Category: Wires

The Venezuelan opposition party led by exiled former legislator and Nobel laureate María Corina Machado mobilized volunteers throughout the nation last week to collect donations for homeless earthquake survivors, but it encountered an unexpected obstacle: the National Police.

On Thursday, Heidy Loicett, a leader of the opposition party, Vente, stood under a blue tarp on a sidewalk in Portuguesa, a state some 275 miles from the disaster zone, as people came by with a variety of items such as diapers, bottled water, and used clothing. The police came by, too, she said.

Several Venezuelan National Police officers and officials from the federal Civil Protection agency tried to shut down the charity drive, she explained in a telephone interview after the encounter, adding that she was told that all donations had to be channeled through the federal government.

“They said we couldn’t have a donation center, that the only authorized donation drop-off center was Civil Protection and the government,” Loicett said. “That was political persecution.”

The clash over who gets to take credit for the humanitarian relief effort for the earthquake-shattered nation highlights a much larger, high-stakes battle for political survival in a fractured Venezuela.

Last week Venezuela suffered two devastating earthquakes that killed more than 1,400 people, just six months after the U.S. military raided the country and seized the country’s former leader, Nicolás Maduro. Critics say they fear that Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, will politicize the tragedy, using the disaster response to establish her legitimacy at a critical inflection point.

Rodríguez’s government, which did not respond to requests for comment, has said the authorities are trying to impose order and keep areas and roads hit by the earthquakes clear so relief convoys and emergency responders can do their work unimpeded.

It is also a general rule of politics that opposition figures are quick to highlight any failures of the governing party.

Rodríguez had been vice president before the United States captured Maduro and said it was going to run the country, elevating her to the top job. Her tenure depends on the Trump administration’s approval, and her management of this crisis is also a key moment for President Donald Trump.

White House officials have said the alliance with Rodríguez was meant to stabilize Venezuela and help revive its battered economy. The disaster is likely to put that relationship to a severe test.

Experts say that tightening control over aid and stifling the opposition’s grassroots relief efforts is a page out of a decades-old authoritarian playbook. Rodríguez, they say, is gambling that international crisis management can mask the state’s internal decay and secure her hold on power.

That strategy was on full display in a widely circulated video in which a police officer appears to tell volunteers where the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the ruling government party, had authorized donation drop-offs. Donation centers set up by the opposition in other cities were told that they could not display signs reading “Donation Center,” because those words could be used only by the government’s authorized drop-off sites, political activists said.

“They told us we could not use the words ‘donation center,’ like if they had trademarked those words,” said María Oropeza, a Vente party official. “It is inevitable that they will try to use this tragedy at their favor to stay in power.”

Party officials said police backed off after crowds started gathering and taking videos. The volunteers took down the offending signs, and the drive continued.

Volunteers from the opposition planned to try to make deliveries to the earthquake zone over the weekend, but the authorities announced that civilians without authorization would be prohibited from entering La Guaira, the hardest-hit coastal area.

Government officials said the rush of volunteers in the disaster zone was blocking traffic, which was critical for the movement of heavy machinery.

“Those who do not have rescue or security duties in La Guaira state should please refrain from traveling there, as you are obstructing the movement of personnel needed for our military, police, Civil Protection, firefighters, and rescue workers to reach the disaster zone,” Rodríguez said. “These are critical hours.”

She called for unity in the time of crisis, and has welcomed a number of international search and rescue delegations, including from the right-wing governments of El Salvador and Argentina.

Rodríguez’s decision to accept help from political adversaries underscored a delicate balance of projecting an image of effective disaster management while scoring political points before potential elections, said Pablo Quintero, a political consultant, who said he works mostly with the opposition in Venezuela.

“In the face of catastrophes, governments act based on political interests,” he said. “In this case, the Chavista government is acting to gain greater prominence, to demonstrate its management capacity to the international community, and in some way to send a message to the population that they have managed to unify the country.”

But Machado is acting in her own interests too, he said.

“María Corina Machado has a political agenda,” he said. “And the objective reality is that her media operatives are running a campaign to demonstrate the government’s incompetence.”

Machado was said to be trying to go back to Venezuela, which frustrated some U.S. officials, who considered a return in the wake of an emergency to be a “political stunt,” the New York Times reported Saturday.

A spokesperson for Machado said she was not available for comment.

Rodríguez, as Maduro’s vice president in charge of the economy, was part of a repressive government that stole a presidential election in 2024.

After the U.S. raid in January that removed Maduro but allowed Rodríguez to stay on as interim leader, the Trump administration said Venezuela would eventually move toward elections and a restoration of democracy. The disaster engulfing Venezuela could delay such a transition, experts said.

