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Voting will be during the day.
Photo:
Barranquilla Mayor’s Office Press
Voting will be during the day.
The elections in Bucaramanga will be held after the request of the same candidates.
Find the validation of El Cazamentiras at the end of the news.
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buCARAMANGA Article publication time
Author’s name Article publication time
BU
March 04, 2022, 11:03 AM
MR
Maria Alejandra Rodriguez Castellanos March 04, 2022, 11:03 AM
On the day of elections for Community Action Boards that took place in November 2021, 67 of the 271 Community Action Boards of Bucaramanga participated.
Another 89 requested the postponement of the elections in their neighborhoods, for reasons that were admitted through resolution 002 of 2022.
The new elections will be held on April 24. Only the Communal Action Boards that requested the authorization of atypical elections will be able to participate in the day of April 24.
The mayor’s office has already begun training for these elections.
BUCARAMANGA
BU
March 04, 2022, 11:03 AM
MR
Maria Alejandra Rodriguez Castellanos March 04, 2022, 11:03 AM
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U.S. President Joe Biden cut off the Russian government from international financing on Tuesday and imposed sanctions on two large banks, declaring that its movement of troops into eastern Ukraine was “a flagrant violation of international law.”
In a brief White House speech to the American public, Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order late Monday to send troops across the eastern Ukraine border into the Luhansk and Donetsk regions was “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Hours earlier, Putin had declared the regions as independent, no longer part of Ukraine.
Biden pointedly asked, “Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belonged to his neighbors?”
U.S. President Joe Biden provides an update on Russia and Ukraine during remarks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Feb. 22, 2022.
The U.S. leader said his sanctions would cut off the Russia government “from raising money from the West,” and vowed that Russia “will pay an even steeper price (with more sanctions) if its forces advance further” west into Ukraine.
He said the United States has no intention of “fighting Russia.” But he said that “none of us should be fooled, none of us will be fooled” by Putin’s intentions in deploying what he characterized as “peacekeeping forces” into the one-time Soviet republic, which has been independent since 1991.
On Monday, in a Kremlin speech, Putin declared that Ukraine was never an independent state and belonged as part of a greater Russian sphere of influence, not a “puppet” of the West.
“He directly attacked Ukraine’s right to exist,” Biden said of Putin, while adding there is “still time to avert the worst-case scenario” of a full-scale invasion, through diplomatic settlement of the crisis.
But, Biden concluded, “We’re going to judge Russia by its actions, not its words.”
Biden warned Americans, “Defending freedom will have costs,” with higher gasoline prices as world oil prices surge with the threat of further violence in Ukraine and an expanded Russian invasion.
A woman attends a rally to protest after Moscow’s decision to formally recognize two Russian-backed regions of eastern Ukraine as independent at the industrial city of Mariupol, located about 20 kilometers from the rebel-controlled areas in eastern Ukraine, Feb. 22, 2022.
Biden’s implementation of long-promised sanctions came as other Western allies quickly moved Tuesday to punish Russia with sanctions of their own.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz halted authorization for Nord Stream 2, the completed but not yet operational natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, at least temporarily curbing potential fuel deliveries to Germany but also depriving Moscow of revenue from the pipeline.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Parliament he had sanctioned five Russian banks and three “high net worth” executives, freezing their assets in Britain and cutting off financial transactions with them.
“This is the first tranche, the first barrage, of what we are prepared to do,” Johnson said.
Russian lawmakers on Tuesday gave Putin permission to use military force outside the country, possibly presaging a broader attack on Ukraine.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that “Russian troops are on Ukrainian soil” in Donetsk and Luhansk but that it was not a “fully fledged invasion.”
A little girl waits along with people crossing to Ukrainian government controlled areas from pro-Russian separatists controlled territory in Stanytsia Luhanska, the only crossing point open daily, in the Luhansk region, eastern Ukraine, Feb. 22, 2022.
For weeks, the U.S. and European allies have warned of swift and severe consequences for Russia if it launched an invasion of Ukraine, a possibility viewed with growing concern as Russia deployed 150,000 troops and military equipment along its border with Ukraine and in Belarus, a Russian ally to the north of Ukraine.
Russian tanks entered eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region overnight, Western diplomats and residents in Donetsk confirmed to VOA. It was unclear if their presence constituted significant movement of Russian forces or instead movement of Russian-backed militias already in eastern Ukraine.
