World News Random, Random

[ti-amie]

Europe is running out of heroin. The alternatives are much worse
Nitazines from China are penetrating Europe, causing almost 100 deaths in Latvia and Estonia last year.


June 11, 2024 5:04 pm CET
By Alessandro Ford

A highly potent family of synthetic opioids that are mass-produced in China is crossing from the Baltics into Western Europe, penetrating staid heroin markets and regularly killing their users, the EU's drugs authority warned.

Nitazenes were involved in a sharp rise in deaths in Estonia and Latvia last year — nearly 100 — while contributing to scores of overdoses in France and Ireland.

The highly dangerous substances, which are hundreds of times more potent than heroin and even stronger than the cancer pain medicine fentanyl, were missold as street-grade heroin, according to the EU Drug Report 2024 by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).

"Nitazenes are sometimes sold as ‘synthetic heroin’ and have been detected in fake medicines on the drug market," said the report, which was released on Tuesday. Their sudden arrival on city streets "can result in multiple poisonings occurring over a short period, with the potential to overwhelm local services."

While an opioid crisis on the scale seen in the United States is still far away for Europe, six of the seven new synthetic opioids reported for the first time to the EU's early warning system in 2023 were nitazenes, the highest number in a single year, with 16 found in Europe since 2019.

It's a "rapidly evolving drug market, where established illicit drugs are widely accessible and potent new synthetic substances continue to emerge," EMCDDA Director Alexis Goosdeel said in a written statement.

Produced in China, nitazenes have been on health and law enforcement agencies' radar for several years, as officials nervously eye the ongoing crisis in North America. Synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, killed some 75,000 people in the U.S. last year, adding to the 1 million who have died since an epidemic of prescription painkiller use exploded in the country around 2000.

In the U.S., painkillers made way for heroin, and heroin for synthetic opioids, sparking fears of a similar process in Europe. That is particularly worrying given the looming possibility of a heroin drought. In April 2022, the recently victorious Taliban banned all opium cultivation and heroin processing in Afghanistan, knocking out 95 percent of Afghan production, according to the U.N.

Given the country accounts for nine-tenths of world's supply, that means Europe's heroin users are consuming their way through limited stockpiles. For now, provisions have held up, but "it would be prudent to prepare for a possible heroin shortage in late 2024 or 2025," predicted the EMCDDA.

While the agency said it is too early to determine if a decline in heroin availability would lead to a larger market for synthetic opioids, EU countries should nonetheless expand treatment access, boost needle-exchange programs, and stockpile the anti-opioid drug naloxone to counteract overdoses, the report said.

Those measures would also help address another narcotic time bomb: the transformation of cocaine into a mass consumer good.

Riches to rags

When the white powder first hit Europe in the 1980s, cocaine was an elite drug, associated in popular culture with celebs and city bankers. Today it's everywhere and as its affordability has grown, so too have the negative health effects it entails.

Cocaine use "appears to be becoming increasingly common in more vulnerable or marginalized groups in some countries," the report states, such as France and Belgium. "Both cocaine injection and the use of crack cocaine is reported in a growing number of countries ...[contributing] to a number of localized HIV outbreaks in Europe in recent years."

That will only worsen as overflowing supply drives up purity, which has jumped by 45 percent in a decade. Half of the surveyed countries now report an average purity between 64 percent and 76 percent, meaning cash-strapped consumers can get high more times for the same retail price.

Gone is the glamor and with crack use spreading through major Western European cities, local and national governments are fumbling for answers. Belgium's first-ever drugs commissioner recently told POLITICO that despite the fact addiction "seems to be on the rise in Brussels region," there is no obvious solution in sight.


https://www.politico.eu/article/europe- ... ced-china/

[Owendonovan]

I've enjoyed the videos from France of the left celebrating and the right crying over their election. Sorry, no fascism this time, Marie.

[ti-amie]

Andrew—Author of America Rises On Substack @AmoneyResists
Nothing to see here. Just official reports from the Venezuelan Foreign Minister that both
@GOP senators from Florida @marcorubio and @SenRickScott were assisting Maduro in his efforts to steal the Venezuelan election tonight.

[ti-amie]

Maduro declared winner of disputed Venezuelan election
The opposition, which had warned of the potential for fraud, was expected to challenge the result.


Presidential candidate Edmundo González, center, and opposition leader María Corina Machado, center right, greet supporters during a rally in Maracaibo, Venezuela, on Tuesday. (Matias Delacroix/AP)

By Samantha Schmidt, Ana Vanessa Herrero and María Luisa Paúl
Updated July 29, 2024 at 3:09 a.m. EDT|Published July 28, 2024 at 5:08 a.m. EDT

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s electoral council declared the authoritarian socialist the winner of Venezuela’s election Sunday despite partial results and independent exit polling that suggested opposition candidate Edmundo González had captured twice as many votes.

