International
Luisa González, Correa’s bishop who seeks revenge against Noboa
Luisa González, the bishop of the former president of Ecuador Rafael Correa (2007-2017), once again personifies the hope of the correismo to return to govern the country after eight years away from power and to be the first Ecuadorian woman to win a presidential election.
González (Quito, 1977), a lawyer with peasant roots on the Ecuadorian coast, was on the verge of achieving it in 2023, when she was surpassed in the second round of the extraordinary elections by the current president, Daniel Noboa, who now seeks his re-election and once again profiles himself as the greatest rival of the correísmo.
This 47-year-old single mother with two children, a woman of Correa’s absolute confidence, accepted the challenge of seeking her particular revenge and returning to being the candidate of the Citizen Revolution led by the former president, who is disqualified from being a candidate for the sentence of eight years in prison for bribery he received in 2020 and he considers “lawfare”.
Although he was born circumstantially in Quito when his parents visited the capital, González defines himself as an “authentic manaba”, originally from the coastal province of Manabí, where he grew up in Canuto, a lavish agricultural land where the “montubios” the tough peasants of the coast are also forged.
He worked in the field with his grandfather, who taught him to temper his character, to ride a horse, to handle the machete and perform the hard tasks entrusted to the mountaineer. Emerging from that rural and challenging environment, González proudly claims to be a woman who has managed to make herself and get her children ahead.
With a strong Catholic conviction, a crucifix hangs from González’ neck and on her skin she has tattooed pink paths since she was a twenty-year-old that symbolize her commitment to the Lord, one with a stem formed by the words of a fragment of the Bible.
His positions against the total decriminalization of abortion have also cost him criticism from leftist groups in his time as an assemblyman.
González studied at the International University of Ecuador, where she received a lawyer’s degree, but also has a master’s degree in Economics and Development at the Complutense University of Madrid.
He is a lover of Manabita cuisine, one of the most precious in Ecuador, as well as sports and animals, to the point that he has two dogs at home.
He was linked to Correísmo from the beginning, when Rafael Correa began his political life and quickly reached the Presidency of the Republic in 2007. She is faithful to the former president, of whom she was his coordinator of Strategic Agenda (2010), a key and close position that allowed her to understand the twists and turns of power.
She also served as Deputy Minister of Tourism Management (2014), Secretary General of the Presidential Office (2015) and National Secretary of Public Administration (2017).
She served as vice-consul of Ecuador in Madrid (2011) and consul in Alicante (Spain) in 2017, as well as general secretary of the Intendencia de Compañías de Quito.
After concluding Correa’s mandate in 2017, she launched into active political life and in 2021 she was elected as a member of the National Assembly (Parliament), where she held a strong critical position against the Government of conservative President Guillermo Lasso (2021-2023), whose early departure led to the extraordinary elections of 2023.
His name began to sound just after Lasso invoked the so-called “cross death”, a constitutional mechanism that allowed him to dissolve Parliament and call new elections to complete the period that did not end (2021-2025).
After the 2023 elections, she remained as the president of the Citizen Revolution, which gave her strength to be the presidential candidate again against other possible candidates of the Correísmo such as Paola Pabón, Augusto Verduga and Gustavo Jalkh.
On this occasion he accompanies González as a candidate for vice president Diego Borja, instead of Andrés Arauz, who was the presidential candidate of the correísmo in 2021.
The Citizen Revolution appeals to the stability enjoyed by Ecuador during the decade that Correa ruled the country, which the presidential candidate wants to “revive”, as she repeatedly mentions in her campaign interventions, which happens to a large extent by appeasing the crisis of violence that affects the country due to the rise of organized crime gangs.
International
China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”
The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.
That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”
“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.
Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”
In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”
This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.
The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.
Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.
For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.
International
Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants
The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.
According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.
The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”
The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.
The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”
These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.
International
Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”
“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.
“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.
Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.
“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.
The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.
Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.
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