At least 48 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed this Saturday in Israeli aerial bombardments against the Al Tuffah and Zeitun neighborhoods and the Al Shati refugee camp, in Gaza City, in the north of the strip, local medical sources and rescue teams confirmed to EFE.
In Zeitun, at least seven Gazans died, twenty-two in Al Shati and at least nineteen other bodies were recovered from the rubble in Al Tuffah, although the number of victims is expected to increase in the coming hours.
In videos released on social networks, injured people are seen in Al Shati completely covered in dust caused by the collapse of at least four buildings, in addition to an atmosphere of widespread panic and a multitude of debris.
The Israeli Army reported, shortly before, that it had attacked two bases of “military infrastructure of Hamas” in the capital of Gaza with fighters, in which local media point to an attempt to assassinate a senior official of Hamas.
The Islamist group Hamas lamented in a statement the “savage attack on unarmed civilians” by Israel, which it called “a continuation of the genocide of more than eight months, in flagrant contempt and defiance of all the laws and rules that prohibit attacking civilians.”
The Hebrew Army has confirmed that intense fighting against Hamas militiamen is being recorded in the center of Gaza and “selective operations” in Rafah (south).
Already yesterday, in another attack that the Israeli military command claimed to be investigating, at least 25 Gazans died and fifty were injured when tanks opened fire on tents of displaced people in the north of Rafah, in the safe area of Al Mawasi, in an incident reported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
In the last few hours, at least 101 Gazans have died, according to the local Ministry of Health, dependent on Hamas.
“The ‘Israeli’ occupation committed three massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, causing 101 martyrs and 169 injured treated in hospitals in the last 24 hours,” the Gazaz Ministry of Health said on Saturday.
Thus, the total number of deaths increased today to 37,551 and the number of wounded to 85,911, after eight and a half months of war in Gaza started after the attacks in Hamas on October 7
The Israeli Army has reported the death of Ayman Ratma, a member of both Hamas and the Lebanese Sunni group Jamaa al Islamiya, in a selective air attack on his vehicle near the city of Khiara, 40 kilometers from the border with Lebanon.
“An air force (unmanned) aircraft carried out a precise attack in the (western) area of Beqaa in Lebanon to eliminate the terrorist Ayman Ratma, a key member responsible for the supply of weapons for the terrorist organizations Hamas and Jamaa al Islamiya in Lebanon,” according to a military statement.
Israel assures that Ratma was preparing to attack in Israel “immediately” and that he had already participated in other previous attacks, without offering evidence or giving details about it.
At the moment, Hamas has not spoken about it or claimed Ratma as one of its affiliates.
The European Union (EU) condemned this Saturday the bombing that caused damage at a headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Gaza this Friday, during two Israeli attacks in an area near its offices, and which left at least 25 Palestinian civilians dead and 50 injured, according to the Ministry of Health of the Strip, controlled by Hamas.
The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, called for an independent investigation and stressed that those responsible for the attacks “will be held accountable,” as he said in a message disseminated through the social network X.
“The protection of civilians is an obligation under the Geneva Conventions. All parties to the conflict are obliged to do so,” Borrell said.
The head of European diplomacy stated that the ICRC must be able to carry out “in safe conditions” all its work, which is covered by the Geneva Conventions, and which, according to Borrell, includes humanitarian protection, assistance to victims and access to prisoners.
The American press agency Associated Press (AP) announced this Friday that it has sued three members of the Donald Trump Administration after being banned from the Oval Office and the presidential plane Air Force One for not complying with the directive of calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not to be retaliated for it by the Government. The Constitution does not allow the Government to control freedom of expression,” the media maintains.
In its style guide, AP decided to continue calling the Gulf of Mexico “by its original name”, still mentioning the new name chosen by Trump, since it is a body of water that shares a border with Mexico and Cuba.
The White House formally blocked AP’s access to the Oval Office and Air Force One on February 14. “We are very proud of this country and we want it to be the Gulf of America,” Trump said on Tuesday.
The agency’s lawsuit, of 18 pages and filed before a federal court in Washington DC, alleges that they have decided to take this step to claim their right to editorial independence and prevent the Executive from coercing journalists to use only a language approved by it.
Trump signed the executive order to change the name to Gulf of America on January 20, the first day of his return to power. He later named February 9 as ‘ Gulf of America Day’.
