Venezuela

One day after Maduro's new "constituent assembly" expelled chief prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz - the highest-ranking member of President Maduro’s administration to break ranks with the authoritarian - from her post and ordered her to stand trial, confirming fears that it would use its unchecked powers to root out government critics, Venezuelan authorities claimed to have suppressed a military rebellion near the central city of Valencia, an official said on Sunday morning.

In Venezuela's latest crackdown on all opposition voices, on Saturday the country's newly convened pro-government constituent assembly removed dissident state prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz - the highest-ranking member of President Nicolas Maduro’s administration to break ranks with the dictator - from her job in what critics said was a blatant example of Maduro's new dictatorship flexing its muscles. The assembly voted on Saturday to permanently remove Diaz, 59, from her post after the Supreme Court ruled on Friday evening to suspend her and send her to trial.

Venezuela's currency, the bolivar, is disintegrating at an incredible pace under the country's political and economic crisis that has left citizens broke, desperate and in many cases, homicidal. The depreciation accelerated this week, after a disputed vote electing an all-powerful "Constituent Assembly" filled with allies of President Nicolas Maduro, which the opposition and dozens of countries have called illegitimate.

 Just two days ago, on August 2, we reported that one dollar would buy 14,100 bolivars, up from 11,280 the day before.

Authored by Hannah Dreier via APNews.com,

The first thing the muscled-up men did was take my cellphone. They had stopped me on the street as I left an interview in the hometown of the late President Hugo Chavez and wrangled me into a black SUV.

Heart pounding in the back seat with the men and two women, I watched the low cinderblock homes zoom by and tried to remember the anti-kidnapping class I’d taken in preparation for moving to Venezuela. The advice had been to try to humanize yourself.

With events in Venezuela now well into the endgame, following US sanctions that named "dictator" Maduro personally and a likely subsequent sanction that will cripple Venezuela's oil industry promptly resulting in the nation's insolvency as it loses its last remaining source of revenue, things are moving fast. So fast, in fact, that according to Reuters, Venezuela's money supply surged 10% in just one week earlier this month, its largest single-week rise in a quarter of a century.