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Collapse of illegal open pit gold mine in Venezuelan jungle leaves multiple people dead
At least 16 people died when an illegal gold mine collapsed in the jungles of southern Venezuela, officials said Wednesday, revising down an earlier figure.
The incident happened Tuesday at the “Bulla loca” mine in the state of Bolivar, a seven-hour boat ride from the nearest town, La Paragua, where family members waited anxiously for news.
Officials gave conflicting accounts of the number of dead.
REUTERS TV / REUTERS
The Bolivar state’s secretary of citizen security, Edgar Colina Reyes, said 16 people were dead. President Nicolas Maduro said another 11 were injured.
“I convey my condolences to the families and friends of these people who unfortunately died in this accident,” Maduro said on state television.
But earlier in the day, Yorgi Arciniega, mayor of the Angostura municipality, told AFP that about 23 bodies had been recovered, including 15 that had arrived by boat in La Paragua and about another eight on their way.
Deputy Minister of civil protection Carlos Perez Ampueda published a video of the incident on X and referred to “a massive” toll, though providing no numbers. Some 200 people were thought to have been working in the mine, according to officials.
The video showed dozens of people working in the shallow waters of an open pit mine when a wall of earth slowly collapses on them. Some managed to flee while others were engulfed.
Miner Carlos Marcano, 71, called the situation at the mine “terrifying.”
In La Paragua Wednesday, he told The Associated Press, “One would not want a colleague, a human being, to die like that. Some of us made it. There are a few wounded, but there are still a number of dead who have not been rescued and are buried there.”
Mayor Arciniega, who had earlier spoken of 15 people injured, said four had been brought by boat to La Paragua by Wednesday afternoon to receive treatment.
Colina Reyes said the injured were being transported to a hospital in the regional capital Ciudad Bolivar, four hours from La Paragua, which is 460 miles southeast of the capital Caracas.
Waiting for word
Relatives waited on the shores for news of their breadwinners.
“My brother, my brother, my brother,” cried one as he saw a body being taken off a boat.
REUTERS TV / REUTERS
“We ask that they support us with helicopters to remove the injured,” a woman waiting for news on her brother-in-law, a father of three, told AFP.
Reyes said the military, firefighters and other organizations were “moving to the area by air” to evaluate the situation.
Rescue teams were also being flown in from Caracas to aid in the search.
“We are evaluating the damage and doing a rescue analysis,” added Ampueda.
In December last year, at least 12 people were killed when a mine in the Indigenous community of Ikabaru, in the same region, collapsed.
“Bound to happen”
The Bolivar region is rich in gold, diamonds, iron, bauxite, quartz and coltan. Aside from state mines, there is also a booming industry of illegal extraction.
“This was bound to happen,” resident Robinson Basanta told AFP of the unsafe working conditions of the miners, most of whom live in extreme poverty.
“This mine has yielded a lot of gold. … People go there out of necessity, to make ends meet,” he said.
Activists denounce “ecocide” in the area and the exploitation of children who work long hours without protection.
In the past year, the Venezuelan Armed Forces evicted some 14,000 illegal miners from the Yapacana National Park in the neighboring state of Amazonas.
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COVER STORY: The story of Handel’s “Messiah”
Since its premiere in 1742, George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah,” a 3.5-hour work for chorus, soloists and orchestra that includes the “Hallelujah Chorus,” has become one of the most-heard pieces of classical music on Earth. Correspondent David Pogue looks back on the creation of this masterwork with author Charles King and conductor-musicologist Jane Glover, and examines how Biblical passages assembled by a wealthy English landowner suffering from doom and despair would, in the hands of the German-British opera composer, become a timeless message of hope, and a Christmas tradition.
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ARTS: In Asheville, N.C., gingerbread houses reflect community spirit
For more than three decades, Asheville, North Carolina, has hosted the National Gingerbread Contest, a celebration of Christmas, creativity and carbohydrates. The flooding brought by Hurricane Helene this past fall cancelled the contest, but what had been a destination event for bakers and spectators has become an ad hoc celebration of Asheville. Forty-one gingerbread creations have been placed around town to help bring holiday cheer (as well as attract donations and tourist dollars) to the struggling city. Correspondent Conor Knight reports.
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Visionary director Werner Herzog has made more than 20 feature films and more than 30 documentaries. But it wasn’t movies that prompted the German-born filmmaker to move to Los Angeles; it was love. He talks with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz about his recent memoir, “Every Man for Himself and God Against All”; about the epic making of his 1982 classic, “Fitzcarraldo”; and why he enjoys acting – when he gets to play the villain.
