A helicopter has attacked Venezuela's Supreme Court in what President Nicolás Maduro called a "terrorist" incident.

Four grenades were dropped on the court and 15 shots fired at the interior ministry on Tuesday, officials said.

Rogue policeman Oscar Pérez said he had piloted the stolen helicopter to attack what he called a "criminal government". His whereabouts are unknown.

Venezuela is in the midst of a political and economic crisis that has sparked mass protests.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley on Thursday called for international action to address the crisis in Venezuela, after a US-backed proposal for regional mediation failed to win support at the Organization of American States.

The Latest on a helicopter attack on Venezuela's Supreme Court. (all times local):

11:40 p.m.

Venezuelan Information Minister Ernesto Villegas says that a stolen helicopter fired 15 shots against the Interior Ministry as a reception was taking place for 80 people. It then flew a short distance to the pro-government Supreme Court and launched what he said were four Israeli-made grenades of "Colombian origin," two of them against national guardsmen protecting the building.

Authorities said there were no injuries from Tuesday's attack and that the area was still being surveyed for damages. Villegas said security forces were being deployed to apprehend Perez, who the government of President Nicolas Maduro accused of working under the instructions of the CIA and the U.S. Embassy in Caracas.

Just over a month after O Globo newspaper first brought the world's attention to the fact that Brazil's President Michel Temer was 'allegedly' involved in "hush money" payments, then vehemently denied by him; and just a week after the police confirmed it had evidence that Temer received bribes, O Globo, reports citing court documents, that President Michel Temer was formally charged with corruption by Prosecutor-General Rodrigo Janot.

A driver indiscriminately rammed through crowds of skateboarders who packed the city streets on Sunday at an event in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
"Lots of people were running, some guys tried to smash the car, of course. But a lot of people just ran trying to protect themselves while the guy zigzagged trying to hit the crowd," eyewitness Ezequiel Magalhães told El Globo.

We’ve repeatedly warned our readers that a collapse of life as we know it in America would quickly devolve into violence, looting and outright anarchy. As the economic landscape in America deteriorates it is likely only a matter of time before millions of starving Americans make their way to the streets in protest. When that happens they’ll be met with a heavily armed response. It’ll start with tear gas and rubber bullets, but that won’t be enough to stave off the starving and hopeless masses, so we can fully expect real bullets to start flying in short order.

To see a real-world example of this one need only turn their attention to Venezuela, where the collapse of their currency has led to hyperinflation to the point that supplies of bare essentials like flour, meat, medicine and toilet paper are unavailable to the general population. The situation has been playing out for several years and it appears to be coming to a head.

Almost exactly one month after Brazil's stock market crashed, and the Real plunged after the country's never-ending political drama made a triumphal return following accusations that president Michel Temer had encouraged a "hush money" bribe to former House Speaker Eduardo Cunha in return for not getting dragged into the Carwash scandal, on Tuesday afternoon, Brazil’s federal police force said it has found evidence that the embattled president received bribes to help businesses, Brazil's O Globo reported.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday that BRICS cooperation would be more productive and usher in a new "golden decade."

Xi made the remarks when meeting with the heads of delegations from Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, who are in Beijing to attend the BRICS foreign ministers' meeting.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi chaired the meeting, which also included Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Brazilian Foreign Minister Aloysio Nunes, South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane and India's Minister of State for External Affairs Vijay Kumar Singh.

Xi extended congratulations on the success of the meeting and thanked other BRICS members for their support.

He said that BRICS countries faced the common task of safeguarding domestic stability and development, creating a favorable international environment and working to make the international order more just and equitable.

GM crops in Argentina are approved by people from the same companies that produce and market them, a new investigation by the journalist Dario Aranda reveals.

The agency in which these people are collected is called the National Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology (Conabia). According to Aranda, it is composed of representatives of Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, Indear/Bioceres, Pioneer/DuPont, Don Mario, ASA (Seed Companies’ Association), Aapresid (Association of No-Till Producers – farmers who grow GM crops and use herbicide applications to control weeds), Argenbio and INTA (National Institute of Agricultural Technology). Out of 34 members, 26 belong to the same companies that produce seeds or are scientists with conflicts of interest.

As Bloomberg notes, the country’s cash hoard has fallen $326 million this week to $10.2 billion, near the 15-year low reached last month before the windfall.

