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Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicWarning: this episode contains descriptions of violence. A massive scam targeting older Americans who own timeshare properties has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars sent to Mexico. Maria Abi-Habib, an investigative correspondent for The Times, tells the story of a victim who lost everything, and of the criminal group making the scam calls — Jalisco New Generation, one of Mexico’s most violent cartels.

Persons: Maria Abi, Habib Organizations: Spotify, The Times Locations: Mexico, Jalisco

Even as gangs terrorized Haiti, kidnapped civilians en masse and killed at will, the country’s embattled prime minister held on to power for years. In the midst of political upheaval not seen since the country’s president was assassinated in 2021, Haiti’s prime minister, Ariel Henry, agreed to step down. What made this moment different, experts say: The gangs united, forcing the country’s leader to relinquish power. “Prime Minister Ariel resigned not because of politics, not because of the massive street demonstrations against him over the years, but because of the violence gangs have carried out,” said Judes Jonathas, a Haitian consultant who has worked for years in aid delivery. “The situation totally changed now, because the gangs are now working together.”

Persons: Ariel Henry, Ariel, ”, Judes Jonathas Organizations: “ Locations: Haiti, Haitian

☆ Haiti Engulfed by Crisis as Gangs Press Prime Minister to Step Down
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-06 | by ( Simon Romero | Maria Abi-Habib | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Haiti’s security crisis is reaching a breaking point. An alliance of armed gangs is pressing the country’s prime minister to resign, placing the United States in the middle of a power struggle gripping the country. Aiming to ease the standoff, the Biden administration is increasing pressure on Prime Minister Ariel Henry to enable a transfer of power. The United States was not actively “calling on him or pushing for him to resign,” Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the State Department, said. The standoff emerged after Mr. Henry, who has been backed by the United States since becoming Haiti’s de facto leader after the assassination in 2021 of President Jovenel Moïse, was unable to return to Haiti on Tuesday because of doubts over safely landing at the airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, which has been targeted in recent days by gang assaults.

Persons: Biden, Ariel Henry, ” Matthew Miller, Henry, Jovenel Moïse Organizations: State Department Locations: United States, Haiti, Port

Ecuador’s military was sent in to seize control of the country’s prisons last month after two major gang leaders escaped and criminal groups quickly set off a nationwide revolt that paralyzed the country. In Brazil last week, two inmates with connections to a major gang became the first to escape from one of the nation’s five maximum-security federal prisons, officials said. Officials in Colombia have declared an emergency in its prisons after two guards were killed and several more targeted in what the government said was retaliation for its crackdown on major criminal groups. Inside prisons across Latin America, criminal groups exercise unchallenged authority over prisoners, extracting money from them to buy protection or basic necessities, like food.

Locations: Brazil, Colombia, Latin America

☆ Where Is Hamas Getting Its Weapons? Increasingly, From Israel.
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-28 | by ( Maria Abi-Habib | Sheera Frenkel | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Israeli military and intelligence officials have concluded that a significant number of weapons used by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attacks and in the war in Gaza came from an unlikely source: the Israeli military itself. For years, analysts have pointed to underground smuggling routes to explain how Hamas stayed so heavily armed despite an Israeli military blockade of the Gaza Strip. Hamas is also arming its fighters with weapons stolen from Israeli military bases. What is clear now is that the very weapons that Israeli forces have used to enforce a blockade of Gaza over the past 17 years are now being used against them. Israeli and American military explosives have enabled Hamas to shower Israel with rockets and, for the first time, penetrate Israeli towns from Gaza.

