The Arab League has severed ties with Guatemala following the latter’s decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem.

Arab League spokesman, Mahmoud Afif, said in a statement yesterday that the decision is in accordance with the results of the recent Arab League meeting which condemned Guatemala for moving its embassy to Jerusalem and vowed to take appropriate political and economic measures against it.

The Netherlands does not recognize the outcome of the elections held in Venezuela over the weekend, in which leftist president Nicolas Maduro was re-elected. "They were not free and independent elections", Minister Stef Blok of Foreign Affairs said to the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, RTL Nieuws reports.

As we are bussed through Caracas to the airport, vultures perched on lamp posts on the concrete banks of the Rio Guaire remind me of a T-shirt I had in high school. The T-shirt featured two vultures in a tree. One addresses the other: "Patience my ass, I'm gonna kill something."

The vultures hanging around what's essentially a concrete drainage ditch through the capital might represent moneyed interests both inside and outside Venezuela. The country is a treasure trove of petroleum and minerals, and while the socialist government has made many mistakes, it doesn’t seem poised to fail anytime soon. And some vultures just can't wait. Sanctions and an infowar by corporate media, parroting the neoliberal party line, have turned Venezuela into an economic warzone.

A day after being re-"elected", Venezuela's Maduro spoke on State TV rejecting U.S. sanctions - which "offend national dignity" - and expelling the top US diplomat from Caracas due to "conspiratorial behavior" against the government.

Tensions have mounted mount between the two countries following Maduro's victory in disputed presidential elections on Sunday. The White House has branded the election a "sham," and Maduro claims he "earned every vote and fought to win."

“How many times have they underestimated me?” Maduro, 55, called out to crowd of supporters outside the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas.

“You have believed in me, and I’m going to respond to this infinite confidence, this lovely confidence.”

“They say you were forced to vote, that you were coerced into voting -- it’s an insult to the people!"

The top US diplomat in Caracas, Venezuela has been expelled for allegedly conspiring against the government, President Nicolas Maduro announced.

"I have declared him persona non grata and I announce the exit of the US chargé d'affaires in 48 hours," Maduro said on Tuesday, referring to Todd Robinson.

Nicolas Maduro won another six-year term overwhelmingly by a two-thirds majority – far greater than polls predicted, turnout disappointing at less than 50%.

His main adversary, Chavista turncoat Henri Falcon, fared much poorer than predicted with around 21% of the vote.

Businessman/evangelical pastor linked to the Panama Papers tax haven scandal got only about 11% support.

Addressing a late Sunday night crowd of supporters, Maduro hailed his triumph as a victory over “imperialism,” saying:

“How much have they underestimated our revolutionary people, and how much have they underestimated me. And here we are victorious,” adding:

“It has been a heroic, beautiful, popular victory forged in the struggle. I’m the president of all of the Venezuelans. I call for a dialogue process. Permanent dialogue is what Venezuela needs. The revolution is here to stay!”

Venezuelans, reeling under a devastating economic crisis, began voting Sunday in an election boycotted by the opposition and condemned by much of the international community but expected to hand deeply unpopular President Nicolas Maduro a new mandate.

Maduro, the political heir to the late leftist firebrand Hugo Chavez, has presided over an implosion of once wealthy oil producer Venezuela's economy since taking office in 2013.

Hyperinflation, food and medicine shortages, rising crime and broken water, power and transportation networks have sparked violent unrest, and left Maduro with a 75-percent disapproval rating.

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have fled the country in a mass exodus in recent years as the country descends into economic ruin.

The United States will not recognise the result of Venezuela’s presidential election on Sunday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan told journalists.

The United States is actively considering oil sanctions on Venezuela and Sullivan said a response to Sunday’s vote would be discussed at a G20 meeting in Buenos Aires on Monday.

“We need to make sure we adhere to our goal which is to target corrupt regime officials and not the people of Venezuela,” Sullivan said. “We don’t want to damage the country in a way that makes it difficult to repair after democracy is restored.”

