Amanda Browder works with fabrics of all kinds. But, instead of creating clothing for people, she “dresses up” buildings with her unique style of installation art. Maxim Moskalkov has the story.
 

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More than a year has passed since protests against changes to Nicaraguas pension program turned into a full scale socio-political crisis. The government crackdown by President Daniel Ortega has resulted in more than 200 deaths, and forced more than 65,000 people to leave the country. Among them journalists who say they’ve been targeted. But even though they’re not there, many of these journalists are still sending the news back home. VOA reporter Cristina Caicedo Smit has the story.
 

…

For many years, the United States has been issuing advisories, warning potential travelers about countries plagued by terrorism or armed conflict.  But now, Amnesty International, Japan, Uruguay and other countries are warning about the danger of travel to the U.S., citing gun violence. This sparked a response from President Donald Trump, as VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
 

…

This story originated in VOA’s Russian Service. Some information is from AFP.

WASHINGTON — The fundraising chief for prominent Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny says a Moscow court’s decision to freeze financial assets of the jailed activist’s anti-corruption watchdog is a laughably predictable outcome that says more about the group’s success in exposing widespread corruption than the money laundering charges it’s now facing.

A Moscow district court Thursday froze the assets of Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption (FBK), which was set up to spotlight the excessively lavish lifestyles of top government and Kremlin officials.

“It is actually very funny,” Leonid Volkov told VOA’s Russian Service just hours after criminal charges landed, pointing out that the investigation coincides with a crackdown that has seen Navalny jailed and thousands of people detained at some of the largest free-election rallies Moscow has seen since Putin’s 2012 term began.

“It has already been noted that when someone needs to be accused of murder, the call always comes from MP Lugovoi, who is actually accused of murder in Britain,” said Volkov, referring to former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi, a member of the State Duma committee on security and countering corruption, who stands accused in the 2006 poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko.

Russian ‘projection’

Shortly after Thursday’s court ruling was announced, Navalny’s web site posted security camera footage of Russian Investigative Committee officials, Moscow’s equivalent of the FBI, entering FBK headquarters accompanied by masked guards in tactical gear. Other investigators raided the homes of FBK attorneys Vyacheslav Gimadi, Alexander Pomazuyev, Evgeny Zamyatin and Vladlen Los.

Agents also searched the homes of FBK video-producer Vitaly Kolesnikov and regional manager Anastasia Kadetova, and called in other FBK representatives for questioning.

“Everything is done according to this logic,” Volkov told VOA, explaining that just as a pro-Kremlin legislator who stands accused of murder would call for murder charges against an opposition figure, it was members of the State Duma’s financial crimes committee who filed the motion to bring money laundering charges against Navalny’s group.

“Allegations we’ve ‘laundered a billion rubles’ are being levied by the very officials whose homes we’ve proven are worth literally millions of dollars,” he said. “Thieves make accusations of theft; murderers make accusations of murder; rapists make accusations of violence and rape. In psychology, I believe this is what’s called ‘projection.’”

Corruption watchdog

Since being founded in 2011, Navalny’s FBK corruption watchdog has published reports detailing the lavish lifestyles of figures close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, including Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Moscow first deputy mayor Natalia Sergunina.

A court spokesperson said the order would freeze assets estimated at a billion rubles ($15.3 million). Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh, however, said the Moscow district court ordered a freeze of 75 million rubles ($1.1 million) held in accounts of the FBK and those of several staff members.

Russian investigators say the FBK knowingly used a large amount of money that was gained by third parties through criminal enterprises. Yarmysh says the foundation solicits donations on its website.

Four FBK employees are currently incarcerated, and several others are under an ongoing investigation. FBK lawyer Lyubov Sobol, who called for protests after she was barred from running for a seat on the Moscow City Duma, has been on hunger strike for almost a month.

“What we are seeing now is the most aggressive attempt so far to silence us,” Navalny recently wrote in his blog, vowing not to give in.

“The strategic aim of this raid and all the made-up legal affairs is to create fear. … Do not be afraid to go and demonstrate,” he added.

