United News of Bangladesh

Venezuelans across the world — some with flags and other patriotic paraphernalia — responded to a call from their country’s political opposition Saturday and took to the streets to defend the faction’s claim to victory over President Nicolás Maduro in last month’s disputed presidential election. The demonstrations in Tokyo, Sidney, Mexico City and several other cities were an effort by the main opposition coalition to make visible what they insist is the real outcome of the election. They also called on governments to throw their support behind candidate Edmundo González and express support to Venezuelans who are fearful in their home country of speaking against Maduro and his allies during a brutal repression campaign. As thousands of Venezuelans waved the national flag, opposition leader María Corina Machado made her way through the streets of Caracas on a truck while shouting “brave” and “freedom.” Then, before a crowd, she said it was the moment “that every vote is respected.” “Let the world and everyone in Venezuela recognize that the president-elect is Edmundo González,” she said while being applauded by thousands of cheering supporters. Earlier, González, the opposition candidate wrote on his X account: “They will not be able to cover up the reality of July 28: we won resoundingly.” He didn't show up at the demonstration in Caracas. In Mexico City’s Monument to the Revolution downtown, hundreds of people young and old alike loudly repeated the chants for “Freedom! Freedom!” that dominated the opposition’s rallies ahead of the election. “Maduro out! Maduro out!” they then screamed as motorists going by honked their horns. “What is happening right now is that Venezuela woke up ... so much so that the government doesn’t dare to show the tally sheets,” Antonia Imbernon said, referring to the voting results documents that are considered the ultimate proof of results. “What are they afraid of?” Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, whose members are loyal to the ruling party, declared Maduro the winner of the July 28 election hours after polls closed. Unlike previous presidential elections, the electoral body has not released the tally sheets’ detailed voting data to back up its claim that Maduro earned 6.4 million votes while González, who represented the Unitary Platform opposition coalition, garnered 5.3 million. But González and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado shocked Venezuelans when they revealed they obtained more than 80% of the vote tally sheets issued by every electronic voting machine after polls closed. The documents, they said, showed González winning by a wide margin and were uploaded to a website for anyone to see. Machado urged supporters to print the tally sheet from their voting station and take it to Saturday’s demonstrations. In Mexico City, some held signs reproaching the decision by Mexico’s government to not participate in a Friday hearing of the Organization of American States focused on Venezuela’s election crisis. “Mexico, we missed you at the OEA,” a sign stated using the acronym in Spanish for the regional body. The opposition has consistently expressed the need for the international community’s help to get Maduro to accept the unfavorable results of the election. “The derision is worse this time because there is proof; anyone can see them,” said Janett Hurtado, 57, who left Venezuela two years ago, referring to the tally sheets. “(The government) took away other elections from us again.” Hurtado said she has noticed Venezuelans’ fear to speak against Maduro following the widespread arrests across the South American country in connection with protests sparked by the election results. She said she has friends who have not sent her a single text message since then. Security forces have rounded up more than 2,000 people for demonstrating against Maduro or casting doubt on his claim he won a third term despite strong evidence he lost the vote by a more than 2-to-1 margin. Another 24 have been killed, according to Venezuela-based human rights group Provea. The spree of detentions — urged on by Maduro himself — is unprecedented, and puts Venezuela on pace to easily exceed those jailed during three previous crackdowns against Maduro’s opponents. Those arrested include journalists, political leaders, campaign staffers and an attorney defending protesters. Others have had their Venezuelan passports annulled trying to leave the country. One local activist even livestreamed her arrest by military intelligence officers as they broke into her home with a crowbar. “It pains us to see what’s happening,” said Hurtado’s daughter, Veronica Guedez, 19. “We are here to support us as brothers and sisters.” The opposition was dealt a blow Thursday when Brazil and Colombia — countries that had been pressuring Maduro to release vote tallies backing his claim to victory — began suggesting a repeat of the contest instead. But Machado categorically rejected any plan to redo the election, and she said that it would be “an insult” to the people.

Tiers of graves are stacked deep underground in a bloated Gaza cemetery, where Sa’di Baraka spends his days hacking at the earth, making room for more dead. “Sometimes we make graves on top of graves,” he said. Baraka and his solemn corps of volunteer gravediggers in the Deir al-Balah cemetery start at sunrise, digging new trenches or reopening existing ones. The dead can sometimes come from kilometers (miles) away, stretches of Gaza where burial grounds are destroyed or unreachable. The cemetery is 70 years old. A quarter of its graves are new. The death toll in Gaza since the beginning of the 10-month-old Israel-Hamas war has passed 40,000, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The count does not distinguish civilians from militants. The small, densely populated strip of land is now packed with bodies. They fill morgues and overflow cemeteries. Families, fleeing repeatedly to escape offensives, bury their dead wherever possible: in backyards and parking lots, beneath staircases and along roadsides, according to witness accounts and video footage. Others lie under rubble, their families unsure they will ever be counted. “One large cemetery” A steady drumbeat of death since October