QUITO: Ecuador is on maximum alert over an alleged assassination plot against recently reelected President Daniel Noboa, the government said on Saturday.
Noboa won the race in an April 13 runoff vote, but his main rival Luisa Gonzalez has accused him of committing “grotesque electoral fraud.”
A military intelligence report saying that assassins entering Ecuador from Mexico and other countries planned to carry out “terrorist attacks” against Noboa was leaked on social media this week.
“We strongly condemn and repudiate any intention against the life of the president of the Republic, state authorities or public officials,” Ecuador’s Ministry of Government said in a statement early Saturday.
“The state is on maximum alert,” it added.
The government accused “criminal structures in complicity with political sectors defeated at the polls” of hatching the plot, though it did not offer any specific names.
Ecuador’s electoral council and international observers have dismissed claims of fraud in the runoff vote, but Mexico and Colombia have yet to officially recognize Noboa’s win.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has expressed support for leftist Gonzalez, who has said she will seek a recount.
Mexico severed ties with the South American nation a year ago after security forces stormed its embassy in Quito to arrest a former vice president granted asylum.
Noboa, who is expected to be sworn in on May 24, faces the herculean task of uniting his violence-plagued nation, which averaged a killing every hour at the start of the year as cartels vied for control over drug smuggling routes.
Ecuador on ‘maximum alert’ over alleged assassination plot
https://arab.news/4twv3
Ecuador on ‘maximum alert’ over alleged assassination plot
Trump warns against infiltration by a ‘bad Santa,’ defends coal in jovial Christmas calls with kids
- Take potshots at his critics, "including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country, but are failing badly”
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: President Donald Trump marked Christmas Eve by quizzing children calling in about what presents they were excited about receiving, while promising to not let a “bad Santa” infiltrate the country and even suggesting that a stocking full of coal may not be so bad.
Vacationing at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the president and first lady Melania Trump participated in the tradition of talking to youngsters dialing into the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which playfully tracks Santa’s progress around the globe.
“We want to make sure that Santa is being good. Santa’s a very good person,” Trump said while speaking to kids ages 4 and 10 in Oklahoma. “We want to make sure that he’s not infiltrated, that we’re not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa.”
He didn’t elaborate.
Trump has often marked Christmases past with criticisms of his political enemies, including in 2024, when he posted, “Merry Christmas to the Radical Left Lunatics.” During his first term, Trump wrote online early on Dec. 24, 2017, targeting a top FBI official he believed was biased against him, as well as the news media.
Shortly after wrapping up Wednesday’s Christmas Eve calls, in fact, he returned to that theme, posting: “Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country, but are failing badly.”
But Trump was in a jovial mood while talking with the kids. He even said at one point that he “could do this all day long” but likely would have to get back to more pressing matters like efforts to quell the fighting in Russia’s war with Ukraine.
When an 8-year-old from North Carolina, asked if Santa would be mad if no one leaves cookies out for him, Trump said he didn’t think so, “But I think he’ll be very disappointed.”
“You know, Santa’s — he tends to be a little bit on the cherubic side. You know what cherubic means? A little on the heavy side,” Trump joked. “I think Santa would like some cookies.”
The president and first lady Melania Trump sat side-by-side and took about a dozen calls between them. At one point, while his wife was on the phone and Trump was waiting to be connected to another call, he noted how little attention she was paying to him: “She’s able to focus totally, without listening.”
Asked by an 8-year-old girl in Kansas what she’d like Santa to bring, the answer came back, “Uh, not coal.”
“You mean clean, beautiful coal?” Trump replied, evoking a favored campaign slogan he’s long used when promising to revive domestic coal production.
“I had to do that, I’m sorry,” the president added, laughing and even causing the first lady, who was on a separate call, to turn toward him and grin.
“Coal is clean and beautiful. Please remember that, at all costs,” Trump said. “But you don’t want clean, beautiful coal, right?”
“No,” the caller responded, saying she’d prefer a Barbie doll, clothes and candy.