“It’s hard to imagine that Delcy won’t use the earthquakes to delay discussions of a democratic transition; some of that is certainly legitimate in the face of such an overwhelming humanitarian emergency,” said Cynthia Arnson, an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

But it may not work out as she hopes, Arnson said.

“The political effects of natural disasters are often severe,” she said. “Weeks or a few short months after the immediate emergency, the quakes are likely to magnify the incapacity of the government to meet basic needs, let alone undertake any kind of reconstruction.”

Widespread corruption of international aid sent after a 1972 earthquake in Nicaragua was among the events that led to the unraveling of a dictatorship led by Anastasio Somoza Debayle. An earthquake in Mexico City in 1985 helped lead to the end of one-party rule there more than a decade later.

Benigno Alarcón, the former director of the Center of Government and Political Studies at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, said there was “no doubt” that Rodríguez would try to capitalize on the catastrophe — and she would not be the first.

He said many Venezuelans still recall the 1999 mudslides that occurred in the quake zone — including La Guaira — when the ruling party’s former leader, Hugo Chávez, refused to accept humanitarian assistance from the U.S. military.

“Remember that these are not new people in power,” he said. “These people in the government have been in government for a long time.”

Rodríguez and Machado would hardly be the first to politicize natural disaster recovery, said Brian Naranjo, a former top U.S. diplomat in Venezuela. He cited the words of the liberator, Simon Bolivar, amid the political machinations following a catastrophic earthquake in 1812 in Venezuela.

“If nature opposes us,” Bolívar said, “we shall fight nature and make it obey.”

BEAVER, Utah — Three firefighters were killed and two sustained burn injuries when they were overcome by flames from fast-moving wildfires in hot, windy conditions near the Colorado-Utah border.

The firefighters deployed emergency shelters during the burnover incident on Saturday in Mesa County, Colo., the U.S. Interior Department said.

They worked for the U.S. Wildland Fire Service and U.S. Forest Service and were part of an interagency response to the Knowles and Gore fires, which merged with other fires to form the Snyder Fire. So far, about 44 square miles have burned.

Temperatures in Grand Junction hit a high of 93 degrees Fahrenheit, with winds gusting to 44 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

The U.S. Wildland Fire Service, created earlier this year to streamline firefighting and fire reduction across public lands, said in a statement that it “stands united” with the Forest Service in grief and “in our unwavering support for the loved ones left behind.”

“Their bravery, dedication, and sacrifice will never be forgotten,” the statement said.

The names of the firefighters who perished were being withheld pending notifications to their loved ones, the Interior Department said.

The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office was asking people to evacuate the potential path of the fire and to turn on irrigation water to saturate the land. The federal Bureau of Land Management closed public access to lands it manages nearby.

“Firefighter and public safety are the highest priority,” the agency said in a statement. “The temporary closing of the lands is to reduce exposure to hazardous situations due to the rapid rates of spread and fire behavior that the fire has exhibited. The public is to remain clear of these closed lands.”

Hot, dry, and windy conditions

Wildfire activity has intensified across the western United States, as consecutive days of hot, dry, and windy weather have fueled flames in Utah, Arizona, and elsewhere as new fires popped up across the region.

The largest blaze, the Cottonwood Fire, was burning in rugged terrain in southwest Utah. It ballooned Saturday to more than 144 square miles after marching through canyons and mountainsides, destroying part of a ski resort and other summer cabins along the way.

Authorities in Beaver County began working with fire teams on Saturday to assess the extent of the damage, but no estimates were immediately available. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox in a post on social media called it bleak, but he thanked crews for what he called “several miraculous stops and saves.”

The cliffs and steep slopes have made the job even harder, said Alyssa Mason, a spokesperson assigned to the fire.

“It’s hard to get dozers and other heavy equipment into that. It’s hard to get engines into that,” she said. “It doesn’t make it impossible to firefight, but it does just kind of slow things down.”

Hundreds of firefighters have been arriving in the arid state to battle new starts as well as those that have been growing because of what forecasters called critical fire weather — dangerously low humidity levels, warm temperatures, and gusty winds.

The danger is even higher this year because of Utah’s record-low snowpack and its warmest winter on record. Much of the West is grappling with similar conditions, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Nationally, nearly 3 million acres have burned since the start of the year. That is more than the 10-year average.

Emergencies declared in Utah and Colorado

The conditions in Utah were critical enough for Cox to declare an emergency earlier this week and clear the way for the state to ban fireworks ahead of the July Fourth holiday. The order comes as Utah is experiencing one of the most severe wildfire seasons in recent history, fueled by historic drought conditions.

State officials said that over the past week, Utah has seen an increase in wildfire starts, with each fire showing unprecedented behavior. These starts have stretched the state’s wildland firefighting capabilities, State Forester Jamie Barnes said.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis also declared an emergency on Saturday, and authorized the use of the National Guard to tackle the fires.