The AP complaint is specifically directed against the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, his number two, Taylor Budowich, and the White House spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt.
This Thursday, more than thirty US media asked the Government to restore AP’s participation in presidential events and not to take into account “the editorial point of view” when limiting access to the White House.
Among the signatories are the television networks Fox News and Newsmax, with a conservative tinge, in addition to other large newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Wall Street Journal or The Atlantic.
AP highlighted when reporting on his complaint that this Friday Trump referred to that agency as “radical left-wing lunatics”: It is “a third-rate company with a first name,” he said about it, the main one in the country and founded in 1846.
The Legislature of the city of Buenos Aires approved this Friday the suspension of the open, simultaneous and mandatory primary elections (PASO), a measure that, according to the deputy head of government, Clara Muzzio, “allows to save 20 billion pesos (about 18,894 million dollars)”, and advanced the legislative elections for May 18.
“The City Legislature suspended the PASO, a measure that saves $20 billion for neighbors,” Muzzio announced on Friday.
For his part, the mayor of the City, Jorge Macri, maintained that the PASO “were an expensive mechanism that only solved the problems of politicians, not of the people.”
The May 18 elections, which were originally scheduled for July, will be held through the Single Electronic Ballot system.
In that instance, the inhabitants of the city of Buenos Aires will elect their local legislators and, in October, they will have to return to the polls to define, together with the rest of the country, the composition of the chambers of Deputies and Senators.
“The fact that the elections are in May allows each Buenos Aires to decide on their own city, without being tied to national discussions,” said the mayor.
The project was approved in the Buenos Aires legislature with 55 votes in favor, 3 against and one abstention, after an agreement between the main political forces.
The suspension of the primaries in the City of Buenos Aires occurs one day after the Argentine Parliament approved the same measure at the national level.
The original project sent by the national government sought the elimination of the primary system but finally, given the lack of support for that objective, the government chose to promote an initiative that suspends them for this year.
The primary election system was first implemented in Argentina to define the candidates for the 2011 general elections, based on a political reform approved by Parliament at the end of 2009, with the aim of democratizing political representation, transparency and electoral equity.
According to the PASO system, to be qualified to compete in the general elections, candidates or lists of candidates must achieve at least 1.5% of the total votes in the primaries.
All parties are obliged to participate in the primaries, although they do not necessarily have to present more than one list of candidates to decide which one will lead to the general elections, an option for which the majority of the forces have opted in the last elections.
That is one of the reasons why the system has been questioned, among which are also its costs and the cumbersomeness of the organization.
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed an executive order on Friday that threatens to impose tariffs on foreign governments that apply digital fees to US companies, including Spain, the United Kingdom and France.
The order states that “foreign governments have exercised a growing extraterritorial authority over US companies, particularly in the technology sector,” and directly cites the taxes on digital services that “several business partners” apply since 2019.
According to the text, the Trump Administration will impose tariffs on those governments that use taxes or regulations that are “discriminatory, disproportionate or designed to transfer significant funds or intellectual property from US companies to that government or its chosen domestic entities.”
Trump delegates to the US Trade Representative the possibility of “renewing investigations” on the so-called technology fees of Spain, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Austria and Turkey, imposed in the first term of the Republican, and if so, “take all appropriate actions”, which would include the imposition of tariffs.
“US companies will no longer sustain failed foreign economies through fines and extortionational taxes,” says the White House document, which provides for a “process” for them to “report” these “disproportionate” measures to the Commercial Representative.
He also instructs him to investigate together with the Secretaries of the Treasury and Commerce whether in the European Union or the United Kingdom the use of products or services of US companies is “required or encouraged” to “undermine freedom of expression”, political activity or, “otherwise, moderate content”.
It also suggests to the Representative, among other things, to hold “a panel” with its partners of the T-MEC (Canada and Mexico) on the tax on digital services in Canada, and identify ways to achieve a “permanent moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions”.
The order does not mention any specific company, but mainly affects large technology companies such as Apple, Google (subsidiary of Alphabet), Meta and Amazon, which have precisely starred in a resounded approach to President Trump since he won the elections in November.
In his first term (2017-2021), Trump ordered to investigate the digital fees to his companies abroad and threatened to apply tariffs to the six countries indicated today; taxes were imposed in the government of his successor, the Democrat Joe Biden, and subsequently suspended.
