International
The United States maintains that Israel’s operation in Rafah is of a “limited” scope
The Pentagon held on Tuesday its analysis that the operation of the Israel Defense Forces in Rafah has a limited scope and although he described the attack on a camp of displaced people as “horrible”, he asked to wait for the results of the Israeli investigation.
“We still think it’s a limited operation,” Pentagon’s deputy spokesperson Sabrina Singh said at a press conference.
In that intervention he stressed that “of course” they have seen the images of the attack on a camp of displaced people from Tal al Sultan, where the impact of a missile and the subsequent fire killed 45 people on Sunday night.
“It’s horrible. It’s heartbreaking and it must stop. We must also remember that we support Israel in its fight against Hamas. It is a terrorist organization that is embedded in tunnels, that uses innocent civilians as hostages and that uses people as human shields. That’s why we are going to support Israel in its efforts to defeat Hamas,” he said.
Singh reiterated that they continue to urge the Israeli Executive to take all precautions to protect the population and stressed that they are waiting for the conclusions of the investigation opened by Israel, whose Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has described what happened as a “tragic mishap.”
The vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, said on Tuesday that “the tragic word does not even begin to describe” the Israeli attack on a camp for displaced people in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, in which 45 people died last Sunday night.
Harris made those statements to questions about the bombing, during a ceremony in Washington for the inauguration of Courtney O’Donnell as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The vice president did not respond to a second interrogant, about whether that attack crossed a “red line” in the United States’ policy towards Israel.
In an interview with CNN on May 8, US President Joe Biden warned for the first time that he would stop supplying Israel with certain offensive weapons, which he acknowledged has been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Rafah to invade.
The United States warned Israel that it is opposing a large-scale operation in Rafah, but so far the Biden government has maintained that the current military operations are of limited scope.
The Israeli airstrike, in which about 45 Palestinians were killed, many of them children, affected a camp of tents for displaced people in Rafah, in southern Gaza, where the war has caused about 36,000 deaths.
After the incident was known, Netanyahu claimed that the death of civilians in Rafah was a “tragic mishap.”
The deceased were in an alleged “safe zone” in the Tal al Sultan neighborhood, in the northwest of Rafah, where there were hundreds of displaced people in an improvised camp that Israel had not yet ordered to evacuate.
The Israeli Army reported that it was a “precise intelligence-based operation” aimed at eliminating two high commanders of Hamas who were in a building in the area, although it admitted that a fire later generated that caused a high number of fatalities.
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”
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.
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Deportation flight lands in Venezuela; government denies criminal gang links
Son of journalist José Rubén Zamora condemns father’s return to prison as “illegal”
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