Las noticias con La Mont, 10 de octubre de 2023

*LAS NOTICIAS CON LA MONT* 📰

📃 *Premio Internacional Periodismo Y Periodismo Migrante*📃

La Información Directa a tu Celular 📲 de HOY *Martes 3 de Octubre 2023* *En El Plano Nacional e Internacional*:

*Ahora también ya estamos en la redes y síguenos a través de nuestros siguientes medios:*

– *TikTok*: https://www.tiktok.com/@federicolamontoficial?_t=8fbL5yfdiiM&_r=1

*YouTube:* https://www.youtube.com/@FedericoLamontTv

*Instagram:* https://instagram.com/federicolamontoficial?utm_source=qr&igshid=ZDc4ODBmNjlmNQ%3D%3D

*Twitter:* https://twitter.com/federicolamont_?t=1JFGx2rnaadYGDPKxR_jpA&s=09

*Colaboración Especial En:* http://MexicoTodayUSA.com

*Across the Mideast, a Surge of Support for Palestinians as War Erupts in Gaza*

The escalation laid bare the limitations of diplomatic deals between Israel and Arab governments as long as the underlying conflict continues. “We told you so,” a Saudi scholar said.

When the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco announced that they were establishing relations with Israel in 2020, Emirati officials said the deals were symbols of peace and tolerance, while then President Donald J. Trump declared “the dawn of a new Middle East.”

Those words rang hollow to many in the region, though. Even in the countries that signed the deals, branded the Abraham Accords, support for the Palestinians — and enmity toward Israel over its decades-long occupation of their land — remained strong, particularly as Israel’s government expanded settlements in the Palestinian West Bank after the agreements.

On Saturday, when Palestinian gunmen from the blockaded territory of Gaza surged into Israel, carrying out the boldest attack in the country in decades, it set off an outpouring of support for the Palestinians across the region. In some quarters, there were celebrations — even as hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians were killed and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel threatened a “long and difficult war” ahead.

“This is the first time that we rejoice in this way for our Palestinian brothers,” said Abdul Majeed Abdullah Hassan, 70, who joined a rally with hundreds of people in the island kingdom of Bahrain. In the context of the Israeli occupation and blockade, the Hamas operation “warmed our hearts,” he said, calling his government’s deal to recognize Israel “shameful.”

Demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinians took place across the region, including in Bahrain, Morocco, Turkey, Yemen, Tunisia and Kuwait. In Lebanon, Hashem Safieddine, head of the executive council for the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah, delivered a fiery speech lauding “the era of armed resistance.” And in Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria, a policeman opened fire on Israeli tourists, killing two Israelis and an Egyptian.

The ripples spreading from Gaza underscored what many officials, scholars and citizens in the region have been saying for years: The Palestinian cause is still a deeply felt rallying cry that shapes the contours of the Middle East, and Israel’s position in the region will remain unstable as long as its conflict with the Palestinians continues.

Diplomatic “normalization” agreements between Israel and Arab governments — even with the powerhouse of Saudi Arabia, where American officials have been pushing recently for normalization — will do little to change that, many regional analysts say.

*The Attack on Israel Demands Unity and Resolve*

The brutal terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas is a tragedy, one that may change the course of the nation and the entire region.

Israelis are reeling, in shock over the toll of people killed, wounded and taken hostage, and the world is mourning with them. The militants killed more than 800 Israelis in a series of coordinated rocket attacks and continued fighting. To the world’s horror, they attacked civilians — including older people, women and children — and took them hostage. More than 150 people remain captive in Gaza, in a further atrocity.

The attack was a tragic and painful reminder of how vulnerable Israel has always been — and continues to be, at a time of rising global antisemitism. The terrorists burst through border fences without warning or any immediate provocation, landed on Israeli beaches and fired thousands of rockets into Israel early on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath and a Jewish holiday. Many Israelis have called this attack their 9/11.

Hamas struck Israel 50 years and one day after the surprise invasion from Egypt and Syria that launched the Yom Kippur War of 1973, prompting comparisons with one of the major battles of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But this time the attackers were not Arab armies against military targets; they were militants from a Palestinian enclave randomly terrorizing civilians, and this attack was organized by armed groups that have long questioned Israel’s right to exist.

Israel responded to this aggression with strikes in Gaza, killing at least 687 Palestinians so far, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Israelis that this will be “a long war.”

President Biden is right to express America’s full support for Israel at this painful moment. The United States, as its closest ally, has a critical role to play. Moderate Israeli opposition leaders said they were prepared to join Mr. Netanyahu in an emergency government. The Biden administration, and all of Israel’s friends and allies, should encourage such a broad coalition. A unity government is the best chance Israel has to come together to defend itself against aggression, as it has at so many times in its history, and emerge from this war able to keep working toward a stable, secure future that includes peace with the Palestinians.

It is also the administration’s duty to work to prevent this terrible eruption of violence from spreading from Gaza to involve Palestinians in the West Bank. Mr. Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and others have an invaluable role to play in maintaining open communication with leaders of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and of neighboring Arab states to urge calm.

For Republicans in Congress, this is an occasion to rise above political dysfunction and stand with the Biden administration to show resolve, in support of Israel and for peace and stability in the region. Israel and Hezbollah, an armed group based in Lebanon, exchanged fire on Sunday across Israel’s northern border. Hezbollah, like Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007, is sponsored by Iran. Representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah have claimed that Iran helped prepare the attack, and while those reports are so far unconfirmed, the danger of a wider war is real and significant.

The U.S.-brokered efforts to establish relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a potential breakthrough in bolstering the security of the Middle East, are suddenly in jeopardy. Iran opposes that step toward peace, and if it was, in fact, behind the Hamas attacks, derailing this rapprochement may have been a major goal. Israel and Saudi Arabia should continue this effort and deny terrorists a veto over the nations’ futures.

The crisis unfolded as Israel was embroiled in a debilitating internal conflict. Ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox members of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition are trying to curb the power of the judiciary to serve as a check on the government. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis, including reservists, have rightfully gathered week after week to protest these dangerous changes and preserve their democracy.

But Israel’s military strength depends on its national unity, and Israelis have now come together to defend themselves. The government has promised a severe and protracted response against Hamas. It began with multiple strikes on cities in Gaza, and Israel should do everything it can to avoid the loss of civilian lives. Already the Israeli government is cutting off power and water to Gaza, and it ordered a siege to starve Hamas of resources. This tactic, if it continues, will be an act of collective punishment. All sides involved in the conflict are bound by international law, and it is important to note that violations by one side do not permit violations by another.

The United States has an important role to play here as well. It can and should offer diplomatic support and emergency military assistance and work with the Israeli government, Palestinian leaders and humanitarian organizations to help ensure that civilian casualties and suffering in Israel and Gaza do not spin out of control.

*We Just Saw What the World Is About to Become*

The history of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh was ended in the old manner of conflict resolution: siege, conquest, expulsion. After a 10-month blockade, Azerbaijan launched an attack on Sept. 19, claiming the enclave in a day and causing nearly the entire ethnic Armenian population to flee. Give war a chance, as the saying goes.

For Armenians, a classic relic ethnic minority whose Christianity and peculiar alphabet date to the epic struggles between the Romans and the Parthians, it was another genocide. For the Azerbaijanis, Turkic in language and historically Shia Muslim, a great triumph. Yet despite appearances, the conflict is not a Samuel Huntington-style clash of civilizations. Instead, in its emboldening of traditional regional powers like Turkey, scrambling for geopolitical spoils after the retreat of superpowers, it’s a harbinger of the coming world disorder.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region in the South Caucasus, is perennially contested. Ceded by Persia to Russia in the 19th century, it fell into dispute with the emergence of the Soviet Union, Armenia and Azerbaijan both claiming it. In 1921, Stalin attached the enclave to Azerbaijan, home to oil resources and a thriving intellectual culture. Yet the thin crust of Azeri modernist intelligentsia was eliminated in Stalin’s purges of the 1930s and replaced by corrupt functionaries overseen by the formidable K.G.B. general Heydar Aliyev. (His son, Ilham Aliyev, is the dynastic president of Azerbaijan.)

In 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev’s dreams of achieving a more rational, humane Soviet Union emboldened Armenian intellectuals to start a tremendous popular movement for uniting the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh with mainland Armenia. This seemed deceptively easy: transfer a province from one Soviet republic to another. But the Armenian demands ran into protests in Azerbaijan that almost immediately turned violent. Gorbachev looked impotent in the face of disasters he had provoked. From there to the end of the superpower, it took just three years.