The opposition is planning another large protest in Moscow on Saturday, although hundreds were detained at the last gathering Aug. 3.

…

Prosecutors on Friday filed a terrorist threat charge against a 20-year-old man who said he walked into a Missouri store wearing body armor and carrying a loaded rifle and handgun to test whether Walmart would honor his constitutional right to bear arms.

The incident, just days after 22 people were killed during an attack at another Walmart in El Paso, Texas, caused a panic at the Springfield, Missouri, store. Dmitriy Andreychenko walked through filming himself with his cell phone Thursday afternoon.

No shots were fired and Andreychenko was arrested after he was stopped by an armed off-duty firefighter at the store.

“Missouri protects the right of people to open carry a firearm, but that does not allow an individual to act in a reckless and criminal manner endangering other citizens,’’ Greene County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Patterson said in a statement announcing the charge. Patterson compared the man’s actions to “falsely shouting fire in a theater causing a panic.”

If convicted, the felony charge of making a terrorist threat in the second degree is punishable by up to four years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000, according to the prosecutor’s office. The charge means he showed reckless disregard for the risk of causing an evacuation or knowingly caused fear that lives were in danger.

“I wanted to know if Walmart honored the Second Amendment,” a probable cause statement released Friday with the charges quoted Andreychenko as saying.

Recorded his deed

Andreychenko started to record himself with his phone while he was still in the car parked at Walmart. He got the body armor from the trunk of his car and put it on before grabbing a shopping cart and walking into the store, according to the statement.

Andreychenko said his intention was to buy grocery bags. The rifle had a loaded magazine inserted, but a round was not chambered. A handgun on his right hip was loaded with one round in the chamber.

He said he bought the rifle and body armor because of three recent shootings and a stabbing, and said he wanted to protect himself.

Wife, sister warned him

His wife, Angelice Andreychenko, told investigators that she warned him it was not a good idea, adding that he was an immature boy.

His sister, Anastasia Andreychenko, said he had asked her if she would videotape him going into Walmart with a gun and she also told him it was a bad idea, according to the probable cause statement.

The statement does not allege that he pointed the weapons at anyone, although patrons in the surveillance video could be seen in the background running away.

Walmart bans him

Walmart issued a statement Friday that praised authorities for stopping the incident from escalating. It said Andreychenko is no longer welcome in its stores.

“This was a reckless act designed to scare people, disrupt our business and it put our associates and customers at risk,” said spokeswoman LeMia Jenkins. “We applaud the quick actions of our associates to evacuate customers from our store, and we’re thankful no one was injured.”

Since January 2017, Missouri has not required a permit to openly or conceal carry a firearm for those 19 years or older. Roughly 30 states allow the open carrying of handguns and rifles and shotguns in public without a permit.

San Francisco-based Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence said six states generally prohibit the open carrying of rifles and shotguns — California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Jersey — along with the District of Columbia, the law center said.

California, Florida and Illinois also generally ban the open carry of handguns, as do New York and South Carolina.

Springfield is about 165 miles (266 kilometers) south of Kansas City, Missouri.
 

…

Cameroon has instructed its military to be on the alert as Equatorial Guinea says it is building a border wall to stop Cameroonians and West Africans from illegally entering its territory. Equatorial Guinea’s announcement comes as officials of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) regional economic bloc, of which Equatorial Guinea is a member, are encouraging the free movement of people and goods to boost economic growth in the region.

Thirty-two-year old Cameroonian merchant Kome Pascal imports wine from Equatorial Guinea. He also exports cement, roofing sheets and farm produce from Cameroon to the neighboring nation. 

“I feel very bad because goods will not come again into Cameroon and farmers who sell in Equatorial Guinea, what do they expect them to do with their goods,” he told VOA. “Building that particular wall is not going to permit Cameroonians to sell their goods.” 

