Major EU nations recognize Guaido as Venezuela’s acting president

Opposition leader and self-proclaimed president Juan Guaido has called on more members of the military to abandon the country’s socialist government. (AFP)
Updated 04 February 2019
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Major EU nations recognize Guaido as Venezuela’s acting president

  • European support heightened the global showdown over Nicolas Maduro’s socialist rule
  • Russia said it was foreign meddling and Venezuelans should be allowed to resolve their own domestic problems

 

MADRID/PARIS: Eight European nations joined the United States in recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president on Monday, heightening the global showdown over Nicolas Maduro’s socialist rule.

Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands and Germany’s coordinated move came after the expiry of an eight-day deadline set last weekend for Maduro to call a new election. Austria and Lithuania also lined up behind the self-declared interim president Guaido.

The Venezuelan leader, accused of running the OPEC nation of 30 million people like a dictatorship and wrecking its economy, has defied them, saying Europe’s ruling elite are sycophantically following President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Guaido, who leads the opposition-controlled National Assembly, declared himself temporary leader last month in a move that has split international powers and brought Venezuelans onto the streets.

Trump immediately recognized him but European Union nations were nervous over the global precedent of a self-declaration.

Russia and China, who have poured billions of dollars of investment and loans into Venezuela, are supporting Maduro in an extension of a geopolitical tussle with the United States playing out across various global flashpoints.

“Attempts to legitimize usurped power” constituted “interference in Venezuela's internal affairs,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“I recognize the president of Venezuela’s assembly, Mr. Juan Guaido, as president in charge of Venezuela,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a televised statement, urging a free and fair election as soon as possible.

“Venezuelans have the right to express themselves freely and democratically. France recognizes @jguaido as ‘interim president’ to implement an electoral process,” President Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said via social media. “UK alongside European allies now recognizes @jguaido as interim constitutional president until credible elections can be held.”

He added: “The oppression of the illegitimate, kleptocratic Maduro regime must end.”

Maduro, 56, a former union leader, bus driver and foreign leader, replaced former leader Hugo Chavez in 2013 after his death from cancer. But he has presided over an economic collapse and exodus of 3 million Venezuelans.

He blames a US-led “economic war” and also accuses Washington of seeking a coup against him in order to get its hands-on Venezuela’s oil wealth. It has the largest reserves in the world, but production has plunged under Maduro.

Critics say incompetent policies and corruption under both Maduro and Chavez have impoverished a once-wealthy nation while dissent has been brutally crushed.

Responding to the EU nations’ moves on Monday, Russia said it was foreign meddling and Venezuelans should be allowed to resolve their own domestic problems. The Maduro government is paying back both Russian and Chinese loans with oil.

In addition to the European pressure, a major bloc of Latin American nations plus Canada were to meet on Monday seeking to maintain their pressure on Maduro.

Maduro won re-election last year, but critics say it was a sham. Two opposition rivals with a good chance of winning were barred from standing, while food handouts and other subsidies to hungry Venezuelans were linked with political support.

Non-EU member Switzerland expressed concern and urged a “constitutional solution” and protection for Guaido, but did not specifically recognize him as president.


NGOs: Environment fears over $6 bn Indonesia EV battery project

Updated 3 sec ago
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NGOs: Environment fears over $6 bn Indonesia EV battery project