Investors follow the level intently, trying to gauge how much time Venezuela has left before its dollar shortage results in a default.

Lithium is the hottest commodity on the planet right now, and investors trying to profit from it don’t understand how to invest in it.

MOST ARE MAKING A CRITICAL MISTAKE and investing in the wrong companies.

That’s because, in this game, lithium GRADE is the key to profitability.

Why? First, lithium...

Lithium is the most important component of electric vehicles, high-energy batteries, power storage, a vast menu of consumer electronics—and even Nirvana-reaching drugs.

Even today’s hyper-growth EV industry is just the tip of the iceberg compared with where it's headed to. Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that 35% of all new vehicle sales by 2040 will be EVs, equivalent to 100 million units every year.

Tesla’s “halo effect” will make astute investors lifetime riches because that's 100 times greater than current production.

Crisis-hit Venezuela devalued its currency by 64 percent in a dollar auction that aimed to stabilize its foreign exchange market, officials said Wednesday.

Under an overhauled official exchange system, the government let investors bid for the dollars at a new higher rate in what President Nicolas Maduro said was an effort to undermine the black market.

It was the latest in a series of moves to ease a crisis in a country stricken by soaring inflation and shortages of food and medicine.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has announced that elections to the Constituent Assembly will take place in July. In the meantime, the country’s opposition is becoming more and more violent, denying each and every initiative presented by the contested president.

After over a year of deliberation and an independent satellite analysis commissioned by the RSPO, the Complaints Panel concurred with the complaint filed in December 2015 by the Shipibo community of Santa Clara de Uchunya that PdP had deforested over 5000 hectares of forests, including primary forests.

In so doing, it had failed to comply with RSPO’s restrictions on the conversion of primary forests to plantations, measures to address risks to forests considered of High Conservation Value (HCV) and requirements to disclose all information about planting and conversion plans to the RSPO and affected communities.

A-tisket, A-tasket. You can tell a lot from a basket. Especially if it comes from the ruins of an ancient civilization inhabited by humans nearly 15,000 years ago during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene ages.

An archeologist from Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute is among a team of scientists who made a groundbreaking discovery in Huaca Prieta in coastal Peru—home to one of the earliest and largest pyramids in South America. Hundreds of thousands of artifacts, including intricate and elaborate hand-woven baskets excavated between 2007 and 2013 in Huaca Prieta, reveal that early humans in that region were a lot more advanced than originally thought and had very complex social networks.

- Protesters demanding the resignation of Brazilian President Michel Temer staged running battles with police and set fire to a ministry building in Brasilia on Wednesday, prompting the scandal-hit leader to order the army onto the streets.

Police unleashed volleys of tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets to halt tens of thousands of protesters as they marched towards Congress to call for Temer's ouster and an end to his austerity program.

Masked protesters fired powerful fireworks at police, set ablaze furniture in the Agriculture Ministry, and sprayed anti-Temer graffiti on government buildings.

It was the most violent protest in Brasilia since anti-government demonstrations in 2013 and fueled a political crisis sparked by allegations Temer condoned paying off a potential witness in a massive corruption probe.

The scandal has raised chances Brazil could see a second president fall in less than a year.

Venezuela, a country increasingly on the precipice of anarchy, has a cache of 5,000 Russian-made surface to air missiles — a fact that has U.S. officials concerned.

The South American country acquired most of the stockpile of SA-24 Man-Portable Air-Defense System (MANPADS) missiles during the reign of late President Hugo Chavez, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

The missiles are fired from shoulder-mounted launchers by one person, and can be used to shoot down commercial and military aircraft. More than 40 civilian aircraft have been hit by MANPADS since the 1970’s, according to the Small Arms Survey, leading to at least 28 crashes and 800 deaths.

The weapons are popular with insurgent groups because of their portability, effectiveness, and ease of operation. More than 84 non-state groups are believed to have the missiles, or similar light-weight systems.

Physical confrontation erupts in Brazil's Congress between Temer's supporters & opponents after he deploys the military against protesters.

US President Donald Trump said Thursday he would work with Colombia to “fix” Venezuela, as he slapped Caracas with new sanctions.

