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Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro looks on during his swearing-in ceremony as caretaker president following the death of President Hugo Chavez in Caracas March 8, 2013.
Hard Numbers: Venezuelan opposition arrests, Bangkok’s murder mystery, Acropolis closed amid heat wave, More Kenyan police arrive in Haiti, Voting day for von der Leyen
102: Ahead of presidential elections set for July 28, Venezuelan authorities have arrested at least 102 people linked to the political opposition this year, according to Foro Penal, a local legal aid non-profit. Three-quarters of them were jailed after the official presidential campaign period began on July 4. On Wednesday, police arrested the security chief of opposition leader Marina Corina Machado. Polls show strongman President Nicolas Madurotrailing badly ahead of the vote.
6: Authorities said Wednesday that traces of cyanide were found in the blood of six Vietnamese nationals, two of whom had dual US citizenship, in a luxury suite of a Grand Hyatt in Bangkok. The group was last seen alive on Monday by a waiter delivering room service. Police say there was a possible financial motive related to an investment … and that the suspected perpetrator is among the six dead.
5: Greece’s most-visited archaeological site, the Acropolis, was closed for five hours by the Ministry of Culture on Wednesday amid a brutal southern European heat wave. Wildfires, meanwhile, are proving difficult to contain amid the extreme heat and led to the closure of a major border crossing between Greece and North Macedonia for several hours on Wednesday.
200: Another 200 Kenyan police officers joined the UN-backed mission in Haiti this week to support local authorities against the violent gangs who took over the capital city of Port-au-Prince in a joint offensive last February. The Kenyan-led mission also expects new arrivals from Jamaica, Bangladesh, Chad, and others to help grow the force to 2,500 personnel in the coming weeks.
361: In the EU parliament later today, MEPs will decide whether to confirm Ursula von der Leyen as Commission president in a knife-edge vote that will either result in another five-year mandate for the EU executive’s first female leader or tip the bloc into a temporary crisis. Despite no other candidate standing, it looks like she will just barely, if at all, get the 361 votes she needs.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, his wife Cilia Flores, and Vice President of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela Diosdado Cabello participate in a rally during May Day celebrations in Caracas, Venezuela, on May 1, 2024.
Is Venezuela’s election going to be too lopsided to steal?
Until about two weeks ago, Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro looked like he’d managed to sideline the opposition enough to ensure a win in this summer’s presidential election.
His government had disqualified the leading opposition candidate, María Corina Machado. Then, for good measure, it banned her stand-in as well. The familiar specter of division and disorganization hung over the beleaguered opponents of Maduro, who has run Venezuela for more than a decade.
Then the opposition united to name the little-known, 74-year-old former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia as their candidate. González has delegated most of his campaigning to Machado, and his popularity has soared. A poll over the weekend showed he already holds a 40-point lead over Maduro, with 62% of respondents saying they’d vote for him.
The government has already recognized him as a candidate, tarring him as an agent of “imperialism” – but that presents a problem. By moving against him, Maduro could overplay his hand in a country already reeling from economic mismanagement and US sanctions. But facing Gonzalez directly might leave Maduro vulnerable to the one thing a strongman can’t accept: losing.
Venezuelan migrants are pat-down before boarding a repatriation flight as a part of an immigration enforcement process, at the Valley International Airport, in Harlingen, Texas, U.S. October 18, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Venezuela grabs Biden by the border, EU reaches deal on Ukraine aid, US strike on Houthi drones, Professional trust crisis, ICJ rules on Russia, Amelia Earhart found at last?
14: Venezuela has given the US 14 days to back off its “economic aggression,” or it will stop accepting deportation flights from the US carrying undocumented Venezuelan migrants. Washington has threatened to re-impose oil sanctions on Caracas after Venezuela banned the leading opposition candidate from running for president. But Venezuela is hitting Biden where it hurts: The migration crisis at the US southern border is becoming a major political liability for him, and Venezuelans are the third most common nationality of undocumented migrants apprehended.
50: The EU on Thursday reached a deal on an additional €50 billion in aid for Ukraine, breaking through a deadlock caused by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. "All 27 leaders agreed" on the support package, tweeted Charles Michel, the European Council president. Though Orbán is finally on board, it was not immediately clear what the Hungarian leader gained in exchange for abandoning his objections.
10: A US strike destroyed 10 Houthi drones in Yemen on Thursday, as Washington prepares to retaliate over a deadly attack on US forces in Jordan that the White House blamed on an Iran-backed coalition of militias. The US has repeatedly targeted the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in recent days in response to attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
78: Who do Americans trust? Nurses, that’s who. A whopping 78% of respondents polled said nurses are honest and ethical, the highest of nearly two dozen professions. The bad news? That’s still down 7 points since 2019, amid a wider collapse of trust in all trades. The least trusted? No surprises here: members of Congress, with just 6% – lower than car salespeople! And just one profession is seen as more trustworthy than it was four years ago: Labor union leaders, who rose by one mere percentage point to 25% during that period.
7: After seven years, the International Court of Justice (yes the same court that is handling the Gaza genocide case) on Wednesday ruled that Russia violated a UN anti-terrorism treaty by supporting separatists in Eastern Ukraine, and a minority rights treaty by suppressing the Ukrainian language in Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014. But in a setback for Ukraine, which brought the case, the court declined to rule on Russian responsibility for downing the MH17 commercial airliner in 2014.
87: Here’s some good news about America’s most famous missing aviatrix: An explorer claims his sonar imaging technology has found and photographed the remains of Amelia Earhart’s plane, which went missing over the Pacific Ocean 87 years ago as she attempted to become the first female pilot to fly around the world. Not bad. Next up, we’d like to ask this explorer to find us Jimmy Hoffa.Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro shows his ballot during a referendum over Venezuela's rights to the potentially oil-rich region of Esequiba in Guyana, in Caracas, Venezuela, on Dec. 3, 2023.
Maduro’s weapon of mass distraction
Venezuela held a referendum Sunday on proposed statehood for the oil-rich region of Essequibo, currently governed by neighboring Guyana, with more than 95% reportedly voting to approve the proposed takeover.
At 61,600 square miles, Essequibo comprises two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. An international arbitral tribunal awarded the area to Britain in 1899 when the latter controlled British Guiana, but Venezuela has never recognized the ruling. Its contestation took on new life after ExxonMobil discovered oil in Essequibo's offshore waters in 2015, leading to a case before the International Court of Justice at the Hague that remains unresolved.
Venezuela’s referendum asked its citizens five questions, including whether they agreed with creating a new state called Guayana Esequiba, granting its population Venezuelan citizenship and identity cards, and including the new state in the map of Venezuelan territory. While the ICJ urged Venezuela to refrain from “taking any action” on the proposals, it did not ban the holding of the referendum.
Guyana fears the referendum is the first step to a takeover. “This is a textbook example of annexation,” Paul Reichler, an American lawyer representing Guyana, told the ICJ. But Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro disagreed, saying, “We are solving through constitutional, peaceful, and democratic means an imperial dispossession of 150 years.”
Before the vote, his government poured considerable resources into Essequibo-themed music, nationally televised history lessons, murals, events, and social media content to bolster the "Yes" vote. Observers see the referendum as a means of distracting the nation from calls for free and fair conditions in next year’s presidential election, as well as from the US government’s demand that Maduro release political prisoners and wrongfully detained Americans. Analysts say the creation of a Venezuelan state in Essequibo is highly unlikely.
Knowing the referendum would pass, Ian Bremmer tweeted that he was "deeply skeptical we are on the brink of war," especially since China, Venezuela’s close friend, owns a piece of the massive oil find Maduro claims.
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