In the chaotic aftermath of Soviet collapse, the Armenians undertook to defend Nagorno-Karabakh by force. Instead of poetic intellectuals, the wartime generation of Armenian leaders became militia commanders. They proved earthier and, soon, brazenly corrupt. Defending the country became their sole means of legitimacy, ruling out the concessions that peace would require. By 1994 the Armenians, mobilizing around the traumatic memories of genocide, succeeded in expelling scores of Azeris from the enclave. Last month, Azerbaijan got more than even.

In that project, it had a powerful backer: Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a master of vertiginous visions, has already tried Islamic liberalism, joining Europe, leading the Arab revolts, challenging Israel and negotiating peace in Ukraine. He now has another dream: opening a geopolitical corridor from Europe through Central Asia, all the way to China. This is the “Zangezur corridor,” a 25-mile-long strip of land to be carved through Armenia as part of a peace deal imposed at gunpoint.

Iran is not happy with Azerbaijan’s victory. As openly as the Iranians ever do, they’ve threatened to use force against any changes to the borders of Armenia. Iran, a millenniums-old civilization central to a whole continent, cannot tolerate being walled off behind a chain of Turkish dependencies. India, similarly, is on Armenia’s side and has been sending a regular supply of weapons. One spur for such support, no doubt, is Pakistan’s joining the Azeri-Turkish alliance. In the jargon of American lawyers, this opens a whole new can of worms.

*Special Counsel Interviewed Biden About Classified Documents*

Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed to investigate how sensitive material ended up at the home and office of President Biden, met with the president over the past two days.

President Biden met over the past two days with Robert K. Hur, the special counsel investigating how classified documents improperly ended up at Mr. Biden’s home and an office he used after leaving the vice presidency, the White House disclosed on Monday.

“The voluntary interview was conducted at the White House over two days, Sunday and Monday, and concluded Monday,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.

The interview played out amid the dramatic events in the Middle East, as Hamas militants carried out a major attack on Israel and Mr. Biden met with his national security team and consulted with foreign leaders. The interview’s timing had been arranged several weeks ago, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Wyn Hornbuckle, a spokesman for Mr. Hur, declined to comment.

The interview raises the possibility that Mr. Hur is nearing the end of his investigation, which the Justice Department began after Mr. Biden’s lawyers reported that they had found several classified documents mixed in with other papers in a storage closet while packing up an office at a Washington think tank, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.

Mr. Biden had periodically used the space after leaving the vice presidency in 2017 and before he began his presidential campaign. A search of Mr. Biden’s house in Delaware later turned up several more such documents, and in January Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed Mr. Hur, a former Trump-era U.S. attorney for Maryland, as a special counsel — a prosecutor with a degree of day-to-day autonomy to handle sensitive investigations — to investigate the matter.

The inquiry has unfolded against the charged backdrop of another special counsel investigation, into former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified documents he took to his Florida club and residence, Mar-a-Lago, and his refusal to give them all back even after being subpoenaed.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he had a right to hold onto the documents, and the prosecutor in that case, Jack Smith, has charged him with unauthorized retention of national security secrets and obstruction, among other counts.

By contrast, Mr. Biden has portrayed himself as surprised to learn that classified documents were improperly mixed in with copies of papers from his previous office, and his team has sought to portray itself as being cooperative with the investigation.

*Hurricane Lidia Nears the West Coast of Mexico*

The storm is expected to strengthen more before it makes landfall on Tuesday. It could bring heavy rains leading to mudslides, forecasters said.

Hurricane Lidia was forecast to make landfall on the west coast of Mexico on Tuesday afternoon, bringing strong wind and heavy rains that may trigger flooding and mudslides.

Early Tuesday, The storm, which strengthened into a hurricane on Monday night, was about 235 miles west southwest of Puerto Vallarta on Mexico’s west coast, and had sustained winds of 85 miles per hour, with higher gusts, according to the National Hurricane Center. Once a storm’s winds exceed 74 m.p.h., it is considered a hurricane.

It’s unclear exactly where on Mexico’s west coast Lidia will make landfall, but it is projected to approach land at the Islas Marías, off the coast of Nayarit, Mexico, on Tuesday and move inland over west-central Mexico on Tuesday night, forecasters say. Once the storm moves inland, “rapid weakening is forecast,” according to the Weather Service.

Exact population estimates for the areas that might be affected weren’t available but AccuWeather meteorologists said it will likely hit a “sparsely populated area.”

Hurricane conditions were expected to reach the coast by Tuesday afternoon. A hurricane warning was in effect for Las Islas Marías and for the coast of west-central Mexico from Playa Pérula to Escuinapa. A tropical storm warning was in effect from Manzanillo to Playa Pérula and from Escuinapa to Mazatlan early Tuesday.

Lidia is expected to produce four to eight inches of rain — and in some areas up 12 inches — through Wednesday across the state of Nayarit, southern portions of the state of Sinaloa and coastal portions of the state of Jalisco in western Mexico, the Hurricane Center said.

These rains will likely produce flash and urban flooding, along with possible mudslides in areas of higher terrain near the coast. A “dangerous storm surge” is expected to cause significant coastal flooding, forecasters said.

“Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,” forecasters warned on Monday.

Swells from Lidia will affect the west coast of Mexico and the Baja California peninsula over the next few days. These swells will likely cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.

Models indicate Lidia will make landfall as a Category 1, Alex DaSilva, a meteorologist with AccuWeather, said on Sunday.

The waters are warm enough for Lidia to intensify but meteorologists don’t expect it to strengthen further because of wind shear, meaning that the wind will change direction, disrupting the storm’s formation.

A hurricane made landfall in Nayarit in late October last year. That storm, Hurricane Roslyn, was a Category 4 hurricane that contributed to the deaths of four people, according to the Hurricane Center.

“That was a much more significant system,” Mr. DaSilva said. “While we don’t expect it to be of that strength, we are always concerned about the flooding downpours.”

Areas inland on the west coast of Mexico have mountainous terrain, meaning that a lot of rain there can lead to mudslides, washouts and other flooding issues, he said.

*ATENTAMENTE*
*MAESTRO FEDERICO LA MONT*

Sent from my iPod

LAS NOTICIAS CON LA MONT* 📰

📃 *Premio Internacional Periodismo Y Periodismo Migrante*📃

La Información Directa a tu Celular 📲 de HOY *Lunes 9 de Octubre 2023* *En El Plano Nacional e Internacional*:

*Ahora también ya estamos en la redes y síguenos a través de nuestros siguientes medios:*

– *TikTok*: https://www.tiktok.com/@federicolamontoficial?_t=8fbL5yfdiiM&_r=1

*YouTube:* https://www.youtube.com/@FedericoLamontTv

*Instagram:* https://instagram.com/federicolamontoficial?utm_source=qr&igshid=ZDc4ODBmNjlmNQ%3D%3D

*Twitter:* https://twitter.com/federicolamont_?t=1JFGx2rnaadYGDPKxR_jpA&s=09

*Colaboración Especial En:* http://MexicoTodayUSA.com

*Across the Mideast, a Surge of Support for Palestinians as War Erupts in Gaza*

The escalation laid bare the limitations of diplomatic deals between Israel and Arab governments as long as the underlying conflict continues. “We told you so,” a Saudi scholar said.

*The Global Context of the Hamas-Israel War*

The Hamas attack is a sign of a new world order.

Russia has started the largest war in Europe since World War II.

China has become more bellicose toward Taiwan.

India has embraced a virulent nationalism.

Israel has formed the most extreme government in its history.

And on Saturday morning, Hamas brazenly attacked Israel, launching thousands of missiles and publicly kidnapping and killing civilians.

All these developments are signs that the world may have fallen into a new period of disarray. Countries — and political groups like Hamas — are willing to take big risks, rather than fearing that the consequences would be too dire.

The simplest explanation is that the world is in the midst of a transition to a new order that experts describe with the word multipolar. The United States is no longer the dominant power it once was, and no replacement has emerged. As a result, political leaders in many places feel emboldened to assert their own interests, believing the benefits of aggressive action may outweigh the costs. These leaders believe that they have more sway over their own region than the U.S. does.

“A fully multipolar world has emerged, and people are belatedly realizing that multipolarity involves quite a bit of chaos,” Noah Smith wrote in his Substack newsletter on Saturday.

Zheng Yongnian, a Chinese political scientist with ties to the country’s leaders, has similarly described the “old order” as disintegrating. “Countries are brimming with ambition, like tigers eyeing their prey, keen to find every opportunity among the ruins of the old order,” Zheng wrote last year.

A weaker U.S. …
Why has American power receded? Some of the change is unavoidable. Dominant countries don’t remain dominant forever. But the U.S. has also made strategic mistakes that are accelerating the arrival of a multipolar world.

