International

Internally displaced by gang violence in Haiti has increased by 60% since March

The number of internally displaced persons in Haiti, a country that is going through a serious crisis due to the violence of armed gangs, has increased by 60% since March to reach 580,000 people, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday.

“These figures are a direct consequence of years of increasing violence, which reached new record levels in February, and its catastrophic impact on humanitarian matters,” the head of the IOM office in Haiti, Philippe Branchat, said in a statement.

“The endless crisis forces more and more people to leave their homes and leave behind everything they have,” added the local leader, who stressed that many of them is not the first time they have to change homes fleeing violence.

The displacements occur not only in the capital, Port-au-Prince, the main area of activity of the armed gangs that according to some reports control 80% of their territory, but also in neighboring southern provinces, where the number of people who have fled has increased from 116,000 to 270,000 in the last three months.

Many of them are welcomed in communities that previously had problems with access to basic services and with poor infrastructure, which increases the fear of new tensions that will degenerate into greater violence, IOM said.

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According to the UN immigration agency, this risk exists to a greater extent in areas of the south not yet recovered from the earthquake that devastated the region in 2010, one of the worst that has occurred on the planet so far this century, with about 160,000 deaths according to different estimates.

IOM also warned of the obstacles in the distribution of medicines, fuel and other basic goods between the capital and other provinces that the country has been suffering since the end of February.

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.