Corruption is Everywhere > Santos kicked out of Congress! Paraguay Ag Minister fired for stupidity

 

U.S. House expels George Santos from Congress after damning ethics report

The U.S. House voted on Friday to expel Republican Rep. George Santos of New York after a blistering ethics report on his conduct heightened lawmakers’ concerns about the scandal-plagued freshman. Santos became just the sixth member in the chamber’s history to be ousted by colleagues, and the third since the Civil War.

The vote to expel was 311-114, easily clearing the two-thirds majority required. House Republican leaders opposed removing Santos, whose departure leaves them with a razor-thin majority, but in the end 105 GOP lawmakers sided with nearly all Democrats to expel him.

The expulsion marked the final congressional chapter in a spectacular fall from grace for Santos. Celebrated as an up-and-comer after he flipped a district from Democrats last year, Santos’ life story began to unravel before he was even sworn into office. Reports emerged that he had lied about having Jewish ancestry, a career at top Wall Street firms and a college degree, among other things.

Then, in May, Santos was indicted by federal prosecutors on multiple charges, turning his presence in the House into a growing distraction and embarrassment to the party.

Santos joins a short list of lawmakers expelled from the House, and for reasons uniquely his own. Of the previous expulsions in the House, three were for siding with the Confederacy during the Civil War. The remaining two occurred after the lawmakers were convicted of crimes in federal court, the most recent in 2002.

Seeking to remain in office, Santos had appealed to colleagues to let the court process play out. He warned of the precedent they would set by expelling a member not yet convicted of a crime.

“This will haunt them in the future,” Santos told lawmakers on Thursday evening as they debated his removal.

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George Santos: New effort to expel him from Congress after scathing report

As it became clear Friday that he would be expelled, Santos appeared resigned to his fate. He placed his overcoat over his shoulders and shook hands with conservative members who voted against his expulsion. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who voted against expelling Santos, was solemn as he announced the result of the vote and declared the New York seat vacant.

Outside the Capitol, trailed by a crush of reporters and cameras, he quickly ducked inside a vehicle and left.

Santos’ fellow Republicans from New York were front and center in the effort to boot him. Among them were fellow freshmen who serve in key swing districts and had helped the GOP take the House majority. They sought to generate as much political distance as they could from Santos, whose lies about his past made him a pariah in the House before he even took the oath of office.

Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, whose district is next to Santos’, led the debate for expulsion and argued that voters would welcome lawmakers holding themselves to a high standard. Another New York Republican, Rep. Nick Langworthy, said Santos had only himself to blame.

“Every precedent under the sun has been broken by George Santos,” Langworthy said. “Has there ever been anyone here that’s made up a whole life?”

Santos had survived two previous expulsion attempts, but a scathing House Ethics Committee report released the week before the Thanksgiving holiday appeared to turn colleagues decisively against him.

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George Santos opts out of re-election following scathing ethics report

After eight months of work, Ethics Committee investigators said they had found “overwhelming evidence” that Santos had broken the law and exploited his public position for his own profit.

“It’s a solemn day,” said the chairman of the ethics panel, Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss. “I mean no one wants to have to remove a member from Congress. But the allegations against him, the evidence was overwhelming.”

Rep. Susan Wild, the top Democrat on the Ethics Committee, reminded members that the decision approving the investigators’ findings was unanimous.

“Mr. Santos is not a victim,” Wild said. “He is a perpetrator of a massive fraud on his constituents and the American people.”

Paraguay official sacked after signing agreement

with fictitious country

A senior Paraguayan official was fired this week after signing a cooperation memorandum with a country he has since learned does not exist.

Arnaldo Chamorro told reporters Thursday he was dismissed from his job as chief of staff to the agriculture minister after signing the document with purported officials from the "United States of Kailasa" -- presented to him as a South American island.

"They (the 'officials') came and expressed a wish to help Paraguay. They presented several projects, we listened to them and that was that," he said, admitting to having been fooled.

He was dismissed on Wednesday.

Chamorro said the fake officials also met his minister Carlos Gimenez.

Their motive was not known.

The memorandum signed by the two parties had envisaged the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two "countries."

In the document, complete with the ministry's letterhead and official seal, Chamorro salutes "the honorable Nithyananda Paramashivam, sovereign of the United States of Kailasa" and praises his "contributions to Hinduism, humanity and the Republic of Paraguay."

The memorandum further recommends that the "government of Paraguay actively explore the establishment of diplomatic relations with the United States of Kailasa and supports its admission as a sovereign state to various international organizations, including the United Nations."

