Two Israelis have died in a Palestinian armed attack in the West Bank while the war between Israel and the fundamentalist group Hamas continues in the Gaza Strip without a truce agreement being seen in the coming days as US President Joe Biden had predicted.

According to initial information, the perpetrator of this Thursday's attack was a police officer from the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).. In the middle of the afternoon, he arrived at the gas station near the Eli neighborhood and shot at point-blank range two Israelis, one 16 years old and the other 57 years old.. Shortly after, he was shot dead by one of the owners of the food establishment where four Israelis were shot dead by two Palestinians nine months ago.. As he told the media, he is a reservist who was part of the ground operation in Gaza.

The Palestinian attacker this Thursday was from the Kalandia refugee camp, between Ramallah and Jerusalem, and was released in 2019.

“We welcome the heroic attack in Ali in the same place where previously two operatives of the armed wing of Hamas carried out a similar attack,” the Islamist group reacted.. “It is the response to the crimes in Nablusi Square in Gaza,” added Hamas, which this Thursday accused Israel of having shot and killed more than 100 Palestinians who were waiting for humanitarian aid in that area of the city located north of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Army denies shooting at Palestinians seeking assistance or at the humanitarian convoy. “Dozens of Gaza residents died due to the stampede and crowding and unfortunately Palestinian trucks ran them over during an attempt to escape,” said army spokesman Daniel Hagari, praising “the bravery and determination of the civilian who neutralized the terrorist in Eli “.

The devastating military offensive that Israel launched in response to the Hamas attack on October 7, the Islamist group's calls to “confront soldiers and settlers in all parts of Palestine” and “carry out martyrdom attacks against the occupation” and The proximity of Ramadan, a holy month for Muslims and always sensitive in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict around Jerusalem, has triggered tension in the West Bank. According to data from the internal secret service (Shabak), 200 Palestinian attacks, including 150 armed attacks, have been aborted since the beginning of 2024.

The great instability in this territory with an increase in raids and incursions by the Israeli Army, with increasingly frequent use of drones, is of particular concern to the United States, which is leading the mediation to achieve a truce between Israel and Hamas in the hope that can calm two explosive fronts: the Israeli-Lebanese border, where there is an intense exchange of blows between the Israeli Air Force and the Shiite Hezbollah militia, and the West Bank.

The European Union has experience in integrating countries from the socialist orbit and even former Soviet countries, such as the Baltic countries.. But it has no choice in doing so with a country that is suffering the worst armed invasion since the Second World War, with devastating missile and drone attacks every night and part of its territory in the hands of an enemy that swears and perjures that it is fighting a war.” existential”, although in reality it is only existential for the members of that regime.

Ukraine today represents the greatest challenge for the EU, more than disconnecting the United Kingdom, more than integrating the Eastern countries. Brussels combines a good dose of faith and much more relaxed conditions than those its last members had. Everyone knows that the first objective is to win the war and that can delay some issues that, over time, can be worked on calmly.. Right now Europe cannot turn its back on Ukraine, possibly the country whose population is most eager to join the European project, and which suffers Moscow's wrath precisely for this.

One of the issues that the EU is most concerned about is the fight against corruption.. Ukraine, like all the countries of the USSR, maintains a system with a certain level of corruption inherited from the old socialist order. It is in all social orders, but it is very tangible in the political world. kyiv has already taken significant steps in the fight against these practices, even in the middle of the war, such as ousting its former Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov for a massive purchase of winter clothing for the army in which a commission agent earned a good premium.. But the problem is not so much the individual actions but the system that allows them and the few counterweights that monitor it.. In Ukraine the health system is public, but a doctor will not see you if you do not give him a bite.

However, the will of Brussels coincides 100% with that of the vast majority of Ukrainians and the process is unstoppable.. “There is no way to understand why one country can invade another with strange, vague excuses that there are Nazis. That's nonsense. And that puts the European security architecture at risk and therefore, people have understood that helping Ukraine is a just war and it is what we have to do also from an ethical point of view,” says socialist MEP Nacho Sánchez Amor.

