It gave no indication if or when the process would resume.

The move sparked a new round of international condemnation of the socialist government.

Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called Friday for increased sanctions on Venezuela, the head of the Organization of American States promised concrete consequences for violating democratic norms, and U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the elections board was being used to block voters' "right to determine the direction of their country."

(AP)

Chile's embattled Bachelet put to test in local polls

     
 
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet takes part in celebrations for the 206th anniversary of the country's independence, in Santiago on September 19, 2016  © AFP/File / by Paulina Abramovich 

SANTIAGO (AFP) - 

Chile's opposition is leading with a razor-thin margin in local elections that could deal a disappointment to embattled President Michelle Bachelet by returning conservatives to power.

Seen as a litmus test for her ruling center-left coalition one year before her term ends, with 95.79 percent of the vote counted, a conservative coalition Chile Vamos (Let's go Chile) was leading with 38.53 percent against 37.07 percent for the ruling New Majority coalition.

Opinion polls had given Bachelet's center-left coalition a razor-thin lead before polls opened.

"We've got to do things better. That's what the people are asking for," Bachelet said on Sunday after learning the results.

The local polls are the last vote before general elections in 2017 that will decide the Socialist leader's successor, at a time when the left in Chile -- as in much of Latin America -- is struggling.

In the elections, which serve as the unofficial opening of the 2017 campaign season, some 14 million voters are choosing 346 mayors, plus city councils.

The vote came as Bachelet, Chile's first woman president, has been sideswiped by a corruption scandal involving her son and is struggling to deliver on the reform agenda that got her elected by a landslide in 2013.

After testing political waters in the local polls, the country's parties will nominate presidential candidates and launch their campaigns.

The 65-year-old Bachelet -- serving for a second time as the South American country's president -- urged people to participate in the election, amid fears Sunday's polls would be marred by low turnout.

- Looking ahead to 2017 -

Bachelet is one of the last remaining leaders from a "pink tide" of left-wing governments that swept Latin America in the last decade.

She served a first term from 2006 to 2010, and -- constitutionally barred from immediate re-election -- returned in 2014.

But her popularity has plunged since accusations emerged last year that her son and his wife used political influence and inside information to make $5 million on a shady real estate deal.

A separate campaign-finance scandal involving some of the country's biggest firms and political parties has also been damaging.

Bachelet herself has not been implicated in either scandal, although they have hurt her image as a squeaky clean reformer.

Elected with 66 percent of the vote, her popularity now stands at just 23 percent.

The top name on the left currently being floated for a presidential run is Isabel Allende -- not to be confused with her distant relative of the same name who is a best-selling novelist.

She is a senator and the daughter of former president Salvador Allende, who was overthrown by late dictator Augusto Pinochet in a 1973 coup.

Journalist and independent Senator Alejandro Guillier also scores well in opinion polls, while former president Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) has thrown his hat in the ring, too.

On the right, former president Sebastian Pinera (2010-2014) is tipped as the likely nominee, but has yet to declare his candidacy.

The local polls come amid an economic slowdown in Chile, hit hard -- like much of the region -- by the plunge in global commodity prices.

Chile, the world's top copper producer, will see economic growth of just 1.75 percent this year, before a pickup of 2.25 percent in 2017, the government forecasts.

by Paulina Abramovich

War on Fat: Chile Bans McDonald's 'Happy Meals' and Kinder Eggs

Is there any chance this attitude could catch-on in North America?

Are there snowballs in Hell?

Chile is the most obese nation in South America, with nearly 10 percent of children under 5 overweight. | Photo: Reuters

“The 'meal' as it is today is not 'happy,' from the point of view of critical nutritionists,” said Chile's Health Ministry.

Chile's government is banning the famous Kinder Surprise Egg and the McDonald's Happy Meal, among other food products, as part of an effort to combat obesity, it was announced Wednesday.

The move is meant to set an example for the world, said Senator Guido Girardi, a medical doctor who introduced the authorizing legislation in Congress in order to launch “a crusade against deceiving propaganda mainly directed toward children.”

Kinder Surprise Eggs and Happy Meals have a “commercial hook” for kids and contain “high levels of salt, sugar and saturated fat,” Tito Pozarro of the Chilean Health Ministry told ADN radio.

