International
Ukraine announces the dismantling of a subversive group that wanted to take Parliament
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) announced today the dismantling of a subversive group that had called a public event in the capital with the aim of overthrowing the Ukrainian civil and military authorities and taking the Supreme Rada building (Parliament).
An indeterminate number of people have been arrested for their participation in the conspiracy, according to the SBU.
“According to the investigation, in May and June 2024 a group of people distributed messages on social networks discrediting the current leadership of the State, calling for changes in the constitutional order and the seizure of power in Ukraine2, reads a statement from the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office, which has also reported the dismantling of the group.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the leaders of the group had called various public events for June 30, when Ukraine celebrates Constitution Day. The organizers did not reveal their coup intentions in the calls.
In addition to taking Parliament, the idea of these supposed subversives was to elect a new “interim government” in these public acts.
The main organizer of the event is, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, the leader of an organization that “has experience in participating in provocative acts that have not yielded results.” The Prosecutor’s Office does not provide more details about the identity of this person or about the organization he leads.
“He had rented a room with capacity for two thousand people and had also sought military personnel and armed guards from private structures to carry out the seizure of power,” says the Prosecutor’s Office about how he prepared the alleged attempt.
According to this source, the organizer had accomplices in the regions of Dnipropetrovsk (center) and Kiev and had tried unsuccessfully to attract an oenegé from the Ivano-Frankivsk region (west) to the preparations.
Four people are being investigated in Ivano-Frankivsk for distributing material with calls for the violent overthrow of constitutional order in Ukraine. Two of them are deprived of liberty on a preventive basis, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
On the other hand, Russia expressed its concern about the concentration of Ukrainian troops next to the Belarusian border, denounced by the Belarusian military command.
“This causes concern not only in Minsk, but also in Moscow. Well, we are really partners and allies,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said at his daily telephone press conference.
The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, asked in his speech to the nation last night for more “bold decisions” from his Western allies to reduce Russian airstrikes such as the one that on Sunday killed one person and injured ten others in the city of Kharkov.
Ukraine has repeatedly asked in recent weeks for more freedom of action to use Western weapons against targets within the Russian Federation to neutralize at the origin of Russian attacks from the other side of the border. One of Kiev’s claims is that it is allowed to use long-range missiles to destroy planes on Russian airfields.
Last month, the United States and other Kiev partners allowed Ukraine to attack military infrastructures located in Russian territory near the border that Russia uses to attack regions such as Kharkov, in northeastern Ukraine.
Ukraine asks its allies for long-range missiles to attack air bases within Russia, and more Patriot systems and other types of longer-range missile systems to keep enemy planes that launch these bombs away from their targets.
On the other hand, Russian anti-aircraft defense systems shot down a total of 18 Ukrainian fixed-winged drones last night over the Kursk and Belgorod regions, both bordering Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported on Monday on its Telegram channel.
In addition, the Russian Army took two Ukrainian localities in the Kharkov and Donetsk regions, in the east of the country, as reported by the Russian Ministry of Defense in its daily war report.
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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