Among those mistakes: Presidents of both parties naïvely believed that a richer China would inevitably be a friendlier China — and failed to recognize that the U.S. was building up its own rival through lenient trade policies, as the political scientist John Mearsheimer has argued. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. spent much of the early 21st century fighting costly wars. The Iraq war was especially damaging because it was an unprovoked war that George W. Bush chose to start. And the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan, overseen by President Biden, made the U.S. look weaker still.

Perhaps the biggest damage to American prestige has come from Donald Trump, who has rejected the very idea that the U.S. should lead the world. Trump withdrew from international agreements and disdained successful alliances like NATO. He has signaled that, if he reclaims the presidency in 2025, he may abandon Ukraine.

In the case of Israel, Trump encouraged Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to show little concern for Palestinian interests and instead seek a maximal Israeli victory. Netanyahu, of course, did not start this new war. Hamas did, potentially with support from Iran, the group’s longtime backer, and Hamas committed shocking human rights violations this past weekend, captured on video.

But Netanyahu’s extremism has contributed to the turmoil between Israel and Palestinian groups like Hamas. An editorial in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, yesterday argued, “The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession.” Netanyahu, Haaretz added, adopted “a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.”

*Fighting in Israel and Gaza, in Photos*

Destruction around the Ahmed Yassin Mosque, which was leveled by Israeli airstrikes, in Gaza City on Monday.Credit…Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
A multipronged surprise attack by Palestinian militants put Israel and Gaza on a war footing. Here are images from the assault and its aftermath.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warned on Sunday of a “long and difficult war” ahead, a day after Palestinian militants launched one of the biggest attacks in years from the Gaza Strip, sending thousands of rockets into central and southern parts of the country as heavily armed gunmen crossed border fences into Israeli communities.

Israel responded with heavy airstrikes on Gazan cities, which continued into Monday morning. Hamas, a militant group that controls Gaza, also continued to fire rockets into Israel overnight.

Here are images from the confrontation.

This gallery contains graphic images.

Monday
Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile system intercepting rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel.

Palestinians inspecting damage to their homes in Gaza City.

*Where This Summer Was Relentlessly Hot*

The planet just experienced its hottest months on record, and by a large margin, scientists said.

The exceptional heat, driven in part by a warming climate, has exacerbated extreme weather events around the world, including wildfires, heat waves and dangerous flooding.

Hot, dry and windy conditions fueled an early and intense wildfire season in Canada that, by mid-July, had already become the country’s worst on record. Much of the wider Arctic region experienced warmer-than-normal temperatures that accelerated ice melt.

In many places, the heat persisted for days and days on end. Phoenix saw 31 straight days at or exceeding 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and a total of 55 days above that mark from June through Sept. 23.

El Paso faced 44 consecutive days above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, beginning in the middle of June. The punishing heat in the borderlands between Texas and Mexico became deadly for some migrants on their journey to the United States, officials said.

Parts of the southeastern United States like Louisiana also sweltered under seemingly endless hotter-than-normal days, accompanied by high humidity that made the air feel swampy and suffocating.

*Trump Said to Have Revealed Nuclear Submarine Secrets to Australian Businessman*

Soon after leaving office, the former president shared sensitive information about American submarines with a billionaire member of Mar-a-Lago, according to people familiar with the matter.

Shortly after he left office, former President Donald J. Trump shared apparently classified information about American nuclear submarines with an Australian businessman during an evening of conversation at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The businessman, Anthony Pratt, a billionaire member of Mar-a-Lago who runs one of the world’s largest cardboard companies, went on to share the sensitive details about the submarines with several others, the people said. Mr. Trump’s disclosures, they said, potentially endangered the U.S. nuclear fleet.

Federal prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, learned about Mr. Trump’s disclosures of the secrets to Mr. Pratt, which were first revealed by ABC News, and interviewed him as part of their investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents, the people said.

According to another person familiar with the matter, Mr. Pratt is now among more than 80 people whom prosecutors have identified as possible witnesses who could testify against Mr. Trump at the classified documents trial, which is scheduled to start in May in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla.

Mr. Pratt’s name does not appear in the indictment accusing Mr. Trump of illegally holding on to nearly three dozen classified documents after he left office and then conspiring with two of his aides at Mar-a-Lago to obstruct the government’s attempts to get them back.

But the account that Mr. Trump discussed some of the country’s most sensitive nuclear secrets with him in a cavalier fashion could help prosecutors establish that the former president had a long habit of recklessly handling classified information.

And the existence of the testimony about the conversation underscores how much additional information the special prosecutor’s office may have amassed out of the public’s view.

During his talk with Mr. Pratt, Mr. Trump revealed at least two pieces of critical information about the U.S. submarines’ tactical capacities, according to the people familiar with the matter. Those included how many nuclear warheads the vessels carried and how close they could get to their Russian counterparts without being detected.

It does not appear that Mr. Trump showed Mr. Pratt any of the classified documents that he had been keeping at Mar-a-Lago. In August last year, the F.B.I. carried out a court-approved search warrant at the property and hauled away more than 100 documents containing national security secrets, including some that bore the country’s most sensitive classification markings.

Mr. Trump had earlier returned hundreds of other documents he had taken with him from the White House, some in response to a subpoena.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Smith declined to comment. Representatives for Mr. Pratt did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Even though Mr. Pratt has been interviewed by prosecutors, the people familiar with the matter said, it remained unclear whether Mr. Trump was merely blustering or exaggerating in his conversation with him.

Still, Mr. Trump has been known to share classified information verbally on other occasions. During an Oval Office meeting in 2017 shortly after he fired the F.B.I. director James B. Comey, Mr. Trump revealed sensitive classified intelligence to two Russian officials, according to people briefed on the matter.

Well into his presidency, he also posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, a classified photo of an Iranian launch site.

The indictment in the documents case also accused Mr. Trump of showing a classified battle plan to attack Iran to a group of visitors to his club in Bedminster, N.J. Prosecutors claim that a recording of the meeting with the visitors depicts Mr. Trump as describing the document he brandished as “secret.”

Mr. Trump has not had access to more updated U.S. intelligence since leaving the presidency; President Biden cut off the briefings that former presidents traditionally get when Mr. Trump left office in the wake of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I just think that there is no need for him to have the intelligence briefings,” Mr. Biden said at the time.

“What value is giving him an intelligence briefing?” he said. “What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”

Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Pratt appear to fit a pattern of the former president’s collapsing his public office and its secrets into his private interests.

Mr. Pratt cultivated a relationship with Mr. Trump once he became president. He joined Mar-a-Lago in 2017, then was invited to a state dinner and had Mr. Trump join him at one of his company’s plants in Ohio.

*U.S. Dysfunction Clouds Economic Diplomacy Efforts*

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen calls on Congress to authorize more economic support for Ukraine.

As she traveled to Morocco, Ms. Yellen affirmed America’s support for Israel.

“The United States stands with the people of Israel and condemns yesterday’s horrific attack against Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza,” Ms. Yellen said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday. “Terrorism can never be justified and we support Israel’s right to defend itself and protect its citizens.”

In an interview on Sunday during her flight to Marrakesh, Ms. Yellen acknowledged that other nations feel concerned and anxious about the political gridlock that has gripped the United States. However, she pointed out that other democracies face similar obstacles and that she believed America’s allies would continue to be supportive of the Biden administration’s efforts on issues such as protecting Ukraine and addressing climate change.

“I think they have been delighted over the last two years to see the United States resume a very strong global leadership role and they want to work with us and they want us to be successful,” Ms. Yellen said.

Yet America’s role as an economic bulwark against Russia’s war in Ukraine has been undercut by its own domestic politics, including Republican opposition to providing more economic support to Ukraine. The United States’s huge debt load and its inability to find a more sustainable fiscal path has also hurt its economic credibility.

“The rest of the world can only look aghast with trepidation at our dysfunction — lurching from threats of default, to shutdowns, the adjournment of the House because there is no speaker,” said Mark Sobel, a former longtime Treasury Department official who is now the U.S. chairman of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, a think tank. “While foreign governments have always expected a degree of hurly-burly U.S. behavior, the current level of dysfunction will surely erode trust in U.S. leadership, stability and reliance on the dollar’s global role.”

Eswar Prasad, the former head of the I.M.F.’s China division, added that instability in the U.S. economy could be problematic for some of the world’s most vulnerable economies that rely on America to be a source of stability.

“For countries that are already struggling to prop up their economies and financial markets, the added uncertainty from the political drama in Washington is most unwelcome,” Mr. Prasad said.

