US recognizes opposition candidate Gonzalez as the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election

US recognizes opposition candidate Gonzalez as the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election
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Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado (C-left) and opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia (C-right) greet supporters during a rally in front of the United Nations headquarters in Caracas on July 30, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 02 August 2024
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US recognizes opposition candidate Gonzalez as the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election

US recognizes opposition candidate Gonzalez as the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election
  • Brazil, Colombia and Mexico have called on Venezuela’s electoral authority to show the vote tally sheets from Sunday’s election and allow impartial verification
  • President Nicolas Maduro’s officials had earlier threatened to arrest opposition leaders for calling for mass protests against the election commission’s partiality

CARACAS, Venezuela: The stakes grew higher for Venezuela’s electoral authority to show proof backing its decision to declare President Nicolas Maduro the winner of the country’s presidential election after the United States on Thursday recognized opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez as the victor, discrediting the official results of the highly anticipated vote.

The US Department of State announcement followed calls from multiple governments, including close allies of Maduro, for Venezuela’s National Electoral Council to release detailed vote counts, as it has done during previous elections.

The electoral body declared Maduro the winner Monday, but the main opposition coalition revealed hours later that it had evidence to the contrary in the form of more than two-thirds of the tally sheets that each electronic voting machine printed after polls closed.

“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

The US government announcement came amid diplomatic efforts to persuade Maduro to release vote tallies from the election and increasing calls for an independent review of the results, according to officials from Brazil and México.

Government officials from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico have been in constant communication with Maduro’s administration to convince him that he must show the vote tally sheets from Sunday’s election and allow impartial verification, a Brazilian government official told The Associated Press Thursday.

The officials have told Venezuela’s government that showing the data is the only way to dispel any doubt about the results, said the Brazilian official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the diplomatic efforts and requested anonymity.

A Mexican official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity for the same reason, confirmed the three governments have been discussing the issue with Venezuela but did not provide details.

Earlier, Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador said he planned to speak with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil and President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, and that his government believes it is important that the electoral tallies be made public.

Later Thursday, the governments of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico issued a joint statement calling on Venezuela’s electoral authorities “to move forward expeditiously and publicly release” detailed voting data, but they did not confirm any backroom diplomatic efforts to persuade Maduro’s government to publish the vote tallies.

“The fundamental principle of popular sovereignty must be respected through impartial verification of the results,” they said in the statement.

On Monday, after the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner of the election, thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets. The government said it arrested hundreds of protesters and Venezuela-based human rights organization Foro Penal said 11 people were killed. Dozens more were arrested the following day, including a former opposition candidate, Freddy Superlano.

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado — who was barred from running for president — and Gonzalez addressed a huge rally of their supporters in the capital, Caracas, on Tuesday, but they have not been seen in public since. Later that day, the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez, called for their arrest, calling them criminals and fascists.

In an op-ed published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal, Machado said she is “hiding, fearing for my life, my freedom, and that of my fellow countrymen.” She reasserted that the opposition has physical evidence that Maduro lost the election and urged the international community to intervene.

“We have voted Mr. Maduro out,” she wrote. “Now it is up to the international community to decide whether to tolerate a demonstrably illegitimate government.”

Government repression over the years has pushed opposition leaders into exile. After the op-ed was published, Machado’s team told the AP that she was “sheltering.” Machado later posted a video on social media calling on supporters to gather Saturday across the country.

The Gonzalez campaign had no comment on the op-ed.

On Wednesday, Maduro asked Venezuela’s highest court to conduct an audit of the election, but that request drew almost immediate criticism from foreign observers who said the court is too close to the government to produce an independent review.

Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice is closely aligned with Maduro’s government. The court’s justices are nominated by federal officials and ratified by the National Assembly, which is dominated by Maduro sympathizers.

On Thursday, the court accepted Maduro’s request for an audit and ordered him, Gonzalez and the eight other candidates who participated in the presidential election to appear before the justices Friday.

Gonzalez and Machado say they obtained more than two-thirds of the tally sheets printed from electronic voting machine after the polls closed. They said the release of the data on those tallies would prove Maduro lost.

Asked why electoral authorities have not released detailed vote counts, Maduro said the National Electoral Council has come under attack, including cyber-attacks, without elaborating.

