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By Ivana Kottasová, Anna Chernova, CNN (CNN) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to join US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” the committee that will oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, his spokesman said on Monday. Speaking to reporters during a regular media briefing, Dmitry Peskov said: “President Putin also received through diplomatic channels an invitation to join this Board of Peace.” He said the Kremlin is now reviewing the invitation and “hoping to get more details from the US side.” CNN has asked the White House for a comment. Later on Monday, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said President Alexander Lukashenko also received an invitation to join the board. The ministry’s press service said Minsk “highly appreciates that the American side sees Belarus – and this is clearly stated in the text of the address – as a country ready to take on the noble responsibility of building a lasting peace and leading by example, investing in a secure and prosperous future for future generations.” Lukashenko is Putin’s closest ally and has been described as Europe’s last dictator. The establishment of the board, chaired by Trump, is a key step in the United Nations-backed American plan to demilitarize and rebuild Gaza, which was ravaged by two years of war between Israel and the Hamas militant group. However, signs of discontent have already started to appear. Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee issued a statement on Sunday warning that the body proposed by Trump “would have a mandate wider than the implementation of the Gaza Peace Plan.” “The United Nations has a unique mandate to maintain international peace and security, and the legitimacy to bring nations together to find common solutions to shared challenges. While it may be imperfect, the UN and the primacy of international law is more important now than ever,” she said in a statement. ‘Greatest Board ever’ Described by Trump as the “the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled,” the committee will include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump has also invited Israel to join the board as a founding member state, a senior Israeli official told CNN on Monday. According to the official, the invitation was extended to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or another Israeli representative on his behalf. It is unclear how many invitations have been sent out – the information about which countries and global leaders have been asked to join has been coming from the individual states, rather than the White House. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Argentinian President Javier Milei and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also received invitations to join, according to statements from them or their offices. The US ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, said India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also invited to join. Some of the leaders, including Orbán, have shared the invitation letters publicly. They show that, while Trump addressed the letters personally to the leaders, he was inviting their country to join the board as a “founding state.” Members of the committee will receive a permanent seat if they pay $1 billion, according to a US official, who told CNN that, while there was no requirement to contribute funds to the board, members who do not make the $1 billion payment will have a three-year term. All funds raised will go toward rebuilding Gaza, the official said, adding that “there will not be exorbitant salaries and massive administrative bloat that plagues many other international organizations.” Return to global stage Putin’s appointment to the board would mark an extraordinary return to the global stage for the Russian leader, who has been mostly shunned from international cooperation projects since he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Kremlin’s involvement in the conflict…

Por Mauricio Torres, CNN en Español Medio siglo de vida, miles de millones de barriles de petróleo producidos y un rol central en la historia contemporánea de una nación. En sus 50 años, la empresa estatal Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) se ha ubicado como un actor fundamental en el desarrollo económico del país sudamericano —donde el petróleo es la principal fuente de ingresos y se cuenta con las mayores reservas de crudo extrapesado del mundo— y también en su estabilidad política y social. De acuerdo con exfuncionarios y especialistas del sector energético consultados por CNN, se trata de una historia con altibajos, atravesada por presidentes, aperturas al exterior, nacionalizaciones y tensiones con otros países. Entre estas últimas, las más recientes fueron las que escalaron el año pasado entre los gobiernos de Nicolás Maduro y Donald Trump, que condujeron al operativo militar que Estados Unidos realizó el 3 de enero en Caracas para capturar a Maduro —a quien acusa de narcoterrorismo, narcotráfico y posesión de armas, cargos que él rechaza— y al anuncio de Washington de que ahora buscará recuperar el petróleo que, dice, Venezuela “le robó”. PDVSA se creó en 1976, durante la primera presidencia de Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974-1979), tras la publicación de una ley