The sanctions targeted Venezuela’s chief judge and seven other members of Venezuela’s Supreme Court (TSJ). The sanctions were in retaliation to a controversial TSJ ruling that effectively granted the court with the power to pass legislation without parliamentary approval. The ruling was quickly reversed, but kicked off a wave of opposition violence that has so far left 54 people dead.

The announcement of the new sanctions came after Trump held a joint press conference with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. During the conference, the US leader claimed the world hasn’t seen any political crisis as bad as Venezuela’s in “decades”.

“People don’t have enough to eat. There’s great violence. We will do whatever is necessary … to help with fixing that,” he said.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley said that the Trump administration “wants to prevent another conflict like Syria, North Korea or South Sudan” in Venezuela which is a code phrase for “regime change.” According to a May 17th report by the Associated Press (AP):

Haley said the U.S. intention wasn’t to be “intrusive” or “heavy-handed” but to support regional efforts to find a political solution and “show respect for the Venezuelan people” who want free and fair elections, the release of political prisoners and the worsening humanitarian situation addressed.

“We think if that doesn’t happen we will certainly be hearing this in the Security Council because it will be a real problem — not just in the region but internationally,” Haley told reporters after the closed-door briefing and discussions that lasted over 1½ hours.

Venezuelan Ambassador Rafael Ramirez accused Washington of trying “to interfere in our domestic issues.” The AP report says that the

In a move that will surely light the proverbial lightbulb over Donald Trump's head, Brazilian President Michel Temer, having been officially dragged into Brazil's massive corruption scandal after a record emerged in which he urged the payment of "hush money", said on Saturday he would ask the Supreme Court to suspend its investigation into allegations he was also involved in the carwash corruption scheme, vowing to remain in power.

Speaking during a televised address on Saturday afternoon, Brazil’s deeply unpopular president, who replaced a just as deeply unpopular president last year when Dilma Rouseff was impeached, claimed the recording that implicated him in the scandal was doctored and said he would file a petition with the Supreme Court to suspend the investigation until it could be verified, the WSJ reported.

If the protests that have rocked Venezuela over the past few months can teach us anything, it’s that the Maduro regime is desperately clinging to power. As SHTFplan.com's Mac Slavo writes, protests are normal in any country, but when they occur every day for weeks on end, and result in dozens of deaths, it’s obvious that the government is in an unstable position. And as the government grows more desperate, their methods of controlling the population will always become more extreme.

That’s what’s happening in Venezuela, where the police have unleashed a devastating water cannon on protesters, which has been referred to as “La Ballena,” or “The Whale.”

The United States called Wednesday's first-ever U.N. Security Council consultations on Venezuela because the crisis is getting worse and the Trump administration wants to prevent another conflict like Syria, North Korea or South Sudan, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said.

Venezuelan Ambassador Rafael Ramirez strongly rejected the U.S. bringing his country's political dispute to the United Nations' most powerful body and accused Washington of again trying "to interfere in our domestic issues."

Haley said the U.S. intention wasn't to be "intrusive" or "heavy-handed" but to support regional efforts to find a political solution and "show respect for the Venezuelan people" who want free and fair elections, the release of political prisoners and the worsening humanitarian situation addressed.

A half-hour before dawn, the pedestrian bridges that connect the Venezuelan towns of San Antonio and Ureña with the Colombian city of Cúcuta begin to fill with people. The traffic is circular, as it has been for years, with large numbers crossing in both directions — but those headed into Colombia are greater in number.

Venezuelans crossing the border are easily distinguished by their luggage. Many drag rolling suitcases behind them, bulging at the edges; others lug duffel bags and cardboard boxes on their shoulders. Some even have their cats and dogs in pet carriers.

In January, 47,095 Venezuelans entered Colombia, more than double the number from January of last year. Some 21,000 of them crossed into Norte de Santander, the state of which Cúcuta is the capital. Here and at other points along the nearly 1,400-mile border, the situation is beginning to feel like a refugee crisis.

This week’s bipartisan Venezuela Humanitarian Assistance and Defense of Democratic Governance Act not only seeks to pump US$10 million to Venezuela as part of a “humanitarian assistance” package but also looks to provide millions to efforts to undermine the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

The Colombian government's peace agreement with the FARC rebels requires the government to protect activists and former FARC fighters, but their government is not living up to this requirement, says Prof. Mario Murillo

The involvement of the U.S. military in an upcoming multilateral military drill in South America has raised concerns over potential ulterior motives on the part of the U.S. The drill, dubbed “Operation: America United,” will involve the installation of a temporary military base on the triple border shared by the drill’s other participating nations: Peru, Brazil and Colombia.