Paraguayan media reported that "Paramashivam" was in reality an Indian citizen wanted for crimes committed in his country.

The agriculture ministry in a statement lamented "procedural errors" committed and said the memorandum "cannot be considered official" nor confer any obligations on the state of Paraguay.

(AFP)

No maps for the United States of Kailasa

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Bits and Bites from Around the World > Vicious Piranha Attacks in Paraguay; Goldfish Learn to Drive; Google Street View Finds Mafia Fugitive

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This one certainly falls in the "bites" category:

Four people are found dead and covered in bites after

spate of terrifying PIRANHA attacks in Paraguay

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: Bodies of four people found mauled by piranhas

By STEWART CARR FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 13:25 EST, 6 January 2022

The bodies of four swimmers have been found mauled by piranhas in a spate of attacks that has sent shockwaves throughout South America.

The attacks happened in Paraguay, where people have visited local rivers in large numbers during the current heatwave in order to cool down.

The first death of the New Year happened on Sunday when a 22-year-old man was bathing in the Paraguay River. 

The alarm was raised when he suddenly vanished, and when his body was eventually found 45 minutes later, several parts had been torn off and eaten by the piranhas.

The second attack also happened on the Paraguay River when a 49-year-old man was found dead after being attacked by piranhas.

He had been reported missing hours earlier, and he was also found with severe bites to the face. In this case, however, it is believed the man died from a heart attack and only then was he attacked by the piranhas.

The Paraguay River is one of the biggest in the country, in the Ita Enramada neighbourhood, just south of the capital Asuncion.

Two other people were found dead with piranha bites on their bodies in the Tebicuary river on Sunday.

There have been further alleged attacks, which were not fatal but resulted in serious injuries, on the Parana River at the Bella Vista Fishing Club, which is in the department of Itapua. 

The attacks follow on from other incidents reported in Argentina recently, including a teenage girl who had a toe bitten off. 

 Local TV reports showed images of medics treating wounds sustained by the bathers to their hands and feet.

This victim was lucky not to lose a toe.

This individual had a chunk bitten out of one of their fingers by the piranhas during the attack

According to local media, such attacks occur during hot weather. They are more common during the summer when the fish reproduce and come close to the coast when water levels are low.

After the latest attacks that left 20 injured and at least two people dead, Argentinian biologist Julio Caply revealed that although there are eight species of piranhas in the country, the attacks are usually made by only two - serrasalmus marginatus and serrasalmus maculatus.

The biologist said that the killer fish are mainly present in the Parana and Paraguay rivers, saying that they tend to hide under floating plants before suddenly rushing out to attack victims.

Locals have now been warned to avoid bathing in the rivers during breeding season, in particular areas with floating plants - where piranhas may be guarding their eggs and offspring.  

In another incident, a man had his big toe bitten off again in a piranha attack on the Parana River, on this occasion as it followed its course through the small city of Coronda in the east-central Argentinian province of Santa Fe.

The man had the tip bitten off his big toe and his son had a chunk torn from the heel of his foot, both leaving gaping wounds. 

Goldfish learn how to drive 

Six fish were able to navigate a room in search of targets with ‘high level of success’

Israeli scientists have taught goldfish to operate a specially-designed vehicle. © Getty Images / David Aubrey

Israeli scientists have built a “Fish Operated Vehicle” (FOV) and claim to have trained six goldfish to move it around. They say the experiment demonstrates how navigational skills can translate between different environments.

The study, published this month in the Behavioural Brain Research journal, involved putting the fish into a water tank attached to a wheeled robot that was hooked up to a motion-tracking camera. A computer program developed to respond to its movement towards the tank’s walls then moved the FOV into the respective direction.

Researchers from Ben-Gurion University found that the goldfish managed to maneuver the vehicle around a three-by-four meter room in search of a marked destination in return for a food pellet reward. They gradually improved, “all while avoiding dead-ends and correcting location inaccuracies,” the team wrote.

The fish were able to complete the same task when starting the FOV from different points in the room, or when the target was moved, or even when decoys were set up. While the trials lasted 30 minutes each, some of the fish ended up finding their targets in under a minute as the experiment progressed.

The team recorded the number of times the fish got to their targets, how long it took them and the distance traveled. By the last session, the fish had “exhibited control of the FOV and a high level of success.”

The results suggest that “navigational ability is universal rather than specific to the environment,” the researchers said, adding that it supports the hypothesis that space representation and navigation skills “possess a universal quality” across species.

