Venezuela

Planning is under way inside and outside Venezuela to deliver humanitarian aid from the US.

Britain has become the latest European country to declare it will recognise the Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president – unless fair, democratic elections are announced in the next eight days, an ultimatum rejected by the Venezuelan Foreign Minister.

Venezuela’s president was in the middle of his speech at a military commemoration in Caracas when two explosions were heard, causing soldiers to scatter. The government lost little time in describing the incident as an attack involving explosive drones. But firefighters said gas canisters had exploded in a nearby apartment. Meanwhile many of the culprits…

Once magnificent, now dilapidated. The Venezuelan director Jorge Armand’s new film La Soledad is set in a crumbling mansion in Caracas which was once his family home. Now, it is a metaphor for his country’s inexorable slide into decay.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says he’s “very sad” about deaths on the streets of Venezuela during clashes between protestors and police – although when asked if he condemned President Maduro’s actions – he said he condemned “violence by all sides”.  Today President Maduro warned armed anti-government activists that they would face the “maximum penalty”.

Security forces have barred Venezuela’s chief prosecutor from her office – as she accused the authorities of trying to hide corruption and human rights violations.

Pregnant women are advised to avoid countries that have seen outbreaks of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which doctors are linking to unusually high numbers of babies born with brain defects.

Venezuela’s hospitals are in disarray. Betty Zapata reports on a country where inflation is forcing doctors’ salaries below $10 a month and patients are forced to buy life-saving drugs on the street

While the US and UK stand by Israel over its military offensive in Gaza, governments across Latin America have moved to cut their links.

Venezuelan soldiers and officials begin moving hundreds of families out of a half-built 45-storey skyscraper that dominates the Caracus skyline and is thought to be the tallest slum in the world.

Anti-government protesters clashed with National Guard officers in Caracas on Sunday, with masked protesters throwing rocks at police, who responded with water cannon.

In any analysis of Venezuelan politics, it is prudent not to underestimate the vast shadow that former President Hugo Chavez casts over his country, writes Thom Walker.

Protesters battle riot police in the streets of Caracas as three more fatal shootings raised to 25 the death toll from a month of demonstrations in Venezuela.

A female student and a young supermarket worker are the latest fatalities from Venezuela’s political unrest as the death toll from 10 days of violence rises to at least eight.

As the violence in Ukraine threatens to take the country to the brink of civil war, on the other side of the world unrest in Venezuela threatens to do the same.