Venezuela’s socialist government has run the OPEC nation’s economy to the group, prompting shortages of goods as varied as toilet paper, coffin materials, beer, and water. The shortage has now hit pharmacies, with most pharmacies having completely run out of most forms of contraceptives, particularly birth control pills.
Two members of Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Guard–the state police–have been arrested after being accused of aiding drug trafficking by the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, run by the now-fugitive Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The government of Venezuela, intent on finding a solution to its economic woes that do not involve changing its socialist economic system, has taken up a campaign to annex two-thirds of neighboring Guyana, a jungle territory known as the Essequibo. Guyana is soundly rejecting that Venezuela has any claims to its territory.
Contents: Pope Francis in Paraguay alludes to 1860s War of the Triple Alliance; Distrust of Greece dominates indecisive Eurogroup meeting on Saturday; France and Italy welcome Greece’s proposals
Venezuela has stopped publishing official data on its rate of inflation, but one expert on monetary policy says the current rate is 615 percent.
A Chavista union demanding higher wages, combined with difficulties in importing necessary ingredients, are threatening to leave Venezuela without beer. The potential scarcity of the extremely popular beverage is just the latest in a string of increasingly difficult to find common goods in the socialist nation.
Venezuelan socialist head of state Nicolás Maduro has recalled his nation’s ambassador to neighboring Guyana after statements by the latter government that Venezuela was excessively intruding into Guyanese maritime territory.
Socialism is having its moment here in America, even as socialism abroad is collapsing in disarray.
Following news of reconciliation with the Cuban communist regime, Reuters is reporting that the Obama administration has been engaging in secret diplomacy with the dictatorship currently governing Venezuela, hoping to reestablish ties with socialist President Nicolás Maduro and negotiate the freedom of political prisoner Leopoldo López.
A Venezuelan veterinarian has been arrested in Spain after remaining fugitive for years. The man, identified only as 33-year-old Andrés L.E., is charged with implanting packets of liquid heroin in puppies traveling from Colombia to the United States to be sold as pets, in order to smuggle the drug into America.
Following protests from Guyana that the socialist Venezuelan government is attempting to usurp international waters for itself, the Colombian government issued a statement this weekend rejecting a Venezuelan decree claiming waters off the coast of Colombia for itself.
The government of Guyana has declared Venezuela a “regional threat” after the socialist nation imposed an expansion of its “integral maritime zone” deep into Guyanese waters, just months after President Obama denounced Venezuela as a threat to America’s national security.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, facing a tidal wave of international criticism over human rights violations and hunger strikes by his nation’s most famous prisoners of conscience, canceled a visit to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis. Both dissidents and Vatican sources have told multiple Spanish newspapers that the cancelation, ostensibly due to a “cold,” actually occurred out of fear of being embarrassed on a public stage.
An international survey that compares ordinary people’s experience of the rule of law in 102 countries placed Venezuela in last place.
The president of Venezuela’s National Assembly–the Venezuelan government’s second-in-command–has announced he will seek to take legal action in the United States and Spain against media outlets that have published reports alleging that he is being investigated for running a cocaine trafficking organization.
Venezuela is collapsing rapidly before the eyes of Latin America, with most of the region standing idly by. This exposes isolationism by countries throughout the Western Hemisphere, and exemplifies how the lack of engagement within the region is now confronted with a regional bloc that will not let it engage even if it wants to.
Socialist politicians in Venezuela are proposing a project that would force all Venezuelans to use an internet emanating from a single government-controlled server, as a way to prevent citizens from using Google, Twitter, and other social media to access sites that publish material unfavorable to the government.
The value of Venezuela’s bolivar currency collapsed this month, as air carriers and U.S. automakers announce they will only do business in U.S. dollars.
The rapid and steady decline of Venezuela’s national currency, the Bolívar, is forcing a growing number of businesses to do trade only in American dollars, freezing out Venezuelan citizens from buying cars, renting apartments, or boarding flights offered by businesses that refuse their currency even when they can muster an equivalent amount of retail prices in Bolívars.
The socialist government of Venezuela has made it increasingly dangerous for political satirists to practice their craft, removing any anti-government humor from airwaves and newspapers and prompting angry mobs to attack stand-up comics.
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs under George W. Bush, Roger Noriega, asserted in multiple interviews this week that the United States has ample evidence that high-ranking government Venezuelan officials are involved in cocaine trafficking, and that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has used drug money to run his campaign.