has claimed nearly 2% of Gaza’s prewar population. Health officials and civil defense workers say the true toll could be thousands more, including bodies under rubble that the United Nations says weighs 40 million tons. “It seems,” Palestinian author Yousri Alghoul wrote for the Institute for Palestine Studies, “that Gaza’s fate is to become one large cemetery, with its streets, parks, and homes, where the living are merely dead awaiting their turn.” Israel began striking Gaza after Hamas-led militants stormed across the Israeli border on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking some 250 others hostage. Israel seeks Hamas’ destruction and claims it confines its attacks to militants. It blames Hamas for civilian deaths, saying the militants operate from residential neighborhoods laced with tunnels. The fighting has killed 329 Israeli soldiers. Even in death, Palestinians have been displaced by Israel’s offensives. Palestinians move corpses, shielding them from the path of war. Israel’s military has dug up, plowed over and bombed more than 20 cemeteries, according to satellite imagery analyzed by investigative outlet Bellingcat. Troops have taken scores of bodies into Israel, searching for hostages. Trucked back to Gaza, the bodies are often decomposed and unidentifiable, buried quickly in a mass grave. Israel’s military told The Associated Press that it is attempting to rescue hostage bodies where intelligence indicates they may be located. It said bodies determined not to be hostages are returned “with dignity and respect.” Haneen Salem, a photographer and writer from northern Gaza, has lost over 270 extended family members in bombardments and shelling. Salem said between 15 and 20 of them have been disinterred — some after troops destroyed cemeteries and others moved by relatives out of fear Israeli forces would destroy their graves. “I don’t know how to explain what it feels like to see the bodies of my loved ones lying on the ground, scattered, a piece of flesh here and bone there,” she said. “After the war, if we remain alive, we will dig a new grave and spread roses and water over it for their good souls.” Honoring the dead In peacetime, Gaza funerals were large family affairs. The corpse would be washed and wrapped in a shroud, according to Islamic tradition. After prayers over the body at a mosque, a procession would take it to the graveyard, where it would be laid on its right side facing east, toward Mecca. The rituals are the most basic way to honor the dead, said Hassan Fares. “This does not exist in Gaza.” Twenty-five members of Fares' family were killed by an airstrike on Oct. 13 in northern Gaza. Without gravediggers available, Fares dug three ditches in a cemetery, burying four cousins, his aunt and his uncle. Survivors whispered quick prayers over the distant hum of warplanes. Those who died early in the war might have been the lucky ones, Fares said. They had funerals, even if brief. Nawaf al-Zuriei, a morgue worker at Deir al-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, is on the front lines of the rush of dead. Workers cover the damaged bodies in plastic to avoid bloodstains on white shrouds. “We wipe the blood off the face so it’s in a suitable state for his loved ones to bid him farewell,” he said. Following Israeli troop withdrawals, dozens of bodies are left on streets. With fuel scarce, workers collecting the dead fill trucks with corpses, strapping some on top to save gas, said civil defense official Mohammed el-Mougher. Headstones are rare; some graves are marked with chunks of rubble. When a corpse remains unidentified, workers place a plastic placard at the grave, bearing the burial date, identification number and where the body was found. Searching for lost loved ones The uncertain fate of relatives' bodies haunts families. Mousa Jomaa, an orthopedist who lives in al-Ram in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has watched from afar as the war claimed 21 relatives in Gaza. Jomaa’s cousin Mohammed was killed in an Israeli airstrike early in the war while operating an ambulance in southern Gaza and was buried in Rafah, away from the family’s home in central Gaza. The cemetery was damaged in a later offensive. There’s no sign of Mohammed’s body, Jomaa said. A strike in December then destroyed Jomaa’s uncle’s house, killing his aunt and her children, 8-year-old Mira and 10-year-old Omar. Jomaa's uncle, Dr. Hani Jomaa, rushed home to search the rubble. Before he could find Mira's body, a strike killed him too. Because her body has not been recovered, Mira has not been counted among the dead, said Jomaa, who showed a photo of the young girl standing beside her brother, with a rainbow handbag matching her barrette. In July, an Israeli tank killed two more cousins, Mohammed and Baha. Baha’s body was torn apart, and the shelling made it too dangerous to collect the remains for weeks. Jomaa said that come the end of the war, he plans to visit Gaza to search for Mira's remains. Smashed graves and cemeteries off-limits Israeli evacuation orders cover much of Gaza, leaving some of the largest cemeteries off-limits. Jake Godin, a Bellingcat researcher, has used satellite imagery to document destruction to more than 20 cemeteries. Sandy, bulldozed expanses appear where some cemeteries once stood. Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan graveyard is cratered. In Gaza's Eastern Cemetery, roads carved by heavy vehicles bury headstones under tire tracks, he said. “Anywhere the (Israeli military) is active, they bulldoze and destroy the ground without regard to cemeteries,” Godin said. The military told the AP it does not have a policy of destroying graves. “The unfortunate reality of ground warfare in condensed civilian areas" can result in harm to cemeteries, it said, adding it found Hamas tunnels underneath a cemetery east of the southern city of Khan Younis. Mahmoud Alkrunz, a student in Turkey, said his father, mother, two brothers, sister and three of his siblings’ children were buried in the Bureij refugee camp’s cemetery after Israel bombed their home. When Israel withdrew from Bureij in January, the graves were found unearthed. Alkrunz fainted when his uncle delivered the news. “We don’t know what has happened to the bodies,” he said.

