Two media firms and several non-governmental organizations (NGO) on Wednesday said that their offices apparently were confiscated by the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, with placards posted at the properties reading: “Property of the Health Ministry.”
The offices in most cases were closed by the government following the 2018 protests against Ortega and have been occupied by police since then.
The signs appeared outside the television station 100% Noticias and the magazine Confidencial, as well at the offices of NGOs Popol Na, Center for Health Information and Advisory Services, and the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights.
The signs indicated that the properties would be used as maternal welfare or drug treatment centers.
Journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro, owner of the building where Confidencial had its offices, said that “the regime is officially practicing confiscation, in violation of Nicaragua’s constitution.”
“We have lived in a state of total illegality for two years, and today Ortega has confirmed there is no rule of law in Nicaragua,” Chamorro said.
Miguel Mora, the director of 100% Noticias, wrote on his social media accounts that “in practice, this is bald-faced robbery. No expropriation order exists ... there has been no legal ruling about the property of 100% Noticias.”
At least 325 people were killed in anti-government protests in 2018, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Starting in April 2018, Nicaragua’s economy was devastated by nearly five months of unrest initially sparked by cuts to social security benefits, but which quickly evolved into calls for Ortega to step down and allow early elections.
Media firms and NGOs accused by Ortega of supporting the protests were raided by police, and in some cases shuttered.
On Monday, the Nicaraguan Congress approved a law that would essentially ban opposition candidates from running in next year’s presidential election.
The law gives Ortega the power to unilaterally declare citizens “terrorists” or coup-mongers, classify them as “traitors to the homeland” and ban them from running as candidates.
When Melinda Gates asked her husband, Microsoft Corp cofounder Bill Gates, to let her coauthor the 2013 annual letter about their foundation, the conversation blew up into a fight. “It got hot,” Melinda Gates wrote in her 2019 book The Moment of Lift. “Bill said the process we had for the Annual Letter had been working well for the foundation for years, and he didn’t see why it should change,” she wrote. Ultimately, Bill Gates agreed for her to write a separate piece about contraceptives, while he penned the main letter about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s work. In the next year’s letter,
Part of a huge rocket that launched China’s first module for its Tianhe space station is falling back to Earth and could make an uncontrolled re-entry at an unknown landing point. The 30m-high core of the Long March 5B rocket on Thursday launched the “Heavenly Harmony” uncrewed core module into low Earth orbit from Wenchang in China’s Hainan Province. The Long March 5B then itself entered a temporary orbit, setting the stage for one of the largest-ever uncontrolled re-entries. Some experts fear it could land on an inhabited area. “It’s potentially not good,” said Jonathan McDowell, astrophysicist at the Astrophysics Center at Harvard
CIA INVOLVED: US senators issued a statement after reports said more mysterious attacks had taken place in Miami and Washington, including near the White House US senators on Friday said that the government is investigating an apparent increase in mysterious directed-energy attacks dubbed “Havana syndrome,” amid new reports of potentially brain-damaging incidents inside the country. US senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio, who lead the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, issued a statement after two media reports said attacks had taken place in Washington, including just outside the White House, and in Miami, Florida. “For nearly five years, we have been aware of reports of mysterious attacks on United States government personnel in Havana, Cuba and around the world,” they said. “This pattern of attacking our
Malaysian teenager Ain Husniza Saiful Nizam came home from school last week and posted a video on TikTok, taking a male teacher to task over an alleged joke about rape during class. The video went viral overnight, sparking a nationwide debate on sex education, misogyny and sexual violence in the Southeast Asian nation, where such subjects are often considered taboo. “There’s been numerous students who have been coming forward with their own stories to me ... but people didn’t take any action on what the students had to say, and for me, that is very, very sad,” Ain said. The 17-year-old, who loves
RSS