de nacionalización de la industria petrolera. El objetivo del Gobierno era contar con una empresa estatal que explotara y administrara la riqueza del país. El economista José Toro Hardy, exdirector de PDVSA, dice en su canal de YouTube que en sus orígenes la compañía tenía personal altamente capacitado y contaba con herramientas avanzadas. Hacia mediados de la década de 1990, señala Toro Hardy, PDVSA preguntó a la Justicia de Venezuela bajo qué sustento legal podría buscar inversión extranjera, lo que llevó a que se fijaran parámetros para una apertura del sector y para gestar alianzas con empresas privadas. Esto significó la llegada de recursos y crecimiento para PDVSA, beneficiada también por la ubicación geográfica de Venezuela y su lejanía de los conflictos que había en los países petroleros de Medio Oriente. De acuerdo con Toro Hardy, para 1997 PDVSA había logrado expandirse y era propietaria de una veintena de refinerías, situadas en Europa, Estados Unidos, el Caribe y Venezuela. El especialista dice que, según la plataforma Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, PDVSA llegó a ser la segunda petrolera más importante del mundo, solo detrás de la saudí Saudi Aramco. Hoy, el sitio oficial de PDVSA matiza ese dato, al señalar que la compañía es la quinta más relevante del planeta. El asesor en energía y economía Ramsés Pech coincide en que esa fue la época dorada de PDVSA. “La empresa PDVSA tuvo su auge sobre todo antes del 2000 porque había interacciones con contratos para la explotación de ciertos campos”, dijo el experto, quien recordó que para entonces la producción de la compañía llegó a superar los 3 millones de barriles de petróleo al día. Tanto para PDVSA como para Venezuela, sin embargo, la situación comenzó a cambiar durante los primeros años del siglo XXI. Hugo Chávez llegó a la presidencia de Venezuela en 1999 —un cargo que mantuvo hasta su muerte en 2013— y, con su arribo, cambiaron las políticas del Gobierno con relación a PDVSA, dicen los especialistas. Desde que fue candidato, Chávez fue crítico de la apertura del sector petrolero, dice Toro Hardy, por lo que cuando estuvo en el poder impulsó nacionalizaciones y cambios de personal en PDVSA. Estos relevos se produjeron en 2003 después de una breve huelga, cuando Chávez ordenó el despido de trabajadores que consideraba contrarios a su Gobierno. De acuerdo con la agencia Reuters, esta medida significó la salida de más de 18.000 empleados. Gonzalo Monroy, director de la consultora GMEC, explica que esto representó un momento clave para PDVSA. “El punto de quiebre, de pasar de una PDVSA fuerte, líder en ciertas áreas como la extracción de crudo extrapesado, viene justamente en la purga de 2003, donde todavía Hugo…

By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN (CNN) — A number of forces on the left questioned Josh Shapiro’s ties to Israel during Kamala Harris’ rushed running mate selection process in 2024. In his new memoir out next week, the Pennsylvania governor says the former vice president and her vetting team were among them. So much so, Shapiro writes in a copy obtained by CNN, that Dana Remus, a former White House counsel under President Joe Biden who became a senior member of Harris’ VP vetting team, asked him, “Have you ever been an agent of the Israeli government?” “Was she kidding?” Shapiro writes. “I told her how offensive the question was.” “‘Well, we have to ask,’” Remus, a former White House counsel under President Joe Biden, said, according to his book. “‘We just wanted to check.’ She added: ‘Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?’” Shapiro’s anger was clearly rising. “If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?” he wrote. “I calmly answered her questions. Remus was just doing her job. I get it. But the fact that she asked, or was told to ask that question by someone else, said a lot about people around the VP.” Shapiro, an observant Jew and a proud Zionist, was critical of some protests proliferating on college campuses as tensions rose following Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack and the Israeli military’s response, warning that some of those demonstrations seemed to tip into antisemitism. Despite his condemnation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, some voices on the left called him “Genocide Josh,” which they didn’t do with other politicians. Shapiro spent time in high school working on an Israeli kibbutz and as a volunteer on an Israeli army base. He also wrote an op-ed in college saying Palestinians “do not have the capabilities to establish their own homeland and make it successful even with the aid of Israel and the United States,” and had a brief stint in the Israeli Embassy’s public affairs division at the beginning of his career. His staff has previously downplayed the volunteer work in Israel and work at the embassy, and he has said that his writing as college student does not reflect his current views. Harris had her own questions in their interview at the Naval Observatory, which Shapiro writes that he was heading to when he got the call. He writes that she asked him whether he would apologize for statements he made condemning the campus protests at the University of Pennsylvania. “‘No,’ I said flatly,” he writes. But he says he told her he felt he could still make the case for her, even in places like Dearborn, Michigan, where