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The debate from the inside: two podiums, stopwatch of lights and a thousand journalists in a stadium

The logistics of a presidential debate in the United States is not a simple thing and even less in the first and decisive face-to-face that democrat Joe Biden faces Republican Donald Trump this Thursday.

These are the studies inside where this historic day will be held in the city of Atlanta, which were already armored by the Police with several surrounding streets cut off to traffic.

The debate will begin at 9:00 p.m. local time (01:00 GMT on Friday) in a CNN television studio on the Techwood campus, in downtown Atlanta, with no public presence and will last 90 minutes with two advertising breaks.

The candidates, the oldest in history, will debate standing on two podiums separated by 2.4 meters and will have behind them a set with the slogan ‘CNN Presidential Debate’.

By lot, it was up to the Democratic campaign to choose the position of the candidates and opted for Biden to be on the right side of the television screen and Trump, on the left side.

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Candidates will access the study by opposing entries and it is unknown if they will greet each other by shaking hands.
Right in front, the moderators of the debate, journalists Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, will be sitting at a table, who will ask the questions to the candidates and they will have two minutes to answer.

Biden and Trump will not have a stopwatch as such: above the cameras they will see lights that will turn yellow when they have 15 seconds left of their turn of speech, they will blink when five seconds remain and they will be red when their time has run out.

Only the microphone of the candidate who has the turn of the word will be turned on and his rival will have it off. Anything he says will be practically inaudible to viewers.

This is how it is tried to prevent the repetition of the screams and interruptions that led the two tense face-to-face between Biden and Trump of the 2020 elections.

None of the candidates will be able to talk to their advisors during the two breaks and they are prohibited from taking previous notes, although they will have a notebook and a pen to take notes.

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About a thousand journalists from several dozen different countries have been accredited for the debate, a demonstration of the great international interest of this event, which could break audience records.

But the reporters will not be in the CNN studio, but in an adjoining basketball stadium, the Hank McCamish Pavilion, where the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets usually play.

It is not an unusual press room. Journalists work from the stands where spectators usually watch the matches, but this time what they will see on the giant screens of the stadium is the face-to-face between Biden and Trump.

The court where the games are played has been lined with a red carpet to house the famous ‘spin room’ and the programs of the major American television networks.

It will be in that space, where the advisors of both campaigns will walk to give interviews and pull arguments to convince journalists that their candidate was the clear winner of the day.

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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.

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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.”

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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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