Persons: Israel lobbed Organizations: Hamas, Intelligence Locations: Gaza, Israel

☆ Israel-Hamas War Israel and Hamas Agree to Cease-Fire for Release of Hostages
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-22 | by ( Patrick Kingsley | Michael D. Shear | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +5 min

The Israeli government and Hamas agreed to uphold a brief cease-fire in Gaza to allow for the release of 50 hostages captured during Hamas’s assault last month on Israel and the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, Qatar said early Wednesday. Israel and Hamas have been negotiating indirectly for weeks over the roughly 240 hostages taken to Gaza in the Hamas attacks on southern Israel. A brief cease-fire could allow Israel to achieve part of the latter objective before returning to the former. Mr. Netanyahu said earlier on Tuesday night that Israel’s campaign to prevent Hamas from controlling any part of Gaza would continue after the cease-fire. As part of its offensive against Hamas, Israel has cut off electricity to Gaza and blocked the delivery of most fuel, saying it could be diverted for the armed group’s use.

Persons: Benjamin Netanyahu’s, “, God, ”, Khan Younis, Yousef Masoud, Mohammed Al Khulaifi, Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Abir Sultan, Netanyahu, ” Mr, Edward Wong, Aaron Boxerman, Liam Stack, Johnatan Reiss, Maria Abi, Habib Organizations: Hamas, Nasser Medical Hospital, ., The New York Times, Video, Israel, Credit Locations: Old City, Jerusalem, Gaza, Israel, Qatar, Khan, Qatari

More than 400 political appointees and staff members representing some 40 government agencies sent a letter to President Biden on Tuesday protesting his support of Israel in its war in Gaza. The letter, part of growing internal dissent over the administration’s support of the war, calls on the president to seek an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and to push Israel to allow humanitarian aid into the territory. Two political appointees who helped organize the letter to Mr. Biden said the majority of the signatories are political appointees of various faiths who work throughout government, from the National Security Council to the F.B.I. Some of the signatories helped Mr. Biden get elected in 2020 and said in interviews they were concerned that the administration’s support of Israel’s war in Gaza clashed with Democratic voters’ stance on the issue. So far, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military offensive according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Persons: Biden, Antony J, Blinken, Mr, Israel Organizations: State Department, U.S . Agency for International Development, USAID, Department, U.S ., The New York Times, National Security Council, Justice Department, Democratic Locations: Israel, Gaza, U.S, United States

It’s a list that includes powerful members of Mexico’s government. And, court records show, they were all recently under surveillance by the Mexico City attorney general’s office. At least 14 written orders reviewed by The New York Times show that the attorney general directed Mexico’s largest telecommunications company to hand over the phone and text records, as well as location data, of more than a dozen prominent Mexican officials and politicians. Telcel, the telecommunications company, acknowledged in a court filing reviewed by The Times that it had received the orders and handed over the records, which spanned from 2021 until earlier this year. The surveillance included both opponents of the governing Morena party and its allies.

Organizations: The New York Times, The Times, Morena Locations: It’s, Mexico City

Israel had delayed its ground attack to give some time for the hostage negotiations to be completed, according to two of the officials. “The only way of saving the hostages is if Israel continues its ground operation.”On Oct. 7, Palestinian attackers penetrated towns and military bases in southern Israel and killed roughly 1,400 people. The United States and Israel have long used Qatar as an intermediary to get messages to Hamas and to coordinate aid efforts in Gaza. Over the last week, Hamas has added a new condition for releasing civilian hostages — the delivery of fuel to collapsing hospitals across the Gaza Strip. Israel has prevented fuel deliveries into Gaza, claiming that Hamas uses it for its rocket attacks and that it has stockpiled fuel meant for civilians.

Persons: Yoav Gallant, Israel Organizations: Israel, New York Times, Hamas Locations: Gaza, Israel, Qatar, United States, Doha

Hamas derided the Palestinian Authority for its cooperation with Israel, including the use of Palestinian police to prevent attacks on Israel. Instead of firing rockets over issues in Gaza, Hamas was fighting for concerns central to all Palestinians, including those outside the enclave. “The Israelis were only concerned with one thing: How do I get rid of the Palestinian cause?” Mr. Hamdan said. But inside Gaza, Hamas’s capabilities grew. That restoration deepened the relationship between Hamas’s military wing in Gaza and the so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s network of regional militias, according to regional diplomats and security officials.

