A fresh wave of violence claimed at least seven lives, including a baby, in Nicaragua as international criticism mounted against the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega over its response to the protests against his rule.
The clashes began on Friday evening, hours after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights presented a report saying that the Nicaraguan government has violated human rights during the protests, which started in mid-April and have been met by a heavy-handed crackdown by security forces and allied civilian groups.
Opposition and civic groups called off a march planned for Saturday afternoon to honor those killed in the latest clashes.
The organizers said they wanted to avoid further bloodshed.
Saturday was also Father’s Day in Nicaragua.
Protesters are calling for Ortega’s ouster and opposition groups want presidential elections to be moved up by two years to next year. Nicaragua has no term limits and Ortega has yet to respond to the demand for early elections.
The Roman Catholic Church is mediating talks between opposition groups and the government, and Nicaraguan bishops have called for discussions to resume today.
Pablo Abrao, executive secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said on Twitter on Saturday that a technical team from the commission would meet with state authorities, members of civil society and religious leaders today.
Alvaro Leiva, director of the Nicaraguan Pro-Human Rights Association, told Nicaraguans to be on alert for further violence, saying that more than 215 people have died since the unrest began.
“There’s a savage repression, there are executions, deaths, persecutions, kidnappings and a high risk of further bloodshed,” Leiva said.
A one-year-old was among those killed on Saturday.
The Nicaraguan police said the boy was struck by a bullet fired by a delinquent trying to prevent authorities from clearing road barricades in the capital, Managua.
However, his mother told a local TV station that police shot her son.
Two men were also shot dead nearby, local media reported.
The National Autonomous University of Nicaragua also came under attack early on Saturday.
Two students were killed, more than a dozen were wounded and at least six were missing, said priest Raul Zamora, who helped secure a ceasefire.
Students took over the state university in Managua nearly two months ago.
Two people were killed in the city of Masaya, where bishops had negotiated a truce just days earlier, the Red Cross said.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
In the East Room of the White House on a particularly frigid Saturday afternoon, US President Joe Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 of the most famous names in politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy and science. Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton aroused a standing ovation from the crowd as she received her medal. Clinton was accompanied to the event by her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and grandchildren. Democratic philanthropist George Soros and actor-director Denzel Washington were also awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor in a White House
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply