indictment

Jan. 3 (UPI) — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are indicted on federal charges accusing them of narco-terrorism conspiracy and three related charges.

They also are accused of cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices in a federal grand jury indictment in the U.S. District Court for Southern New York.

“For over 25 years, leaders of Venezuela have abused their positions of public trust and corrupted once-legitimate institutions to import tons of cocaine into the United States,” said Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for Southern New York, in the federal indictment.

Maduro “is at the forefront of that corruption and has partnered with his co-conspirators to use his illegally obtained authority and the institutions he corroded to transport thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States,” Clayton said.

He said Maduro has “tarnished every public office he has held” by engaging in narco-trafficking while protected by Venezuelan law enforcement since at least 1999.

Clayton accuses Maduro of partnering with criminal organizations, including the Sinaloa and Zetas cartels in Mexico and Tren de Aragua in Venezuela, and Colombian Marxist rebel groups Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia aka FARC and Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional aka ELN to engage in narco-trafficking.

He said Maduro provided drug traffickers with diplomatic passports and diplomatic cover for planes used by money launderers to retrieve drug proceeds from Mexico and fly them to Venezuela.

Maduro “now sits atop a corrupt, illegitimate government that for decades has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking,” Clayton argued.

He said Maduro illegitimately claimed to have won the 2018 Venezuelan election for president after succeeding former President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, while Maduro was vice president.

Maduro also falsely claimed to have won Venezuela’s 2024 election and never has been a legitimately elected president, according to Clayton.

Maduro’s wife, Flores, also been a highly placed politician in Venezuela and was president of the National Assembly and attorney general before marrying Maduro in 2013.

Both are accused of participating in, perpetuating and protecting a “culture of corruption in which powerful Venezuelan elites enrich themselves through drug trafficking and the protection of their partner drug traffickers,” Clayton said.

Venezuela has been a safe haven for drug traffickers who paid for protection and support corrupt Venezuelan officials and military members, who enable them to operate outside the reach of Colombian law enforcement and armed forces that receive anti-narcotics help from the United States.

They ship processed cocaine from Venezuela to the United States “via transshipment points in the Caribbean and Central America, such as Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico,” Clayton said.

State Department officials estimate between 200 and 250 tons of cocaine are trafficked through Venezuela every year.

“The defendants, together and with others, engaged in a relentless campaign of cocaine trafficking” and distributed “thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States,” according to Clayton.

The Maduro’s son, Nicolas Ernesto Maduro Guerra aka Nicolasito aka The Prince also is among four other defendants named in a 25-page federal indictment that was unsealed on Saturday.

None of the other four indicted are in U.S. custody as of Saturday.

Also indicted is Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores aka Nino Guerrero who is the alleged leader of the Tren de Aragua gang that originated in Venezuela.

Diosdado Cabello Rondon, Venezuela’s minister of Interior, Justice and Peace of Venezuela, and Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, who formerly held the same position and is a former naval officer and government liaison with cocaine-producing Marxist FARC rebels in Colombia, also are named in the indictment.

Maduro and his wife likely will be arraigned in federal court next week.

More than two months after an explosion erupted at the Chevron oil refinery in El Segundo, neither the company nor the regulators responsible for monitoring the facility have released details on the cause and the extent of the environmental fallout.

Here’s what we do know so far: Around 9:30 p.m.on Oct. 2, a large fire broke out in the southeast corner of the refinery, where Chevron turned crude oil into jet fuel. The resulting violent blast allegedly wounded several workers on the refinery grounds and rattled homes up to one mile away.

The refinery carried out emergency flaring in an effort to burn off potentially hazardous gases, as public officials told residents in neighborhoods nearby to stay indoors. That warning held until firefighters managed to extinguish the fire the following day.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District — the agency responsible for regulating the refinery’s emissions — said Chevron would submit reports detailing the potential cause of the fire and any unexpected equipment failures within 30 days. But the preliminary reports were handed in nearly a month late — and without any significant updates from what was said in the days immediately following the fire.

In those reports, Chevron said the fire was “unexpected and unforeseeable.” The cause is still under an investigation that probably won’t conclude until next month, an air district spokesperson told me recently.

Company officials said the fire significantly damaged power supply, utilities and gas collection systems in that section of the refinery. Repairs are underway but could take months. Meanwhile, the majority of the 1,000-acre refinery is operational, distilling crude oil into gasoline and diesel.

At an air district meeting on Dec. 2, Chevron asked for leniency from conducting equipment testing at the damaged wing of the refinery that is now offline, and the air district obliged.

One member of the agency’s hearing board, Cynthia Verdugo-Peralta, said she understood that the investigation was “quite involved” but stressed the need for “some type of response” from Chevron on the cause.

“I’m hoping that this will never happen again,” she said. “Hopefully this repair will indeed be a full repair and there won’t be another incident like this.”

Environmental regulators like the South Coast Air Quality Management District often rely on the very industries that they oversee to arrange for monitoring and investigations into disasters. For obvious reasons, that’s not ideal. Experts say this system of self-reporting is somewhat inevitable, given that many government agencies lack the staffing, budget and access to provide adequate oversight.

But it often leaves the public waiting for answers — and skeptical of the findings, when they finally arrive.

For example, there are still serious questions surrounding the air monitoring systems at Chevron’s El Segundo refinery that were supposed to act as a safety net for the public nearby during emergencies like the October fire.

Under state law, refineries are required to install, operate and maintain real-time fence line air monitors. Indeed, over four hours after the Oct. 2 fire at El Segundo, Chevron’s fence line air monitors detected elevated levels of volatile organic compounds, a category of quickly vaporizing chemicals that can be harmful if inhaled.

However, at the time of the incident, the refinery’s monitors oddly did not detect any elevated levels of some of the most common types chemicals that experts say would have been likely to be released during such a fire, such as cancer-causing benzene, a typical byproduct of burning fossil fuels.

Experts are now asking whether those monitors were fully functioning at the time.

Earlier this month, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District fined Chevron’s refinery in Richmond $900,000 after the agency found 20 of the oil company’s fence line monitors were not properly calibrated to detect the full range of emissions, potentially allowing excessive air pollution to go undetected and unreported.

As for the El Segundo facility, neither the South Coast air district nor the refinery could confirm whether the air monitors were working properly on Oct. 2. A spokesperson said the air district is scheduled to audit Chevron’s fence line air monitoring network sometime next year.

But it may already be too late to warn nearby communities. Since October’s explosion, there have been more than a dozen reported incidents of unplanned flaring at Chevron’s refinery in El Segundo, according to air district data.

Each one raises the question: What happened?

More news on air pollution

The holiday season is associated with fragrant candles, incense and gathering around the fireplace. But health experts say these traditions should be done in moderation to avoid respiratory risks, according to Associated Press reporter Cheyanne Mumphrey.

That’s especially true in Southern California, where the air district continues to issue no-burn advisories, prohibiting burning wood to limit unhealthy levels of soot, per Pasadena Now.

Almost a year after the Eaton and Palisades fires, the health effects from breathing wildfire smoke are still coming into focus. L.A. Times science and medicine reporter Corrine Purtill writes that emergency room visits rose 46% for heart attacks at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in the 90 days after the fires. The findings suggest the death toll could be much higher than the 31 fatalities that have been linked with the fires.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta sued the Trump administration — for the 50th time — after the suspension of $3 billion in federal funding that Congress approved for building more electric vehicle chargers, according to Times climate reporter Hayley Smith. California alone stands to lose out on $179.8 million in grants that could help reduce smog and greenhouse gases.

A few last things in climate news

The Trump administration announced it will dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, one of the world’s premier Earth science research institutions, per reporting from the New York Times. Scientists fear this could undermine weather forecasting in an age when global warming is contributing to more intense storms and other natural disasters.

A new analysis from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found the rate of sea-level rise has more than doubled along U.S. coastlines over the last 125 years, according to Washington Post environmental reporter Brady Dennis. The research rebuts a controversial federal assessment published this summer that concluded there was no acceleration in rising ocean waters.

The U.S. and Europe continue to abandon their electric vehicle aspirations, ceding the clean car market to China, Bloomberg auto reporter Linda Lew writes. The European Commission recently scrapped an effective ban on combustion engine vehicles by 2035, and Ford Motor Co. walked away from plans to significantly overhaul its EV production — including the imminent demise of its all-electric Ford 150 Lightning truck.

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