International
U.S. opposes reported israeli plans for permanent military base in Gaza
The United States expressed its opposition on Tuesday to Israel building a permanent military base in the Gaza Strip, following a report by The New York Times indicating such construction is underway.
Using satellite image analysis, the newspaper highlighted increased construction activity at a site in central Gaza and the demolition of over 600 buildings, suggesting a longer-term Israeli military presence.
According to the U.S. Department of State, Secretary of State Antony Blinken had already expressed opposition to a permanent Israeli presence in Gaza at the onset of the war.
State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel stated that the department could not confirm the report.
“If true, this would undoubtedly be inconsistent with several of the principles outlined by Secretary Blinken,” Patel said during a press briefing.
“There must be no reduction of Gaza’s territory. Furthermore, there cannot be any forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes,” he added.
The New York Times quoted an Israeli military spokesperson who claimed that the on-ground construction activities are for operational purposes and that the structures could be dismantled quickly.
U.S. President Joe Biden has supported Israel in its relentless campaign in Gaza following the devastating October 7, 2023, attack but has also voiced concerns about the plight of civilians.
Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump has pledged strong support for Israel once he assumes office on January 20.
International
Who is Yoon Suk-yeol, the unpopular president of South Korea?
Pressures to remove South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol from power have not stopped since the president briefly and unexpectedly declared martial law, by accusing the opposition of “anti-state activities”, a decision that further erodes his low popularity and can cost him the position.
Embodying a presidency as unpopular as it was weakened to which it reached thanks to the narrow margin of less than 1% by which he imposed himself on liberal Lee Jae-myung in 2022, Yoon (born in Seoul in 1960) is the South Korean leader with the highest negative assessment in history (74%, according to the polling company Gallup Korea) and the first in the country’s democracy not to have control of the General Assembly (Parliament) at any time during his mandate.
The pressure for the president to resign is increasing and six formations, including the main opposition force, the liberal Democratic Party (PD), presented a parliamentary motion to dismiss him on Wednesday, after some of his main advisers, including his chief of staff and his National Security adviser, offered to resign en masse on the same day.
At the same time, the largest trade union group in the country, the Korean Trade Union Confederation (KCTU), called for protests and promised to start an indefinite strike until Yoon takes responsibility for what happened and leaves office, something that citizens also seem to ask out loud.
Orchestrator of his potential fall
A lawyer by training and with a dazzling career in the South Korean Prosecutor’s Office, Yoon could have orchestrated his own fall by assuming the risk of imposing emergency martial law, revoked six hours after Parliament voted in favor of lifting it.
The decision to activate, with visible political eagerness, a measure designed to “guarantee law and order” in times of war or in case of national emergency and that allows to prohibit political activities, control the media or arrest people without a court order can put an end to a government that owes its low acceptance to factors such as the economic situation, the lack of communication by the president or the management of accusations directed against the first lady, Kim Keon-hee.
Accusations against the first lady
Last night’s surprise announcement came after the PD approved without the support of Yoon’s conservative People’s Power Party (PPP) general budgets for 2025 with multiple cuts.
There were also motions to dismiss the attorney general and the head of the Audit and Inspection Board, in charge of monitoring the accounts of public bodies.
These last two had become the target of the PD due to their refusal to continue investigating or to charge the first lady with different crimes for which she has been scrutinized, from interference in state affairs to manipulation of stock market assets or receiving a luxury bag as a bribe.
Yoon assured that the aforementioned budget cuts would undermine the “essential” functions of the Government, including the prevention of drug-related crimes and public security measures, and considered that the opposition, which he called pro-North Korean, was carrying out “anti-state” actions.
From the prosecutor’s office to the presidential candidacy
Son of university professors and raised in a neighborhood of Seoul, Yeonhui – once considered prosperous -, Yoon graduated in Law from the prestigious National University of Seoul and made his debut as a prosecutor in 1994.
On the way to becoming attorney general in 2019, he left a trajectory in which he sat on the bench important liberal and conservative politicians, as well as leaders of large national companies such as Hyundai or Samsung.
In addition, he led the special investigation in 2016 against the only South Korean president who has been deposed in democracy, Park Geun-hye.
The ordeal he launched, already as attorney general, to the government of the liberal Moon Jae-in, who sought to reform the prosecutor’s office itself after the investigations opened against the Minister of Justice, Cho Kuk, turned him into a symbol of resistance for conservatives, especially for those who saw in the former president a figure too close to Pyongyang or Beijing.