JAKARTA: Environmental groups raised concerns Thursday over a $6 billion Indonesian EV battery megaproject backed by Chinese giant CATL which is set to open on a once-pristine island, as Jakarta exploits its huge supply of nickel.
Indonesia is both the world’s largest nickel producer and home to the biggest-known reserves, and a 2020 export ban has spurred a domestic industrial boom.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto will inaugurate the project — also backed by China’s Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt and Indonesia’s state-owned Antam — in the east of Halmahera in Indonesia’s Maluku islands on Sunday.
The complex will encompass a process from nickel mining to production of cathodes, state news agency Antara reported.
But NGOs say Indonesia and the Chinese firms involved have not given assurances about environmental protections at the site, located just kilometers from a huge industrial park where spikes in pollution and deforestation have been reported.
“CATL, Huayou Cobalt, PT Antam... must commit to respecting the rights of local communities and the environment before breaking ground,” said Brad Adams, executive director at Climate Rights International, in a statement.
“Communities are repressed, forests are cleared, and pollution goes unaddressed with impunity. This is a chance for the Prabowo government to show that it has learned from those failures.”
The presidential office did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
Halmahera hosts the world’s largest nickel mine by production Weda Bay, where operations have grown and sparked reports of widespread environmental damage.
Greenpeace Indonesia said the new project carried “great responsibilities” and the environment and locals “must not take a back seat” to powering electric vehicles.
“If the environment and the rights of our most vulnerable people are not prioritized now... we will all pay a high price through worsening biodiversity and climate crises,” Arie Rompas, forest campaign team leader at Greenpeace, told AFP.
A CRI report this month warned the Indonesian government was allowing environmental damage to go unchecked around Weda Bay.
An AFP report last month detailed how the home of the nomadic Hongana Manyawa tribe was being eaten away by the mine.

Vietnamese tycoon’s jail term reduced in $146 million stock fraud

Updated 26 June 2025
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Vietnamese tycoon’s jail term reduced in $146 million stock fraud

  • Trinh Van Quyet, who owned the FLC empire of luxury resorts, golf courses and budget carrier Bamboo Airways, was given the lengthy jail term in August after a trial

HANOI: A Vietnamese appeal court on Thursday slashed a former property and aviation tycoon’s jail sentence in a $146 million fraud and stock market manipulation case from 21 years to seven.
Trinh Van Quyet, who owned the FLC empire of luxury resorts, golf courses and budget carrier Bamboo Airways, was given the lengthy jail term in August after a trial.
Quyet and 49 others including his two sisters and four stock exchange officials were punished for fraud, stock market manipulation, abuse of power and publishing incorrect stock market information.
After a 10-day hearing in Hanoi, the appeal court dropped Quyet’s three-year term for market manipulation and cut his 18-year sentence for fraud to seven years.
The appeal court gave several other defendants reduced jail terms on Thursday.
Its ruling comes after the tycoon’s family paid nearly $96 million in compensation for the losses.
According to the indictment in August, Quyet set up several stock market brokerages and registered dozens of family members, ostensibly to trade shares.
Police said while orders to buy shares were placed in hundreds of trading sessions — pushing up the value of the stock – they were canceled before being matched.
The court said there were 25,000 victims of the fraud as Quyet illegally pocketed more than $146 million between 2017 and 2022.
The appeal court said it had received 5,000 letters asking for a reduction of punishment for Quyet “from the victims, FLC staff, some associations and local authorities.”
The case is part of a national corruption crackdown that has swept up numerous officials and members of Vietnam’s business elite in recent years.


Ecuador’s most-wanted gang leader ‘Fito’ captured

Updated 26 June 2025
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Ecuador’s most-wanted gang leader ‘Fito’ captured

  • Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, known as Fito, escaped custody in Ecuador in early 2024
  • American prosecutors charged him, in absentia, with seven counts of cocaine distribution, conspiracy and firearms-related crimes

QUITO: Ecuador’s president announced Wednesday that the country’s most-wanted fugitive, Los Choneros gang leader “Fito,” had been recaptured over a year after his escape from prison triggered a wave of violence.

“We have done our part to proceed with Fito’s extradition to the United States, we are awaiting their response,” Daniel Noboa wrote on X.

Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, known as Fito, escaped custody in Ecuador in early 2024 and American prosecutors charged him, in absentia, with seven counts of cocaine distribution, conspiracy and firearms-related crimes, including weapons smuggling.

Macias Villamar’s January 2024 escape resulted in a surge of gang-related violence in Ecuador that lasted days and left about 20 people dead.

