Tag Archives: Government

Turkey orders arrest of scores of municipality, ministry staff: media

U.S. based cleric Fethullah Gulen at his home in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 29, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Mostoller/File Photo

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish authorities ordered the detention of 139 staff from Ankara municipalities and two ministries in an investigation targeting supporters of the U.S.-based cleric accused of being behind last July’s failed coup, CNN Turk said on Wednesday.

Since the attempted putsch, authorities have jailed pending trial 50,000 people and sacked or suspended 150,000 from a wide range of professions including soldiers, police, teachers and public servants, over alleged links to what the government calls terrorist organizations.

Detention warrants on Wednesday were issued for 60 staff at the Ankara city council, 19 at district councils, 30 staff at the development ministry and 30 at the education ministry, broadcaster CNN Turk said.

The cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States for almost 20 years, has denied involvement in the putsch.

Ankara accuses Gulen, a former ally of President Tayyip Erdogan, of infiltrating Turkish institutions, including the judiciary, police and military in a decades-long campaign. Government critics say the post-coup crackdown has been used to crush dissent.

State-run Anadolu news agency said the municipality staff, some of whom had previously been dismissed from their jobs, were found to have used ByLock, an encrypted messaging app the government says was used by Gulen’s followers.

(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Humeyra Pamuk and Richard Lough)

Following advice, potential FBI chiefs steer clear of job under Trump

FILE PHOTO: People protest against President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, on Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles, California, U.S. May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

By Julia Edwards Ainsley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration’s search for a new FBI director hit roadblocks on Tuesday when two high-profile potential candidates, a moderate judge and a conservative senator, signaled they did not want the job.

Advisers to Judge Merrick Garland and U.S. Senator John Cornyn of Texas told Reuters they discouraged them from leading the Federal Bureau of Investigation, cautioning that they would be leaving important, secure jobs for one fraught with politics and controversy.

The advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the new FBI director would have little job security and heightened scrutiny by political observers following President Donald Trump’s abrupt firing of James Comey on May 9.

Garland and Cornyn distancing themselves from the selection process just three days before Trump has said he may make a decision, points to the difficulties the White House has in filling the FBI post amid turmoil in the administration.

Trump’s firing of Comey, the man in charge of an investigation into possible collusion between 2016 election campaign associates and the Russian government, outraged many lawmakers, including some Republicans.

Garland, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, “loves his job and is not interested in leaving the judiciary,” said one source familiar with the judge’s thinking.

Cornyn said in a statement that he had informed the White House that “the best way I can serve is continuing to fight for a conservative agenda in the U.S. Senate.”

White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters on Tuesday that an announcement on FBI director was still possible before Trump leaves on his first foreign trip on Friday. He said the U.S. Department of Justice was still interviewing candidates.

Several Republican senators had promoted Garland even though they had refused to give him a hearing when Republican Trump’s predecessor President Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated Garland last year for a then-vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The Republicans’ reasoning appeared to be that Garland would be accepted by Democrats and help restore faith in the FBI as a nonpartisan agency.

In an interview on Bloomberg Television, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell referred to Garland, a former federal prosecutor, as “an apolitical professional.”

A second Garland acquaintance who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Garland sought advice from those who told him he would be leaving his life-long position on the federal bench to take a job that could be terminated by Trump overnight.

A Republican Senate aide said Cornyn’s staff also worried that the third-term Texas Senator could cut his- and their own- careers short by going to the FBI.

An adviser to another candidate on the White House short-list, former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, 75, said Kelly is also being persuaded to step out of the running.

Kelly has not said that he would not consider the job, but so far he has not been interviewed.

Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor whose name had been floated, said on Monday he was not interested in the director position.

The difficulty in filling key administration jobs is not just limited to the FBI director post.

Trump’s habits of contradicting his top aides, demanding personal loyalty and punishing officials who contradict him in public has discouraged a number of experienced people from pursuing jobs, said three people who declined to discuss possible positions with administration officials.

“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to attract good people to work in this administration,” said one senior official. “In other cases, veteran people with expertise are leaving or seeking posts overseas and away from this White House.”

(Reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley, additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley, Mark Hosenball, Richard Cowan and Steve Holland; editing by Grant McCool)

Syrian government denies U.S. accusation of crematorium at prison

A satellite view of part of the Sednaya prison complex near Damascus, Syria. Department of State/via REUTERS

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian government on Tuesday denied U.S. accusations that a crematorium had been built at one of its prisons that could be used to dispose of detainees’ remains.

A foreign ministry statement published by state news agency SANA said the U.S. administration had come out with “a new Hollywood story detached from reality” by alleging the crematorium had been built at Sednaya military prison near Damascus.

Stuart Jones, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, said on Monday that U.S. officials believe the crematorium could be used to dispose of bodies at a prison where they believe Assad’s government authorized the hanging of thousands of inmates during Syria’s six-year-old civil war.

Amnesty International reported in February that an average of 20 to 50 people were hanged each week at the Sednaya military prison. Between 5,000 and 13,000 people were executed at Sednaya in the four years since a popular uprising descended into war, it said.

The government also denied that accusation.

Amnesty said the executions took place between 2011 and 2015, but were probably still being carried out and amounted to war crimes.

In a briefing on Monday, Jones showed aerial images of what he said was the crematorium at the Sednaya site.

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Historically black university in Texas cancels Senator’s speech

FILE PHOTO: Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) speaks during a news conference following party policy lunch meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. on August 4, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

By Gina Cherelus

(Reuters) – U.S. Senator John Cornyn will no longer deliver the commencement address at Texas Southern University this weekend, the school said on Friday, after U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was booed at another historically black university.

More than 800 people signed a petition started by a Texas Southern University student who opposed the university’s invitation to the Republican senator to speak at Saturday’s graduation in Houston.

The petition said Cornyn’s backing of DeVos and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, among other things, showed that he supported “discriminatory policies and politicians.”

“We have the right to decide if we want to refuse to sit and listen to the words of a politician who chooses to use his political power in ways that continually harm marginalized and oppressed people,” the petition said.

The university, which will graduate more than 1,100 students on Saturday, said every effort had been made to ensure its ceremony was a celebration that would be remembered for the right reasons.

Cornyn has been invited to meet with Texas Southern University students in the future, the school said in a statement.

Libby Hambleton, a spokeswoman for Cornyn, said in an email that the senator was honored to have been invited to speak, but that he “respects the administration’s decision and looks forward to continuing to engage with the university in the future.”

It was not immediately clear who would replace Cornyn at the ceremony.

Texas Southern University’s action came after graduates at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida, booed, jeered and turned their backs on DeVos in protest on Wednesday as the education secretary gave a commencement speech.

Bethune-Cookman students, alumni and political activists, angered by comments DeVos has made about historically black colleges and universities, gathered tens of thousands of signatures on petitions seeking to have the invitation to DeVos rescinded.

DeVos, who is a proponent of school choice, said in February that such schools were “real pioneers” when it came to choice, without acknowledging racism as the main factor that led to the creation of such institutions.

She subsequently noted that historically black colleges were created because other institutions were not open to African-Americans.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing Daniel Wallis)

Protesting pensioners throw punches in latest Venezuela unrest

Elderly opposition supporters rally against President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Andreina Aponte and Andrew Cawthorne

CARACAS (Reuters) – Elderly Venezuelan protesters on Friday threw punches and yelled curses at riot police blocking the latest in six weeks of demonstrations against President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government.

Riot police with helmets and shields used pepper gas several times to control the crowd as hundreds of pensioners jostled against security lines to attempt a march from a Caracas square.

“Respect the elderly you sons of bitches!” shouted one bearded man, throwing a punch at an officer on the front line.

Since launching protests against Maduro in early April, Venezuela’s opposition has sought to vary tactics by staging silent and candle-lit marches, for instance, and rallies for women, musicians and medics.

Each time, the ruling Socialist Party has tried to match them. On Friday, it organized its own rival old people’s march next to the Miraflores presidential palace.

At least 39 people have died in the unrest since April, including protesters, government sympathizers, bystanders, and security forces. Hundreds have also been hurt and arrested.

