Nearly two million Venezuelans sign on for Maduro recall

Venezuela's opposition presented reams of signatures to election authorities Monday calling for a referendum to remove President Nicolas Maduro, whom it blames for the country's crushing economic crisis.

Venezuelans fed up with food shortages, soaring inflation and now a paralyzing electricity crunchhave flocked to sign a petition for a recall referendum, according to the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD).

It said it had presented 1.85 million signatures -- more than nine times the number needed to launch the referendum process -- to the National Electoral Board.

MUD executive secretary Jesus Torrealba said 80 boxes packed with referendum petitions had been presented to the authorities.

However, board official Tania D'Amelio suggested Sunday on Twitter that the authorities might not start verifying the signatures until late May.

That drew opposition cries of bias in favor of Maduro and the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

"There's no doubt about it... Tania D'Amelio is a supporter and unconditional activist of the PSUV and is working to prevent a recall referendum this year," said Henry Ramos Allup, the speaker of the opposition-controlled legislature.

Racing against clock

Opponents are racing to hold a recall referendum before the end of the year.

Under Venezuela's constitution, after January 2017 a successful recall vote would transfer power to Maduro's vice president rather than trigger new elections.

The constitution gives the authorities five days to verify the signatures collected by the opposition.

But D'Amelio indicated that the five-day countdown would begin only once the full 30 days allotted for circulating the petition had lapsed.

The opposition insists there is no need to wait until the end of the 30-day period because it already surpassed the required 200,000 signatures "in record time."

If the electoral board accepts the signatures as valid -- far from a sure bet -- the opposition will then have to collect four million more for the board to organize the vote.

New time zone

Adding to Venezuela's woes, Maduro's government has taken a series of drastic measures to deal with the electricity crisis, instituting four-hour daily blackouts across most of the country, reducing the public-sector workweek to two days and closing schools on Fridays.

The power cuts sparked riots and looting last week in Venezuela's second-largest city, Maracaibo.

On Sunday the country also set its clocks forward half an hour in an attempt to curb evening electricity demand.

Maduro blames the power crunch on the El Nino weather phenomenon, which has unleashed the worst drought in 40 years, reducing the reservoirs at Venezuela's hydroelectric dams.

But the opposition says mismanagement is to blame for the power crisis as well as the recession and shortages.

Maduro warns of 'rebellion'

Maduro defiantly urged his supporters on Sunday to launch a "rebellion" if the opposition succeeds in ousting him.

"If the oligarchy someday does something against me and manages to take this palace, I order you to declare yourselves in rebellion and decree an indefinite general strike," he told supporters massed outside the presidential palace in a fiery May Day speech.

A recent poll found that more than two-thirds of Venezuelans want Maduro, elected president by a razor-thin margin in 2013, to leave office.

Once-booming Venezuela, which has the world's largest proven oil reserves, has plunged into economic chaos as global crude prices have collapsed.

The import-dependent country faces acute shortages of food and basic goods like toilet paper due to a lack of foreign currency, more than 96 percent of which it gets from oil sales.

The economy, which has been in recession since 2013, shrank 5.7 percent last year. The government said inflation came in at more than 180 percent last year.

Analysts however estimate the inflation rate is much higher. The International Monetary Fund forecasts it will hit 700 percent this year.

Maduro has nevertheless vowed to press on with the socialist "revolution" launched in 1999 by his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez.

Poll says Trump, Clinton are in race to be least unpopular

It’s the paradox of the 2016 US presidential elections: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are virtually assured of facing off against each other in November, and yet both are widely unpopular.

Two thirds (65 percent) of voters have unfavorable opinions of the Republican billionaire, and only a quarter (24 percent) think positively of him, according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC survey.

In Clinton’s case, 56 percent are down on her, while only 32 percent see her in a favorable light, the same poll found.

A CNN poll this week put their unpopularity at 56 percent and 49 percent respectively.
“Historically, we haven’t seen this kind of thing before,” said Jeanne Zaino, a political scientist at Iona College. “It would be one thing if you had one, but this is... the two frontrunners.”

Trump, 69, an unpredictable political outsider who has never held elected office, has antagonized substantial portions of the electorate with his insults against women, Mexicans and Muslims.

The very experienced and circumspect Clinton, meanwhile, has struggled to win over many voters who have trouble relating to the 68-year-old White House aspirant.
How in the world did these two become their party’s presumptive nominees?

