International
Armed settlers attack Palestinian villages as Iranian threat plans over Israel
Armed settlers attacked ten villages in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, leaving more than a dozen Palestinians wounded by bullets, after a 14-year-old Israeli teenager was found dead near a settlement; the escalation occurs while Israel remains on alert to the Iranian threat of attacking the Jewish State.
According to medical sources of the Palestinian Red Crescent, more than a dozen Palestinians were wounded by bullets today – five in the village of Al Mughayir, where yesterday a 25-year-old Palestinian died in a first attack by settlers along with law enforcement forces – and another five in the village of Duma, northeast of Ramalla.
At least three more were beaten, and one Palestinian was injured with rubber bullets in widespread attacks – with burning of homes and destruction of cars – according to a count by the Israeli NGO Yesh Din in eight other villages: As Sawiya, Qusra, Beitin, Silwad, Sinjil, Beitillu, Turmusaya and Beit Furik.
The Palestinian Prime Minister, Mohamad Mustafa, today condemned the attacks of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and said in a statement that they will “not deter” Palestinians from “remaining in their land.” With the start of the war in Gaza, these attacks have increased to more than 700 since October, according to OCHA.
These attacks occurred after a search device found this afternoon with a drone the lifeless body, near the outpost of Malachei HaShalom (illegal settlement also under Israeli law) of the 14-year-old settler Benjamin Achimeir, who disappeared yesterday at 6:00 in the morning when he went out to herd sheep.
The Israeli Army reported that the violence and clashes “had ended” tonight and announced more military and police presence in the West Bank, according to a statement.
According to the text, members of the Israeli security forces were also injured in the clashes that lasted for hours, and the Army reported the use of “anti-riot dispersal means” to end the altercations.
The Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, today asked Israelis via X that they will not take “justice in their own hands” and to let “the security forces act quickly in the search for the terrorists.”
“Acts of revenge will make the mission of our soldiers difficult. Justice should not be taken by its own hands,” he said in reference to the search operation to find the person responsible for the death of the Jewish teenager, who the authorities believe is Palestinian.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, sent his condolences to the family, in what he called an “atrocious murder,” and assured that those responsible will be punished as “anyone who damages the citizens of the State of Israel.”
Meanwhile, the Army said it was still on “high alert” to protect itself from “new Iranian aggressions,” as the Israeli military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said today in a statement shortly after the capture by Iran of a freighter in the Persian Gulf, to which he made no reference, was known.
The Israeli Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, did confirm the participation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in the hijacking of the ship, linked to the company ‘Zodiac Maritime’ owned by an Israeli billionaire, and asked the European Union to declare that Persian military corps a “terrorist organization.”
Hours later, the Ministry of Defense claimed to have increased security measures.
The capture has further increased tension in the Middle East, and especially in Israel, which awaits a reprisal attack after the bombing of the Tehran consulate in Damascus on April 1, which claimed the lives of half a dozen Iranians.
Despite the official alert, the population has hardly altered their behavior at all: the bars are still full and, tonight, a large demonstration has been called in Tel Aviv against the Netanyahu Government and for the return of the hostages from the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas informed on Saturday the intermediaries of Egypt and Qatar, who have been working for months to try to achieve a truce in the war in Gaza, its rejection of the latest proposal, mediated by the United States, which it received last Monday and calls for a “permanent ceasefire.”
“In Hamas we reaffirm our adherence to our demands and the national demands of our people,” Hamas said in a statement, in which it reiterated its four requirements for an agreement: a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of the Israeli “occupation army” from all Gaza, the return of displaced people from the northern of the Strip, and a greater entry of humanitarian aid and the beginning of reconstruction.
“We also confirm our willingness to close an agreement,” the statement says, through “a serious and real exchange of prisoners between the two parties.”
According to leaks to the Israeli media and sources close to the negotiations in Cairo contacted by EFE, the last agreement on the table included six weeks of ceasefire, and a first exchange of 40 hostages for about 900 Palestinian prisoners; a hundred of them with long sentences.
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.
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.
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.
Canelo Álvarez after meeting with Claudia Sheinbaum: “I know he’s going to win”
Trump’s defense doubts Cohen’s honesty on his second day of cross-examination
The United States keeps Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism despite collaborating with the island
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