According to Theofilo de Oliveira, the top general of the Brazilian Armed Forces, the U.S. military will carry out the drill along with the three Latin American nations this November over a period of ten days. The Brazilian military has asserted that the objective of the exercise is to “ develop greater knowledge, share experiences and develop mutual trust.” Brazilian government officials have strongly denied rumors that the exercise will lead to the establishment of a multinational military base in the Amazon.

One month ago, when discussing the latest "explosive" turn in Venezuela's political situation, we predicted that the worst case for president Nicolas Maduro who has so far managed to keep the army on his side even as Venezuela faces now daily violent and in some cases deadly protests, would be the start of the local army turning on the regime, and defecting to join the protesters. Overnight, according to Thor Halvorsen of the Human Rights Foundation, this "inflection point" appears to have arrived when he observed in a Tweet that "the military in parts of Venezuela has begun to defect. They are now marching *with* the protesters. Dozens of soldiers are under arrest."

A 20-year-old Venezuelan protester has died after being shot in the head, authorities said, taking the death toll from a month of anti-government unrest to at least 37.

After enduring shortages of food and medicine for years, as well as a total collapse of their currency, the people of Venezuela have had enough. Last week it was estimated that 2.5 million people marched against the Maduro regime, which had previously tried to strip away the powers of the opposition-led parliament. It’s estimated that as many as 6 million people may have taken to the streets to protest throughout the country.

In the lead-up to the protest, which had been planned for weeks by opposition political parties, President Maduro issued an alarming proclamation that didn’t receive nearly enough press. He promised to expand the nation’s armed militia, and hand out firearms to as many as 400,000 loyalists.

General Motors' (GM.N) Venezuelan subsidiary has sent a message to almost 2,700 staff informing them that they are no longer employed by the company and had received severance pay in their bank accounts, according to two employees.

A Venezuelan court last week ordered the seizure of the company's Valencia plant, ruling in favor of two dealers that had filed a case in 2000 against the subsidiary on grounds they had not complied with an agreed sale of 10,000 vehicles.

A day before opposition leaders convened more protests in Caracas calling for the ouster of Venezuela’s government, the country’s leader has accused the United States of working with right-wing leaders towards a coup.

“The U.S. government, the State Department has given the green light, the approval for a coup process to intervene in Venezuela,” President Nicolas Maduro said, speaking from the Miraflores Palace.

Maduro said that security forces had arrested an “armed commando group sent by the opposition in order to attack the mobilization called by the right-wing for Wednesday to generate violence and deaths in the country.” An investigation has been opened to determine who is behind the plan.

According to the Venezuelan leader, who also pointed to a U.S. State Department statement issued Tuesday evening warning of an “international response” should “peaceful protests” face repression, the U.S. government wrote up a coup scenario for opposition leader Julio Borges.

Venezuela, a country with only $10 billion left in reserves to run on, is in trouble. As the currency hyperinflates to new record lows against the dollar...James Holbrooks points out that the people are starving. The government has gone full-on authoritarian, and now desperate human beings are dying in the streets.

A segment of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show displayed a chyron implying the widespread anti-socialist protests in Venezuela were actually against President Donald Trump.

The death toll in three weeks of violence at anti-government protests in Venezuela jumped to 20 people after a night of clashes and pillaging left 12 people dead in Caracas, reports AFP.

Riot police and pro-government vigilantes fought running battles on the capital's east, west and south sides with protesters demanding the ouster of President Nicolas Maduro.

At nightfall on Friday, more protests and pockets of unrest were reported in eastern Caracas, and in Macuto in the neighboring state of Vargas.

Opposition leaders have called new protests for Saturday and Monday.

On Saturday, they plan to march in silence to the Catholic Church's episcopal seats nationwide. They plan to erect roadblocks on Monday to grind the country to a halt.

Protesters blame Maduro -- heir of the leftist "Bolivarian revolution" launched by the late Hugo Chavez in 1999 -- for an economic crisis marked by severe shortages of food, medicine and basic goods.

U.S. multinationals with plants in Venezuela are likely on edge Thursday, after American automaker General Motors (NYSE:GM) pulled the plug on its operations in the poverty-stricken country, following a government takeover of its plant amid large-scale violent protests.

“All foreign companies, and especially U.S. firms, should be concerned with the increasingly extreme and aggressive behavior of the Venezuelan regime,” Ian Vasquez, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, told FOX Business.

American beverage company Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO), however, indicated to FOX Business Thursday it didn’t have any plans to pull its operations from the distressed South American country.

“There is no indication that any of our facilities in Venezuela are currently at risk of being altered and we’re working closely with Venezuelan authorities to assure a continuous operation in the country,” the company said.

A Venezuelan protester stripped naked and handed a Bible to rows or armed police as a second night of violent clashes broke out in the crisis-hit country.

Ugly scenes - now a common sight as furious demonstrators show their opposition to President Nicolas Maduro - were seen for a second night, 24 hours after three people died in shocking confrontations.

Thousands again took to the street on Thursday, aiming missiles at law enforcement officers, who in turn released tear gas.

But experts believe that the under-fire president could hold onto power because many of the poorest people in his crisis-hit country are too malnourished to protest, experts believe.

While international media focused almost exclusively on the opposition protests and clashes with the police, the pro-government protests were equally as large, says Lucas Koerner from Venezuelanalysis

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has ordered the army into the streets as the volatile country braces for what his opponents vow will be the "mother of all protests" on Wednesday.

Maduro, who has faced violent protests over recent moves to tighten his grip on power, ordered the military to defend the leftist "Bolivarian revolution" launched by his late mentor Hugo Chavez in 1999.

"From the first reveille (on Monday morning), from the first rooster crow, the Bolivarian National Armed Forces will be in the streets... saying, 'Long live the Bolivarian revolution,'" Maduro said Sunday night in a televised address.

State TV showed images of army units marching in the streets of Caracas as Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino watched.

But there was no sign of soldiers on patrol Monday morning in the capital.

If Venezuela defaults on its debt obligations, it could result in Russia taking control over U.S. refining assets, leading to more Russian “control over oil and gas prices worldwide,” which would “inhibit U.S. energy security, and undermine broader U.S. geopolitical efforts.”

That is the warning from two members of Congress, Reps. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) and Albio Sires (D-NJ). The two Congressmen sent a joint letter to the U.S. Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin, requesting his attention on the matter. A bipartisan group of six U.S. Senators also requested a response from Secretary Mnuchin on the matter.

They cite the fact that Russia’s government-backed oil company, Rosneft, gave Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, a $1.5 billion loan. As collateral, PDVSA offered up 49.9 percent of Citgo, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan oil company. Citgo owns three refineries in the U.S., along with pipelines and retail gas stations.

If Venezuela defaults on its debt obligations, it could result in Russia taking control over U.S. refining assets, leading to more Russian “control over oil and gas prices worldwide,” which would “inhibit U.S. energy security, and undermine broader U.S. geopolitical efforts.”

Opponents of President Nicolas Maduro are calling on demonstrators to flood the streets of Caracas on Saturday as part of a weeklong protest movement that shows little sign of losing steam.

Past demonstrations were sometimes planned weeks in advance to guarantee high turnout. But now the almost-daily churn of events in what's being called the "ongoing coup" — the government's alleged moves to accumulate more power — has energized and united the normally fractious opposition leading up to Saturday's march.

Authorities on Friday barred former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles from seeking office for 15 years for administrative irregularities as governor of Miranda state, a move decried by his supporters and foreign governments as another step toward dictatorship. It followed last week's decision by the Supreme Court to gut the opposition-controlled legislature of its last vestiges of power.

Venezuela security forces on Tuesday clashed with anti-government protesters seeking, in part, to remove justices from the Supreme Court accused of unconstitutionally favoring the ruling party, while supporting lawmakers locked in a bitter dispute with the administration of President Nicolas Maduro and the Supreme Court.

Previously, the opposition-controlled National Assembly had called for the march ahead of a vote by lawmakers to remove members of the country’s top court, less than a week after judges attempted to seize the power of Congress. The protest was the most violent since hundreds of thousands flooded the capital last year demanding the embattled president’s ouster.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange dodged an eviction order in Ecuador's Sunday election, after the right-wing candidate who had vowed to kick him out of the country's London embassy was set to narrowly lose a presidential election.