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HEADLINES: Why drone hysteria has taken off
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PASSAGE: In memoriam
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WORLD: West Bank settlements, and the expanding divide of Israelis and Palestinians
Inside the occupied West Bank, the Israeli settlement of Karnei Shomron is one of more than a hundred carved into Palestinian land. Today, upwards of 700,000 Israelis live in communities scattered inside the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the United Nations calls illegal. About 15% of settlers are Americans. Correspondent Seth Doane talks with two settlers, originally from West Virginia and Detroit, and with Palestinians in the West Bank now living on the other side of an Israeli security barrier.
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COMMENTARY: Bob Dylan’s enduring love affair with the movies
The iconic Bob Dylan has long been a silver screen presence – as an actor, a subject of documentaries, and as portrayed by Hollywood heavyweights, from Christian Bale to Timothée Chalamet (star of the new biopic “A Complete Unknown”). But as historian Douglas Brinkley points out, Dylan’s love of movies has been a recurring theme in his art, and his persona, all his life.
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SUNDAY PROFILE: Darren Criss
Kelefa Sanneh reports.
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MUSIC: A Darren Criss performance
COMMENTARY: Reflections on the messages of Christmas and Hanukkah
Wednesday will mark both Christmas Day and the first night of Hanukkah. Mariann Budde, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., and author and rabbi Steve Leder, of Los Angeles, offer their thoughts on what the holiday season means to us all.
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MUSIC: Darren Criss performs with the Young People’s Chorus of New York City
NATURE: TBD
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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Hollywood Legends IV (YouTube Video)
Watch more classic “Sunday Morning” interviews with some of the film industry’s most luminous stars. From 2014, Leonardo DiCaprio talks about the making of “The Wolf of Wall Street”; from 2012, Jane Fonda discusses what she calls her “third and final act”; from 2015, Russell Crowe talks about his first film as a director, “The Water Diviner”; from 2010, Harrison Ford describes stardom and his responsibility to his audience; and from 2018, Denzel Washington discusses his career on screen and on stage, as he appears in a Broadway revival of the Eugene O’Neill classic, “The Iceman Cometh.”
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Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo filed a lawsuit Thursday against a former aide who alleged he sexually harassed her in 2020. His legal filing came just days after she withdrew her own lawsuit against him.
In the filing, Cuomo’s lawyers claimed Charlotte Bennett, a former executive assistant in his office, lied about him making sexual advances toward her.
“Governor Cuomo did not make any sexual advances toward Bennett and did not sexually harass her,” his lawyers wrote in a notice filed in New York state court on Thursday.
Bennett was the second woman to accuse the then-governor of sexual harassment, which she said included telling her he was “lonely” and asking her if she would be open to sex with an older man. She described Cuomo as “a textbook abuser” who made her “deeply uncomfortable.”
After Bennett went public with her allegations in March 2021, Cuomo held a press conference where he said he felt “embarrassed” and that he “never knew at the time I was making anyone feel uncomfortable.”
In Thursday’s filing, his lawyers wrote the former governor faced “a cascade of harm” as a result of Bennett’s allegations.
Cuomo resigned in August 2021 after New York’s attorney general released the results of an investigation that concluded he had sexually harassed at least 11 women, including Bennett.
When that investigation came out, Cuomo denied ever sexually harassing women. “The facts are much different than what has been portrayed,” Cuomo said at the time. “I never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances.”
Last week, Bennett dropped a separate federal suit she had filed in 2022 accusing Cuomo of sexual harassment. In a statement posted by her attorney on X, Bennett cited “invasive discovery requests” made by Cuomo’s legal team that included her medical records from more than a decade ago.
In their filing today, Cuomo’s attorneys note that their discovery requests fell “under the rules that govern all federal lawsuits. They alleged Bennett dropped her suit to avoid being deposed and to “shield the overwhelming evidence of her false claims from ever becoming public.”
Cuomo’s notice said “Bennett’s claims were … exposed as a sham through the discovery process.”
As part of her statement last week, an attorney for Bennett said she would still be pursuing a case against the state of New York, her employer at the time of the alleged harassment. In a separate statement, Bennett called Cuomo’s legal filings “abusive.”
“Throughout this extraordinarily painful two-year case, I’ve many times believed that I’d be better off dead than endure more of his litigation abuse, which has caused extraordinary pain and expense to my family and friends,” Bennett said. “I desperately need to live my life.”
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