Venezuela's military enters high-crime slums Associated Press Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Updated 11:20 am, Friday, May 17, 2013 Since Monday, this scene is playing out day and night at dozens of military checkpoints set up here in the socialist government's latest attempt to control the oil-rich country's pandemic ...

CARACAS, Venezuela — The once-almighty U.S. dollar has lost its luster in some corners of the world. But there’s one outpost where greenbacks have never been stronger: in socialist, anti-imperialist Venezuela, whose government rails against American-style capitalism as the bane of humanity. The dollar is not just holding steady here — it is flourishing like nowhere else, the byproduct of ...

Venezuelans scrambling to find scarce toilet paper Associated Press Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Updated 1:34 pm, Thursday, May 16, 2013 CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelans scrambled to stock up on toilet paper Thursday as fears of a bathroom emergency spread despite the socialist government's promise to import 50 ...

I’ve been working recently with clients on more and more 20-minute speeches.  As I indicated in an earlier blog post, it’s the era of shorter speeches.  Fidel Castro holds forth no more, and Hugo Chavez is gone altogether, so multi-hour practitioners are on the wane, but the rest of us are expected to bring it in under an hour more ...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A portrait of Hugo Chavez stared down from a black metal frame as Jose Pastano sipped coffee after dinner with his sons in the slum house he shares with 17 relatives on the western edge of the capital.