International criticism of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro mounted Tuesday, a day after electoral authorities declared him the winner in a presidential election that the opposition claims to have won by a landslide. During a rally in Caracas on Tuesday, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado called on the National Electoral Council, which is loyal to the ruling party, to release voting tally sheets produced by every voting precinct, asking “why don't they publish them?” Machado said the opposition coalition has obtained more than 84% of the tallies and that she is confident that opposition candidate Edmundo González was elected to be the new president in Sunday's election. “The only thing we are willing to negotiate is the peaceful transition,” Machado said as the crowd chanted: “We have no fear!” The Organization of American States chastised Maduro for his government's sustained repression of the opposition. It also lambasted the National Electoral Council not releasing the precinct-level results. “The worst form of repression, the most vile, is to prevent the people from finding solutions through elections,” the organization said in a statement. “The obligation of each institution in Venezuela should be to ensure freedom, justice, and transparency in the electoral process. The people should have the maximum guarantees of political freedom to be able to express themselves at the polls, and to protect the rights of citizens to be elected.” The organization, which has called an urgent meeting of its members to discuss Venezuela’s election, even suggested that a new vote should take place to resolve the widely different results that electoral authorities and the opposition presented Monday. The do-over, the organization said, would require robust international observation. Venezuela has the world’s largest proven crude reserves, and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy. But it entered into free fall after Maduro took the helm in 2013. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared past 130,000% led first to social unrest and then mass emigration. Refugee agency UNHCR estimates more than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2014, the largest exodus in Latin America's recent history. Thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets nationwide Monday to protest the results announced by the electoral council. As they marched, González announced that his campaign has the proof it needs to show he won. “I speak to you with the calmness of the truth,” González said, as dozens of supporters cheered outside campaign headquarters in Caracas. “We have in our hands the tally sheets that demonstrate our categorical and mathematically irreversible victory.” Monday's protests in Caracas were mostly peaceful, but when dozens of national police officers wearing riot gear blocked the caravan, a brawl broke out. Police used tear gas to disperse the protesters, some of whom threw stones and other objects at the officers who were deployed on a main avenue of an upper-class district. A man fired a gun as the protesters moved through the city’s financial district. No one was injured in that incident. However, Attorney General Tarek William Saab said Tuesday that more than 700 people had been detained in the protests, in which one officer died. Saab said a combined 48 military and police officers also were injured. Charges against some of the detainees will include terrorism, he added. Those taken into custody included opposition leader Freddy Superlano, who was filmed by a bystander on Tuesday morning as armed individuals pulled him out of a sports utility vehicle and forced him and two other men into another SUV. Superlano and one of the men can be seen throwing what appear to be their cellphones, which were then picked up by the people detaining them. Long lines started to build Tuesday outside supermarkets and other stores in Caracas that sell food and essential supplies, in apparent anticipation of a prolonged period of demonstrations — as the country has seen before — that could lead to food shortages. Monday's demonstrations followed an election that was among the most peaceful in recent memory, reflecting hopes that Venezuela could avoid bloodshed and end 25 years of single-party rule. The winner would take control of an economy recovering from collapse and a population desperate for change. “We have never been moved by hatred. On the contrary, we have always been victims of the powerful,” Maduro claimed in a nationally televised ceremony. “An attempt is being made to impose a coup d’état in Venezuela again of a fascist and counterrevolutionary nature.” “We already know this movie and this time there will be no kind of weakness,” he added, saying that Venezuela’s “law will be respected.” In the port city of La Guaira, people toppled a statue of Maduro's mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chavez, dragged it to the street and set it on fire during Monday's protests. Maduro unveiled the statue in 2017, and by Tuesday, all that remained was its base, littered with twisted rebar and broken cement. Machado told reporters that tally sheets from polling stations show Maduro received more than 2.7 million votes while González secured roughly 6.2 million. Meanwhile, the electoral council reported Maduro and González garnered about 5.1 million and more than 4.4 million votes respectively. More than 9 million people cast ballots Sunday, according to figures released by National Electoral Council President Elvis Amoroso. The number of eligible voters for this election was estimated to be around 17 million. Another 4 million Venezuelans are registered to vote, but they live abroad and many did not meet the requirements to register to cast ballots overseas.

Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner in Venezuela’s presidential election Sunday, even as his opponents were preparing to dispute the results, setting up a high-stakes showdown that will determine whether the South American nation transitions away from one party rule. Shortly after midnight, the National Electoral Council said Maduro secured 51% of the vote, overcoming opposition candidate Edmundo González, who garnered 44%. It said the results were based on a tally of 80% of voting stations, marking an irreversible trend. But the electoral authority, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists, didn't immediately release the official tallies from each of the 15,797 voting centers nationwide, hampering the opposition’s ability to challenge the results after claiming it had the voting acts for only 30% of the ballot boxes. The delay in announcing results — six hours after polls were supposed to close — indicated a deep debate inside the government about how to proceed after Maduro’s opponents came out early in the evening all but claiming victory. Opposition representatives said tallies they collected from campaign representatives at the polling stations showed Gonzalez trouncing Maduro. Maduro, in seeking a third term, faced his toughest challenge yet from the unlikeliest of opponents in Gonzalez: a retired diplomat who was unknown to voters before being tapped in April as a last-minute stand-in for opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado. Opposition leaders were already celebrating, online and outside a few voting centers, what they assured was a landslide victory for González. “I'm so happy,” said Merling Fernández, a 31-year-old bank employee, as a representative for the opposition campaign walked out of one voting center in a working class neighborhood of Caracas to announce results showing González more than doubled Maduro's vote count. Dozens standing nearby erupted in an impromptu rendition of the national anthem. “This is the path toward a new Venezuela,” added Fernández, holding back tears. "We are all tired of this yoke.” Earlier, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris offered her support. “The United States stands with the people of Venezuela who expressed their voice in today’s historic presidential election,” Harris wrote on the social media platform X. “The will of the Venezuelan people must be respected." Voters started lining up at some voting centers across the country before dawn Sunday, sharing water, coffee and snacks for several hours. The election will have ripple effects throughout the Americas, with government opponents and supporters alike signaling their interest in joining the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already left their homes for opportunities abroad should Maduro win another six year term. Authorities set Sunday's election to coincide with what would have been the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chávez, the revered leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013, leaving his Bolivarian revolution in the hands of Maduro. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for crushing wages, spurring hunger, crippling the oil industry and separating families due to migration. The opposition managed to line up behind a single candidate after years of intraparty divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed their ambitions to topple the ruling party. Machado was blocked by the Maduro-controlled supreme court from running for any office for 15 years. A former lawmaker, she swept the opposition's October primary with over 90% of the vote. After she was blocked from joining the presidential race, she chose a college professor as her substitute on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council also barred her from registering. That's when González, a political newcomer, was chosen. Sunday's ballot also featured eight other candidates challenging Maduro, but only González threatens Maduro's rule. After voting, Maduro said he would recognize the election result and urged all other candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same. “No one is going to create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I recognize and will recognize the electoral referee, the official announcements and I will make sure they are recognized.” Venezuela sits atop the world's largest proven oil reserves, and once boasted Latin America's most advanced economy. But it entered into a free fall after Maduro took the helm. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared past 130,000% led first to social unrest and then mass emigration. Economic sanctions from the U.S. seeking to force Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection — which the U.S. and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate — only deepened the crisis. Maduro's pitch to voters this election was one of economic security, which he tried to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable currency exchange and lower inflation rates. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the economy will grow 4% this year — one of the fastest in Latin America — after having shrunk 71% from 2012 to 2020. But most Venezuelans have not seen any improvement in their quality of life. Many earn under $200 a month, which means families struggle to afford essential items. Some work second and third jobs. A basket of basic staples — sufficient to feed a family of four for a month — costs an estimated $385. The opposition has tried to seize on the huge inequalities arising from the crisis, during which Venezuelans abandoned their country's currency, the bolivar, for the U.S. dollar. González and Machado focused much of their campaigning on Venezuela’s vast hinterland, where the economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years didn't materialize. They promised a government that would create sufficient jobs to attract Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.

