1. Oropouche virus cases have now been reported in six Latin American nations, after the Dominican Republic yesterday reported positive lab tests in some patients.
So far, Brazil, Cuba, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia have found transmission of the virus, according to Pan-American Health Organization data.
Oropouche virus disease, nicknamed sloth fever, is transmitted by the bite of an insect that used to be found only in the Amazonian region — but the PAHO says has now spread elsewhere because of climate change and deforestation.
2. A lawyer for the Venezuelan opposition, Perkins Rocha, has been detained by the regime of President Nicolás Maduro for unclear charges, opposition leader María Corina Machado said Tuesday.
Rocha, who is also the spokesperson for one of the main parties in the opposition coalition, is now one of more than 1,600 people who have been arrested since the contested July 28 presidential elections.
"It's the highest number of political prisoners this century in Venezuela," Alfredo Romero, president of legal aid NGO Foro Penal, said yesterday.
