Various news outlets are reporting on an announcement by the Venezuelan government that it will leave the Organization of American States (OAS), a process that takes two years. The country will stop participating in OAS meetings immediately. No country has left the OAS since its founding in 1948.
According to Venezuela-based teleSUR, the move comes in response
[...] to a meeting of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States to discuss Venezuela scheduled for Wednesday, which violates the rules of the organization because it does not have the consent of the affected country.
[The foreign minister] indicated that there is also a group of countries with right-wing governments working under U.S. imperialist orders against Venezuela.
Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets demanding [President Nicolás] Maduro hold elections and denouncing his government as being responsible for triple-digit inflation, food shortages and a rise [in] crime.
It also says that 29 people have been killed in connection with the protests.
Additional coverage:
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday April 28 2017, @05:17PM
The constant efforts to remove Maduro via means other than regularly scheduled election are very suspicious, given that the US sponsored a coup attempt against his mentor, Hugo Chavez.
What's suspicious about it? He's deeply unpopular among half the electorate, setting up an authoritarian government, and presiding over a meltdown of the Venezuelan economy. And in the US, we heard people state that Trump should be impeached from the very beginning well before he had a chance to commit a crime worthy of removal from office. Detractors like most people are lazy/impatient and don't want to wait till 2018. Couple that with a real chance that they won't have an fair election in 2018 and I can see the desire for getting Maduro out of the way before they get into a situation that is even more irreversible than the current one via any means that they can do now.