The airline Vueling has canceled its Barcelona-Tel Aviv flight this Sunday, but has decided to send the plane empty in order to bring back to Spain the travelers who had not been able to leave Israel until now, as well as the crew who They were in the same situation.

Among those passengers are those who could not fly to Barcelona on Saturday due to lack of free seats on the Tel Aviv-Barcelona flight hours after the escalation of the war between Palestinians and Israelis in Gaza increased, airline sources have explained.

The “rescue” flight, with an aircraft with capacity for just over 220 passengers, lands first in Rome (the first available route) and will then fly to Barcelona.

Vueling has reported that this Monday and the following days it will reassess “day by day” whether or not it cancels the daily route to Israel in light of the security of operations in the face of the unstable situation in the region.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has announced the sending of an aircraft carrier, a destroyer and ammunition to Israel to “protect the Israeli people.”

“I have ordered the deployment of the aircraft carrier strike group 'USS Gerald R. Ford' in the Eastern Mediterranean”, Austin explained in a statement. Also in the group are a Ticonderoga-class missile cruiser and Burke-class missile cruisers.

Washington will also send additional squadrons of F-35, F-15, F-16 and A-10 fighter jets and provide the Israeli Armed Forces with “additional material and resources, including ammunition.”. “The first security aid is already on the move today and will arrive in the coming days,” Austin highlighted.

Authorizing the use of US ammunition stored in Israel for use in an emergency is also being studied.. Much of that ammunition has been sent to Ukraine despite protests from Israeli authorities, although Washington hopes there will be enough ammunition to meet Israeli needs.

Both the Democratic and Republican Parties have expressed support for sending additional military aid to Israel, but it is unclear whether Congress has the authority to pass new laws now that the speaker of the House of Representatives has been removed.

The acting president, Patrick McHenry, does not have the power to present projects or participate in meetings of senior Pentagon officials.

“Full support” from the United States

This same Sunday, US President Joe Biden had promised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu additional US military aid.. “Additional aid for the Israel Defense Forces is already on its way to Israel and there will be more in the coming days,” Biden told Netanyahu, according to a statement from the White House.

In addition, Biden has informed the Israeli leader of the “intense US diplomatic offensive” of the last 24 hours to support Israel.. “The leaders have addressed efforts underway to ensure that no enemy of Israel believes they can take advantage of the current situation,” Washington said.

In that sense, Biden has expressed the “total support” of the United States for the Government and people of Israel in the face of “this unprecedented and devastating attack by Hamas terrorists.”

In particular they have dealt with the taking of hostages, “including entire families, the elderly and small children”. “The president has stressed that there is no justification for terrorism and that all countries must unite in the face of these brutal atrocities,” the White House reported.

Netanyahu himself had previously reported the telephone conversation with Biden, although it had only emerged that Biden had expressed his “unwavering support” for Israel.

One of the most dramatic points of the coordinated attack by Hamas terrorists this Saturday in Israel was a music festival that was held in the south of the country, and where hundreds of victims occurred.

One of the survivors is a young woman called Gili Yoskovic, who has been interviewed by the BBC and has given her testimony of what happened.

“Were… everywhere with automatic weapons,” says the young woman. “They were standing next to the cars and started shooting, but I realized that it was very easy for them to kill us…. because everyone went everywhere,” he said.

“The terrorists came from four or five places…. so we didn't know where to go, so I got in my car again and drove some more. Some people were shooting at me. I left the car and started running, I saw a place with many grapefruit trees and I headed there,” he continued.

“So I was in the middle (of that field) and I was lying on the ground. It was the second hiding place I found and they were all around me,” Yoskovich said. “They went tree by tree and shot. Everywhere. From both sides. I saw people dying everywhere. I was very quiet. I didn't cry, I didn't do anything,” he confesses.

“But on the one hand I was breathing and saying, 'Okay, I'm going to die.'. It's okay, just breathe, just close your eyes,' because I was shooting everywhere, they were very, very close to me,” he says.

“Then I heard the terrorists open a big van…. and get more weapons out of this vehicle. They were in the area for three hours. There was no one there, no one,” he says.

“I was sure the army would come, I heard some helicopters, I was sure the army would come down with helicopters and ropes and come down to this field and save us. But there was no one there. Just all these terrorists,” explains the young woman.

“They were very close to me and my leg was shaking. I tried and did the best I could, I moved a little bit and when they were on this side I heard them speaking in Arabic,” he continues. “I tried to be more under the tree so that maybe when the shooting came, they wouldn't touch my face “, Add. “I was lying there for three hours,” she says.

