The U.S. has withdrawn the visa of Venezuela’s ambassador to Washington, in retaliation for the rejection of Barack Obama’s choice of US ambassador by Caracas.
The State Department said Venezuela had brought the measure upon itself.
Posts Tagged ‘Caracas’
Chavez moves into tent
December 11th, 2010 |
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is to temporarily govern from a Bedouin tent to allow victims of recent floods to take temporary shelter in his office.
More than 100,000 people have been made homeless and 30 killed by the worst rains to hit the South American state in over a decade. Landslides have swept away houses in slums built on hillsides in the capital, Caracas.
Russia, Venezuela sign deal on nuclear power plant
October 15th, 2010 |
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Russia and Venezuela signed on Friday an agreement on the construction of a nuclear power station in the South American country The agreement, signed during Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s visit to Moscow, was reached in April 2010 during Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to Caracas.
Venezuela, Russia agree plans for nuclear power plant
April 3rd, 2010 |
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Venezuela and Russia have reached an agreement to draft plans on the construction of the first nuclear power plant in the Latin American country. “We are ready to start drafting the first nuclear plant project,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told a joint news conference in Caracas after talks with the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Chavez accused of gagging media
August 1st, 2009 |
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Venezuelan opposition groups have protested against a decision to take 34 radio stations off the air, calling it an attack on freedom of speech.
As the stations stopped broadcasting on Saturday, staff said the move was aimed at giving more space to media that support President Hugo Chavez.
More than 200 other radio stations are expected to close in coming weeks.
The government says the stations are in breach of the rules for failing to hand in their registration papers on time.
The move to close the stations comes as the arguments over control of the media in Venezuela are becoming increasingly bitter, the BBC’s Will Grant reports from the Venezuelan capital Caracas.
This week a tough new media law was proposed under which journalists could be imprisoned for publishing "harmful" material.
The opposition mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, said the closure of the stations showed the government was "scared of freedom of expression".
Opposition politician Juan Carlos Caldera said the government had "turned into a mutilator of rights".
But Diosdado Cabello, head of the national regulator and public works minister, said there was no evidence that the closures were against the law, adding that they were part of efforts to make the media more democratic.
"When we – the national government, the revolutionary government – took the decision to democratise the radio-electrical spectrum… we were speaking seriously," he said.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Venezuela mulls tough media law
July 31st, 2009 |
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By Will Grant
BBC News, Caracas, Venezuela
A tough new media law, under which journalists could be imprisoned for publishing "harmful" material, has been proposed in Venezuela.
Journalists could face up to four years in prison for publishing material deemed to harm state stability.
Public prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz, who proposed the changes, said it was necessary to "regulate the freedom of expression" without "harming it".
The move comes at a time of rising tension over private media regulation.
Under the draft law on media offences, information deemed to be "false" and aimed at "creating a public panic" will also be punishable by prison sentences.
The law will be highly controversial if passed in its current form.
It states that anyone – newspaper editor, reporter or artist – could be sentenced to between six months and four years in prison for information which attacks "the peace, security and independence of the nation and the institutions of the state".
Radio risk
A case which has often been quoted in the bitter arguments over this law is a recent advert in national newspapers by a right-wing think tank, Cedice, which shows a naked woman next to the slogan "The Social Property law will take all you’ve got, Say No to communist laws".
The government says it has no intention of removing the right to private property and that such publications are irresponsible and designed to breed fear among Venezuelans.
But the opposition says the draft law is an unprecedented attack on private media outlets and journalists in Venezuela.
The proposed bill, which must still be debated on the floor of the assembly, comes as some 240 radio stations in Venezuela are at risk of being closed for allegedly failing to hand their registration papers into the government ahead of a deadline last month.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Chavez freezes ties with Colombia
July 29th, 2009 |
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Venezuela is withdrawing its ambassador from neighbouring Colombia and freezing relations, following a dispute over weapons supplied to Colombian rebels.
President Hugo Chavez, who announced the move on Venezuelan TV, also said he was halting trade deals with Colombia.
The announcement came a day after the Colombia government said weapons bought by Venezuela from Sweden had made their way to left-wing Farc guerrillas.
Mr Chavez denied this and accused Colombia of acting "irresponsibly".
"I’ve ordered to withdraw our ambassador from Bogota," the Venezuelan leader said on Tuesday. "We will freeze relations with Colombia," he added.
Mr Chavez said Venezuela would substitute imports from Colombia with goods from other countries, notably Brazil and Ecuador.
On Monday the Colombian government said its troops had recovered Swedish anti-tank weapons in a raid on a Farc camp. The Caracas government denied supplying them.
The Swedish authorities have launched an inquiry into how the Farc had acquired the weapons.
The Marxist rebels have been fighting the Bogota government since the 1960s.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Former Venezuela minister charged
July 18th, 2009 |
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By Will Grant
BBC News, Caracas
Venezuela’s former defence minister is facing charges over his alleged role in violent clashes between police and protesters in Caracas in 1989.
Italo del Valle Alliegro is accused of having played a role in ordering the violent repression of the protest.
The protests, sparked by a series of economic restructuring measures which included price rises on fuel and public transport, left hundreds dead.
The retired general denies all the charges against him.
The street riots of February 1989 in the Venezuelan capital are known as the Caracazo.
Government-imposed price rises, particularly on the cost of fuel, provoked several days of looting and clashes with the military which left an official figure of 274 people dead.
Some groups say as many as 3,000 people were killed.
Very few public figures were put on trial over the violence and it has stained Venezuela’s reputation ever since.
Since coming to power, Hugo Chavez – who was a lieutenant in the army at the time – has described the event as a massacre by the state, and ordered a tribunal to investigate the Caracazo.
Now, charges have been brought against the then-defence minister, Mr del Valle Alliegro, one of the highest members of the government of former President Carlos Andres Perez to be charged in relation to the violence to date.
The retired general is facing charges of alleged complicity in homicide and breaking international human rights accords. He denies the charges.
Mr Chavez often cites the Caracazo as one of the key events which led him to attempt a coup against Mr Perez a few years later, in a failed effort to remove him from power.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Honduras Talks Fail To Reach Agreement
July 11th, 2009 |
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SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Delegates representing the ousted and interim governments of Honduras failed to forge an agreement during a second day of talks and no fixed date was set for future negotiations.
The only consensus reached between…