Brazil’s president charged
BRASILIA, Brazil — Brazil’s Michel Temer was charged with corruption by the chief prosecutor Monday evening, in a highly anticipated development that may put the embattled president of Latin America’s largest economy on trial.
Rodrigo Janot has charged Mr. Temer with passive corruption and stated there are indications of other crimes that need to be investigated, according to documents filed at the Supreme Court. The charges need to be approved by twothirds of Brazil’s chamber of deputies to proceed. It is not yet clear how long that process will take.
The prosecutor’s charges are based partly on a secret recording of a conversation between Mr. Temer and Joesley Batista, the former CEO of the meat-packing giant JBS. The document sent to the Supreme Court states that Mr. Temer received $151,000 between April and March 2017 from Batista via an intermediary. Mr. Temer’s lawyer, Antonio Mariz, told Bloomberg that he had not yet had time to analyze the report. The presidential palace declined to comment. The president has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
Leader orders inquiry
ISLAMABAD— The death toll from a fireball that consumed an overturned fuel truck in eastern Pakistan has reached 157, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ordered a high-level inquiry Monday into what caused such a devastating loss of life.
The blaze in Punjab province, which also left at least 127 injured, has cast a pall of grief over Eid al-Fitr, the celebration that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and has raised stark questions about road safety and law enforcement.
Hundreds of people, including women and children, had ignored police warnings and swarmed around an overturned tanker early Sunday in the town of Ahmadpur East. They were using bottles, buckets and pots to collect fuel gushing from the vehicle when the site was engulfed in an enormous fireball.
Italy rescues banks
Italy will commit as much as 17 billion euros ($19 billion) to clean up two failed banks in one of its wealthiest regions, the nation’s biggest rescue on record.
The intervention at Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca includes state support for Intesa Sanpaolo to acquire their good assets for a token amount, Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan said Sunday after an emergency cabinet meeting in Rome. Milan-based Intesa can initially tap about 5.2 billion euros to take on some assets without hurting capital ratios, Mr. Padoan said. The European Commission approved the plan.
Also in the world ...
Scuba divers on Monday continued their search for bodies from a submerged boat in Colombia as authorities turned their attention to what led the tourist ferry to sink. ... The world’s biggest coal users — China, the United States and India — have boosted coal mining in 2017, in an abrupt departure from last year’s record global decline. ... Choi Soonsil, a longtime friend of Park Geun-hye, the ousted president of South Korea, was sentenced to three years in prison on Friday on charges of abusing her influence to get her daughter illegally enrolled in a prestigious university.