When Equatorial Guinea said it was building the wall and erected milestones on the border near the Cameroon town of Kye-Ossi, Cameroon army chief Lieutenant General Rene Claude Meka visited the border. Meka said he was told the neighboring state was not respecting territorial limits and was encroaching on Cameroon land. He said the Cameroonian army would not tolerate any unlawful intrusion.

Anastasio Asumu Mum Munoz, Equatorial Guinea ambassador to Cameroon, was called up by Cameroon’s minister of external relations on Thursday to explain his country’s plans for the border.

Ambassador Munoz said his country plans to build a wall, but that reports that the its military had installed milestones in Cameroon territory are misleading.

Equatorial Guinea has always accused Cameroon of letting its citizens and West Africans enter its territory illegally.

More than 100 migrants from Togo, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Benin on their way to Equatorial Guinea and Gabon are currently stranded in Cameroon after they were rescued from their capsizing vessel in the Atlantic Ocean.
 
Cameroonian-born Christian Mbock, visiting lecturer of international relations at the National University of Equatorial Guinea, said the wall will stop illegal migrants and secure Equatorial Guinea.

“There was a problem in Equatorial Guinea because there was a coup there, then the government had to protect itself and said that the government was suspending the implementation of [CEMAC’s decision for free movement],” he said. “It is a complex situation.”

Equatorial Guinea has often sealed its border with Cameroon, complaining of security threats posed by illegal immigration.

In December 2017, Equatorial Guinea said it had arrested 30 foreign armed men from Chad, the Central African Republic and Sudan on the border.  The report said they possessed rocket launchers, rifles and a stockpile of ammunition to destabilize the government of President Theodoro Obiang, who has led oil-rich Equatorial Guinea since 1979.

Cameroon said it also arrested 40 heavily-armed men on the 290-kilometer boundary. 

Both countries are members of the CEMAC, which in 2017 said it had reached a milestone when heads of state meeting in Chad lifted visa requirements for their 45 million citizens traveling within the six-member nation economic bloc.  
 

…

Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said Friday he is not quitting despite facing mounting criticism for failing to properly take his oath of office.

Prayuth led the inauguration of his Cabinet in a ceremony presided over by the king on July 16.

However, he omitted a phrase in the oath of office in which he was supposed to pledge to uphold every aspect of the constitution. The omission has raised questions over whether the inauguration was legally valid.

Prayuth told reporters Friday that he was continuing to conduct his duties “to the best of my abilities because I am the prime minister.”

The oath of office is required under Article 161 of Thailand’s Constitution, which includes the complete oath and states it must be said to the king before Cabinet ministers take office.

Prayuth’s failure to recite the oath in full, which also led to other ministers making the same error because they repeated what he said, was pointed out by opposition politician Piyabutr Saengkanokkul during a Parliament session on July 25.

Legal activist Srisuwan Janya filed a complaint over the issue to the Office of the Ombudsman on Monday which has been accepted for consideration.

Prayuth led a military junta that seized power in 2014 and was dissolved with the inauguration of the new Cabinet. The junta had ruled with a heavy fist and regularly cracked down on its critics. It also introduced new election laws to favor Prayuth’s return as prime minister.

Mongkolkit Suksintaranont, a leader of a political party that was part of Prayuth’s coalition, said on Thursday that he and four other parties which hold single seats in the House of Representatives were leaving the coalition.

“I did not think that being part of the government coalition would mean that we would have such little freedom,” Mongkolkit said, adding that he had been told to refrain from criticizing the government in Parliament sessions.

When asked how he would handle the issue of the Cabinet’s incomplete oath of office, Mongkolkit said, “If I was prime minister, I would have resigned already.”

…

The World Food Program’s partial aid suspension in Yemen has increased concerns for families.

Mohammed Qaid worries for his four-day-old boy Nazeh.  Qaid has seven other children, and little hope that he can feed his family.  But this family is not the only household feeling the pinch of the recent reduction in food aid delivered to Sana’a.  

