Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday condemned a recent attack on a Venezuela synagogue, suggesting that his political foes were responsible for the incident.
Armed men broke into a synagogue in Caracas late on Friday night, destroying religious objects and spray-painting walls. Leaders of Venezuela’s estimated 15,000-member Jewish community said vocal denunciations of Israel by Chavez and the country’s state and pro-government news media may have encouraged the attack — which they called the worst ever on their community in Venezuela.
Last month Chavez expelled the Israeli ambassador and cut diplomatic ties in protest over the military campaign in Gaza that killed nearly 1,300 people.
He suggested that Venezuela’s “oligarchy” — wealthy power brokers who oppose his socialist government — could have been behind the attack.
“We condemn the actions on the synagogue of Caracas,” Chavez said in a televised speech. “It must be asked ... who benefits from these violent incidents. It is not the government, nor the people, nor the revolution.”
In an often cryptic response, he suggested opposition leaders plotted the attack to reduce his chances in a Feb. 15 referendum on a constitutional amendment that would let him stay in office after his term ends in 2013.
The Argentine office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization, condemned the attack and warned of an anti-Semitic campaign in Venezuela that has heated up since last month’s attack on Gaza.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS