In brief: 16 die in blaze at Mexican retirement home
MEXICO CITY – A fire swept through a retirement home for poor people early Tuesday, killing 16 elderly residents at the facility outside the northern border city of Mexicali, the mayor’s office said.
Five other residents were reported in serious condition after being taken to a hospital in Mexicali, which sits across the border from Calexico, California.
Mayor Jaime Diaz Ochoa said the cause of the blaze at the Hermoso Atardecer (Beautiful Sunset) retirement home was being investigated by the state prosecutors’ office.
Diaz Ochoa said 23 residents had been taken to a temporary city shelter and would be referred to a city elderly care center. He said most were apparently over 75 years old. The nursing home housed poor, abandoned or formerly homeless elderly people.
3 million Iraqis displaced by IS
BAGHDAD – The number of people displaced within Iraq because of violence and fighting by the Islamic State group has exceeded 3 million, the United Nations said Tuesday, a grim milestone for the war-battered country.
The International Organization for Migration, or IOM, said at least 3.09 million people were displaced between January 2014 and June 4 in 18 Iraqi provinces. The majority of the displaced are from Anbar province, Iraq’s Sunni heartland captured last summer in a blitz by the IS militants.
The IOM report said more than 276,000 people were displaced during a two-month period between April and June alone amid fighting in Anbar’s provincial capital, Ramadi, which eventually saw the city slip out of Iraqi government’s control.
At least 45 percent of Anbar’s displaced have fled to Baghdad, while about 35 percent are elsewhere within the sprawling desert province.
Elections set; hunger strike ends
CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez ended his 30-day hunger strike Tuesday after the government scheduled legislative elections for Dec. 6, thereby meeting his demand.
By setting a date for National Assembly elections, Tibisay Lucena, head of the electoral council, on Monday ended weeks of speculation that the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro might call off the vote.
Lopez’s wife, Liliana Tintori, on Tuesday read a statement from her husband in which he asked 104 other hunger strikers to end their fasts as well.
“We took on this protest not to die but so that all of us Venezuelans can live with dignity. I will continue the struggle for a better Venezuela,” Lopez said in his note.
A former mayor of a Caracas borough, Lopez has been detained at a military base prison near Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, since February 2014 on charges of incitement to violence. He denies the charges and claims they are politically motivated.