Decrying Maduro as a dictator who has wrecked the OPEC nation’s economy, opponents are seeking elections, foreign humanitarian aid, freedom for hundreds of jailed activists, and autonomy for the opposition-controlled legislature.

Maduro, a 54-year-old former bus driver and successor of Hugo Chavez, says his foes are seeking a coup with the support of the United States and encouragement of international media.

Chanting “Freedom!” and “Down with Maduro!”, the elderly protesters made it onto a highway but were blocked from their intended destination, the state ombudsman’s office, by police with armored vehicles. A representative of the office listened briefly to their grievances on the street instead.

The crowd, including plenty of octogenarians plus a nun and one white-haired man dressed as Santa, sang Venezuela’s national anthem in front of the security cordon. Opposition leaders joined them, hugging and linking arms with the pensioners.

‘MORE TEAR GAS THAN FOOD’

Venezuela’s elderly have been hard hit by four years of brutal recession, leading to shortages of food and medicines, long lines at shops and runaway prices.

“Each tear gas cannister costs more than the minimum (monthly) salary, the government spends more on tear gas than providing food,” complained university professor Francisco Viveros, 67.

“I’m here for the youth, the students, those who are going onto the streets. We’ve lived our lives so we should be at the front.”

There were also old people’s protests in western Tachira and southern Bolivar states, with those demonstrations able to reach the local headquarters of the ombudsman.

Scores of government supporters also gathered in Caracas near Miraflores palace, wearing red, punching their fists in the air and chanting pro-Maduro slogans. “The opposition are killers,” said Nelia De Lopez, 65, with a tattoo of Chavez on her arm.

Long viewed by many poor Venezuelans as an out-of-touch elite, the opposition now enjoys majority support.

It thrashed the government in 2015 parliamentary elections, but was blocked from holding a referendum on Maduro last year and suffered another blow when 2016 state elections postponed.

Opposition leaders want the 2018 presidential vote brought forward, but there is no sign of that happening and Maduro is creating a controversial “constituent assembly” with authority to rewrite the constitution and shake up public powers.

“The opposition doesn’t understand the constituent assembly, but it does know about death, assassination and terrorism,” Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello told a rally in east Monagas state, condemning violence by opposition supporters.

While the opposition believes it has more momentum than at any other time during Maduro’s four-year presidency, officials appear to be banking on protesters tiring in the streets and are also hoping for rise in oil prices to ease the economic crisis.

(Additional reporting by Marco Bello and Carlos Rawlins in Caracas; Anggy Polanco in San Cristobal, Maria Ramirez in Ciudad Bolivar; editing by Girish Gupta and Tom Brown)

Venezuela opposition seeks Latin American support for ‘democratic agenda’

President of the National Assembly and deputy of the Venezuelan coalition of opposition parties (MUD) Julio Borges talks to the media at the Congress in Lima, Peru, May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Guadalupe Pardo

LIMA (Reuters) – Venezuela’s opposition is asking other Latin American countries to pressure President Nicolas Maduro’s government into implementing a “democratic agenda,” opposition leader Julio Borges said on Thursday.

Borges, the president of Venezuela’s opposition-led National Assembly, traveled to Lima to meet with Peruvian legislators and President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who has been one of Maduro’s most vocal critics among Latin American leaders.

He said the humanitarian crisis and strong protests against Maduro’s socialist government had crossed Venezuela’s borders because of a wave of refugees across the region.

“It’s important – fundamental – that we get several governments in the region to unite in the short term to make sure in Venezuela there exists nothing other than a popular and democratic agenda,” Borges told Reuters.

Venezuela has suffered through more than five weeks of violent anti-government protests in which 39 people have died. The opposition has decried Maduro as an autocrat who has wrecked the OPEC member’s economy, and demanded elections to resolve the political crisis.

Peru recalled its ambassador to Caracas in late March.

Appearing together with Borges in the Presidential Palace later on Thursday, Kuczynski said he had “no desire to interfere in the internal matters of other countries” but that countries in the region must support the wellbeing of Venezuela’s people and provide “humanitarian assistance.”

