Chinese doctors helping Venezuela combat the novel coronavirus visited a leading health facility here on Wednesday, and accompanied their local counterparts in making house calls.

Gasoline shortages in Venezuela are worsening after U.S. officials have told foreign firms to refrain from supplying the fuel to the sanctioned South American nation and only provide diesel.

Years after fleeing the collapsed socialist state, thousands are returning.

Venezuela’s acute fuel shortages are leaving medical professionals stuck in gas lines or struggling to reach their place of work just as the coronavirus outbreak threatens to overwhelm the crisis-stricken country’s battered health system.

Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly on Tuesday opened an investigation into Rosneft’s sale of its assets in the country to another unnamed Russian state company.

Venezuelan retirees Carlos Blanco, 81, and Olga Rodriguez, 78, have for more than a year been unable to purchase the diabetes medication they need, as the country’s hyperinflation has left their monthly pensions insufficient to buy even a loaf of bread.

The few gasoline stations still open in Caracas are manned by armed soldiers, and those waiting to fill their vehicles in day-long lines are only security personnel and designated medical and food suppliers.

…It started with a routine police search on a road in northern Colombia. Within days the government of Venezuela was claiming it was proof of a foiled plot to “liberate” the country from its socialist…

The department, in a notice on its website, extended the general license authorizing certain activities involving Nynas until May 14.