Nobel laureate María Corina Machado will not lead negotiations over new elections, contrary to expectations
The interim government of Venezuela has announced it will begin formal talks with the opposition aimed at “strengthening democracy” in the country.
The move is backed by the US, which says it is seeking a “democratic transition” in a country still recovering from the twin earthquakes that killed more than 4,700 people.
Continue reading...Threat of social unrest rises as public indignation at lack of disaster aid comes on top of fallout from US military intervention
• A revolution in ruins: fury amid the rubble of a housing project in quake-hit Venezuela
Public anger at what many perceive as the Venezuelan government’s botched response to twin earthquakes that killed nearly 4,500 people is growing, with one grieving mother caught on camera berating the son of former president Nicolás Maduro.
Maduro’s politician son received a hostile reception while visiting a semi-destroyed social housing project named after his father’s late mentor Hugo Chávez.
Continue reading...Nearly 17,000 injured and thousands more listed as missing amid calls by president Delcy Rodríguez and UN for financial help
The death toll in Venezuela’s devastating twin earthquakes has passed 4,300, the government said on Saturday.
At least 4,333 people were killed and 16,740 injured in the back-to-back quakes on 24 June that flattened entire districts in the coastal state of La Guaira, the Venezuelan parliament chief, Jorge Rodríguez, wrote on Telegram. Thousands more people are listed as missing.
Continue reading...Interim president says unrest will not break out despite anger at official response to the 24 June disaster
Venezuela’s interim president has defended her country’s emergency response to the twin earthquakes that have killed more than 3,000 people, vowing the country would not descend into social unrest.
Many Venezuelans have expressed anger at what they see as the US-backed government’s inadequate response to the 24 June disaster before international teams arrived.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: A country already in crisis since the removal of its leader earlier this year by the US, now has to find a way to rebuild with little state presence in evidence
The shaking seemed to come from nowhere. In a moment captured by fishers off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, two earthquakes struck seconds apart. Plumes of dust appear where buildings once stood in the recording as the camera rises and falls with the swell. The men rapidly head for the shore in search of their families. “I’m shaking,” says the cameraman.
Since the quakes struck last Wednesday, the search for missing loved ones has not stopped for scores of Venezuelans. Officially, more than 1,700 people have died. But tens of thousands remain missing: desperate relatives are walking up and down streets lined by rubble and collapsed buildings with photos of those they cannot find, asking for help.
World news | A child has been rescued from the rubble in Venezuela, six days since the country was hit by devastating twin earthquakes.
UK politics | Andy Burnham will have to find an extra £4.7bn for defence in his first budget, after Keir Starmer announced a £298bn defence investment plan (Dip) without having fully identified how it will be funded.
US politics | The US supreme court has upheld the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, affirming that nearly all people born on US soil are American citizens and rejecting a central pillar of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.
UK news | The European media group Axel Springer has completed its £575m takeover of the Telegraph, ending years of uncertainty over the future ownership of the 171-year-old titles.
US news | Nine matches in the World Cup group stage were played amid potentially dangerous heat and humidity, a Guardian analysis shows.
Continue reading...More than 100 people removed on ICE flight were being held in hotel in La Guaira when earthquakes struck
More than 100 people just deported from the United States were being held in a hotel when earthquakes struck Venezuela, setting off a scramble to find survivors and bodies buried in the rubble, according to survivors.
A deportation flight from Miami arrived in Venezuela hours before Wednesday’s earthquakes. Onboard were 146 Venezuelans, including 19 women and seven children, according to ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative of Human Rights First, which tracks deportation flights. They were transported to a hotel in La Guaira.
Continue reading...No damage reported in 4.6 magnitude aftershock; At least 1,450 people are known to have died in initial quakes but number is expected to rise
In an update to X, El Salvador’s president has said that after hours of intensive work rescuers have freed Aaron Levi Cantillo Vargas, 21, who was trapped under a building in Caraballeda, La Guaira, calling the operation “a miracle”.
“This rescue was made possible thanks to the coordinated effort of the rescue teams from Venezuela, Mexico, and El Salvador, who worked tirelessly to reach Aaron,” Nayib Bukele wrote in a social media post, adding that the 21-year-old is now receiving specialised medical attention.
Continue reading...President says ‘we always hold onto hope’ as discovery of earthquake survivors spurs fresh search efforts despite dwindling chances of survival
A man and his teenage son were found alive under the rubble in Venezuela on Sunday, in a town about 40km north of the capital Caracas, AFP journalists reported, as the death toll from last week’s twin earthquakes passed 1,450.
The discovery of survivors in Caraballeda was made by French and American rescue teams nearly four days after back-to-back quakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck, completely destroying nearly 200 buildings in the area.
Continue reading...Marco Rubio is scrambling to provide effective disaster response to country whose president US deposed in January
This week’s dual earthquakes in Venezuela are a test for the new era of American power in the western hemisphere, as the Trump administration scrambles to provide an effective disaster response mission to a country that it now calls an ally in Latin America, after a US special forces raid in January deposed the country’s strongman leader, Nicolás Maduro.