The presidents of Colombia and Brazil — both close allies of the Venezuelan government — have urged Maduro to release detailed vote counts.

The Brazilian official said the diplomatic efforts are only intended to promote dialogue among Venezuelan stakeholders to negotiate a solution to the disputed election. The official said this would include the release of voting data and allowing independent verification.

López Obrador said Mexico hopes the will of Venezuela’s people will be respected and that there’s no violence. He added that Mexico expects “that the evidence, the electoral results records, be presented.”

Pressure has been building on the president since the election.

The National Electoral Council, which is loyal to Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela, has yet to release any results broken down by voting machine, as it did in past elections. It did, however, report that Maduro received 5.1 million votes, versus more than 4.4 million for Gonzalez. But Machado, the opposition leader, has said vote tallies show Gonzalez received roughly 6.2 million votes compared with 2.7 million for Maduro.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven crude reserves and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy, but it entered into free fall after Maduro took the helm in 2013. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared past 130,000 percent led to social unrest and mass emigration.

More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2014, the largest exodus in Latin America’s recent history.


India’s leader Modi touted all was well in Kashmir. A massacre of tourists shattered that claim

India’s leader Modi touted all was well in Kashmir. A massacre of tourists shattered that claim
Updated 15 sec ago
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India’s leader Modi touted all was well in Kashmir. A massacre of tourists shattered that claim

India’s leader Modi touted all was well in Kashmir. A massacre of tourists shattered that claim
  • The attack outraged people in Kashmir and India, where it led to calls of swift action against Pakistan

