Bombs have fallen. Damascus has been beaten again. The United States, United Kingdom and France coalition launched airstrikes against Syrian targets as Donald Trump sought to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a suspected chemical attack last weekend near Damascus that killed more than 40 people.
The governor of Brazil’s northern state of Roraima on Friday asked the Supreme Federal Tribunal for permission to temporarily close the only land border crossing with neighboring Venezuela to halt the massive and disorderly arrival of refugees. But Brazil’s President Michel Temer, attending the Summit of the Americas in Lima, said closing the border was “unthinkable.”
The Brazilian Supreme Federal Tribunal acts primarily as the Constitutional Court of the country, and its rulings cannot be appealed. The court is made up of eleven members, Justices, addressed to as Ministers, and they are appointed by the president and must be approved by the Senate.
One of the front-runners in Brazil's presidential campaign was charged with racism on Friday by the country's top prosecutor. Attorney General Raquel Dodge charged conservative deputy Jair Bolsonaro for statements comparing members of rural settlements founded by the descendants of slaves to animals. Members of the settlements are called quilombolas in Brazil.
Ecuador on Friday confirmed the deaths of two journalists and their driver who had been kidnapped by renegade Colombian rebels -- and quickly launched a retaliatory military operation in the area where they were snatched.
Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra opened on Friday a subdued Summit of the Americas decrying widespread corruption and urging regional leaders to join forces in increasing transparency and boosting civil society. Addressing Western Hemisphere leaders in an auditorium where a number of seats were left notably empty, Peru's new president said that rather than accept corruption as a deep-seated scourge impossible to eliminate, governments should adopt concrete measures that prevent it from ever taking place.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was accused of betraying by handing lucrative licenses in the South Atlantic to foreign firms. The row erupted after it emerged that £75million worth of licenses in the South Atlantic have been handed to firms from Norway, Chile and New Zealand, according to reports in the UK media.