They are building a dam,
but 3 of what I assume is 4 relief tunnels have been plugged
by debris in the rainy season. So the dam has a chance to fail.

Guillaume Long, Ecuador’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs and former Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, discusses Lenin Moreno’s rightward shift since his election – a shift that his new cabinet further deepened

A dam in Colombia has failed due to faults in the construction of the hydroelectric power plant, resulting in roads being flooded. The incident was captured on video.

According to the local media, tens of thousands of people had to be evacuated after the Cauca River broke through the infiltration tunnel in Colombia. Two bridges, two schools and a hospital were destroyed and about 600 people lost their homes. The video captured by one of the workers shows people running away from the powerful burst of water that made its way through the tunnel.

The US has criticized the upcoming Venezuelan elections as 'fake,' and rushed to support 'democracy' by slapping a top ruling-party member with new sanctions and accusing President Nicolas Maduro of drug-trade profiteering.
The "second most powerful man in Venezuela," Diosdado Cabello, immediately brushed aside the accusations and new US sanctions introduced against him for allegedly heading a drug ring. He said such slander would only strengthen the ruling party's candidate, Maduro, to win Sunday's elections.

"In truth I feel liberated, that imperialism is busy persecuting this humble soldier and his family, strengthens me, forces me every day to continue fighting for the causes that I believe and to be faithful and loyal to our beloved people," Cabello, who is vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), said in a tweet after the US Treasury slapped him – as well as two members of his family, and his "front man" – with sanctions ahead of the election.

The socialist Venezuelan government has seized a closed Kellogg’s factory and decided to make the perfect storm for failure out of their theft. The government has handed control of the factory over to the workers who will attempt to continue to produce Kellogg’s products.

He enlisted in Venezuela's National Guard to earn a ticket out of poverty. But little more than two years later, his monthly pay is worth only about $2, forcing him to moonlight at a tire shop, and he has put in for a discharge.

"I don't know what everybody else does to survive," said Ruben, a 21-year-old sergeant, who fearing retaliation agreed to speak about his situation only if his last name was not revealed. "If I don't get out of this, I'll starve to death."

Not even Venezuela's once-proud military is immune to the oil-rich country's deepening economic crisis of food shortages and skyrocketing prices, and while top commanders deny there is any discontent, analysts say thousands of soldiers are asking for honorable discharges or deserting their posts by simply walking away.

Former FARC leader Jesús Santrich has been conducting a hunger strike since his arrest on April 9. His looming death ought to be big news in the United States whose government has responsibility for his fate. The U.S. State Department and DEA personnel did the groundwork in Colombia in manufacturing a case against him. The Southern New York District Court is requesting his extradition on a charge of drug-trafficking. Santrich won’t be judged in Colombia.

Santrich’s case deserves continuing attention especially because his arrest and threatened extradition portend the return of civil war to Colombia.

It started at dawn. A vehicle full of Honduran police officers showed up at around 5 am on May 3 in front of the community protest camp in Pajuiles, where residents have been present day and night for more than a year to prevent the passage of hydroelectric dam construction machinery. Less than two hours later, the whole area was crawling with hundreds of members of various police units, including regular national police, the Police Investigations Directorate, the elite COBRAS unit and the TIGRES special forces, which are heavily supported by the US and trained by Green Berets from the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne).

"It was like a war zone," Pajuiles community leader Albertina López told Truthout.

Reuters published an exclusive report claiming that Venezuela is purchasing foreign oil for its regional friends, but contrary to what the outlet implies is a desperate bid by a failing state to hold on to its last partners left, it’s really doing so in order to stave off the hemisphere’s re-subjugation to full-spectrum American dominance.

In March, Washington prohibited trade in the petro in the US with President Donald Trump calling the cryptocurrency a 'scam supporting a dictatorship.' The executive order signed by Trump banned “all transactions related to, provision of financing for, and other dealings in, by a United States person or within the United States, any digital currency, digital coin, or digital token,” issued by Venezuela's government.

