NEWS OF THE DAY
_1 Iraq protests: Security forces wounded dozens of protesters Sunday as renewed antigovernment demonstrations gripped the capital of Baghdad and Iraq’s south, activists and officials said. The mass protests had lost steam when soaring U.S.Iran tensions threatened an open conflict on Iraqi soil in past weeks. As the regional crisis receded, Iraqi activists gave the government a week’s deadline to act on their demands. Protesters are seeking an end to Iraq’s sectarian political system, alongside early elections and the stepping aside of its ruling elite. Clashes between protesters and security forces in central Baghdad wounded at least 27 people on Sunday. Security forces fired tear gas to disperse crowds. Some protesters hurled rocks at police, wounding four personnel, officials said. Activists said more rallies are planned in the coming days. Protests were also held in the southern provinces of Najaf, Dhi Qar, Karbala and Basra.
_2 Prison escape: At least 75 inmates, many of them members of a Brazilian gang, escaped from a prison in a Paraguayan border town Sunday, according to authorities who said they immediately fired the prison’s director. Interior Minister Euclides Acevedo said the majority of the escapees belong to the First Capital Command based in Brazil, which borders the city of Pedro Juan Caballero, where the prison is located. Officials said they discovered a tunnel and found cells filled with as many as 200 bags of earth. National police were mobilized to hunt for the escapees.
_3 Deadly fire: A fire swept through a Czech asylum for the mentally impaired Sunday, killing eight male patients, officials said. Prokop Volenik, spokesman for the regional rescue service, said the fire that broke out in the town of Vejprty before 5 a.m. also injured 30 others, one critically. There were 35 patients and three staff members at the facility at the time of the fire, officials said. Firefighter spokesman Michal Zavoral said the blaze was contained and the cause is under investigation. Prime Minister Andrej Babis visited the site and offered his condolences.
_4 Venezuela politics: Opposition leader Juan Guaidó has traveled to Colombia to participate alongside U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a regional counterterrorism meeting — a new show of support by the Trump administration for the man it says is the country’s legitimate leader. From Bogota, Guaidó plans to travel to Europe and then possibly the U.S., two people close to the opposition leader told the Associated Press. Colombian President Ivan Duque welcomed Guaidó in a tweet on Sunday. In his role as president of the National Assembly, Guaidó is recognized as Venezuela’s rightful leader by the U.S. and more than 50 nations that consider Nicolás Maduro’s reelection invalid. His visit to Colombia comes days after government loyalists attempted to engineer a takeover of the National Assembly. _5 Couple slain: Mexican authorities found two more bodies at a house in Tijuana where a couple with dual U.S.Mexico citizenship were found buried, allegedly by their soninlaw. The attorney general’s office for the state of Baja California said the second set of bodies — one male and the other female— are in a state of advanced decomposition. The suspect was deported from the U.S. in 2012 and had been living at a property in Tijuana owned by his inlaws. Maria Teresa Lopez, 65, and her husband, Jesus Ruben Lopez, 70, entered Mexico on Jan. 10 to retrieve rent for apartments they owned in the city that their soninlaw had supposedly collected on their behalf. A daughter reported the couple from Garden Grove (Orange County) missing the next day. All four bodies were covered in lime.