International
Protests break out as Maduro declared winner of disputed Venezuela election
Protests break out as Maduro declared winner of disputed Venezuela election
Venezuelans have taken to the streets after the electoral authority officially declared President Nicolas Maduro the winner of an election that the opposition says was marred by fraud.
Protests have erupted across the country, with demonstrators even toppling a statue of Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, in the state of Falcon.
In the Petare area — one of the poorest parts of the capital, Caracas — demonstrators shouted slogans against the president, and some masked young people tore down his campaign posters from lampposts.
Some protesters were also headed towards Miraflores, the presidential palace.
Police were deployed in large numbers across the city, and members of the National Guard were seen to be firing tear gas to disperse demonstrators. There were also reports of “colectivos” — pro-Maduro paramilitary groups — firing at protesters.
“It’s going to fall. It’s going to fall. This government is going fall!” some of the protesters shouted.
Public anger swelled after the National Electoral Council (CNE) on Monday formally confirmed that Maduro had been re-elected by a majority of Venezuelans to another six-year term as president “for the period 2025-2031”.
But the CNE, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists, has not released the tallies from each of the 30,000 polling stations across Venezuela, fuelling political tensions in the South American nation and calls for greater transparency.
Opposition representatives said the counts they collected from campaign representatives at the centres show presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez trouncing Maduro.
In a press conference on Monday evening, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado claimed her coalition had more than 70 percent of the votes tallied and catalogued in an online database.
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“They show we have a president elect, and that person is Edmundo Gonzalez,” Machado said, turning to the presidential candidate, who stood by her side.
The CNE, however, maintained Gonzalez had failed to defeat the president, earning 44 percent of the votes compared with Maduro’s 51 percent.
Speaking in a televised address from Caracas on Monday, Maduro, 61, claimed, without providing evidence, that “an attempt is being made to impose a coup d’etat in Venezuela”.
“We already know this movie, and this time, there will be no kind of weakness,” he added, saying Venezuela’s “law will be respected”.
As Maduro spoke, demonstrators began to gather in Caracas, and some tried to block freeways, including one that connects the capital with a port city that is home to Venezuela’s main international airport.
Opposition leaders also rejected Maduro’s allegations, calling for peaceful protests across the country.
“The Venezuelans and the entire world know what happened,” Gonzalez said in his first remarks since the results were announced.
Later, during the Monday evening press conference, he reiterated his claim to victory while urging supporters to remain calm.
“I speak to you at peace, knowing the truth. And I want to tell all the Venezuelan people that their will expressed yesterday through their vote will be respected. We will make sure that happens,” Gonzalez said.
“That is the only path towards peace. We have in our hands the records that show our triumph — our overwhelming triumph that cannot be reversed.”
Eating breakfast on a bench next to an unopened business in Caracas on Monday morning, 28-year-old voter Deyvid Cadenas said he felt cheated.
“I don’t believe yesterday’s results,” Cadenas, who cast a ballot in a presidential election for the first time on Sunday, told AP.
As the political uncertainty continues to swirl, election observers and foreign leaders from around the world have urged Venezuela to release a full breakdown of the election results.
A spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the UN chief was calling “for complete transparency” and “the timely publication of the election results and their breakdown by polling stations”.
“The secretary-general trusts that all electoral disputes will be addressed and resolved peacefully and calls on all Venezuelan political leaders and their supporters for moderation,” Stephane Dujarric told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.
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The Carter Center, which sent a team of electoral observers to Venezuela for the election, also called on the electoral authority to immediately publish the presidential voting results by polling station.
“The information contained in the polling station-level results forms as transmitted to the CNE is critical to our assessment and important for all Venezuelans,” the group said in a statement.
‘They robbed us’
Maduro, who first came to power in 2013 after the death of his mentor and predecessor Chavez, has presided over an economic collapse that has pushed millions of people to leave the country.
Venezuela also has been isolated internationally amid sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union and others, which have crippled an already struggling oil industry.
Reporting from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo said there was an immediate sense of disappointment amongst Venezuelans “who were hoping for change” at the ballot box on Sunday.
Many also expressed anger over the election results and how they were announced.
“What we saw happening on Sunday night is unprecedented in Venezuela. It was about one o’clock in the morning, on Monday morning, and the president of the electoral council came out and announced that Nicolas Maduro was the winner,” Bo noted.
“However, he never showed the results. We have never seen something like this.”
Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek Saab, a Maduro ally, said on Monday that his office had launched an investigation into an alleged cyber attack on the electoral system that slowed the vote count.
Saab accused opposition leaders – including Machado – of being involved, but did not offer any evidence to back up his claim.
“What we’re seeing from the government right now is a government that is saying it won the elections, saying that it’s under attack,” Bo reported.
“This is not what people on the streets are saying. Millions of Venezuelans are convinced that there was massive fraud.”
On Monday morning, a cacophony of banging came from Caracas’s Petare and 23 de Enero areas – traditionally major working-class bastions for the United Socialist Party – as neighbours took part in a “cacerolazo”, a traditional Latin American protest in which people bang pots and pans.
