International
Biden will resume his campaign events next week and presents an improvement of COVID-19
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, who is at his home in Delaware after having contracted COVID-19, announced on Friday that next week he will resume his campaign events for the November elections.
The campaign made the announcement in a statement in which it lashes out against the “dark vision” that former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) outlined during his speech of acceptance of the Republican nomination on Thursday night at the party convention in Milwaukee.
“I’m looking forward to returning to the electoral campaign next week,” Biden said in the statement, which comes at a time when the pressure has redoubled to end his candidacy, with more members of Congress publicly asking him this Friday to “pass the witness” to someone younger.
In that statement, Biden makes no mention of the revolt within his party and only raises the elections as a dilemma between his vision for the United States and the one outlined by Trump during his speech. “The challenge is great and the choice is clear. Together, we will win,” he says.
In most of the statement he criticizes Trump, saying that his 90-minute speech “focused on his own grievances” and did not put on the table any plan to “unite” the country or to “improve the lives of workers.”
“Donald Trump’s dark vision for the future is not who we are as Americans. Together, as a party and as a country, we can and will defeat him at the polls,” he says.
Trump gave a speech of an hour and a half on Thursday in which he began with a gloomy tone, alluding to the attempted murder he suffered only a few days ago, and in which he called for unity, although he also gave space to conspiracy theories about electoral fraud in the 2020 elections and returned to his harsh rhetoric against migrants.
President Joe Biden has shown a “significant” improvement since Thursday although he continues to have symptoms from COVID-19, especially cough, as reported this Friday by the president’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor, in a letter distributed by the White House.
“His dry cough and hoarseness continue to be his main symptoms, but they have improved significantly since yesterday,” the doctor said in a statement.
Biden is in isolation in his Delaware home, after last Wednesday he tested positive for COVID-19 while campaigning in Nevada, a key state for the November elections.
About thirty members of Congress have publicly asked Biden to withdraw from the presidential race and several publicly asked him this Friday to “pass the witness,” in a drip that increases the pressure on the president.
Biden has seen in recent hours how his support weakens among key figures of the party. As reported on Thursday by The Washington Post, Former President Barack Obama (2009-2017) has told his close circle that Biden should “seriously reconsider” the future of his candidacy.
The call for him to withdraw came after the debate on June 27 against Trump, in which Biden, who at 81 years old is the oldest president in the history of the United States, projected an aged image and had difficulty concluding some sentences.
International
Venezuela Refuses to Repatriate Citizens Amid Tensions Over Chevron’s Departure
The government of Venezuela privately warned the government of Donald Trump that it will not accept its own citizens being deported, following the United States’ decision to end Chevron’s license to operate in the Caribbean country, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal on Friday.
The newspaper, citing sources familiar with the matter, notes that the Venezuelan repatriation agreement is becoming strained after a January meeting between Trump’s envoy Richard Grenell and the Chavista leader Nicolás Maduro, who is not recognized as president by the U.S. The Chevron issue has exacerbated tensions.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration ended Chevron’s license in Venezuela and gave the company a month, until April 3, to leave the country after President Trump criticized Maduro for not accelerating the deportation of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. as quickly as expected.
The WSJ indicates that Venezuela’s private warning could further hinder Trump’s promised mass deportation campaignof undocumented immigrants, which his administration has already had to pause due to the high costs of using military planes for repatriation flights.
International
Hearing suspended in Guatemala on revocation of José Rubén Zamora’s house arrest
Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín will know until next week if he should return to preventive detention, after this Friday the hearing was suspended for a possible revocation of his house arrest.
The resumption of the hearing was rescheduled for next Monday, at 10:00 local time (16:00 GMT), by order of criminal judge Erick García, since, as he indicated, he lacks the case file for the moment.
The possible return of Zamora Marroquín to prison is due to a case of alleged money laundering in 2022, the year in which the Public Ministry (Prosecution), whose leadership is sanctioned internationally under allegations of corruption, began a judicial prosecution against him.
The journalist’s potential return to prison takes place after this week an Appeals Chamber revoked the house arrest measures that had been granted since October 2024 to the former owner and founder of the media El Periódico, a morning in which he uncovered more than a thousand cases of state corruption.
According to the opinion of the magistrates of the Third Appeals Chamber, there was “an error” in the resolution of the judge who decided to release the journalist last year. The review of the measures was requested by the Prosecutor’s Office.
Zamora Marroquín was detained for the case for more than 800 days, between July 29, 2022 and October 2024, without his guilt being proven to date.
Before this Friday’s hearing, the journalist recalled in statements to the media that he has complied with all the court orders regarding his house arrest, and reiterated that he has not seen his family for more than two years, since they are abroad in the face of the risks they could encounter in the Central American country.
Likewise, he added that the persecution against him has been “physical and psychological but I am not going to give up” and described the Third Appeals Chamber as a court linked to the “corrupt” and Deputy Felipe Alejos, sanctioned by the United States for corruption.
Zamora Marroquín, with 30 years of journalistic career, was arrested on July 29, 2022, just five days after issuing strong criticism for corruption against then-President Alejandro Giammattei, between 2020 and 2024, and his close circle.
The journalist remained in prison for a judicial process for alleged money laundering, which according to international organizations such as the Inter-American Press Society (IAPA) has been plagued with irregularities.
International
Trump withdraws 400 million federal funds from Columbia University for anti-Semitism
Donald Trump’s government canceled this Friday subsidies and contracts with Columbia University in New York worth 400 million dollars “due to its passivity in the face of the persistent harassment of Jewish students,” after receiving on Monday a report commissioned by the administration on anti-Semitism on the campuses of several universities in the country.
This cancellation “is the first set of actions, and new cancellations are expected,” warns a statement signed by the general administrative services, which specify that Columbia currently has 5 billion federally committed.
The decision to cut subsidies and contracts has been made together with the federal departments of Justice, Health, Education and Administrative Services, after the operational group commissioned by the government with the specific task of detecting and denouncing anti-Semitic behavior has not received a satisfactory response from Columbia, according to the statement.
Complaints of anti-Semitism began to appear in Columbia and other campuses shortly after October 7, 2023, the date on which Hamas launched a terrorist attack against Israel, which was then followed by a war declared by Israel against Gaza that has been one of the deadliest in several decades.
That war gave rise to demonstrations against Israel as they had not been seen on university campuses for fifty years, with Columbia at the spearhead, with some anti-Jewish incidents that made the Joe Biden Government intervene and summon the rectors of several universities to Congress, several of which (including Columbia’s) had to resign.
Despite the fact that the protests have dropped a lot in terms of intensity, Trump went further than Joe Biden: first, he named that operative group on anti-Semitism on campuses, and second, he threatened to withdraw visas or residence permits from students accused of supporting “terrorist organizations like Hamas.”
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon says that Columbia “for too long has left its homework with Jewish students on its campus, but today we show Columbia and the other universities that we will no longer tolerate that terrible passivity.”
And the director of the group that sent his report last Monday, Leo Torrell, abounded in the threats: “Freezing funds is one of the tools at our disposal to respond to this upsurge in anti-Semitism. This is just the beginning,” he said.
Curiously, in the protests against Israel, one of the most active groups has been the left-wing Jews, who have denounced that under the premise of anti-Semitism, legitimate political criticisms against the State of Israel are being included.
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