The gathering comes at a delicate moment for the global economy. While the world appears poised to avoid a recession and achieve a so-called soft landing, the fight against inflation remains a challenge and output remains tepid. Economic weakness in China and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine continue to be headwinds.

The higher borrowing costs that central banks have deployed to tame inflation have also made it more difficult for countries to manage their debt loads.

That is a problem across the globe, including in the United States, where the gross national debt stands just above $33 trillion. Foreign appetite for government bonds has been weak in recent months and concerns about the sustainability of America’s debt have become more prevalent. That is making it somewhat more challenging for the United States to counsel other nations on how they should manage their finances.

The most challenging task for Ms. Yellen will be persuading other nations to continue to provide robust economic aid to Ukraine as its war with Russia drags on. European nations are coping with economic stagnation, and with Congress in disarray, it is unclear how the U.S. will continue to help Ukraine prop up its economy.

Ms. Yellen said she would tell her counterparts that supporting Ukraine remains a top priority. Explaining that the Biden administration lacks good options for providing assistance on its own, she called on Congress to authorize additional funding.

“Fundamentally we have to get Congress to approve this,” Ms. Yellen said. “There’s no gigantic set of resources that we don’t need Congress for.”

Dismissing concerns that the U.S. cannot afford to support Ukraine, Ms. Yellen argued that the cost of letting the country fall to Russia would ultimately be higher.

“If you think about what the national security implications are for us if we allow a democratic country in Europe to be overrun by Russia and what that’s going to mean in the future for our own national defense needs and those of our neighbors, we can’t not afford it,” Ms. Yellen said.

¡Buenos días, excelente inicio de semana! #MeetPoint Ajedrez 2024: comienza el juego político
🔹Revisiones de Texas a camiones agravan la crisis.
🔹México necesita elevar productividad con digitalización: WEF
🔹Pierden 412 mdd autopartes por paro en EU.
🔹Recaudación aumenta 8.9% a septiembre: SAT.
🔹Dos mexicanos son rehenes de Hamás; otros 500, en zona de guerra.

El estallido de violencia en Israel provocó otro encontronazo en las redes sociales entre políticos de la 4T y de la oposición; convertidos, de manera súbita, en expertos de la problemática histórica del Medio Oriente.

Como es natural abundaron las barbaridades.

Lo importante, en lo que deben estar todos concentrados, es en salvaguardar la integridad de los mexicanos sorprendidos en la zona de conflicto.

Ricardo Monreal calculó en 3 mil 500 los mexicanos que requieren solidaridad y apoyo.

La cancillería, que es la institución que maneja los datos oficiales, reportó hasta la tarde de ayer 500 compatriotas registrados en el formulario de emergencia y hay dos mexicanos entre los secuestrados.

Las consecuencias de lo que ocurre se extenderán por tiempo indefinido mucho más allá del territorio de Israel y afectarán, lo hacen ya, a la comunidad internacional en su conjunto. La prioridad para nosotros es que los mexicanos regresen sanos y salvos.

2024, la cuestión del género
La sesión de hoy de la Comisión de Prerrogativas y Partidos Políticos del INE dará nota. Trascendió que podría ordenar que los partidos postulen al menos 5 mujeres para las ocho gubernaturas y la jefatura de Gobierno de la CDMX que estarán en juego el año próximo.

Lo que busca el instituto es que la paridad de género sea una realidad concreta y no solo material para discursos floridos que no aterrizan.

No será, en caso de aprobarse, una resolución de fácil aplicación. Al contrario, pueden adelantarse inconformidades mayores de políticos varones que se sentirán desplazados de manera injusta.

Hay, según los sondeos conocidos, entidades en las que dos, incluso tres hombres de un mismo partido, están mejor posicionados que las mujeres. De manera que las decisiones en el INE pueden provocar una revuelta al interior de los partidos.

Claudia, pisa fuerte en Jalisco
Se esperaba con interés la presencia de Claudia Sheinbaum en Jalisco, sobre todo porque el estado occidental ha sido bastión del Movimiento Ciudadano, que es gobierno es el estado y en la capital.

La respuesta fueron eventos masivos, exitosos, como el de Tlajomulco donde las crónicas periodísticas hablan de 15 mil personas reunidas en la arena VFG, dedicada a don Vicente Fernández

El mensaje de la doctora Sheinbaum se centró en la unidad y en la participación activa de los seguidores para atraer más personas a su causa.

Ahí queda el saldo de la visita. Ya se verá si los otros contendientes logran una movilización semejante y si la presencia de Claudia mueve las encuestas que han estado muy cerradas.

Trejo Delarbre
El columnista de Crónica, Raúl Trejo Delarbre, doctor en Sociología, fue distinguido con el Premio Universidad Nacional 2023 en el área de investigación en Ciencias Sociales.

El doctor Trejo es especialista en medios, sociedad y cibercultura. Su más reciente libro “Adiós a los medios”, es la mejor guía para conocer la comunicación contemporánea. Felicidades, Raúl.

*ATENTAMENTE*
*MAESTRO FEDERICO LA MONT*

Sent from my iPod

LAS NOTICIAS CON LA MONT* 📰

📃 *Premio Internacional Periodismo Y Periodismo Migrante*📃

La Información Directa a tu Celular 📲 de HOY *Jueves 28 de Septiembre 2023* *En El Plano Nacional e Internacional*:

*Ahora también ya estamos en la redes y síguenos a través de nuestros siguientes medios:*

– *TikTok*: https://www.tiktok.com/@federicolamontoficial?_t=8fbL5yfdiiM&_r=1

*YouTube:* https://www.youtube.com/@FedericoLamontTv

*Instagram:* https://instagram.com/federicolamontoficial?utm_source=qr&igshid=ZDc4ODBmNjlmNQ%3D%3D

*Twitter:* https://twitter.com/federicolamont_?t=1JFGx2rnaadYGDPKxR_jpA&s=09

*Colaboración Especial En:* http://MexicoTodayUSA.com

*Who’s Gaining Ground in Ukraine? This Year, No One.*

Although both sides have launched ambitious offensives, the front line has barely shifted. After 18 months of war, a breakthrough looks more difficult than ever.

The front line in Ukraine changed little last winter. Russia aimed to capture the entirety of the Donbas, but it only inched forward.

Less territory changed hands in August than in any other month of the war, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War. While Ukraine made small gains in the south, Russia took slightly more land overall, mostly in the northeast.
Across the front line, every mile of territory has been a grinding fight, with no repeat of the rapid breakthrough that Kyiv managed in Kharkiv in September last year, when Russia’s defenses collapsed after a surprise Ukrainian counterattack.
Russia and Ukraine have faced similar challenges this year. Both sides are fighting for positions that have remained largely entrenched for months, or even years in some parts of eastern Ukraine. Seasoned troops and commanders who were killed earlier in the war have been replaced with new recruits who often lack sufficient training.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive has struggled to push forward across the wide-open fields in the south. It is facing extensive minefields and hundreds of miles of fortifications — trenches, anti-tank ditches and concrete obstacles — that Russia built last winter to slow Ukrainian vehicles and force them into positions where they could be more easily targeted.
When both sides’ gains are added up, Russia now controls nearly 200 square miles more territory in Ukraine compared with the start of the year.

*5 Takeaways From Another Trump-Free Republican Debate*

The party’s front-runner took few hits as his rivals bickered, Nikki Haley delivered an assured performance, Tim Scott reasserted himself and Ron DeSantis took his first debate swipes at Trump.

As he sat in the spin room with the Fox News host Sean Hannity after the second Republican debate on Wednesday night, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida accurately summed up the spectacle he had just participated in.

“If I was at home watching that,” Mr. DeSantis said, “I would have changed the channel.”

The meandering and at times indecipherable debate seemed to validate former President Donald J. Trump’s decision to skip it. With only occasional exceptions, the Republicans onstage seemed content to bicker with one another. Most of them delivered the dominant front-runner only glancing blows and did little to upend the political reality that Mr. Trump is lapping all of his rivals — whose cumulative support in most national polls still doesn’t come close to the former president’s standing.

Here are five takeaways from 120 minutes of cross-talk, unanswered questions, prepackaged comebacks and nary a word mentioning the heavy favorite’s legal jeopardy.

The first time he spoke, Mr. DeSantis finally took on Mr. Trump in front of a national audience.

“Donald Trump is missing in action,” Mr. DeSantis said. “He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record where they added $7.8 trillion to the debt. That set the stage for the inflation that we have now.”

Allies and some donors had long been itching for such forcefulness.

But by the end of the 120-minute slog of a debate, that line felt more like an aberration that blended into the background. The candidates mostly seemed to intentionally ignore Mr. Trump’s overwhelming lead — other than Mr. Christie, who took an awkward stab at a nickname (“Donald Duck”).