“It has to do with the way we select candidates,” said Columbia University professor Robert Shapiro.

In 2012, only about 16 percent of Americans eligible to vote participated in party primaries.

“Those who vote in primaries and caucuses are more often activists and extremists within the party. The average American barely votes,” Shapiro said.

With 17 candidates in the race for the Republican nomination, Trump only needed “a very small segment of the American electorate” to become his party’s standard bearer, he added.

Strong opinions

Hillary Clinton profited from the fact that she had little competition, except from Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who continues to nip at her heels.

“Other capable Democrat candidates decided not to run, because this is a bad year for Democrats to run for president,” said Shapiro, alluding to the difficulty of getting elected to succeed a two-term president from the same party.

Trump and Clinton also suffer from the fact that they are so well known, said Zaino.

“These are two people who have been around a long time, so people have very strong opinions about them on both sides of the aisle,” she said.

Americans know all about them—their strengths, their weaknesses, the trajectory of their lives.

Clinton, who has long dreamt of being the first woman president of the United States, has been in the public eye for more than 20 years: she was first lady during Bill Clinton’s 1993-2001 presidency, senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, and secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

Trump has been a celebrity even longer, famed for his wealth, his skyscrapers, his two divorces and a hit reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” which he hosted for more than 10 years.

“A lot of Democrats feel like the Democratic party has become the party of the Clintons and a lot of people are not happy with that,” said Sam Abrams, an expert at Sarah Lawrence College.

“For many of my students, they have never known an era when a Clinton or a Bush was not president or dominating national politics,” he said.

Something else

Which explains the yearning for something else, particularly among young voters who prefer the 74-year-old Sanders to Clinton by a wide margin.

And while three quarters of Americans say they are unhappy with their political leaders, the White House frontrunners have been battered by their rivals and the bitterness of the campaign itself.

Before calling it quits Tuesday evening, Republican candidate Ted Cruz went so far as to accuse Trump of being a “serial philanderer,” a “pathological liar,” and a “narcissist.”

Sanders, meanwhile, continues to denounce Clinton’s ties to Wall Street and the hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees that she has received from big banks and corporations.

The battle between Clinton and Trump is certain to be at least as brutal.
But on election day, all this will count for little.

That is because Americans will vote, first and foremost against the other side: 51 percent of Democrats who intend to vote for Clinton say they will do it to stop Trump, and only 48 percent to support her candidacy.

And 57 percent of Republicans would vote for Trump to oppose Clinton, and only 43 percent because they want the billionaire to win, according to the CNN poll.

Cruz and Kasich strike pact to stop Trump

Latest update : 2016-04-25

Republican hopefuls Ted Cruz and John Kasich announced a deal Sunday not to compete with one another in certain state primaries in an effort to put the brakes on fellow Republican White House rival Donald Trump’s march towards the party’s nomination.

Cruz’s campaign said in a statement that the Texas Senator would focus his efforts on the May 3 primary in Indiana and “in turn clear the path for Governor Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico”, which hold their primaries on May 17 and June 7 respectively.

Kasich’s campaign put out a similar statement saying he would allow Cruz a clear path to victory against Trump in Indiana.

The move is designed to prevent controversial billionaire Trump from gaining the 1,237 delegates required to secure the nomination outright and instead force the nomination contest to go a second ballot at the Republican National Convention in July, where delegates would be allowed to switch sides.

“Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee,” Kasich’s campaign strategist John Weaver said in a statement.

Too little, too late?

Some of the extreme views espoused by Trump during his campaign – including building a wall along the Mexican border and blocking Muslims from entering the country – have caused consternation among the Republican hierarchy who fear the impact him winning the presidential nomination could have on the party's image and their chances of securing the White House in November's election.

“Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans. Not only would Trump get blown out by [Hillary] Clinton or [Bernie] Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation," Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said in a statement Sunday.

Some Republican strategists have been packing a united effort to thwart Trump for some time, but with the New York-born businessman's already substantial lead in the race for delegates, it could be a case of too little, too late for Cruz and Kasich.

With 845 pledged delegates, Trump is currently just 392 short of the magic number of 1,237. Cruz, his closest rival, has 559 delegates to his name, while Kasich lags well behind with 148.