Kuczynski said he told Borges that “we’re prepared to help with this, to help as part of a group of American countries that are worried about an important neighbor. Venezuela is the number one issue in America.”

Borges said the aim of the strategy of street protests and calls for international pressure was to “break the conscience of the armed forces and the political groups” that still support Maduro, and to avoid more deaths.

He told Peruvian reporters after his speech to Peru’s congress that he would travel to Brazil next week to convene a summit with congressional leaders from across the region to push for a “democratic transition” in Venezuela.

Socialist Venezuela has lost many regional allies as several Latin American countries have moved to the right in recent years.

“There’s a new map in Latin America that I’m sure will strongly support this democratic agenda for Venezuela,” Borges said.

Last week, Borges met with U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security advisor H.R. McMaster, where they agreed on the need to bring Venezuela’s crisis to a quick and peaceful conclusion.

(Reporting by Reuters TV and Marco Aquino; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Alistair Bell and Grant McCool)

Iraqis dig their own wells in battle-scarred Mosul

Iraqi security personnel stand guard during the inaugration of a water treatment plant on the outskirts of Qaraqosh, Iraq, May 7, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

(This May 11 story has been refiled to correct U.N. to U.N. Development Program and adds government in paragraph 11.)

By Ahmed Aboulenein

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – The families start queuing every day near the well in Mosul’s Karaj al-Shamal neighborhood, filling their large plastic containers with sulphurous, nearly undrinkable water.

As the battle to clear out Islamic State drags on around them, the residents of the wrecked city in northern Iraq have given up waiting for the government or international aid groups and started digging their own water out of the rubble.

They don’t always hit the cleanest sources.

“We have no water, no electricity, no salaries, and no food. What are we supposed to do? Eat grass?” says 56-year-old Fasla Taher, as she take her containers home to the nine orphans and two widowed daughters under her care.

Shaker Mahmoud, a carpenter and day laborer, says he helped dig the well, funded by a local benefactor. The same unnamed donor has paid for five others in the area and local charities have dug some more.

Families try boiling the water to make it safer to drink, but the smell and the taste linger. “It is not fit to drink. I took it to a lab once and they said it was 15-25 percent sulfur,” says Mahmoud.

The supply is still invaluable for washing – at least 10 children had died in the area because of unsanitary conditions since the fighting started.

Islamic State militants overran the city in 2014, taking it as their biggest base in Iraq and triggering counter-attacks that have destroyed large parts of the infrastructure, including the water pipes.

A government offensive that started in October has cleared the militants out of the eastern side of the city. But the ultra-conservative militants are holed up in the Old City on the western side of the Tigris river and fighting seems to have stalled.

WATER TREATMENT

The United Nations Development Program and the government this week also reopened a water sanitation plant, part of a program that they hope will supply all re-taken areas in three months – still a long wait for the residents.

“It’s now been weeks, months really, since there has been safe drinking water here and that is why the opening of this water treatment plant is just so important today,” Lise Grande, UNDP Resident Representative for Iraq, told Reuters on Sunday.

About another 25 other plants are in line for repairs.

Beyond Mosul itself, officials say it will take $35 billion to restore all facilities in surrounding Nineveh province, though the central government in Baghdad has not yet made funds available.

Back in Karaj al-Shamal, the residents are still doing the work for themselves, as they wait for their own treatment plant to be repaired.

Progress has been slow. Soon after Islamic State quit their area, locals pooled money to repair their pipeline, only to watch it destroyed in an air strike the same day the work finished.

So they resorted to their own wells, and queuing up outside with their large plastic containers.

“This is all set up by generous people. The state is not involved,” Mahmoud says.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Illinois bill expands abortion coverage, faces governor’s veto

FILE PHOTO: Illinois Gov-elect Bruce Rauner speaks to the media after a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama and other Governor-elects from seven U.S. states at the White House in Washington December 5, 2014. REUTERS/Larry Downing/File Photo

By Timothy Mclaughlin

CHICAGO (Reuters) – An Illinois bill that expands state-funded coverage of abortions for low-income residents and state employees passed the Democratic-controlled Senate on Wednesday but faces a likely veto by the state’s Republican governor.

