An international arbitration panel has awarded US oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp 908 million dollars in compensation for Venezuela's 2007 nationalization of assets, less than 10% of what it sought in a dispute that pitted a top global oil company against one of the world's largest oil exporters.
President Hugo Chavez Venezuela is on track to set a new record for murders and to remain South America's most violent country, according to data released by a crime watchdog. The Venezuela Violence Monitor (OVV) said this week that 19 336 people had been murdered in 2011, an average of 53 per day in a country of 29 million.
The Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad will be travelling to Latinamerica in the second week of January 2012 to visit Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador, announced the Teheran presidential office, according to a report from the official news agency FNA.
President Hugo Chavez claimed that a small group of Paraguayan lawmakers, manipulated by a “powerful black hand”, are impeding the long-delayed access of Venezuela as full member of Mercosur.
Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo called for the free flow and free access of his country’s goods to Mercosur senior members’ markets and insisted on the energy integration of the block.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez arrived in Uruguay on Friday to push for his country's incorporation into the Mercosur trade bloc, in his first official trip abroad since undergoing cancer surgery in June.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said he will travel on Tuesday to the Mercosur summit in Uruguay in his first official foreign trip since undergoing cancer surgery in June and a further sign he is feeling stronger.
The president of the Paraguayan congress Senator Jorge Oviedo Matto said that Paraguay should withdraw from Mercosur if the block during its Tuesday summit in Montevideo agrees the incorporation of Venezuela “eluding the approval of the Legislative as indicates the Constitution and the Mercosur charter”.
A two day Mercosur summit begins Monday in Montevideo with Foreign Affairs ministers meeting Monday and the presidents on Tuesday when the rotating chair will be passed from Uruguay to Argentina for the next six month.
In a controversial ruling Venezuela’s Supreme Court endorsed the non enforcement of Criminal Code sanctions against those occupying private landholdings and plots of land.