International

Mexico and the U.S. agree to keep border crossings open

Photo: @SecBlinken

December 29 |

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday that U.S. officials agreed to keep border crossings and railroad crossings open at their meeting Wednesday to address the migration crisis.

“There is more and more movement on the border, on the bridges, and that is why we have to be vigilant so that the crossings are not closed. This agreement was reached. The railroad crossings and border bridges are already opening, normalizing the situation,” said the president in his usual morning press conference, highlighting the strong trade relationship between the two countries.

“We are already the main trading partners in the world Mexico and the United States, they are our main partners,” he detailed.

Lopez Obrador met Wednesday in Mexico City for more than two hours with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top U.S. officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, to address the sharp increase in migration.

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The U.S. has suspended several legal crossings at the more than 2,000-mile border with Mexico arguing that it seeks to focus on processing undocumented immigrants.

The Mexican president added that both countries also agreed to have regular meetings to address the migration issue.

The Mexican Foreign Ministry said in a statement that there will be a meeting in January next year in Washington, although it did not specify the day.

Blinken’s visit came as the opposition Republican Party pressures U.S. President Joe Biden to crack down on migration in exchange for accepting more support for Ukraine in the U.S. Congress.

Wednesday’s trip was abruptly announced last week after Biden spoke by phone with Lopez Obrador.

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The number of people seeking to enter the United States without authorization soared this month to about 10,000 per day, nearly double the number before the pandemic.

Few migrants are Mexican. For many years, most have come from Central America, ravaged by extreme poverty, rampant violence and poor harvests, worsened by climate change.

There has also been an increase in migrants from Haiti, plagued by gang violence and lack of a functioning government, and Venezuela, where commodities have become scarce after years of economic chaos.

International

Deportation flight lands in Venezuela; government denies criminal gang links

A flight carrying 175 Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States arrived in Caracas on Sunday. This marks the third group to return since repatriation flights resumed a week ago, and among them is an alleged member of a criminal organization, according to Venezuelan authorities.

Unlike previous flights operated by the Venezuelan state airline Conviasa, this time, an aircraft from the U.S. airline Eastern landed at Maiquetía Airport, on the outskirts of Caracas, shortly after 2:00 p.m. with the deportees.

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who welcomed the returnees at the airport, stated that the 175 repatriated individuals were coming back “after being subjected, like all Venezuelans, to persecution” and dismissed claims that they belonged to the criminal organization El Tren de Aragua.

However, Cabello confirmed that “for the first time in these flights we have been carrying out, someone of significance wanted by Venezuelan justice has arrived, and he is not from El Tren de Aragua.” Instead, he belongs to a gang operating in the state of Trujillo. The minister did not disclose the individual’s identity or provide details on where he would be taken.

International

Son of journalist José Rubén Zamora condemns father’s return to prison as “illegal”

Guatemalan court decides Wednesday whether to convict journalist José Rubén Zamora

The son of renowned journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, José Carlos Zamora, has denounced as “illegal” the court order that sent his father back to a Guatemalan prison on March 3, after already spending 819 days behind barsover a highly irregular money laundering case.

“My father’s return to prison was based on an arbitrary and illegal ruling. It is also alarming that the judge who had granted him house arrest received threats,” José Carlos Zamora told EFE in an interview on Saturday.

The 67-year-old journalist was sent back to prison inside the Mariscal Zavala military barracks on March 3, when Judge Erick García upheld a Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the house arrest granted to him in October. Zamora had already spent 819 days in prison over an alleged money laundering case.

His son condemned the situation as “unacceptable”, stating that the judge handling the case “cannot do his job in accordance with the law due to threats against his life.”

International

Miyazaki’s style goes viral with AI but at what cost?

This week, you may have noticed that everything—from historical photos and classic movie scenes to internet memes and recent political moments—has been reimagined on social media as Studio Ghibli-style portraits. The trend quickly went viral thanks to ChatGPT and the latest update of OpenAI’s chatbot, released on Tuesday, March 25.

The newest addition to GPT-4o has allowed users to replicate the distinctive artistic style of the legendary Japanese filmmaker and Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki (My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away). “Today is a great day on the internet,” one user declared while sharing popular memes in Ghibli format.

While the trend has captivated users worldwide, it has also highlighted ethical concerns about AI tools trained on copyrighted creative works—and what this means for the livelihoods of human artists.

Not that this concerns OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, which has actively encouraged the “Ghiblification”experiments. Its CEO, Sam Altman, even changed his profile picture on the social media platform X to a Ghibli-style portrait.

Miyazaki, now 84 years old, is known for his hand-drawn animation approach and whimsical storytelling. He has long expressed skepticism about AI’s role in animation. His past remarks on AI-generated animation have resurfaced and gone viral again, particularly when he once said he was “utterly disgusted” by an AI demonstration.