CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela's government said Friday it will order former opposition candidate Edmundo González to provide sworn testimony in an ongoing investigation into what it considers attempts to spread panic in the South American country by contesting the results of last month's presidential election.
It's the latest attempt by Nicolas Maduro's government to crack down on opponents who claim they handily defeated the self-declared socialist leader.
Maduro has refused to recognize defeat and claims he won the July 28 election by more than 1 million votes, even though tally sheets by González's campaign and published online show the president lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin. The U.S., United Nations and others said the vote lacked credibility and even some of Maduro's leftist allies in Latin America have called on him to publish the voting records.
Venezuela's Attorney General Tarek William Saab at a press conference Friday accused the former candidate of trying to “illegally usurp responsibilities that belong exclusively” to the National Electoral Council.
González went into hiding after the July 28 vote as security forces have rounded up more than 2,000 demonstrators and political activists for challenging the official results. He's been joined underground by opposition leader María Corina Machado, who picked González as a last minute stand-in after her own candidacy was disqualified.
Ruling party stalwarts have called for González and Machado’s arrest but so far authorities have held off.
The Biden administration on Friday condemned a ruling by Venezuela's Supreme Court certifying Maduro's win. The high court on Thursday said it had performed an audit of the results and found they matched the results announced by electoral authorities, adding that the tally sheets published online by the opposition were forged.
“This ruling lacks all credibility, given the overwhelming evidence that Gonzalez received the most votes on July 28,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said. "Continued attempts to fraudulently claim victory for Maduro will only exacerbate the ongoing crisis."
Thanks to a superb ground game on election day, opposition volunteers managed to collect copies of voting tallies from 80% of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide. The tally sheets printed by each voting machine carry a QR code that makes it easy for anyone to verify the results and are almost impossible to replicate.
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres on Friday called on Venezuela to act in a transparent manner and expressed concern about human rights violations.
Meanwhile, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose government is leading an attempt with Brazil and Colombia to resolve the dispute, said Friday that he will withhold recognizing Maduro as the winner until a breakdown of results are published.
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AP Writer Edith Lederer at the United Nations, Courtney Bonnell in Washington and Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this report. Goodman reported from Miami
FILE - Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez attends a campaign event before the election in Caracas, Venezuela, June 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)
BOSTON (AP) — A study that explores the feasibility of using pigeons to guide missiles and one that looks at the swimming abilities of dead fish were among the winners Thursday of this year’s Ig Nobels, the prize for comical scientific achievement.
Held less than a month before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced, the 34th annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was organized by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine’s website to make people laugh and think. Winners received a transparent box containing historic items related to Murphy’s Law — the theme of the night — and a nearly worthless Zimbabwean $10 trillion bill. Actual Nobel laureates handed the winners their prizes.
“While some politicians were trying to make sensible things sound crazy, scientists discovered some crazy-sounding things that make a lot of sense,” Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine, said in an e-mail interview.
The ceremony started with Kees Moliker, winner of 2003 Ig Noble for biology, giving out safety instructions. His prize was for a study that documented the existence of homosexual necrophilia in mallard ducks.
“This is the duck,” he said, holding up a duck. “This is the dead one.”
After that, someone came on stage wearing a yellow target on their chest and a plastic face mask. Soon, they were inundated with people in the audience throwing paper airplanes at them.
Then, the awards began — several dry presentations which were interrupted by a girl coming on stage and repeatedly yelling “Please stop. I'm bored.” The awards ceremony was also was broken up by an international song competition inspired by Murphy's Law, including one about coleslaw and another about the legal system.
The winners were honored in 10 categories, including for peace and anatomy. Among them were scientists who showed a vine from Chile imitates the shapes of artificial plants nearby and another study that examined whether the hair on people's heads in the Northern Hemisphere swirled in the same direction as someone's hair in the Southern Hemisphere.
Other winners include a group of scientists who showed that fake medicine that causes side effects can be more effective than fake medicine that doesn't cause side effects and one showing that some mammals are cable of breathing through their anus — winners who came on stage wearing a fish-inspired hats.
Julie Skinner Vargas accepted the peace prize on behalf of her late father B.F. Skinner, who wrote the pigeon-missile study. Skinner Vargas is also the head of the B.F. Skinner Foundation.
“I want to thank you for finally acknowledging his most important contribution,” she said. “Thank you for putting the record straight.”
James Liao, a biology professor at the University of Florida, accepted the physics prize for his study demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout.
“I discovered that a live fish moved more than a dead fish but not by much,” Liao said, holding up a fake fish. “A dead trout towed behind a stick also flaps its tail to the beat of the current like a live fish surfing on swirling eddies, recapturing the energy in its environment. A dead fish does live fish things.”
Professor James Liao displays a stuffed fish while accepting a prize for physics for demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout during a performance at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
A team of researchers perform a demonstration during a performance showing that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus while accepting the 2024 Ig Nobel prize in physiology at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass., Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
People in the audience throw paper airplanes toward the stage during a performance at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
FILE - Students walk past the "Great Dome" atop Building 10 on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, Mass, April 3, 2017. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