“I was thinking about my children, my friend, about everything and I was saying that it is not the time to die, it is not yet. Then I started hearing some Hebrew on one side, but Arabic on three sides. “I noticed there were some soldiers, maybe five or six,” he adds.

“I decided to go with these soldiers. Meanwhile there were still terrorists around, so I had my hands up so they would know I wasn't a terrorist.. Then someone put me in a car,” he explains.

“I was the first to leave the field. For others it took two or three more hours to leave and all along the way people were dying, all along the way, young people, since it was a festival for young people,” he points out.

“Those who tried to flee were shot from both sides. So it was best to hide. The craziest thing is how is it possible that we were there for so long and no one was there. Neither the army nor the police. Nothing,” concludes Gili Yoskovich.

More than 250 bodies recovered

More than 250 bodies have been recovered at the venue where an electronic trance music concert was held, which was held near Kibbutz Reim, in the middle of the Negev desert, according to the latest report.

The Disaster Victim Identification Service (ZAKA), a volunteer organization recognized by the Israeli Government that is in charge of removing bodies of the deceased, has given this figure in statements to the Israeli press.

The hundreds of attendees at the Nova Music Festival witnessed the rockets launched early on Saturday by the Palestinian militias from Gaza and later armed individuals arrived at the scene, causing the participants to flee en masse while the electronic music was still playing. .

The festival was organized to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.. It began at 11:00 p.m. on Friday and lasted all night with thousands of attendees, mostly Israelis between 20 and 40 years old.

Rescue teams continue working in Afghanistan to find survivors of the devastating earthquakes that shook the province of Herat this Saturday and have left at least 2,530 people dead and 9,240 injured, as confirmed by a spokesperson for the Taliban authorities. .

Some six villages have been destroyed and hundreds of civilians have been buried under the rubble, according to Abdul Wahid Rayan, spokesman for the Ministry of Information and Culture.. For this reason, professionals and volunteers work this Sunday to manually remove the deceased and injured who are found among rocks and rubble.

Thus, a video has been released in which a girl is rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building as a result of the earthquakes.. The images show how several rescuers try to free the little girl, who was buried up to her neck.

In the video you can also see that, while they are making efforts to save the girl, a hand covers the body of the minor, about whom the rescuers have indicated that it could be the mother.. It is unknown if the girl or the mother have survived.

Around a dozen teams have been mobilized to help with rescue efforts and care for the victims, including members of the army and humanitarian organizations such as the World Health Organization or the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS).

Late this Saturday, the Taliban's main spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, announced the launch of a large emergency deployment of rescue troops to alleviate the effects of the earthquakes.

More than 1,300 homes destroyed

The powerful chain of earthquakes of magnitude between 5.5 and 6.3 has caused one of the worst catastrophes of this nature in the Central Asian country in the last two decades. All of the earthquakes shook the region in the space of just one hour, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

The tremor was recorded in the Afghan province of Herat, in a radius of approximately 50 kilometers, and was especially felt in the municipality of Zendejan, a town of about 10,000 inhabitants in the valley of the Hari Rud river.

The two most notable earthquakes, both of magnitude 6.3, occurred about 33 kilometers northeast of this town, with a hypocenter located at a depth of 14 and 10 kilometers respectively.. We must add a third earthquake of 5.5 to 29 kilometers from the town. The fourth and last earthquake, of magnitude 5.9, was recorded 35 kilometers from Herat, with a hypocenter at 7.7 kilometers.

The latest balance has been released by the spokesperson for the Ministry of Disaster Management, Janan Faiq, who has confirmed that the greatest damage has been observed in 13 towns in Zendejan, where more than 1,300 homes have been completely destroyed. made known at a press conference reported by Tolo News.

It must be said, however, that the Taliban leadership in Kabul has at the same time offered significantly lower figures, particularly in terms of injuries. The spokesman for the Taliban politburo, Mohamed Naim, has confirmed more than 2,000 deaths (2,053, to be exact) but the number of injured is ten times lower, 1,240, although they have acknowledged that the final figure may be much higher.

Afghanistan prone to natural disasters

Afghanistan is among the countries most prone to natural disasters, being located in a point of great seismic activity. In addition, it has a very vulnerable population, mostly poor, and lacks sufficient infrastructure to deal with major disasters.

In this sense, the country suffers frequent earthquakes, especially near the junction between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates, such as in the Hindu Kush mountain range.

This same year, last March, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake occurred near the city of Jurm, in the northeast of the country, killed 13 people in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Last year, in June 2022, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake in Paktika and Khost provinces killed more than 1,000 people and left thousands homeless in Paktika and Khost provinces in the southeast of the country. country.

