US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske on Tuesday in Colombia stressed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s recent announcement that Caracas will intercept any drug traffic aircraft overflying Venezuelan territory. “Venezuela has expressed clearly its support for curbing drug trafficking by air,” said Kerlikowske upon the beginning of his three-day visit to Colombia, DPA reported. Read Article
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Foreign Affairs Minister Surujrattan Rambachan and Venezuelan Ambassador to this country Eugenia Marcano Casado have intervened in the matter of three missing fishermen from Moruga. In a telephone interview yesterday, Rambachan said he is working with the Trinidad and Tobago Embassy in Venezuela to determine whether the men are in fact being held at a […]
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Colombia’s improved ties with Venezuela and neighbors to its south are just a few signs of the understated foreign policy shifts implemented by recently elected President Juan Manuel Santos – changes that may have positive implications for regional security and cooperation across Latin America. Read Article
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A specialized ship has arrived in Venezuela loaded with enough fiber optic cable to connect the South American country to Cuba. Jose Ignacio Quintero, a manager for Paris-based Alcatel-Lucent SA, which is carrying out the project, told The Associated Press that the ship “Ile de Batz” is anchored on the Venezuelan coast and will begin […]
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Venezuela’s battle against land inequality and the exploitation of small agricultural producers has increased in intensity recently as the Chavez government steps up measures to redistribute fallow lands in the area known as South of Lake Maracaibo. Last week, one of the offices of the government agency in charge of carrying out Venezuela’s land redistribution […]
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Workers at the Coca-Cola in the Venezuelan city of Valencia were reported on strike to formally reject the pay offer the company, which warned of a “risk of shortages of water, juices, soft drinks, tea and other beverages national level.” Read Article
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Saturday that the country’s oil reserves amount to 217,000 million barrels and is the first country in the world with more than Saudia “We’ve surpassed the 217,000 million barrels but has not completed the certification process,” said Chavez during the presentation of accounts on its management in 2010 before the […]
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Governments throughout Latin America are ramping up dengue prevention campaigns after 1.5 million people were infected and over 1,000 people in the region died of the disease in 2010. There have already been deaths from dengue fever this year, the most recent one in Perú, where the deaths are exceeding hospital capacity – and it […]
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Venezuelan police have captured a drug suspect alleged to belong to Mexico’s Zetas drug gang. The Interior Ministry said in a statement Friday that 56-year-old Gloria Rojas Valencia was detained in Caracas this week. Read Article
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s government has urged a private TV station to pull the plug on a Colombian soap opera that features a dog named “Little Hugo” and which it says insults Venezuela’s national pride. Named for its main character, “Chepe Fortuna,” the program also stars a loud and gossipy secretary named “Venezuela.” Read Article
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Former president of Costa Rica, Abel Pacheco (2002-2006), told a U.S. diplomat in 2004 that his government spied on a Venezuela diplomat suspected of holding secret meeting with labour leaders, according to a cable released on Thursday by the Wikileaks website. Former president Abel Pacheco confirmed on Thursday the surveillance by Costa Rica secret police, […]
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Tension was running high between Spain and Venezuela on Thursday over allegations that the Latin American country had become a refuge for the militant Basque separatist group ETA, which has plagued Spain for decades. Read Article
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The cost of family food basket-CAF-December 2010 Bs.F. 2.798,01, raised to Bs.F. 2798.01, an increase of Bs.F. 111,16, or 4.1% compared to November 2010. The annualized change in the cost of food basket for the period December 2010-December 2009 is 39.4%, 790.76 bolivars, 64.6% of the minimum wage. Read Article
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Ecuador exported 5,000 tons of crude African palm oil to Venezuela, traded in Sucres, the legal tender of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Alba), the Ecuadorian Executive Office reported on Tuesday. They added that the deal, led by state-run National Development Bank of Ecuador, is within the framework of a bi-monthly […]
The opposition bloc of the Venezuelan Parliament Group to the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino), composed of five deputies, prepared a “draft agreement” that will be introduced in next-week session. The purpose is seeking the unanimous approval of a request that they would made to Paraguay to let Venezuela enter Mercosur. Read Article
Roman Catholic leaders in Venezuela are calling for President Hugo Chavez to give up special lawmaking powers granted to him by his congressional allies. Read Article
