Venezuela updates

After Venezuela,  where?  
IMO, it should have been Colombia where the powers-that-be could invest some funds to overthrow that inefficient govt. and replace it with a functioning one.   
Colombia .... your day is coming.  

Hannah Strange, and Alasdair Baverstock writing at TelegraphUK: 
....Venezuela to slap arrested protestors with passport ban as unrest grows
President Nicolas Maduro calls for talks with US after Washington criticises actions against protesters as 'not how democracies behave'



Venezuela's Socialist government has warned it will suspend the passports of arrested protesters for five years amid a hardening crackdown on the bloody unrest that has spread nationwide in recent weeks, threatening to consume the volatile oil-rich nation.
Anger erupted among demonstrators in Caracas, as news broke on Friday night of the Interior Ministry resolution that anyone detained for disturbing the peace and the public order or participating in acts of violence would be barred from leaving the country. "We're turning into Cuba", government opponents wailed as they once again took to the streets for the daily protests that have now claimed nine lives nationwide.
The country was braced for further clashes on Saturday as government supporters and opponents gathered for large rival rallies in the capital. As the protests began, Ernesto Villegas, the minister of state for the revolutionary transformation of greater Caracas, warned the country was in "a spiral of death and destruction". "We can still stop a civil war," he urged.



On Friday, President Nicolas Maduro accused US intelligence services of giving the "green light for the overthrow" of the Venezuelan government, which has long sparred with the "empire" to the north. He had already expelled three US diplomats, claiming they had conspired with the students who have formed the core of the protests as part of a "far right" plot similar to that which unseated his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, for 36 hours in 2002. But he also, unusually called for talks with Washington, an indication perhaps of fears he may be losing control of the crisis.........