International
Donald Trump pulls on economics and geopolitics to reverse his negative trend in the polls
Former American President Donald Trump (2017-2021) bet this Thursday for a speech with a slow tone, a “amiable” mood in geopolitical terms and a content deeply focused on the economy at a crucial moment for the future of the November elections.
“Harris is a communist, he destroys everything he touches. If he takes office, his finances will suffer. Inflation will be our priority from day one,” Trump said in the first minute of a press conference from his private golf club in Bedminster (New Jersey).
The latest polls show that, since the Democratic Party named Vice President Kamala Harris as its candidate for the presidential elections, support for the former president has fallen and the notable advantage that distanced him from Joe Biden has almost vanished.
The latest update of the FiveThirtyEight poll average, carried out today, gives Harris approximately 46.4% of the national vote, compared to Trump’s 43.4%.
From the same golf club in which he took refuge after his assassination attempt last month, Trump appeared flanked by four shelves with basic food products and several dozen followers who enthusiastically applauded his proclamations.
“We had mortgages at 2% and now they are at 10%. Every month, inflation costs Americans thousands of dollars. Only in food they are paying 148 dollars each month,” said the Republican candidate between cans of Campbell’s tomatoes, Cheerios cereals and packaged meat.
Trump described as “Kamala’s crash” the black day for the international stock exchanges on August 5 but, once the market was stabilized, he could not recycle the argument and limited himself to qualifying his hypothetical financial management as “a disaster for the United States.”
In addition, immigration was once again the origin of the main evils of the United States in a shrewed argument already for Trump, who said that “while this happens, millions of people cross the border and we don’t even know who they are.”
“Criminals, rapists and people with mental problems,” repeated the former president, claiming that many of them come from Latin America.
Trump referred to this region, and more specifically Venezuela, when he said that if Kamala Harris arrives at the White House he will apply what he called the “Maduro Plan” to impose economic policies “of Venezuela or the Soviet Union” in the United States “with disastrous consequences.”
It was not the only foreign nation to which the tycoon alluded: he said that he will be “amiable” with Iran if he returns to the Oval Office and reiterated that during his mandate there was no open conflict in the Gaza Strip or a war in Ukraine because the international community “respected” it.
“I don’t want to misbehave with Iran. We are going to be friendly (…) I hope we are friendly, but they can’t have a nuclear weapon because once they have it, it’s a totally different world,” he said.
Shortly after, he explained that in his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July he urged him to end the war in Gaza, also corroborating that he has not had any recent conversation with him.
“I encounted him to end this. It has to end quickly. Get your victory and finish it. The massacre has to stop,” he said, about the meeting they held on July 26 in their mansion in Mar-a-Lago (Florida).
Trump tried to convey tranquility and confidence in defeating Harris, something that he said will be “easier than defeating Biden” but that does not agree with the nervousness and the way of proceeding of his campaign in recent days.
The ambiguous label of “weird” about his running mate JD Vance has been one of the slabs that has fallen with the most weight, to which Trump responded today that the Democratic bench is “radical” and is “sick.”
“He is a great Yale student, a self-made man. I don’t know what it’s like to be weird for them,” he said.
Trump lavished himself for an hour and a half and then admitted several questions from the press, on the same day that Harris made his first joint public appearance with Joe Biden since he gave him the witness, celebrating a price control measure for patients in the Medicare health system.
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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