International
Jamer Elder, UNICEF spokesman, from Gaza: “Children are as thin as paper”
“Children are thin as paper due to malnutrition,” laments James Elder, UNICEF spokesman who is currently in the Gaza Strip, where he has been able to travel north and witness the famine that is already looming over his population and that has claimed the lives of 27 children.
“We are beginning to see how children die of hunger, in the crudest literal sense,” he said in a telephone interview with EFE from Rafah, after having visited the Kamal Adwan hospital, in the north of the enclave, and having contemplated the total devastation in Gaza City or Jan Yunis.
More than twenty babies have died from malnutrition and dehydration in the last month: “Children are as thin as paper, and mothers and grandmothers are tied to their beds, crying, begging them to endure one more day.”
“I have never seen in my 20 years at the United Nations, a place where the nutritional situation has worsened so much in such a short time, to the point where we have caused a famine,” explained Elder, who already entered the Strip last December in the middle of the war between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas.
Last week the UN published a report that establishes that half of the population of the Strip is at “imminent” risk of suffering catastrophic famine, while the enclave does not receive even half of the basic humanitarian aid it needs, much less in the north.
Hunger did not exist in Gaza six months ago and now, one in three children under the age of two suffers acute malnutrition – twice as much as last January – due to a crisis that is worsening at high speed, according to the UNICEF spokesman.
Precisely, the Commissioner General of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, denounced yesterday that Israel had communicated to the United Nations that it was not going to authorize more humanitarian convoys from UNRWA – which he accuses without convincing evidence of ties to Hamas – to the north, where hunger is already a reality.
The visit to the Kamal Adwan, in Beit Lahia – in the northern part of the enclave – has been one of the experiences that has most marked this humanitarian worker.
“People’s ability to survive has been destroyed; access to water and food has deteriorated as the bombings have continued. Fewer and fewer hospitals operate at a time when more and more children need medical attention,” Elder summarized about how the situation has worsened since his previous visit inside the enclave.
“The families have had to move again because of the fighting. The stress of leaving even more things behind, moving fewer and fewer belongings. I’ve never seen entire cities crumbled and annihilated,” he adds.
However, Elder sees a glimmer of hope, and that is that famine is “avoidable and reversible” since it has been provoked by man, and can still be solved with political will.
“Opening more ground access routes is a simple first solution,” he said.
At the moment Israel, after subjecting it to exhaustive controls, only allows the entry of humanitarian aid through two of the nine crossings in the Gaza Strip – Kerem Shalom and Rafah, bordering Egypt -, both in the south, so humanitarian agencies need security guarantees to be able to reach the north and convoys have frequently been subjected to attacks, in addition to the destruction of roads.
According to the Government of Gaza, controlled by Hamas, about 560 people have died in attacks on trucks or food warehouses or in incidents related to the distribution of aid, as happened on February 29 in the so-called “flour massacre”, in which 118 Gazans died and more than 700 were injured in a chaotic distribution of aid in Gaza City in which Israel admitted to having opened fire.
Elder acknowledged that the difficulties in distributing aid in the Gaza Strip are endless, nothing compared to the problems in other places of conflict such as Afghanistan, Somalia or Ukraine.
“It’s getting harder and harder to find words to describe what I see,” he lamented.
International
Brazil exceeds 100 deaths from floods in the southern region of the country
The number of deaths from the catastrophic floods in the southern region of Brazil has exceeded one hundred, in one of the greatest climatic tragedies in the country, according to the latest balance published this Wednesday by the Civil Defense.
The most hit state is Rio Grande do Sul, bordering Uruguay and Argentina and where 100 deaths have been reported, five more than Tuesday night, 128 missing and 372 injured, according to official figures.
The neighboring state of Santa Catarina has so far recorded a death, which brings the preliminary balance to the 101 deaths throughout southern Brazil, which since Monday of last week has been dealing with heavy rains linked to the effects of climate change.
In Rio Grande do Sul, 80% of the municipalities have been affected by severe floods, which have partially or totally flooded cities, including Porto Alegre, the regional capital and whose main airport has become a lagoon.
In that state, one of the prosperous of the country, about 230,500 people have had to leave their homes and in total there are 1.5 million victims, according to the Civil Defense.
Rainfall and the consequent floods have left a large part of the population without water and electricity and caused considerable material damage to roads, bridges and other urban infrastructure.
The rescue teams, with the support of the Armed Forces, are still working in the area to find more victims and save the incommunicado survivors, many of whom only had time to climb to the roof of their homes.
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said this Wednesday, during an event to present investments in the areas of infrastructure and prevention of natural disasters, that this climate tragedy is “a warning for the world” and “a bill that the planet is passing” to humanity.
The governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite, has said that the state is experiencing “a war situation” in the face of what is already one of the worst climatic tragedies in the history of Brazil and that could worsen in the coming hours, since a new storm is expected in the extreme south of the region.
The heavy rains in the south of the country, an important agricultural pole, contrast with the high temperatures, above 30 degrees Celsius, which have been recorded in recent days in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, not common for this time of year.
International
Petro on the formulation of charges against him: “It’s the beginning of a coup d’état”
The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, assured on Wednesday that the country initiated “a coup d’état” with the favorable presentation presented by two magistrates of the National Electoral Council (CNE) to bring charges against him for the alleged irregular financing of his campaign.