there is a sizable Arab American population and where the state’s “Uncommitted” movement during the 2024 Democratic primary took off. “She heard me and expressed how bad she felt that I had been getting hammered with the antisemitic attacks that she had witnessed throughout the process,” Shapiro writes. Days after Harris became the nominee in 2024, a top aide opted not to answer directly when asked whether the vice president still considered herself a Zionist. The New York Times first reported on the details from the memoir. Shapiro spokesman Manuel Bonder pointed out that this material is only one chapter of a larger memoir prompted by the firebomb attack on the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg last year on the first night of Passover. ​​“Gov. Shapiro wrote a very personal book about his faith, his family, and the people of Pennsylvania he has learned from and fought for throughout his life in public service,” Bonder said Sunday. A spokesperson for Harris did not respond when asked for comment. Remus could not be reached for comment. Deborah Lipstadt, the former US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism during the Biden administration, wrote in a social media post that the more she reads about Shapiro’s “treatment in the vetting process, the more disturbed (I) become.” “The questions to him, I repeat, are why they needed a…

By Pau Mosquera in Cordoba, Tim Lister, Sana Noor Haq CNN At least 39 people were killed and dozens more injured when two high-speed trains collided in Spain on Sunday evening, in the country’s deadliest rail disaster in more than a decade. Carriages of a northbound train, heading to Madrid, derailed and were struck by another express train traveling south, near the city of Cordoba. The northbound high-speed train, operated by private rail company Iryo, was traveling from Malaga to Madrid with 371 people onboard when its rear three carriages were derailed. They were struck by the front carriages of the southbound train operated by state rail company Renfe, officials said. The collision, near the small town of Adamuz, about 360 km (223 miles) south of Madrid, caused both trains to overturn at speed, news agency EFE reported, with the front carriages of the second train plunging down an embankment. The head of the regional government in Andalusia, Juanma Moreno, confirmed the death toll of 39 in a radio interview Monday, but said he expected the number to rise as cranes began removing the carriages. He said 11 adults and one child are in intensive care, in critical condition. A further 24 people were seriously injured, emergency officials said on X. The driver of the second train, an Alvia service traveling from Madrid to the southwestern city of Huelva, was among the dead, EFE reported, citing sources at Renfe – which owns and operates Alvia. The tragedy has prompted an outpouring of grief across Spain, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez calling it a “night of deep pain” for the country. Sánchez is due to visit the site later Monday. ‘Everything went dark’ In the aftermath, survivors recalled being pulled from the debris smeared in blood – as the haunting cries of passengers filled the air. Some were seen scrambling out of the windows, while others escaped via the roof, in video verified by CNN. One survivor, Rocío Flores, described the scene as “total chaos.” She told Spanish newspaper El Pais that she was still in hospital in Cordoba and was covered in bruises. Flores, who was on the southbound train, said: “We were thrown through the air. Thank God I’m okay; there were many people worse off than me.” A woman who gave her name as Ana said the northbound train “tipped to one side… then everything went dark, and all I heard was screams.” Her face covered with Band-Aids, she told Reuters that she was dragged out of the train covered in blood through a window by other passengers who had escaped. Firefighters rescued ⁠her sister from the wreckage, she said. She said many of the passengers were severely injured. “You had them right in front of you and you knew they were going to die, and you couldn’t do anything.” A mother whose daughter was traveling in the fourth carriage said her child called her in tears, describing the scene as a catastrophe. “At that moment, she hung up on me. There was no coverage,” the woman told EFE from Huelva train station where distressed relatives are awaiting news of missing passengers. The sound of passengers’ ringing phones echoed through the wreckage as their loved ones tried to contact them, according to a freelance reporter at Atocha train station, in Madrid. “A lot of families that are in distress, that are anxious, are calling their family members,” the local reporter told the BBC’s Today programme on Monday. Emergency workers “can hear the phones… from inside the trains,” the reporter said. “But of course, people are not picking up.” Some of those on board the southbound train were returning home after sitting prison service exams in Madrid. Raquel López, the manager of the prison academy in Huelva, told El Pais: “We are devastated. We have all sorts of situations: missing students, some seriously injured, and others who missed the train.” The streets of Adamuz – a small town of 4,200 residents – were quiet, according to a CNN reporter at the scene. Tables laden with dozens of blankets in the…