*Forget About Living to 100. Let’s Live Healthier Instead.*

When I ask my patients about their long-term health goals, they seldom say they want to live to be 100. Instead they talk about aging with independence and dignity, being free from aches and pains or having the strength to play with their grandchildren. “I’d just like to blow out the candles on my birthday cake without coughing,” a 60-something patient suffering from emphysema told me.

Yet our national dialogue around aging doesn’t reflect this basic reality about what people value in their lives.

Our country is long overdue for an audacious health goal. The average life span in the United States doubled during the last century, a stunning achievement. Equally stunning is that life expectancy is now stagnating, a revelation that has mostly been met with a collective shrug.

The Census Bureau predicts that by 2034, there will be more people in the United States age 65 or older than under 18, for the first time in history. Increasingly people are suffering from addiction, other chronic diseases and injuries, even at younger ages. Our current state of politics, mired in narrow debates about who does and does not deserve health insurance, is not up to meeting these challenges. We need a fresh approach to talking about health before we can improve it.

A new health moonshot should not just be oriented around increasing life spans but should focus, too, on what’s referred to as health span — the years people can expect to live in good health. As President John F. Kennedy said decades ago: “It is not enough for a great nation merely to have added new years to life. Our objective must also be to add new life to those years.”

Let’s start with what already matters to each of us: healthy birthdays. When we are younger, many of us take for granted having our faculties intact with the passing years. But as we age, every birthday spent flourishing versus feeling frail becomes an increasingly precious experience.

Peer nations have already taken steps to center health span in their policies. Singapore, with a longer average life span and an even more rapidly aging society than the United States, committed in its national health reforms last year “to prevent or delay the onset of ill health.” Britain has set an explicit goal of increasing healthy life expectancy by five years by 2035. And in Japan, local programs already invest in initiatives to help older adults share their skills and wisdom across generations, such as teaching youths how to cook, make art and garden, with benefits for young and old alike.

Yet in the United States, we do not rigorously measure and report health span as we do life expectancy. Best estimates indicate that the average American can expect to celebrate only a single birthday in good health after the traditional retirement age of 65. Meanwhile, Singapore, Britain and Japan (along with Canada, Costa Rica and Chile) already report average health spans of at least 70 years.

A bold but common-sense national goal would be to add a decade of healthy birthdays after retirement age. Achieving a target health span of 75 years would push us to think about health equity, given the lower healthy life expectancies for certain groups, such as Native Americans, Black Americans and low-income Americans.

Measuring health span, however, must go hand in hand with re-engineering our health and social systems. Doubling our national investment in primary care — to at least 10 cents of every dollar spent on health services — would make our medical infrastructure more proactive. We would be more effective at catching and treating diseases earlier and centering patient care on trusted relationships built over time. Increased access to primary care would mean that medical innovations offering hope for reversing diabetes or curing hepatitis could be made more available to those who would benefit from them.

Rebalancing national health expenditures toward primary care should be part of a broader shift toward disease prevention. For instance, President Biden’s cancer moonshot has emphasized the importance of reducing tobacco use and getting more people vaccinated against human papillomavirus to prevent new diagnoses of cancer. The National Institutes of Health could build on these efforts by advancing the science of healthy longevity and developing better ways to stall cognitive and physical decline, particularly by facilitating behavioral changes like reducing sedentary time.

The quest to improve health span should integrate mental and emotional health. Health departments have tackled smoking, infectious diseases and blood pressure — often resulting in remarkable gains in life expectancy. Extending health span would require taking on other major causes of morbidity, too, such as anxiety and loneliness. A lack of social connection can increase the risk of depression and dementia, often leading to a vicious cycle of illness and isolation. The role of public health must be to interrupt those vicious cycles and seed virtuous ones, particularly for emotional support and connection.

Adding a decade of healthy birthdays to Americans’ lives would also require us to reckon with issues beyond health care. When I take care of patients experiencing homelessness, who have a markedly lower healthy life expectancy than average, I measure their blood pressure and check their bloodwork as I do for any other patient. But the most definitive treatment for any issues they may be experiencing is not medicine or surgery; it’s housing. One of my patients who struggled for years to give up cigarettes quit smoking the day he moved into his new apartment. When I asked him what changed, he had a laconic answer: “Less stress and more sleep.” It was a recipe for better health I wish I could prescribe to everyone.

Housing costs money, of course, as do other basic needs, such as healthy food and quality education. But they should be seen as investments for the economic benefits of extending health span. One study published in the journal Nature Aging in 2021 estimated that improving health spans and increasing the average life span by one year would be worth $725 billion annually.

A better quality of life in older age could provide cascading returns for society. “As we age, we gain knowledge and expertise, along with the intellectual and cognitive abilities to decide if something matters,” Linda P. Fried, a geriatrician and the dean of the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, has said.

But unlocking this longevity dividend would require new narratives about healthy aging. Older Americans already contribute to society through working, caring for grandchildren, volunteering and civic participation. Social infrastructure could be further adapted around older age as a latent natural resource, waiting for us to tap it in ways that build purpose and connection. Schools could host youth mentoring programs. Employers could create additional part-time or flexible work opportunities. Even smaller campaigns that combat ageist stereotypes, like reimagining birthday cards to ditch denigrating jokes in favor of celebratory pride, could change these narratives. “Great stories take time,” reads one, depicting a stylish woman in sunglasses with flowing white hair.

In Spanish, the word for retirement is “jubilación.” Its English cognate matches what I most wish for my parents after a half-century of working: that their birthdays are not just healthy but jubilant, too. For my patient with emphysema, a dockworker originally from South America, our primary care team has painstakingly helped get his symptoms under better control. But to truly thrive, he would also need a more dignified place to live, larger public investments in indoor air quality and stronger social connections to supplant screen time. All of these seem like tall orders until I reflect on the boldness it took for him to immigrate across a continent and carve out a life for his family in the United States, like so many of our forebears. It’s that boldness our nation would have to channel to make a moonshot for health span a reality. It wouldn’t happen in weeks, months or even the next couple of years — but then again, great stories take time.

*Pope Francis Has Put His Stamp on the Cardinals. Or Has He?*

When Pope Francis anoints 21 new princes of the Roman Catholic Church on Saturday, he will seem to have consolidated his grip on the powerful College of Cardinals — and on the direction of the church, possibly for decades to come.

With that consistory, as the ceremony is called, the Argentine pontiff will have appointed 99 of the 137 churchmen who are eligible to elect his successor — at least as long as they remain under 80 years old, the maximum voting age per church rules. A candidate needs only two-thirds of the vote to win.

As a result, many observers say Francis has shaped the college to elect a “new Bergoglio,” to use the pope’s family name: a socially liberal Latin American cleric who would keep the leadership of roughly 1.3 billion Catholics on a path of inclusiveness, doctrinal openness and non-Western leadership.

But that is a hazardous prediction. History shows the Catholic Church follows strange dynamics when it is called to select the successor of St. Peter inside the Sistine Chapel.

The next conclave could well be shaped by growing dissatisfactions among the cardinals with the Francis papacy — over his management of the Vatican, his approach to global politics and doctrinal measures, to name a few of the grievances church leaders have aired since Francis’ election in 2013.

Francis himself was a beneficiary of the church’s unpredictable dynamics. When his conservative predecessor, Benedict XVI, resigned in an extremely rare and traumatic move, the accepted wisdom among outside observers at the time was that Benedict’s protégé, Cardinal Angelo Scola, who was then the archbishop of Milan, would succeed him.

But things took a different turn. In the 2013 conclave, the unspoken slogan became “Not an Italian pope,” given the maneuvers and scandals in the Vatican bureaucracy that may have contributed to Benedict’s resignation. At the same time, a feeling had taken hold in the conclave that the future of Catholicism lay in South America, home to a young, growing and ambitious community of Catholics ready to lead the church and evangelize a secularized West.

That year, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the first non-European pope in nearly 13 centuries, and the first Jesuit ever. (He also helped himself with a powerful speech before the election to his fellow electors about the need for the church’s renewal.) His papacy began with a fresh sense of reform, a focus on the poor and a more open doctrinal approach. He brought a novel sense of humility to the role, paying his own hotel bill after the conclave and eschewing the apostolic palace for a more modest residence in the Vatican. He has compared the church to a “field hospital” for the suffering.

In Francis’ mind, while the West remains influential, it is destined to decline for demographic, geopolitical and cultural reasons. So he has continued to favor the “periphery” of the church, choosing cardinals from remote dioceses with few Catholics, while leaving dioceses with millions of followers without cardinals at their helms.