The Venezuelan opposition, which sent thousands of ordinary citizens to monitor voting centers across the country Sunday, swiftly rejected the results and said it had records showing a clear victory by González. The election outcome was immediately challenged by a host of foreign leaders, including U.S. officials.

“We have serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people,” said U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. He called on the electoral council to publish the tabulation of votes. “It’s critical that every vote be counted fairly and transparently.”

María Corina Machado, the face of the Venezuelan opposition campaign on behalf of González, said the opposition had received 40 percent of official printouts of voting center results, which showed González winning with 70 percent of the votes.

“This is not one more fraud,” Machado said in a news conference at 1 a.m. local time. “This is a gross disregard and violation of popular sovereignty.”

She stopped short of calling for protests but asked election observers and Venezuelan families to remain at voting centers well into the morning until all voting records arrive.

The pro-government electoral council, delivering results shortly after midnight Monday, said Maduro won with 51 percent of the vote to González’s 44 percent.

“I’m Nicolás Maduro, president-elect,” Maduro bellowed to a crowd of supporters outside the Miraflores presidential palace. “And I will defend our democracy, our law and our people.”

The opposition had seen the election as its best chance in more than a decade to unseat the strongman, whom many here blame for this oil-rich country’s economic collapse and the exodus of millions of citizens, hundreds of thousands of them to the United States. Maduro claimed reelection in a 2018 presidential vote that was condemned internationally as fraudulent and prompted a tightening of U.S. sanctions.

In Caracas, the sounds of banging pots and pans echoed across buildings as soon as the results were announced — the sound of protest in Venezuela.

“Maduro has a huge problem on his hands. If the government doesn’t actually back up the results with data, Maduro is inviting the biggest loyalty test he’s faced in years,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who is focused on Venezuela. “This doesn’t end here. Maduro has to convince the ruling elite that he can keep things under control, but both he and the military know that he can’t govern a country in flames.”

Latin American leaders, including some leftists with friendly ties to Maduro, cast doubt on the results. In a post on social media, Colombia’s foreign minister called for an independent verification and audit of the vote count “as soon as possible.”

As votes were being counted, opposition leaders denounced what they said was a government order to voting-center workers to refuse to hand over printouts of voting results, which are used to corroborate the machine count, to opposition poll watchers.

Delsa Solórzano, an opposition electoral council observer, decried a “concerning, widespread pattern.” Multiple voting centers had removed opposition witnesses, she said, and refused to transmit the results in the printouts.

Elvis Amoroso, president of Venezuela’s electoral council, mentioned delays in transmitting results, and said he asked prosecutors to launch an investigation.

Exit polling released after voting centers began to close Sunday evening showed González taking 65 percent of the vote, more than doubling Maduro’s 31 percent, according to Somerville, N.J.-based Edison Research.

“Our fight continues, and we will not rest until the will of the people is respected,” González said in a news conference.

As night fell, violence broke out at some polling centers. When opposition supporters at the Liceo Andrés Bello in Caracas complained of being denied access to the vote count, a colectivo — a gang of at least 150 Maduro supporters on motorbikes — arrived shouting pro-government chants.

A Washington Post reporter saw the men, hooded and wearing black, begin to punch and kick those outside the polling center, injuring multiple people. “Viva Nicolás,” they shouted.

Leiner González, caught in the middle, was beaten, and his shirt was ripped.

“Please, we need change in Venezuela,” the first-time voter, 25, said, “so that there is no more violence in our beloved country from a group of criminals. We demand peace, freedom and truth. Please, we want a transition.”

In the run-up to the vote Sunday, the government barred Machado, Venezuela’s most popular politician, from running, arrested campaign workers and blocked access to state media.

Sunday saw reports of blocked access at voting centers, delays and some violence. In Maturín, a state capital about 350 miles east of Caracas, local opposition leaders said a voting center coordinator and her mother were demanding access for opposition poll watchers when members of a colectivo rode up and shot the mother in the leg.

Voting centers were scheduled to open 6 a.m. Sunday, but at a school in the Chacao neighborhood of Caracas, a group of 18 people arrived three hours early. They would wait for more than six hours, amid delays opening some voting tables.

By 9 a.m., some of the hundreds of people began to chant: “We want to vote!” Esther Pérez Villegas, whose husband was among those waiting, stepped in to help organize the lines. “Anxiety is high, very high, because of all of the uncertainty we feel,” she said.

Noemi Tovar, 61, had been in line since 3 a.m. “If I have to wait all day, I’ll wait all day,” she said.

“We’ve made lines here for many things — for food, for gasoline,” said Martha Salas, 62. “This is for so much more — for a vote.”

Edison Research, which interviewed more than 6,800 voters at 100 locations, said González outpolled Maduro among men and women, rural, suburban and urban voters, and every age group.