An Egyptian police officer shot dead two Israeli tourists this Sunday in the city of Alexandria, according to security sources reported to the Al Qahira network.

The incident, under investigation, has also resulted in the death of an Egyptian citizen while another has been injured, according to information collected in turn by the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram.

The person responsible for the shooting has been arrested and is currently being questioned by the authorities.

This shooting in Egypt takes place in the middle of the neighboring Gaza war between Hamas and Israel, which has already left more than 600 dead and 3,600 injured between Israelis and Palestinians since its outbreak this Saturday.

Struck by the housing crisis, the Portuguese Government has decided to put an end to a special regime by which certain foreigners, many of them Spaniards and retirees, pay less taxes, in a decision that above all affects those thinking of moving to this country.

In an interview this week, the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, announced that his Executive was going to eliminate starting next year the “Special regime for non-habitual residents”, a measure in force since 2009, because, he justified, “now Has no sense”.

This tax mechanism is considered one of the causes of the increase in house prices in the country, having attracted high-income foreigners who can afford more expensive homes, while the Portuguese can barely afford the rent, much less buy a property. because of the low salaries they have.

Since Costa's announcement, economist Juan Carlos Pérez, executive director of the consulting firm CE Consulting Portugal, which operates in the Portuguese country and in Spain, assured that they have received numerous calls from clients concerned that their tax situation may be affected.

However, he explained, “those who are already covered by this regime maintain the same tax advantages that they maintained, they do not disappear”, since it will only have an impact on those who were planning to move to Portugal and benefit from this mechanism from 2024. .

Special regime for non-habitual residents

This regime was created in 2009 to attract both “qualified residents with added value” and beneficiaries of pensions obtained abroad, the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicates on its website.

According to Government data, in 2022 there were a total of 74,258 non-habitual residents registered in Portugal, whose tax expenditure – that is, the amount of income that the Public Treasury stops receiving for granting tax treatment different from the general one – was 1,670 million euros.

Those 1,670 million euros were the highest fiscal expenditure that year after that related to VAT, accounting for 67.2% of what the Treasury stopped receiving, so the Portuguese authorities do not have the accounts.

Pérez explained that in general terms it is a regime in which non-habitual residents who have not had tax residence in Portugal in the previous five years can benefit.

Citizens of other countries who live in Portugal and who receive pensions from private employment can benefit, and pay taxes at 10%. “Not public, because there they are taxed at the source where they are paid, that is, a Spanish citizen who comes here, if his pension is from a public job, he will be taxed in Spain, because that is what the double taxation agreement imposes.”

“And if you worked in a private company, although there are exceptions, you are taxed in Portugal and would only do so at 10%” if you apply for this regime, he explained.

Other beneficiaries are foreigners with income that comes from abroad that is not income from work, since they are not taxed on Portuguese soil.

For example, a non-habitual resident of Portugal who has a company in Spain and receives dividends. “In general terms, these dividends will be taxed a little in Spain, while the rest in Portugal would not be taxed at all,” said this economist.

The third case is foreigners with professions with “high added value”, such as company managers, but also architects, engineers, plastic artists, actors, musicians, doctors or university professors, who pay taxes at 20%.

“Imagine an engineer who earns 100,000 euros in Spain, there he could pay taxes of around 35,000 or 40,000, while in Portugal he would pay taxes of 20,000 euros,” Pérez added.

The process to benefit from this special regime is not very complicated, especially if you are citizens of the European Union (EU).

Broadly speaking, you need to have a rental home, an address and a Portuguese NIF; and both self-employed and employed workers can do it.

The duration of this privilege is ten years and after this time it cannot be renewed, so the elimination of this regime from 2024 will not affect those who will have it expire soon because they would have been left without it anyway. .

Pérez indicates that in his company, which has been in Portugal for five years, although it has operated in Spain for 34 years, the client profile that usually benefits from this mechanism are liberal professionals, such as computer scientists.

Consequences in Spain

The expert rules out that its elimination will benefit other countries, such as Spain, which also offers tax incentives for foreigners, because they are different situations.

In Spain, “the misnamed 'Beckham law', because athletes are not covered by it, has some interesting advantages, but they are not similar to this regime because it is for people who travel for work and then pay taxes at 24 % income up to 600,000 euros and the rest up to 45%, and income obtained outside of Spain is not taxed either,” he noted.

“The Spanish regime is to encourage the entry of highly qualified professionals, whereas this (Portuguese) regime is for professionals, but also for retirees,” Pérez said.

The Israeli armed forces have released a video showing how the country's navy shoots at boats manned by Palestinian terrorists who were trying to enter Israeli territory.

