International
Noboa decrees a new state of emergency in Ecuador due to the serious energy crisis
The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, again decreed a new state of emergency at the national level for 60 days, this time because of the serious energy crisis that the country is going through, with blackouts of up to eight hours during to not being able to meet the national demand for electricity.
Through a decree, Noboa ordered “the mobilization and intervention of the National Police and the Armed Forces throughout the national territory, duly coordinated, to guarantee the security of critical energy infrastructure facilities to prevent sabotage, terrorist attacks or other threats that may affect their operation.”
Since last Sunday Ecuador has suffered daily blackouts in different areas of up to eight hours of duration, since the Mazar reservoir, the second largest in the country, has been left without the sufficient water level, which allows the operation of a complex of three hydroelectric plants with a power of 1,757 megawatts, equivalent to about a third of national demand.
Added to this is the cut in the supply of electricity from Colombia, which also faces a situation of great drought that does not allow it to generate surplus electricity to export to Ecuador.
This new state of emergency occurs on the eve of the referendum called by Noboa for this Sunday where it seeks to carry out with popular support a series of reforms in the field of security, justice, investments and employment.
It also arrives less than three weeks after the previous state of emergency ended, issued at the beginning of January to address the swell of violence of organized crime gangs, after a series of attacks and violent actions that included the taking of the TC Television channel by a group of armed men during a live broadcast.
The previous state of emergency was accompanied by the declaration of ‘internal armed conflict’, the same that remains until now and that serves the Ecuadorian Government to consider twenty-two criminal gangs as terrorist groups and non-state belligerent actors that can be neutralized by the Armed Forces.
Thus, in the week of the referendum, the blackouts returned to Ecuador, a situation that Ecuadorians had already experienced at the end of last year due to another similar situation of drought in the main hydroelectric plants and a fall in Colombia’s supply.
On that occasion the power cuts were up to four hours, half that at the current time that Noboa attributed to an alleged sabotage, to the point that his administration filed a complaint against twenty-two people for allegedly hiding information and not giving the voice of alert in advance.
Among the people who are part of the presidential accusation is the former Minister of Energy and Mines Andrea Arrobo, to whom Noboa asked for her resignation in a public event on Tuesday, after last Friday she had ruled out the return of blackouts to Ecuador in the short term.
Even the Secretary of Communication of the Presidency, Roberto Izurieta, went so far as to affirm on Thursday that they have suspicions that the Mazar reservoir was deliberately emptied, something that was denied by the Corporación Eléctrica del Ecuador (Celec), which operates the reservoir.
According to the data of this company, the level of the reservoir, located in the southern Andean province of Azuay, whose capital is Cuenca, has been gradually decreasing since the beginning of this year, and apparently it has not rained enough in that time for it to be replenished.
The prolonged power cuts forced the Government to decree for this Thursday and Friday the suspension of the working day and school classes, although many private businesses continued to operate normally, since in Ecuador only three out of ten people of working age have a formal job.
International
The United States accuses Russia of using chemical weapons against Ukraine
The U.S. State Department determined that Russia has used chemical weapons against Ukraine with agents that constitute a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CAQ) and will impose sanctions on those responsible.
The United States determined that Russia has used chloropicrin, a pesticide used as a suffocating gas in World War I and banned internationally. He has used it in Ukraine to force the departure of troops from fortified positions.
For this reason, the United States has imposed new sanctions on individuals and organizations related to this use of chemical weapons.
“We make this determination, in addition to our conclusion that Russia has used riot control agents as a method of war in Ukraine, also a violation of the CAQ,” the State Department said.
The United States considers that the use of this chemical armament is not isolated and “is probably driven by the desire of the Russian forces to expel Ukrainian forces from fortified positions and achieve tactical advances on the battlefield.”
The Treasury and State Departments sanctioned two people, six Russian entities and four companies. All associated with Russia’s chemical and biological weapons programs.
Chloropicrin is used as a tear agent, but it is prohibited in armed conflicts. In a trench war you can’t escape its effects and you can suffocate.
International
Trump promises the largest deportation of migrants in history, “they are going to destroy the country”
The former president of the United States and Republican pre-candidate Donald Trump promised to carry out the “highest deportation” of migrants in the country’s history if he returns to the White House after the elections on November 5, because “they are going to destroy the country.”
“Allowing the entry through the southern border of millions and millions of people, many of them very bad, is not sustainable. They are going to destroy the country. We are going to do the biggest deportation in history. We have no other choice,” he said at a campaign rally in Waukesha, in the key state of Wisconsin.
The former president once again accused his rival, Democratic President Joe Biden, of having applied an open border policy during the last four years that has resulted in an “invasion” of migrants.
Trump made these statements a day after an interview with Time magazine was published in which he detailed that he plans to deploy the Army to persecute and detain undocumented migrants if he wins the elections.
In the same interview, he did not rule out the possibility of building new migrant detention camps. Although he did not point it out as a priority since his plan is to deport them quickly.
Trump, who won the elections in 2016 after promising to build a wall on the border with Mexico, has put migration back at the center of his campaign, which has become one of the issues of greatest concern for voters.
The Republican took advantage of a pause in the open criminal trial he has in New York to campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan. Places where he is practically tied with Biden in the polls.
The New York tycoon already visited these two states in the midwest of the country in April and then also insisted on the issue of migration, since he accused the current president of having caused a “bloodbath at the border.”
The Biden Administration annulled Trump’s policy that facilitated the return of hot migrants. It launched humanitarian permit programs for people from several countries, while restricting asylum applications at the border.
More than two million people were arrested last year when crossing the southern border of the United States irregularly.