“The 'meal' as it is today is not 'happy,' from the point of view of critical nutritionists,” he added. "If McDonald’s wishes to promote a healthier product, then it could be allowed to do so."

President Michelle Bachelet, a pediatrician herself, has vowed to tackle the issue of obesity in Chile. The country ranks first in South America in terms of obesity, according to a 2015 report by the World Health Organization, with over 32 percent of women and 23 percent of men affected.

In terms of childhood obesity, Chile has the second worst record in the region, with almost 10 percent of children under 5 considered overweight, according to a government estimate, and 30 percent of children under 7, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Obesity is a condition where a person has accumulated so much body fat that it might have a negative effect on their health. If a person's bodyweight is at least 20% higher than it should be, he or she is considered obese. 

Chilean Vigilantes Have Sense of Humor

Mob justice ruled Santiago, Chile Wednesday as a thief was seized, stripped and trussed up by residents of the capital.

The young male was in the process of robbing an elderly man at knifepoint when nearby Santiagueños intervened and took a peculiar form of revenge.

In scenes recalling the public stocks of old, social media was abuzz with pictures of the unfortunate robber, branded “flaite” (“white trash”) by Twitter users. Stripped near-naked, he was tied to a lamppost and exposed to the mockery of passersby.

“This ‘flaite’ assaulted and put a knife to an old man’s neck. He struggled, but a group of men grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground,” one witness told press.

“They took the knife off him, slashed his clothes and tied him to a pole with plastic,” she added.

A crowd soon assembled and tweeted triumphant photos and jibes, with the Carabineros — Chile’s uniformed police — taking over 20 minutes to arrive on the scene.

“I feel proud of people today,” tweeted one witness. “The ‘flaite’ of Banderas and Agustinas was pretty well-bruised.”

Just in time for the US holiday of Thanksgiving, social media users were also treated to pictures of the would-be thief’s plastic-wrapped rear end, oddly reminiscent of a prize turkey.

Citizens may have good reason to deal out rough justice by themselves. Although levels of public confidence in the Carabineros, at 56 percent, far outstrip their trust in Chile’s political class, recent police figures reveal that some 93 percent of robberies in the first half of 2014 — some 166,000 cases in total — went without any resulting arrests.

Startling Revelation! Abortion-Illegal Chile has Lower Maternal Mortality Risk than U.S.

“Outlaw abortion and abortion won’t stop. Women will just do it illegally and women will die!”

Or so the argument goes… But facts are pesky things, and they show that the opposite is true in Chile. 

According to new research from the MELISA Institute, since Chile’s ban on abortion, not only has maternal health improved but the number of women seeking illegal abortion has plummeted! 

Since Chile banned abortion in 1989, the number of maternal deaths decreased from 41.3 to 12.7 per 100,000 women (69.2% reduction). That puts Chile in second place for the lowest maternal mortality rate in the Americas (that’s right, even better than the United States).

Prof. Elard Koch, a molecular epidemiologist and lead author of the study, says educating women enhanced their ability to access existing health care resources, and since those resources included skilled attendants for childbirth, that directly led to a reduction of maternal deaths during pregnancy and childbirth.

As Dr. Koch explains, “it is a unique natural experiment conducted in a developing country.” During the fifty-year period under study, the overall maternal mortality rate dramatically declined by 93.8%, from 270.7 to 18.2 deaths per 100,000 live births, making Chile a leader in maternal healthcare outcomes in the Americas. 

But wait. If abortion is legally banned, wouldn’t we expect to see the number of women hospitalized due to illegal abortion procedures increase? Aren’t women just seeking abortions outside of proper healthcare facilities?

No. Not only is Chile one of the safest places in the world for women to give birth, but the number of women actually seeking abortion is also declining. According to data from the Chilean Ministry of Health, the country displays a continuous decreasing trend of hospital discharges due to complications of abortions suspected to be illegally induced at a rate of 2% per year since 2001. In contrast, a decreasing trend was not observed in hospital discharges due to miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, which have remained constant during the same period.

Dr. Koch’s research also found that a large sample of abortion-minded women in Chile displayed a vulnerability profile marked by coercion and fear, which accounted for nearly 70% of the reasons women considered abortion. Moreover, the research indicated that support programs directed to vulnerable women can prevent most illegal abortions, with an outcome of live birth (with or without adoption) ranging between 69% and 94% depending on the risk group.