Russia has become Europe's greatest enemy and this is what neighboring countries have understood, who already know from experience its imperial ideology and its militaristic tendency.. Moscow has financed ultra parties and secessionist movements where it could destabilize the EU, including Puigdemont's sovereigntist project, Le Pen's party or Brexit supporters themselves, such as Nigel Farage.. With its gray zone strategy, it has invested mountains of money in state propaganda and has persecuted opponents, even with murder, in several European countries.. The Russian pilot who took refuge in Spain and was shot dead in Alicante is the latest in a long list.

“The weakness of the Russian arguments and the solidity of the Ukrainian ones allow us to think that although there are problems to be solved, although the war is of course creating problems in some economic sectors in Europe, although there are others derived from the shortage, for example, of grain , people understand that military aid to Ukraine is fair, it is ethical because you have to help those who have been attacked,” says Sánchez Amor, who also refers to Russian propaganda: “Russian propaganda tries to polarize Europe by presenting the European Union as a thing that is always on the verge of self-destruction. If it was for Brexit, for Brexit. If it was because of the pandemic, because of the pandemic. According to them, the European Union is about to collapse but it has been collapsing for 25 years and here we continue giving vaccines and providing weapons.”

Ukraine applied for accession to the EU in February 2022, that is, in the midst of Russian escalation, and was granted the status of EU candidate country in June 2022.. In December 2023, EU leaders decided to start accession negotiations.

When we talk about integrating Ukraine we are talking about integrating at least three different countries: the first of them is born in the center of kyiv, Lviv or Dnipro and dies a few kilometers from its municipal limits.. These are those cities of skyscrapers, elegant tsarist buildings and beehive neighborhoods with ugly buildings in the style of the Warsaw Pact, where there are Crossfit gyms, sex shops and house music clubs attended by thousands of teenagers.

These cities, with very little crime and rattling nineteenth-century trams, are not part of the European Union but are full of EU flags in their schools, official buildings and sports halls. The Euromaidan of 10 years ago broke with Russian influence and changed everything. Even the traditional drink of the Soviet world, tea, has been replaced by a very Western addiction to coffee.

Sometimes we are not aware, in Western Europe, of the extent to which this political battle to integrate Ukraine is also vital.. Members of the Friends of Europe organization define the EU accession process in these terms: “Ukraine is crucial for the enlargement processes. If Russia prevails there and the EU proves incapable of defending it, the credibility of the EU will suffer an almost mortal blow.”. And they make the following criticism of this process: “It is not easy for countries that have suffered totalitarian regimes and a centrally planned economy to adopt the EU acquis, made up of thousands of rules and regulations.. “The EU must better supervise and help the candidates more.”

Nacho Sánchez Amor believes that “if Putin wins this war, we would be almost guaranteed that there would be another one in the near future with another aggression against another country. That is, it already happened in Georgia, it already happened in Crimea, we cannot let it happen again, because that will be an invitation to Putin and other autocrats to say, 'well, in the world in which we have managed to create dictatorships, these things have already happened. “They can't stop them.”

The second country contained within Ukraine, although in fact it may be the first in importance, is the rural world, that of the brick jatas (country house) and colored windows with a fireplace and a small garden in the front.. If the American dream exists in the capitalist world, those small properties surrounded by a wooden fence represent the Soviet dream. In this world of rural Ukraine, the most driven car is the Lada, a true unbreakable tank.

Most of its inhabitants are born in a place and are buried in the cemetery 100 meters from that same place after having lived tied to the land.. Most only allow themselves a weekly walk to the gold-domed Orthodox church that stands out in every village.. Even the field is organized and labeled under the old criteria of Soviet communal farms or kolkhoz.. In that flat horizon of sunflowers and cereals, the vatniks live. The vatnik is the traditional Soviet coat and is used to pejoratively refer to those nostalgic for the USSR.