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his followers to ramp up the seizure of land in Caracas so it can be used for low-income housing. In a nationally broadcast address, Chavez said the nation’s poor were being forced to live on landslide-prone hillsides in west Caracas rather than on more appropriate real estate on the affluent […]
Cemex says it is in constructive negotiations with the government of Venezuela with a view to reaching an “amicable settlement” following the expropriation of its cement businesses in the country in August 2008. The forced nationalisation also saw plants owned by Holcim and Lafarge being seized. Read Article
Hugo Chávez went on the offensive in Caracas following his party’s poor election showing this fall, pushing through a slate of measures that amounted to a sustained political power grab ahead of the swearing-in of the new Parliament last week. On the international scene, though, the famously combative president has been striking an unusually conciliatory […]
Venezuela warned mayors, governors and the South American country’s numerous state-run companies on Monday to pay overdue electricity bills or face being cut off in a drive to stop waste and balance its accounts. Read Article
Unprecedented prices of food items will strongly affect the world’s poorest people, and this will raise the risk of protests, calls to ban exports, expropriation of farmlands owned by foreigners and more short-term price increases driven by investors. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said that food prices reached all-time highs […]
A fire ripped through a Venezuelan government office belonging to the agency that handles land takeovers Saturday, and officials said there was evidence pointing to arson. The blaze damaged 70 percent of the regional headquarters of the National Land Institute in the western state of Zulia, Agriculture and Land Minister Juan Carlos Loyo said. Read […]
A 10-year-old girl has survived a plane crash in western Venezuela that killed the five other people on board, apparently her family members. Amilcar Mendes, the civil protection director in western Cojedes state, says the small, PN68 plane crashed on the edge of a farm in the municipality of Lima Blanco. Read Article
Venezuela may purchase additional volumes of oil from Azerbaijan to ensure the contract with Belarus to supply up to 10 million tons a year, the Belarusian agency BelTA quoted Ambassador of Venezuela to Belarus, Americo Diaz Nunez. Read Article
Venezuela’s government will not increase its sales tax as had been expected thanks to high global oil prices, President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday. Read Article
Venezuela’s government will not increase its sales tax as had been expected thanks to high global oil prices, President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday. Read Article
The United States and Venezuela are starting the year without ambassadors in Caracas and Washington due to an intensifying diplomatic dispute that is likely to persist and boost President Hugo Chavez’s long-standing antagonism. Read Article
The US has revoked the visa for Venezuela’s ambassador to Washington in what it called a “reciprocal” action for Caracas turning down the US choice for its own representative in the Venezuelan capital. Read Article
“If the government (of the United States) is to expel our ambassador there, let them do so! If they are to cut diplomatic relations, let them do so!” said Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in reference to the White House’s insistence that Caracas accepts the new US ambassador-designate Larry Palmer. Read Article
A balance on personal security in Venezuela shows that 123,000 people were killed during the past 10 years. Out of these, about 16,000 died in 2010 alone, according to unofficial figures provided by the Commission on Public Safety, which comprises opposition deputies-elect. The lawmakers questioned the efforts made by the cabinet of President Hugo Chávez […]
Reporters Without Borders calls on President Hugo Chávez to publicly condemn the physical attack on Carlos Correa, the head of the NGO Espacio Público, that took place yesterday at the entrance to the National Assembly. The attack comes amid a government campaign to discredit those who defend human rights and civil liberties and as the […]
Azerbaijan has agreed to supply crude oil to Belarus on behalf of Venezuela and, in return, the Latin American country will provide oil to meet Azerbaijan’s export commitments to the United States, state energy company SOCAR said. Read Article
December 23, 2010: Unable to maintain its American C-130 transports, because of an embargo, Venezuela is buying a dozen similar Chinese Y-8 transports. China has been building the Y-8. Read Article
A correction to a “material error” in the Organic Law for the Financial System was published in the Official Gazette dated December 21. The law forces banks to carry out a financial corporate divestiture, that is, to reduce the structure that currently allows them to gather under one corporation a bank, an insurance company and […]
University students and professors rallied at the Rectorship Square, Central University of Venezuela (UCV), to rebut the Law on Higher Education for considering that it violates university autonomy. A huge amount of military officers and police agents were deployed at the entrance of the UCV, in Plaza Venezuela, to prevent the march from leaving. Read […]
From November/2010 – Translation from German Iran wants to place on Venezuelan soil, bases for medium-range missiles up and deepen the strategic cooperation with the regime of Hugo Chávez. World Online” learned from Western security sources, an agreement between the two countries during the last visit of the Venezuelan president in Tehran and signed on […]
