Latest news with #Castro
Mint
5 hours ago
- Sport
- Mint
David Festa, Twins shut down AL-best Tigers
Byron Buxton hit a solo homer and David Festa pitched 5 2/3 scoreless innings as the visiting Minnesota Twins downed the Detroit Tigers 4-1 on Friday night. Brooks Lee drove in two runs, Willi Castro scored a run and knocked in another and Buxton scored two runs as the Twins won their third straight following a five-game losing streak. Festa (2-2) allowed just two hits and struck out six Tigers, who have the best record in the American League. Jhoan Duran notched his 12th save by getting the last three outs in the opener of a three-game set. Gleyber Torres had two hits and drove in the lone Tigers run. Starter Sawyer Gipson-Long (0-1) yielded three runs on four hits and two walks in 5 1/3 innings while recording five strikeouts. The Tigers had a threat in the second. Spencer Torkelson was hit by a pitch and Dillon Dingler had a two-out single. Parker Meadows was retired on a check-swing comebacker to Festa. Minnesota stranded two runners in the third, then broke through in the fourth. Matt Wallner slashed a two-out double before Lee doubled to right for the first run of the contest. The Twins made it 2-0 the next inning on Buxton's two-out homer to left which traveled an estimated 425 feet. Minnesota tacked on a run in the sixth. Castro walked, stole second and moved to third on a wild pitch. After Ty France walked with one out, Lee singled to center to score Castro. Minnesota took a 4-0 lead in the seventh. Buxton walked, stole second and moved to third on a groundout. He scored on Castro's sacrifice bunt. Detroit stranded two runners in the seventh, then got on the scoreboard in the eighth. Colt Keith tripled with one out and scored on Torres' RBI single. Zach McKinstry's single put runners on the corners. McKinstry stole second, but reliever Griffin Jax responded by striking out Riley Greene and Torkelson to end the inning.
GMA Network
a day ago
- Politics
- GMA Network
PH gov't not directly cooperating with ICC on drug war witnesses — Palace
Malacañang on Friday clarified that the government is not directly cooperating with the International Criminal Court (ICC) despite the recent pronouncement of Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla that the tribunal had requested the government to provide protection for witnesses. In a press briefing, Palace Press Officer Undersecretary Atty. Claire Castro said the government would help witnesses. "Parang sa ating pagkakadinig ay tutulungan ng DOJ (Department of Justice) ang mga witnesses para makapag-testify, para mabigyan ng hustisya ang dapat mabigyan ng hustisya. Hindi directly makikipagtulungan sa ICC," Castro said. (From what we hear, the DOJ will help the witnesses to testify so that justice will be attained by those who seek it. Not directly cooperate with the ICC.) "Still, ang tutulungan po natin ay kapwa Pilipino na nangangailangan ng tulong para mabigyan sila ng hustisya. 'Yan din naman po ang sinasabi ng Commission on Human Rights," she added. (Still, assistance will be given to our fellow Filipinos who need help so they may achieve justice. This is aligned with the statements of the Commission on Human Rights.) Pressed if this matter has the go signal of President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., Castro said, "'Yun po ay, 'yan din naman po ang gusto ng Pangulo, mabigyan ng hustisya ang dapat mabigyan ng hustisya." (That's also what the President wants, that justice be provided to those who deserve it.) Remulla earlier said three to four witnesses in the case of former President Rodrigo Duterte before the ICC are currently under government protection. According to Remulla, more individuals may be placed under witness protection. Remulla also said cooperating with the tribunal does not contradict with the government's position that the Philippines is no longer a member of the ICC. The Philippines withdrew from the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, in March 2019 during the Duterte administration. Castro recently said the President was open to having discussions with regard to the Philippines rejoining the ICC. — VDV, GMA Integrated News
Atlantic
2 days ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
Nuclear Roulette
On October 27, 1962, the 12th day of the Cuban missile crisis, a bellicose and rattled Fidel Castro asked Nikita Khrushchev, his patron, to destroy America. 'I believe that the imperialists' aggressiveness makes them extremely dangerous,' Castro wrote in a cable to Moscow, 'and that if they manage to carry out an invasion of Cuba—a brutal act in violation of universal and moral law—then that would be the moment to eliminate this danger forever, in an act of the most legitimate self-defense. However harsh and terrible the solution, there would be no other.' We exist today because Khrushchev rejected Castro's demand. It was Khrushchev, of course, who brought the planet to the threshold of extinction by placing missiles in Cuba, but he had underestimated the American response to the threat. Together with his adversary, John F. Kennedy, he lurched his way toward compromise. 'In your cable of October 27 you proposed that we be the first to carry out a nuclear strike against the enemy's territory,' Khrushchev responded. 