“The way space is represented in the fish brain and the strategies it uses may be as successful in a terrestrial environment as they are in an aquatic one,” the team noted, adding that goldfish may have the “cognitive ability to learn a complex task in an environment completely unlike the one they evolved in.”

The team posted videos of the experiment and shared instructions to build mobile fish tanks on GitHub. In 2014, a team of Dutch computer scientists designed a similar goldfish-at-the-wheel apparatus that was apparently intended to “liberate fish all over the world.”

Mafia boss caught after 20 years following Google Maps blunder

Italian police have credited the app with capturing a photo of a crime group leader

who’d been in hiding since 2002

Google Maps logo. © Nikolas Kokovlis / NurPhoto / Getty Images

Anti-Mafia authorities in Italy have credited a Google Street View picture for revealing the location of a member of Sicily’s Stidda Mafia group who escaped a Rome prison in 2002 partway through a life sentence for murder.

Gioacchino Gammino was convicted of murder and other Mafia-related crimes in 1998, and had been on Italy’s list of most wanted criminals. He escaped prison three years later, during the making of a film. He was detained in the town of Galapagar, near the Spanish capital of Madrid, where he had been living, working as a chef, and running a greengrocers’ shop, having assumed the name Manuel.

Police in Sicily had been searching for the 61-year-old for several years, and a European arrest warrant had been issued in 2014. However, it was a Google Street View image that ultimately allowed authorities to discover his specific location.

The tech company’s navigation tool caught an image of two men chatting outside El Huerto de Manu – Manu’s Garden, the shop ‘Manuel’ owned – and officers noted that one of the individuals looked a lot like Gammino. The Mafia boss was further identified by the scar on the left side of his chin that was evident in a photo on a local restaurant’s Facebook page.

Although Gammino was detained on December 17, his arrest was not made public until it was reported by Italy’s La Repubblica daily on Wednesday.

“There were many previous and long investigations which led us to Spain. We were on a good path, with Google Maps helping to confirm our investigations,” Palermo prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi told the Italian media.

According to local reports, following his arrest, the gangster – who apparently thought he’d successfully cut all ties with his past – asked the authorities, “How did you find me? I haven’t even called my family for 10 years!”

Gammino is currently in Spanish custody, with Italian police hoping to extradite him to face his sentence by the end of February.

Paraguay Arrests 18 Police over Brazilian Inmates' Escape

Also, 18-y/o girl smuggled into prison and murdered

Corruption is Everywhere - definitely in Paraguayan prisons

By Renzo Pipoli

Authorities said two Brazilian inmates escaped from a Paraguay prison on Sunday.

File Photo by f11photo/Shutterstock/UPI

(UPI) -- Paraguay officials detained 18 police guards and placed them under investigation after an escape Sunday of two Brazilian inmates from a high-security prison.

Paraguay's internal security vice minister said inmates Thiago Ximenes, identified as a criminal band leader, and Reinaldo Araujo, identified as a hitman, escaped without a shot being fired from the Agrupamiento Especializado prison in Asuncion.

"Evidently there was police complicity in the escape of two members of the Fist Commando Capital," Paraguayan President Mario Abdo said Monday, reported 45 Ultima Hora.

He said 18 police officers, including two higher ranking officials, are under investigation for potential complicity.

The first stage of the escape, that involved cutting iron bars, occurred in a prison section where the guard in charge had requested permission to leave for family reasons, but superiors did not replace him. Security cameras in other areas that could have foiled the escape were damaged.

The detentions occur within of a month of a deadly incident in the same jail that sparked replacements of Paraguay's top police officials. In November, a Brazilian leader of the Comando Vermelho bank, Marcelo Pinheiro, was able to get an 18-year old girl inside his cell.

The incident became known after the girl was killed. Authorities said Pinheiro may have killed her to avoid extradition to Brazil, possibly because he has privileges in Paraguay he wouldn't have in Brazil.

Instead of being retained in Paraguay for a murder trial, he was immediately expelled by the Paraguayan government, which had already prepared his extradition.

An investigation by Paraguayan newspaper ABC cited a police source that said Paraguay criminals can pay up to $1,600 to arrange for illegal visiting privileges in high-security prisons.

Jail guards are also involved in selling weapons to inmates, it added. Weapons are sold "in parts" and assembled inside jails, the report said. Police uniforms have also been sold to Brazilian criminals who planned to use them to escape, it added.

The border between Brazil and Paraguay is a point from which drugs and weapons are smuggled into Brazil. They end up in the poorest neighborhoods of Brazil's biggest cities, which are plagued by drug related violence, according to Brazilian authorities. Brazilian police have cracked down on such organizations in recent months.