While in Israeli detention, Palestinian photojournalist Shadi Abu Sido was told his wife and children had been killed in Gaza. But when he was released under the ceasefire deal, he discovered they were alive.
The economy, however, is seen as the deciding issue across segments of Bolivian society.
The Ipsos Ciesmori survey found that voters identified Bolivia’s economic crisis as their top concern going into the run-off. Other key concerns included the rise in consumer prices and the ongoing fuel shortage.
In recent years, Bolivia has experienced a sharp fall in its natural gas production, the country’s main source of export revenue.
With reserves of its primary export nearly depleted, the country has limited ability to earn outside revenue. That has contributed to an acute shortage of United States dollars, which in turn has made it more difficult to import products.
Prices have risen as a result, and an unofficial, parallel market has cropped up to swap the boliviano currency for dollars — albeit at a higher exchange rate than the official standard.
According to Jauregui, the country’s rightward shift is a response to the economic hardships that many attribute to the current government of outgoing President Luis Arce.
But it’s also due to the inevitable decline of a left-wing political project that has lost its sense of direction.
“From the outset, the historical MAS project achieved its goals and has run its course; it no longer offers new proposals for a changing society,” Jauregui said.
“The economic crisis has exacerbated all of this, driving a search for something different.”
To address the economic decline, the two right-wing candidates in this Sunday’s run-off have taken distinct approaches.
Quiroga has called for increased international investment and the implementation of austerity measures that would “end wasteful spending” — though critics warn that could come at the expense of social programmes.
“I am here to change everything, dramatically and radically,” Quiroga told The Associated Press in August.
Paz, on the other hand, has proposed more gradual reforms under the slogan, “Capitalism for all”. Among his proposals are tax cuts, tariff reductions and the decentralisation of the national government.
“Eighty-five percent of the budget is today managed by the central government,” Paz told the online newspaper Infobae. “That must change in favour of the regions.”
Like Quiroga, Paz has pledged to crack down on government corruption, arguing that, “when money isn’t stolen, there is enough for everyone”. But unlike Quiroga, Paz believes it would be unwise to seek international loans before the Bolivian economy has stabilised.
Both candidates have also expressed their intention of restoring diplomatic relations with the US, which were severed in 2008 amid tensions over Washington’s “war on drugs”.
But Paz and Quiroga diverge on a major hot-button economic issue: the continuation of fuel subsidies.
Since the late 1990s, the Bolivian government has sold fuel at a fixed price, something critics say is unsustainable. The subsidies cost the state billions of dollars each year.
US President Donald Trump says he and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin have agreed to meet again for talks on the war in Ukraine.
Trump announced on social media on Thursday that he and Putin would meet in the Hungarian capital Budapest, after the two leaders held a lenghty and productive phone call. A date for the meeting has not been set.
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The call came a day before Trump is set to meet with President Zelenskyy in Washington, DC, where the Ukrainian leader is expected to resume his appeal to Trump to sell Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, which could allow it to strike deeper in Russian territory in the two countries’ ongoing war.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he would brief Zelenskyy on the Russia talks in the Oval Office tomorrow.
“I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation,” he added.
Trump also said that senior US and Russian officials would meet next week to prepare for another meeting between Putin and Trump, the US leader said.
The call is the first known conversation between the two leaders since they met for a summit in Alaska in August.
The surprise development comes with Zelenskyy preparing to meet Trump at the White House on Friday, as Ukrainian officials seek greater support to fend against aerial attacks and strike back at Russia.
Russian forces continued to bombard Ukraine on Thursday, firing hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles overnight that targeted infrastructure, including energy-related infrastructure.
Eight Ukrainian regions experienced blackouts after the barrage, Ukraine’s national energy operator, Ukrenergo, said on Thursday. DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, reported outages in the capital, Kyiv, and said it had to stop its natural gas extraction in the central Poltava region due to the strikes.
Natural gas infrastructure was damaged for the sixth time this month, said Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned oil and gas company.
Earlier this week, Russian forces struck a hospital and a United Nations convoy in Ukraine, injuring 57 people and forcing the evacuation of 50 patients.
Kyiv, in turn, has ramped up attacks on Russian targets, including a strike on an oil refinery in the Saratov region.
Zelenskyy has argued that boosting Ukraine’s ability to carry out long-range strikes would help compel Putin to take Trump’s calls for direct negotiations to end the war more seriously.
Tomahawk cruise missiles have a range of around 1,600km (1,000 miles) and would make a strike on Moscow and other major Russian cities possible. While Putin has warned that selling such missiles to Ukraine would be a “whole new level of escalation,” Trump told reporters over the weekend that he’s considering it.
“I might talk to [Putin], I might say, ‘Look, if this war is not going to get settled, I’m going to send them Tomahawks.’ I may say that,” Trump told reporters.
“The Tomahawk is an incredible weapon, very offensive weapon, and honestly, Russia does not need that.”
Trump spoke to reporters en route to Israel over the weekend, where he addressed Israel’s parliament as the ceasefire he helped broker in Gaza took effect. In that speech, Trump signalled the ceasefire deal could lay the groundwork for a truce between Russia and Ukraine, making it clear he’s ready to apply pressure to Putin.
“First we have to get Russia done,” Trump said. “We gotta get that one done.”
Trump and Putin met in Alaska in August to discuss ending Moscow’s war in Ukraine, but left that short summit without a deal.
Several deaths have been reported in Kenya after police used live fire and tear gas to disperse mourners who had rushed the stadium holding a public viewing of deceased opposition figure Raila Odinga.
United States President Donald Trump has threatened to break the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas if the Palestinian group continues to target gangs and alleged Israeli collaborators in Gaza.
“If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Thursday. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
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The statement appears to signal an about-face from Trump, who earlier this week expressed support for Hamas’s crackdown on gangs in the Palestinian territory.
“They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad, very, very bad gangs,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “And they did take them out, and they killed a number of gang members. And that didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you. That’s OK.”
There have been deadly clashes reported between Hamas and armed clan members in Gaza, who have been accused of looting humanitarian aid and working for Israel.
After the fighting on Sunday, the Interior Ministry in Gaza issued general amnesty for gang members who did not participate in the bloodshed.
In June, Israeli officials admitted to arming Gaza gangs, some of which have ties to ISIL (ISIS), in an effort to destabilise Hamas.
On Sunday, gunmen from a Gaza gang linked to Israel killed prominent Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi, according to local forces.
Earlier this week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Hamas over accusations that the group executed suspected Israel collaborators, calling the purported killings a “heinous crime”.
“What happened represents a crime, a flagrant violation of human rights, and a serious assault on the principle of the rule of law,” Abbas’s office said in a statement.
Under Trump’s ceasefire plan, Hamas would disarm and end any role in the governance of Gaza. But it is not clear whether the group has agreed to these conditions.
The truce has largely held since coming into effect on Saturday. But Israel has repeatedly violated the agreement, killing Palestinians daily under the justification that they approached areas under the control of the Israeli military, which are not clearly marked.
Israeli has also threatened to once again restrict humanitarian aid to Gaza, accusing Hamas of failing to return all the bodies of the captives it held. And it has refused to open the Rafah crossing between the Palestinian enclave and Egypt, to facilitate movement in and out of the territory.
