The Venezuelan government has responded to demands from flood refugees for a quicker solution to their housing problem after recent protests by refugee groups closed key highways in the capital Caracas.
Officers of the Venezuelan National Anti-Drugs Office (ONA) arrested a prominent Colombian drug dealer, Nelson Orlando Buitrago Parada, aka "Caballo," on Saturday.
Member countries of Latin America’s alternative integration bloc, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), met in the Venezuelan capital this weekend in order to discuss the advancement of the organisation at its 11th official summit.
This past Monday Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that his government would make reforming the country’s penal code a priority in the upcoming year.
This past Tuesday, the Venezuelan National Assembly passed new legislation reforming the country’s laws on organised crime and terrorism. The legislation widens the number of crimes under its competence and also increases maximum sentences for offenses.
A United Nations (UN) official praised Venezuela’s gun control and disarmament efforts as the government proceeds with several policies aimed at countering violent crime and guaranteeing citizen security.
The reduction of the working day to a maximum of 7 hours, eliminating subcontracted work and increasing maternity leave to a period of 5 months are some of the proposals which have been put forward by thousands of workers across Venezuela in an effort to write the country’s new Labour Law, said President of the Socialist Bolivarian Workers’ Central, Will Rangel on Monday.
The purpose of the recently formed Great Patriotic Pole (GPP) will be to establish a “new hegemony” within the Bolivarian revolution, said the Vice-president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Francisco Arias Cardenas this past Saturday.
Reforms to humanise Venezuela’s prison system moved ahead this week with the launch of a program in which inmates work to restore and improve prison facilities, while prison affairs minister Iris Valera reported progress in tackling delays in the judicial processing of prisoners.
On Wednesday, Venezuelans were shocked at the news of Attorney General and revolutionary lawyer Carlos Escarra’s abrupt death after suffering a heart attack earlier that morning.
The president of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) Tibisay Lucena reported on Wednesday that the CNE, which organises and oversees elections in Venezuela, is fully prepared for the upcoming 2012 – 2013 electoral period. “We say to the country that we are ready...all that remains is to put that thorough planning into practise,” she stated.
The Venezuelan government has announced Venezuela’s “irrevocable” withdrawal from the World Bank affiliated arbitration body the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
The new Venezuela social network, called Plaxed, which allows streams of short posts (200 characters), as well as event invitations, polls, and questions, was created as an alternative site so that files or personal details found on the network “aren’t blocked, erased, or followed” by U.S laws, said its creator, Cesar Cotiz, a systems engineer student.
Leopoldo Lopez has withdrawn from the opposition presidential primaries, deferring his support to the current governor of Miranda state, Henrique Capriles Radonski.
Indepabis, the Institute for the Defence of People in the Access to Goods and Services, has published a list online of over 1,000 new regulated prices for medicinal products.