SRINAGAR, India: Hundreds of Indian tourists, families and honeymooners, drawn by the breathtaking Himalayan beauty, were enjoying a picture-perfect meadow in Kashmir. They didn’t know gunmen in army fatigues were lurking in the woods.
When the attackers got their chance, they shot mostly Indian Hindu men, many of them at close-range, leaving behind bodies strewn across the Baisaran meadow and survivors screaming for help.
The gunmen quickly vanished into thick forests. By the time Indian authorities arrived, 26 people were dead and 17 others were wounded.
India has described the April 22 massacre as a terror attack and blamed Pakistan for backing it, an accusation denied by Islamabad. India swiftly announced diplomatic actions against its archrival Pakistan, which responded with its own tit-for-tat measures.
The assailants are still on the run, as calls in India for military action against Pakistan are growing.
World leaders have been scrambling to de-escalate the tensions between two nuclear-armed neighbors, which have historically relied on third countries for conflict management.
But the massacre has also touched a raw nerve.
Early on Wednesday, India fired missiles that struck at least three locations inside Pakistani-controlled territory, according to Pakistani security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. India said it was striking infrastructure used by militants.
India admits security lapse
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration has governed Kashmir with an iron fist in recent years, claiming militancy in the region was in check and a tourism influx was a sign of normalcy returning.
Those claims now lie shattered.
Security experts and former intelligence and senior military officers who have served in the region say Modi’s government — riding on a nationalistic fervor over Kashmir to please its supporters — missed warning signs.
The government acknowledged that in a rare admission.
Two days after the attack, Kiren Rijiju, India’s parliamentary affairs minister, said that a crucial all-party meeting discussed “where the lapses occurred.”
“We totally missed ... the intentions of our hostile neighbor,” said Avinash Mohananey, a former Indian intelligence officer who has operated in Kashmir and Pakistan.
The meadow, near the resort town of Pahalgam, can be reached by trekking or pony rides, and visitors cross at least three security camps and a police station to reach there. According to Indian media, there was no security presence for more than 1,000 tourists that day.
Pahalgam serves as a base for an annual Hindu pilgrimage that draws hundreds of thousands of people from across India. The area is ringed by thick woods that connect with forest ranges in the Jammu area, where Indian troops have faced attacks by rebels in recent years after fighting ebbed in the Kashmir Valley, the heart of an anti-India rebellion.
The massacre brought Modi’s administration almost back to where it started when a suicide car bombing in the region in 2019 prompted his government to strip Kashmir of its semi-autonomy and bring it under direct federal rule. Tensions have simmered ever since, but the region has also drawn millions of visitors amid a strange calm enforced by an intensified security crackdown.
“We probably started buying our own narrative that things were normal in Kashmir,” Mohananey said.
In the past, insurgents have carried out brazen attacks and targeted Hindu pilgrims, Indian Hindu as well as Muslim immigrant workers, and local Hindus and Sikhs. However, this time a large number of tourists were attacked, making it one of the worst massacres involving civilians in recent years.
The attack outraged people in Kashmir and India, where it led to calls of swift action against Pakistan.
Indian television news channels amplified these demands and panelists argued that India should invade Pakistan. Modi and his senior ministers vowed to hunt down the attackers and their backers.
Experts say much of the public pressure on the Indian government to act militarily against Pakistan falls within the pattern of long, simmering animosity between both countries.
“All the talk of military options against Pakistan mainly happens in echo chambers and feeds a nationalist narrative,” in India, New Delhi-based counterterrorism expert Ajai Sahni said.
“It doesn’t matter what will be done. We will be told it was done and was a success,” he said. “And it will be celebrated nonetheless.”
Modi’s optimism misplaced, experts say
Experts also say that the Modi government’s optimism was also largely misplaced and that its continuous boasting of rising tourism in the region was a fragile barometer of normalcy. Last year, Omar Abdullah, Kashmir’s top elected official, cautioned against such optimism.
“By this attack, Pakistan wants to convey that there is no normalcy in Kashmir and that tourism is no indicator for it. They want to internationalize the issue,” said D.S. Hooda, former military commander for northern India between 2014 to 2016.
Hooda said the “choice of targets and the manner in which the attack was carried out indicates that it was well-planned.”
“If there would have been a good security cover, maybe this incident would not have happened,” he said.
India sees Pakistan connection to the attack
Indian security experts believe the attack could be a retaliation for a passenger train hijacking in Pakistan in March by Baloch insurgents. Islamabad accused New Delhi of orchestrating the attack in which 25 people were killed. India denies it.
Mohananey said that Indian authorities should have taken the accusations seriously and beefed-up security in Kashmir, while arguing there was a striking similarity in both attacks since only men were targeted.
“It was unusual that women and children were spared” in both cases, Mohananey said.
Two senior police officers, who have years of counterinsurgency experience in Kashmir, said after the train attack in Pakistan that they were anticipating some kind of reaction in the region by militants.
The officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that security officials perceived the threat of an imminent attack, and Modi’s inauguration of a strategic rail line in the region was canceled. A large-scale attack on tourists, however, wasn’t anticipated, because there was no such precedence, the officers said.
Hooda, who commanded what New Delhi called “surgical strikes” against militants in the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir in 2016, said that the attack has deepened thinking that it was time to tackle the Pakistani state, not just militants.
Such calculus could be a marked shift. In 2016 and 2019, India said that its army struck militant infrastructure inside Pakistan after two major militant attacks against its soldiers.
“After this attack,” Hooda said, India wants to stop Pakistan “from using terrorism as an instrument of state policy.”
“We need to tighten our security and plug lapses, but the fountainhead of terrorism needs to be tackled,” Hooda said. “The fountainhead is Pakistan.”


Trump says only 21 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza now believed to be alive

Trump says only 21 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza now believed to be alive
Updated 23 min 14 sec ago
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Trump says only 21 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza now believed to be alive

Trump says only 21 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza now believed to be alive

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said Tuesday that three hostages held by Hamas in Gaza have died, leaving only 21 believed to be still living.
“As of today, it’s 21, three have died,” Trump said of the hostages being held by Hamas, noting until recently it had been 24 people believed to be living. He did not elaborate on the identities of those now believed to be dead, nor how he had come to learn of their deaths. “There’s 21, plus a lot of dead bodies,” Trump said.
One American, Edan Alexander, had been among the 24 hostages believed to be alive, with the bodies of several other Americans also held by Hamas after its Oct. 7, 2023 assault on Israel.
The president’s comments came as Israel approved plans on Monday to seize the Gaza Strip and to stay in the Palestinian territory for an unspecified amount of time, in a bid to recover the hostages and try to fulfill its war aims of destroying Hamas. If implemented, the move would vastly expand Israel’s operations there and likely draw fierce international opposition.