The future of Venezuela is on the line. Voters will decide Sunday whether to reelect President Nicolas Maduro, whose 11 years in office have been beset by crisis, or allow the opposition a chance to deliver on a promise to undo the ruling party's policies that caused economic collapse and forced millions to emigrate. Historically fractured opposition parties have coalesced behind a single candidate, giving the United Socialist Party of Venezuela its most serious electoral challenge in a presidential election in decades. Maduro is being challenged by former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, who represents the resurgent opposition, and eight other candidates. Supporters of Maduro and Gonzalez marked the end of the official campaign season Thursday with massive demonstrations in the capital, Caracas. Maduro and his allies have traditionally fended off challenges by barring rivals from elections and painting them as out-of-touch elitists in league with foreign powers. But this time, the ruling party is allowing the Unitary Platform, the coalition of the main opposition parties, to participate in the election. A deal that allowed the opposition coalition to participate in the election won Maduro some relief from crippling economic sanctions imposed by the United States. But that respite was short-lived. President Joe Biden's administration reimposed the sanctions, citing mounting government repression of real and perceived adversaries, including blocking the candidacy of opposition powerhouse María Corina Machado. Here’s what to know about Venezuela’s upcoming presidential election. Who is the opposition candidate?The most talked-about name in the race is not on the ballot: María Corina Machado. The former lawmaker emerged as an opposition star in 2023, filling the void left when a previous generation of opposition leaders fled into exile. Her principled attacks on government corruption and mismanagement rallied millions of Venezuelans to vote for her in the opposition’s October primary. But Maduro’s government declared the primary illegal and opened criminal investigations against some of its organizers. Since then, it has issued warrants for several of Machado’s supporters and arrested some members of her staff, and the country’s top court affirmed a decision to keep her off the ballot. Yet, she kept on campaigning, holding rallies nationwide and turning the ban on her candidacy into a symbol of the loss of rights and humiliations that many voters have felt for over a decade. She has thrown her support behind Edmundo González Urrutia, a former ambassador who has never held public office, helping a fractious opposition unify. They are campaigning together on the promise of economic reform that will lure back the millions of Venezuelans who have migrated since Maduro became president in 2013. González began his diplomatic career as an aide to Venezuela’s ambassador in the U.S. in the late 1970s. He was posted to Belgium and El Salvador, and served as Caracas’ ambassador to Algeria. His last post was as ambassador to Argentina during Hugo Chávez’s presidency, which began in 1999. More recently, González worked as an international relations consultant and wrote a historical work on Venezuela during World War II. Why is the current president having trouble?Maduro’s popularity has dwindled due to an economic crisis caused by a drop in oil prices, corruption and government mismanagement. Maduro can still bank on a cadre of die-hard believers, known as Chavistas, including millions of public employees and others whose businesses or employment depend on the state. But the ability of his party to use access to social programs to make people vote has diminished as the economy has frayed. He is the heir to Hugo Chávez, a popular socialist who expanded Venezuela’s welfare state while locking horns with the United States. Sick with cancer, Chávez handpicked Maduro to act as interim president upon his death. He took on the role in March 2013, and the following month, he narrowly won the presidential election triggered by his mentor’s death. Maduro was reelected in 2018, in a contest that was widely considered a sham. His government banned Venezuela’s most popular opposition parties and politicians from participating and, lacking a level playing field, the opposition urged voters to boycott the election. That authoritarian tilt was part of the rationale the U.S. used to impose economic sanctions that crippled the country’s crucial oil industry. Who will vote?More than 21 million Venezuelans are registered to vote, but the exodus of over 7.7 million people due to the prolonged crisis — including about 4 million voters — is expected to reduce the number of potential voters to about 17 million. Voting is not mandatory and is done on electronic machines. Venezuelan law allows people to vote abroad, but only about 69,000 voters met the criteria to cast ballots at embassies or consulates during this election. Costly and time-consuming government prerequisites to register, lack of information and a mandatory proof of legal residency in a host country kept many migrants from registering to vote. Venezuelans in the U.S. face an insurmountable obstacle: Consulates, where citizens abroad would typically cast their ballots, are closed because Caracas and Washington severed diplomatic relations after Maduro’s 2018 reelection. Under what conditions is the election taking place?A more free and fair presidential election seemed like a possibility last year, when Maduro’s government agreed to work with the U.S.-backed Unitary Platform coalition to improve electoral conditions in October 2023. An accord on election conditions earned Maduro’s government broad relief from U.S. economic sanctions on its state-run oil, gas and mining sectors. But days later, authorities said the opposition’s primary was against the law and began issuing warrants and arresting human rights defenders, journalists and opposition members. A U.N.-backed panel investigating human rights violations in Venezuela has reported that the government has increased repression of critics and opponents ahead of the election, subjecting targets to detention, surveillance, threats, defamatory campaigns and arbitrary criminal proceedings. The government has also used its control of media outlets, the country’s fuel supply, electric network and other infrastructure to limit the reach of the Machado-González campaign. The mounting actions taken against the opposition prompted the Biden administration earlier this year to end the sanctions relief it granted in October.

