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APRIL 3, 2020 | The Jewish Home
The Week In News
Venezuelan Leaders Charged
The U.S. Department of Justice hit senior Venezuelan leaders, including President Nicholas Maduro, with a slew of criminal charges on Monday. Maduro and the other officials from Venezuela’s military, legislature, and government were charged with narcoterrorism and drug traf-
ficking. The indictments were filed in New York’s Southern District, Washington, D.C., and Miami. The State Department also designated them as international drug traffickers and issued a $15 million bounty for any information that would lead to Maduro’s arrest and conviction. Prosecutors accuse the aforementioned officials of collaborating with Columbia’s FARC terror group to send massive amounts of cocaine into the United States. “We estimate that somewhere between 200 and 250 metric tons of cocaine are shipped out of Venezuela… Those 250 metric tons equates to 30 million lethal doses,” said the Justice Department. Other than Maduro, officials who were charged include Diosdado Cabello Rondón, leader of Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly; Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez; Supreme Court Chief Justice Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios; and ex-military intelligence chief Clíver Antonio Alcalá Cordones. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza denied the charges on Monday, slamming the Trump administration for “using a new form of coup d’état on the basis of
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vulgar, miserable and unfounded accusations” and “trying to minimize the recognition that Venezuela has achieved in the fight against drug trafficking.” “The deep frustration of the White House is a product of the peace that reigns in Venezuela today, whose authorities have managed to neutralize coups and destabilizing attempts planned and financed from the United States,” said Arreaza.
Van Gogh Painting Stolen
A painting by famed artist Vincent Van Gogh was stolen from a Dutch museum last week while it was closed due to the coronavirus. According to police, the breakin occurred at 3:15 a.m. on Monday morning at the Singer Laren Museum in Amsterdam. The thieves made off with the painting known as “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884.” The work was completed by the master in 1884 and was on loan from Holland’s Groninger Museum. It is unknown how much the painting is worth. “I am shocked and unbelievably [annoyed],” said Singer Laren director Jan Rudolph de Lorm. “It is very bad for the Groninger Museum. It’s also very bad for Singer. “But above all it is horrible for all of us, because art is there to be seen and shared by all of us, for society as a whole, to bring enjoyment, to bring inspiration.” The Singer Laren Museum was founded in 1950 to preserve the personal art collection of American steel baron William Henry Singer and his wife Anna. Knowing that the building was empty due to the coronavirus, thieves smashed a glass door to enter the museum. Although they set off an alarm, they managed to escape before police arrived. The Singer Laren Museum has been raided before, with thieves making off with seven sculptures in 2007. The majority of the works were recovered within a few days.
A Couple of Capitals
While most countries around the world have a single capital city, there are a number of nations with two or more capitals. “The very concept of a capital city is relatively new. In 1900, only around 40 countries had capital cities,” wrote professor David Gordon in an introduction to the book, Planning Twentieth Century Capital Cities. That number expanded to over 200 by the year 2000, as the collapse of the French and British empires, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia gave rise to new countries. Gordon, an urban planning professor at Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario, noted that “this is a place where politicians get together to pass laws, where the central administrative apparatus of the country are generally located... There are very much synergies in locating these all together.” In Chile, the capital cities of Santiago and Valparaíso are located 72 miles apart. Santiago, home to the country’s administrative and judicial bodies, rests among mountains, while the national legislature at UNESCO-listed Valparaíso has a colorful sunset view of the Pacific Ocean. Bolivia’s administrative capital, La Paz, is located in the Andes Mountains. Hundreds of miles away sits the constitutional capital of Sucre, where in the early days of colonial rule, nearby mines filled with silver served to raise the city’s profile. In the Czech Republic, the president’s official office is located in Prague Castle, part of the city’s UNESCO-listed historic center. Yet the supreme court sits in the country’s second capital, Brno. The Netherlands’ official capital, Amsterdam, is a common tourist destination with much to see and do. However, the country’s government sits in The Hague, where the state’s general, executive branch, and su-
