International
Camilla wins praise for first week in Queen Consort role
AFP | by Juliette MONTESSE
Camilla has taken on the role of Queen Consort to her husband King Charles III with a minimum of fuss after gradually overcoming public opposition.
King Charles III, in his first speech to the nation on September 9, thanked his “darling wife” Camilla for her support.
The couple finally married in 2005 after a long-running love affair that was at times adulterous.
“I know she (Camilla) will bring to the demands of her new role the steadfast devotion to duty on which I have come to rely so much,” Charles said in a televised tribute the day after his mother’s death.
Camilla, 75, was at Charles’s side on September 8 when he rushed to the queen’s Scottish residence of Balmoral, where she died that day.
Since then, she has been travelling around the UK with the new king, showing herself to be a rock of stability in the royal family: taking part in a brief walkabout outside Buckingham Palace, the proclamation of the new king and trips to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
While Camilla is not topping polls on the most popular royals, her approval rating has hugely improved.
Last year, fewer than half of people in Britain wanted her to become queen.
A poll published by YouGov on Tuesday found 53 percent now think Camilla will do a good job as consort, while 18 percent thought she would not.
On Friday, those queueing in London to see the queen’s coffin told AFP that they respected Camilla’s support for Charles and had come to appreciate her role.
“I’ve changed my mind (about Camilla) in the last five or 10 years,” said one man, Peter Finlayson, who works in risk management.
“If you look back in history, Camilla has always been there for Charles; she is a great support to him and she has earned the right to be there.
“They are providing the continuity that we all thought we had lost with the queen.”
For Deborah Toulson, a 57-year-old maths tutor, “this week particularly, she (Camilla) has been amazing”. She said she had noticed Camilla subtly guiding Charles on what to do at recent public appearances.
Camilla has nevertheless faced long-standing dislike from many British people, who see her as morally culpable for being Charles’s mistress during his failed marriage to Diana.
She has slowly earned her stripes and won round the queen, who personally recommended that she become known as Queen Consort to Charles.
Broken toe
When Charles came to Westminster Hall last week to receive condolences from parliament, Camilla came with him in a black dress and pearls and they sat on matching gold thrones.
When the new king and his two brothers and sister held a silent vigil in Edinburgh’s St Giles’ Cathedral, standing around the queen’s coffin, Camilla sat nearby.
Tabloids welcomed the tact of the new queen, who chose to wear a diamond brooch in the shape of a thistle, Scotland’s national emblem, which had been a gift from Queen Elizabeth.
Camilla has carried out duties while recovering from a broken toe, an injury thought to have happened before the queen’s death, The Daily Telegraph reported.
“She is in quite a lot of pain but she is just getting on with it. It is unfortunate timing to say the least but she’s been an absolute trouper,” a source told the paper.
At a signing ceremony in Northern Ireland, when Charles was caught on camera losing his cool over a leaking fountain pen, Camilla stood there stoically and took the offending pen while Charles stormed out.
Camilla “has shown through time that she is an immense support for Charles and she has again proved it this week by being very calm,” said another woman waiting in the queue, Anne-Marie Whatts, a Londoner in her early 40s who works in information technology.
Camilla’s biographer Angela Levin, wrote in The Telegraph that Camilla has a better understanding than Charles of what the public is thinking because “she had a relatively normal life until her 50s”.
What remains to see is whether Camilla is allowed to express herself: over the last week, we have barely heard her speak.
International
Trump appoints Stallone, Voight, and Gibson as special ambassadors to Hollywood
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday the appointment of actors Sylvester Stallone (‘Rocky’) and Jon Voight (‘Midnight Cowboy’), as well as actor and director Mel Gibson (‘Braveheart’) as special ambassadors to the “very problematic” Hollywood.
“They will help me as special envoys to make Hollywood, which has lost many overseas businesses in the last four years, COME BACK BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER,” he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The Republican lamented all the “problems” he claims Hollywood faces and created this role with the aim of improving the situation from a business perspective.
“These three talented men will be my eyes and ears. I will do whatever they suggest,” he said.
Stallone had previously described Trump as the second George Washington, the first U.S. president (1789–1797) and one of the nation’s founding fathers, during a dinner after his victory in the November presidential elections, where he served as the master of ceremonies.
Meanwhile, Gibson attacked Trump’s rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing her of having “the IQ of a fence.”