The cardinals Francis will appoint this week reflect that view of the world. After Sept. 30, the churchmen leading Catholics in Juba in South Sudan, Tabora in Tanzania, Cape Town in South Africa and Penang in Malaysia will have cardinal red hats, while the archbishops of Paris, Los Angeles, Venice and Milan — cities all but guaranteed to have a cardinal in the past — will continue without them. The pope’s top theological adviser, Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández of La Plata, Argentina, will become a cardinal, along with two other Argentines. Francis will also add another Jesuit, Bishop Stephen Chow Sau-yan of Hong Kong, to the cardinals’ ranks, another sign that Jesuits are emerging more and more as his trusted advisers and members of his inner circle.

Over the course of his papacy, Francis has reduced the proportion of voting European cardinals to 39 percent from 52 percent and North Americans to 10 percent from 12 percent. He has raised the proportion of Asians to 18 percent from 9 percent, Latin Americans to 18 percent from 16 percent and Africans to 13 percent from 9 percent.

But while Francis remains a broadly popular figure more than 10 years into his papacy, for many church leaders and followers, the shine has worn off. He has marginalized official bureaucracies with his “kitchen cabinet” of informal advisers. His peace efforts regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, admiring comments about imperial Russia in off-the-cuff remarks and expression of good will toward China have also made many in the church uncomfortable.

Conservatives, especially in the United States, have become increasingly aggressive in opposing Francis’ supposed progressive doctrinal agenda. Latin American religious elites have not met expectations, despite becoming the leading force of this pontificate for the positions of power they have gained.

Francis’ embrace of liberal social values has confronted Catholics with different ways to read the teachings of the church: on the acceptance of gays and married priests, and extending the concept of “nonnegotiable” values from a ban on abortion and euthanasia to required action by church leaders on social matters, such as migration and helping the poor. Francis doesn’t give a strong response to the different messages. He tends to welcome diversity.

Nevertheless, the next conclave will determine whether the pope’s reform agenda has gone too far. This time the sentiment among the cardinals — even those he has appointed — may be “Not a Latin American pope, nor a Jesuit one,” people close to the pontiff say.

The church’s distancing itself from being centered in the West was inevitable: Eurocentrism is an outdated concept. But the image of the Catholic Church as a sort of moral arm of non-Western nations would be equally divisive. It’s a problem the princes of the church will have to figure out.

*Decades Later, Closed Military Bases Remain a Toxic Menace*

Cities hoped for new businesses and housing on former military sites. But many are still waiting for poisonous pollution to be cleaned up, a wait that for some may never come.

For much of the 20th century, Fort Ord was one of the largest light infantry training bases in the country, a place where more than a million U.S. Army troops were schooled in the lethal skills of firing a mortar and aiming a rifle — discharging thousands of rounds a day into the scenic sand dunes along the coast of central California.

Later, when it became clear with the end of the Cold War that the colossal military infrastructure built up to fight the Soviet Union would no longer be necessary, Fort Ord was one of 800 U.S. military bases, large and small, that were shuttered between 1988 and 2005.

The cities of Seaside and Marina, Calif., where Fort Ord had been critical to the local economy, were left with a ghost town of clapboard barracks and decrepit, World War II-era concrete structures that neither of the cities could afford to tear down. Also left behind were poisonous stockpiles of unexploded ordnance, lead fragments, industrial solvents and explosives residue, a toxic legacy that in some areas of the base remains largely where the Army left it.

Across the country, communities were promised that closed bases would be restored, cleaned up and turned over for civilian use — creating jobs, spurring business growth and providing space for new housing.

But the cleanup has proceeded at a snail’s pace at many of the facilities, where future remediation work could extend until 2084 and local governments are struggling with the cost of making the land suitable for development.

Marina and Seaside city officials say the land they received costs more to service than it generates in new taxes, and future growth is unpredictable.

“They say Fort Ord is the biggest success in the United States, but if you ask me it is the biggest failure,” Marina’s city manager, Layne Long, said. “They didn’t do anything to remove the blight — 28 years after the base closed.”

At more than 1,000 sites within the closed bases, the land is so badly contaminated that no one will ever be allowed to live on it. Sites that were supposed to be clean were later found full of asbestos, radioactivity and other health threats.

In most cases, fixing up the bases is costing far more than expected and taking longer, federal reports show. The Government Accountability Office found last year that the projected costs for closing the bases had escalated to $65 billion from $43 billion. And while the Pentagon officially reports that it is saving $12 billion a year as a result of the Base Realignment and Closure process, the G.A.O. said that Pentagon officials did not have complete records of how those estimates were calculated.

*North Korea May Have Seen Little Benefit in Keeping U.S. Soldier*

Why did the North expel Pvt. Travis T. King, rather than use him for its own purposes? Analysts say he was probably considered more of a burden than an asset.

When Pvt. Travis T. King fled to North Korea in July, he looked like a potential propaganda bonanza for Kim Jong-un’s government.

He was the first American soldier to cross from South Korea into the North since 1982. The North Korean state media claimed that Private King, who is Black, had complained of racial discrimination in the Army and said he wanted asylum. All the U.S. soldiers who deserted to the North during the Cold War were welcomed and used for anti-American propaganda, a fate that seemed entirely possible for Private King.

But instead, North Korea deported him on Wednesday after weeks of diplomacy mediated by Sweden. American officials took custody of him in China and flew him to the United States.

The North has said little about its reasons for expelling Private King. But several experts on the isolated country said it boiled down to this: Times have changed, and North Korea is now more likely to see an American deserter as a burden than as a benefit, unless the defector is a high-profile person privy to secret information.

“Mr. King, to Pyongyang, is a low-value asset,” said Lee Sung-Yoon, a fellow with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington who has written a book about the North.

During the Cold War, American soldiers who defected to the North were allowed to settle there and start families. They became propaganda assets, domestically as well as internationally. North Korea was producing countless films meant to teach its people to fear and hate the United States, and the deserters came in handy for roles as American characters, usually evil ones.

But while the North still makes such movies, its nuclear arsenal has become a vastly more important domestic propaganda tool for Mr. Kim, said Cheong Seong-chang, a longtime North Korea analyst at the Sejong Institute, a South Korean think tank.

“Kim Jong-un’s nuclear weapons have become the most effective means for him to elicit the loyalty of his people, as he told them that their country has become a nuclear power that the United States cannot mess with,” Mr. Cheong said.

Some American civilians detained by North Korea have been used as bargaining chips with Washington, released only when prominent figures like former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter visited Pyongyang, the capital. But Mr. Kim has shown little interest in restarting talks with the United States since his direct diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump collapsed in 2019.

And North Korea has learned that detaining Americans can backfire, from a propaganda perspective. It found itself in an ignoble global spotlight after the death of Otto F. Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, in 2017. Mr. Warmbier, who had visited the North as a tourist, was held there for 17 months on charges of stealing a propaganda poster. When released to American officials, he was in a coma, and he died soon afterward.

“Kim Jong-un may have wondered, ‘What’s the use of keeping an American soldier?’” Mr. Cheong said. “It was not as if Private King came over with a load of valuable information on the U.S. military with him.”

Nor is there any indication, even from the North’s dubious state media accounts, that Private King had praised the country’s political system. His reasons for crossing into the North, at the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Koreas, remain unclear.

Private King had spent time in a South Korean jail on assault charges, and U.S. military personnel had escorted him to Incheon International Airport near Seoul. He was supposed to board a plane to Texas to face further disciplinary action from the military, but instead he left the airport and made his way to Panmunjom.

“North Korea is sensitive about how the rest of the world sees its human rights condition,” said Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. “It may have wanted to prove that it was not an abnormal country by treating Private King’s case in a ‘gentlemanly manner’ and showing that it has its own internationally acceptable protocol of handling cases like his.”

Keeping Private King in the North indefinitely might also have seemed more trouble than it was worth to Mr. Kim, said Mr. Cheong, who described the North Korean leader as more “practical minded” than his grandfather and his father, who led the country before him.

During the Cold War, the North’s totalitarian government took pains to prevent American military deserters from coming in contact with the general public because it feared the spread of news from the outside world among its people (as it still does). The soldiers were kept in special zones, provided with housing and language and ideological training and kept under constant surveillance.

The fact that Private King is Black may also have played a role in the decision to expel him, said Kim Dong-sik, a former North Korean spy who defected to the South and worked in a government-run research institute in Seoul before opening his own consultancy.