“Maduro yesterday shattered my greatest dream, to see my only daughter again, who went to Argentina three years ago,” retiree Dalia Romero, 59, told the Reuters news agency in Maracaibo, a city in northwestern Venezuela.
“I stayed here alone with breast cancer so that she could work there and send me money for treatment,” she said through tears. “Now I know that I’m going to die alone without seeing her again.”
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Ender Nunez, a 42-year-old driver in Maracaibo, also expressed disappointment. “We’re going to be in this nightmare for six more years and what hurts the most is that they robbed us,” he said.
Emergency meeting requested
Meanwhile, nine Latin American countries have called for an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) permanent council due to their concerns over the election results.
Panama, one of the countries, also said it would be putting its diplomatic relations with Venezuela “on hold” and would withdraw diplomatic staff from the country until a full review is conducted.
“We are putting diplomatic relations on hold until a complete review of the voting records and of the voting computer system is carried out,” Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino said during a news conference.
Al Jazeera’s Bo explained that the call for an OAS meeting was unsurprising, as the governments involved are largely “right-wing governments [that] have traditionally opposed Venezuela”.
Instead, she said “all eyes right now are on what left-wing or centre-left-wing governments in the region will say” about the results.
On Monday morning, the government of left-wing Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for the “impartial verification” of the results.
Gabriel Boric, the left-wing president of Chile, said his government would “not recognise any result that is not verifiable”, urging Venezuela to provide “total transparency of the election records and the process”.
In response to the international outcry, Maduro announced it would withdraw its diplomats from seven Latin American countries, including Panama, Peru, Chile and Argentina.
Opposition leaders also accused Maduro’s allies of attempting to surround the Argentinian embassy in Caracas, where certain political figures had taken refuge.
Eric Farnsworth, the vice president of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA), told Al Jazeera that the international community ultimately has relatively little power over what happens next with the election results
“The reality is, he [Maduro] does control the courts. He controls the electoral system,” Farnsworth explained, adding that Maduro also has good relations with the military.
“So there’s not a whole lot of leverage that the international community maintains at this point in terms of Venezuela, particularly when we understand that there are some countries around the region, such as Cuba, and around the world, like China, which continue to support the Maduro regime.”
Still, Farnsworth said international pressure could help defuse a potentially volatile situation — and ensure the safety of key members of the opposition.
“We have to be really careful that this does not get out of control, and I think the international community really has a role to play in saying, ‘Look, just because somebody ran for president does not put a target on their back.’ Their lives and their families need to be protected.”
He also anticipates the election crisis will trigger another exodus from Venezuela, as people seek economic stability and political freedom elsewhere.
“If you take hope away from those who have remained, they really face a question: Is it worth it to stay in Venezuela? Or should they seek their fortunes elsewhere?”
Protests break out as Maduro declared winner of disputed Venezuela election
International
Israel ejects Gaza hospital, detains medical personnel
Israel ejects Gaza hospital, detains medical personnel
The last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza was forcibly evacuated by the Israeli military on Friday after dozens of people were reportedly killed in Israeli strikes targeting the area.
Medical staff, including the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, have also been detained, Gaza health officials said on Saturday.
The hospital director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, was among the first to report that about 50 people had been killed in Israeli air strikes targeting the vicinity of the hospital on Friday.
The IDF had said it was carrying out an operation in the area, alleging the hospital was a “Hamas terrorist stronghold”.
On Friday, patients at the hospital were forcibly moved to the nearby Indonesian Hospital which doctors warn is damaged and unsuitable due to a lack of power generators and water.
Eid Sabbah, head of the nursing department at Kamal Adwan, told the BBC the military had ordered the evacuation around 07:00 on Friday, giving the hospital about 15 minutes to move patients and staff into the courtyard.
Israeli troops then entered the hospital and removed the remaining patients, he said.
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The IDF said it had “facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel” before beginning the operation.
Seriously ill patients were moved to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, itself evacuated earlier in the week, which medics have described as non-functional.
“You can’t call it a hospital, it’s more of a shelter. It’s not equipped for patients,” Gaza’s deputy minister of health, Dr Abu-Al Rish, told the BBC on Friday.
Dr Sabbah, from Kamal Adwan Hospital, said: “It’s dangerous because there are patients in the ICU department in a coma and in need of ventilation machines and moving them will put them in danger.”
He had said critically ill patients needed to be moved in specialised vehicles.
The World Health Organization said the raid “has put this last major health facility in north Gaza out of service”.
“Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destroyed during the raid,” it posted on X on Friday.
Nadav Shoshani, international spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said in a post on Friday evening on X that a “small fire broke out in an empty building inside the hospital that is under control”.
This was when IDF troops were not inside the hospital, he said, adding that “after preliminary examination, no connection was found between IDF activity to the fire”.
The director of Kamal Adwan hospital had said on Friday that approximately 50 people had been killed, including five medical staff, in a series of Israeli air strikes targeting the vicinity of the hospital.
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The statement from Dr Hussam Abu Safiya said a building opposite the hospital was targeted by Israeli warplanes, leading to the death of a paediatrician and a lab technician, as well as their families.