Maduro vowed that, despite the sanctions, Venezuela would continue pushing forward the domestic blockchain technology and “make the petro one of the most solid and trustworthy cryptocurrencies in the world.”

He added that the digital currency will be traded for several global currencies, including the Russian ruble. The president also announced four “exclusive economic zones” in the country, in which it will be possible to use the petro “for the sale of goods and [payment] of services.”

For evidence that the Venezuelan migrant crisis is overwhelming this Colombian border city, look no further than its largest hospital.

The emergency room designed to serve 75 patients is likely to be crammed with 125 or more. Typically, two-thirds are impoverished Venezuelans with broken bones, infections, trauma injuries — and no insurance and little cash.

"I'm here for medicine I take every three months or I die," said Cesar Andrade, a 51-year-old retired army sergeant from Caracas. He had come to Cucuta's Erasmo Meoz University Hospital for anti-malaria medication he can't get in Venezuela. "I'm starting a new life in Colombia. The crisis back home has forced me to do it."

Yesterday kicked off a two day diplomatic visit between the leaders of Venezuela and Palestine.

The first item on the agenda was the signing of an agreement to create a bi-national bank to fund infrastructure, technology, and industry between the two countries.

Additionally, a business council spanning economic and financial matters was agreed upon.

The bank will be started off with 20 million Venezuelan Petros.

As Reported by Telesur

Newly re-elected Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas landed in Caracas last night for a two-day diplomatic stay in Venezuela and already he and President Nicolas Maduro have signed an accord to create the binational bank to fund technological and industrial initiatives between the two countries.

During the same meeting Venezuelan minister of tourism Marlenys Contreras and Palestinian director general of international cooperation, Imad Zuhairi agreed to bilateral tourism and hotel projects.

Military officers are joining the exodus of Venezuelans to Colombia and Brazil, fleeing barracks and forcing President Nicolas Maduro’s government to call upon retirees and militia to fill the void.

High desertion rates at bases in Caracas and the countryside are complicating security plans for the presidential election in 13 days, which by law require military custody of electoral materials and machinery at voting centers.

“The number is unknown because it used to be published in the Official Gazette. Now, it is not,” said Rocio San Miguel, director of Control Ciudadano, a military watchdog group in Caracas. She said soldiers are fleeing for the same reason citizens are: “Wages are low, the quality of food and clothing isn’t good.”

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is set to announce new sanctions on Venezuela in a speech to the Organization of American States on Monday, an aide to Pence said.

The market fear has raised since China issued the new tariff list of 106 U.S. products. Targeting at soybean, corn, cotton, sorghum and other U.S. agricultural exports, the additional tariff would result in the severe export decline as well as the growing panic of U.S. farming and agricultural industry. Today, U.S. soybean market’s biggest fear has been confirmed. Bunge, world’s biggest oilseed processor says China has essentially stopped buying U.S. supplies amid the brewing trade war, reported by Bloomberg.

Instead of buying U.S. soybeans, China is turning the sourcing region to Brazil and Canada, mostly Brazil. Many experts have predicted Brazil would be one of the beneficiaries in U.S-China trade war and the best alternative soybean exporter to the U.S.. Soren Schroder, chief executive of Bunge, said that he saw the U.S. making “very little if any” sales of soybeans to China, and not sure about how long it will last.

As Venezuela’s creditors are gathering to discuss how they may best protect their interests, additional pressure from former head of the country’s state-owned oil company, PdVSA, was applied on Saturday. Rafael Ramirez, the former head of the company under Chavez and Maduro, barely escaped with his life when Maduro arrested the top officials at the company last year for “engaging in corruption.” Maduro replaced Ramirez with Major General Manuel Quevedo, who is succeeding in even more rapidly running into the ground the once-prosperous and highly profitable energy producer.

Venezuela arrested 11 top officials from the country's largest private bank and announced that the state would intervene in the institution's activities at least temporarily to clean up purported illicit activity, officials said Thursday.

It was not clear whether the 90-day intervention would be a first step toward a full takeover of Banesco. It's the second round of arrests recently at a private interest following the detention of two Chevron employees.