*ATENTAMENTE*
*MAESTRO FEDERICO LA MONT*

Sent from my iPod

LAS NOTICIAS CON LA MONT* 📰

📃 *Premio Internacional Periodismo Y Periodismo Migrante*📃

La Información Directa a tu Celular 📲 de HOY *Miércoles 27 de Septiembre 2023* *En El Plano Nacional e Internacional*:

*Ahora también ya estamos en la redes y síguenos a través de nuestros siguientes medios:*

– *TikTok*: https://www.tiktok.com/@federicolamontoficial?_t=8fbL5yfdiiM&_r=1

*YouTube:* https://www.youtube.com/@FedericoLamontTv

*Instagram:* https://instagram.com/federicolamontoficial?utm_source=qr&igshid=ZDc4ODBmNjlmNQ%3D%3D

*Twitter:* https://twitter.com/federicolamont_?t=1JFGx2rnaadYGDPKxR_jpA&s=09

*Colaboración Especial En:* http://MexicoTodayUSA.com

*A Stunningly Sudden End to a Long, Bloody Conflict in the Caucasus*

After decades of wars and tense stalemates, almost no one saw it coming: Azerbaijan seized Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenian control seemingly overnight.

Tens of thousands died fighting for and against it, destroying the careers of two presidents — one Armenian, one Azerbaijani — and tormenting a generation of American, Russian and European diplomats pushing stillborn peace plans. It outlasted six U.S. presidents.

But the self-declared state in the mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh — recognized by no other country — vanished so quickly last week that its ethnic Armenian population had only minutes to pack before abandoning their homes and joining an exodus driven by fears of ethnic cleansing by a triumphant Azerbaijan.

After surviving more than three decades of on-off war and pressure from big outside powers to give up, or at least narrow, its ambitions as a separate country with its own president, army, flag and government, the Republic of Artsakh inside the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan collapsed almost overnight.

Slava Grigoryan, one of the thousands this week who fled Nagorno-Karabakh, said he had only 15 minutes to pack before heading to Armenia along a narrow mountain road controlled by Azerbaijani troops. On the way, he said, he saw the soldiers grab four Armenian men from his convoy and take them away.

Mr. Grigoryan took with him only a few shirts and the negatives of family photographs, leaving behind his apartment and a country house with beehives and a garden.

One of his last acts, he said, was to destroy a personal video record of his homeland’s journey from triumph to destruction. His videos started in 1988, when both Armenia and Azerbaijan were part of the Soviet Union and Nagorno-Karabakh first erupted in violence as ethnic Armenians demanded and then secured self-determination.

“With tears in my eyes,” he said, “I burned 100 cassettes.”

Sergey Danilyan, a former Artsakh soldier, fled to Armenia on Saturday, after the village headman told everyone to leave because “the Turks” — a common slur for Azerbaijanis — were gathering nearby. “They will slaughter children, cut off their heads,” he said.

He said he had fled his village, Nerkin Horatagh, three times before because of eruptions of fighting. “Always war, war — 30 years of war.”

Life had been unbearable for months under an Azerbaijani blockade, said his brother, Vova. “There was hunger. No cigarettes, no bread, nothing,” he said.

Until last week, the tiny self-declared republic, with fewer than 150,000 people, had been an enduring feature of the political and diplomatic landscape of the former Soviet Union. Russia, Armenia’s traditional protector and ally since 1992 in a Moscow-led collective security organization, sent peacekeepers to the area in 2020 and promised to keep open the only road linking the enclave to Armenia, a vital lifeline for Artsakh.

*American Soldier Who Went to North Korea in July Is in U.S. Custody*

Pvt. Travis T. King dashed across the inter-Korean Demilitarized Zone in July. North Korea expelled him after finding him guilty of “illegally intruding” into its territory.

Pvt. Travis T. King, the American soldier who fled across the inter-Korean border into North Korean territory on July 18, was in United States custody on Wednesday, according to a senior U.S. administration official, after the North’s state news media announced that it had decided to expel him.

The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the efforts to release Private King.

After 70 days of investigation, North Korea found Private King guilty of “illegally intruding” into its territory and decided to expel him, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. The news agency said that Private King had confessed to illegally entering North Korea because, it said, he “harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. Army and was disillusioned about the unequal U.S. society.”

North Korea had not said how or when it planned to deport Private King. He had fled to the North through the Demilitarized Zone, which separates North and South Korea.

There was no immediate comment from the Pentagon.

It is unusual for North Korea to expel an American soldier who has expressed a wish to seek asylum there. In the past, the country allowed American G.I.s who deserted to its side to live and even start families there. It often used them as propaganda tools, casting them as evil United States military officers in anti-American movies.

Private King, 23, had been assigned to South Korea as a member of the First Brigade Combat Team, First Armored Division. After being released in July from a South Korean detention center where he had spent time on assault charges, he was escorted by U.S. military personnel to Incheon International Airport outside Seoul to board a plane to the United States, where he was expected to face additional disciplinary action.

He never boarded the plane. Instead, he took a bus the next day to the border village of Panmunjom, which lies inside the DMZ and allows tourists to visit.

The soldier “willfully and without authorization crossed the Military Demarcation Line into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” Colonel Taylor, the public affairs officer for U.S. Forces Korea, said at the time.

Last month, North Korea said that Private King wanted to seek refuge in the isolated Communist country or in a third country. In its announcement on Wednesday, it did not elaborate on why it had decided not to grant his wish.

Private King was the first known American held in North Korean custody since Bruce Byron Lowrance was detained for a month after illegally entering the country from China in 2018.

Civilian Americans accused of illegal entry have been prosecuted and sentenced to hard labor, or sometimes released and expelled.

Robert Park, a Korean American missionary who walked across the border between China and North Korea in 2009, was held for 43 days in the North before being deported by plane to Beijing. In 2013, Merrill Newman, an American retiree, was held for 42 days before being flown from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, to Beijing.

In the cases of some civilian Americans accused of illegal entry, North Korea has also used them as bargaining chips in negotiations with Washington, with which it has no formal diplomatic ties.

*As Menendez’s Star Rose, Fears of Corruption Cast a Persistent Shadow*

The New Jersey Democrat broke barriers for Latinos. But prosecutors circled for decades before charging him with an explosive new bribery plot.

Robert Menendez’s education in political corruption came unusually early. In 1982, he turned against his mentor, Mayor William V. Musto of Union City, N.J., the popular leader of their gritty hometown.

Mr. Menendez took the witness stand and testified that city officials had pocketed kickbacks on construction projects, helping to put a man widely seen as his father figure behind bars. Mr. Menendez, then 28, wore a bulletproof vest for a month.

The episode, which Mr. Menendez has used to cast himself as a gutsy Democratic reformer, helped fuel his remarkable rise from a Jersey tenement to the pinnacles of power in Washington as the state’s senior senator. The son of Cuban immigrants, Mr. Menendez broke barriers for Latinos and has used his perch as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to influence presidents and prime ministers.

But those who have closely followed his career say the years he spent enmeshed in Mr. Musto’s machine also set the tone for another, more sinister undercurrent that now threatens to swallow it — one in which Mr. Menendez became a power broker himself whose own close ties to moneyed interests have repeatedly attracted the scrutiny of federal prosecutors.

Those two sides of his life collided on Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan, where Mr. Menendez, 69, surrendered to face his second bribery indictment in less than a decade.

The explosive charges, unveiled on Friday, accuse the senator and his wife of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for helping increase U.S. assistance to Egypt and trying to throttle a pair of criminal investigations involving New Jersey businessmen. Investigators who searched their suburban home found piles of cash squirreled away, gold bars worth $100,000 and what they described as an ill-gotten Mercedes-Benz.

Mr. Menendez insists he is innocent and refuses to resign. He has already begun accusing the government of twisting facts to try to criminalize legitimate congressional activity — the same defense that helped him bottle up the last charges in a hung jury.

*How Benjamin Netanyahu Pushed Israel Into Chaos*

The nation’s current crisis can be traced back, in ways large and small, to the outsize personality of its longest-serving prime minister.

Flanked by two bickering ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to shrivel in his seat. It was late July in the Knesset, the last week before the summer recess, but there was no anticipatory buzz in the air. While lawmakers were preparing to vote, anti-government protesters, walled off from Parliament by newly installed barbed wire, chanted “Busha!” — “Shame!”

Sitting to Netanyahu’s left was Yariv Levin, Israel’s dour justice minister, a man “with less charisma than that of a napkin,” in the mordant opinion of Anshel Pfeffer, a Haaretz journalist and Netanyahu biographer. To Netanyahu’s right was Yoav Gallant, a former major general who serves as Israel’s defense minister. The two ministers hail from the right-wing Likud party, as does Netanyahu himself. But their consensus — much like every other consensus in the country — had splintered. Levin’s camp was bent on using the government’s majority to pass a package of bills that would do away with judicial oversight in the country and concentrate power in its hands. Gallant’s camp, seeing the extraordinary blowback that the bills had touched off around the nation, worried that this was a step too far.

