Posted in Arts & Culture, The Region, tagged culture, Art, venezuela, Venezuelan Art, Latin American history, latin american culture, artists, Cisneros, Los Angeles, Jorge Pardo on July 26, 2008 | No Comments »
Tomorrow, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) opens two new galleries devoted to pre-Columbian art and artifacts from Latin America. A large part of the material comes from the collection of Venezuela’s wealthy Cisneros family.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Cuban-born sculptor Jorge Pardo was hired by LACMA to design ”a contiguous display of Latin American [...]
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The Venezuelan-owned gas subsidiary Citgo has been providing cut-rate home heating oil to poor communities in the U.S. for three now. Last winter, 23 states relied on the donations, which exceeded $100 million in value. New Hampshire has just become the latest to sign on.
The small state, which borders Canada and registers brutal temperatures in [...]
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Posted in Nature & Environment, The Region, tagged citgo, development, eco-friendly design, Energy, energy-efficient lighting, environment, environmentalism, oil, poverty, u.s. and venezuela, venezuela, venezuela anti-poverty effort, venezuela charity on July 16, 2008 | No Comments »
For many low- and middle-income people in the U.S., helping the environment can take a back seat to the everyday demands of simply making ends meet. Citgo, the Venezuelan-owned gas company, is helping to address this problem through its new Energy Efficient Lighting Program.
The program donates energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs to families in cities across [...]
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Last week, Venezuela hosted the 7th Conference of Information Ministers of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries. The event brought representatives from 80 countries together to discuss common projects.
One of these was a proposal from Venezuela to create a Non-Aligned News Network (NNN). The network would provide news from and for the 118 countries that make [...]
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Posted in Society & Politics, The Region, tagged alvaro uribe, Colombia, colombia hostages, Farc, hostage release, Hugo Chavez, ingrid betancourt, keith stansell, marc gonsalves, rescue, security, tom howes on July 2, 2008 | No Comments »
Breaking news! We just heard that the government of Colombia has announced that it “rescued” 15 captives held by the FARC in Colombia.
The freed captives include French-born politician Ingrid Betancourt and U.S. military contractors Marc Gonsalves, Tom Howes, and Keith Stansell (pictured here).
This would have happened a lot sooner if Uribe had not canceled the [...]
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Posted in The Region, tagged argentina, Bank of the South, Bolivia, brazil, development, economic development, ecuador, IMF, latin america, paraguay, uruguay, venezuela, World Bank on July 1, 2008 | No Comments »
The Bank of the South (or in Spanish, Banco del Sur) is an institution that promises to help Latin American countries help themselves.
Founded late last year, the Bank has just announced it will begin operations with US$10 billion in startup capital. This amount may climb to as much as $20 billion. Each country’s contribution is [...]
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Posted in Society & Politics, The Region, tagged democracy, venezuela, latin america, venezuela oil, oil, politics, paraguay, Fernando Lugo on June 19, 2008 | No Comments »
Paraguay’s President elect, former Bishop Fernando Lugo, visited Caracas yesterday to meet with President Chavez. We can probably expect to see lots of cooperation between Venezuela and Paraguay once Lugo is sworn in in August.
Amazingly, Paraguay spent the last 60 years under one-party rule. With the election of Lugo last April 20th, the country voted [...]
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Posted in Society & Politics, The Region, tagged environment, venezuela, venezuelan government, food, politics, food crisis, food security, rice, agriculture, food supply on June 13, 2008 | No Comments »
Venezuela is upping investments in agriculture in response to concerns about food supplies that are part of a rising global crisis.
Agriculture Minister Elias Jaua announced plans on Tuesday for a 20% increase in the production of food crops including cereals, rice, corn, and sorghum. The transformation is dramatic in the area of soy farming: while [...]
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Posted in Arts & Culture, The Region, tagged cinema city, film, hollywood, naomi campbell, roman chalbaud, sean penn, tim robbins, venezuela, venezuelan directors, Venezuelan film, Venezuelan movies, villa del cine on June 11, 2008 | No Comments »
Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey, Naomi Campbell… Hollywood just cannot resist the charms of Venezuela!
The Academy Award- winning U.S. actor and director Tim Robbins visited yesterday, scouting a location for a film.
Robbins was particularly interested in seeing Coro, the desert-like peninsula that juts out into the ocean from the northern state of Falcón.
He also made the [...]
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Posted in Arts & Culture, The Region, tagged Cuba, culture, latin america, latin american culture, Latin American history, latin american literature, literature, poetry, venezuela, venezuelan government, Venezuelan History, Venezuelan literature, Venezuelan writers on May 30, 2008 | No Comments »
Thanks to Venezuela’s Ministry of Culture, many classic works of Latin American literature are now available online for free.
To check it out, visit Biblioteca Ayacucho. You can download PDFs files of books in Spanish ranging in publication date from the early 17th century to the late 20th century. Many famous Venezuelan writers are included in [...]
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Posted in Nature & Environment, The Region, tagged caribbean, conservation, Cuba, development, eco-friendly design, economy, environment, environmentalism, housing, latin america, oil, oil and environment, Petrocasas, venezuela on May 21, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Remember the petrocasas we told you about back in March? These affordable, eco-friendly homes made of waste generated by oil refining are now being used to ease a housing shortage in Cuba. Reuters reports that 40 new petrocasas are being built per day to reach a total number of 14,000 this year.
Petrocasas are [...]
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Posted in The Region, tagged ALBA, Bolivarian Alternative, caribbean, development, education, electricity, haiti, humanitarian aid, poverty, venezuela, venezuelan aid abroad on May 20, 2008 | No Comments »
Unlike elsewhere in the world, electricity consumption rates in Haiti have declined steadily over the last five years.
To help increase access, Venezuela is expanding a project set up in 2006 to provide Haiti with more electricity assistance. A new processing plant to be built on the island is expected to extend access to electricity [...]
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