Thus, without any political experience, he became the candidate of the conservative People’s Power Party (PPP) for the March 2022 presidential elections.
Yoon managed to win by only 247,000 votes on Lee Jae-myung in elections – the most close that the country has experienced since the return of democracy in 1987 – characterized by the little attachment of the South Koreans to the two main candidates.
Punishment at the polls
Two years later, in April 2024, the polls tremendously punished the ruling formation in a legislative election in which the PPP not only failed to snatch the majority of the PD in Parliament, but was terribly weakened (108 seats against 192 of the opposition).
The elections made it clear that South Koreans consider Yoon someone disconnected – along with the first lady – and unable to solve the economic problems faced by citizens, while suspicions of corruption are piled up.
The leader has also shown absolute disdain for the inequality that affects South Koreans every day, in the country with the largest wage gap in the OECD.
International
Record of executions in Saudi Arabia: more than 300 so far this year
The number of executed so far in 2024 in Saudi Arabia is 304, including seven women, an unprecedented record in the country, according to EFE this Wednesday an official of the European-Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR).
“The executed so far are 187 Saudis and 117 foreigners,” said Taha al Hajji, legal advisor to the NGO, who monitors the executions in the kingdom.
More than 100 executed for drug trafficking
The last executed were three Egyptians, precisely yesterday, who were imprisoned in Tabuk prison, where 27 other prisoners of Egyptian nationality are sentenced to death and “could be executed at any time,” the activist warned.
According to Al Hajji, the number of executions for cases related to drug trafficking so far this year is 105, that is, more than one in three executed.
In November 2022, Saudi Arabia carried out the first executions for drug-related crimes in almost three years, thus reversing a moratorium on executions for such crimes announced by the Saudi Human Rights Commission in 2021.
Amnesty International’s complaints
Despite their repeated promises to limit the use of the death penalty, the Saudi authorities have increased executions while systematically violating international rules on fair trials and safeguards for the accused, according to Amnesty International (AI).
The authorities have also used the death penalty to silence political dissent, punishing citizens of the country’s Shiite minority who supported the “anti-government” protests between 2011 and 2013, the NGO recalled.
In 2022, Saudi Arabia executed 196 people, a year that then held the tragic record of registering the highest annual number of executions in the country in the last 30 years, according to AI.
International
Cuba suffers a new national blackout, the third in two months
The Ministry of Energy and Mines (Minem) of Cuba reported on Wednesday that the country suffered a new national blackout, the third in just two months, after the failure in a key thermoelectric power plant for the National Electric System (SEN).
“At 2:08 this morning, the Electrical System, SEN, was disconnected when the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric company left by firing the automatic. We are working on the recovery process,” Minem said on social networks.
Cuba suffered another national blackout on October 18 due to another breakdown in that same thermoelectric power plant and another with the passage of Hurricane Rafael, on November 6, with category 3 (out of 5) on the Saffir-Simpson scale through the west of the country.
Energy crisis
In both cases it took days to restore service throughout the island. The country has been plunged into an energy crisis for years due to the lack of fuel – due to the lack of foreign currency to import it – and the frequent breakdowns in its obsolete thermoelectric plants, with decades of operation and a chronic deficit of investments. The situation has worsened since the end of August.
The Minister of Energy, Vicente de la O Levy, assured the state press that the reconnection will be “relatively faster” than in the previous two times. In that sense, the Chancellor, Bruno Rodríguez, said that “there are favorable conditions” for the restoration.
On Tuesday, the Caribbean country recorded its highest rate of affectation due to electricity generation deficit, with 52%, a figure similar to the one announced on November 19.
The frequent blackouts weigh down the economy – which already contracted by 1.9% in 2023 – and stire social discontent, visible in the massive migration of recent years and in the unusual protests that have been recorded since 2021.
In mid-November, the Minister of Economy, Joaquín Alonso Vázquez, acknowledged that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will also contract in 2024.
“The economic development of a country depends largely on energy and we have had electrical effects throughout the year (…) On the other hand, we have not had a stable supply of fuel this year either. There is a shortage of gasoline, diesel, etc… and the economy needs energy to be dynamic,” he lamented.
Who is Yoon Suk-yeol, the unpopular president of South Korea?
Record of executions in Saudi Arabia: more than 300 so far this year
Cuba suffers a new national blackout, the third in two months
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