The presidential residence of Gabriel Boric, the leftist millennial leader of Chile elected three years ago in the wake of public unrest over income inequality, shares a street in downtown Santiago with an overwhelmed homeless shelter. The sight of cardboard boxes and blankets strewn across sidewalks in Boric's bohemian neighborhood serves as a sharp reminder of his struggle to fulfill his promise to give Chileans "a better life." A pandemic-induced recession combined with a housing crunch and a major immigration influx have expanded Chile's homeless population like never before. Over the last four years, the rate of homelessness in one of South America's richest economies has jumped more than 30%, transforming the streets of a country that prides itself on its prosperity. Bangladesh is close to become a country without homeless people: PM Hasina "The resources allocated to combat homelessness have been reduced, and the homeless population has increased," said Rosario Carvajal, a city councilor in the capital, Santiago. Even in the "barrios altos" — the well-heeled areas that presidents before Boric called home — destitute families have increasingly turned benches into beds and trees into toilets. In the beachside tourist hub of Viña del Mar, huddles of improvised tents have overshadowed the trendy art scene. Chile said it has registered 21,126 homeless people this year, compared to 15,435 in 2020. Government figures rely on single-night snapshots by municipalities. Social workers put the real count around 40,000. Last month, the government announced that, for the first time, it would include the homeless in its national census. Aid workers say that a better number, however flawed, will better reflect the scope of the problem and the country's progress — or lack thereof — toward fixing it. "This should force the government to implement more effective social policies," said Andrés Millar, from Chilean charity Hogar de Cristo. Madhumati River Erosion in Narail leaves 100 families homeless The sheer visibility of so many homeless people in Chile — a country considered far wealthier and more stable than its neighbors — has pushed the problem up on the agenda. "There is a lot of pressure from the neighbors to recover the public spaces," said Carvajal. Chilean police, reviled by the left for their harsh handling of the mass 2019 protests, have taken to tearing down encampments, joining municipal workers in routinely removing rough sleepers from parks and plazas. "Police come and take everything, my tent, my blankets, my HIV medication," said 43-year-old Paris López who sleeps outside in downtown Santiago. She stays up all night, she said, fearing violence from police as much as assaults from criminal gangs that have recently gained a foothold in Chile. "It's dangerous," Victoria Azevedo, a homeless mother of two, said of life on the streets in Santiago — particularly amid a crime wave that has driven Chile's homicide rate up 50% since 2018. "If you are a woman and have children, it's worse." In recent years, Chile has seen a demographic shift in its homeless population. Although there won't be an official breakdown until the census comes out next year, experts say that the country's affordable housing crunch has pushed more women and children onto the streets. "Entire families have lost their resources to pay rent," said Ximena Torres, another advocate from Hogar de Cristo. Fire at Ctg slum leaves upto 200 families homeless Pandemic lockdowns wreaked hardship on Chile's economy while it was struggling to recover from the 2019 mass protests that cost the country at least $3 billion, Chile's national insurance organization estimated. Lavish pandemic aid — including a measure allowing Chileans to withdraw their pensions early — stoked inflation. The unemployment rate doubled to a record-breaking 13% from 2019 to 2020, making it difficult for many to pay rent. The central bank raised interest rates, lenders hiked the cost of loans and a housing crisis was born. Housing prices jumped 70% over the last decade, said economist Gonzalo Durán from SOL Foundation, a Chilean think tank. "I'm extremely broken inside," said Moka Valdés, bursting into tears as she tried to describe the shock of having landed on the street last November after losing her job. Migration on the rise Many families bouncing between Chile's tent camps are undocumented migrants lured to the country by its reputation as South America's most successful economy. Government data shows that nearly 1.6 million of Chile's 19 million inhabitants are registered migrants, up from 1.3 million in 2018. The number of undocumented migrants has also soared, from 16,000 in 2020 to a staggering 53,875 two years later, according to the Observatory of Responsible Migration, a Chilean watchdog. PM declares 12 districts, 123 upazilas free of homeless people As the economy has slumped and public backlash against migrants intensified, Chile tightened visa requirements for Venezuelans — the largest group of recent arrivals. And last year President Boric deployed armed forces to the northern border with Peru, a key migration pass, to check migrants' documents and arrest smugglers. After fleeing Venezuela and finding life as a migrant intolerable in Colombia and then Ecuador, 34-year-old Karen Salazar dreamed of Chile. Via foot and pick-up truck, Salazar, her husband and their two small children braved freezing cold mountains, rough desert terrain and predatory smugglers, lured by Chile's reputation as a rare upwardly mobile nation in the region. They didn't find what they hoped for. At first, they lived in a flimsy tent encampment in northern Chile. Then they moved to Santiago, where they slept outside in a public park. "We know why we're in this situation, but to see the children like this is heart-breaking," Salazar said from the shelter on Boric's street, where she queues for free meals. As the crisis mounts, aid groups have intensified their pressure on the government. There are fewer than 200 homeless shelters nationwide, barely enough to accommodate 13% of Chile's current homeless population, said local advocate Rodrigo Ibarra Montero. Upon taking office in March 2022, Boric vowed to build 260,000 new government-sponsored houses during his four-year term. Given the scale of the problem, many fear that will not be enough. But the president hopes it will. "We are making steady progress," he insisted in a recent speech inaugurating a new public housing development in Santiago. "You should judge us by the end of our term." “Husband and wife have equal ownership rights to Ashrayan homes for homeless”

