Venezuelan court removes fifth opposition mayor, orders arrest

CARACAS, Venezuela — A fifth opposition mayor in Venezuela was removed from his post and ordered under arrest in a continuing crackdown by the struggling nation’s government on President Nicolas Maduro’s adversaries.

A small group of young people, some of them masked, set up barricades of strewn metal objects in the eastern Caracas district of El Hatillo on Thursday to protest the previous day’s Supreme Court decision to order Mayor David Smolansky imprisoned for 15 months for not obeying orders to shut down the protests.