After 22 days without a Legislature, the United States once again has a Congress capable of functioning. The Republican Party has managed to overcome its fragmentation and agree on the appointment for the presidency of the House of Representatives of Mike Johnson, a tough Trumpist, but without the verbal aggressiveness of the former president or another of the candidates for the position, Jim Jordan. , who was resoundingly defeated last week after failing to win the votes of his party colleagues.

With his rise to office, Johnson – who believes that the Universe is 6,000 years old, God created it in 6 days, and opposes aid to Ukraine, gay marriage and abortion – becomes the second person in the line of succession of the president of the United States, after the vice president, Kamala Harris.

Unlike most of the protagonists in this crisis – Jordan himself, the ousted President Kevin McCarthy, and other candidates, such as Steve Scalise – Johnson is not a personality of national projection.. He has been in the House for seven years, which is a relatively short time, and has never played a prominent role. Perhaps that is the reason why the totally fragmented Republican Party has unanimously supported him: Johnson has never insulted anyone. In addition, it has the most important endorsement of the Republican: the support of Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, a message from the former president on his social network Truth Social was enough to sink, without any vote, the candidacy of centrist Tom Emmer.. Trump called Emmer, among other things, a “globalist”, although it would have been enough for him to have said that he did not support him for the candidacy to be liquidated.. Such is the power of the former president among Republicans.

Johnson is different. He not only voted against the ratification of the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Donald Trump lost, but he also masterminded a painful lawsuit by the state of Texas to stop the vote count.. in Pennsylvania. The Justice Department refused to accept the case, which in a federal state like the United States raised enormous constitutional doubts.

Now, Johnson, an evangelical Christian who represents rural Louisiana, assumes leadership of the House of Representatives at a critical time for the United States and the world.. In just over three weeks, the US Public Administration runs out of resources to continue operating, which would imply its progressive closure. Added to this is the urgent aid package of 106.6 billion dollars (100.6 billion euros) that Joe Biden has requested for Ukraine, Israel and the countries of the Pacific Rim.. Johnson supports Israel – like practically all members of the United States Congress – but opposes giving more aid to Ukraine, even though he voted in favor of it in 2022. In two votes held in September and October, Johnson said no to helping Kiev.

Johnson, 51, belongs to the most conservative wing of the Republican Party, what the weekly The Economist baptized two decades ago as “paleoconservatives”. Although, in reality its relationship with Paleontology (the science that studies life forms prior to the appearance of human beings on Earth) is not good.. The new president of the House of Representatives regularly collaborates with the Genesis Answers organization, which has built the Creation Museum, a huge museum of History and Natural History in the state of Kentucky in which it explains the Universe according to the literal interpretation of the bible. That means, for example, that the Earth is about 6,000 years old, that God created the Universe in six days, and that Noah saved all animals from extinction by putting them in his ark.. Other beliefs of Genesis Answers are that dinosaurs are not completely extinct (although many disappeared due to the action of the knights of the Middle Ages), since Noah saved them from the Flood by putting the adult specimens in the ark, but to the eggs of the reptiles, as the founder and president of the organization, Ken Ham, explained to the author of these lines in October 2005. Johnson has also advocated establishing tax breaks for Gathering on the Ark, a creationist theme park.

Leaving aside the origin of the Universe, Johnson has very specific ideas about earthly issues. He opposes same-sex marriage, and is a prominent supporter of so-called conversion therapy, which maintains that medicine can cure homosexuality.. Likewise, it rejects abortion, and among its objectives is the establishment of a law that prohibits this practice throughout the United States. Since last year, abortion, once legal nationwide, has been banned in more than a dozen states, and significantly limited in several more.

Barks for help come from social networks. “They are breaking into houses and kidnapping dogs to take them to the slaughterhouse!” writes a boy from a province in central China. She claims that, on Wednesday morning, two men from her neighborhood committee sneaked into a neighbor's apartment and took her English pointer, a large dog, justifying that it scared the small children of the community.

“Last morning, in my neighborhood, neighborhood patrols went out to kill stray dogs. They also say that if you have a big dog at home, they can come in and take it away from you,” said a girl from Guangzhou, a large city in the south.. “Not all stray dogs are bad, not all people are good. Please stop killing animals,” posted Cya Liu Ya-se, one of China's most famous actresses.