Trump's easy victory in the key New York primary earlier this month swung momentum in the race for the presidential nomination firmly back in his favour after a string of defeats, notably to Cruz.

He is also expected to do well in a string primaries across five northeastern states – Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware – all voting on Tuesday.

Trump's reaction to the news of the pact between the two was to ridicule them on Twitter.

"Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION!," he said.

There may be some truth to Trump's comments. Cruz's campaign has previously dismissed approaches by Kasich’s team to form an anti-Trump alliance. Doing so now is an admission that Cruz has almost no chance of securing more delegates than Trump while both he and Kasich are acknowledging that time is rapidly running out to turn the tide.

But their newfound spirit of cooperation could prove pivotal, particularly in Indiana where there are a potentially significant 57 delegates up for grabs in a winner-takes-all vote.

Both Cruz and Kasich had both been targeting Indiana as a potential turning point in the race. A recent Fox survey in Indiana suggested Trump had 41 percent of support compared to 33 percent for Cruz and 16 percent for Kasich. The pact now potentially gives Cruz enough votes to deny Trump victory in the state.

Contested convention

If Cruz and Kasich's gamble pays off it would see the Republican domination go down to a vote at the July Convention where, thanks to the complicated rules of the Republican primary race, Trump may go in with the most delegates but come away the loser.

The convention sees delegates vote to select the party's presidential nominee. In the first round of voting nearly all are bound to vote according to the primary result of their respective state. But if there is no outright winner in the first vote – likely, if Trump fails to reach 1,237 pledged delegates in the primary – voting then goes to a second round where delegates can switch their votes to another candidate.

Votes can be switched for a variety of reasons, from what delegates think is best for the party's electoral prospects to the outcome of a flurry of back-channel deals and negotiations.

Such a scenario could put Cruz, who has long been canvassing delegates to switch their votes to him in the event of a second ballot, in a strong position to beat Trump to the nomination.

There is even a possibility the nomination could go to none of the current candidates.

A current Republican party rule dictates that a candidate must have the support of a majority of delegates from eight different states in order to win the nomination.

But there is nothing to stop the party scrapping the rule, introduced in 2012 and known as Rule 40, before the convention, allowing delegates to vote for someone else entirely.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney have both been mentioned as possible last-minute candidates.

Trump, meanwhile, has been focusing on making sure such a scenario remains purely theoretical.

"We want to put it (nomination) away," Trump said at a campaign rally in Hagerstown, Maryland, on Sunday. "I only care about the first ballot. We're not going for the second and third and fourth and fifth."

26 April 2016 - 00H05 US detaining more migrants at Mexico border: officials

WASHINGTON (AFP) - 

The number of people caught trying to enter the United States illegally from Mexico rose in the first months of this year compared to the same period last year, officials said Monday.

The US authorities detained 33,335 people in March, up 11 percent from the same month in 2015, the US Border Patrol said, providing no explanation for why.

Detentions in October and November were similar to levels in the same months of 2013, when the number of attempted entries spiked, especially by unaccompanied minors.

That wave triggered an outpouring of concern for the children among Americans, prompting the government to take emergency measures to look after them in mid-2014.

Many of the migrants come from Central America, a region plagued by poverty, street gangs and drug-related violence.

Countries there are due to receive 750 million dollars in US aid this year to boost security and living standards and discourage people from embarking on dangerous trips through Mexico to the United States.

Trudeau confirms Canadian hostage decapitated by Philippine extremists

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that the decapitated head of a Caucasian male recovered Monday night in the southern Philippines belongs to one of two Canadians taken hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in September.

Trudeau identified the victim as John Ridsdel of Calgary, Alberta and said his government will work with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this “heinous act.”

Two men on a motorcycle left Ridsdel’s head, placed inside a plastic bag, along a street in Jolo town in Sulu province and then fled, Jolo police chief Supt. Junpikar Sitin said.

Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of three men - two Canadians and a Norwegian - they kidnapped last September from a marina on southern Samal Island if a large ransom was not paid by 3 p.m. Monday (0800 GMT).

Jolo Mayor Hussin Amin condemned the beheading, blaming Abu Sayyaf militants, who have been implicated in past kidnappings, beheadings and bombings.

“This is such a barbaric act by these people and one would be tempted to think that they should also meet the same fate,” Amin said by telephone.

