News stories by Humberto Márquez, page 5

Unseasonable rains falling for months and months in much of Venezuela have taken lives, destroyed homes, damaged crops and affected huge numbers of people. Experts blame the high level of damages on the improvised actions of citizens and the state.

Venezuela has been a major arms purchaser from Russia, China and other suppliers in the last five years, but has failed to acquire the necessary competence to deal with hypothetical conflicts, says a non-governmental organisation specialised in security and defence.

Saudi Arabia has increased oil production to compensate for the fall in output from Libya, as the popular uprising against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi continues to grow in that North African country.

For the first time in over 20 years, a Venezuelan government gave in Tuesday to the demands of students, more than 60 of whom were on hunger strike, and released or promised better conditions for members of the opposition who are in prison.

Millions of cancer patients around the world benefit from a medication called Paclitaxel (Taxol), which may begin to be produced from a new source: fungi found at the summit of Venezuela's flat-topped mountains. But the indigenous communities who have lived in that area since time immemorial will receive no benefits, and were not even consulted on the matter.

Controversy has flared up in Venezuela over planned reforms to the law on online media, especially because restrictions that already apply to the content of radio and television broadcasts would be extended to the internet. Portals and networks that transmit messages deemed to be illegal may face heavy fines, or even be shut down.

Rubén González, a 51-year-old welder who is the secretary general of the Sintraferrominera ironworkers union, has spent over a year in prison in Venezuela for leading a strike by hundreds of workers outside the San Isidro mine in Ciudad Piar, 550 kilometres southeast of the capital.

Bridges, railroads, petrochemicals, steel mills, electricity, aqueducts, agriculture, meat-processing plants, ship building and even cable cars: Brazil's powerful entrepreneurial arm is reaching towards the Caribbean, via Venezuela, where the Hugo Chávez government is working to build what it calls '21st century socialism.'

An 81-year-old Jesuit missionary in Venezuela ended a week-long hunger strike Monday after the government agreed to high-level talks to negotiate the release of three indigenous prisoners facing murder charges and to discuss land claims by Yukpa communities.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced the expropriation of a subsidiary of the British Vestey Group, and of Agroisleña, a major agricultural firm founded by Spaniards half a century ago, indicating that he is radicalising his Bolivarian revolution in spite of a drop in support for him in the recent parliamentary elections.