In the thermal camera images, the Israeli Navy is seen firing explosive rounds at small boats that are moving at full speed.

Video shows multiple explosions on the ship as vehicles are destroyed. The press office of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) revealed that the two ships were carrying “dozens of terrorists attempting to infiltrate Israel.”

“The fighters of the maritime arm eliminated dozens of terrorists in the southern maritime space and on the coast. “In the early hours of the morning, maritime arm fighters conducted a naval pursuit and eliminated dozens of the terrorists who attempted to reach Israeli territory,” the Navy said in a statement.

“The combatants opened fire on them and destroyed two rubber boats, two other boats and an agricultural tool,” the Hebrew Navy revealed.

After Saturday's surprise attack, Israel is now trying to recover the areas invaded by Palestinian terrorists in its own territory and is preparing a counteroffensive that the government has warned will be relentless.

The surprise attack carried out this Saturday by Hamas terrorists on different parts of Israel is leaving the first heartbreaking stories of the victims. This is the case of Shani Louk, a 30-year-old German tourist, who has supposedly been murdered by fundamentalists.

Her mother, Ricarda, posted a video asking for help: “This morning my daughter, Shani Nicole Louk, a German citizen, was kidnapped with a group of tourists in southern Israel by Palestinian Hamas.”

“They sent us a video in which I could clearly see our unconscious daughter in the car with the Palestinians and them driving through the Gaza Strip,” the woman continues.

“I ask you to send us any help or any news. Thank you very much,” concludes the desperate mother, who during the video showed her phone with an image of her daughter.

Hamas had claimed that the body seen in the video was that of an Israeli soldier, but Tomasina Weintraub-Louk, cousin of the missing tourist, confirmed that it was Shani, who was recognized by her tattoos on her legs and her hairstyle with dreadlocks.

“We hope for positive news. It is definitely Shani. She was at a peace music festival. “This is a nightmare for our family,” said the victim's cousin.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip to flee that territory and has warned that they will turn all places where Hamas is into “ruins.”

“All the places where Hamas is organized, this city of evil, all the places where Hamas hides and operates, we will turn them into ruined cities. To the residents of Gaza I say: get out of there now, because we are going to act everywhere and with all our strength,” Netanyahu said in a speech to the nation.

The Israeli president has reported that the Israeli Armed Forces “are currently clearing the last settlements of terrorists” that they reached in the offensive launched on Saturday morning.. “They are advancing settlement by settlement, house by house and regaining control,” he explained.

Netanyahu has denounced this attack “on the morning of a holiday and Sabbath” and “innocent civilians, children and elderly people were murdered”. “Hamas has started a cruel and evil war,” he noted.. “We will win this war, but the price is too high to bear. “This is a very difficult day for all of us,” he acknowledged.

For Netanyahu, “Hamas wants to kill us all”. “It is an enemy that murders children and mothers in their homes, in their beds. An enemy that kidnaps the elderly, boys and girls,” he denounced.

What happened this Saturday “had never been seen in Israel and I am going to make sure it does not happen again”. To this end, the Armed Forces “will immediately use all its forces to destroy Hamas' capacity.”. “We will paralyze them to the point of destruction and we will take strong revenge on this black day,” he promised.

Regarding the hostages taken by Hamas, Netanyahu has warned that he holds the group responsible for their safety.. “Israel will settle accounts with anyone who touches a single hair on its head,” he stressed.

“This war will last a long time. It will be hard. There are still difficult days ahead. But I can guarantee one thing: with the help of God, with the help of the combined strength of all of us, with the help of our faith in the eternity of Israel “We will win,” he stressed.

There are hundreds of victims in Israel and the Gaza Strip as a result of Hamas' ground and air offensive and Israeli retaliation. To them must be added the thousands of wounded and the dozens of Israelis captured by the Palestinian militias.

After the Palestinian Hamas terrorists began an unprecedented attack on Israel this Saturday, with missiles and incursions into Israeli territory that have caused hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries, the response of the Israeli state was immediate.

Israeli Air Force fighter jets attacked military targets in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the morning offensive.

Hours later, the Qatari network Al Jazeera was reporting live from Gaza on the development of events, when its cameras were able to capture it in detail.

Journalist Youmna El Sayed was reporting live for the English version of Al Jazeera when a projectile from an Israeli plane suddenly fell on a building behind her.

Although it was not a high-capacity missile, the detonation was enough for the journalist, who was wearing a helmet and bulletproof vest, to cower in fear.

Youmna El Sayed did not suffer any damage. Israel's airstrikes in Gaza have left hundreds dead and thousands injured.