The measure, which passed the Senate 33-22, also aims to keep abortions legal in Illinois if the U.S. Supreme Court follows President Donald Trump’s call to overturn its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling 44 years ago that made abortions legal.

Illinois’ Medicaid program covers abortions in cases of rape, incest and when a mother’s life or health is threatened. The expansion would enable poor women to obtain elective abortions. Also, the legislation would allow state employees to have the procedures covered under state health insurance.

The vote was a rare legislative victory for U.S. abortion-rights advocates at a time when foes have ratcheted up the heat with the election of Trump and a conservative Congress.

However, the victory will likely be short lived because Governor Bruce Rauner has promised to veto the legislation, saying Illinois should focus on less “divisive” issues and instead pass a full-year operating budget for the first time in nearly two years.

A spokeswoman for Rauner directed questions on Wednesday evening to previous statements where he said he did not support the measure. However, as a candidate in 2014, he supported expanding abortion access.

Republican lawmakers have criticized the bill as both burdensome to tax payers and immoral.

“We should be focused on ways to reduce costs—not advance costly controversial proposals that will cost the taxpayers even more,” Republican state senator Dan McConchie said in a statement on Wednesday.

A veto override would take 71 votes in the Democrat-led House, where the bill passed 62-55 in late April. It would take 36 votes in the Senate.

A veto by Rauner would be a sharp turn from his previous position, which political opponents are poised to exploit.

“We cannot allow Illinois to return to the days when women had so few options for reproductive care that they desperately resorted to back-alley quacks, poison, knitting needles, disappearing from public sight or suicide to deal with unwanted pregnancies,” state senator Daniel Biss, a Democrat, said in a statement after the bill passed on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Karen Pierog; Editing by David Gregorio)

California Controller warns that economic downturn may be near

FILE PHOTO - The California flag flies above City Hall in Santa Monica, California, U.S. on February 6, 2009. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo

By Robin Respaut

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – California’s state tax collections in April fell short of expectations, a sign that the state may be headed toward an economic downturn, State Controller Betty Yee warned on Wednesday.

Collections totaled $15.98 billion, $1.05 billion or 6.2 percent short of the governor’s projected budget for the month.

“April is usually the state’s biggest tax filing month, so lower-than-expected personal income tax receipts are troubling,” said Yee, the state’s chief fiscal officer, in a statement.

“While we await the governor’s May Revision, this is another signal that we may be inching towards an economic downturn, and we must tailor our spending accordingly.”

California has collected $96.88 billion during the first 10 months of fiscal 2017, which ends June 30. That means the state is $1.83 billion behind last summer’s budget estimates and $211.3 million shy of January’s revised fiscal year-to-date predictions.

Governor Jerry Brown plans to release on Thursday his mid-year revision of the proposed state budget for fiscal 2018. The revised budget is expected to reflect changes in the state’s financial position since January.

For the month of April, during which California tends to collect about 17 percent of its personal income tax receipts, collections lagged by 5.3 percent. Retail sales and use tax receipts fell short of projections in the governor’s proposed 2017-18 budget by $106.7 million, or 13.3 percent. Corporation tax receipts for April were 13.8 percent lower than estimates in the budget.

In January, Governor Brown proposed a $179.5 billion state budget for fiscal 2018, a 5 percent increase over this year, but he warned that the state must remain fiscally prudent ahead of an inevitable economic downturn.

California is especially vulnerable to downturns, because the state is more reliant than most on capital gains taxes, a volatile revenue source, and less on property tax revenue, which is more stable.

(Reporting by Robin Respaut; Editing by Richard Chang)

Venezuela protesters fling feces at soldiers; unrest takes 2 more lives

Opposition supporters clash with riot security forces while rallying against President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, May 10, 2017. REUTERS/Marco Bello

(This story contains language in second paragraph that some readers may find offensive)

By Andrew Cawthorne and Carlos Rawlins

CARACAS (Reuters) – Young Venezuelan protesters lobbed bottles and bags of feces at soldiers who fought with tear gas on Wednesday to block the latest march in more than a month of nationwide protests against socialist President Nicolas Maduro.

