 Hello and welcome to Around the World in 8 Minutes, a show by People's Dispatch where we bring stories of struggles from people's movements from across the globe. Today, we report from Buenos Aires on the major developments in the Latin American countries of Venezuela and Colombia. In Venezuela, tensions are high as the Ministry of Defense announced on Monday that the Bolivarian Armed Forces of Venezuela contains an attack on their facilities in Caracas by a group of defecting soldiers. The Ministry of Defense reported that, on January 21, at approximately 2.50 a.m., local time, a small group of soldiers who defected from the Bolivarian National Guard broke into the headquarters of the Urban Security Outpost located in the town of Petare Sucre. They stole a cache of weapons and kidnapped two officers and two National Guard members of the outpost. They were later captured by security forces. The attack was condemned by the Bolivarian Armed Forces as well as the Venezuelan government. This attack comes in the context of several warnings of possible coup attempts being orchestrated by conservative Latin American countries like Brazil and Colombia, along with the United States government. These countries, along with the Venezuelan far-right wing, have declared that they do not recognize the current elected government of Nicolás Maduro. Last year, on August 4, an assassination attempt was orchestrated against President Maduro using drones attached with explosives. The drones were successfully neutralized by the Venezuelan security forces. International organizations have also rallied in solidarity with Bolivarian Venezuela and in support of its legitimate government led by President Nicolás Maduro. Next, we take you to Colombia, where the peace process has reached a critical point. Yesterday morning, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, released a statement claiming responsibility for the car bomb attack at the General Santander Police School that occurred last Thursday in the capital of Colombia, Bogotán. Twenty-one people were killed in the attack and over 80 were injured. The ELN in a statement on Monday reiterated the need to arrive to a political solution to the armed conflict. They declared that the attack was in response to the lack of respect by the Colombian government to adjust your peace proposed by the ELN to maintain a ceasefire from December 23 to January 3. They report that the armed forces carry out attacks during the ceasefire and on December 25, they heavily bombed an ELN camp, which affected a peasant family that lived nearby. The communique states that the General Santander Police School is a military installation, as those trained there participate actively in the counter insurgent war, and as such, it does not constitute a war crime as all victims were combatants, they stated. The group reiterated the need to work towards peace in Colombia and urged the government to resume the peace talks. On Friday, before the ELN had pronounced about the attack, Iván Duque announced that the government will terminate the peace process with the ELN, and he revoked the decree suspending the arrest of the 10 members of the ELN's peace delegation who are currently in Navanacua. He also asked Cuba to hand over the members of the ELN's peace delegation and has also issued the Interpol Red Alert on these members. The peace process, which had been in a critical situation since Duque assumed office in August, has seemingly come to an end, and the war in Colombia, which never left, will be intensified. For more news of people's struggles, we head back to the studio. In our next story, we take you to Tunisia, where the Tunisian General Labour Union conducted a strike of public servants across the country to protest the government's new austerity law. The strike was called on January 16th, after negotiations between the government and the UGTT over the increase of wages for government employees failed. Tunisia is currently on the verge of an economic crisis and has witnessed a rapid increase in unemployment since the nation's transition from an autocratic polity to a multi-party democracy in 2011. The Tunisian government is under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, to take up austerity policies to balance its public debt crisis. The current strike of public sector employees comes less than a month after violent clashes between police and protesters. On December 24th, spontaneous protests began in the city of Kasserine, with people yelling Yezikom or enough of you. These protests were triggered by the widely circulated video of a 32-year-old, under-employed journalist Abdul Razzaq Zorghi's call for revolt and self-immolation. Tunis-based activist Ayub Zaidi told People's Dispatch that he blames the December protest and a self-immolation of Zorghi on the fallout of the new finance law implemented in January 2018. According to him, setting himself up was his way of protesting, his miserable condition, and that of most Tunisian youth. The law laid down an institutional framework for austerity measures to manage the national debt, which included freezing current wages of government employees and raising taxes on goods and services, which in turn raises the cost of living. These measures were met with a month-long protest by the workers in youth across the country, supported by the leftist popular front. We now look at the successful strike by transport workers in India's commercial capital. The BESD, Britain-Mumbai Electricity Supply and Transport Workers in Mumbai, went on a nine-day strike against low wages and privatization attempts. The strike reached a successful conclusion on January 16th, as the management agreed on an interim pay hike for 15,000 employees effective from this month. The best Samyukta Kangar, Krithi Samiti, BS KKS, a joint action committee of different best unions led the strike. BESD is a public sector undertaking based in the city of Mumbai, responsible for providing electricity and operating the city's buses, one of the largest fleet of buses in India. It also runs ferry services between three adjoining cities of Mumbai. As part of the strike, almost 33,000 workers in the transport wing and over half of the 8,000 workers in the electricity wing refused to work. The strike began with a nationwide general strike in India on January 8th, 9th, and went on to become the longest strike in BESD's history. The main demands of the BESD workers included a hike in wages, payment to the long new Diwali bonuses, and the merging of BESD with Mumbai's Civic Body, the Brahman-Mumbai Municipal Council BMC. BMC is India's richest civic body. It was allocated a budget of 27,000 crores in the financial year 2017-18. By bringing BESD under the ambit of BMC, the workers feel that they will be able to get better pay and benefits, as well as the transport services also benefiting by a greater inflow of resources. The BESD was once a premier public transport service in India. Serving as a model for other cities, but years of neglect, moves towards privatization and disinvestment have left it in a deplorable condition, leading to commuters shifting to other modes of transport. The mishandling of the service has led to 21% reduction in the bus fleet size and the discontinuation of at least 18% of the routes in the last five years. Nearly 7,200 staff positions have also been scrapped, causing a further unavailability of human resources to operate the service. The BESD workers face a number of threats with their management, going so far as to send letters to the workers, demanding that they leave the houses allocated to them. That's all for this episode of Around the World in 8 Minutes. For more stories and videos about people's movements, please check out our website, peoplesdispatch.ovg, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.