Philippine forces were moving to rescue the abductees, also including a Filipino woman who was kidnapped with them, as the Abu Sayyaf’s deadline for the ransom payment lapsed, the military said.

The militants reportedly demanded 300 million pesos ($6.5 million) for each of the foreigners, a reduction from their earlier demands.

The hostages were believed to have been taken to Jolo Island in Sulu, a jungled province where the militants are thought to be holding a number of captives, including 14 Indonesian and four Malaysian crewmen who were abducted at gunpoint from three tugboats starting last month.

“Maximum efforts are being exerted ... to effect the rescue,” the military and police said in a joint statement, without divulging details of the rescue operation, which was ordered by President Benigno Aquino III.

About 400 Abu Sayyaf militants were involved in the kidnappings, it said.

In militant videos posted online, Ridsdel and fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipino Marites Flor were shown sitting in a clearing with heavily armed militants standing behind them. In some of the videos, a militant positioned a long knife on Ridsdel’s neck. Two black flags hung in the backdrop of lush foliage.

The abductions highlight the long-running security problems hounding the southern Philippines, a region with bountiful resources that also suffers from poverty, lawlessness and decades-long Muslim and communist insurgencies.

The Abu Sayyaf began a series of large-scale abductions after it emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a separatist rebellion by minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation’s south.

It has been weakened by more than a decade of Philippine offensives but has endured largely as a result of large ransom and extortion earnings. The United States and the Philippines have both listed the group as a terrorist organization.

Harriet Tubman to replace Andrew Jackson on $20 bill

Anti-slavery crusader Harriet Tubman will become the first African-American to be featured on the face of U.S. paper currency when she replaces President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, the U.S. Treasury Department announced on Wednesday. 

She will also be the first woman on U.S. paper currency in more than a century.

The redesigned $20 bill will move Jackson to the back of the bill alongside an image of the White House, Treasury officials said.

A new $10 bill will keep founding father Alexander Hamilton on the front, while adding images of five women, all leaders of the women’s suffrage movement, to the back.

The reverse of a new $5 note will honor events held at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., including former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, Jr., officials said.

The slew of changes give the Treasury “a chance to open the aperture to reflect more of America’s history,” Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew told reporters on a conference call.

The decision to replace the seventh president of the United States with Tubman, who was born a slave and helped hundreds of slaves escape using the network of safe-houses known as the Underground Railroad, followed public outreach by the Treasury Department regarding which woman should be featured on a bill after they announced plans in June to feature one on the $10 note.

While no depictions of African-Americans have appeared on U.S. currency, the signatures of five African-Americans have been on it. Four were Registers of the Treasury and included Blanche K. Bruce, Judson W. Lyons, William T. Vernon and James C. Napier, and one was U.S. Treasurer Azie Taylor Morton.

Native American Sacagawea has been featured on the gold dollar coin since 1999, and suffragist Susan B. Anthony has appeared on the silver dollar coin since 1979. Deaf-blind author and activist Helen Keller is on the back of the Alabama quarter, which was first issued in 2003.

Prompted partly by a young girl’s letter to President Barack Obama about the lack of women on U.S. currency, a social media campaign last year called “Women on 20s” began pushing for a woman to replace Jackson.

On Wednesday, the movement’s leaders said they were “ready to claim victory” but only if the bill was issued by 2020 to mark the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote.

“What was to be a celebration of female American heroes ... cannot be postponed,” the group’s founder Barbara Ortiz Howard said in a statement.

U.S. Treasury spokesman Rob Runyan could not say when the redesigned bill would be issued.

The women last depicted on U.S. bills were first lady Martha Washington on the $1 silver certificate from 1891 to 1896, and Native American Pocahontas in a group photo on the $20 bill from 1865 to 1869.

Harriet Tubman became the top-trending hashtag on Twitter shortly after the news broke on Wednesday, with more than 100,000 tweets and mentions online.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams (@BPEricAdams) tweeted, “Having #HarrietTubman on the new $20 bill is a #milestone for our nation, a powerful acknowledgment of great #women and #AfricanAmericans.”

Other users applauded Treasury’s decision to keep Hamilton on the $10 bill, which is a decision many say resulted from the influence of the popular, Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical “Hamilton,” created by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Actress Mara Wilson (@MaraWritesStuff) tweeted Miranda on Wednesday stating, “@Lin_Manuel First you win a Pulitzer, now you’re affecting US currency. Get some rest!”

