Why a fair election in Venezuela could change the fate of millions of migrants – and Joe Biden
CNN
This month, for the first time in a decade, Venezuela will hold an election in which Maduro’s government is being challenged by an opposition with a credible chance of winning.
A small corner of Venezuela is spreading slowly along 77th Street in Bogota, the capital of Colombia. Municipal maps formally refer to that neighborhood as Unir II (“unite”), but to many of its inhabitants it is known as Barrio Hugo Chavez, after the late Venezuelan president. Many of the more than seven million Venezuelans who fled their country over the past decade or more now call Bogota home. The city is brimming with informal communities where migrants come together to help each other integrate and combat the ever-present melancholy and homesickness. Maria Alvarez is one such migrant. A 27-year-old single mother from Valencia, Alvarez left Venezuela in 2017 when her son Gabriel was only one. They haven’t returned since. Gabriel knows his grandparents only from the photos on his mother’s phone and the occasional video call. “Everyone left… I’ve got family in Brazil, the US, here in Colombia, in Ecuador, in Chile too. We are all abroad: uncles, aunts, cousins… only my mom and my dad, and one of my brothers remain in Venezuela,” Alvarez told CNN. Most of those seven million migrants left Venezuela after 2014, according to the United Nations, amid an economic and political crisis brought about by a crash in the price of oil – a key export for Venezuela – combined with chronic corruption and mismanagement at the hands of government officials.
FBI says it has disrupted major Chinese hacking operation that threatened US critical infrastructure
The FBI has used a court order to seize control of a network of hundreds of thousands of hacked internet routers and other devices that Chinese government-linked hackers were using to threaten critical infrastructure in the US and overseas, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday.
The Federal Reserve is preparing to cut interest rates for the first time in the Biden era after the White House spent the last three years grappling with Americans’ dissatisfaction with the cost of living, raising new questions about the health of the economy and the impact on voters at the ballot box.
Israeli officials notified the US that the country was going to carry out an operation in Lebanon on Tuesday but did not give any details about what they were planning, according to three sources familiar with the matter, including in a call between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant early Tuesday morning.