A congress dominated by President Hugo Chavez’s allies passed a law barring foreign funding for nongovernment organizations and political parties, adding to a series of measures that critics say aim to stifle dissent. Read Article
New laws governing radio, television and the internet in Venezuela “could be very dangerous,” anti-censorship campaigners warned Wednesday, two days after the controversial laws passed. “It could be a license to crack down on any kind of dissent in the media,” said Padraig Reidy of Index on Censorship, a leading British freedom-of-speech organization. Read Article
Venezuela’s opposition accused President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday of a “coup d’etat” after the outgoing parliament gave him the power to rule by decree for 18 months and pushed through a host of new laws. Read Article
THREE state-owned Chinese companies have agreed to invest some $40b in oil and gas projects in Venezuela over the coming years. The deal, which was struck between Venezuela’s oil minister Rafael Ramirez and China’s v ice premier Li Keqiang at a meeting in Qatar, represent at least $40b dollars that will be invested during a […]
No matter that farmers in South Lake Maracaibo rejected the steps taken by the National Lands Institute (Inti). Venezuela’s Vice President Elías Jaua held a press conference in the city of El Vigía, Andean Mérida state, in which he announced: “we will evict paramilitaries and slaveholders from these lands.” Reference was made to the takeover […]
According to data provided by the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), liquid external assets, that is, US dollars deposited in bank accounts or in foreign currency instruments that are immediately available to cover imports, pay debt and meet the demand of foreign currency, have plummeted. Read Article
The National Assembly of Venezuela [official website, in Spanish] on Monday passed the Social Responsibility Law [text, PDF, in Spanish], which bans Internet content that promotes unrest among citizens or challenges legally established authorities. The law expands 2004 restrictions [AFP report] on television, radio and print media to Internet and electronic subscription services content. The […]
InterContinental Hotels Group Plc (IHG – Snapshot Report), the world’s largest hotel group by number of rooms, continues to expand its footprint in Latin America with its recent opening at Maracaibo in Venezuela. The hotel features 14,500 square feet of meeting space including 252 rooms, 300 self-contained parking spaces, and ball-room as well as guest […]
The governments of Colombia and Venezuela each declared states of emergency this month in vast areas of their countries where record flooding and landslides have killed more than 250 people and left more than 1 million homeless. Recent Gallup surveys in the two nations find that fewer than one in three believe they personally are […]
CARACAS, Venezuela — Long-standing tensions between the United States and Venezuela are on the rise as Washington refuses to drop a nominee for ambassador opposed by President Hugo Chavez. Chavez has vowed to reject President Barack Obama’s nominee, Larry Palmer, saying the diplomat’s critical remarks about his government have disqualified him. Read the Article
Venezuelan officials and troops began seizing 47 private ranches on Friday as President Hugo Chavez pushes ahead with a socialist-oriented effort to take over big swaths of agricultural land. Agriculture Ministry officials began taking control of the land accompanied by soldiers and pro-government farmers. Together the ranches in western Venezuela cover more than 93 square […]
A new science law in Venezuela says that research will now be done for the people and in part by the people, and no longer to benefit those “in white coats.” However, scientists fear the changes could hinder progress across many fields. The new rules, approved last week by the National Assembly to take effect […]
US diplomats discussed efforts to curb Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s clout in Latin America and tried to dissuade Russia from selling anti-aircraft missiles to the South American government, according to classified documents released by WikiLeaks. Read Article
The first Latin American country is Uruguay (21), while Chile and Costa Rica rank 28 and 29, respectively.
Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa will arrive on Tuesday in Caracas in a “solidarity visit” to his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chávez, who suspended a travel to Quito this week due to the crisis that has hit Venezuela as a result of heavy rains, the Venezuelan government reported. Read Article
Close to 14,000 people were murdered in Venezuela last year and the figure could be significantly higher, a prominent human rights group said Thursday, alluding to the rampant crime that has become a central concern of Venezuelans. Venezuela has one of Latin America’s highest murder rates and the government has stopped releasing complete annual figures, […]
A new aviation union has been established to bolster the fortunes of workers in Venezuela’s national flag airline. The union, Sindicato de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras de CONVIASA (SITRACON), was established following a field trip to Caracas by ITF civil aviation section secretary Gabriel Mocho. He was backed by Alicia Castro from the Argentine aviation affiliate […]
CARACAS — Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez called on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to resign after the leak of embarrassingly candid US diplomatic correspondence by WikiLeaks. “The empire stands naked… Mrs Clinton should resign,” Chavez said in a speech, using his favourite description of the United States. “It’s the least you can do: resign, […]