CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s crisis quickly escalated on Wednesday, as an opposition leader backed by the Trump administration declared himself interim president in a direct challenge to embattled socialist Nicolas Maduro, who retaliated by breaking off relations with the United States, his biggest trade partner.
For the past two weeks, ever since Maduro took the oath for a second six-year term in the face of widespread international condemnation, the newly-invigorated opposition had been preparing for nationwide demonstrations Wednesday coinciding with the anniversary marking the end of Venezuela’s last military dictatorship in 1958.
While Maduro has shown no signs of leaving, his main rival, National Assembly President Juan Guaido, upped the ante by declaring himself interim president before masses of anti-government demonstrators — the only way, he said, to rescue Venezuela from “dictatorship.”
The U.S. led a chorus of Western hemisphere nations, including Canada, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, that immediately backed the bold challenge, with President Donald Trump calling on Maduro to resign and promising to use the “full weight” of the U.S. economic and diplomatic power to push for the restoration of Venezuela’s democracy.
WASHINGTON — A strong majority of Americans blame President Donald Trump for the record-long government shutdown and reject his primary rationale for a border wall, according to a new poll that shows the turmoil in Washington is dragging his approval rating to its lowest level in more than a year.
Overall, 34 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance in a survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s down from 42 percent a month earlier and nears the lowest mark of his two-year presidency. The president’s approval among Republicans remains close to 80 percent, but his standing with independents is among its lowest points of his time in office.
“Trump is responsible for this,” said poll respondent Lloyd Rabalais, a federal contractor from Slidell, Louisiana, who’s not affiliated with either political party.
The 47-year-old has been furloughed for more than a month. He said he’d need to start drawing on his retirement savings next week to pay his bills if the shutdown continues.
“I do support a wall, but not the way he’s handling it,” Rabalais added. “Trump guaranteed everybody that Mexico would pay for the wall. Now he’s holding American workers like me hostage.”
SEBRING, Fla. — A gunman who opened fire inside a Florida bank Wednesday afternoon killed five people before surrendering to SWAT negotiators, police said.
Zephen Xaver, 21, was arrested after the shooting at a SunTrust branch, Sebring police Chief Karl Hoglund said at a news conference.
“Today’s been a tragic day in our community,” Hogland said. “We’ve suffered significant loss at the hands of a senseless criminal doing a senseless crime.”
The victims were not immediately identified.
A man called police dispatch Wednesday afternoon and reported that he had fired shots inside the bank, Hoglund said. Initial negotiations failed to persuade the barricaded man to leave the bank, so the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team entered the building to continue negotiations, and the man eventually surrendered, he said.
PARK HILLS, Ky. — Less than a week ago, Covington Catholic High School was known mostly for its seven state titles in football and its rousing motto, “A spirit that will not die.”
By Tuesday, its phones had been shut off, its website and social media accounts had gone dark, police cars were barricading its entrances, and classes were canceled along with a basketball game as the overwhelmingly white, all-boys school found itself a symbol of the nation’s deep divisions over race, class and culture.
The transformation began with an online video that appeared to show a group of Covington Catholic boys in “Make American Great Again” hats mocking a Native American protester as he beat a ceremonial drum at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Friday. Subsequent videos showed a more complicated three-way confrontation, involving a cluster of men calling themselves the Black Hebrew Israelites who hurled insults at the boys and the Native Americans.
“People saw the original video and took an early side, and they are just not budging from that side,” said Hayden Bode, who graduated from Covington Catholic last year and was part of a small group who came to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington on Tuesday to support the students.
In the wake of the incident, parents, alumni and others have rallied to the school’s defense, with many changing their social media profiles to say things like “I stand with Covington Catholic High School.” Others, though, have gone on the attack against the 586-student school, situated just outside Covington in Park Hills.
NEW YORK — The wife of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman played a key role in his infamous 2015 escape from prison through a tunnel dug into the shower of his cell, a witness tesified Wednesday at the kingpin’s U.S. trial.
Former cartel worker Damaso Lopez Nunez told the jury that Emma Coronel Aispuro helped her husband trade messages with his sons and others who coordinated the breakout at Altiplano prison in central Mexico.
Coronel “was giving us his orders,” Lopez told a New York jury, adding that she also was in on meetings about the escape.
After Guzman was recaptured and thrown in another Mexican lockup, the cartel paid a $2 million bribe to a prison official in exchange for getting him moved back to Altiplano, the witness said. Before that could happen, Guzman was sent in 2017 to the U.S., where he’s been kept in solitary confinement while facing drug-trafficking charges he says have been fabricated by cooperators like Lopez.
From Associated Press