Attorney General Tarek William Saab in a state TV broadcast announced that the Banesco executives had been detained following a "surgical" probe uncovering "irregularities" that devalued Venezuela's flagging currency.

JULIAN ASSANGE HAS been barred from communicating with the outside world for more than three weeks. On March 27, the government of Ecuador blocked Assange’s internet access and barred him from receiving visitors other than his lawyers. Assange has been in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, when Ecuador granted him asylum due to fears that his extradition to Sweden as part of a sexual assault investigation would result in his being sent to the U.S. for prosecution for his work with WikiLeaks. In January of this year, Assange formally became a citizen of Ecuador.

Want an example of how dangerous gun prohibition for citizens can be ? Try Venezuela, where since April 2017 at least 163 pro-democracy protesters have been murdered by the Maduro dictatorship.

In 2012, the Venezuelan National Assembly, which was dominated by communists, passed the “Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law." The bill was clear that it aimed to “disarm all citizens.” All gun sales were banned except to government entities. If a citizen was caught selling a gun or carrying one, they could get 20 years in prison.

The year preceding Maduro’s disarmament initiative, Caracas recorded a homicide rate of 122 per 100,000 inhabitants, roughly 20 times the global average of 6.2.

So what happened next? The national homicide rate rose from 73 per 100,000 in 2012 to 90 per 100,000 in 2015. In 2014, the Maduro government invested $47 million to create 60 centers for voluntary firearm trade-ins.

The flow of migrants fleeing Venezuela’s collapsing economy is increasing every day, putting a strain on Colombia’s health and education systems and its jobs market, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said.

“Venezuela is on the verge of imploding,” Santos told Bloomberg TV Monday. “What we hope is that this implosion will be peaceful and not violent, because otherwise we will have a tremendous avalanche of more Venezuelans coming to Colombia.”

The migrant crisis is probably the biggest challenge facing Colombia at the moment, Santos said. Venezuelans are currently crossing the border into Colombia at the rate of more than 100,000 per month, according to data from the immigration authority, with many more arriving illegally.

Former Presidents of Ecuador and Brazil Rafael Correa and Dilma Rousseff discussed a positive impact on the decrease of poverty and starvation in Brazil made by the social-democratic forces in the times of their leadership, during an interview broadcast on RT in Porto Alegre on Thursday.

Rafael Correa praised Dilma Rousseff’s State merits and embedded her in the ranks of “the three great Latin-American women who used to lead the three biggest countries of the region.”

He said that the Latin-American countries experienced “renaissance period” when they were governed by the socialist leaders.

Brazil's agriculture minister is accusing the European Union of trying to start a trade war with South America's largest economy after it threatened to cut off imports of domestic Brazilian chicken following a food-contamination scandal Bloomberg reported.

With the European Commission set to discuss restrictions on imports from BRF, Brazil's largest packaged-food producer and leading poultry supplier, Blairo Maggi is apparently turning up the rhetoric in hopes of averting a potentially devastating export ban.

South and Central America are on a crash course for regional collapse and a geopolitical disaster which could drastically alter the political landscape of the Western Hemisphere and plunge the United States into dire crisis.

Federal police in Brazil have reportedly decided to hold off the arrest of the former President Lula da Silva, who stayed inside the headquarters of a steelworkers union past the deadline, surrounded by hundreds of his supporters.

The fate of the 72-year-old former Brazilian leader is in limbo, after da Silva, known as Lula in the country, did not turn himself in to the Federal Police to begin serving his 12-year corruption sentence. The 5pm deadline, set in the arrest warrant issued by Judge Sergio Moro on Thursday, was missed, after Lula's supporters in Sao Bernardo do Campo refused to surrender their leader to the authorities.

FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday the upcoming presidential election in Venezuela would not be “free and fair,” drawing the ire of Caracas, which called on the young centrist to stay out of the nation’s internal affairs.

