INTERNACIONAL
Venezuela y Estados Unidos sellarían este martes un acuerdo en Barbados: Washington aliviaría sanciones y Caracas permitiría elecciones libres en 2024
El gobierno de Joe Biden y el gobierno del venezolano Nicolás Maduro llegaron a un acuerdo en el que Estados Unidos aliviaría las sanciones a la industria petrolera venezolana y a cambio Venezuela permitiría una elección presidencial competitiva y supervisada internacionalmente el próximo año, según revelaron a la prensa a dos personas familiarizadas con las conversaciones entre las partes.
El alivio de las sanciones se anunciará después de que el gobierno de Maduro y la oposición venezolana, respaldada por Estados Unidos, firmen un acuerdo para incluir compromisos de Venezuela para permitir una votación libre en 2024, dijeron las fuentes a The Washington Post y Bloomberg.
Los últimos detalles del acuerdo ser revelarían en una reunión en Barbados el martes, con la asistencia de funcionarios estadounidenses y venezolanos, que comenzarían a llegar allí este mismo lunes.
Maduro, quien se adjudicó la victoria en las elecciones de 2018 ampliamente consideradas fraudulentas, aceptaría un proceso para levantar las prohibiciones a los candidatos de la oposición que se postulan, dijo una de las fuentes, aunque no está claro qué tan rápido se llevaría a cabo ese proceso.
Un alto funcionario estadounidense dijo que el acuerdo no incluía planes para descongelar los activos venezolanos que actualmente se encuentran en Estados Unidos, pero levantaría algunas sanciones bancarias. Es probable que Estados Unidos ponga un límite de tiempo a cualquier alivio de las sanciones para que pueda revertirse si Maduro no cumple con su parte del acuerdo.
El venezolano se comprometería a aceptar las observaciones electorales internacionales y a abrir el acceso de los medios de comunicación para las elecciones. No estaba claro si el acuerdo también implicaría la liberación de presos políticos en Venezuela.
Alivio al sector petrolero
Si se firma el acuerdo, el gobierno de Estados Unidos también está preparado para anunciar el levantamiento de ciertas sanciones petroleras contra Venezuela, dijeron los funcionarios. El alivio de las sanciones podría incluir una licencia general para que la agencia petrolera estatal venezolana reanude sus negocios con Estados Unidos y otros países.
Estados Unidos estaría abierto a levantar las sanciones tanto al banco central de Venezuela como al banco estatal de desarrollo, lo que le daría al gobierno de Maduro un camino para volver a comprometerse con las instituciones financieras para recuperar al menos 3.000 millones de dólares en cuentas en Europa.
Si bien el Departamento de Estado ni Venezuela no han confirmado ni descartado ningún cambio en las conversaciones, funcionarios estadounidenses ya habían dicho que considerarían aliviar las sanciones si Maduro sentaba las bases para elecciones presidenciales libres y justas.
El acuerdo se produce días antes de que los partidos de oposición de Venezuela planeen celebrar una votación primaria para elegir a un solo candidato que respalde a Maduro. La favorita en las primarias no oficiales, María Corina Machado, es una de varios líderes de la oposición a los que el gobierno de Maduro ha prohibido postularse para el cargo. La descalificación fue duramente condenada por el gobierno de Estados Unidos.
Los candidatos aún deben solicitar la eliminación de la restricción al Tribunal Supremo de Justicia de Venezuela, un requisito que retrasó el acuerdo durante meses, ya que se considera clave para darle a Machado la oportunidad de ganar la votación.
Estados Unidos ha impuesto sanciones contra el gobierno venezolano o individuos venezolanos durante más de 15 años, pero las endureció significativamente a principios de 2019 después de declarar ilegítima la victoria de Maduro en 2018.
INTERNACIONAL
Hamas’ Gaza death toll questioned as new report says its led to ‘widespread inaccuracies and distortion’
A new report cites a laundry list of alleged errors in the casualty tallies that the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health has issued during the conflict in Gaza, and found that worldwide media widely report the inflated numbers with little or no scrutiny.
The Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a U.K. based think tank, found «widespread inaccuracies and distortion in the data collection process» for the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) which has resulted in a «misleading picture of the conflict.» The study also analyzed how journalists worldwide have spread misleading MoH data without noting its shortcomings or offering alternative information from Israeli sources.
The report’s author, Andrew Fox, a fellow at HJS said his team’s research is based on lists of casualty figures that the MoH has released through Telegram as well as lists released by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Fox said he and his team have been able to examine segments of the reporting, despite changeable MoH data being «really hard to interrogate.»