He said a third staff member who worked as a maintenance technician was targeted and killed as he rushed to the scene of the first strike.
Two of the hospital’s paramedics were 500m (1,640ft) away from the hospital when they were targeted and killed by another strike, the statement continued, with their bodies remaining in the street with no-one able to reach them.
The Israeli military said on Friday morning that it was “unaware of strikes in the area of Kamal Adwan hospital” and was looking into the reports that staff had been killed.
Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia has been under a tightening Israeli blockade imposed on parts of northern Gaza since October, when the military said it had launched an offensive to stop Hamas from regrouping there.
The UN has said the area is under a “near-total siege” as the Israeli military heavily restricts access of aid deliveries to an area where an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people remain.
In recent days, the hospital’s administrators have issued desperate pleas appealing to be protected, as they say the facility has become a regular target for Israeli shelling and explosives.
Oxfam said that attempts by aid agencies to deliver supplies to the area since October had been unsuccessful because of “deliberate delays and systematic obstructions” by the Israeli military.
Additional reporting by Shaimaa Khalil
Israel ejects Gaza hospital, detains medical personnel
BBC
International
Trump asks Supreme Court to suspend law for TikTok ban
Trump asks Supreme Court to suspend law for TikTok ban
US President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief Friday urging the Supreme Court to pause a law that would ban TikTok the day before his January 20 inauguration if it is not sold by its Chinese owner ByteDance.
“In light of the novelty and difficulty of this case, the court should consider staying the statutory deadline to grant more breathing space to address these issues,” Trump’s legal team wrote, to give him “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution.”
Trump was fiercely opposed to TikTok during his 2017-21 first term, and tried in vain to ban the video app on national security grounds.
The Republican voiced concerns — echoed by political rivals — that the Chinese government might tap into US TikTok users’ data or manipulate what they see on the platform.
US officials had also voiced alarm over the popularity of the video-sharing app with young people, alleging that its parent company is subservient to Beijing and that the app is used to spread propaganda, claims denied by the company and the Chinese government.
Trump called for a US company to buy TikTok, with the government sharing in the sale price, and his successor Joe Biden went one stage further — signing a law to ban the app for the same reasons.
– Reversing course –
Trump has now, however, reversed course.
At a press conference last week, Trump said he has “a warm spot” for TikTok and that his administration would take a look at the app and the potential ban.
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Earlier this month, the president-elect met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
Recently, Trump told Bloomberg he had changed his mind about the app: “Now (that) I’m thinking about it, I’m for TikTok, because you need competition.”
“If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram — and that’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg.”
International
Romeo and Juliet actress Olivia Hussey dies at 73
Romeo and Juliet actress Olivia Hussey dies at 73
Actress Olivia Hussey, who shot to international prominence as a teenager for her role in the acclaimed 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet, has died aged 73.
The Argentinian-born actress, who grew up in London, died on Friday surrounded by her loved ones, a statement posted on her Instagram said.
Hussey won the best new actress Golden Globe for her part as Juliet, but decades later she sued Paramount Pictures for sexual abuse as she was aged just 15 when she filmed the movie’s nude scene.
Her other most notable screen role was as Mary, mother of Jesus, in 1977 TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth.
“As we grieve this immense loss, we also celebrate Olivia’s enduring impact on our lives and the industry,” the statement said.
Hussey was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1951, before moving to London aged seven and studying at the Italia Conti Academy drama school.
1968’s Romeo and Juliet was nominated for best picture and director Oscars
She was 15 when Romeo and Juliet director Franco Zeffirelli discovered her onstage, playing opposite Vanessa Redgrave in the play The Prime of Miss Joan Brodie
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Zeffirelli was looking for someone who was young enough to be a convincing Juliet in what he intended to be the definitive cinematic version of the Shakespeare play.
He cast Hussey alongisde British 16-year-old Leonard Whiting as Romeo in the film.
The film was nominated for an Oscar for best picture and director. Hussey missed out on an Oscar nomination herself in a strong year in which Barbra Streisand won the main award for Funny Girl.
But at that year’s Golden Globes Hussey won the award for best new star.
Decades later, she and Whiting sued Paramount Pictures alleging Zeffirelli – who died in 2019 – had encouraged them to film nude scenes despite previous assurances they would not have to.
The pair sought damages of more than $500m (£417m), based on suffering they said they had experienced and the revenue brought in by the film since its release.
But last year a judge dismissed the case, finding the scene was not “sufficiently sexually suggestive”.
In 1977, Hussey had reunited with Zeffirelli for Jesus of Nazareth to play the Virgin Mary, before appearing in Death on the Nile a year later based on Agatha Christie’s novel.
Her roles in early slasher film Black Christmas (1974) and TV film Psycho IV: The Beginning earned her recognition as a scream queen. In the latter, she p[layed Norman Bates’s mother in a prequel storyline.
In later years she also took on work as a voice actress, appearing frequently in video games.
But she did have one final reunion with her former Romeo – as she and Whiting appeared together in the 2015 British film Social Suicide, which was loosely based on Romeo and Juliet, albeit set in the social media era.
Romeo and Juliet actress Olivia Hussey dies at 73
BBC
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