IRAN voWINg REvENgE AFTER WEEKEND ATTACK
The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, vowed revenge against Israel on Monday morning, a day after a blackout at an Iranian nuclear enrichment site was attributed to an Israeli attack.
Zarif’s comments highlight the risk of escalation in a years-long shadow war between Iran and Israel. They also threaten to overshadow efforts in Vienna to encourage Iran to reimpose limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions.
In a statement broadcast by Iranian state television, Zarif was quoted as saying: “The Zionists want to take revenge because of our progress in the way to lift sanctions.”
Countries deploy troops to lower migration.
WA S HING TON» The Biden administration has struck an agreement with Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to temporarily surge security forces to their borders in an effort to reduce the tide of migration to the U.S. border.
The agreement comes as the U.S. saw a record number of unaccompanied children attempting to cross the border in March, and the largest number of Border Patrol encounters overall with migrants on the southern border — just under 170,000 — since March 2001.
According to White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Mexico will maintain a deployment of about 10,000 troops, while Guatemala has surged 1,500 police and military personnel to its southern border and Honduras deployed 7,000 police and military to its border “to disperse a large contingent of migrants” there. Guatemala will also set up 12 checkpoints along the migratory route through the country.
Ecuador picks conservative for president; Peru sets runoff.
Ecuador will be led for the next four years by a conservative businessman after voters on Sunday rebuffed a leftleaning movement that yielded an economic boom and then a recession since taking hold of the presidency last decade. That election certainty, however, did not extend to neighboring Peru, where the presidential contest is headed to a runoff after none of the 18 candidates obtained more than 50% of the votes.
The victory of former banker Guillermo Lasso in Ecuador came after less than half of a percentage point put him ahead of another candidate and allowed him to claim a spot in Sunday’s runoff. The result breaks off the country’s years under the so-called Correismo, a movement labeled after former President Rafael Correa who governed Ecuador from 2007 through 2017, grew increasingly authoritarian in the latter years of his presidency and was sentenced to prison last year in a corruption scandal.
Officer who pepper-sprayed a Black army medic is fired, officials say. A police officer in Virginia who confronted a uniformed Black Army medic at gunpoint and doused him with pepper spray during a traffic stop, an exchange captured on video, has been fired, officials said.
The officer, Joe Gutierrez, was terminated for his role in the Dec. 5 encounter involving Caron Nazario, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, the town of Windsor, Va., said in a statement posted on its website.
Officials said an internal investigation had determined that Gutierrez’s actions were not consistent with the department’s policies. They did not provide further details on when Gutierrez had been fired.
Japan to start releasing Fukushima water into sea in two years.
Japan’s government decided Tuesday to start releasing massive amounts of treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean in two years — an option fiercely opposed by local fishermen and residents.
The accumulating water has been stored in tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi plant since 2011, when a massive earthquake and tsunami damaged its reactors.