At least two people were killed and nine others injured Thursday when a train full of passengers collided head-on with another train on a test run just outside the capital of Chile, where fatal railway crashes remain rare. Police said they were investigating to determine the cause of the crash, which vaulted the test car fully on top of the freight train, which was also carrying passengers. Photos and video of the scene showed one carriage jackknifed several meters into the air above a badly mangled cargo train. Two dozen emergency vehicles swarmed the tangle of crushed metal as helicopters buzzed overhead in San Bernardo, a district just south of Santiago, the capital. The eight-car freight train, which was carrying 1,346 tons of copper, was also packed with people, while the other train had 10 workers on board operating a speed test, the state rail company said. Security camera footage showed both trains traveling at high speed when they slammed into each other. It wasn't immediately clear why the test train hadn't been alerted to the freight train's approach. Officials indicated that a failure in a signaling device might be responsible. “We have to identify what the causes are and take the corresponding measures,” Transportation Minister Juan Carlos Muñoz told The Associated Press. Authorities identified the two people killed as crew members on the freight train. Another nine people were injured, including four Chinese nationals. Medical workers described their condition as serious but not life-threatening. Heavy rains have thrashed Chile in recent days, causing floods that have submerged hundreds of houses and displaced thousands of people. But the downpour had largely eased in Santiago on Thursday and it didn't seem to have contributed to the collision Deadly train collisions have become rare in the South American country, which significantly boosted its safety consciousness after a 2001 crash involving a passenger train and a bus that killed 20 people and injured many more. Even as the government has invested in improvements, challenges remain, with four train collisions reported in the last two decades that resulted in around three dozen injuries over that time.

The Israeli army ordered about 100,000 Palestinians on Monday to begin evacuating from the southern city of Rafah in Gaza, signaling that a long-promised ground invasion there could be imminent and further complicating efforts to broker a cease-fire. Israel’s closest allies, including the United States, have repeatedly said that Israel shouldn’t attack Rafah. The looming operation has raised global alarm over the fate of around 1.4 million Palestinians sheltering there. Aid agencies have warned that an offensive will worsen Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe and bring a surge of more civilian deaths in an Israeli campaign that in nearly seven months has killed 34,000 people and devastated the territory. U.S. President Joe Biden spoke Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reiterated U.S. concerns about an invasion of Rafah. Biden said that a cease-fire with Hamas is the best way to protect the lives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, a National Security Council spokesperson said on condition of anonymity to discuss the call before an official White House statement was released. Hamas and key mediator Qatar said that invading Rafah will derail efforts by international mediators to broker a cease-fire. Days earlier, Hamas had been discussing a U.S.-backed proposal that reportedly raised the possibility of an end to the war and a pullout of Israeli troops in return for the release of all hostages held by the group. Israeli officials have rejected that trade-off, vowing to continue their campaign until Hamas is destroyed. Netanyahu said Monday that seizing Rafah, which Israel says is the last significant Hamas stronghold in Gaza, was vital to ensuring the militants can’t rebuild their military capabilities and repeat the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war. Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an army spokesman, said about 100,000 people were being ordered to move from parts of Rafah to a nearby Israel-declared humanitarian zone called Muwasi, a makeshift camp on the coast. He said that Israel has expanded the size of the zone and that it included tents, food, water and field hospitals. It wasn’t immediately clear, however, if that material was already in place to accommodate the new arrivals. Around 450,000 displaced Palestinians already are sheltering in Muwasi. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it has been providing them with aid. But conditions are squalid, with few bathrooms or sanitation facilities in the largely rural area, forcing families to dig private latrines. After the evacuation order announcement Monday, Palestinians in Rafah wrestled with having to uproot their extended families once again for an unknown fate, exhausted after months living in sprawling tent camps or crammed into schools or other shelters in and around the city. Few who spoke to The Associated Press wanted to risk staying. Mohammed Jindiyah said that at the beginning of the war, he had tried to hold out in his home in northern Gaza after Israel ordered an evacuation there in October. He ended up suffering through heavy bombardment before fleeing to Rafah. He’s complying with the order this time, but was unsure now whether to move to Muwasi or another town in central Gaza. “We are 12 families, and we don’t know where to go. There is no safe area in Gaza,” he said. Sahar Abu Nahel, who fled to Rafah with 20 family members including her children and grandchildren, wiped tears from her cheeks, despairing at a new move. “I have no money or anything. I am seriously tired, as are the children,” she said. “Maybe it’s more honorable for us to die. We are being humiliated.” Israeli military leaflets were dropped with maps detailing a number of eastern neighborhoods of Rafah to evacuate, warning that an attack was imminent and anyone who stays “puts themselves and their family members in danger.” Text messages and radio broadcasts repeated the message. UNRWA won’t evacuate from Rafah so it can continue to provide aid to those who stay behind, said Scott Anderson, the agency’s director in Gaza. “We will provide aid to people wherever they choose to be,” he told the AP. The U.N. says an attack on Rafah could disrupt the distribution of aid keeping Palestinians alive across Gaza. The Rafah crossing into Egypt, a main entry point for aid to Gaza, lies in the evacuation zone. The crossing remained open Monday after the Israeli order. Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, condemned the “forced, unlawful” evacuation order and the idea that people should go to Muwasi. “The area is already overstretched and devoid of vital services,” Egeland said. He said that an Israeli assault could lead to “the deadliest phase of this war.” Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza have killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them children and women, according to Gaza health officials. The tally doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. More than 80% of the population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes, and hundreds of thousands in the north are on the brink of famine, according to the U.N. Tensions escalated Sunday when Hamas fired rockets at Israeli troops positioned on the border with Gaza near Israel’s main crossing for delivering humanitarian aid, killing four soldiers. Israel shuttered the crossing — but Shoshani said it wouldn’t affect how much aid enters Gaza as others are working. Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes on Rafah killed 22 people, including children and two infants, according to a hospital. The war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which Hamas and other militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. After exchanges during a November cease-fire, Hamas is believed to still hold about 100 Israelis captive as well the bodies of around 30 others. The mediators over the cease-fire — the United States, Egypt and Qatar — appeared to scramble to salvage a cease-fire deal they had been trying to push through the past week. Egypt said it was in touch with all sides Monday to “prevent the situation from … getting out of control.” CIA Director William Burns, who had been in Cairo for talks on the deal, headed to meet the prime minister of Qatar, an official familiar with the matter said. It wasn’t clear whether a subsequent trip to Israel that had been planned would happen. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations. In a fiery speech Sunday evening marking Israel’s Holocaust memorial day, Netanyahu rejected international pressure to halt the war, saying that “if Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.” On Monday, Netanyahu accused Hamas of “torpedoing” a deal by not budging from its demand for an end to the war and a complete Israeli troop withdrawal in return for the hostages’ release, which he called “extreme.”

The order to kill came from inside a federal prison near Argentina's capital. Unwitting authorities patched a call from drug traffickers tied to one of the country's most notorious gangs to collaborators on the outside. Hiring a 15-year-old hit man, they sealed the fate of a young father they didn't even know. At a service station on March 9 in Rosario, the picturesque hometown of soccer star Lionel Messi, 25-year-old employee Bruno Bussanich was whistling to himself and checking the day's earnings just before he was shot three times from less than a foot away, surveillance footage shows. The assailant fled without taking a peso. It was the fourth gang-related fatal shooting in Rosario in almost as many days. Authorities called it an unprecedented rampage in Argentina, which had never witnessed the extremes of drug cartel violence afflicting some other Latin American countries. A handwritten letter was found near Bussanich's body, addressed to officials who want to curb the power drug kingpins wield from behind bars. “We don’t want to negotiate anything. We want our rights," it says. "We will kill more innocent people.” Shaken residents interviewed by The Associated Press across Rosario described a sense of dread taking hold. “Every time I go to work, I say goodbye to my father as if it were the last time,” said 21-year-old Celeste Núñez, who also works at a gas station. The string of killings offer an early test to the security agenda of populist President Javier Milei, who has tethered his political success to saving Argentina’s tanking economy and eradicating narco-trafficking violence. Since taking office Dec. 10, the right-wing leader has promised to prosecute gang members as terrorists and change the law to allow the army into crime-ridden streets for the first time since Argentina's brutal military dictatorship ended in 1983. His law-and-order message has empowered the hardline governor of Santa Fe province, which includes Rosario, to clamp down on incarcerated criminal gangs that authorities say orchestrated 80% of shootings last year. Under the orders of Governor Maximiliano Pullaro, police have ramped up prison raids, seized thousands of smuggled cellphones and restricted visits. “We are facing a group of narco-terrorists desperate to maintain power and impunity,” Milei said after Bussanich was killed, announcing the deployment of federal forces in Rosario. “We will lock them up, isolate them, take back the streets.” Milei won 56% of the vote in Rosario, where residents praise his focus on a problem largely neglected by his predecessors. But some worry the government's combative approach traps them in the line of fire. Gangs started their deadly retaliations just hours after Pullaro’s security minister shared photos showing Argentine prisoners crammed together on the floor, heads pressed against each other’s bare backs — a scene reminiscent of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s harsh anti-gang crackdown. “It’s a war between the state and the drug traffickers,” said Ezequiel, a 30-year-old employee at the gas station where Bussanich was killed. Ezequiel, who gave only his first name for fear of reprisals, said his mother has since begged him to quit. “We’re the ones paying the price.” Even Milei's supporters have mixed feelings about the crackdown, including Germán Bussanich, the father of the slain gas station worker. “They're putting on a show and we're facing the consequences," Bussanich told reporters. A leafy city 300 kilometers (180 miles) northwest of Buenos Aires, Rosario is where revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara was born, Messi first kicked a soccer ball and the Argentine flag was first raised in 1812. But it most recently won notoriety because its homicide numbers are five times the national average. Tucked into a bend in the Paraná River, Rosario's port morphed into Argentina's drug trafficking hub as regional crackdowns pushed the narcotics trade south and criminals started squirreling away cocaine in shipping containers spirited down the river to markets abroad. Although Rosario never suffered the car bombs and police assassinations gripping Mexico, Colombia and most recently Ecuador, the splintering of street gangs has fueled bloodshed. “It’s not close to the violence in Mexico because we still have the deterrence capacity of the government in Argentina,” said Marcelo Bergman, a social scientist at the National University of Tres de Febrero in Argentina. “But we need to keep an eye on Rosario because the major threats come not so much from big cartels but when these groups proliferate and diversify.” Drug traffickers keep a tight grip over Rosario's poor neighborhoods full of young men vulnerable to recruitment. One of them was Víctor Emanuel, a 17-year-old killed two years ago by rival gangsters in an area where street murals pay tribute to slain criminal leaders. No one was arrested. “My neighbors know who’s responsible,” his mother, Gerónima Benítez, told the