The commotion has already jumped from the networks to the streets. There were a couple of demonstrations led by animal groups who came out with signs asking the authorities to put an end to the indiscriminate killing of stray dogs.. Official estimates say that there are more than 45 million of these animals loose throughout the country, almost like the entire population of Spain.

It all started a few days ago in Chongzhou, a city in the Sichuan region. A black Rottweiler attacked a two-year-old girl, biting off much of her left leg. The dog was loose inside an urbanization. The mother of the calf threw herself on the ground to try to cover her with her body, but the animal dragged her to the side and continued biting the girl.. In the end, a cleaning worker who was passing by managed to scare him away by hitting him with a broom.. The little girl remains admitted to the ICU. He also has a torn kidney and several fractured ribs.

The scene was captured by the urbanization's security cameras.. The video ended up going viral on social media, igniting a heated national debate about what to do with China's stray dogs.. The rottweiler did have an owner, although he ran away after the attack. He was arrested hours later.

Earlier this week, officials in several provinces released statements announcing that they had launched a campaign to capture “uncivilized” stray dogs.. Most will be sacrificed. In a country where there is no law on animal cruelty that offers protection to pets, the announcement was interpreted in their own way by some community workers and neighbors, who have gone out hunting for these dogs, even taking some large ones that They have an owner.

On Weibo, the Chinese brother of. The online protest grew larger. Users, outraged by the massacre, ask for “more humane” measures, such as adoption and castration.

A university in the north of the country fired its security guard because he strangled a stray dog that frequently roamed the campus. At another university, it was the students themselves who beat a dog to death. There were also several witnesses who narrated how the owner of an apartment, taking advantage of the fact that his tenant was not there, entered the house and killed his two dogs.

19 days after the start of the war that began with the attack by the fundamentalist group Hamas in southern Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his army is preparing for a ground incursion to hit “the perpetrators of the Hamas massacres.” -ISIS”. Meanwhile, the intense air offensive continues against hundreds of targets, including underground, in the Gaza Strip, which, between bombs and missiles, requested the urgent entry of fuel to prevent the collapse of hospitals.

“I will not detail when, how and how much or even all the considerations we take into account,” Netanyahu declared of the ground offensive.. In a television intervention, he noted that his forces killed “thousands of terrorists and it is only the beginning” and outlined two objectives: “Destroy the military capabilities of the Hamas Government and do everything possible to return the kidnapped people home.”

Israel, which accused Iran this Wednesday of helping Hamas, has not yet begun the invasion to give more time to the release of children (30) and perhaps women among the 222 kidnapped in the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and to the United States to to strengthen its defenses in the Middle East.

After the open fronts in Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Syria (militias and Bashar Assad's regime), Israel faces a new front, although it is not one of fire but of rhetoric: the UN. Its Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has become the target of the Israeli diplomatic campaign that accuses him of linking the jihadist attacks of October 7 with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“It is important to recognize that Hamas attacks do not come from nowhere. The Palestinian people are under 56 years of suffocating occupation,” Guterres had declared, later clarifying that he does not justify the attacks and being “shocked by the biased representation” of his statements.. His clarifications do not reduce Israel's discomfort – even under unprecedented trauma and in a relentless fight against Hamas – towards the representative of an organization that it already considered “anti-Israeli.”

“There was no misrepresentation of his words. The massacres of the Hamas terrorists, who also came from a territory from which Israel withdrew, have nothing to do with the conflict,” denounces the UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, who demands the resignation of Guterres while the possibility of denying visas to their representatives.

In peacetime, the UN has an important role in Gaza. In times of war, vital. According to the agency in charge of Palestinian refugees (UNWRA), 613,000 displaced Gazans found refuge in some 150 buildings converted into a theoretical safe island.. But UNWRA warns that if Israel does not allow fuel entry, it will have to “make difficult decisions”. Its representative, Tom White, warned on CNN that, “without fuel, people in Gaza will not have access to drinking water, hospitals will close and we will have to end our relief operations.”