The Venezuelan government will begin rationing electrical supplies this week in response to high demand triggered by heat. Public employees will only have to work six hours a day until further notice, and police units will be sent to inspect private businesses to ensure they only use their allotted amounts. Venezuelan Vice President Jorge Arreaza blamed the measures on climate change.
A Venezuelan woman has been identified as the culprit of an attack on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro this week, in which he was pelted in the head with a mango while driving a truck through a socialist rally. The video of the attack has gone viral, inspiring the hashtag #manguicidio or #mangocide.
The banning of private gun ownership in Venezuela has made firearms such a valuable commodity that 57% of police killed in the nation’s capital this year were targeted for their weapons, according to Venezuela’s largest newspaper.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro met the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, in Damascus in 2007 to discuss “drug trafficking, money laundering, the distribution of arms and issuing of passports… to terrorists,” according to a new book citing witnesses and Venezuelan diplomatic cables.
This week, the Venezuelan government announced a series of manufacturing and infrastructure investments from China that could ultimately amount to up to $20 billion in ten years, though China only agreed to an initial $5 billion in “development” funds this Sunday.
The Spanish government has lodged a formal complaint with Venezuela’s ambassador to Madrid after President Nicolás Maduro accused Spanish President Mariano Rajoy of being a “racist” in a national broadcast, adding, “In Spain, they are all racists.”
Threats and arrests were made. Government workers lost their jobs. Free chickens were handed out. An all-encompassing mass media campaign against President Barack Obama took over Venezuelan state airwaves, where President Nicolás Maduro vowed to hand Obama a 10-million-signature petition against his recent sanctions on Venezuela. Yet, when the time came to show President Obama– and the American public– those signatures, Maduro came up empty-handed.
President Barack Obama met with his Venezuelan counterpart, dictator Nicolas Maduro, on Saturday in a closed-door meeting to discuss Washington’s tumultuous relationship with Caracas.
Last week, the White House promised that President Barack Obama would engage in an “interaction” with Cuban dictator Raúl Castro at the Summit of the Americas. The summit begins officially Friday, and more details have surfaced on what that interaction will entail: the two leaders, who shared a phone conversation Thursday night, will share the stage at the summit Friday.
President Obama asserted that Venezuela did not pose a threat to the United States, but pointed to “enormous challenges” the country faced under the leadership of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
The Summit of the Americas begins tomorrow, but the presence of dictatorships at the table with the rest of the Western Hemisphere’s democratic nations has already begun to cause havoc. On Wednesday, representatives of the socialist governments of Venezuela and Cuba walked out of the pre-Summit Forum on Civil Society due to the presence of pro-democracy activists.
The President of the Chamber of Tourism of Venezuela’s Andean state of Mérida has warned tourists hoping to enjoy the state’s mountain vistas over the Easter holiday that they will have to bring their own soap and toilet paper to Mérida’s hotels.
The Venezuelan government is forcing citizens to sign a petition calling for President Obama to remove sanctions on the socialist state for its human rights abuses. Those eager to sign are rewarded with anything from a coveted smaller wait time on supermarket lines to whole chickens, but those who refuse may wind up unemployed.
Venezuela, a fertile ground for major-league talent, now repels many of the players it produced.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has vowed to collect millions of signatures for a petition against American President Barack Obama, demanding that he repeal executive sanctions against high-ranking armed forces officials in the country over human rights abuses against anti-socialist protesters.
In a surprising assessment that indicates the Venezuelan economy is doing worse than its socialist government has indicated, a Barclay’s report on the nation’s oil exports show that the nation has reduced exports of crude to the Caribbean by at least half, including exports to its greatest political ally, Cuba.
The human rights violations occurring in Venezuela– from thousands of arbitrary arrests to beatings and rapes to the murder of unarmed teenagers– have taken up little of the international spotlight in the past year. They have, however, increasingly caught the attention of human rights groups like Amnesty International, which details and condemns the abuses in a report released this week.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — A Jacksonville businessman reported dead two years ago in Venezuela was arrested in North Carolina on alleged fraud charges Saturday after his life insurance companies filed a lawsuit alleging he was alive and they shouldn’t be
Former officials in the government of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez claim that the late leader granted temporary asylum to Bushra al Assad, sister of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, and her five nephews, before they were able to escape to Dubai.