There is a recurring phrase in motivational exercises to the tune of “the essence of life is to go forward”, which shows the need of every living being not to go backwards, since according to the phrase described we would be struggling against life itself

However, the US backed Venezuelan opposition does not apply this principle. Unlike the rest of the living beings in the world, it has the permanent and systematic habit of going backwards, of going back in time, which implies that it makes mistakes that have already been overcome and that, in theory, should not be reissued.

I characterize this in relation to the reactivation of the specter of electoral fraud, created and boosted from the year 2004, after the victory of President Hugo Chávez in the attempts to carry out a recall referendum. We must remember that after the failure of the opposition, a discrediting campaign, national and international, began against the National Electoral Council (CNE).

The so-called ‘petro’ digital currency, which was successfully launched by Venezuela last month, will be traded for several global currencies, including the Russian ruble.
“Starting March 23, all legal and physical entities will be able to purchase the petro directly… within the next 15 days for convertible currencies: yuan, rubles, Turkish liras and euro,” said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

He described these are the most important currencies for “the economic future of the planet.”

Maduro said state companies that are exporting goods, such as the country's energy giant PDVSA, can already trade for petro. “PDVSA and those enterprises that trade for foreign currency are authorized from now on to receive ‘el petro’ for their export deliveries,” he said, adding that they will be able to supply products for the Venezuelan cryptocurrency "to all countries and enterprises in the world.”

his, valued the participants of the activity, participated by senators and congressmen of North America, and justified by their territorial proximity with Venezuela. This was stated by Ernesto Ackerman, president of the Venezuelan-American Independent Citizens (IVAC, for its acronym in English), NGO that organized the event and which is based in South Florida.

It is not the first time that this character coordinated such an activity. In 2014, he brought together about 200 Venezuelans from Florida, but also from 19 other states, in a caravan to Washington to support the violence orchestrated by opposition groups in the suburbs of the beginning of the year and to protest the “lack of attention” of the White House and the OAS.

Estimated at 52 million troy ounces of gold.

In the world’s most murderous country, gun control is starting to lose its appeal.

Desperate Brazilians are wondering whether they’d be better off armed, given that around 60,000 of their compatriots are killed each year. Polls show support for gun ownership gaining ground. In an election year, politicians are paying attention.

For years, the small communities near an industrial park in Barcarena, in the Brazilian Amazon state of Pará, complained that a Norwegian-owned aluminium plant and other factories were contaminating their water, causing diarrhoea and vomiting and poisoning fish and local produce.

In November they launched a $154m legal claim for environmental and moral damages against the Pará state government, the Hydro Alunorte alumina refinery and the Albras aluminium factory. The Norwegian company Norsk Hydro owns 92% of Hydro Alunorte and 51% of Albras.

Community organisers began to receive threats. Then came the February rains, which brought floods of red-coloured water and mud.

And then came the murder.

Can we prepare for everything?

We never could have imagined…or prepped for…what happened in Venezuela.

In this article, I wanted to analyze my preps, and the nature of the apocalypse we have been forced to face. I don’t know about you, but anything that kicks you out of your place, of your warm bed, your pets, kids, wife, and the rest of your family, for me does not have another better word to describe it.

My comfort bubble was destroyed, my work of an entire life was thrown out by the window, my family insurance full coverage policy is gone with the wind (although with no medications to be had and doctors running away to Argentina and Colombia, it’s not like it was very useful though), and the few preps I had for 4 or 5 months are history now. Of course, they worked pretty well, and we stretched it a little bit, but once the system collapsed, there is nothing else we can do but close the place and bug out to some other place where we can at least buy food.

From the majority of headlines on Venezuela, one would be left with the very strong impression that the country is already dead and it just doesn’t know it. Yet there is at least one other country that has an interest in not letting this happen. That’s China, of course, and if we add Russia to the ally list, things start to look a bit differently.

Both China and Russia have extended massive credits to Caracas. Letting the country “die” is not an option that either Beijing or Moscow would gladly accept. This means that they would more likely than not step in to help keep it on its feet in case of harsher sanctions.

