At least four people have been killed, including a police officer, after thousands of Venezuelans in two different marches, opposing and supporting President Nicolas Maduro took to the streets of Caracas on Wednesday following two weeks of anti-government protests across the country.
Mercosur summit delays and oil are two of the main issues the Paraguayan foreign minister Eladio Loizaga will address with his Venezuelan peer Elias Jaua, when he travels on Thursday to Caracas. Formally the event is a diplomatic reciprocity for Jaua's visit to Paraguay last 9 October, when the two countries re-established full relations.
Mercosur pretends to increase its trade integration with members from the Pacific Alliance, said Brazilian foreign minister Luiz Alberto Figuereido. The top official made the statement this week before the Brazilian Senate foreign affairs committee.
A Mercosur technical committee will be meeting next week in Venezuela to elaborate the group's final tariffs reduction proposal to exchange with the European Union as part of the ongoing, but long delayed, negotiations to reach an ambitious free trade agreement, according to Brazil's foreign minister Luiz Alberto Figuereido.
A leading Venezuelan businessman rejected a new presidential decree limiting the profit margins of companies, vowing to take the fight all the way to the country’s Supreme Court. The President of the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Fedecámaras) Jorge Roig, announced he had the backing of his organization and other business leaders.
The economies of Argentina and Venezuela are the least well-off in the region due to pressures on inflation, the balance of payments, and foreign exchange markets that developed last year, the International Monetary Fund warned.
The Brazilian government is determined to advance with negotiations for a trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union even if it means leaving Argentina for a second phase of the process, according to sources from Itamaraty, the country's foreign ministry, reported in the Rio do Janeiro media.
Venezuela decreed a new price control law that sets limits on company profits and establishes prison terms for those charged with hoarding or over-charging, part of populist President Nicolas Maduro's efforts to tame inflation.
Ecuadorean airline Tame has suspended flights to Venezuela, demanding 43m dollars in overdue payments for tickets. Some 80 passengers were left stranded on Thursday at the airport in the Ecuadorean capital, Quito. Tame says the Venezuelan Central Bank has not transferred any money to its account in Ecuador since April 2013.
Discotheques have long operated inside Venezuelan penitentiaries, the head of the country's prison service said Thursday in response to a public uproar over the death of a young man after partying at a disco behind bars.