Trump signed another executive order aimed at restricting access to US technology, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, what he calls “foreign adversaries”, including Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Russia and China.
The executive order does not specify in detail what measures will be taken to restrict the access of these “foreign adversaries” to US technology.
Under the label of “foreign adversaries”, the order identifies China, Hong Kong, Macau, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and the “regime of Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro”, according to the text.
Trump justifies his decision with the argument that “economic security is national security” and maintains that the country must protect its sensitive infrastructures and technologies, from artificial intelligence to semiconductors and advances in biotechnology.
The executive order focuses especially on China, pointing out that companies linked to Beijing have used investments in the US to access key technologies and that the Chinese government is taking advantage of US technology to modernize its military apparatus.
Since his return to the White House on January 20, Trump has announced several restrictions on trade with the aim of balancing the trade balance and pressuring countries such as Mexico and Canada to make concessions on immigration and efforts against drug trafficking.
It has imposed a 10% tariff on China, which is in addition to the rates already applied during its first term (2017-2021).
Trump’s new restrictions come after his predecessor, Joe Biden, took steps to limit exports of semiconductors and artificial intelligence technology to China, which led Beijing to respond with export controls on graphite, a key material for electric vehicle batteries.
Noboa assures that Ecuador will not have any more blackouts in 2025 and 2026
Zelenski asks for “guarantees” from the US, the EU and Turkey for a possible peace agreement with Russia
Guantánamo expresses criticize its use to detain migrants: “It’s a black hole”
The Sudanese government accuses the paramilitaries of killing more than 430 civilians in the south-central part of the country
The pope suffers from “bilateral pneumonia” and his clinical picture remains “complex”
Europol warns of the increase in groups on the Internet to radicalize minors
Boric, Lula, Petro and Peña will be in the assumption of Yamandú Orsi as president of Uruguay
Hamas will deliver six hostages on Saturday and four bodies on Thursday, including the Bibas
Europe and Canada close ranks to count on Ukraine in the peace negotiation
Mexico has 20 of the 50 most violent cities in the world
Mexico announces reforms against “external interference”, after the US designated the cartels as terrorists
Trump’s annexation threats return to Canada at the end of the 19th century
The constitutional reform that gives full power to Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua comes into force
Von der Leyen urges Caricom to defend peace in Ukraine in the face of “an unpredictable world”
For the Government of Argentina, the scandal over the $LIBRA case is a “finished topic”
Immigrants in Denver are afraid to take their children to school because of the raids
The White House denies that Elon Musk is the legal manager of the Department of Efficiency
109 migrants deported from the US are referred from a hotel in Panama to the Darién
The United States urges Ukraine to “lower the tone” and accept Trump’s proposal on its minerals
Trumpism embraces the European far-right at its annual convention
Migrants, more vulnerable to organized crime in southern Mexico after Trump’s return
Even in the Nido de las Águilas, a section without a wall, border crossings in the United States go down
Trump says Zelensky’s presence in peace talks makes it “difficult” to reach agreements
The Government of Ecuador proposes the temporary entry of foreign forces to combat insecurity
An attack with explosives leaves five injured and destroys a toll booth on the border of Colombia and Venezuela
Xiomara Castro reaches an “agreement” with the United States for Honduras to continue the extradition treaty
Netanyahu vows Hamas will pay for violating ceasefire after mix-up over hostage bodies
The famous ‘stone of the 12 angles’ of the Incas is damaged by a stranger in the city of Cuzco
Evo Morales announces his presidential candidacy in Bolivia with a new party and moves away from the ruling party
More than 21,000 tharks have shaken the Cyclades Islands in the last three weeks
Canada declares Mexican drug cartels terrorists as well as the United States
IICA to strengthen prevention efforts against cattle tick disease with $250K investment
The AP agency sues the Trump Government after being banned for writing Gulf of Mexico
Lula da Silva: Bolsonaro “will know that in this country the law is for everyone”
Milei: Social justice promotes hostility, incompatible with progress
What are the six Mexican cartels designated as terrorist groups by the United States?
Trump threatens to impose tariffs on governments that apply digital fees to US companies
Buenos Aires advances legislative elections to May 18 and suspends the primaries
Bolivia’s ruling party meets to choose candidates without the participation of Evo Morales
The Los Angeles fires caused losses of more than 30 billion in real estate