Forecasters with the National Weather Service over recent days have been issuing red flag warnings for a wide swath of the West, from California to Arizona and New Mexico.

South of Grand Canyon National Park, authorities said the flames of a new wildfire were moving away from Grand Canyon Village and the nearby community of Tusayan on Saturday. But about 50 miles away, another fire prompted Coconino County officials to issue evacuation orders for those near Kendrick Mountain.

Parts of northern Arizona were without power Saturday as the utility serving the area initiated a safety shut-off in hopes of lessening the wildfire risk.

Power shutoffs have become more common in the West as wildfire risk has expanded. It is usually a last resort after utility forecasters weigh factors like sustained wind and gust speeds, available fuels, and topography.

With extreme fire conditions persisting in Utah, Rocky Mountain Power also shut off power lines serving Beaver County and other areas.

BERLIN — France saw around 1,000 additional deaths last week at the height of its record-smashing heat wave, the country’s public health agency said Sunday, as the head of the World Health Organization warned that Europe is now the fastest-warming continent and needs to do more to protect its citizens.

Temperature records were toppled in several countries on the weekend, wildfires were sparked in Germany, and Berlin police used water cannons to cool down the crowds.

Meanwhile, the heat wave slowly moved toward eastern parts of the continent.

Germany marked a new record for the third day in a row with 107 degrees Fahrenheit in Neißemünde, near the border with Poland, which baked under its new all-time high of 104.9 F. The Czech Republic also experienced its hottest day ever with 106.4 F.

A new study from the World Weather Attribution, a Europe-based collaboration of scientists, reported Friday that the record-breaking heat and humidity in Europe this past week would not have been possible without climate change.

The rapid study found that the heat would have been virtually impossible just five decades ago, and is 200 times more likely today than it would have been 20 years ago.

France records surge in deaths during heat wave

France reported a surge in deaths last week, including a sharp increase at private homes, especially in the Paris region, the national public health agency said Sunday.

There were more than 1,200 deaths on Wednesday, when France was sweltering under its hottest temperatures, increasing to more than 1,400 deaths on each of the two following days, Public Health France said. In April and May, before the heat wave, France’s rate of deaths was about 900 to 1,000 per day.

The agency concluded that France experienced a total of at least 1,000 additional deaths during those three days alone, an estimate it cautioned is likely to increase as more data is collected, including for deaths at home.

The increase was sharpest in areas under red warnings of extreme heat, it said. Those warnings blanketed about three-quarters of the country at the peak of the heat wave. The agency said that 85% of the deaths involved people aged 65 and above.

Europe is fastest-warming continent, WHO warns

“Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth, heating at twice the global average,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday on X. “Right now 150 million people are living under extreme heat, hundreds have died, schools are shut, grids are buckling.”

Driven by climate change and global warming, the “once-in-a-generation” heat wave is now occurring nearly every year, Tedros said, adding that more than 1,300 excess deaths have been recorded since June 21 linked to high temperatures in Europe.

“Heat stress is often called the ‘silent killer’ — and European homes, workplaces, and schools were not built for these temperatures,” Tedros warned as he called on European countries to implement action plans. He said they should focus on preparedness, prevention, and stronger health system responses.

Lightning strikes Swedish theme park

In Sweden, several people were injured when they were hit by lightning at an amusement park, the country’s TT news agency reported.

Three adults were taken to the hospital, among them a woman with serious injuries, after the lightning struck the Tosselilla Sommarland park in Tomelilla in the south of the country.

Across Europe, the extreme heat has been followed by severe thunderstorms.

Denmark, which marked new temperature records on Saturday, recorded 1,156 lighting strikes by Sunday morning, according to public broadcaster DR.

Wildfires burn forests contaminated with WWII ammunition

In Gohrischheide, in eastern Germany, a fire broke out in a large forest that’s still contaminated with ammunition from World War II, which made the firefighters’ efforts even more complicated.

Similarly, a major firefighting operation was underway in southwest Germany near the village of Traisen, where the heat sparked a forest fire in an area that also contained unexploded ordnance. Firefighters had to be temporarily stop after explosions took place and an ordnance disposal unit was brought in to continuously assess the situation, German news agency dpa reported. Some 650 people in Traisen had to leave their homes Sunday afternoon because the fire continued to spread.

The big cities’ fire departments were busy sending out ambulances to people suffering from heat-related illnesses. In Berlin, an additional 500 ambulance dispatches were reported on Saturday, most of them heat-related.

Berlin police use water cannons to cool down locals. tourists

The German capital’s police found a way to help suffering Berliners and tourists alike. They put up two huge water cannons — usually used to disperse unruly protesters — in front of the city’s iconic Brandenburg Gate and sprayed the cool water across the cheering crowd.

