Fish and birds covered with tar-like oil are washing up on the eastern shores of Venezuela’s largest body of water, angering fishermen who fear their livelihood is at stake because of the country’s state-run oil company.
Government officials say their critics are exaggerating the size of the slick allegedly caused by pipeline leaks, but 600 fishermen from Zulia state have vowed to take legal action.
“Someone throws a fishing net down to the bottom and it comes out filled with oil,” said Alfonso Moreno, a 49-year-old fisherman.
Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said pipeline leaks probably causing the slick are being fixed, and cleanup crews are retrieving the crude. He said the problem was being blown out of proportion, adding that it “cannot be compared with the spill in the Gulf of Mexico.”
The size of the Maracaibo slick is difficult to determine, partly because the government has not provided any official figures.
Alfonso Gutierrez, president of Zulia’s association of engineers, estimated that the oil has covered about 100km2 of the lake’s 8,585km2 surface. That’s a fraction of the size of the gulf oil slick, which earlier this month was projected to be more than 8,500km2, but is now far too dispersed for accurate estimates.
Lake Maracaibo is a large brackish lake that opens up into the Caribbean Sea. Fed by several rivers, it’s commonly considered a lake rather than a bay.
Moreno said his daily catch has fallen from about 100kg of fish a day before the oil appeared roughly two months ago to about 10kg.
Fishermen plan to launch a drive next week to gather signatures and present them to the Attorney General’s Office along with demands for compensation, Moreno said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home