International

Biden’s inner circle, key in the political future of the Democrats

In the midst of the political crisis unleashed by the poor performance of President Joe Biden in last week’s presidential debate, Washington’s attention is focused on the president’s inner circle, which can push the president to withdraw or an uncertain recovery towards electoral victory.

A handful of advisers and relatives are the people who have the most access to the president and to whom the 81-year-old president truly listens, according to US media.

The president’s wife, one of his sisters and his son are the members of the Biden family on whom the Democrat relies the most. The first lady, according to sources consulted by EFE, has reinforced her role as an “anchor” of the president, encouring him to continue his re-election campaign despite criticism for his performance in the debate.

Despite the voices of the Democratic Party and the media asking her to retire, Jill is “fully convinced” that her husband can beat Trump and, in fact, if she couldn’t, she would be the first to tell her, sources close to the campaign told EFE.

According to Jill herself at a fundraising event the day after the debate, Biden approached him after concluding the meeting with Trump to confess that “he didn’t feel well,” to which she replied she replied “we are not going to allow 90 minutes to define the four years in which you have been president.”

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The president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, is the one who has led most of his campaigns since he began his political career in 1970 until he decided to run for president in 2020.

On a personal level, she supported Biden when his wife and daughter died in a car accident in 1972, helping him raise his children.

According to the Political portal, Valerie has also defended her brother’s permanence in the presidential race, but has expressed concern about the impact it could have on her brother’s health and his legacy.

For his part, his son Hunter, a controversial figure over the trials against him for illegal possession of weapons and his fight for drug addiction, has redoubled his presence in the president’s life since the presidential debate.

Biden’s son has been present even at White House meetings, and along with Jill, he fervently supports his father’s decision to stay in the presidential race.

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The president’s main political adviser and one of his closest allies. He was part of his team in Biden’s campaign for the Senate in 1972 and, since then, he has become a key piece in the Democratic environment.

Kaufman, 85, replaced Biden in his Senate post with the state of Delaware when the president assumed the position of vice president in 2008.

Biden’s sister, Valerie, describes it in her autobiographical book as the president’s “compass”: “Joe has said for a long time that Ted Kaufman is the wisest man he knows.”

He was chief of staff of the White House until February 2023 and currently works as legal director of the technology company Airbnb.

He has known Biden since the Democrat was in the Senate and was part of his first presidential campaign in 1987. He has an extensive career as an advisor to figures of the “blue” party, he worked as a counselor for Al Gore in 2000 and also for Hilary Clinton’s campaign in 2015.

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She was one of the people, along with the current presidential counselor Anita Dunn and political strategist Mike Donilon, who helped prepare Biden for the debate.

He is a lawyer and one of Biden’s closest political advisors and strategists. He has worked for the president since 1982, when he was in the Senate, going through the position of number 2 in the Obama administration and during the 2020 presidential campaign.

He is one of the people in charge of the president’s public speeches and deveived the political message of the first race against Trump, focused on the defense of democracy.

According to The New York Times, almost “all” the important decisions of the White House go through Donilon’s filter and together with Dunn and Kaufam, he prepared the president for days in his residence in Camp David for the debate.

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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.

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.