The extraordinary scenes, in what was dubbed the “Shit March” on the main highway through Caracas, came as thousands of opposition supporters again poured onto the streets decrying Venezuela’s economic crisis and demanding elections.

“These kids live in a dictatorship, they have no other option but to protest however they see fit,” said Maria Montilla, 49, behind lines of youths with masks, slingshots and makeshift wooden shields.

Many carried stones and so-called “Poopootov cocktails” – feces stuffed into small glass bottles – that they threw when National Guard troops blocked their path, firing gas and turning water cannons on the crowds.

“There’s nothing explosive here. It’s our way of saying, ‘Get lost Maduro, you’re useless!'” said one young protester, who asked not to be named, between tossing bottles of feces.

The state prosecutor’s office said 27-year-old Miguel Castillo was killed during Wednesday’s protests in Caracas, without giving details. Motorbike taxi driver Anderson Dugarte, 32, died on Wednesday in the Andean city of Merida after being injured in a protest.

Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said in comments broadcast by state television that Dugarte was killed by a sniper linked to the opposition’s Democratic Unity coalition. He said Castillo also was killed by a firearm.

At least 39 people have died in the unrest since early April, including protesters, government sympathizers, bystanders, and security forces. Hundreds have also been hurt and arrested.

Maduro says foes are seeking a coup with U.S. encouragement.

The opposition, which enjoys majority support after years in the shadow of the ruling Socialist Party, says authorities are denying a solution to Venezuela’s crisis by thwarting a referendum, delaying local elections and refusing to bring forward the 2018 presidential vote.

They are seeking to vary tactics to keep momentum going and supporters energized.

The government accused the opposition of breaking international treaties on biological and chemical weapons by throwing feces.

Maduro is seeking to create a new super body called a “constituent assembly,” with authority to rewrite the constitution and shake up public powers. Foes dismiss it as an attempt to keep the socialists in power by establishing a biased new assembly.

“They closed all the democratic doors, we warned how dangerous that would be for our country,” said opposition leader Henrique Capriles, joining protesters on the highway.

“FAITHFUL TO CHAVEZ”

In downtown Caracas, government supporters also rallied, dancing salsa and waving pictures of Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez who remains venerated by many, especially the poor.

“I’m here to support the constituent process, which brings opportunities to resolve the crisis,” said agriculture worker Ilian Leon, 40. “We’re faithful to Chavez’s legacy.”

Rights group Penal Forum says 1,991 people have been detained since April 1, with 653 still behind bars.

Opposition leaders have complained the government is processing 250 detainees via military courts.

The state prosecutor’s office, which has in recent months, been dissenting from the government over judicial matters, said 14 prisoners accused of destroying a statue of Chavez in western Zulia state should be judged in civilian not military courts.

“They are not military officials, so it is wrong to judge them in that jurisdiction,” it said, without mentioning other cases raised by the opposition.

Maduro, 54, a former bus driver and foreign minister under Chavez, and his allies appear to be hoping the opposition will run out of steam and are banking on a rise in oil prices to help assuage four years of recession.

They are seizing on vandalism by young opposition hotheads who burn rubbish in the streets and smash public property, to depict the whole movement as intent on violence.

The protests so far have failed to garner massive support from poorer, traditionally pro-Chavez sectors of Venezuela’s 30 million people. But a bigger cross-section of society has been apparent at recent marches, some of which drew hundreds of thousands.

Looting has been breaking out in some cities, especially at night.

Chavez’s former spy-master, Miguel Torres, has broken with Maduro’s government, despite having served as interior minister and fighting against protests in 2014. He warned on Wednesday that the violence in Venezuela may be getting out of control.

“What is happening may be the starting point for a huge armed confrontation between Venezuelans,” he told Reuters.

“Nobody wants that.”

(Additional reporting by Jackson Gomez, Andreina Aponte, Girish Gupta, Corina Pons and Diego Ore in Caracas; Editing by Tom Brown and Bill Trott)