Free Republic

CARACAS, Venezuela — Motorists in socialist Venezuela have long enjoyed the world’s cheapest gasoline, with fuel so heavily subsidized that a full tank these days costs a tiny fraction of a U.S. penny. But the economy is in such shambles that drivers are now paying for fill-ups with a little food, a candy bar or just a cigarette. Bartering at the pump has taken off as hyperinflation makes Venezuela’s paper currency, the bolivar, hard to find and renders some denominations all but worthless, so that nobody will accept them. Without cash in their wallets, drivers often hand gas station attendants...

Venezuela came to a standstill on Tuesday as the country tried to deal with its newly introduced currency. Thousands of businesses closed in order to adapt to the "sovereign bolivar", and many workers stayed at home. President Nicolás Maduro launched the new banknotes on Monday, revaluing and renaming the old bolivar currency. The government says this will tackle runaway inflation, but critics say it could make the crisis worse. The notes went into circulation on Tuesday.

Venezuela will remove five zeroes from the bolivar currency rather than the three zeroes originally planned, President Nicolas Maduro said on Wednesday, in an effort to keep up with inflation projected to reach 1 million percent this year. The OPEC nation’s economy has been steadily collapsing since the 2014 crash of oil prices left it unable to maintain its socialist economic system that for years provided lavish subsidies while enforcing strict price controls. Annual inflation in June topped 46,000 percent, according to the opposition-run Congress. The IMF said this week it could hit seven digits this year, putting it on...

Venezuelans are struggling to carry out basic transactions like purchasing food as the value of their currency, the bolivar, has plunged against the dollar amid the country’s worsening economic collapse. According to Reuters, over the past year, Venezuela’s currency weakened 97.5% against the greenback: Put another way, $1,000 of local currency purchased in early January would be worth just $25 now. The annual inflation rate in 2017 could reach $2,000. Though at least one other estimate puts the real rate of inflation closer to 2,800%. Of course, President Maduro has blamed websites like DolarToday – which publishes the closest thing...

Caracas (AFP) - Embattled President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday raised the minimum wage by 50 percent in Venezuela, a country with astronomical inflation. Maduro said he was raising the minimum wage to 40 bolivars, about 60 dollars at the highest official exchange rate, or $12 on the black market. "To get the year started, I have decided to raise the minimum wage," the president sad on his weekly show on state television. ... Venezuela has been rocked by low prices for its key export, oil. Now in its third year of a deep recession, it is facing severe shortages of...

HOOVER, Ala.—Public Enemy No. 1 of Venezuela’s revolutionary government is Gustavo Díaz, a Home Depot Inc. employee in central Alabama. On his lunch breaks from the hardware section, Mr. Díaz, 60 years old, does more than anyone else to set the price of everything from rice to aspirin to cars in his native Venezuela, influencing the inflation rate and swaying millions of dollars of daily currency transactions. How? He is president of one of Venezuela’s most popular and insurgent websites, DolarToday.com, which provides a benchmark exchange rate used by his compatriots to buy and sell black-market dollars. That allows them...

The Pentagon has responded to a globally-released ‘Kill List’, asking law enforcement to give extra protection for military personnel whose personal information was released,News Channel 10 reports. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports the Pentagon spent the weekend notifying the soldiers who appeared on the list, and urged city police departments and military police to increase patrol in the neighborhoods where the targeted live. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) published the list days ago, a report that contained names, photos, and home addresses of U.S. Armed Forces personnel, causing alarm in cities potentially at high-risk....

Mr. Chávez would have enjoyed the comparisons to Christ and Mr. Bolívar. "He wanted to be the Bolívar of the 21st century," said Enrique Krauze, a leading Mexican historian and author of "Redeemers," about Latin America's messianic caudillos, or charismatic political leaders. The late president often saw himself as a reincarnation of the 19th-century patriot who liberated five countries and sought to unite the former Spanish colonies, say former colleagues.

Stress, family medical history or possibly even poison led to the death of Vladimir Lenin, contradicting a popular theory that a sexually transmitted disease debilitated the Soviet Union’s founder, a UCLA neurologist said. Dr. Harry Vinters and Russian historian Lev Lurie reviewed Lenin’s records Friday for an annual University of Maryland School of Medicine conference that examines the deaths of famous figures. The conference is held yearly at the school, where researchers in the past have re-examined the diagnoses of figures including King Tut, Christopher Columbus, Simon Bolivar and Abraham Lincoln.

Death never dies here. It just keeps getting more interesting, more beguiling. More, well, alive. Alive in every cringe-worthy detail, in every clue about its causes, in every shard of evidence waiting to be spliced to another shard . . . and another shard until a picture starts to form, an image assembled from nuggets of information collected decades or centuries ago. Death, at least for the doctors and history buffs who gather each year at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, is the coolest of puzzles, leading them to the coolest of theories. Could Abraham Lincoln have been saved? (Yes.)...