The Republican leader will be sworn in as president on January 20 on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, succeeding Democrat Joe Biden.
International
Latin American and Caribbean diplomats voice concern over U.S. mass deportation plan
Diplomatic chiefs from ten Latin American and Caribbean countries expressed their “serious concern” over the announcement of a mass deportation of migrants, a measure they consider incompatible with human rights, according to a joint statement released this Friday.
The statement, which does not attribute the measure to any specific country, refers to the announcement made by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to carry out the largest foreign deportation operation in the history of the nation once he takes office next Monday. “The announcements of mass deportations are a serious cause for concern, especially due to their incompatibility with the fundamental principles of human rights and their failure to effectively address the structural causes of migration,” the statement said, released by Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE).
The signing countries—Brazil, Belize, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela (almost all migrant-sending nations)—also committed to “defend the human rights of all migrants.”
This includes “rejecting the criminalization of migrants at all stages of the migration cycle” and “protecting them as a priority from transnational organized crime that profits from migration,” the document adds.
International
Noboa once again entrusts the Vice President of Ecuador to the vice president he appointed by decree
The President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, returned this Thursday to delegate – for the second time – the Presidency to the Secretary of Public Administration and Cabinet of the Presidency Cynthia Gellibert, whom he himself appointed by decree vice president in charge, in the face of the open confrontation he maintains with the vice president, Verónica Abad.
As he did last week, Noboa again issued a decree in which he announces that he is absent from the Presidency from Thursday to Sunday, to make an electoral campaign in search of his re-election in the elections of February 9, and during that period of time it will be Gellibert who will be in charge of the head of the State.
This action of the president of Ecuador is a matter of evaluation by the ordinary and constitutional justice at the request of the vice president, Verónica Abad, who claims to assume the presidential functions during the full period of the electoral campaign, in which according to the Constitution the head of state must ask for leave for being a candidate for re-election.
In his decree, Noboa argues that, although the Constitution determines that the Vice Presidency must assume the head of State in the event of the absence of the president, this “is not limited to the elected vice-president, but to the person who to date is exercising the functions of the Vice Presidency.”
Before appointing Gellibert as vice president in charge by decree, Noboa sent Abad to the Ecuadorian Embassy in Turkey, after a judge annulled the five-month suspension that the same Government had imposed on him. Until now, the vice president remains in Ecuador to claim to be the one who temporarily assumes the Presidency.
The new period of Gellibert with presidential powers began at 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) this Thursday and is scheduled to end at 22:00 (03:00 GMT) next Sunday, time at which the debate between presidential candidates is expected to end where Noboa is summoned to participate.
After the debate, Noboa plans to travel to Washington to attend Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, according to the Ecuadorian Presidency.
After the first assignment of the Presidency to Gellibert, Abad denounced a “coup d’état” and urged the Organization of American States (OAS) to apply the Democratic Charter, considering that the constitutional order had been broken because it had not received the presidential powers, as contemplated in the Ecuadorian Constitution.
In addition, he filed a protection action with which he seeks that the Justice annul the decrees in which Noboa appointed Gellibert as vice president in charge and delegated the Presidency to him. A court admitted the appeal on Friday, but did not accept some precautionary measures that Abad also asked for to suspend those effects immediately.
Controversies like this will be part of the analysis and evaluation of the electoral observation mission (EOM) of the European Union (EU) for the Ecuadorian elections, as anticipated on Wednesday by its leader, Spanish MEP Gabriel Mato.
The confrontation between Noboa and Abad began in the electoral campaign for the second round of elections for the extraordinary elections of 2023, and was reflected when he assumed the charges, when in one of his first decisions, the president sent the vice president to Israel as ambassador, with the mission of seeking peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Abad has denounced Noboa for alleged political gender violence and has accused her of leading a harassment against her to force her to resign and thus avoid having to delegate the Presidency to her during the electoral campaign period, which runs from January 5 to February 6.
The titular vice president has also accused the Government of being behind the corruption investigation in the offices of the Vice Presidency that involves her son in a case where the Prosecutor’s Office also sought to indict Abad, but the National Assembly (Parliament) voted mostly against lifting the jurisdiction, although the ruling party voted in favor.
The general elections in Ecuador are called for Sunday, February 9 and, according to the polls published so far, Noboa and the candidate of the correismo Luisa González appear as prominent favorites to move on to the second round.
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