Biden issued an initial set of sanctions Monday in response to Putin’s recognition of the breakaway regions and his order to deploy what he called Russian peacekeeping forces.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters that the first round of sanctions was specifically tied to those actions and did not represent the “swift and severe economic measures we have been preparing in coordination with allies and partners should Russia further invade Ukraine.”
Biden’s Monday order prohibited new investment, trade and financing by Americans in Luhansk and Donetsk after Putin declared them independent from Ukraine.
From a desk at the Kremlin, Putin delivered a nearly hourlong televised address to the Russian people Monday, outlining his version of the history of national boundaries in Europe and the 1990s breakup of the Soviet Union.
FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, chairs a Security Council meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 21, 2022.
Putin also said there was “no prospect” for peace to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine, but Moscow has contended it has no plans to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“This wasn’t a speech just about Russia’s security,” a senior U.S. administration official said. “It was an attack on the very idea of a sovereign and independent Ukraine. He (Putin) made clear that he views Ukraine historically as part of Russia. And he made a number of false claims about Ukraine that seemed designed to excuse possible military action. This was a speech to the Russian people to justify war.”
The official would not say whether plans were still on for Secretary of State Antony Blinken to meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, later this week. That meeting was intended to set the scene for a possible summit between Putin and Biden, with the United States saying both were predicated on Russia not invading Ukraine.
“We’ll continue to pursue diplomacy until the tanks roll,” the official said. “We are under no illusions about what is likely to come next. And we’re prepared to respond decisively when it does.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Tuesday the Russian side was still “ready for negotiations.”
The Supreme Court this week announced that it would hear two cases challenging the practice by some U.S. universities of using the race of an applicant as one of the factors that affect admissions.
The announcement, six years after the court upheld the use of affirmative action in a case involving the University of Texas at Austin, is another signal that the high court’s new conservative majority is willing to wade into thorny issues on the fault lines of U.S. politics.
The court said it would combine two cases — one brought against Harvard University and another against the University of North Carolina. The central question identified by the court in both cases is whether it should overturn its own ruling from 2003 in the case Grutter v. Bollinger, which the court upheld in 2016, that allowed universities to use race as a factor in admissions decisions.
FILE – People remove belongings on campus at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., March 18, 2020.
Both cases were brought by an organization called Students for Fair Admissions. In a statement, the group’s president, Edward Blum, said, “In a multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation like ours, the college admissions bar cannot be raised for some races and ethnic groups but lowered for others. Our nation cannot remedy past discrimination and racial preferences with new discrimination and different racial preferences.”
Blum’s organization claims that Harvard and the University of North Carolina effectively discriminate against Asian American and white students to the extent that they give any preference to members of other groups, notably African Americans, when making admissions decisions.
The Harvard case comes to the Supreme Court on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, which found that the university’s admissions system, while “not perfect,” was not racially discriminatory.
‘Merit’ v. ‘accidents of life’
Supporters of affirmative action point out that many of the factors typically considered “merit” by advocates of completely race-blind admissions cannot be reliably disentangled from privilege. Do students who achieve excellent grades and test scores with the aid of college-educated parents, or of tutors hired by their parents, truly exhibit more merit than students who achieved slightly lower marks without any outside assistance?
“Those built-in advantages ought to not count as merit. Those aren’t merit,” said Michael A. Olivas, the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law (Emeritus) at the University of Houston Law Center.
FILE – People walk through the gates leading to Harvard Yard, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 13, 2018.
“Those are accidents of life,” Olivas told VOA. “Children can take advantage of opportunities, but the opportunity structures are unequally distributed in our society, and higher education is probably the best manifestation of that.”
The current college admission system may be imperfect, Olivas said. However, he added, “As (Former British Prime Minister Winston) Churchill once said of democracy, I think it’s the worst of all systems, except for the alternatives. What would you substitute in the alternative?”
Multiple flashpoints
The court’s decision to take on an affirmative action case creates another potential flashpoint in the so-called “culture wars” that dominate political discourse in the United States.
So far this term, the court has heard arguments in an abortion case that many experts believe will lead to the overturning or gutting of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which determined that states are not allowed to outlaw access to abortion services
The court has also heard arguments in a controversial gun rights case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., v. Bruen, which could result in the invalidation of numerous state-level gun laws that restrict the ability of individuals to carry firearms outside of their homes.