In the countryside, the pro-Soviet or Soviet-nostalgic feeling in older people is more tangible.. That universe of babushas (grandmothers) with headscarves, monuments to the heroes of the Second World War and gardens with flowers is in the fields of Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Chernigiv, and Donbas.. Integrating this Ukrainian rural world represents another major challenge, especially considering the agricultural quota models of the European Union.

Regarding this, the MEP believes that “all entries into the European Union by any country generate tensions in one sector or another.”. We Spaniards remember how Spain's entry into the EU was not easy, precisely because our interests or our agricultural sector was viewed with suspicion by others, such as the French.. But those are things that fit. That seemed like a world. And then we have arrived at a system of production, distribution, sale and export of agricultural products that works reasonably well.”

The third country within Ukraine is a line with more than 800 kilometers of front and the places through which that same line has previously passed, that is, the liberated territories. They are semi-abandoned and destroyed villages and cities, where there are no public services left and where demining and reconstruction will take years. Only a Marshall Plan could make this enormous scar habitable. “When we say that there will be reconstruction, it is not reconstruction after the war, it is reconstruction now. That money, the 50 billion from the Ukranian Facility plan, will be ready to be executed in the coming months,” concludes MEP Sánchez Amor.

Almost 14 million people watched live as Tuzi, the new queen of makeup in China, turned a 72-year-old woman into a young Caucasian princess with blonde hair, blue eyes and glittering eyelids, without a single wrinkle on her teenage face.

The incredible transformation broadcast on Douyin, TikTok's Chinese brother, was a success. Fans of the elderly woman, Grandma Tian, a popular rural streamer with 35 million followers, praised the makeup artist for making the lady “regain” her youth.

Several celebrities from the Asian giant have passed through the hands of the twenty-year-old Tuzi. A few days ago, the radical change of image of Tang Jianjun (57 years old), one of the most famous comedians in the country, who became a handsome soap opera heartthrob, was a trend on social networks.

Every morning, hundreds of thousands of Chinese women of all ages follow live makeup tutorials that Tuzi broadcasts from her studio in Yunnan, southwest of the country.. This influencer has become an icon for those who long for eternal youth.

In addition to being a maker of extraordinary makeovers, cosmetic brands raffle Tuzi to promote all types of elixirs, from herbal creams, such as ginseng, goji berries and licorice root, to one of the products stars in traditional Chinese medicine for skin care: ejiao, a kind of gelatinous porridge produced from collagen extracted from boiled donkey skin.

In ancient writings, ejiao appears as a potion to rejuvenate the faces of the women of the imperial court of Beijing.. Today it remains so popular that every year around 4.8 million donkeys are slaughtered for their skins.. The problem is that China does not have as many equines to meet demand, which has led to the emergence of a thriving African donkey trafficking industry.

The first historical references to Chinese women's obsession with beauty treatments appear during the reign of Empress Wu Zetian (624-705 AD).. C.), who applied powdered pearls mixed with egg white to his face every night. Facial massage with a jade roller and the consumption of tremella, a mushroom rich in antioxidants and vitamin D, were also popular in the dynasties.

In today's millennial China, more and more fans of perfect skin are visiting beauty clinics and hiring the services of South Korean dermatologists, with a reputation in the region for being the best in the world.. In a genuinely sexist society, the idea that looking eternally young has a very close link with professional success remains deeply rooted.. Fashion magazines and television shows glorify to the extreme mature women with huge cheeks, shaped noses and perfect complexions.. Appearance continues to open many doors in the richest cities.

In the younger urban generations, in addition to spending a fortune on creams, the usual thing is that, before entering university, they undergo surgery to have a blepharoplasty, eyelid surgery to enlarge the eyes, as well as lengthen the nasal bridge and reduce the size of the nostrils. They look for faces that look like the filtered selfies they upload to social media.

