海角大神

Bangladeshis are reeling from one of the most violent weeks in their country鈥檚 recent history. At the center of the chaos are young people striving to be heard.

鈥⒙燜rench train attacks:聽France鈥檚 high-speed rail network is hit with聽widespread and 鈥渃riminal鈥� acts聽of vandalism including arson attacks, disrupting travel only hours before聽the opening ceremony聽of the Olympic Games.聽
鈥⒙燘ombers near Alaska:聽U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says that Russian and Chinese bombers flew together for the first time in international airspace off the coast of Alaska.
鈥⒙燤exican cartel arrests:聽The U.S. Justice Department says Ismael 鈥淓l Mayo鈥� Zambada, a longtime leader of Mexico鈥檚 Sinaloa cartel, and Joaqu铆n Guzm谩n L贸pez, a son of another infamous cartel leader,聽have been arrested in Texas.
鈥� Clearing homeless encampments:聽California Gov. Gavin Newsom orders state agencies to start removing homeless encampments on state land.

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Three months ago, Edmundo Gonz谩lez Urrutia was still what he had always been 鈥� a soft-spoken and little-known career diplomat who, by his own admission, harbored no political ambitions. Yet on Sunday in Venezuela, he represents the hopes of voters seeking to end more than a quarter century of repressive autocratic rule.

Mr. Gonz谩lez typifies more than just the possibility of a change in government. Polls show him winning by as much as 40% against incumbent President Nicol谩s Maduro. His improbable rise offers a study in how societies recover their ideals of freedom and democracy through humility and civic agency.

鈥淥ur commitment is to rebuild Venezuela ... so that political adversaries see each other as adversaries and not as enemies,鈥� he told Le Monde. 鈥淢y government will be one of reconstruction. Not one of vengeance.鈥澛�

Mr. Gonz谩lez is a stand-in for the more popular and longtime opposition leader Mar铆a Corina Machado. She was banned from holding public office for 15 years after winning a primary election last October with 93% of the vote. In March, Ms. Machado and other opposition leaders rallied behind Mr. Gonz谩lez as her proxy.

That consensus marks a shift in how Venezuelans may emerge from a prolonged period marked by corruption, economic decline, and erosion of democratic principles under Mr. Maduro and his predecessor, the late leftist populist Hugo Ch谩vez.

鈥淧olitical leaders have put the good of the country before everything else and abandoned their ambitions in favor of a candidate who didn鈥檛 want to be one,鈥� wrote Jos茅 Toro Hardy, a Venezuelan economist, in Le Monde.

Ms. Machado and like-minded opponents once saw foreign intervention as critical to change. She gradually came to see that the real source of democratic renewal was in defusing the fear, division, and false patronage that autocracies depend on. 鈥淲e have learned wonderful lessons,鈥� she said in a TED Talk in 2011. 鈥淭he first lesson is that we need collective empowerment to face fear and division. We went from disbelief to being [too] worried to protest, to activism.鈥澛�

Though banned from running for office or even sleeping in hotels or eating in restaurants, she has campaigned across the country without interruption 鈥� not just to promote Mr. Gonz谩lez, but to strengthen a sense among ordinary Venezuelans that freedom is based on individual dignity and self-worth. While she shies away from expressing her faith in public, she has characterized that message as a 鈥渟piritual fight.鈥�

Venezuela, wrote the writer and poet Pedro Varguillas Vielma in the magazine Nacla, is 鈥渁 country in tatters, held together by its people.鈥� If voters reject Mr. Maduro on Sunday, few see him leaving peacefully. That does not unsettle Mr. Gonz谩lez and Ms. Machado. 鈥淥ur strength is in redemption and unity,鈥� she posted on the social platform X recently.聽 In one of the most troubled corners of Latin America, the light of democratic virtue is breaking through.