International
‘Gaby’ Carrizo, the unpopular ruling presidential candidate for the Presidency of Panama
José Gabriel Carrizo, the current Panamanian vice president, better known as ‘Gaby’, aspires to the historic Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) to lead Panama again for another five years after next Sunday’s elections, in which he participates with low popularity rates.
Carrizo, the ruling party’s candidate for the Presidency in conjunction with the Molinera party, and who this Wednesday closes his campaign in Panama City, is at the queue of the polls among the five candidates with options, although the strong base of the PRD in the country, the party of the iconic general Omar Torrijos, cannot be underestimated.
The polls that ‘Gaby’ does lead are those of rejection, with between 50% and 60% of the participants in some surveys who assured that they would “never” vote for him.
“Don’t eat a story (…) we are going to win the elections in a forceful way,” Carrizo said on Wednesday at the closing ceremony of the campaign before a mass of members of the PRD, and assured that the polls “really that they do not want to publish” predict that triumph.
A lawyer by profession, he has been a member of the majority party of Panama since 2007 and in 2019 he became the youngest vice president in Panamanian history at just 36 years old, after Laurentino Cortizo won that year’s elections.
‘Gaby’, 40, has had a lot of visibility within the Executive, which has led to it being popularly pointed out as one of the main faces behind the different scandals that have enveloped the current Government since its inception and that increased with the COVID-19 pandemic.
That year, Carrizo defended the transparent management of the $1,457 million approved during 2020 to combat the pandemic in Panama.
Carrizo has also had a step run over by the presidential debates or during interviews with some media, when making mistakes when explaining his proposals, defending for example that “Panama is safer than France” or that they want to “pass Panama from the first world to the third world.”
This triggered a wave of jokes on social networks that the same candidate used in his favor to campaign with humor, a tone of his political strategy.
In the third and final debate he made the decision not to participate, arguing that José Raúl Mulino, candidate who leads the polls for the Realizing Goals party and substitute for the disabled former President Ricardo Martinelli (2009 – 2014), did not join the debate, as he had not done in the previous ones.
“In the case of the vice president candidate, I think he was looking for an excuse not to come because the last interventions have really been disastrous for him,” José Blandón, the running mate for vice president of Rómulo Roux of Democratic Change, told EFE after the debate.
The youngest of the eight candidates for the Presidency, starts with his main proposal to reduce the working week by maintaining 40 hours in fewer days, a system similar to the one already implemented in some European countries: “Work four days, pound three,” he says on his advertising posters and social networks.
Carrizo has given continuous mass baths in the provinces of Panama during his campaign explaining his electoral promises, which include that cut in working days, salary increases – including for security groups -, free medicines and promotion of tourism, among others.
“When you ask how much 4×8 is (referring to the ruling you had in one of the debates by saying 40 and not 32) answer that there are a thousand sticks (tickets) for your pocket,” the candidate shouts eagerly in one of his videos.
The United States accuses Russia of using chemical weapons against Ukraine
Trump promises the largest deportation of migrants in history, “they are going to destroy the country”
‘Gaby’ Carrizo, the unpopular ruling presidential candidate for the Presidency of Panama
Tec de Monterrey honors one of its students for his contribution to nanotechnology in medicine
Defense Minister commends salvadoran soldier for Central American Cross Country victory
Ecuador prison riot leaves at least 43 dead
-
International4 days agoPolice enter La Sorbonne to expel dozens of pro-Palestinian students
-
International4 days agoThe US warns that it cannot support the Rafah invasion without seeing Israel’s plan to protect civilians
-
International4 days agoPro-independence Humza Yousaf resigns as chief minister of Scotland
-
International4 days agoFormer President Alberto Fujimori, admitted to a hospital for probable tumor in the tongue
-
International4 days agoThe economic data that defined Mexico’s second presidential debate
-
International19 hours agoThe United States accuses Russia of using chemical weapons against Ukraine
-
International4 days agoDesertions in the Russian Army in Ukraine are growing, according to Kiev’s military intelligence
-
International19 hours agoTrump promises the largest deportation of migrants in history, “they are going to destroy the country”
-
International19 hours ago‘Gaby’ Carrizo, the unpopular ruling presidential candidate for the Presidency of Panama
-
International20 hours agoThe trial against Daniel Sancho in Thailand concludes and the reading of the sentence is set for August 29
-
International20 hours agoRussia destroys postal infrastructure in Odessa in another ballistic missile attack
-
International20 hours agoTrump defends that each state can legislate on abortion after the restriction in Florida
-
International2 days agoThe Biden administration will forgive $6.1 billion in debt of art students
-
International20 hours agoThe polling stations open in the municipal by-elections in England
-
International20 hours agoA reputed surgeon from Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital dies in an Israeli prison
-
International2 days agoBlinken praises a truce proposal and Netanyahu gets stuck in his rejection at the end of the war
-
International4 days agoThe United States says that Israel has made an “extraordinarily generous” proposal for a truce to Hamas
-
International2 days agoUS lawmakers threaten reprisals to the ICC if it issues orders against Israel
-
International4 days agoPeople are already dying from diseases in Gaza and not only from the bombings, denounces MSF
-
International2 days agoIsrael compares the protests in Columbia at the UN with a passage from Nazi Germany
-
International2 days agoNew York Police surround the protest of the Columbia University campus
-
International2 days agoThe United States will take a historic step by classifying marijuana as a low-risk drug
-
International2 days agoNew York puts 282 detainees in pro-Palestinian university protests with “external agitators”
-
Internacionales2 days agoPetro denounces missing more than one million projectiles and ammunition from military bases
-
International2 days agoThe debate is growing about whether student protests in the US are anti-Semitic or anti-war