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Tropical Storm Ana leaves trail of destruction in Madagascar

AFP

Residents in an inundated neighbourhood of Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo are returning with dread to see what remains of their homes and harvests, three days after Tropical Storm Ana relented.

Flooding has killed 51 people on the large Indian Ocean island off southeastern Africa since 10 days of intense rain began on January 17.

The storm formed to the east of Madagascar last week, causing floods and landslides and affecting around 130,000 people, with many made homeless overnight.

Ana then hit Mozambique and Malawi on the African mainland, killing 90 people across the three countries.

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Rescue crews are still battling to access regions where roads and bridges have been swept away after the storm cut off tens of thousands and left them without power.

Travelling on makeshift boats, small groups row through water and a common floating plant called tsifakona normally given to pigs as food.

Some refused to spend the 300 Malagasy ariary ($0.08) for transport and are forced to carry their children where the water level remains high.

“I woke up at three o’clock in the morning to go to the toilet and found my house full of water,” said Ulrich Tsontsozafy, 66.

Recalling the ordeal from the top of a pile of chairs in his waterlogged room, the retired soldier is trying to find ways to avoid having his feet constantly in the water.

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“It ruins your skin. It chafes and it infects,” he said of the floodwater, showing a fine white film that has developed on the skin between his toes.

– Humanitarian emergency –

Residents in Antananarivo’s swampy Betsimitatatra plain are used to living with water thanks to an ingenious system of wooden pontoons that usually connect houses.

But the storm has engulfed everything with a brownish water that reeks of silt, while rats seeking food swam at the surface for a few days.

Tsontsozafy’s rice paddy, coconut tree and avocado tree were destroyed.

His wife, Juliette Etaty, 65, managed to save some bags of rice, heaped up with pans and clothes in a pile that reaches their ceiling.

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Their grand-daughter Luciana, 17, remembered waking up in the middle of the night with her feet dipped in water.

“The first thing I thought of was my school notebooks,” she said.

Gyms and schools in the capital have been requisitioned and turned into emergency shelters.

But the family preferred not to go for fear of catching Covid-19 in a crowded space and leaving their home vulnerable to burglars and the elements.

Toky Ny Nosy, an unemployed 42-year-old, took shelter in a school as she thought her home was about to collapse under the weight of the deluge.

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She also suffers from asthma and said the water was preventing her from breathing properly.

Despite coming back to her neighbourhood every day for almost two weeks, the water still reaches her hips.

Hundreds of families huddled in a classroom converted into an emergency shelter watch the arrival of a truck laden with food for the evening.

But “there’s never enough,” said Toky.

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International

Rubio promises to work for “a safer world” after swearing in as US Secretary of State

Marco Rubio was sworn in this Tuesday as the new Secretary of State of State in a ceremony in which he promised to work for “a safer world” under the directives of President Donald Trump.

Rubio became the first confirmed Trump Cabinet on Monday after receiving the unanimous support of the Senate. The new vice president, JD Vance, was in charge of taking the oath from Rubo.

After swearing in office, Rubio said that “one of the main objectives of US foreign policies will be the promotion of peace.”

“Of course, a peace through force, a peace always without abandoning our values, but I think it is extraordinary that it is something that should be said and that has not been said enough in recent memory,” added the new secretary.

Rubio had a few words in Spanish for his parents, who migrated from Cuba to Florida in 1956, during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

“The purpose of his life was that we could live the dreams that were not possible for them. It is an incredible honor to be the Secretary of State of the most powerful and goodest country in the history of humanity,” he said.

Subsequently, Rubio was greeted in the lobby of the State Department with applause from dozens of workers of this agency.

“There will be changes, but changes don’t have to be destructive. They don’t have to be punitive,” said the new head of US diplomacy.

Rubio said that the State Department needs to “act faster than ever because the world is changing faster than ever.”

“It is an honor to be able to run this agency. I hope to do it with distinction and integrity, working harder than anyone in this position. And that won’t be easy, because before me there have been very hardworking people,” he added.

The new Secretary of State was accompanied by his wife Jeanette, of Colombian origin, and their four children: Amanda, Daniella, Anthony and Dominick.

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International

Mexico will return migrants affected by Trump’s restrictions to its countries

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum assured on Tuesday that her Government will return to their countries of origin to migrants stranded in Mexico affected by the new immigration restrictions of the President of the United States, Donald Trump.

“We would look for the mechanisms through the migration policy and the foreign policy of return to their countries of origin, for example, there is an agreement with Guatemala, with practically all Central American countries, in fact there was a meeting last Friday for it, there is an agreement with Cuba,” he warned at his press conference.

The president promised “humanitarian attention” to migrants from other nations, particularly from Latin America, who are in Mexico and who can no longer cross to the United States, but insisted that the new Trump Government must directly deport undocumented immigrants to their places of origin and not to Mexican territory.