Venezuela sovereign bonds crashed on Friday as a result of soaring political tensions after the annulment of the country's legislature by its high court on Wednesday, a move that ignited protests, invoked international condemnation and prompted the opposition to call for a military response to what it deemed a "coup."

One day after our report on the latest attempt by Maduro to seize unilateral control of the government and to isolate the opposition, the political situation turned "explosive" on Friday when Venezuela's powerful attorney general Luisa Ortega broke ranks with President Nicolas Maduro's government after the Supreme Court annulled congress, a rare show of internal dissent as protests and international condemnation grew. As a reminder, the pro-Maduro Supreme Court on Wednesday said it was assuming the legislature's functions because it was in "contempt" of the law. The opposition promptly slammed the decision as a "coup" against an elected body.

As Ecuador heads toward the second round of its presidential election on April 2, a scandal has broken out over the opposition candidate Guillermo Lasso's financial dealings.

The accusations are serious and largely based on public records, with most of it verifiable on websites such as the Panamanian Public Registry and Superintendency of Banks and the Ecuadorean Superintendency of Companies. The newspaper that broke the story was Página/12 of Argentina, with two articles there in the last week by journalist Cynthia Garcia, as well as on her website.

Yet, as of this writing, the major international media covering the election, as well as the big privately owned Ecuadorian media, have pretended for a week that the story does not exist.

In a press briefing at the Pentagon today, African Command leader Gen. Thomas Waldhauser announced that the US intends to keep ground troops in Libya for the foreseeable future to support “friendly forces,” and to “degrade” the ISIS forces that remain in the country.

Waldhauser did not specify how many US troops are in Libya now, or how many will stay, but did estimate that there were less than 200 ISIS fighters left in Libya. The US had announced the end of the anti-ISIS campaign in Libya back in December, but never fully withdrew from the country.

The US forces were in Libya trying to help the “unity” government defeat ISIS in the city of Sirte. US officials repeatedly claimed the city was totally surrounded, and that no ISIS fighters would get away, though when the fighting finally ended, a substantial number of ISIS fighters did in fact get away.

On March 20, David Rockefeller died at the age of 101. As the obituaries for one of the world’s richest men gush over his philanthropy, it needs to be pointed out that he was a major player in several Latin American coups, supported extremely corrupt military dictatorships, post-dictatorship neoliberal policies that greatly exacerbated income stratification and poverty and that his dark legacy will continue to influence the region long after his death.

The Rockefellers’ arrival in Brazil

We always knew that this would start happening. Earlier this month, I wrote about the severe economic problems that are plaguing South America, but up to this point I have neglected to discuss the horrific famines that are breaking out all over Africa. Right now there is a desperate need for food in South Sudan, Somalia, northeast Nigeria, Eritrea and Kenya. And Yemen, even though it is not technically part of Africa, is being affected by many of the same factors that are crippling nations all over eastern Africa. The United Nations says that more than 20 million people could die from starvation and disease if nothing is done. When I write about economic collapse, this is the kind of thing that I am talking about, and we are starting to see alarming conditions spread across the globe. Many believe that we could never possibly face this kind of food crisis in the western world, but unfortunately wishful thinking will only get you so far.

As The BBC reports, the Venezuelan government says it will expropriate bakeries which fail to abide by new government regulations aimed at tackling bread shortages.

In a growing row between the government and bakers, officials said that bakeries could face fines if people had to queue to get their bread. Severe shortages of basic goods mean that Venezuelans often have to queue for hours to buy essential items.

The government says the shortages are caused by an "economic war".

With its people resorting to eating flamingos, the Venezuelan government has decided to find yet another thing to blame for the collapse of the socialist utopia - the bakers!

As The BBC reports, the Venezuelan government says it will expropriate bakeries which fail to abide by new government regulations aimed at tackling bread shortages.

In a growing row between the government and bakers, officials said that bakeries could face fines if people had to queue to get their bread. Severe shortages of basic goods mean that Venezuelans often have to queue for hours to buy essential items.

The government says the shortages are caused by an "economic war".

Venezuela does not produce wheat and relies on imports bought in by the government which it then sends to mills where it is ground and then distributed.