Decisions in the abortion and gun rights cases are expected in the coming months. The affirmative action case will not be heard until the court’s next term begins in October.
The court has already ruled on some controversial cases during its current term.
Earlier this month, it blocked the Biden administration’s effort to require all businesses with 100 or more employees to require workers to be vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19 or have a masking and testing policy.
Last August, the court required the Biden administration to reinstitute the controversial Remain in Mexico program initiated by the Trump administration, which required asylum-seekers stopped at the southern border to remain outside U.S. territory while their applications are processed.
Energized conservative majority
Because former President Donald Trump was able to appoint three new members to the court during his four years in office, the ideological makeup of the court shifted dramatically in a short time. The 5-4 conservative majority that existed during former President Barack Obama’s final term in office often produced rulings friendly to the political left, when a centrist conservative crossed over to vote with the court’s liberal bloc, including a landmark 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.
However, the court is now solidly conservative by a margin of 6-3.
“You have a very strong working majority of conservative voices in the court now,” said Frederick M. Lawrence, a distinguished lecturer at Georgetown Law Center and the former president of Brandeis University. “By any objective measure, this is the most conservative court in the country in roughly a century.”
Lawrence said it would not be unreasonable to expect the court to begin revisiting many decisions made by previous incarnations of the court which American conservatives have long opposed.
“There are at least some justices of that conservative group who have very strong views about what the law ought to be, what the court has done over the past quarter-century or half-century, and what they’re trying to roll back,” he told VOA.
While liberal groups brace for likely defeats, setbacks and reversals, conservatives are eager to continue advancing legal cases that could draw the high court’s attention and, they hope, result in sweeping decisions favorable to their side.
Washington has put 8,500 military personnel on heightened alert for possible deployment to Europe and will evacuate some embassy personnel from Ukraine, as tensions rise between Russia and NATO countries over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s continued mobilization of troops near the Ukrainian border. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.
The U.S. government said Friday it would suspend 44 China-bound flights from the United States by four Chinese carriers in response to the Chinese government’s decision to suspend some U.S. carrier flights over COVID-19 concerns.
The suspensions will begin Jan. 30 with Xiamen Airlines’ scheduled Los Angeles-to-Xiamen flight and run through March 29, the Transportation Department said.
The decision will cut some flights by Xiamen, Air China, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines.
Since Dec. 31, Chinese authorities have suspended 20 United Airlines, 10 American Airlines and 14 Delta Air Lines flights, after some passengers tested positive for COVID-19.
As recently as Tuesday, the Transportation Department said the Chinese government had announced new U.S. flight cancellations.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said Friday the policy for international passenger flights entering China has “been applied equally to Chinese and foreign airlines in a fair, open and transparent way.”
He called the U.S. move “very unreasonable” and added, “We urge the U.S. side to stop disrupting and restricting the normal passenger flights” by Chinese airlines.
Airlines for America, a trade group representing the three U.S. carriers affected by China’s move, along with others, said it supported Washington’s action “to ensure the fair treatment of U.S. airlines in the Chinese market.”
The Transportation Department said France and Germany have taken similar action against China’s COVID-19 actions. It said China’s suspensions of the flights “are adverse to the public interest and warrant proportionate remedial action.” It added that China’s “unilateral actions against the named U.S. carriers are inconsistent” with a bilateral agreement.
China has also suspended numerous U.S. flights by Chinese carriers after passengers later tested positive.
The department said it was prepared to revisit its action if China revised its “policies to bring about the necessary improved situation for U.S. carriers.” It warned that if China cancels more flights, “we reserve the right to take additional action.”
China has all but shut its borders to travelers, cutting total international flights to just 200 a week, or 2% of pre-pandemic levels, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said in September.
The number of U.S. flights being scrapped has surged since December, as infections caused by the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus soared to record highs in the United States.
Beijing and Washington have sparred over air services since the start of the pandemic. In August, the U.S. Transportation Department limited four flights from Chinese carriers to 40% passenger capacity for four weeks after Beijing imposed identical limits on four United Airlines flights.
Before the recent cancellations, three U.S. airlines and four Chinese carriers were operating about 20 flights a week between the countries, well below the figure of more than 100 per week before the pandemic.