The US is marshalling what secretary of state Marco Rubio called a “big, fast, effective” and “whole-of-government” response as the state department sent three specialised urban search and rescue teams and pledged a $150m assistance fund that one former disaster relief expert called the largest he had seen within 24 hours of an incident.
Continue reading...Search for survivors continues with nearly 70,000 people reported unaccounted for by their family members
The death toll in the twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela earlier this week has risen to 1,430, according to one of the country’s top politicians, Jorge Rodríguez.
Another 3,200 people were injured and 3,100 left homeless by the disaster, the National Assembly president added, speaking on state television.
Continue reading...Billboards are being painted over and former allies seem eager to forget the man they once glorified
For years, his bewhiskered face stared down from propaganda billboards glorifying the supposedly revolutionary rule of a dictator who styled himself as “the protector of the people”.
The spin-doctored adoration was such that factories churned out plastic action figures exalting Nicolás Maduro as an “indestructible” and “iron-fisted” caped crusader nicknamed “Super Moustache”.
Continue reading...Inmates at Barinas prison allege they were peacefully protesting when prison staff opened fire, leaving some wounded
Inmates at Venezuela’s western Barinas prison staged a protest on its roof on Sunday, piling flaming mattresses and calling for the removal of the facility’s director, whom they accused of overseeing guards as they shot unarmed prisoners.
“We want justice. They are shooting us, the guards and the wardens,” a prisoner said in a video shared by the Venezuelan Observatory of Prisons, a local NGO, on X, in which a man is seen with a bullet wound in his chest.
Continue reading...All victims of US strikes in eastern Pacific and the Caribbean identified so far came from extremely poor communities
A five-month investigation has named 13 previously unidentified victims of US attacks on boats allegedly carrying narcotics in a campaign that has killed nearly 200 people in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
It is unclear if the US has ever identified any of its 194 victims before attacking them, and the names of just three had previously emerged, after their families launched legal cases against the White House.
Continue reading...US energy department says 13.5kg of uranium taken from reactor in Caracas – a fraction of the 408kg held by Tehran
Donald Trump has succeeded in removing a country’s stash of highly enriched uranium – although that country is not Iran.
On Friday, the US Department of Energy announced that “thanks to President Trump’s decisive leadership” 13.5kg (about 30 pounds) of uranium had been removed from a legacy research reactor in Venezuela.
Continue reading...Four months after US capture of Nicolás Maduro, officials hail repairing of ties as airliner touches down in Caracas
US and Venezuelan officials have hailed a new era in diplomatic relations as the first direct commercial flight between the two countries in more than seven years landed in Caracas.
Nearly four months ago, US special forces attack helicopters and planes swept into the skies over Venezuela’s capital after Donald Trump ordered the capture of its president, Nicolás Maduro.
Continue reading...Prosecutors allege Gannon Van Dyke won $400,000 using insider information to bet on Maduro raid on Polymarket
The US army soldier charged with winning $400,000 by using insider information to bet on the removal of the ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro pleaded not guilty to fraud charges on Tuesday.
Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, entered the plea in US district judge Margaret Garnett’s courtroom in Manhattan. Van Dyke sported a shaved head and wore a black blazer, jeans and brown shoes as he arrived to the courtroom with his lawyers, Zach Intrater and Mark Geragos.
Continue reading...John Feeley says US president was ‘flush with victory’ of Maduro capture and could make same mistake in Cuba
Donald Trump is “reaping the bitter fruit” of erroneously thinking that the capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, offered a blueprint for toppling the Iranian regime, according to one of the US state department’s most respected former Latin America experts.
John Feeley, a Marine helicopter pilot who later served as the US ambassador to Panama, believed Trump had been “flush with the victory from Venezuela” when he made the ill-fated decision to attack Iran in February, leaving a trail of destruction across the Middle East and dealing a hammer blow to the global economy.
Continue reading...US moves towards reestablishing working relations between two countries after abducting President Nicolás Maduro
The US has lifted sanctions on Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, in the latest step towards normalising relations between the two countries after US forces abducted her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife.
The couple were taken to New York after their abduction in January to face charges of alleged drug trafficking, to which both have pleaded not guilty.
Continue reading...Petition seeks accountability from Salvadorian authorities over human rights violations at notorious Cecot facility
A group of 18 Venezuelan men whom the US expelled a notorious Salvadorian mega-prison are demanding that Salvadorian authorities be held internationally accountable for violation of human rights – detailing new allegations of torture, sexual assault and medical neglect.
A new petition, filed on Thursday before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleges that El Salvador violated the human rights of these men, who were expelled to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) last year without charge.
Continue reading...President’s popularity top of mind at another weird and wild cabinet meeting – riff on merits of Sharpies included
They have become so notorious for displays of flattery and obsequiousness that critics have drawn comparisons with North Korea. Thursday’s cabinet meeting at the White House was no different.
Doug Burgum, the US interior secretary, outflanked his fellow praise singers by saying he believes that Venezuela – which the US attacked in January – intends to honour the president with a statue.
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