The heat also continued to damage the country’s infrastructure, with the concrete surface on countless highways breaking up, and a weekend warning by national rail operator Deutsche Bahn to avoid all unnecessary train travel.

More than 600 passengers had to be evacuated from an overheated train in Brandenburg after a tree fell onto an overhead power line during a storm on Saturday evening. The train, which was on its way from Hamburg to Prague, lost power. The air conditioners stopped working and the doors were locked until emergency responders forced them open. Two people were hospitalized with heat-related problems, dpa reported.

In the eastern city of Leipzig, no trams will be running until early Monday morning due to heat damage to tracks and switches. The Leipzig Public Transportation Authority said that the high temperatures had caused the joint sealant for asphalt and concrete in switches and tracks to run and clump together in many places throughout the city’s network.

LA GUAIRA, Venezuela — Tensions flared Saturday as desperation grew among anguished residents of the Venezuelan state of La Guaira, where rescuers and civilians searched for earthquake survivors amid a sharply rising death toll.

Venezuela’s government said the number of people killed rose to 1,430 Saturday morning and families reported at least 68,900 people missing, three days after the one-two punch of 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes that devastated the South American nation.

Venezuelans looking for loved ones and neighbors used shovels, heavy equipment, ropes, and bare hands atop mounds of toppled concrete throughout La Guaira, one of the country’s hardest-hit states.

Most of those digging were civilians who took search efforts into their own hands, and tensions peaked over inadequate response from the Venezuelan government, whose soldiers, firefighters, police, and military cadets were evidently underprepared to respond to the tragedy.

Frustration was only amplified by state efforts to project the image of a robust state response.

“There’s a pile of bodies over there from last night. Newborn babies. Look what time it is, and they still haven’t come to recover them. At 8 p.m. there were people alive down there, and they haven’t bothered to rescue them. We’ve located several bodies, and they haven’t helped us recover them either,” said Mileidy Romero, who was among those searching the rubble in the seaside town of Caraballeada. “What are they waiting for?”

Aid agencies consider the first 48 to 72 hours as crucial for retrieving people alive, though that can be extended if they have access to food and water.

However, a growing number of international rescue teams were joining the effort to save lives nearly 72 hours after the quake.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez said on state television Saturday that more than 14,000 members of the military and police are patrolling the area, where access is now blocked and special permits are required to enter. More rescue teams sent by governments across the world arrived in Venezuela on Saturday.

Simón Bolívar International Airport, which serves Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, was badly damaged in the quake. One runway was operational on Saturday as U.S. teams worked to repair the crucial throughway, Jeremy Lewin, a senior State Department official in charge of foreign assistance, told reporters.

Government forces distributed food and water to survivors in La Guaira, and Rodríguez said her government was mounting a full response during these “critical hours for rescuing people alive.”

The disaster poses a huge challenge for Rodríguez, the former vice president who took office in January after the capture and removal of then-President Nicolás Maduro by the United States. Venezuela has been facing economic disarray for more than a decade, and many people reject the legitimacy of the political movement Rodríguez represents.

Search teams and foreign aid from Mexico, the U.S., Brazil, El Salvador, France, El Salvador, and more continued to arrive in Venezuela Saturday morning to bolster recovery efforts.

Lewin, the State Department official, said the U.S. military would help coordinate flights to bring in search and rescue workers, mobile hospitals, and supplies. He said two 80-person search teams were at work and a U.S. Navy transport ship was docked off the coast of Venezuela ready to receive airlifted survivors in need of medical attention. Lewin said it is a “race against the clock” to find people injured in the quakes.

“People are trapped under rubble, and the priority is to get the search and rescue teams and the medical professionals and others to them as quickly as possible to save lives,” he said.

The International Organization for Migration said up to 6.76 million people could be affected, some 2 million of them in Caracas alone. The destruction was amplified by the quick succession of shallow quakes, experts said.

Loyce Pace, the International Red Cross’ regional director for the Americas, said “people are still terrified to reenter what were their homes.”

Indeed, many continued to sleep on the street.

In the city of Maiquetia, people lined up outside stores and pharmacies that served them one by one behind closed doors. At one point a woman in a crowd threw herself to the ground to protect a package of diapers with her body, desperate to keep it.

Traffic and throngs of motorcyclists at times disrupted search efforts. Mexican soldiers and volunteers repeatedly asked for silence to try to hear signs of life under the rubble, but bikers — civilian and uniformed — continued to honk horns and rev engines, to the first responders’ frustration.

Yuleidy Cadenas, 28, stood across the street from a collapsed public housing building, hoping her son, mother, and brother would be pulled out alive.

She fled barefoot from another building as it collapsed Wednesday and found her mother’s 12-floor apartment tower had pancaked.

“I got on top of the rubble and told them to yell back, and nobody did, not my brother, nor my son, or my mother,” Cadenas said.