So, it may be a little early to talk about death knells and last nails in the coffin of the Venezuelan economy. Chances are that Washington is aware of the role that China and Russia could play there. Otherwise they would have already gone ahead with the broad oil sanctions, despite potential headaches for U.S. refineries.

Citing the 1976 National Emergencies Act, Trump on Friday extended illegal US sanctions on Russia for another year.

In a letter to Congress, the White House cited conditions in Ukraine, calling the situation “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” – failing to explain US responsibility for what’s going on, complicit with Kiev putschists it installed.

Trump’s action followed US approval of Javelin anti-tank missiles and launchers to Ukraine, pending rubber-stamp congressional approval.

Supplying its regime with heavy weapons is all about continuing war on Donbass indefinitely, a US scheme to destabilize southeastern Ukraine near Russia’s border – along with blaming Putin for US imperial lawlessness.

The White House is looking at slapping sanctions on a Venezuelan oil services company while also restricting insurance for oil shipments from the South American country, among other possible measures, according to Reuters.

The moves come as the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is planning elections for April, which few expect to be free or fair. Unlike prior elections, the upcoming race will likely be met with global condemnation, and many countries could refuse to recognize the results altogether.

After almost a week of denials by both Hydro Alunorte and Para state officials, experts from Brazil’s Health Ministry confirmed that basins carrying residue deposits from a Norwegian mining operation overflowed last weekend, dumping toxic waste into waterways and soil around the metropolitan area of Para’s capital, Belem, located in the Amazon region.

Colombia and Brazil have announced a series of measures to control their border with Venezuela, as hundreds of thousands of people have fled the deteriorating situation there.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced that strict immigration controls would be implemented, with 2,120 Colombian soldiers deployed to the 1,378 mile long border to enforce them.

Bogota also said that they would no longer issue migratory cards that had allowed 1.5 million Venezuelans to cross the border without passing customs. Now, only those with valid passports or existing migratory cards will be able to pass.

Venezuelan President Maduro said almost one million people have visited the Petro website since the currency’s launch two days ago.

Democratic US Senator Robert Menéndez, who has previously spoken out against Venezuela's newly-launched government-approved ‘petro’ cryptocurrency, has hinted that the US would take additional measures against the cryptocoin.

Venezuela on Tuesday announced the launch of its own oil-backed cryptocurrency called the petro which, it claims, is the world's first sovereign cryptocurrency. The petro may allow the country to combat US-imposed sanctions amid a deep economic crisis in the country.

Those who are unfamiliar with Venezuela’s unprecedented economic collapse might be surprised to learn that the country’s oil production has only slowed, even as the price of a barrel of crude has risen in most international markets.

Unsurprisingly (it’s Venezuela), there’s a macabre explanation for this phenomenon: The workers at PDVSA – Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, which once showered Venezuelans with oil wealth – are literally collapsing due to hunger and exhaustion as workers defy their government handlers and flee their jobs in their desperation as the value of their pay has been completely erased.

Bloomberg spoke with several workers in Venezuela’s oil industry about the harsh conditions they face on a daily basis.

Of course, oil workers aren’t the only ones suffering: The situation in Venezuela is getting so dire that ordinary Venezuelans are losing tons of body weight because of the food shortages. Many can no longer afford to buy meat.

Argentina’s foreign ministry has issued a press release stating that it will be making a formal protest over undeclared weapons and drugs brought into the nation at Ezeiza last Thursday.

A manifest provided by the US did not list war materiel and drugs which were seized by Argentine authorities.

Among the confiscated materiel were communications interception equipment, encrypted communications equipment, sophisticated GPS devices, high power rifles, a machine gun and narcotics as well as a full trunk of expired pharmaceuticals including stimulants. All boxes had the stamp of the 7th Army Airborne Brigade based in North Carolina.

The Argentine government estimates the value of the goods and the C17 transport expenses to exceed $2 million.

The unreported contents also included an odd brochure with the phrase “I am a United States soldier. Please report to my embassy I have been arrested by the country.” translated into fifteen languages.