In its latest report released on Wednesday afternoon, the closure did not occur, but various reports from NGOs on the ground described a distressing situation.. Doctors Without Borders shared Dr Obeid's shocking testimony about the conditions in which he had to amputate half the foot of a 9-year-old boy at Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

Gasoline is also essential in the distribution of aid in an enclave where, according to a UN report, 80% of its 2.2 million inhabitants needed international aid before the war.

Israel maintains its position of allowing the daily entry of water, food and medicine, but not fuel, considering that it is essential for the armed infrastructure in the Hamas tunnels, which it accuses of not giving the liters it has to civilians in Gaza.

According to the Hamas government, more than 6,500 Palestinians have been killed and 17,000 wounded in the deadliest Israeli offensive since the war against Hezbollah in 2006.

Army spokesman Daniel Hagari pointed out the regional enemy: “Before the war, Iran helped Hamas directly through training, delivery of weapons, money and technological knowledge.. Even now, aid comes in the form of Internet intelligence and incitement around the world against Israel.. According to him, Iran is behind the attacks from Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Tehran denounced the Israeli attacks on Gaza, which it defines as “genocide of the Palestinian people.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, 500 Hamas and Islamic Jihad troops trained in Iran under the leadership of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard weeks before the worst attack in Israel's history.. This Wednesday, the army held a new session with foreign media, including EL MUNDO, to show moments of the attack that left 1,400 dead.. Captured by the terrorists themselves, the victims and survivors in the kibbutzim and the Supernova music festival, the images reflect the brutality of the armed wing of Hamas that carried out and broadcast its atrocities against children, young people and the elderly.. The 40 minutes of recording confirm that it was a mix of a well-planned military operation and a crazed jihadist version of a pogrom..

At nightfall, Israel launched a massive bombardment against several sections of tunnels, according to local media, in Gaza. Shortly after, and not coincidentally, Hamas fired a volley of “quality” projectiles against central Israeli towns. Hours before, he aimed two missiles at two distant areas: the northern Carmel and the southern, Eilat, which these days houses evacuees from the kibbutzim in its hotels.

British parliamentarian Peter Bone, 70, faces the end of his political career after subjecting one of his employees to a “deliberate” chain of physical and mental abuse and at least one instance of sexual indecency in a hotel in Madrid, according to an official investigation. The conclusion of the Parliamentary Complaints Commission's Independent Panel of Experts (IPE) has recommended a six-week suspension from his seat, prompting the Conservative Party to withdraw confidence in its Wellingborough MP with immediate effect.

The IPE considered the complaint against Bone as a “serious case of inappropriate conduct”, which included a “deliberate and intentional abuse of power”. His victim, who preserves his right to anonymity, revealed to the BBC the “horrible, brutal and dark experience” he suffered when he worked with the veteran politician for several months in 2012 and 2013.

“I ended up like the broken shell of the young man I was,” the victim confessed in an interview in which she describes the “erratic behavior” of the radical euroskeptic.. “He has an explosive temperament, like a pendulum that jumps from one personality type to another.”. “It was very difficult for me to predict (his mood) and I felt under constant siege,” he added.

Bone denies the facts reported by his former employee, although he has lost the appeals admitted in the Complaints Commission process.. He awaited the verdict of his colleagues and parliamentary opponents who ratified the recommended penalty in a vote free of party discipline, which was held on Wednesday afternoon.

The suspension of the Chamber for a period of six weeks automatically activates the re-election process of the discredited deputy with the endorsement of 10% of the voters of the constituency. The election would be called at a critical time for the Conservative Party and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose popularity has collapsed.

The official report presents a devastating portrait of the accused. “The abuses,” the panel concludes, “included violence, shouting, swearing, mockery, ignoring, humiliating behavior, ostracism…”.

It also confirms an act of sexual indecency that took place during a work visit to Spain in January 2013.. It apparently happened in the bathroom of a hotel room in Madrid, when the parliamentarian undressed and “exposed his genitals very close to the face” of the young employee.

On other occasions the plaintiff felt forced to massage her shoulders and neck after ensuring that they were both alone in the Westminster office and closing the door firmly.. Investigators further accept that Bone “repeatedly hit” and threw things at his subordinate.

In recent days at the head of the Conservative Executive, and with the investigation already underway, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson promoted his eurosceptic ally to the position of deputy spokesperson for the Government in the House of Commons.