NewsGlobal unrest: Protests in Venezuela, quakes in Kamchatka, Swiss arms scandal
Global unrest: Protests in Venezuela, quakes in Kamchatka, Swiss arms scandal
It happened while you were sleeping. Here is what global agencies reported on the night from Saturday to Sunday.
- In the capital of Venezuela - Caracas, and in the capitals of many countries around the world with large Venezuelan immigrant communities, massive protest demonstrations against the falsification of the presidential election results by Nicolas Maduro's dictatorship on July 28th took place on Saturday. According to the government announcement, Maduro had supposedly won just over 51 percent of the votes. Protestors opposed the manipulation of the recent presidential election results. The demonstrators demanded acceptance of the "real outcome of the vote," referring to the success of opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, whose victory is confirmed by documents from more than 80 percent of polling stations. Maria Corina Machado, the opposition leader who faced actions from Maduro's government preventing her from participating in the election, appeared unexpectedly at a large assembly in the capital after two weeks in hiding. Machado announced that the opposition has copies of voting protocols confirming their candidate's overwhelming lead.
- Last Saturday, seismic solid tremors were recorded in the eastern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula. According to information from the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre, the earthquake was magnitude 7.2. A tsunami alert was issued. The tremors, magnitude 7.2, occurred east of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The centre also reported that the earthquake's epicentre was about 90 kilometres east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and the depth at which the phenomenon occurred was 70 kilometres.
- For years, the Swiss army used Lake Lucerne, Lake Thun, and Lake Neuchâtel as dumping grounds for old ammunition, believing it could be stored there safely. An estimated 3,300 tonnes of ammunition are in Lake Lucerne alone, and 4,500 tonnes are in the waters around Neuchâtel, where Swiss air forces practiced bombings until 2021. The Swiss Defence Ministry now offers a cash reward of 50,000 francs for the best idea of removing the ammunition.
- A beach house in the Outer Banks of North Carolina tilted under the pressure of waves before the pilings underneath it gave way, collapsing the entire structure into the sea. A beachgoer posted a video of the collapse on Instagram on August 16th. "The house in Rodanthe, NC, was swallowed by the ocean right before me!" reads the post. National Park Service officials reported that the house's collapse was the seventh incident in Rodanthe in four years and warned visitors to stay away from beaches near the Cape Hatteras coastline.