Columbia University lays off nearly 180 after Trump pulled $400M over his antisemitism concerns

Columbia University lays off nearly 180 after Trump pulled $400M over his antisemitism concerns
Updated 42 min 41 sec ago
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Columbia University lays off nearly 180 after Trump pulled $400M over his antisemitism concerns

Columbia University lays off nearly 180 after Trump pulled $400M over his antisemitism concerns
  • Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment and seized a campus building in April, leading to dozens of arrests and inspiring a wave of similar protests nationally

NEW YORK: Columbia University said Tuesday that it will be laying off nearly 180 staffers in response to President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel $400 million in funding over the Manhattan college’s handling of student protests against the war in Gaza.
Those receiving non-renewal or termination notices Tuesday represent about 20 percent of the employees funded in some manner by the terminated federal grants, the university said in a statement Tuesday.
“We have had to make deliberate, considered decisions about the allocation of our financial resources,” the university said. “Those decisions also impact our greatest resource, our people. We understand this news will be hard.”
Officials are working with the Trump administration in the hopes of getting the funding restored, they said, but the university will still pull back spending because of uncertainty and strain on its budget.
Officials said the university will be scaling back research, with some departments winding down activities and others maintaining some level of research while pursuing alternate funding.
In March, the Trump administration pulled the funding over what it described as the Ivy League school’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023.
Within weeks, Columbia capitulated to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration as a starting point for restoring the funding.
Among the requirements was overhauling the university’s student disciplinary process, banning campus protesters from wearing masks, barring demonstrations from academic buildings, adopting a new definition of antisemitism and putting the Middle Eastern studies program under the supervision of a vice provost who would have a say over curriculum and hiring.
After Columbia announced the changes, US Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the university was ” on the right track,” but declined to say when or if Columbia’s funding would be restored. Spokespersons for the federal education department didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday.
Columbia was at the forefront of US campus protests over the war last spring. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment and seized a campus building in April, leading to dozens of arrests and inspiring a wave of similar protests nationally.
Trump, when he retook the White House in January, moved swiftly to cut federal money to colleges and universities he viewed as too tolerant of antisemitism.


Trump hopes India-Pakistan clashes end ‘very quickly’

Trump hopes India-Pakistan clashes end ‘very quickly’
Updated 47 min 29 sec ago
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Trump hopes India-Pakistan clashes end ‘very quickly’

Trump hopes India-Pakistan clashes end ‘very quickly’

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he hoped clashes between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan end “very quickly,” after New Delhi’s forces launched strikes and Islamabad vowed retaliation.
“It’s a shame, we just heard about it,” Trump said at the White House, after the Indian government said it had hit “terrorist camps” on its western neighbor’s territory following a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir.
“I guess people knew something was going to happen based on the past. They’ve been fighting for many, many decades and centuries, actually, if you really think about it,” he added.
India and Pakistan have fought three full-scale wars since gaining independence from the British in 1947. Both claim Kashmir in full but administer separate portions of the disputed region.
“I just hope it ends very quickly,” said Trump.
India had been widely expected to respond militarily since gunmen shot dead 26 people in Indian-administered Kashmir, mostly Hindus.
New Delhi has blamed militants that it has said were from Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN-designated terrorist organization.
Pakistan’s army said the Indian strikes targeted three sites in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and two in Punjab province, the country’s most populous.
Islamabad said that three civilians, including a child, had been killed in Indian strikes.
The Indian strikes came just hours after the US State Department issued a fresh call for calm.
“We continue to urge Pakistan and India to work toward a responsible resolution that maintains long-term peace and regional stability in South Asia,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters.
Her statement came after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned of stopping water from flowing across borders following the Kashmir attack.


‘World cannot afford’ India-Pakistan confrontation: UN

‘World cannot afford’ India-Pakistan confrontation: UN
Updated 54 min 48 sec ago
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‘World cannot afford’ India-Pakistan confrontation: UN

‘World cannot afford’ India-Pakistan confrontation: UN

UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “very concerned” about Indian military strikes on Pakistan, his spokesperson said on Tuesday, hours after India said it hit nine sites in Pakistani territory.
“The Secretary-General is very concerned about the Indian military operations across the Line of Control and international border. He calls for maximum military restraint from both countries. The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan,” said Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson.