Several hundred thousand opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez marched in Caracas on Saturday, in a show of strength aimed at energizing their fight for a referendum to oust the leftist leader.
The march, the largest by the opposition this year, followed a week of violent clashes in the capital and other cities between troops and pro-referendum protesters in which at least eight people were killed.
US President George W. Bush said Washington would work with the Organization of American States "to help ensure the integrity" of the referendum process.
His remarks to a news conference at his Texas ranch came a day after the US State Department warned Americans to avoid all demonstrations in Venezuela.
Venezuelan opposition leaders said Saturday's big turnout gave fresh impetus to their campaign for Chavez to submit to a vote to resolve the political conflict that has roiled the world's No. 5 oil exporter for more than two years.
"We don't want bullets, we want votes," said Eduardo Fernandez, a veteran opposition Christian-Democrat politician.
Leaders of the broad anti-Chavez coalition, which brings together businessmen, dissident military officers, middle-class professionals and union militants, called for unity to end political infighting that has weakened the opposition.
Waving national flags and banners reading "down with dictatorship," the marchers denounced what they said were killings and human rights abuses committed by troops in the recent protests. A minute's silence was observed for the dead.
"Our civic resistance must continue in every corner of the country," opposition leader Enrique Mendoza said.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
Prime ministers, presidents and royalty on Saturday descended on Cairo to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities. The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and wars in neighboring countries. “We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a news conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a
RSS