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Chile president declares ‘state of exception’ over Mapuche conflict

AFP

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera on Tuesday announced a state of emergency and deployed troops to two southern regions where clashes have broken out between Mapuche indigenous people and security forces.

The Mapuche are demanding the restoration of their ancestral lands and self-determination.

“We have decided to call a state of exception” in four provinces of the southern regions of Biobio and Araucania and the deployment of troops to help control “the serious disturbance of public order” there, Pinera said in a speech.

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The billionaire right-wing president addressed the nation on a controversial national holiday that marks the “discovery” of the Americas by Christopher Columbus.

It is a day in history that is viewed as a disaster by many indigenous peoples throughout the Americas due to the colonization that followed.

Pinera, 71, said that the four provinces in question have seen “repeated acts of violence linked to drug-trafficking, terrorism and organized crime committed by armed groups,” and that innocent civilians and police officers have been killed in the violence.

The state of exception is initially due to last two weeks in the provinces of Biobio and Arauco in the Biobio region, and in Malleco and Cautin in La Araucania.

The Mapuche are Chile’s largest indigenous group numbering 1.7 million out of the country’s 19 million population and live mostly in the south.

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Their leaders are demanding that land currently owned by farms and logging companies be restored to them.

The lack of a solution to Mapuche demands has prompted radical groups to carry out attacks on trucks and private property over the last decade.

One person was killed and 17 injured on Sunday when clashes broke out in Santiago between security forces and protesters marching for Mapuche autonomy.

– Possible escalation –

Political analyst Lucía Dammert criticized Pinera’s decision, saying that the deployment of troops could further intensify the Mapuche conflict.

“The government has been unable to generate an effective and fair policy to solve the problems that exist in Araucania,” Dammert, a professor at the University of Santiago, told AFP. She added that sending troops to the region could lead to “an escalation of violence.”

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But Luciano Rivas, the ruling party’s governor of Araucania, backed the deployment saying there is “a very deep security crisis” in the region.

“Today we are living in a very complex situation where the police are overwhelmed by groups with heavy caliber weapons,” Rivas told CNN Chile.

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International

Canelo Álvarez after meeting with Claudia Sheinbaum: “I know he’s going to win”

Mexican boxer Saúl Canelo Álvarez anticipated this Thursday the victory in the elections of next June 2 of the candidate for the presidency of the ruling party, Claudia Sheinbaum, in a meeting with her.

“I know he’s going to win,” the boxer told the former head of the Government of Mexico City, between 2018 and 2023, according to a short video of the meeting that Sheinbaum posted on the social network X.

Álvarez, who is one of the best in his sport worldwide, expressed his support for the representative of the Sigamos Haciendo Historia coalition, made up of the ruling National Regeneration Movement (Morena) and its allies, the Labor Parties (PT) and Verde Ecologista de México (PVEM).

In the clip of just over a minute, the owner of 11 world belts throughout his career, advised Sheinbaum to get up in good shape every day, including, meditating on waking up and at night, before going to bed, as well as getting into a tub with ice every morning.

“We’ll see, then, from now on I’m going to get up and get into a tub with ice,” Sheinbaum said laughing.

Canelo, who in his last fight on Saturday, May 4, defeated the also Mexican Jaime Munguía and endorsed his status in world boxing, assured that “sheinbaum will do very well” and offered him his support.

“There in what we can help and we are also available,” said the boxer.

Álvarez praised the ideas of the ruling candidate, especially what is related to investing in Mexico.

Both characters concluded the brief meeting with a kiss and a hug, to finally raise the candidate’s arms as a sign of victory.

Sheinbaum leads the electoral preferences in the June 2 elections, the largest in the country’s history, where 20,375 positions will be renewed in Mexico, including the presidency, the 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and the 128 of the Senate, as well as nine state governments, including that of Mexico City.

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International

Trump’s defense doubts Cohen’s honesty on his second day of cross-examination

The defense of former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) attacked on Thursday the credibility of Michael Cohen, who was a lawyer and right-hand man of the former president, during his second day of cross-examination in the criminal trial against the Republican politician.

During the examination of the star witness of the prosecutor’s office on Thursday morning, Trump’s chief lawyer, Todd Blanche, focused on exposing Cohen’s honesty before the jury and not so much on discussing specific issues of the case.

This week, Cohen testified that Trump ordered him to pay $130,000 to silence Stormy Daniels, a porn star who claims to have had relations with Trump in 2006, and detailed how he later reimbursed him for his expenses.