Qaid is among the thousands of residents in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, a Houthi stronghold, who is dependent on international humanitarian aid in the midst of the conflict.  The war has ravaged Qaid’s life, and his family now survives on scraps. “We’re now sort of dependent on restaurants’ leftover rice,” he told VOA.  “We pay dishwashers $0.80 for collecting leftover rice.”
 
Destitute and hungry, families have resorted to sending their children out to collect leftover rice granules.  Qaid tells VOA his young sons were crying the morning of the interview because he could not afford to pay the cost of two eggs, opting instead for tea. 

Normally, Qaid’s family would have received a monthly basket from the World Food Program consisting of 75 kilograms of wheat, two bottles of cooking oil, sugar, and lentils.  That stopped when WFP shipments were held up due to a standoff between the agency and the Houthi authorities.  Both sides had disagreed over who would be responsible for monitoring the food routing system.  U.N. officials now say they have the Houthi’s agreement to implement a biometric registration system to prevent diversion of food aid.  

The WFP says partial food aid to 850,000 people in Sana’a will resume next week, but the relief is not coming soon enough for many struggling to survive as the war heads into its sixth year.  

The conflict began in 2014 when the internationally-recognized government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi was run out of the capital, Sana’a, by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.  Prompted by rife political corruption and mounting civil unrest, the rebels took the capital and have been fighting against a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which seeks to restore the previous government.   

As the war rages, 13 million Yemeni civilians on the ground face starvation.  U.N. officials say Yemen is suffering the world’s current largest humanitarian crisis and one of the largest man-induced famines in history. 

Critics identify two main culprits.  The first are the Houthi rebels, who have been accused of unlawfully confiscating food and reselling aid to fund the war.  The second is Saudi Arabia, whose campaign of air strikes and bombings of civilians has been labelled by the international rights group Human Rights Watch as illegal.  These attacks have not only made it difficult for Yemen to produce food, but also hampered efforts to get food aid to the people who need it most.   

Aid workers say grain often rots as supply routes are regularly attacked.  Saudi air strikes have not only targeted mosques, schools, stores and homes, but farms, grain storage units, seaports, and food factories. 

The food shipments that do make it through are often not getting to where they are most needed.  Speaking at the U.N. Security Council last year, WFP director David Beasley said there is “serious evidence that food was being diverted and going to the wrong people.”   As many as 60% of residents of the capital, he said, were not receiving food. 

 
WFP officials say using a biometric registration system that includes iris scanning, facial recognition, and fingerprints will help identify those who need aid the most and combat corruption in distribution.

Critics at the United Nations, WHO, and even within the United States, point to the U.S. role, which they say is propelling the conflict by selling billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. 

Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump said Saudi Arabia had agreed to spend $110 billion in “leading the fight against Radical Islamic Terrorism.”   While the arms deal mostly consists of letters of intent and is a far smaller number than the detailed $110 billion, the kingdom’s anti-terrorism campaign, along with its efforts to contain Iranian influence, are in line with Washington’s wider strategic interests in the region.  Houthis oppose this arms deal because they view Saudi Arabia as pandering to western influence and not supporting pan-Arab culture.   

While some claim the U.S. bears indirect responsibility for Yemen’s food shortages, others point, paradoxically, to America’s role in saving millions of Yemenis from starvation.  The United States donates approximately $2.5 billion annually–more than Britain, and Germany and other EU members combined. 

…

South Korea has threatened to end a military intelligence sharing agreement with Japan as their tensions escalate over export controls. The agreement is a symbol of the countries’ trilateral security cooperation with their ally, the United States.

Tensions erupted after Japan tightened export controls on key materials for South Korea’s semiconductor industry and decided to downgrade South Korea’s trade status. Seoul accuses Tokyo of weaponizing trade to retaliate over political rows stemming from their wartime history. Seoul is seen trying to pressure Washington into mediating the dispute between its allies.

Japan says it wants to keep the agreement, whose renewal deadline is coming up on Aug. 24. A look at the military agreement between Seoul and Tokyo tested by a toxic relationship:

The agreement

The General Security of Military Information Agreement, or GSOMIA, went into effect in November 2016 as the two neighbors agreed to step up cooperation in the face of North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat.  