On Tuesday, Gaza health authorities updated its number of dead to what it said was more than 45,000.
ISRAEL TO CLOSE EMBASSY IN IRELAND OVER ‘ANTI-ISRAEL POLICIES’
A man walks past shelter tents erected near collapsed buildings in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on Oct. 1, 2024. (Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)
The report said the ministry’s reporting long indicated that women and children made up more than half of the war dead, leading to accusations that Israel intentionally kills civilians in Gaza.
«If Israel was killing indiscriminately, you would expect deaths to roughly match the demographic proportions pre-war,» Fox said. At the time, adult men made up around 26% of the Gazan population. «The number of adult males that have died is vastly in excess of 26%,» he said.
Within accessible reporting, Fox and his team also found instances of casualty entries being recorded improperly, «artificially increas[ing] the numbers of women and children who are reported as killed.» This has included people with male names being listed as females, and grown adults being recorded as young children.
A terrorist from Hamas takes part in a military parade. (Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/File Photo)
Analyzing data by category has further highlighted biases within reporting. There are three kinds of entries within MoH’s casualty figures: entries collected by hospitals prior to the breakdown of networks in November 2023, entries submitted by family members of the deceased, and entries collected through «media sources,» whose veracity researchers like Dr. David Adesnik, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has previously questioned.
Analysis of gender breakdowns among these groupings shows that hospital records «are distorted,» with a higher percentage of women and children among hospital-reported casualties than in those reported by family members.
UN ACCUSED OF DOWNPLAYING HAMAS TERRORISTS’ USE OF GAZA HOSPITALS AS NEW REPORT IGNORES IMPORTANT DETAILS
Kamal Adwan hospital’s health team evacuate Palestinian patients after Israeli airstrikes damaged the hospital in Gaza Strip on May 21, 2024. (Karam Hassan/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Though around 5,000 natural deaths typically occur in Gaza each year, the study found that MoH casualty figures do not account for natural deaths. It claims that it also fails to exclude deaths unassociated with Israeli military action from its count. This includes individuals believed to have been killed by Hamas, like 13-year-old Ahmed Shaddad Halmy Brikeh, who appears on a casualty list from August despite reports indicating he had «been shot dead by Hamas» while trying to get food from an aid shipment in December 2023. The list also excludes individuals killed by Hamas’ rockets, about 1,750 of which «fell short within the Gaza strip» between October 2023 and July 2024.
Fox and his team also found individuals who died before the conflict began had been added to MoH casualty counts. In addition, at least three cancer patients whose names were included in lists to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment in April had been listed as dead during the month of March.
RETURN OF TRUMP GIVES FAMILIES OF GAZA HOSTAGES NEW HOPE
Ambulances carrying victims of Israeli strikes crowd the entrance to the emergency ward of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Oct. 15, 2023. (Dawood Nemer/AFP via Getty Images)
The ministry does not separate combatants and civilians in its casualty figures. Though the study states that Israeli forces have killed around 17,000 Hamas terrorists, Fox said that his research indicated the death toll may include as many as 22,000 members of Hamas. He said his research supports the fact that around 15,000 of the dead in Gaza are women and children, and 7,500 are non-combatant adult males.
«Collecting these sorts of lists in a war zone is a hugely challenging thing,» Fox admitted, but he stated that the MoH’s mistakes, whether innocent or deliberate, show that the institution is «really unreliable.»
Despite this unreliability, the Henry Jackson Society’s survey of reporting of the conflict found that 98% of media organizations it looked at utilized fatality data from MoH versus 5% who cited Israeli figures. Fox found that «fewer than one in every 50 articles [about the conflict] mentioned that the figures provided by the MoH were unverifiable or controversial,» though «Israeli statistics had their credibility questioned in half of the few articles that incorporated them.»
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Smoke rises near the al-Wafa hospital from Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Oct. 24, 2023. (Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
As an illustration of the phenomenon witnessed in the survey, Fox pointed out what he called an «incredibly biased» article from a British broadcaster that recently emerged citing MoH data claiming that there have been more than 45,000 deaths in Gaza. Though its report mentions MoH data, it does not break down the numbers of combatants and civilians, and does not mention the questionable veracity of MoH reporting. Instead, it parrots MoH claims, reporting that women and children make up for over half of the fatalities.
«It’s just a great example of everything we’ve written in the report,» Fox said.
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