'Naturally you understand where that would lead us. It would not be a simple strike, but the start of a thermonuclear world war. Dear Comrade Fidel Castro, I find your proposal to be wrong, even though I understand your reasons.' Castro was 36 years old during the missile crisis. He was 84 when I met him, in Havana, in late summer 2010. He was in semiretirement, though he was still Cuba's indispensable man. I spent a week with him, discussing, among other things, the Nuclear Age and its diabolical complexities. He still embraced the cruel dogmas of Communist revolution, but he was also somewhat reflective about his mistakes. I was deeply curious about his October 27 cable, and I put this question to him: 'At a certain point it seemed logical for you to recommend that the Soviets bomb the U.S. Does what you recommended still seem logical now?' His answer: 'After I've seen what I've seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn't worth it.' The problem with wisdom is that it tends to come slowly, if it comes at all. As a species, we are not particularly skilled at making time-pressured, closely reasoned decisions about matters of life and death. The sociobiologist E. O. Wilson described the central problem of humanity this way: 'We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.' The main challenge of the 80 years since the Trinity atomic test has been that we do not possess the cognitive, spiritual, and emotional capabilities necessary to successfully manage nuclear weapons without the risk of catastrophic failure. Khrushchev and Castro both made terrifying mistakes of analysis and interpretation during the missile crisis. So, too, did several of Kennedy's advisers, including General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff, who argued that a naval blockade of Cuba, unaccompanied by the immediate bombing of missile sites, was ' almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.' Today, the Global Operations Center of the U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees America's nuclear forces, is housed in an Offutt Air Force Base building named for LeMay. This decision has always struck me as an indirect endorsement by America's nuclear establishment of the bias toward action embodied by the sometimes-Strangelovian LeMay. Bias toward action is an all-purpose phrase, but I first heard it in the context of nuclear warfare many years ago from Bruce Blair, a scholar of nonproliferation and a former Air Force missile-launch officer. It means that the nuclear-decision-making scripts that presidents are meant to follow in a crisis assume that Russia (or other adversaries) will attempt to destroy American missiles while they are still in their silos. The goal of nuclear-war planners has traditionally been to send those missiles on their way before they can be neutralized—in the parlance of nuclear planning, to 'launch on warning.' Many of the men who served as president since 1945 have been shocked to learn about the impossibly telescoped time frame in which they have to decide whether to launch. The issue is not one of authority—presidents are absolute nuclear monarchs, and they can do what they wish with America's nuclear weapons (please see Tom Nichols's article ' The President's Weapon '). The challenge, as George W. Bush memorably put it, is that a president wouldn't even have time to get off the 'crapper' before having to make a launch decision, a decision that could be based on partial, contradictory, or even false information. Ronald Reagan, when he assumed the presidency, was said to have been shocked that he would have as little as six minutes to make a decision to launch. Barack Obama thought that it was madness to expect a president to make such a decision—the most important that would ever be made by a single person in all of human history—in a matter of minutes. We are living through one of the more febrile periods of the nuclear era. The contours of World War III are visible in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia has been aided by Iran and North Korea and opposed by Europe and, for the time being, the United States. Pakistan and India, two nuclear states, recently fought a near-war; Iran, which has for decades sought the destruction of Israel through terrorism and other means, has seen its nuclear sites come under attack by Israel and the United States, in what could be termed an act of nonproliferation by force; North Korea continues to expand its nuclear arsenal, and South Korea and Japan, as Ross Andersen details elsewhere in this issue, are considering going nuclear in response. Humans will need luck to survive this period. We have been favored by fortune before, and not only during the Cuban missile crisis. Over the past 80 years, humanity has been saved repeatedly by individuals who possessed unusually good judgment in situations of appalling stress. Two in particular—Stanislav Petrov and John Kelly—spring to my mind regularly, for different reasons. Petrov is worth understanding because, under terrible pressure, he responded skeptically to an attack warning, quite possibly saving the planet. Kelly did something different, but no less difficult: He steered an unstable president away from escalation and toward negotiation. In September 1983, Petrov was serving as the duty officer at a