According to The New York Times on Thursday, the tycoon has asked his lawyer to be especially incisive in his interrogation, something that was seen in his questions today.

One of his tactics to call Cohen’s credibility into question before the jury was to tell Trump’s former lawyer to tell the lies he told the 2017 House Intelligence Committee, where Cohen lied under oath, which cost him to be accused of perjury in 2018.

Blanche relied on the fact that Cohen acknowledged under oath in Trump’s civil fraud trial that he had lied at the time.

“And he lied again when he met with the special prosecutor on August 7 (2018), right?” Blanche asked him, to which Cohen responded with a: “Correct.”

Cohen, who was extremely serene during the first three hours of the cross-examination, said he accepted the responsibility for lying under oath.

However, he pointed out that he did it because it was what Trump wanted, and also because “whis at stake (him) personally affected.”

Cohen served a prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2018 to federal campaign funding charges related to the plan to silence the extramarital scandal during Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

Blanche unsuccessfully sought Cohen to admit to having lied about the reason for the calls at the end of 2016 to Keith Schiller, Trump’s bodyguard, indicating that it was not to negotiate Daniels’ payment, as he has testified, but to talk about a series of harassment calls from a 14-year-old prankster.

Another way that Blanche used this Thursday was to emphasize Cohen’s hatred of Trump – whose loyalty disintegrated in 2018 – and asked the former lawyer if he believed that his podcast ‘Mea Culpa’ and interviews he has given to the media helped Donald Trump be accused.

“I gave myself some credit, yes,” Cohen said with a calm tone.

The defense, in addition, today showed several clips of Cohen’s program using rude language to refer to Trump.

In one of the excerpts that were shown this Thursday, the one who was the right-hand man of the Republican politician called Trump “fool Donald.”

Trump’s legal team also hinted at the jury at a possible vendetta by the lawyer part of Trump’s close circle for not having climbed further on the White House’s work scale.

As well as his lack of professionalism in general when pointing out that he had been disabled and that he used an artificial intelligence (AI) program to generate legal summons to his lawyers, a response that turned out to be a hallucination – with a correct structure, but false information – of the software.

Trump, accused in this trial of 34 serious crimes of falsification of commercial records, attended the court today with an entourage of Republicans, something that is not unusual.

His son Eric and more than ten Republican lawmakers sat behind Trump this Thursday, showing that, despite having to spend four days every week in the Manhattan Criminal Court, the boss is in the middle of his campaign for this year’s presidential election.

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International

The United States keeps Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism despite collaborating with the island

The United States confirmed on Thursday that it keeps Cuba on the list of sponsoring states of terrorism despite the fact that on Wednesday it admitted that it cooperates with the island in some activities to combat terrorism.

“You can cooperate in the fight against terrorism, but we still believe that there are actions being taken that support terrorist activities,” said the deputy spokesman of the State Department, Vedant Patel, at a press conference.

Patel did not answer the question about the specific actions that Cuba must take to remove it from the list of countries that promote terrorism, which was included in 2021 and which generates a series of economic sanctions for the island.

Joe Biden’s Administration keeps Cuba on that list despite the fact that yesterday it removed it from another list, that of countries that “do not fully cooperate with anti-terrorist efforts” (NFCC).

Washington and Havana resumed police cooperation in 2023, including in matters against terrorism, so the State Department decided that continuing with the certification of Cuba as a country that does not fully cooperate “is no longer appropriate.”

The Cuban government said on Wednesday that this decision does not consider it sufficient and demanded that the United States go a step further and definitively remove the island from the list of sponsors of terrorism.

The inclusion of Cuba on the U.S. list in January 2021 was one of the last decisions made by the Donald Trump Administration, between 2017 and 2021, before leaving power.

The United States then justified the measure by saying that the presence on the island of members of the Colombian guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN), who were in Havana to hold peace negotiations with the Government of Colombia.

In August 2022 and after an order from the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, the Attorney General’s Office of Colombia suspended the arrest warrants against 17 ELN commanders, among which were those who had asked Cuba to extradite.

To determine a country as a sponsor of terrorism, US law requires the Secretary of State to determine that the Government of that nation has repeatedly provided support to terrorist groups.

Cuba had been part of the list since 1982 but came out in 2015, during the rapprochement stage of the then US President Barack Obama, between 2009 and 2017, which was later stopped by Trump.

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