5 international news of the week

Historic EU agreement

After a summit in which the members of the European Council met to talk about various issues around the pandemic, especially the economic crisis , they reached a unanimous agreement of the 27 member states. The result was the creation of a multi-million dollar fund that totals 750 billion euros (860 billion dollars) and that will be divided between grants and loans with low interest rates.

This proposal was presented by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, and the discussions were generally divided into two blocks: those most affected by the virus and the others who are concerned about the high costs of recovery. In the second group were countries such as Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, among others, in which they opposed subsidies and proposed having some kind of control to be able to stop applications. Meanwhile, countries like Spain and Italy, the most affected, were looking for a large grant fund.

Helicopter crash in Colombia

A military helicopter suffered an accident in the southeast of the country and fell on the Inírida River in the department of Guaviare. On the afternoon of Tuesday, July 21, hours after the accident that occurred at dawn, the government had found 6 of the wounded soldiers and had found the body of 9 more, leaving 2 missing . Days later, the bodies of the two missing soldiers were found. 

So far, no information is known about what could have caused the accident, but according to information from El Tiempo, the aircraft went through four inspections a day. According to information provided by General Luis Fernando Navarro Jiménez, the military were getting off the helicopter in rappel mode when the accident occurred. This occurred in the middle of an operation against the leader of the first front of the Farc dissent, alias Iván Mordisco.

Trump's battle against Venezuela

The last move by the United States against the Latin American country was the announcement of a reward for information for the capture or prosecution of Maikel Moreno, president of the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela (TSJ).

Also read: Three Latin American politicians with COVID and other news of the week

Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, made the announcement in which he offered $ 5 million, claiming that Moreno is part of international corruption and organized crime networks . The accusations came from months ago, where Washington accused him of receiving millions of dollars in bribery and money laundering.

Maikel Moreno rejected the accusations and assured that it is an attempt to "subvert democratic institutions". He also added that " the Venezuelan Judiciary does not accept any tutelage of any foreign government, in our country we owe ourselves to the Constitution, the laws and the people, " according to CNN. The Venezuelan government also rejected the accusations and issued a statement comparing US actions as those of" the racist cowboys of the Wild West. "

New Ecuadorian vice president

María Alejandra Muñoz comes to office after a vote in Congress cast her as the next vice president with 75 votes and was part of the short list that President Moreno sent to the legislature. Muñoz will be in office for 10 months, at which time Moreno will leave the presidency. He congratulated her through Twitter account and made an invitation to "not waste a minute in the task of strengthening our democracy."

During Lenín Moreno's presidency, the position of vice-president has been controversial and Muñoz will be the third person to hold the position during his term. Prior to his arrival, two people left office due to corruption scandals, whose fight has been Moreno's motto.

In December 2018, María Alejandra Vicuña resigned from the position while she was in the middle of an investigation for alleged irregular collections. For his part, Moreno's first vice president, Jorge Glas, also came out for corruption and currently has a conviction for crimes related to Odebrecht corruption.

Goodbye to Tik Tok?

Months ago, information began to spread about the poor security of the Tik Tok application and it was reported that it was using the personal information of its users.

Several senators from the United States have pointed out that the social network in which short videos are broadcast and is very popular with young people serves as a spy tool that the Chinese government tries to use. Given this, Washington has confirmed that the possibility of blocking this application is being studied, since the owners of this application are a Chinese company called ByteDance. This opened a new chapter in the fight between the United States and China, as the Trump administration has also threatened to block other applications.

Following these decisions, the company's spokespersons have ensured that all the information is confidential and stored on servers and there is still no evidence of what the senators are reporting . The application also has requests to be blocked in other countries such as Australia and India and national security analysts have questioned it "as a mechanism used by terrorist groups to influence young people, given its popularity," according to Semana.