Soviet command center when its warning system reported that the United States had launched five missiles at Soviet targets. Relations between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were tense; just three weeks earlier, the Soviets had shot down a civilian South Korean airliner. Petrov defied established protocols governing such an alert and declared the launch warning to be false. He understood that the detection system was new and only partially tested. He also knew that Soviet doctrine held that an American attack, should it come, would be overwhelming, and not a mere five missiles. He reported to his superiors that he believed the attack warning to be a mistake, and he prevented a nuclear exchange between the two superpowers by doing so. (Later, it was determined that a Soviet satellite had mistakenly interpreted the interplay between clouds and the sun over Montana and North Dakota as missile launches.) John Kelly, the retired four-star Marine general who served as White House chief of staff for part of Donald Trump's first term, is known for his Sisyphean labors on behalf of order in an otherwise anarchic decision-making environment. Kelly, during his 17 months as chief of staff, understood that Trump was particularly dangerous on matters of national security. Trump was ignorant of world affairs, Kelly believed, and authoritarian by instinct. Kelly experienced these flaws directly in 2017, when Trump regularly insulted the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, who was widely regarded as inexperienced and unstable himself. After North Korea threatened 'physical action' against its enemies, Trump said, 'They will be met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.' Kelly repeatedly warned Trump that such language could cause Kim, eager to prove his bona fides to the senior generals around him, to overreact by attacking South Korea. But Trump continued, tweeting: 'Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!' Kim later responded by firing missiles over Japan and calling Trump a 'mentally deranged U.S. dotard.' According to reporting in Michael S. Schmidt's book, Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President, Kelly told Trump, 'You're pushing him to prove he's a man. If you push him into a corner, he may strike out. You don't want to box him in.' Schmidt wrote, 'The president of the United States had no appreciation for the fact that he could bring the country not just to the brink of a war at any moment—but a nuclear war that could easily escalate into the most dangerous one in world history.' Kelly realized that his warnings to Trump weren't penetrating, so he played, instead, on Trump's insecurities, and on his need to be a hero, or, at the very least, a salesman. 'No president since North Korea became a communist dictatorship has ever tried to reach out,' Kelly told Trump, according to Schmidt. 'No president has tried to reason with this guy—you're a big dealmaker, why don't you do that.' Kelly's diversion worked: Trump quickly became enamored of the idea that he would achieve a history-making rapprochement with North Korea. Kelly understood that such a deal was far-fetched, but the pursuit of a chimera would cause Trump to stop threatening nuclear war. Trump remains an unstable leader in a world far more unstable than it was during his first term. No president has ever been anything close to a perfect steward of America's national security and its nuclear arsenal, but Trump is less qualified than almost any previous leader to manage a nuclear crisis. (Only the late-stage, frequently inebriated Richard Nixon was arguably more dangerous.) Trump is highly reactive, sensitive to insult, and incurious. It is unfair to say that he is likely to wake up one morning and decide to use nuclear weapons—he has spoken intermittently about his loathing of such weapons, and of war more generally—but he could very easily mismanage his way, again, into an escalatory spiral. From the November 1947 issue: Albert Einstein on avoiding atomic war The successful end of the Cold War caused many people to believe that the threat of nuclear war had receded. It has historically been difficult to get people to think about the unthinkable. In an article for this magazine in 1947, Albert Einstein explained: The public, having been warned of the horrible nature of atomic warfare, has done nothing about it, and to a large extent has dismissed the warning from its consciousness. A danger that cannot be averted had perhaps better be forgotten; or a danger against which every possible precaution has been taken also had probably better be forgotten. We forget at our peril. We forget that 80 years after the world-changing summer of 1945, Russia and the United States alone possess enough nuclear firepower to destroy the world many times over; we forget that China is becoming a near-peer adversary of the U.S.; we forget that the history of the Nuclear Age is filled with near misses, accidents, and wild misinterpretations of reality; and we forget that most humans aren't quite as creative, independent-minded, and perspicacious as Stanislav Petrov and John Kelly. Most of all, we forget the rule articulated by the mathematician and cryptologist Martin Hellman: that the only way to survive Russian roulette is to stop playing.