It is automatically extended annually unless either side notifies the other of its intention to terminate in a 90-day prior notice. The deadline falls on Aug. 24.

The agreement took years of discussion and a near-collapse. Any military cooperation with Japan is difficult due to strong resentment against Japanese brutality during its 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea and Japan can still share intelligence through the 2014 three-way intelligence pact via Washington, but that one is limited to North Korea’s nuclear and missile program. GSOMIA allows Seoul and Tokyo to share a broader range of information directly and more quickly.

South Korean military officials say information gathered by Japan’s intelligence satellites, radars, patrol aircraft and other high-tech systems were crucial for analyzing North Korea’s missile tests and activities of its submarines, which could soon be equipped with missile-launch systems. Japan also benefits from South Korean military radars positioned to detect North Korean launches sooner and Seoul’s information gathered from spies and defectors from North Korea.

In 2012, Japan and South Korea backed off from an intelligence-sharing pact less than an hour before a planned signing after Seoul succumbed to political outcry at home.

The row

Tokyo says it wants to keep the agreement despite difficult relations with Seoul.

South Korea says Japan’s trade curbs have forced it to review whether it could continue to send sensitive military information to a country that questions its reliability as a security partner.  

Japan said tighter export controls are needed as South Korea’s trade controls are weak, but they earlier linked the export controls to South Korea court rulings ordering Japanese companies to compensate victims of wartime forced labor. Some lawmakers also suggested South Korea may have allowed sensitive materials to reach North Korea. That enraged many in South Korea, triggering boycotts and protest marches, and lawmakers demanded their government to end the intelligence-sharing agreement. Recent surveys indicate more South Koreans were in support of scrapping the agreement.

Japan’s Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya told reporters on Wednesday that he and visiting U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper agreed on South Korea’s importance in dealing with North Korea.

Esper later traveled to South Korea and met President Moon Jae-in on Friday, and they agreed that the issue over the intelligence-sharing agreement should be “resolved in a good manner,” according to Moon’s office, which didn’t elaborate. It has said Seoul will make a “comprehensive judgment based on national interest” before the Aug. 24 deadline.

Even if South Korea keeps the agreement, threatening to end it might have been a mistake as it would affect long-term trust, said Du Hyeogn Cha, a visiting scholar at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

“Instead of making a strong request for U.S. mediation based on goodwill, (Seoul) is attempting to hold the United States hostage, saying `things can become frustrating for you too’,” said Cha, an ex-intelligence secretary to former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.  

The risk

A senior Japanese official close to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said Japan could probably live without the agreement because it has been utilized less than expected and that Tokyo can get information from Washington.  

The pact doesn’t obligate Seoul and Tokyo to share information and exchanges apparently slowed as relations deteriorated amid nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang.  

There have been 48 exchanges of military intelligence over the three years since the agreement took effect, with each side contributing information 24 times, South Korean lawmaker Ha Tae-kyung said, citing data he obtained from Seoul’s Defense Ministry. Ha said 19 of Japan’s cases came in 2017, during a provocative run in North Korean weapons tests.

Japan says they communicated some 30 times over the past three years, including only once in 2018 when North Korea’s missile threat subsided.

Some analysts say a scraped deal would threaten to erase a decade of U.S. effort to link its separate alliances with South Korea and Japan to deal with North Korea and China’s growing influence.

“The South Korea-U.S. alliance will run into trouble,” said Moon Seong Mook, a former South Korean military official and current analyst for Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy. “A link for security cooperation between Seoul, Washington and Tokyo will be broken.”

Scrapping of intelligence-sharing agreement with Tokyo could make it harder for each of the two neighbors to respond to actions from China and Russia, including their joint bomber patrol over waters between South Korea and Japan last month, which experts say was likely designed to test security cooperation between the U.S. allies.

Japanese experts, however, see emboldened South Korea as signaling its shift away from the U.S.-led trilateral cooperation as the U.S. presence in the region wanes.

