Venezuela crisis: White House 'will respond to threats against diplomats'
The US has warned Venezuela that any threats against American diplomats or opposition leader Juan Guaidó will be met with "a significant response".
National Security Adviser John Bolton said any such "intimidation" would be "a grave assault on the rule of law".
His warning comes days after the US and more than 20 other countries recognised Mr Guaidó as interim president.
Meanwhile, Mr Guaidó has called for anti-government protests on Wednesday and Saturday.
The political crisis in Venezuela now appears to be reaching boiling point amid growing efforts by the opposition to unseat Mr Maduro.
Juan Guaidó: Venezuela has chance to leave chaos behind
Exclusive: self-declared interim president tells the Guardian he is set on forcing out Nicolás Maduro
In one of his first interviews since last Wednesday’s surprise move, Juan Guaidó told the Guardian he was set on “getting the job done” to force Nicolás Maduro from power and ending a humanitarian emergency which has fuelled the largest exodus in modern Latin American history.
Guaidó said a combination of international backing, opposition unity and a reinvigorated grassroots support meant Venezuela now had a unique chance “to leave the chaos behind”.
‘Colombia of Europe’: How tiny Albania became the continent’s drug trafficking headquarters
'Albania is no longer a hub of cultivation. It’s become a centre of investment, distribution, and recruitment'
Borzou DaragahiOff the coast of Durres, Albania
The white fishing boat with the green stripe bobs up in down in rough Adriatic waters. Sirens on, the joint Italian-Albanian coast guard zodiacs precariously sidle up alongside, demanding to be let aboard to search the boat’s interior for contraband. The boat operator, dressed in orange jumpsuit, shrugs and complies. Two more guys emerge from the hold.
Once, finding drugs bound for the rest of the Europe inside the boats trawling the sea was simple – just look for the huge bales of cannabis stashed in the cargo hold. But several years ago, the Albanian authorities launched an aggressive eradication effort in the countryside of the small, poor Balkan state, hoping that destroying the cannabis fields and arresting some of the growers would decrease the power of the traffickers, rid the country of its pariah status, and help ease its entry into the European Union.
China jails rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang for subversion
A court in Tianjin has sentenced prominent human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang to 4 1/2 years in prison for subversion of state power. The 42-year-old went missing in 2015 amid a crackdown on activists and lawyers.
Human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang has been handed a 4 1/2 year jail term for state subversion by a court in northern China.
The No. 2 Intermediate People's Court in the city of Tianjin announced the verdict on its website on Monday. It said Wang's political rights would also be withheld for five years.
The No. 2 Intermediate People's Court in the city of Tianjin announced the verdict on its website on Monday. It said Wang's political rights would also be withheld for five years.
Wang, 42, is known for defending political activists as well as victims of government land seizures and police torture.
Women. Life. Freedom. Female fighters of Kurdistan
Story by Sarah Lazarus
Photographs by Sonja Hamad
Photographs by Sonja Hamad
While there is no official count, it is believed that 30% to 40% of combatants in Kurdistan are women.
After the Syrian war began in 2011, Berlin-based photographer Sonja Hamad saw many images of Kurdish female fighters -- but felt they did not do the women justice. "The images were very sensational," she says. "The women were depicted in the same way as men -- always holding weapons. The pictures didn't say anything about the women as individuals."
Born to Kurdish Yazidi parents in Damascus, Syria, in 1986, Hamad was 3 years old when her family moved to a small town in Germany's North Rhine-Westphalia state.
Trump claimed women were gagged with tape. Then Border Patrol tried to find some evidence.
An internal email, sent 2 weeks after Trump started making the claim, asked agents for “any information” about what Trump was describing.
By
It’s become a staple of President Donald Trump’s riffs on the horrors of the US-Mexico border, something he knows by heart so well that he doesn’t even need it scripted on a teleprompter: Human traffickers gag women with tape so they can’t even breathe before packing them into vans and driving them across the border illegally.
But two weeks after Trump had started talking about tape-gagged women — when a January 17 Washington Post article had questioned the claim — a top Border Patrol official had to email agents to ask if they had “any information” that the claim was actually true.
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