Papa Possum'sNew World Nursery Rhymes Political Poetry for Traitorous Times The Bones of BolívarToma! How deluded dares a despot?         How desperate and bizarre? Sit back and hear the sad tale of         The Bones of Bolívar. A man named Simón once there was,         General in Freedom's War, e'er marked down by Historia         as El Libertador. For Sovereign Rights, Natural Law,         and Private Property, he rallied forces against Spain,         these Things to guarantee. Like Heroes in The North, he fought         and soon both near and far The Southern Continent was freed         by Simón Bolívar. But as time passed he saw his...

On Wednesday, November 24, Iranian demands that female nurses don the hijab in response to Iran’s providing $1.2 million for funding of the new El Alto city hospital in Bolivia sparked a national outcry among women’s rights advocates within Bolivia. In an international teleconference in La Paz held between Bolivian President, Evo Morales, and Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to celebrate the hospital’s opening, nurses were shown wearing hijabs as part of their new uniform regulations.

...Shortly after midnight on July 16, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez reached back in time. He presided at the exhumation of the remains of Simón Bolívar -- Latin America's greatest independence hero, who helped liberate the region from Spain in the 19th century, and the object of Chávez's personal and political obsession.... By presidential decree, every television station in Venezuela showed images of Bolívar in historic paintings, then images of the skeleton, and then images of Chávez, with the national anthem blaring. The message of this macabre parody was unmistakable: Chávez is not a follower of Bolívar -- Chávez is Bolívar,...

Venezuela launched a tightly regulated currency market where the bolivar traded at 5.3 per U.S. dollar on Wednesday in the latest effort by President Hugo Chavez's socialist government to steady the economy. Authorities in South America's top oil exporter want to halt the depreciation of the bolivar and stem capital flight as they battle recession and high inflation ahead of legislative elections in September.

Two-tier exchange rate reintroduced to limit imports and help domestic businesses. President Hugo Chavez has devalued Venezuela's currency by at least 17%. The bolivar will now have two levels--a preferential rate of 2.6 bolivars per U.S. dollar for priority imports like food, health and machinery and a 4.3 "petrodollar" rate for other goods. The currency had been fixed at 2.15 to the dollar since 2005, but ahead of Friday's announcement was trading at 6 bolivars to the U.S. dollar in parallel trade, a tolerated black market. The petrodollar rate represents a 50% devaluation of the official rate. The move will...

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez said Monday that Venezuela should open the coffin of independence hero Simon Bolivar to examine the bones, saying there are sufficient doubts about his death in 1830 to warrant a full investigation. Although history books maintain Bolivar died of tuberculosis, Chavez said doubts exist because some writings suggest it is possible the South American "Liberator" might have been murdered. Chavez has raised this theory before, but went further during a speech on the anniversary of Bolivar's death. "Who knows if they even made Bolivar's bones disappear? We have to determine it now," Chavez said....

In an effort to stanch the eroding value of Venezuelan currency, President Hugo Chávez has issued a new currency with a new name, the "Bárbara." Chávez hopes to stem the steep tide of inflation by lopping off approximately two zeros and turning the 1000 bolivar coin into a coin valued at 12-1/2 "fuerte" or "strong" bolivars. Chávez has nicknamed the new coin Bárbara because its copper color closely matches Barbara Walters's henna hair. In addition, Walters's recent interview broadcast on ABC's Good Morning America has "restored my currency as the most important leader of the Western Hemisphere." In her March...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday his government was cancelling all mining concessions and would not award any new deals to transnational companies as part of a wider sector restructuring. "Recently ... we decided, after looking at this and looking at that, to cancel all mining concessions. We will not give any more concessions to transnationals," Chavez said in a speech late on Wednesday. Left-winger Chavez has launched a broad campaign to review energy and mineral contracts signed by Venezuela before he first won office in 1998. He says some of the deals are robbing the world's No....

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has ignited new controversy with his plans for "units of popular defense" throughout the country to defend it from a possible attack from "imperialism." Chavez, who has referred on many occasions to a possible U.S. invasion, said, "If imperialism ever has the idea of challenging Venezuela it would have to deal with Bolivar's people, who is prepared to defend their sovereignty, their motherland."

Tehran, Nov 28, IRNA -- Statue of Venezuela's nineteenth century leader Simon Bolivar was unveiled at Goft-o-gou (dialogue) Park in Tehran on Sunday in a ceremony attended by President Hugo Chavez, Chairman of Tehran City Council Mehdi Chamran and Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadi said that today is a great day in Tehran-Caracas relations as well as in Iranian ties with Latin American nations. "Though there is long way from Tehran to Latin American states, the common ground between Iran and the Latin American nations has helped bring closer the hearts of those nations," Tehran mayor said. President Chavez thanked...