Noboa declared a 60-day state of emergency in nearly a third of its provinces to quell the violence, but the drug lord was at-large until Wednesday’s announcement.

The months-long manhunt ended with the president stating Fito was in the custody of special military forces fighting narcotics trafficking.

The army and police reported that he was captured during a 10-hour operation in Manta, a fishing port in western Ecuador considered a stronghold for his gang.

Fito’s hideout evoked scenes from a movie thriller — local media reported that officers lifted a trap door in floor tiles of a luxury home to discover the outlaw hiding in a bunker.

The US Embassy congratulated Quito on the arrest, posting in Spanish on its X account that Washington “supports Ecuador in its efforts to combat transnational crime for the security of the region.”

Ecuador, once a peaceful haven between the world’s two top cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, has seen violence erupt in recent years as enemy gangs vie for control and establish ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels.

Macias Villamar is the leader of Los Choneros, the leading criminal gang in a country plagued by organized crime.

Gang wars largely played out inside the country’s prisons, where Macias Villamar wielded immense control.

He had been held since 2011, serving a 34-year sentence for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.

When he escaped, Macias Villamar was also considered a suspect in ordering the assassination of presidential candidate and anti-corruption crusader Fernando Villavicencio.

In the hours after the drug lord’s escape, prison riots broke out and four police officers were taken hostage, where one was forced to read a threatening message to Noboa.

Armed men wearing balaclavas also took over a television station during a live broadcast, forcing the terrified crew to the ground and firing shots.

Soon after, Noboa announced the country was in a state of “internal armed conflict” and ordered the military and tanks into the streets to “neutralize” the gangs.

US prosecutors allege his gang worked with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel to control key drug trafficking routes between South America and the United States.

Ecuador’s government had offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his capture.

If convicted, Fito faces life in prison.


Trump officials to give first classified briefing to Congress on Iran strikes

Updated 26 June 2025
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Trump officials to give first classified briefing to Congress on Iran strikes

  • The classified briefing comes as the Senate is expected to vote this week on a resolution that would require congressional approval if Trump decides to strike Iran again
  • Democrats, and some Republicans, have said that the White House overstepped its authority when it failed to seek the advice of Congress

WASHINGTON: Senators are set to meet with top national security officials Thursday as many question President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb three Iranian nuclear sites — and whether those strikes were ultimately successful.

The classified briefing, which was originally scheduled for Tuesday and was delayed, also comes as the Senate is expected to vote this week on a resolution that would require congressional approval if Trump decides to strike Iran again. Democrats, and some Republicans, have said that the White House overstepped its authority when it failed to seek the advice of Congress and they want to know more about the intelligence that Trump relied on when he authorized the attacks.

“Senators deserve full transparency, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who said Tuesday that it was “outrageous” that the Senate and House briefings were postponed. A similar briefing for House members was pushed to Friday.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are expected to brief the senators on Thursday. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was scheduled to be at the Tuesday briefing, but will not be attending, according to a person familiar with the schedule.

The briefing could be contentious as questions have swirled around Trump’s decision to strike Iran and whether the attacks were successful. A preliminary US intelligence report found this week that Iran’s nuclear program had been set back only a few months, contradicting statements from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to two people familiar with the report. The people were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

On Wednesday, Gabbard and Ratcliffe sent out statements backing Trump’s claims that the facilities were “completely and fully obliterated.” Gabbard posted on social media that “new intelligence confirms what @POTUS has stated numerous times: Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed.”

She said that if the Iranians choose to rebuild the three facilities, it would “likely take years to do.”

Ratcliffe said in a statement from the CIA that Iran’s nuclear program has been “severely damaged” and cited new intelligence “from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

Most Republicans have staunchly defended Trump and hailed the tentative ceasefire he brokered in the Israel-Iran war. House Speaker Mike Johnson even went as far as to question the constitutionality of the War Powers Act, which is intended to give Congress a say in military action.

“The bottom line is the commander in chief is the president, the military reports to the president, and the person empowered to act on the nation’s behalf is the president,” Johnson told reporters.