“South Korea under the Moon administration appears to be not as enthusiastic about the trilateral cooperation with Japan and the U.S. as South Korea used to be in the past,” Junya Nishino, a Korea expert at Keio University, recently said on a TV talk show. “President Moon thinks the current framework is a legacy of the Cold War era and should be changed.”

…

The British economy shrank in the second quarter for the first time since 2012 as Brexit uncertainties weighed on business investment and firms reduced their stockpiling after Britain’s departure from the European Union was postponed, official figures showed Friday.

The decline is set to raise alarm that Brexit uncertainty is increasingly weighing on the economy. Most economists expected the economy to flat-line. The quarterly drop lowered the annual rate of growth to 1.2% from 1.8% in the first quarter.

The Office for National Statistics noted there was “increased volatility around the U.K.’s original planned exit date from the European Union in late March.”

Brexit was meant to happen on March 29, but was delayed to the end of October after Parliament rejected the withdrawal agreement that the previous prime minister, Theresa May, had negotiated with the EU.

Before the extension request, many firms ratcheted up their inventories to help cushion the likely disruption from Britain crashing out of the EU on March 29 without a deal. That business activity helped the economy grow by 0.5% in the first quarter.

Since then, companies have stopped stockpiling as much. Many car companies also brought forward their annual maintenance shutdowns to April from later in the year to cushion the potential blow from Britain leaving the EU without a deal on March 29.

It was largely the combination of these Brexit-related developments that contributed to a sharp 1.4% quarterly decline in the output of production industries.

The fact that the overall economy performed worse than anticipated is likely to increase concern about Brexit’s corrosive effect on the economy. Business investment, which has been historically weak since the country voted in June 2016 to leave the EU, weakened further in the second quarter, contracting by 0.5%.

“Brexit uncertainty, and to a lesser extent, weaker global demand, has reduced firms’ appetites to expand,” said James Smith, an economist at ING bank. “Meanwhile, contingency planning activities for a no-deal Brexit are costly and often resource-intensive, reducing scope to lift capital spending. We expect this trend to continue for the rest of the year.”

May’s replacement as prime minister, Boris Johnson, has insisted there will be no further delay to the Brexit date and that Britain will leave the EU on Halloween come what may. That’s stoked fears that Britain will leave the EU without a deal, a development that would see tariffs and other restrictions imposed on traded goods. Most economists think that would lead to a recession; even Brexit’s most passionate supporters say it would be disruptive at least in the short-term. The pound has fallen to 2-1/2 year lows against the dollar and was down 0.3% on Friday, at $1.2093

Sajid Javid, Britain’s new Treasury chief, conceded that this is a “challenging” period for the British economy but insisted that the fundamentals remain “strong.”

“The government is determined to provide certainty to people and businesses on Brexit — that’s why we are clear that the U.K. is leaving the EU on 31 October,” he said.

The British economy is not expected to fall into recession — commonly identified as two quarters of economic contraction — in the third quarter partly because the car manufacturers will be operating in August, having brought forward their maintenance period earlier in the year. Also Friday’s figures showed that British consumers remains upbeat as unemployment is at 44-year lows and wages are rising solidly and outpacing inflation.

However, Brexit uncertainty looks like it will get more acute in September, when Parliament returns from its summer recess and the political debate and maneuvering around a no-deal Brexit intensifies.

Add in worries over the global economy as a result of the trade conflict between the United States and China, and the economic headwinds are mounting. The Bank of England warned last week that there’s a one-in-three chance that Britain will slip into recession in the early part of 2020 even if a Brexit ends up being smooth.

…

The chief facilitator of negotiations between Venezuela’s socialist administration and opposition has downplayed the decision by President Nicolas Maduro to skip a scheduled round of talks.

Dag Nylander of Norway’s Foreign Affairs Ministry told The Associated Press on Thursday he’s in contact with both sides about finding a date for talks to resume.