Chavismo is advancing with firm steps in the imposition of fake presidential elections tailored to Nicolás Maduro, who is rejected by 80% of the country, according to different surveys and polls.. After several weeks of meetings, the Chavista parliamentary body hosted the signing of the agreement reached by the National Dialogue Table, made up of parties and economic and religious sectors close to the Bolivarian revolution..

Despite the overwhelming presence of 152 “actors” in the signing of the document, which will be sent to the National Electoral Council (CNE) with 27 different electoral calendars, those who lead all the polls were missing: the opposition leader María Corina Machado and the Democratic Unitary Platform. “It is an arrangement between equals, between members of the same group, which leaves aside the essence of the Barbados Agreement (between the government and the opposition under the auspices of the United States),” counterattacked opposition member Juan Pablo Guanipa..

Chavismo maintains the illegal and unconstitutional disqualification of the opposition leader, whom it intends to replace with an archipelago of collaborationist or docile candidates. Already in 2018, in custom-made presidential elections that were not recognized by democratic countries, the “son of Chávez” won his re-election thanks to the judicial takeover of the opposition parties.

“Here is today the economic, social, cultural, political and religious life of the country. Here are 97% of the political parties duly registered with the CNE,” said Jorge Rodríguez, president of the Chavista National Assembly.. In reality, these are unknown parties, without militancy or intervened by the Supreme Court, with little support at the polls.. Among all the candidates present, including the official one, they barely add up to 22% of the vote expectations, very far from the opposition candidate.

“This new little table, an agglomeration of political figures to choose an election date, is just a facade to maintain forms and tell it with propaganda to the people and the international community. There is no element of opposition in this negotiation, they are people who play on the same side with similar interests. “Why so many turns to choose the date? They are groping and calculating when they are going to do it. There will be elections as long as they control the terrain so that they are similar to those of 2018 or in which there is no competitiveness,” Ana Milagros Parra, political scientist and renowned podcaster, explained to EL MUNDO.

Despite the obvious anger that Maduro shows in his interventions, Machado has maintained his electoral tours, adding one mass bath after another. The revolutionary boss appears so uncomfortable that a group of lawyers has gone to the Supreme Court to order the opposition leader to stop calling herself a candidate and not to tour the country again, to avoid events as epic as the one caused last week in Maturín, east of the country, with emboldened citizens carrying the leader of Vente Venezuela to overcome the siege of the Chavista agents.

The harassment goes beyond the leader herself and her collaborators, although three of her regional electoral coordinators remain imprisoned after their illegal detention. Bolivarian agents have closed the Ecos del Páramo 100.3 FM radio station in the last few hours, as announced by the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP). There are already eight radio stations closed so far this year, which join the 130 closed in different parts of the country since 2022. The police repeated their usual modus operandi and took computers, microphones and transmitters.

Once the television channels and traditional newspapers were bought by magnates close to the government or kneeling to the Bolivarian power, the radio stations constitute one of the main sources of information, especially in the interior of the country.. Independent media, also permanently harassed, fight an unequal battle to inform Venezuelans.

Despite the aggressive communication hegemony, the latest survey, conducted by DatinCorp, confirms the overwhelming advantage that Machado maintains. If the elections were held today in Venezuela, the opposition leader would collect 55% of the support, compared to Maduro's meager 14%.. In a polarized scenario between both candidates, the liberal leader would reach 65% of the votes, with Maduro barely 15%..

If Chavismo maintains the disqualification of Machado, it would not serve to defeat the opposition either, since a unitary candidate would prevail with 53% of the support. And that is precisely the “advice” that the majority (70%) of those surveyed give to María Corina: if she is permanently disqualified, support a candidate from the democratic unity.

In his best electoral performance, and with an evident advantage imposed by force, Hugo Chávez defeated the opponent Manuel Rosales, today governor of Zulia, in 2006, with a lead of 26%.