But some Republicans – including some of Trump’s staunchest supporters – are uncomfortable with the strikes and the potential for US involvement in an extended Middle East conflict.

“I think the speaker needs to review the Constitution,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky “And I think there’s a lot of evidence that our Founding Fathers did not want presidents to unilaterally go to war.”

Paul would not say if he is voting for the resolution by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, that would require congressional approval for specific military action in Iran. The resolution is likely to fail as 60 votes would be needed to pass it and Republicans have a 53-47 majority. But Kaine says it’s important to put the Senate on the record.

“You have a debate like this so that the entire American public, whose sons and daughters are in the military and whose lives will be at risk in war, get to see the debate and reach their own conclusion together with the elected officials about whether the mission is worth it or not,” Kaine said.

While he did not seek approval, Trump sent congressional leaders a short letter Monday serving as his official notice of the strikes, two days after the bombs fell.

The letter said that the strike was taken “to advance vital United States national interests, and in collective self-defense of our ally, Israel, by eliminating Iran’s nuclear program.”


Mississippi executes the longest-serving man on the state’s death row for 1976 killing

Updated 26 June 2025
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Mississippi executes the longest-serving man on the state’s death row for 1976 killing

  • Jordan was one of several on the state’s death row who sued the state over its three-drug execution protocol, claiming it is inhumane

PARCHMAN, Mississippi: The longest-serving man on Mississippi’s death row was executed Wednesday, nearly five decades after he kidnapped and killed a bank loan officer’s wife in a violent ransom scheme.
Richard Gerald Jordan, a 79-year-old Vietnam veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, was put to death by lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. The time of death was 6:16 p.m.
Jordan was one of several on the state’s death row who sued the state over its three-drug execution protocol, claiming it is inhumane.
The execution was the third in the state in the last 10 years; previously the most recent one was carried out in December 2022.
Jordan’s execution came a day after a man was put to death in Florida, in what is shaping up to be a year with the most executions since 2015.
Jordan, whose final appeals were denied without comment Wednesday afternoon by the US Supreme Court, was sentenced to death in 1976 for killing and kidnapping Edwina Marter.
Mississippi Supreme Court records show that in January of that year, Jordan called the Gulf National Bank in Gulfport and asked to speak with a loan officer. After he was told that Charles Marter could speak to him, he hung up. He then looked up the Marters’ home address in a telephone book and kidnapped Edwina Marter.
According to court records, Jordan took her to a forest and fatally shot her before calling her husband, claiming she was safe and demanding $25,000.
Edwina Marter’s husband and two sons had not planned to attend the execution. Eric Marter, who was 11 when his mother was killed, said beforehand that other family members would attend.
“It should have happened a long time ago,” Eric Marter told The Associated Press before the execution. “I’m not really interested in giving him the benefit of the doubt.”
“He needs to be punished,” Marter said.
As of the beginning of the year, Jordan was one of 22 people sentenced in the 1970s who were still on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
His execution ended a decades-long court process that included four trials and numerous appeals. On Monday the Supreme Court rejected a petition that argued he was denied due process rights.
“He was never given what for a long time the law has entitled him to, which is a mental health professional that is independent of the prosecution and can assist his defense,” said lawyer Krissy Nobile, director of Mississippi’s Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, who represented Jordan. “Because of that his jury never got to hear about his Vietnam experiences.”
A recent petition asking Gov. Tate Reeves for clemency echoed Nobile’s claim. It said Jordan suffered severe PTSD after serving three back-to-back tours, which could have been a factor in his crime.
“His war service, his war trauma, was considered not relevant in his murder trial,” said Franklin Rosenblatt, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, who wrote the petition on Jordan’s behalf. “We just know so much more than we did 10 years ago, and certainly during Vietnam, about the effect of war trauma on the brain and how that affects ongoing behaviors.”
Marter said he does not buy that argument: “I know what he did. He wanted money, and he couldn’t take her with him. And he — so he did what he did.”