(CARACAS, Venezuela) — Dr. Saturnina Clemente pulls up to the small clinic in the impoverished Caucaguita neighborhood armed with one of Venezuela’s most sought-after commodities: Hormonal implants to prevent pregnancy.

In a country where contraceptives are in short supply, word in the shantytown on the outskirts of Venezuela’s capital spreads quickly. The lucky get on a list run by community leaders. The less fortunate hope there will be extras.

The veteran doctor has 104 implants and there won’t be enough for everyone. As a physician at the nation’s largest pediatric hospital, Clemente knows first-hand that the consequences for those who don’t get one are high.

“It’s a sense of impotency, of frustration,” she says. “You see that it’s not enough, that the demand is much higher.”

As Venezuela’s crisis deepens, women are bearing the brunt of the nation’s upheaval. Despite promises by the socialist government to provide every woman access to family planning, recent surveys and interv..

The Amazon rainforest has seen a record number of forest fires this year, according to Brazil’s Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, a space research center. The INPE detects and tracks fires through satellites — in other words, the current blazes are large enough that, collectively, they are visible from space.

The INPE said Tuesday that it has so far detected an 83% increase from the same time period in 2018, Reuters reports. It’s the highest number of fires recorded since 2013, when record-keeping began. The space research agency said satellite images have spotted 9,507 new fires since Thursday in the Amazon basin. As of Wednesday morning, 74,155 fires have been detected in Brazil, according to the INPE’s burn data, which provides daily updates of the number of fire outbreaks detected.

Images show Roraima, Brazil’s northernmost state located in the Amazon, covered in smoke, Reuters reports. Neighboring Brazilian state Amazonas has declared an emergency in its southern part, ..

(REYKJAVIK, Iceland) — Iceland’s leader has announced that she will skip U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to her Nordic nation, opting instead to keep “prior commitments” by attending a trade union conference in Sweden.

Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir said that she’s planned for months to give the keynote speech for the Council of Nordic Trade Unions’ annual meeting in Malmo, Sweden, on Sept. 3 — the day before Pence’s arrival. She has no plans to return the following day for his visit.

“This visit, that was organized by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, has been bouncing a lot around the calendar so that it has been very difficult to organize oneself around it,” she told Icelandic broadcaster RUV on Tuesday. Her office Wednesday confirmed that she had not changed her mind.

She also underscored that the arrangement was “absolutely not” about snubbing the Trump administration and that she had earlier this year met with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The decision was ma..

(SRINAGAR, India) — At least 2,300 people, mostly young men, have been detained in Indian-administered Kashmir during a security lockdown and communications blackout imposed to curb unrest after New Delhi stripped the disputed region of statehood, according to top Kashmir police and arrest statistics reviewed by The Associated Press.

Those arrested include anti-India protesters as well as pro-India Kashmiri leaders who have been held in jails and other makeshift facilities, according to three police officials. The officials have access to all police records but spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to reporters and feared reprisals from superiors.

The crackdown began just before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led government on Aug. 5 stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its semi-autonomy and its statehood, creating two federal territories.

Thousands of additional Indian troops were sent to man checkpoints in the Kashmir Valley,..

Mainland Chinese authorities have confirmed that they are holding a 28-year-old Hong Kong citizen who works at the British consulate in Hong Kong, according to media reports.

Simon Cheng, a trade and investment officer at the consulate, was reported missing after he failed to return from a business trip to the neighboring Chinese city of Shenzhen on Aug. 8. His girlfriend told local media that he had messaged her shortly before attempting to pass through a border control point on his way back to Hong Kong, saying “pray for me.”

According to Reuters, Geng Shuang, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said that Cheng was being held in Shenzhen for a legal violation.

Hong Kong government-funded broadcaster RTHK quoted Geng as saying “The person you mentioned has been placed in administrative detention for 15 days as a punishment” for breaking a public security law.

The news is sure to exacerbate already worsening tensions between China and the U.K., which governed Hong Kong as a colon..

(COPENHAGEN, Denmark) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel a visit to Denmark next month after the prime minister described his plan to buy Greenland as “absurd” took the Danish royal palace by surprise, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. Lene Balleby told The Associated Press Wednesday that the news was “a surprise” to the royal household, which formally had invited Trump to visit Denmark Sep. 2 and 3 as part of a European trip. She had no further comments.

Trump announced his decision by tweet after the Danish prime minister dismissed the notion of selling the semi-autonomous territory to the U.S. as “an absurd discussion.”

“Denmark is a very special country with incredible people, but based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time,” Trump said.

There was no immediate reaction from the Danish government. Former government..