2 days ago
- Politics
Honduras and US discuss immigration, security after tense start under Trump
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Honduras President Xiomara Castro and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem discussed immigration and border security in their first meeting Wednesday, after Castro had previously rejected President Donald Trump's calls for ramped up deportations. Noem was the first Trump Cabinet member to visit Honduras. The two leaders did not make comments to the press after their meeting. But Honduras Foreign Affairs Minister Javier Bú Soto later said that Honduras signed a letter of intent toward reaching an agreement on sharing biometric data from people transiting the country with the U.S. government. The U.S. has signed similar agreements with other governments across the region. The two governments also signed an agreement related to migrants seeking protection in Honduras, he said, though he did not explain what it entailed. 'We are going to continue mutually collaborating on issues of migration security, border security and the fight against drug trafficking,' Bú Soto said. Noem was headed next to Guatemala where she was scheduled to meet with President Bernardo Arévalo on Thursday. Relations between the U.S. and Castro's administration had been tense since she ordered the end of the longstanding extradition treaty last year. It was under that treaty that Castro sent her predecessor ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández to the United States to be tried on drug trafficking charges. The U.S. ambassador at the time had angered Castro by criticizing the visit of Honduran officials to Venezuela to meet with that country's longtime defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, who has been indicted on drug trafficking charges by the U.S. Then in January, Castro raised the possibility of ending Honduras' cooperation with the U.S. military if Trump followed through on his promised mass deportations. The main U.S. military presence in Honduras is at Soto Cano Air Base outside the capital. While it is a Honduran base, the U.S. has maintained a significant presence there since 1983 and it has become a key U.S. launching point for humanitarian and anti-drug missions in Central America. Castro eventually reversed course earlier this year on the extradition treaty and restored the agreement after negotiations with the Trump administration. But Honduras was notably left off U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's trip through the region in February. Honduran international affairs analyst Graco Pérez the two governments discussed likely discussed more than they announced. 'That is the official version, we don't know the other part,' Pérez said. He also questioned comments made by Castro's son and Presidential Minister Hector Zelaya after the meeting emphasizing the strength of the countries' relationship and coordination. 'For three and a half years they were confronting (the U.S.) and now, in the last six months, they want to give the impression that relations are very cordial,' Pérez said. 'I don't think it's like that.' Earlier Wednesday, Noem met with Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves in San Jose. They signed a letter reaffirming the U.S. support for Costa Rica's bid to join the Global Entry program. That is a program run by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which allows certain passengers who applied to the program and are prescreened to get expedited entry into the U.S. Noem also said the U.S. would help Chaves advance toward his goal of scanning all people and goods entering Costa Rica. The U.S. has been signing agreements across the region for governments to collect and share biometric data on people entering their countries. '(Costa Rica) will give us the most advanced information that we need to know on people who could come into our countries that could do us harm, but also how to prevent them from spreading their criminality and their evil across the world,' Noem said. Noem visited Panama on Tuesday, where she met with President José Raúl Mulino. The U.S. government has designated $14 million for a repatriation program where Panama flies migrants back to their countries.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Honduras and US discuss immigration, security after tense start under Trump
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Honduras President Xiomara Castro and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem discussed immigration and border security in their first meeting Wednesday, after Castro had previously rejected President Donald Trump's calls for ramped up deportations. Noem was the first Trump Cabinet member to visit Honduras. The two leaders did not make comments to the press after their meeting. But Honduras Foreign Affairs Minister Javier Bú Soto later said that Honduras signed a letter of intent toward reaching an agreement on sharing biometric data from people transiting the country with the U.S. government. The U.S. has signed similar agreements with other governments across the region. The two governments also signed an agreement related to migrants seeking protection in Honduras, he said, though he did not explain what it entailed. 'We are going to continue mutually collaborating on issues of migration security, border security and the fight against drug trafficking,' Bú Soto said. Noem was headed next to Guatemala where she was scheduled to meet with President Bernardo Arévalo on Thursday. Relations between the U.S. and Castro's administration had been tense since she ordered the end of the longstanding extradition treaty last year. It was under that treaty that Castro sent her predecessor ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández to the United States to be tried on drug trafficking charges. The U.S. ambassador at the time had angered Castro by criticizing the visit of Honduran officials to Venezuela to meet with that country's longtime defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, who has been indicted on drug trafficking charges by the U.S. Then in January, Castro raised the possibility of ending Honduras' cooperation with the U.S. military if Trump followed through on his promised mass deportations. The main U.S. military presence in Honduras is at Soto Cano Air Base outside the capital. While it is a Honduran base, the U.S. has maintained a significant presence there since 1983 and it has become a key U.S. launching point for humanitarian and anti-drug missions in Central America. Castro eventually reversed course earlier this year on the extradition treaty and restored the agreement after negotiations with the Trump administration. But Honduras was notably left off U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's trip through the region in February. Honduran international affairs analyst Graco Pérez the two governments discussed likely discussed more than they announced. 'That is the official version, we don't know the other part,' Pérez said. He also questioned comments made by Castro's son and Presidential Minister Hector Zelaya after the meeting emphasizing the strength of the countries' relationship and coordination. 'For three and a half years they were confronting (the U.S.) and now, in the last six months, they want to give the impression that relations are very cordial,' Pérez said. 'I don't think it's like that.' Earlier Wednesday, Noem met with Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves in San Jose. They signed a letter reaffirming the U.S. support for Costa Rica's bid to join the Global Entry program. That is a program run by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which allows certain passengers who applied to the program and are prescreened to get expedited entry into the U.S. Noem also said the U.S. would help Chaves advance toward his goal of scanning all people and goods entering Costa Rica. The U.S. has been signing agreements across the region for governments to collect and share biometric data on people entering their countries. '(Costa Rica) will give us the most advanced information that we need to know on people who could come into our countries that could do us harm, but also how to prevent them from spreading their criminality and their evil across the world,' Noem said. Noem visited Panama on Tuesday, where she met with President José Raúl Mulino. The U.S. government has designated $14 million for a repatriation program where Panama flies migrants back to their countries. __ AP journalist Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.
