Source: Washington Post

DHAKA, Bangladesh — A prominent Bangladeshi-American blogger known for speaking out against religious extremism was hacked to death as he walked through Bangladesh’s capital with his wife, police said Friday.

The attack Thursday night on Avijit Roy, a Bangladesh-born U.S. citizen, occurred on a crowded sidewalk as he and his wife, Rafida Ahmed, were returning from a book fair at Dhaka University. Ahmed, who is also a blogger, was seriously injured. It was the latest in a series of attacks on secular writers in Bangladesh in recent years.

A previously unknown militant group, Ansar Bangla 7, claimed responsibility for the attack, Assistant Police Commissioner S.M. Shibly Noman told the Prothom Alo newspaper.

Roy “was the target because of his crime against Islam,” the group said on Twitter.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/unidentified-attackers-hack-us-blogger-to-death-in-dhaka/2015/02/26/a7b8944a-be30-11e4-9dfb-03366e719af8_story.html?tid=trending_strip_6

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Source: Washington Post

Venezuela’s turbulent politics appear headed for a new phase of confrontation a day after intelligence agents stormed the offices of the Caracas mayor, Antonio ­Ledezma, seizing the opposition leader for his alleged role in what President Nicolás Maduro called an “endless coup.”

Ledezma will be indicted on charges of “conspiracy,” according to a statement released by Venezuelan state prosecutors Friday night after the 59-year-old mayor’s appearance at a Caracas tribunal. He was taken directly to the Ramo Verde military jail, the statement said — the same facility where another opposition leader, Leopoldo López, has been imprisoned for the past year.

In a speech Friday night, Maduro said he would lay out recordings and videos next week in a special broadcast revealing the “gringo intervention in Venezuela” that Ledezma allegedly conspired with. “In Venezuela, no one is untouchable,” he warned.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/venezuela-on-edge-after-caracas-mayor-arrested-on-coup-plot-claims/2015/02/20/47647515-2198-4419-b686-317f124c8d91_story.html

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Looks like the disintegration is starting a bit quicker than I expected

Source: TelegraphUK

For Jose Perez, a Venezuelan taxi driver from Caracas, the hardest part about watching his wife die from heart failure was knowing just how easily she could have been saved.
The surgeons at the Caracas University Hospital were ready to operate on 51-year-old Carmen, but because of the shortages of medicines now ravaging Venezuela, they had no stocks of the prosthetic artery that would have saved her life.
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“It’s the government who is responsible for my wife’s death, not the doctors,” Mr Perez, 63, told The Telegraph last week. “Things are very bad in this country, and they are getting worse. I feel that we are in a dictatorship. At the start I believed in Chavez, now I can’t look at him. He is in the best place now.”

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/venezuela/11385294/Venezuelas-socialist-paradise-turns-into-a-nightmare-medical-shortages-claim-lives-as-oil-price-collapses.html

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Source: France24

An international cartoon contest has been launched in Iran around the theme of Holocaust denial, in response to French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo’s decision to publish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Holocaust denial is not uncommon in the Islamic Republic, an arch-foe of Israel, but the controversial competition is a response to the January 14 issue of Charlie Hebdo, whose cover featured a teary Prophet Mohammed holding a sign saying “Je Suis Charlie” (I am Charlie).

The three-word slogan became a rallying cry across France and much of the world in the wake of the deadly terrorist attacks on January 7 at the magazine's offices, carried out as revenge for drawings published by Charlie Hebdo that mocked the founder of Islam.

Read more: http://www.france24.com/en/20150202-iran-holocaust-denial-cartoon-contest-charlie-hebdo-cover-tehran/