International
Islamic Jihad launches 20 rockets from Gaza to Israel, the largest attack in months
The terrorist group Islamic Jihad launched 20 projectiles from Gaza on Monday against several communities in southern Israel, most of which were intercepted and others fell on the ground without causing victims, according to the Israeli Army in a statement.
The attack, which the Islamists carried out from the southern city of Jan Yunis, is the largest launched from the Strip in recent months, in which the missiles that crossed the border into Israeli territory rarely reached the ten.
“We have bombed Kissufim, Ein Hashlosha, Nirim, Sofa, Holit and the settlements of the Gaza area with rocket launches in response to the crimes of the Zionist enemy against our Palestinian people,” Islamic Jihad wrote in a statement with which he claimed the attack.
The Israeli Army, for its part, said it was “attacking” the point of origin of the rocket launch in the statement in this regard.
At the same time, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported an Israeli bombing in the town of Khuza’a, east of Jan Yunis, in which a Palestinian was killed and an indeterminate number were injured and taken to the European Hospital in Gaza.
Israel also reported that it has eliminated about twenty alleged Palestinian militiamen in its “selective incursions” in Shujaiya, a neighborhood in the southeast of Gaza City where Hebrew troops resumed their military offensive last Thursday before the return of Hamas to the area.
Since the war began, about 37,900 people have died in Gaza (mostly women and children) and almost 87,000 have been injured, according to data collected by the Ministry of Health of the Strip, controlled by Hamas.
To these are added the more than 10,000 bodies that continue under the rubble without ambulances or rescue teams having access to them.
On the other hand, the Israeli Army released Mohamed Abu Salmeya, director of the Al Shifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, after spending seven months in detention, Palestinian sources told EFE.
Abu Salmeya returned to Gaza along with at least 50 other Palestinian detainees, whose release is due to the fact that “the prisons are full,” according to the Israeli public radio Kan, although the exact number of Gaza detainees in Israeli prisons is not known.
In statements to the Qatari chain Al Jazeera after his release, Abu Salmeya denounced that the prisoners are in “tragic conditions,” defined by the lack of food, medicines, and the torture carried out against them.
“We have been subjected to severe torture and the (Israeli) occupation assaults the prisoners’ cells and assaults them almost daily,” he explained.
The former director of the largest hospital in Gaza was arrested on November 23 to be interrogated for the “terrorist activities” of the Islamist organization Hamas in the clinic, after the discovery of one of its tunnels under the center.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered an “immediate” investigation after the release of Abu Salmeya, seven months detained by Israel allegedly in a detention center in the Negev.
And several Israeli ministers also rejected that release.
The Minister of National Security, the far-right Itamar Ben Gvir, denounced on social network X the release of Salmeya and the rest of the prisoners as a “security negligence.”
Ben Gvir seeks a tightening of the treatment of prisoners, and in 2023 he already proposed a death penalty law only for Palestinians that was approved in first reading two months later, although he still has to receive the green light from the Knesset (Parliament).
According to lawyer Khaled Mahajneh, who visited a detainee in Sde Teman prison, in Néguez (in southern Israel), known for the harsh treatment to which prisoners are subjected, the Palestinians go so far as to remain chained and blindfolded for up to 24 hours.
On the other hand, a Palestinian child and woman died and four other people were injured during a military incursion by the Israeli Army in the Nur Shams refugee camp, on the outskirts of Tulkarem, in the occupied territory of the West Bank, the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced.
Tulkarem is one of the hottest spots in the West Bank and, so far in 2024, Israel has already killed about 57 Palestinians here, according to an EFE count, sometimes in multi-day raies with great destruction of homes and roads.
The refugee camp, the birthplace of the Tulkarem Brigade that brings together different armed factions of both Fatah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, became this morning the scene of armed fighting between militiamen and soldiers in military vehicles and two excavators.
International
The AP agency sues the Trump Government after being banned for writing Gulf of Mexico
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.
International
Buenos Aires advances legislative elections to May 18 and suspends the primaries
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.
International
Trump threatens to impose tariffs on governments that apply digital fees to US companies
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.
The AP agency sues the Trump Government after being banned for writing Gulf of Mexico
Buenos Aires advances legislative elections to May 18 and suspends the primaries
Trump threatens to impose tariffs on governments that apply digital fees to US companies
Tec de Monterrey honors one of its students for his contribution to nanotechnology in medicine
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