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A judge in Peru opened proceedings on Monday against disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori and other officials accused of the "forced sterilizations" of thousands of poor, mostly indigenous, women.
An estimated 270,000 Peruvians were subjected to surgery to have their fallopian tubes tied as part of a family planning program instigated during Fujimori's final four years in power.
<p>Fujimori and his fellow defendants, including three ex-health ministers, "did a lot of harm with their policies," said public prosecutor Pablo Espinoza as he read out the charges against the 82-year-old former president.</p><p>Espinoza said the accused "played with the lives and reproductive health of people, without caring about the damage" it would do to them.</p><p>Fujimori, who is currently serving a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity during his 1990-2000 presidency, did not take part in the virtual hearing.</p><p>He and his five fellow defendants are accused of being "indirect perpetrators of damage to life and health, serious injuries and serious human rights abuses" against women who were surgically sterilized between 1996 and 2000.</p><p>Most of the victims were indigenous people including a woman who was 19 when in 1997 she took her baby to a clinic to be vaccinated, only to be tied up by soldiers.</p><p>Another woman died in March 1998 after she was subjected to the procedure.</p><p>If the defendants are found guilty, the state could be liable for damages as Peru has recognized the right of victims of forced sterilization to receive reparations from the government.</p><p>© 2021 AFP</p>
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A painting of Marrakesh by Britain's famed wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, owned by Hollywood star Angelina Jolie, smashed expectations to sell for £7 million ($9.75 million) at auction in London on Monday.
Churchill, a keen artist, took inspiration from the Moroccan city and painted "The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque" oil work during a World War II visit in 1943.
<p>He gave the finished article to fellow wartime leader, US president Franklin Roosevelt.</p><p>Auction house Christie's called it "Churchill's most important work".</p><p>"Aside from its distinguished provenance, it is the only landscape he made" during the war, it added.</p><p>The work eventually found its way into the hands of actress Angelina Jolie, who recently put it up for sale.</p><p>After frenzied bidding, much of it carried out over the phone, the gavel eventually came down at £7 million, smashing the pre-sale expectations of £1.5 to £2.5 million.</p><p>Two more of his paintings also went under the hammer, with the three works together fetching £9.43 million.</p><p>A career army officer before entering politics, Churchill started to paint relatively late, at the age of 40.</p><p>His passion for the translucent light of Marrakesh, far from the political storms and drab skies of London, dates back to the 1930s when most of Morocco was a French protectorate.</p><p>He went on to make six visits to the North African country over the course of 23 years.</p><p>"Here in these spacious palm groves rising from the desert the traveller can be sure of perennial sunshine... and can contemplate with ceaseless satisfaction the stately and snow-clad panorama of the Atlas Mountains," he wrote in 1936 in Britain's Daily Mail newspaper.</p><p>- Birthday gift -</p><p>He would set up his easel on the balconies of the grandiose La Mamounia hotel or the city's Villa Taylor, beloved by the European jet set of the 1970s.</p><p>It was from the villa, after a historic January 1943 conference in Casablanca with Roosevelt and France's Charles de Gaulle, that he painted what came to be regarded as his finest work, of the minaret behind the ramparts of the Old City, with mountains behind and tiny colourful figures in front.</p><p>"You cannot come all this way to North Africa without seeing Marrakesh," he is reputed to have told Roosevelt. "I must be with you when you see the sun set on the Atlas Mountains."</p><p>A newspaper photograph taken at the time shows the two wartime Allied leaders admiring the sunset.</p><p>After the US delegation had left, Churchill stayed on an extra day and painted the view of the Koutoubia Mosque framed by the mountains.</p><p>He sent it to Roosevelt for his birthday.</p><p>"This is Churchill's diplomacy at its most personal and intense," said Christie's head of modern British and Irish art, Nick Orchard.</p><p>"It is not an ordinary gift between leaders. This is soft power, and it is what the special relationship is all about."</p><p>A second Churchill landscape, "Scene in Marrakesh", painted on his first visit to Morocco in 1935, earlier sold for £1.5 million.</p><p>That was painted while on a stay at Mamounia, where he marvelled at the "truly remarkable panorama over the tops of orange trees and olives", in a letter to his wife Clementine.</p><p>Churchill's painting of London's St Paul's Cathedral also sold, fetching £880,000.</p><p>© 2021 AFP</p>
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Trump will keep people guessing about 2024 while he rides the grift train all the way to the bank: op-ed
March 01, 2021
Writing for Vanity Fair this Monday, Bess Levin says that if Donald Trump had any shame, the last time we'd have to hear from him would have been the day he left the White House. "But Trump, of course, has no shame. Or integrity. Or morals. Or decency. Or respect," she writes.
At CPAC this weekend, Trump hinted that the next four years will look like, which will likely one long revenge campaign against whose he deems as disloyal, siccing his "fascist mob of followers" on people who spoke out against him like he sicced them on Mike Pence.
<p>"Building on the Big Lie that he won the November election, which a terrifying three-quarters of Republicans <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-joe-biden-won-election-legitimately-poll-1562343" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">believe</a>, Trump said he 'may even decide to beat [Democrats] for a third time,' adding, 'With your help, we will take back the House. We will win the Senate. And then a Republican president will make a triumphant return to the White House. And I wonder who that will be,'" Levin writes. "Not surprisingly, Trump's eldest son, who apparently only receives a biannual hug from his father, loved the line about winning for 'a third time.'"</p><p>Trump's history of keeping people guessing when it comes to a presidential run likely means he'll wait until the last minute until he announces anything related to 2024. "For now, though, he's clearly happy to ride the grift train all the way to the bank."</p><p>Read the full op-ed over at <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/03/donald-trump-cpac-speech?utm_brand=vf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&mbid=social_twitter" target="_blank">Vanity Fair</a>. </p>
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