The president did not clarify whether the Government of Mexico would pay for these repatriations or the United States would.

“It’s what we’re going to talk about (talk) with the United States Government,” he said.

In particular, Sheinbaum referred to the new decree of the Trump president that reinstates the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also called ‘Stay in Mexico’, which forces US asylum seekers to wait in Mexican territory.

The president argued that “more than receiving” these migrants “because the MPP is a decision of the United States”, Mexico would give them “humanitarian attention”.

“So the point is, if they are in Mexican territory those people we attend them for humanitarian reasons, but we seek within the framework of our migration policy, being foreigners, their return to their country of origin,” he argued.

Sheinbaum offered the same to the migrants who were stranded in Mexico after Trump’s cancellation of the ‘CBP One’ application of the Office of Customs and Border Protection to request US asylum from Mexican territory.

“Of course they are voluntary returns, but it is important to inform them that, as we have been doing since we arrived in October (at the Government) and that is why this integral humanitarian policy that we follow, that arriving at the border they will not be able to enter the United States,” he remarked.

The head of state reiterated that her government is ready for mass deportations, which would affect in particular Mexico, the origin of about half of the 11 million undocumented in the United States and whose remittances represent almost 4% of the Mexican gross domestic product (GDP).

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International

Israel shifts the spotlight to the West Bank with a large-scale raid and kills 9 Palestinians

After Gaza and Lebanon, today we begin, with God’s help, to change the security situation in Judea and Samaria (the biblical name for the West Bank),” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced on Tuesday.

Shortly before, the Army began a large-scale raid in Yenin, in the north of the occupied territory, which so far has claimed the lives of nine Palestinians and injured 35 others.

Just two days after the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip came into force, the attention of the armed forces has been diverted to the West Bank: dozens of excavators have accessed Yenin and its refugee camp with Israeli troops, and drone attacks and shots from Army helicopters have been recorded.

In an unusual move, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly announced the start of the operation, dumbled “Iron Wall”: “We are acting systematically and decisively against the Iranian axis wherever it sends its weapons, in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Judea and Samaria.”

Interviewed by the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, the director of the Government Hospital of Yenin, Wissam Bakr, regretted that the speed with which the morning rounding was unfolding did not correctly count the number of injured, which was constantly evolving.

Videos recorded in the city and its refugee camp show how Israeli excavators advance through the streets, razing the roads.

In one of them, an old man crosses the street carrying a bag while the shots hit near his feet. In another, a nurse who walks with another man down the street has to run away when someone opens fire on them.

In the channels of the Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service, the announcements of the transfer of the shot wounds from different areas of the city to the hospitals became a constant as the afternoon progressed.

“The occupation forces (Israel) prevent our teams from reaching the wounded inside the refugee camp when we receive the reports,” the group said this morning.

Following the announcement of the offensive, the Islamist group Hamas today urged both Palestinian civilians and their militiamen to respond to the Israeli army and counterattack.

“We call on the masses of our people in the West Bank and their revolutionary youth to mobilize and intensify the clashes against the occupying Army at all points, and to work to thwart the extensive Zionist aggression against the city of Yenin,” the group said in a statement.

Hamas also accused the forces of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), in the hands of the secular Fatah party, of having abandoned Yenin to allow the operation of Israeli troops instead of defending the Palestinians.

The security forces of the ANP (which governs in small parts of the West Bank) concluded on Friday a 42-day operation in Yenin that ended in the death of police, militiamen and civilians, and which from the Palestinian factions was seen as a demonstration of power of the ANP to demonstrate to Israel its ability to manage security in Gaza after the ceasefire.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the predominant movements in the Yenin camp, also assured that Netanyahu is trying to “save his shaken government coalition” with the operation in the West Bank, after having “failed” in Gaza.

On Saturday, when there were still hours left for the ceasefire to take effect, the Israeli Army warned that it was preparing to increase its presence in the West Bank with up to seven companies, on the occasion of the release of Palestinian prisoners contemplated by the agreement, in exchange for the hostages.

Among Netanyahu’s radical partners (such as the former Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, or the head of Finance, Smotrich) the release of Palestinian prisoners earned the agreement qualifications as “disastrous” or “dangerous”.

The support of at least one of them is essential for Netanyahu to maintain the current government coalition, so, in view of Ben Gvir’s resignation, the prime minister met with Smotrich up to five times to prevent him from leaving the Executive.

Numerous Israeli media reported that Netanyahu put on the table to increase the Israeli presence in the West Bank as a condition for Smotrich not to leave the coalition. When the Executive voted this Friday for the agreement, Smotrich voted against it, but did not leave the Government.

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