“Our exit poll projects a resounding victory for Edmundo González,” executive vice president Rob Farbman said. “The opposition candidate had broad support across nearly all demographic backgrounds.”

In long lines at voting centers across Caracas, voters said they hadn’t seen such large crowds in an election in many years. The opposition described the turnout Sunday as “historic.”

“I haven’t seen this kind of voter intention since Chávez,” said Vladimir Ramos, a 60-year-old engineer waiting in line. Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s mentor and predecessor, founded Venezuela’s socialist state in 1999 and led it until his death in 2013.

“I think people are no longer afraid,” said Natalie Moreno, 47.

By 12:40 p.m., Maduro addressed the nation to announce the activation of Operation Remate — a word meaning “finish it off” — a government-led effort to rally supporters to the polls. Maduro campaign staff and supporters called people to pressure them to vote and offer food and supplies.

“Let’s mobilize ourselves with force,” Maduro said in a message aired by state television. “Let’s vote with strength as was planned, and with the force of the” social programs.

The government aid was flowing in the rural eastern state of Delta Amacuro. In an Indigenous community there, people were being offered bags of food in exchange of support, said Yoxsamar Jiménez, a poll watcher for the opposition.

“But that’s normal here,” she said. More concerning, she said: Poll watchers were not allowed inside, and the center’s coordinator hit Jiménez.

“To avoid violence, we couldn’t do anything so we had to leave the table,” Jiménez said. “The table is alone, and they’re doing whatever they want in that center.”

González, a former diplomat, was unknown to most Venezuelans just months ago. But as the election loomed, polls predicted he could beat Maduro by double digits.

He ran as a stand-in for longtime Maduro critic Machado, the “Iron Lady” who draws tens of thousands of Venezuelans to her near-messianic campaign caravans — and has been disqualified from running by Maduro’s supreme court.

Her campaign focused on a simple message: Vote for us, and your loved ones can come home.

“The central theme is family, in the sense that this could be the last opportunity to reunite our families,” she told The Post. “This is not just an electoral campaign. This is a redemption movement, for liberation.”

Maduro’s campaign portrayed the opposition as an extreme, right-wing threat that would bring instability.

Some voters in Caracas seemed to agree. Hector Trujillo, a 79-year-old retired architect, said he was voting for “peace” and the continued improvement of the economy. He blamed U.S. sanctions for the country’s troubles. He feared the opposition would “eliminate everything,” including the country’s welfare benefits.

Ana Rosas, 26, voted Sunday for the first time in her life. Rosas, who now lives in El Salvador, is among the millions of Venezuelans dispersed across the world — and among the scores who returned home to vote.

“I have goose bumps,” she said. “I still can’t believe I’m able to vote. I hope it makes a difference.”

In Miami, dozens of Venezuelans, unable to vote from abroad, gathered at the Dolphin Mall to watch coverage of the election. Many wore shirts of red, yellow and blue, the colors of the Venezuelan flag, that read “Venezuela Libre.”

“God willing, today the country will be free,” said Lennyn Padilla, 47, tears in his eyes. “I’m emotional because when I speak about it my throat closes up. It makes me so sad.”

Victor Manuel Morina Parra, a 59-year-old bus driver in Caracas, said he has noticed discontent among his passengers. He moved from his farm in the countryside to the Catia neighborhood of the capital, he said, because his rural town was “in a state of total abandonment.”

“We no longer have help from the government. There’s no fuel, the electricity goes out every eight hours,” he said. “That’s why we want change. For our children, for our grandchildren.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... -gonzalez/

[patrick]

Why am I not shocked that Rubio and Scott are in the middle of this situation. Probably was involved on Jan 6th insurrection and are involved in this year election in case Mr Delay claims fraud on a Harris win

[ponchi101]

Sorry. That list of politicians are ENEMIES of Maduro. If they were interfering, it was AGAINST him.
I dislike Rubio and Scott as much as anybody else. But they have been openly against the dictatorship for a long time.
Credit where credit is due.

[ti-amie]

So did Maduro see the writing on the wall?

[ponchi101]

No, he hasn't. A considerable number of news coming out that the opposition got 67% of the vote.
But, as somebody once said: How many battalions does the pope have?

[ashkor87]

Don't know much about Venezuela but what scares me is the army may intervene..Latin America is cursed with armies that don't even need to exist..like the Pakistani army, whose main achievement has been to conquer their own country!

[ponchi101]

The army has been intervening for decades now in Venezuela, in the sense that they support the government. Without the army, the regime would have fallen in 2004, when they stole the first referendum.
Granted, ALL armies in South America are superfluous, with the exception of the Colombian army, which has fought the guerrillas and drug cartels for decades too (60 years + ). But, if Colombia needs an army, so do Peru and Venezuela (and Brasil, to a point), and from that moment, the spiral continues.
And, if you bring that up: which army has a MORAL support to exist? But going down that road leads to naivety.