AP, her eyes shiny with tears. “I looked for help everywhere, I knocked on the doors of the judiciary, the government. No one answered.” A fearful existence is all Benítez has ever known. But now, for the first time in Argentina, warring drug traffickers are banding together and terrorizing parts of the city previously considered safe. Imprisoned gang leaders in Latin America have long run criminal enterprises remotely with the help of corrupt guards. But according to an indictment unveiled last week, incarcerated gang bosses in Argentina have been passing instructions on how to kill random civilians via family visits and video calls. Court documents say the bosses paid underage hit men up to $450 to target four of the recent victims in Argentina’s third-largest city. The killing of Bussanich, two taxi drivers and a bus driver in less than a week in March, federal prosecutors say, “shattered the peace of an entire society." Street emptied. Schools closed. Bus drivers picketed. People were too terrified to leave their homes. “This violence is on another level,” 20-year-old Rodrigo Dominguez said from an intersection where a dangling banner demanded justice for another bus driver slain there weeks earlier. “You can’t go outside.” Panic was still palpable in Rosario last week, as police swarmed the streets and normally bustling bars closed early for lack of customers. A diner managed by Messi’s family, a draw for fans, reported quiet nights and less profit. Women in one neighborhood said they carry 22‐caliber pistols. Analía Manso, 37, said she was too scared to send her children to school. Pope Francis last month said he was praying for his countrymen in Rosario. Assaults and public threats continue. This month, a sign appeared on a highway overpass warning Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich that gangs would extend their offensive to Buenos Aires if the government doesn't back down. Authorities have sought to reassure the public by sending hundreds of federal agents into Rosario. The AP spent a night with police last week as officers patrolled neighborhoods logging suspicious activity and setting up checkpoints. Georgina Wilke, a 45-year-old Rosario officer in the explosives squad, said she welcomes federal intervention, including the military, to get crime under control. “We've been hit very hard,” Wilke said. Omar Pereira, the provincial secretary of public security, promised the efforts represent a shift from failed tactics of the past. “There were always pacts, implicit or explicit, between the state and criminals,” Pereira said, describing how authorities long looked the other way. “What’s the idea of this government? There is no pact." But experts are skeptical a tough-on-crime approach will stop drug traffickers from buying control over Argentina’s police and prisons. “Unless the government fixes its problems with corruption, the crackdown on prisons is unlikely to have any long-term effect,” said Christopher Newton, an investigator at Colombia-based research organization InSight Crime. For years, Rosario's 1.3 million residents have watched warily as presidents and their promises come and go while the violence endures. “It’s like a cancer that grows and grows,” said Benítez from her home, its windows protected by wrought-iron bars. “We, on the outside, live in prison,” she said. “Those inside have everything.”

A crusading Brazilian Supreme Court justice included Elon Musk as a target in an ongoing investigation over the dissemination of fake news and opened a separate investigation late Sunday into the executive for alleged obstruction. In his decision, Justice Alexandre de Moraes noted that Musk on Saturday began waging a public “disinformation campaign” regarding the top court's actions, and that Musk continued the following day — most notably with comments that his social media company X would cease to comply with the court's orders to block certain accounts. “The flagrant conduct of obstruction of Brazilian justice, incitement of crime, the public threat of disobedience of court orders and future lack of cooperation from the platform are facts that disrespect the sovereignty of Brazil,” de Moraes wrote. Musk will be investigated for alleged intentional criminal instrumentalization of X as part of an investigation into a network of people known as digital militias who allegedly spread defamatory fake news and threats against Supreme Court justices, according to the text of the decision. The new investigation will look into whether Musk engaged in obstruction, criminal organization and incitement. Brazil’s political right has long characterized de Moraes as overstepping his bounds to clamp down on free speech and engage in political persecution. In the digital militias investigation, lawmakers from former President Jair Bolsonaro’s circle have been imprisoned and his supporters’ homes raided. Bolsonaro himself became a target of the investigation in 2021. De Moraes' defenders have said his decisions, although extraordinary, are legally sound and necessary to purge social media of fake news as well as extinguish threats to Brazilian democracy — notoriously underscored by the Jan. 8, 2023, uprising in Brazil's capital that resembled the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol. On Saturday, Musk — a self-declared free speech absolutist — wrote on X that the platform would lift all restrictions on blocked accounts and predicted that the move was likely to dry up revenue in Brazil and force the company to shutter its local office.   “But principles matter more than profit,” he wrote. He later instructed users in Brazil to download a VPN to retain access if X was shut down and wrote that X would publish all of de Moraes' demands, claiming they violate Brazilian law. “These are the most draconian demands of any country on Earth!” he later wrote. Musk had not published de Moraes' demands as of late Sunday and prominent blocked accounts remained so, indicating X had yet to act based on Musk's previous pledges. Moraes' decision warned against doing so, saying each blocked account that X eventually reactivates will entail a fine of 100,000 reais ($20,000) per day, and that those responsible will be held legally to account for disobeying a court order. Brazil's attorney general wrote Saturday night that it was urgent for Brazil to regulate social media platforms. "We cannot live in a society in which billionaires domiciled abroad have control of social networks and put themselves in a position to violate the rule of law, failing to comply with court orders and threatening our authorities. Social peace is non-negotiable,” Jorge Messias wrote on X. Brazil’s constitution was drafted after the 1964-1985 military dictatorship and contains a long list of aspirational goals and prohibitions against specific crimes such as racism and, more recently, homophobia. But freedom of speech is not absolute.