The manner of the proposed legislative package (unilateral; rushed through) and scope (total overhaul of the system) had managed to rattle a public that had already accepted the most extremist coalition in Israeli history. Israel has no written constitution. Its Parliament is largely toothless as a check on power: The governing coalition has the majority and the means to impose its decisions there. Now it was proposing to neutralize the only curb to executive overreach: the country’s Supreme Court.

*What the U.S.-China Chip War Means for a Critical American Ally*

South Korea’s vital semiconductor sector depends on China. A deadline looms for how it could be affected by U.S. efforts to control China’s tech advance.

Samsung and SK Hynix, the semiconductor titans of South Korea, have spent over $52 billion to build up their operations in China. Business with China has long made up a sizable portion of their sales.

But the ties between South Korea’s chip companies and China are under strain from geopolitics.

South Korea, which relies heavily on its semiconductor sector for jobs and revenue, is wedged between China and the United States, South Korea’s longstanding ally, in their trade war over technology.

To curb China’s access to advanced chips that could power its military, Washington has escalated steps to control the sale of such technologies. The Biden administration imposed restrictions last October, raising alarms in Seoul and setting off furious lobbying in Washington to try to minimize damage to South Korea’s semiconductor industry.

A one-year waiver the companies received in mid-October 2022 that temporarily exempted them from the export rules is set to expire soon. While a new waiver is widely expected to be extended, uncertainty surrounds how long it might last.

“Geopolitical issues have become the biggest risk for companies to manage,” South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said in June, speaking at a meeting of government officials and business executives about a national semiconductor strategy. “Companies cannot resolve this problem alone,” he said, calling the competition over chips an “all-out war.”

Manufacturing semiconductors requires supply chains that cross national borders, and the efforts to impose new rules on the industry have tested commercial alliances in Asia, Europe and the United States. But few countries have wrestled with the potential economic disruption from trade restrictions as much as South Korea.

China is not only a big customer of chips made in South Korea. Both Samsung and SK Hynix have major production facilities in China.

Semiconductors account for 20 percent of South Koreas exports. Samsung and SK Hynix have long dominated the market for memory chips, which are used in smartphones and laptops to store data. Samsung sold 36 percent of all memory chips and SK Hynix 25 percent as of June, according to data calculated from TrendForce, a market research firm.

Over the past decade, China has received more than half — at one point almost 67 percent — of South Korean chip exports. That number dropped to 55 percent last year, according to a calculation of South Korean government data by The New York Times.

Samsung does not provide semiconductor sales numbers for China. Partly because of a drop in demand for chips and China’s economic slowdown, two of the company’s chip-related subsidiaries in China that disclosed their financial information showed a 35 percent fall in sales of chips and displays in the first half of this year.

SK Hynix’s share of revenue from China peaked at nearly 47 percent in 2019. It shrank to 27 percent last year, still an important part of the company’s business.

“To give up the large market that is China? We won’t be able to recover,” Chey Tae-won, SK Hynix’s chairman, said at a news conference in July.

One of the most outspoken South Korean politicians on the issue is Yang Hyang-ja, a lawmaker in the National Assembly and a former Samsung executive. She called the country “a victim” in the trade dispute and proposed tax cuts to help chip makers. Her bill, called the K-Chips Act, was passed in March.

“We are taking a direct hit,” she said.

Samsung uses its facilities in China to produce 40 percent of its NAND chips, one of two kinds of memory chips that help devices store data. SK Hynix produces 30 percent of its NAND chips in China and almost half of its DRAM chips, which enable short-term storage for personal computers and servers.

The companies’ exposure to China is a challenge, said Avril Wu, a senior research vice president at TrendForce. “It’s not easy to withdraw, yet continuing to invest further is unwise, as nobody knows what might happen in the future,” she said.

Samsung said in a statement that its investments were made to address the needs of global customers and other demands.

Samsung and SK Hynix are not alone in facing uncertainty caused by the China-U.S. tensions. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest chip maker, is also waiting to hear from the U.S. Department of Commerce on the fate of their waivers to the export controls.

The Commerce Department declined to comment but referred to a statement by Don Graves, deputy Commerce secretary, who said during a trip to Korea last week that the United States would “do everything” it can to ensure companies could continue their businesses.

*Hunter Biden Sues Giuliani for Spreading Information From Laptop*

The president’s son accused Rudolph Giuliani of breaking California law about data privacy by disseminating personal messages from a computer he left at a repair shop in Delaware.

Hunter Biden sued Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mr. Giuliani’s former lawyer on Tuesday for their roles in disseminating personal information about Mr. Biden said to have been taken from a laptop he left at a Delaware repair shop before the 2020 election.

The suit is the latest move by Mr. Biden, the president’s son, to take a more adversarial approach with opponents who have used his troubles as the basis for political attacks on his father. Mr. Biden, who long struggled with addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol, was indicted by federal prosecutors this month on charges of lying about his drug use when he purchased a handgun in 2018, and he faces a potential indictment on tax charges.

Earlier this year, Mr. Biden sued the owner of the store where he left the laptop, and last week he sued the Internal Revenue Service for the way it divulged his tax returns to Congress and a former Trump administration aide who has publicized information about him.

In the suit filed on Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles, Mr. Biden claimed that Mr. Giuliani and his former lawyer, Robert J. Costello, “have been primarily responsible for what has been described as the ‘total annihilation’” of Mr. Biden’s privacy.

“For the past many months and even years, defendants have dedicated an extraordinary amount of time and energy toward looking for, hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating and generally obsessing over data that they were given that was taken or stolen from plaintiff’s devices or storage platforms,” including what they claim to have taken from the laptop, the suit says.

Among the laws Mr. Biden says that Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Costello should be held accountable for violating are the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California’s Computer Data Access and Fraud Act. The suit did not name a dollar figure that Mr. Biden is seeking, saying only that it was over $75,000.

Ted Goodman, an adviser to Mr. Giuliani, responded in a statement: “Hunter Biden has previously refused to admit ownership of the laptop. I’m not surprised he’s now falsely claiming his laptop hard drive was manipulated by Mayor Giuliani, considering the sordid material and potential evidence of crimes on that thing.”

Mr. Giuliani began trying to promote the contents of the laptop in the weeks before the November 2020 election, hoping to give Mr. Trump an October surprise that could catapult him to victory over Joseph R. Biden Jr. The contents that Mr. Giuliani said came from the laptop included salacious photos of Mr. Biden as well as a trove of emails and text messages describing foreign business contacts and family matters.

As the contents of the laptop became public, Mr. Biden’s aides tried to raise questions about the validity of the material, and dozens of former intelligence officials released a letter that cast information becoming public as having “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Mr. Biden has never directly acknowledged that the laptop from the repair shop was his, and the suit does not directly concede that it was. But some news organizations, including The New York Times, have authenticated some of the messages from it, and the suit appears to acknowledge that at least some of the information from the laptop was his, saying “some of the data that defendants obtained, copied, and proceeded to hack into and tamper with belongs to plaintiff.”

The suit appears to walk that line carefully, however. It contains a footnote saying that Mr. Biden was not making an “admission” that the computer store owner “possessed any particular laptop containing electronically stored data belonging to Mr. Biden.”

Instead, the footnote says, Mr. Biden “simply acknowledges that at some point,” the store owner “obtained electronically stored data, some of which belonged to Mr. Biden.”

The suit adds to a heaping pile of legal troubles for Mr. Giuliani. Last month, the Fulton County District Attorney’s office indicted him in connection with trying to reverse that state’s 2020 election result. Last week, Mr. Giuliani was sued by a lawyer seeking over a million dollars in unpaid legal fees.

*#La Polémica | #Higinio se dejá sentir en #Edomex*

La #Opinión de #Daniel Camargo en #Cuestión De Polémica

📌 Terminó Higinio la negociación, asumirá como Jefe de Gabinete
🟢 En breve Eruviel anunciará su adhesión al Verde Ecologista
🇲🇽 Sevilla y Herrera claves para «Alito» en Edomex
https://www.cuestiondepolemica.com/la-polemica-higinio-se-deja-sentir-en-edomex/

*ATENTAMENTE*
*MAESTRO FEDERICO LA MONT*

Sent from my iPod

Las noticias con La Mont, 10 de octubre de 2023

Publicado por Mexico Today - USA

Deja un comentario Cancelar la respuesta

Comparte esto:

Relacionado

Publicado por Mexico Today - USA

Deja un comentario Cancelar la respuesta