[ashkor87]

Good point.. but to fight drug cartels, don't you need police rather than an army?

[ponchi101]

Good point.. but to fight drug cartels, don't you need police rather than an army?

Not here. The drug cartels are armed to a degree that they really operate as a guerilla force. These people have heavy artillery. A "regular" police force would be overwhelmed by their fire power.
And, BTW, the police DO fight the cartels. Just not alone.

[ashkor87]

It is time to recognise that drug cartels exist and flourish for one main reason- the lucrative US market for hard drugs ..in turn, the main reason it is so lucrative is because they are illegal. So what is the root cause?!

[ponchi101]

Indeed. The US market is the sole reason why the drug cartels flourish. We know very well that Europeans do not consume cocaine or marihuana, and the rich people of S. America and Africa are too morally strong and proper to get involved in such an immoral trade.

C'mon, Ashkor. The USA is of course a market, but the Venezuela government is nothing more than a narco-state, fueled by the fact that Venezuela is the launching pad for drugs that ship to Europe, which is also a market. We also know that Monte Carlo lives and prospers because of drug dealing (and arms dealing).
The root cause is that people will do drugs, period. All people. The Chinese are also a very lucrative market, now that they have a large, wealthy population.
Nobody has the monopoly on addicts.

[skatingfan]

British Columbia

B.C. Interior braces for Chilcotin River landslide flooding

Emergency management minister says downstream impacts could be significant

CBC News · Posted: Aug 02, 2024 3:50 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago


The province is asking people to stay away from the Chilcotin and Fraser rivers due to unpredictable water behaviour. (Deb Ilnicki/Facebook)

As residents, the B.C. government and First Nations prepare for water to surge through a landslide blocking the Chilcotin River, officials are warning of unpredictable water conditions along the Chilcotin and Fraser rivers.

At a Friday afternoon news conference, Emergency Management Minister Bowinn Ma said current modelling shows water is more likely to go over the top than burst through in a sudden release.

Ma says the impacts downstream could still be significant depending on the distribution of the overtopping flow, and people along the Chilcotin and the connecting Fraser River may need to leave the area.

Ma says it would take 12 to 24 hours for water and debris from the dam to reach Hope, B.C., about 500 kilometres away.

The lake behind the dam has grown to 11 kilometres long. Ma said a new estimate of the length of the blockage is about 1,000 metres along the river.

She asked B.C. residents to stay away from the Chilcotin and Fraser riverbanks and to refrain from boating on these bodies of water.

"It's not going to go crashing over and wipe out a town or anything like that. That's only in movies. This is real life," Chief Joe Alphonse, the tribal chair of the Tŝilhqot'in Nation, told CBC News Friday. "But there will be a lot of debris that will flow, and the water is going to be really affected."

The landslide earlier this week blocked the Chilcotin near Farwell Canyon, about 285 kilometres north of Vancouver. Residents of a nearby ranch reported it Wednesday morning.

That day, the Cariboo Regional District (CRD) ordered evacuations over 107 square kilometres along the Chilcotin River, stretching from where it met the Fraser River to near Hanceville, B.C.

Since then, officials have been expecting the dam to breach. CRD chair Margot Wagner told reporters Thursday that the dam caused by the landslide was 600 metres wide and 30 metres high, and it was holding back a lake filled with debris, including fallen trees.

She said water is expected to surge past the dam in the coming days.


B.C. Water and Land Stewardship Minister Nathan Cullen said crews were assessing the situation from above. The B.C. Wildfire Service also sent helicopters to help ministry staff create maps of the slide, so they could assess the damage.

Gerald Pinchbeck with the Cariboo Regional District's emergency operations centre told CBC New Friday morning he had not received any more information, and officials aren't sure what will happen next.

Alphonse said landslides are common for the area. The Tŝilhqot'in name for the place where the landslide happened is Nagwentled, which he said means landslide area.

He said when the flood happens, he expects water levels to rise along the river system.

"We hope and we pray that it's going to happen in the current the best way possible," he said. "Use common sense. Stay away from the river banks."

One man was rescued and taken to hospital Wednesday after becoming trapped by the slide. No other injuries related to the landslide have been reported.

Alphonse said Friday that a landslide that dammed the river two decades ago burst in about four days, but this latest slide is "a lot larger than it was last time."

"This is not really anything new for us," he said. "There's not a lot we can do."

Alphonse said there's not much use in worrying about what may happen, other than hoping people don't get too close to the water should it rapidly rise after the debris clears.

He said a salmon run expected late next week has already likely been affected, and "that run is now in jeopardy, and that's very concerning for us."

"We should have a fishery going on right now," he said. "We are dependent on salmon runs for healthy living. That's the main source of food for our people."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british- ... -1.7283607