Persons: Sinwar, Deif, Mohammed Deif, ”, “, Osama Hamdan, Israel, Mr, Hamdan Organizations: Palestinian Authority, West Bank, Israel, Hamas, Qassam, Agence France, National Security Council, Palestinian Locations: Israel, Gaza, Egypt, Italian, “, Qatar, East Jerusalem, Aqsa, Jerusalem’s Old City, Beirut, Lebanon, Jihad, Iran, Syria

☆ Democrats Won Big in Last Night’s Elections
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-08 | by ( Matthew Cullen | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Already, roughly 1,400 Israelis and over 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza. That death toll could rise once Israel starts fighting in earnest within the urban warren that is Gaza City, which is Hamas’s stronghold and the primary target of Israel’s invasion. Once Israeli forces enter Gaza City en masse, we will see very intense urban warfare, in part because this is Hamas’s home turf. The biggest question is what Israel’s army will do once they reach the hospitals in central Gaza City, which they claim are the headquarters of Hamas’s military command. Also, my colleagues Ben Hubbard and Maria Abi-Habib explained why Hamas carried out its bloody Oct. 7 attack.

Persons: Patrick, Israel, Israel hasn’t, Ben Hubbard, Maria Abi, Habib Organizations: Hamas Locations: Gaza, Gaza City

In some hospitals, patients arriving in cardiac arrest are not resuscitated, because medical staff choose to work on patients with a greater chance of survival instead. On top of all those challenges, the hospitals have become temporary orphanages, too, according to the medical workers. The medical staff have cared for some of the children until a relative can come to take them. Doctors in two hospitals in Gaza said that, with nothing to power air-conditioners, the heat has gotten bad enough that it is making patients’ wounds fester. Medical staff need their diminishing fuel stocks to light up operating rooms instead.

Persons: Najjar, Mohammad Abu Salmiya, Abu Salmiya, Nir, fester, Kamal Adwan Organizations: Anesthesia, World Health Organization, Medical, Ambulance Locations: Gaza, Al Shifa, Gaza City, Egypt, Israeli

“All of Lebanon, including Hezbollah — we don’t want a war,” said Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, who is in regular contact with Hezbollah. “There is Western pressure on the Lebanese government to apply pressure on Hezbollah not to go to war. But will Israel start a war? “If the situation gets really bad in Gaza, it will be really bad for the whole region — not just Lebanon and Israel,” Mr. Bou Habib said. Israel has responded with a vast bombing campaign on Gaza, a blockade on fuel and a ground invasion.

Persons: ”, Abdallah Bou Habib, ” Ron Dermer, we’re, Mr, Dermer, Bou Habib, ” Mr, Khaled Meshaal, Meshaal, Al Arabiya, Maha Yahya, Ms, Yahya, “, Hassan Nasrallah, Israel, Nasrallah Organizations: Hezbollah, Carnegie Middle East Center Locations: Lebanon, States, Israel, Gaza, United States, Beirut, Iran

But Hamas’s attack exposed the fragility of that technology. The group used explosive drones that damaged the cellular antennas and the remote firing systems that protected the fence between Gaza and Israel. To get around Israel’s powerful surveillance technology, Hamas fighters also appeared to enforce strict discipline among the group’s ranks to not discuss its activities on mobile phones. This allowed them to pull off the attack without detection, one European official said. The group most likely divided its fighters into smaller cells, each probably only trained for a specific objective.

Persons: — Locations: Israel, Gaza

As supplies of virtually every basic human necessity dwindle in Gaza, one group in the besieged enclave remains well-stocked: Hamas. Arab and Western officials say there is substance to Israeli claims of Hamas stockpiling supplies, including desperately needed food and fuel. One of the four Israeli hostages released by Hamas even described the group providing captives with medicine, shampoo and feminine hygiene products. The stockpiles are typically kept underground, they said, and cautioned that precise details on Hamas’s supplies were difficult to come by. Yet with Gazans facing a humanitarian catastrophe, Hamas’s stockpiles raise questions about what responsibility, if any, it has to the civilian population.

Organizations: Lebanese, Hamas Locations: Gaza, Israel, Hamas, Egypt

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