A pregnant woman shot in the head and a Venezuelan National Guard soldier fired on as he tried to clear a roadway have become the latest fatalities in violence tied to anti-government protests in Venezuela, authorities said on Monday.
Adriana Urquiola, 28, died in Guaicaipuro municipality on Sunday night, Guaicaipuro Mayor Francisco Garces said.
Five months pregnant, Urquiola was shot after she left a bus that was stuck in traffic because of a barricade built by anti-government protesters. She had been walking toward the road block when she was shot, but did not appear to have been participating in the protest.
The National Guard member, Sergeant Miguel Antonio Parra, died on Monday during a street demonstration in the southwestern city of Merida, according to Merida Mayor Carlos Garcia.
The opposition politician said Parra was shot when he and two other National Guard soldiers were trying to clear the roadways and were confronted by protesters.
The series of protests against the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government began five weeks ago, less than a year after he succeeded late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and the ensuing violence has claimed at least 32 lives.
As the death toll of the protests continued to rise, so did the political fallout, with the head of the nation’s congress announcing that a top opposition politician had lost her seat and is no longer immune from prosecution for allegedly fomenting violence in the protests.
Venezuelan Assembly President Diosdado Cabello said opposition lawmaker Maria Corina Machado had violated the country’s constitution by addressing the Organization of American States last week at the invitation of Panama, which ceded its seat at the group so she could provide regional diplomats with a first-hand account of the unrest.
Maduro referred to Machado as an “ex-congresswoman” on Saturday, a few days after arresting two opposition mayors for allegedly conspiring with the US to topple his 11-month-old administration.
In Lima, Peru, where she was attending a conference organized by the International Foundation for Liberty, Machado addressed the situation, telling reporters on Monday: “I know very well what my duties and rights are, and I’ll keep fighting and working as a deputy of the National Assembly during these terrible hours through which Venezuela is passing.”
She added that Cabello’s actions “give us more strength and more reasons to continue the fight” and that she intends to return to Venezuela as soon as possible.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
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