Venezula

Venezuela's former opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, on Wednesday said he was coerced into signing a letter effectively recognising his defeat in July's presidential election, which electoral authorities claim was won by President Nicolas Maduro. The revelation of the letter is the latest strain to the country's political crisis, which was exacerbated by the disputed election results and Gonzalez's recent departure for exile in Spain. Gonzalez and the Unitary Platform coalition he represented on July 28 claim they defeated Maduro by a wide margin. The document states it was meant to be confidential, but Jorge Rodriguez, head of the National Assembly and Maduro's chief negotiator, presented it during a nationally televised press conference hours after a local news outlet published parts of it. The letter shows Gonzalez as the sender and is addressed to Rodriguez, who signed it as recipient. Rodriguez told reporters Gonzalez signed the letter of his own volition. Gonzalez, ...

Opponents of Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro took to the streets Wednesday in an attempt to revive protests against him as he tightens his grip on power following last month's disputed election. The demonstration in the capital, Caracas, comes exactly a month after the fraught July 28 vote in which Maduro was declared the winner despite strong evidence that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzlez won by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, which drew international condemnation that the vote lacked transparency. In weeks of on-again, off-again demonstrations, the opposition's rallying cry has been constant but so far ineffective. Opponents have demanded that officials publish results from each polling station that they say would expose Maduro's attempts to steal the election. Voting records kill sentence, is how the opposition billed the latest protest, referring to the thousands of tally sheets it collected and posted online that contradict a recent sentence written by the loyalist Supreme Court

Diplomatic efforts are underway to persuade President Nicols Maduro to release vote tallies from Venezuela's presidential election, after opposition leaders disputed his claim of victory and amid increasing calls for an independent review of the results, according to officials from Brazil and Mxico. Government officials from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico have been in constant communication with Maduro's administration to convince him that he must show the vote tally sheets from Sunday's election and allow impartial verification, a Brazilian government official told The Associated Press Thursday. The officials have told Venezuela's government that showing the data is the only way to dispel any doubt in the results, said the Brazilian official, who asked not be identified because they are not authorized to publicly speak about the diplomatic efforts. A Mexican official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the three governments have been discussing the issue with ...

It's a tale of two dramatically different political campaigns. On Monday, throngs of supporters of President Nicols Maduro rallied at a giant stage draped in the red, yellow and blue colors of Venezuela's flag outside the electoral council headquarters where he is expected to make official his candidacy for a third term. Meanwhile, his would-be rivals tried to register their candidate, an 80-year-old unknown newcomer, before a midnight deadline but found they were unable to do so in what the opposition denounced as the latest attack on Venezuela's democracy. Polls show that Venezuelans would trounce the unpopular Maduro by a landslide if given half a chance. But the self-proclaimed socialist leader has so far managed to block his chief opponents from running while alternately negotiating and then reneging on minimal electoral guarantees promised to the U.S. government in exchange for relief from oil sanctions In a creative attempt to force Maduro's authoritarian hand, two smaller .

Uncertainty over Venezuelan supplies comes amid reduced discounted Russian flows

Indian refiners have resumed purchase of Venezuelan oil following the easing of US sanctions on the South American country last year

The UN Security Council scheduled an emergency closed meeting Friday at the request of Guyana following Venezuela's weekend referendum claiming the vast oil- and mineral-rich Essequibo region that makes up a large part of its neighbor. In a letter to the council president, Guyana's foreign minister, Hugh Hilton Todd, accused Venezuela of violating the UN Charter by attempting to take its territory. The letter recounted the arbitration between then-British Guiana and Venezuela in 1899 and the formal demarcation of their border in a 1905 agreement. For over 60 years, he said, Venezuela accepted the boundary, but in 1962 it challenged the 1899 arbitration that set the border. The diplomatic fight over the Essequibo region has flared since then, but it intensified in 2015 after ExxonMobil announced it had found vast amounts of oil off its coast. The dispute escalated as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro held a referendum Sunday in which Venezuelans approved his claim of sovereignty o

The United States on Tuesday said that it did not recognise Nicolas Maduro as the legitimate President of Venezuela, the White House said in a press release

Since the United States imposed sanctions on Venezuela in 2019, the state firm and some shipping agencies have been ignoring protocols for checking tanker identity, sources close to PDVSA said

Stakes are high for their oil-dependent nation, which is suffering a scarcity of food and basic goods