It’s not sheer coincidence that Malta, The Republic of Ireland, and Chile, all of which have prohibited abortion, have lower maternal mortality rates than the United States. In Africa, where 56% of all maternal mortalities occur, abortion-related maternal mortality is less than half what it is in developed countries. Yet there are more restrictions on abortion in Africa than in developed countries!

So what’s the deal? In countries with higher abortion restrictions, fewer women have to seek treatment for “unsafe abortion” than in countries where abortion is “safe and legal.” So, he said, thinking out loud, that means that 'safe' abortions are not as safe as they claim to be, and that far fewer women consider abortions, or are coerced into having an abortion, where it is illegal, than in developed countries where it is legal.

There are many variables in this equation before it can be applied to developed countries, but the principal is quite thought-provoking. One wonders if women are more careful in protecting themselves from pregnancy, or even less promiscuous in countries like Chile and Ireland, when abortion is not available as a means of contraception.

The result’s of Chile’s natural experiment is bad news for the pro-abortion lobby. But it’s great news for mothers and the unborn!

Unicef's Report on the World's Children 2014, stated that 'The lifetime risk of maternal death in industrialized countries is 1 in 4,000, versus 1 in 51 in countries classified as ‘least developed’. - See more at: Unicef

However, the maternal mortality risk in Chile is 1 in 2400, USA is 1 in 1800. Would you rather go to a hospital in Chile or the US?

After 38 Years, Justice Finally for Murdered Bishop

Two former senior military officers in Argentina have been convicted in connection with the murder of Bishop Enrique Angelelli in 1976.

Former army General Luciano Benjamin Menendez and former Vice-Commodore Luis Fernando Estrella were sentenced to life in prison.

General Luciano Benjamin Menendez Ret.

Bishop Angelelli died in a car crash in the northern city of La Rioja shortly after the military seized power.

Officials insisted that his death was no more than a traffic accident.

But the case was reopened when a priest who had been travelling with the bishop said their car had been forced off the road.

Bishop Angelelli was a prominent left-leaning member of the clergy.

His car overturned just outside La Rioja in August 1976, a few months after the military began their campaign against suspected leftists.

The military authorities said he had died of his injuries.

But the priest Arturo Pinto, who was driving with the bishop, said they had been forced off the road.

It has been reported that Pope Francis, himself a former Argentine bishop, sent two secret documents that helped the prosecution.

One of them was a letter written by Bishop Angelelli to the papal nuncio a month before his death in which he said he was under threat.

The second document was the bishop's investigation into the murder of two priests and his suspicion that they had been killed by the military.

Some 30,000 people were killed during military rule in Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

The history of Argentina is tumultuous and bloody, marked with many military coups. But the period from 1976-1983 was probably the most violent. The Catholic Church, or, at least, individual priests and bishops were sometimes involved in the politics of Argentina. 

Practicing something called 'liberation theology' they sided with the poor against repressive regimes until the Vatican discouraged it for it's Marxist concepts in the mid-1980s. This was most-likely behind the murders of the two priests that Angelelli had investigated.

Massive Festival in Santiago, Chile, to Push for Gay Rights in Elections

Tens of thousands of Chileans will gather outside the presidential palace on Saturday in support of same-sex marriage and transgender rights — social issues backed by seven out of the nine presidential candidates set to go head to head Nov. 17.

Great! Because the world needs more of these, whatever they are. Personally, I couldn't care less about same-sex marriage, as long as I don't have to perform the wedding service. But adoption rights - that's a form of sexual abuse in my world. God help us!

The Movement for Integration and Homosexual Freedom (MOVILH) — the event’s organizer — is the author of “Por un Chile Diverso,” a legislative platform for combatting sexual discrimination in Chile. With the exception of Regionalist Party of Independents (PRI) candidate Ricardo Israel and Evelyn Matthei — candidate for the right-leaning Alianza coalition — all presidential hopefuls have expressed support for the platform, which calls for same-sex marriage with adoption rights, the creation of a Diversity Ministry and a gender identity law which would allow individuals to change their name and sex without having to go through a judicial process.