Maduro on Wednesday night said he had decided not to send envoys to the Caribbean island of Barbados, where talks were to resume Thursday. That was to protest the Trump administration’s decision to freeze the Venezuelan government’s assets in the U.S. and threaten to retaliate against foreign companies that continue to do business with his government.

Maduro’s government also said it would review the mechanism of the talks to ensure it contributes to an efficient solution to the problems Venezuelans face.

“Norway is facilitating the negotiation process at the request of the principal political actors in Venezuela and schedules all meetings based on the availability of the parties. Accordingly we are in touch with them regarding the next meetings,” said Nylander, the head of the peace and reconciliation office at the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

He added:  “The facilitation continues under the principle that the parties would like it to, and that there are realistic prospects of a negotiated solution that can benefit the Venezuelan people.”

In announcing the sweeping move, National Security Adviser John Bolton said the dialogue between the government and opposition was being used by Maduro to buy time.

“We will not fall for these old tricks of a tired dictator,” Bolton declared Tuesday at a meeting in Peru of more than 50 governments aligned against Maduro. “No more time for tap, tap, tapping. Now is the time for action.”

But some believe Bolton’s admonishments might end of strengthening the negotiations, which have been taking place since May.

The United Nations reiterated Thursday U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ “strong support” for Norway’s mediation effort.

“Our position is unchanged — that only a settlement through negotiations will solve this ongoing situation,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric.  

Meanwhile, the U.N.’s top human rights official criticized the U.S.’ response as overhanded and bound to intensify suffering in a country already racked by six-digit hyperinflation, food shortages and an economic recession worse than the U.S. Great Depression.

Michelle Bachelet, who sharply criticized Maduro’s human rights record following a visit to the country in June, said that provision in the new sanctions allowing for the shipment of food and medicine are unlikely to suffice.

“They are still likely to significantly exacerbate the crisis for millions of ordinary Venezuelans, especially as there will certainly be over-compliance by financial institutions around the world that have commercial relations with the governments of the US and Venezuela,” she said.

…

Lebanon’s only English-language daily protested the country’s deteriorating economic and political conditions by publishing a blank edition Thursday, calling it an “alarm bell.” 
 
Each page of The Daily Star’s Thursday edition bore a single phrase referring to one of the country’s problems, including government deadlock, rising public debt, increasing sectarian rhetoric and unemployment. The back page had a photo of a cedar tree, a national symbol, with a caption reading: “Wake up before it’s too late!”

“We are sounding the alarm bell over the many challenges the country is facing,” the paper’s editor-in-chief Nadim Ladki told The Associated Press. “It’s a call on everyone — politicians, activists, ordinary people — to pull together in the same direction to resolve the crises and challenges.”

Lebanon has been in the grip of an economic crisis for months, and the government has not met since a June 30 shooting in a mountain village that escalated tensions between the Christian and Druze communities.

Rival groups in the Cabinet have been divided on how to proceed with the investigation of the shooting, which left two people dead.

The U.S. Embassy issued a statement Wednesday saying it supports a fair and transparent investigation into the shooting in the village of Qabr Shamoun.  
 
“Any attempt to use the tragic June 30 event in Qabr Shamoun to advance political objectives should be rejected,” the embassy said in an apparent reference to the militant Hezbollah group and its allies, who are seen as pressuring Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.

Hezbollah on Thursday blasted the U.S. Embassy statement, calling it “a blatant and gross intervention in Lebanese internal affairs” and adding that it aims to “deepen divisions” within Lebanon. The group called the crisis a “local political issue” that the Lebanese judiciary is dealing with.

Lebanon’s government is the product of a power-sharing agreement that ended the devastating 1975-1990 civil war and which divides powers among various religious sects. The political scene is split between a pro-Western coalition, which includes Jumblatt and his followers, and a bloc dominated by Hezbollah that is aligned with Syria and Iran.

The political infighting has made it impossible to maintain the country’s crumbling infrastructure or provide adequate public services. The national debt is hovering around $85 billion, or 150 percent of gross domestic product.

…