News stories by Humberto Márquez, page 4

These women are not fashion models, nor are they advertising any product, yet their images look down on passersby from giant black-and-white posters in the Venezuelan capital. There are 52 of them, and they are all mothers who have lost one or more children to the criminal violence that is plaguing the country.

The Venezuelan government's decision to expropriate 25 ranches to distribute 15,800 hectares of land to communities of Yukpa Indians in the northwest of the country partially makes up a long-standing debt to the native group.

Garbage pickers, emaciated dogs and carrion birds alike all hunt for items of value at the Cambalache garbage dump, before they have to give way to the smouldering fire that burns up to 900 tonnes of waste a day in the open air, spreading its smoke over Ciudad Guayana in northeastern Venezuela.

Like the biblical plagues of Egypt, 10 calamities have fallen in recent years on the previously flourishing basic industries of northeastern Venezuela, such as iron and steel, aluminium and hydroelectricity.

A Venezuelan municipality where the main industry is oil refining, and that has an import-export 'free zone', is set to become a plastic bag-free area.

Worn down by hunger, thirst and a military cordon, more than 1,000 prisoners involved in a 27-day standoff with the authorities in the El Rodeo 2 prison, 30 km east of the Venezuelan capital, finally surrendered and handed over their weapons Wednesday.

The pieces on Venezuela's political chessboard have shifted as a result of President Hugo Chávez's illness and convalescence in Cuba. His surprise return to Venezuela Monday has opened questions as to how the game will be played in future.

'I want my own roof over my head, my own home. I don't want to live in a curtained-off cubicle surrounded by masses of people,' says Elena Díaz, who does ironing for a living and lives in a temporary shelter in the centre of the Venezuelan capital.

Venezuela's prisons are considered to be among the most violent and dangerous in the world. But the country now has a new ministry specifically tasked with improving conditions in the penitentiaries and making them fit for inmates.

Threats to biodiversity, spreading pollution, degraded river basins and disappearing forests are problems in oil-rich, megadiverse Venezuela, where climate change is knocking on the door.