“If the Constitution says that the President of the Republic cannot be tried by an entity other than the Commission of Accusations (of the Chamber) (…) Why have two entities belonging to an administrative entity said that they raise charges against the president? That is deeply unconstitutional and is the beginning of a coup d’état in Colombia,” the president said.
CNE magistrates Álvaro Prada and Benjamín Ortiz, who are in charge of the investigation, filed the presentation that also calls for charges to be made against Ricardo Roa, president of the state oil company Ecopetrol and who was its campaign manager, according to local media on Wednesday.
In this regard, Petro, who spoke during a day of ‘Government with the popular neighborhoods’ in Cartagena de Indias, and said that “11 and a half million Colombians (who voted for him in the second round of the 2022 elections) will lose their political rights.”
“Not because no criminal judge has ruled that they are criminals, but because it was decided by the Colombian oligarchy and the corruption regime. They want to determine, as they have done in so many Latin American countries, that the president of the Republic despite being elected by the people of Colombia has to stop being president because four or five vagabonds of the political so want it,” Petro added.
Finally, he said that he will remain in office “as far as the people say.”
“If the people say later, later I will go without any fear, without any fear, we will go to where the Colombian people orders. The president of the Republic has only one commander at the front,” he said.
The National Electoral Council (CNE), which will study a paper that recommends charging the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, for the alleged irregular financing of his campaign and violation of the electoral expenses cap, rejected the statements of the president, who considered that decision the beginning of a “coup d’état”, because they “put their magistrates at risk.”
“The serious statements against the members of this corporation break the normal functioning of the democratic system and put at risk those who are in charge of making decisions in fulfillment of their constitutional functions,” the CNE said on Wednesday in a statement.
Magistrates Álvaro Hernán Prada, former congressman of the right-wing Democratic Center party, and Benjamín Ortiz, former secretary general of the CNE, presented a presentation favorable to the positioning of charges against Petro and against Ricardo Roa, president of the state oil company Ecopetrol and who was manager of his 2022 presidential campaign, due to the alleged irregular financing of it.
The presentation presented by the two magistrates will be discussed by the full chamber of the CNE, composed of nine members, who will decide whether to admit it to continue with the process, for which they need the votes of at least five magistrates, or if, on the contrary, they file it.
This case dates back to February 2023 when the CNE opened a preliminary investigation against Petro’s presidential campaign for alleged irregularities in its financing.
As reported by that body at the time, the investigation was opened “based on the anonymous complaint filed for alleged irregularities in the financing and presentation of income and expenditure reports of the first and second presidential electoral campaign” of the Historical Pact, the left-wing coalition that led Petro to the Presidency in 2022.
International
EU countries agree to use profits from frozen Russian assets in defense of Ukraine
The ambassadors of the member states to the European Union (EU) reached an agreement on Wednesday in principle to use the benefits of frozen Russian assets to support “the recovery and military defense” of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s aggression.
“The EU ambassadors agreed in principle on measures on the extraordinary benefits of Russia’s fixed assets,” the Belgian presidency of the Council of the EU wrote in its profile of social network X.
He added that the money “will serve to support the recovery of Ukraine and military defense in the context of Russian aggression.”
The European Commission proposed last March to use the extraordinary benefits of Russian assets frozen by the sanctions in relation to the war in Ukraine, which amount to between 2.5 and 3 billion euros per year, to finance weapons and ammunition for that country mainly.
The first transfer of profits to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia is expected to take place in July.
Community sources detailed that 90% of the profits of fixed assets will go to the European Peace Support Fund (FEAP) for military support. The FEAP is an instrument through which EU countries co-finance the shipment of weapons to Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
The other 10% will go to the macro-financial aid package to Ukraine from the general budget of the European Union. This year, the community club agreed on an aid of 50 billion euros to Ukraine that is part of the revised community budget, covers the next four years until 2027 and is disbursed in the form of loans (33 billion euros) and grants (17 billion).
Most of the frozen Russian assets are deposited in Euroclear, a Brussels-based body that owns about 192 billion euros.
Belgium keeps a part of the profits of those securities in terms of corporate taxes, a fact that has been criticized by other Member States.
That country argues that it is a “general tax, not something that has been invented for Ukraine” and that part of what is collected serves precisely to help Kiev with its weapons needs and to support refugees.
The sources specified that the tax revenues generated in Belgium by those profits will continue to be allocated to Ukraine in its entirety.
The corporate tax is 25% in Belgium and applies to all companies, according to the sources, who insisted that it is impossible to eliminate it.
However, they recalled that in 2022 Belgium decided to allocate all those extraordinary corporate tax revenues to support Ukraine and that in 2023 they created a specific fund for it.
For the fiscal year of 2024, an amount of 1.7 billion euros of national corporate taxes is expected from immobilized Russian assets, of which about 1 billion have already been allocated to Ukraine.
The new legislation will apply to the remaining extraordinary benefits after this mandatory taxation, according to the sources.
The ambassadors of the Member States decided that the rate that Euroclear will charge for handling the assets will be 0.3%.
Some States such as Austria, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus are reluctant to buy weapons for Ukraine because of their policy of neutrality and Hungary has repeatedly said that it does not support the idea.
Brazil exceeds 100 deaths from floods in the southern region of the country
Petro on the formulation of charges against him: “It’s the beginning of a coup d’état”
EU countries agree to use profits from frozen Russian assets in defense of Ukraine
Tec de Monterrey honors one of its students for his contribution to nanotechnology in medicine
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