In the early morning of April 8, the roof of a club in Santo Domingo collapsed. At the time of the incident, the club was hosting a performance by a famous singer. The sudden collapse of the roof buried many people under the rubble.
Dominican President Abinader announced that the 8th to 10th would be national mourning days. On April 10, local time, Dominican President Abinader announced that the national mourning period would be extended by 3 days, from the 11th to the 13th, to mourn the deaths of those who died in the roof collapse accident of a club in the capital Santo Domingo in the early morning of April 8.
The Dominican government announced that morning that the accident had caused 221 deaths and another 189 people were sent to hospital for treatment.
TOF DOOR is deeply saddened by this and hopes that the victims will rest in peace and the living will be strong.
According to an executive order issued by the White House on April 10, the additional tariffs imposed by the United States on Chinese products have now reached 145%.
The executive order shows that the 125% tariff increase on China announced by US President Trump on April 9, combined with the 20% tariff imposed on the so-called fentanyl issue since early March, has accumulated tariffs of 145%.
In a dramatic reversal of the practice of imposing high tariffs on the world, Trump announced a 90-day suspension of reciprocal tariffs. Instead, he raised tariffs on China again to a shocking 125%, hoping to force the Chinese government to reach a deal that would save his face.
After waking up from the carnival mood, the market realized that the hope of easing the trade war initiated by Trump was finally shattered.
As trade tensions between China and the United States intensified, some domestic exporters were forced to take extreme measures to abandon goods in transit and hand over containers directly to shipping companies to avoid the high costs of sudden tariff increases.
Importers also admitted: "The payment is 3 million, but the tariff is more than 3 million. This business cannot be done." The "reciprocal tariff" policy suddenly implemented by the Trump administration makes it difficult for importers to bear the high tariff costs. If they can negotiate with the shipping manufacturers to share the tariffs, they can barely maintain it, but in most cases, the tariff costs directly eat up the profits, and importers finally choose not to pick up the goods or wait for the tariff sharing plan.
On April 11, China immediately introduced countermeasures and imposed an equal 125% tariff on all US goods.
The 2025 election follows a snap election in 2023, when former President Guillermo Lasso invoked a constitutional mechanism in Ecuador days before a congressional impeachment vote. That constitutional mechanism dissolved the National Assembly and triggered snap elections. In that election, Daniel Noboa was elected to complete Lasso's unfinished term, which will last until May 2025.
The 2025 election will return Ecuador to its normal electoral calendar and will determine the president and vice president, who serve four-year terms, as well as members of the National Assembly.
Ecuador held the first round of presidential elections on February 9. Preliminary counts of more than 90% of the votes cast so far show that no candidate has met the requirements to win, and the presidential election will go to a second round of voting.
Preliminary statistics of more than 90% of the votes show that Daniel Noboa, the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Action Movement and the current president, leads with 44.35% of the votes, followed by Luisa Gonzalez, the presidential candidate of the Citizen Revolutionary Party-Comprehensive Renewal Movement Alliance, with 43.8% of the votes.
The Ecuadorian Constitution stipulates that in the presidential election, the candidate who receives more than half of the votes in the first round of voting or more than 40% of the votes and leads the second place by more than 10 percentage points will be directly elected president; if no candidate meets the above conditions, the top two candidates will enter the second round of voting, and the one with the most votes will be elected.
The second round of final voting for the general election in Ecuador, which will be held on April 13, will elect the president, vice president, members of the National Congress (Parliament) and members of the Andean Parliament, whose terms will last until 2029.