In pictures: Ecuador races to find quake survivors

The death toll from Ecuador’s worst earthquake in decades rose to at least 413 on Monday while traumatized survivors slept amid the rubble of their homes and rescuers dug for survivors in the Andean nation’s shattered coastal region. 

"Sadly we have to inform you that there are about 350 people killed. The number of people injured has also risen" from an earlier toll of 2,068, Security Minister Cesar Navas said on television Monday.

Saturday’s 7.8 magnitude quake ripped apart buildings and roads, knocked out power, and injured thousands in the largely impoverished country.

In the devastated beach town of Pedernales, shaken survivors curled up for the night on mattresses or plastic chairs next to the rubble of their homes. Soldiers and police patrolled the hot, dark streets while pockets of rescue workers ploughed on.

Late on Sunday, firefighters entered a partially destroyed house to search for three children and a man apparently trapped inside, as a crowd of 40 gathered in the darkness to watch.

“My little cousins are inside, before there were noises, screams. We must find them,” pleaded Isaac, 18, as the firemen combed the debris.

Pedernales Mayor Gabriel Alcivar estimated that there were up to 400 more dead yet to be confirmed, many buried under the rubble of collapsed hotels.

"Pedernales is devastated. Buildings have fallen down, especially hotels where there are lots of tourists staying. There are lots of dead bodies," he told local media.

Tents sprung up in the town’s still-intact stadium to store bodies, treat the injured, and distribute water, food and blankets to survivors. People wandered around with bruised limbs and bandaged cuts, while patients with more serious injuries were evacuated to hospitals.

Death toll ‘will certainly rise’

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa, who cut short a visit to Italy, surveyed the damage in the coastal province of Manabi on Sunday night. 

Ecuador has been hit tremendously hard,” Correa said in a televised address, his voice breaking.

Correa warned that the death toll "will certainly rise and probably in a considerable way" in the hours ahead.

"There are still lots of bodies in the rubble," he said. "These are extremely difficult times, the biggest tragedy in the last 67 years."

Correa made reference to the August 1949 earthquake near the central Ecuadoran city of Ambato that killed some 5,000 people and caused widespread destruction.

While the full extent of the damage remains unclear, the disaster will likely worsen the OPEC nation’s economic performance this year.

The small, oil-dependent country has already been battered by the tumble in crude prices.

Its crucial energy industry appears largely intact after the quake, though its main refinery of Esmeraldas was closed as a precaution. However, exports of bananas, flowers, cacao and fish could be slowed by ruined roads and delays at ports.

The quake could also alter political dynamics ahead of next year’s presidential election.

After the aftershocks

About 230 aftershocks have rattled survivors who, huddled in the streets, worried the flow of tremors could topple their already cracked homes.

In the hard-hit city of Portoviejo, the stench of decaying bodies began to fill the tropical air as rescuers raced to find survivors.

“We’re scared of being in the house,” said Yamil Faran, 47, surrounded by some 30 people in the middle of a street in the city. “When this improves and the aftershocks stop we’re going to see if we can repair it.”

The destruction caused by the quake to the country’s infrastructure was further hampering rescue efforts, said FRANCE 24’s correspondent in Quito, Carolina Loza-Leon.

“A lot of the roads have been completely destroyed in the hardest hit areas,” she said. “[There is] Inadequate infrastructure to reach the people who need help the most.”

Some 130 inmates in Portoviejo took advantage of the quake’s destruction and chaos to climb over the collapsed walls of the low-security El Rodeo prison. More than 35 prisoners had been recaptured, authorities said on Sunday night.

About 13,500 security personnel were mobilised to keep order. Beyond a handful of unconfirmed reports of theft and looting, the country appeared calm.

Some $600 million in credit from multilateral lenders was immediately activated for the emergency, the government said.

Domestic aid funds were being set up and Venezuela, Chile and Mexico were sending personnel and supplies. The Ecuadorean Red Cross mobilised more than 800 volunteers and staff, and medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said it was sending a team from Colombia.

The tremor followed two large and deadly quakes that struck Japan since Thursday.

Both countries are located on the seismically active “Ring of Fire” that circles the Pacific, but according to the US Geological Survey large quakes separated by such distances are probably not related.