Venezuela

While reading of the estimated 30,000 lives lost by the landslides in Venezuela (Dec. 26), I wondered: Have there ever been rainfall events this severe in that part of the world before? Why is this happening now? A quick search on the Internet (start with "logging in Venezuela") points to the real cause of this massive catastrophe. The widespread failure of the slopes there was a direct result of nonexistent or inadequate erosion prevention measures to accompany logging and mining activities.

Re "Foreign policy close to home," Opinion, April 25 Saying the U.S. cannot afford "to keep putting Latin America on the back burner," Sen. Marc Rubio (R-Fla.) wants us to "enhance trade and economic ties. " Regarding Cuba specifically, we should find "new ways to increase connectivity among Cubans, and expand access to 21st century technologies on the island. " Why then does Rubio oppose lifting the Cuba embargo, which forbids the shipment of information-technology products?

Venezuela took control this weekend of a Chinese-built communications satellite, part of a deepening trade relationship that some say illustrates waning U.S. influence in Latin America. Accompanied by Chinese technicians at a communications facility in western Guarico state, President Hugo Chavez presided at a ceremony in which Venezuela formally assumed operation of the Simon Bolivar, a $400-million satellite that China launched in October.

Musically, Venezuela is like no other place on Earth. Along with baseball and beauty pageants, classical music is one of the country's greatest passions. In the capital, Caracas, superstar Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel is mobbed wherever he goes. Classical music teeny-boppers run up to him for autographs when he walks off the podium at concerts. The state-run music education program, which is known as El Sistema and from which Dudamel emerged, is the most extensive, admired and increasingly imitated in the world.

President Hugo Chavez's government accused Colombia on Monday of using its state security agency to spy on Venezuela while purportedly helping investigate the killings of eight Colombians. Venezuela sent a diplomatic protest note saying officials of Colombia's DAS agency were "detected carrying out espionage work and attempting to bribe." Venezuela did not give details but said authorities had seized documents referring to a conspiracy to destabilize its government. Colombia has offered help in investigating the slayings of 10 men -- eight Colombians, a Venezuelan and a Peruvian -- whose bodies were found in the western Venezuelan border state of Tachira on Saturday.

A retired general and onetime confidant of President Hugo Chavez has been sentenced to prison in a case that revealed the divisions in Venezuelan society. The retired general, Raul Isaias Baduel, was sentenced to a nearly eight-year prison term Friday night by a military court on charges of abuse of power, misappropriation of funds and violation of the military code while he was an officer. Baduel's family criticized the verdict as unjust and said imprisoning him was a means of silencing a prominent critic.

Re "U.S. Is Aiming to Block Chavez," June 19 How dare Venezuela threaten to exercise free will and self-determination? How much clearer can we make this simple lesson: that what the U.S. wants is good for the world, period. The State Department's Eric Watnick summed it up beautifully: Venezuela's continued intransigence might undermine all the good work the U.S. is thinking about doing in Darfur. DOUG WEAVER North Hollywood

Chevron Corp. agreed to convert its oilfield-operating contracts in Venezuela to joint ventures with state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela. A transitional agreement will be signed Monday, San Ramon-Calif.-based Chevron said. Venezuela has now reached such agreements covering 28 of the 32 fields operated by third parties.

Venezuela's aviation agency is criticizing a U.S. travel advisory stating that the U.S. can't vouch for the security of flights departing Venezuela. The National Civil Aviation Institute insists that Venezuela's airports are in full compliance with international standards set by the U.N. agency overseeing civil aviation. Institute President Jose Luis Martinez Bravo denied that Venezuela's government had blocked U.S. officials from visiting its airports. But he acknowledged disagreement with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration on its request to evaluate security.

A succession of violent incidents in Venezuela, including the armed takeover of the Caracas city hall, point to an ugly campaign ahead of a Feb. 15 vote that could lift term limits on President Hugo Chavez. A group of 40 armed men who said they were Chavez supporters were still in control of city hall Monday evening, two days after they forced their way in, handcuffed two security officers and declared the building "recovered for the revolution," a mayoral spokesman said.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced Tuesday that he will undergo surgery to repair a 1-inch "abscess" in the same abdominal area where Cuban doctors removed a cancerous tumor in June. Chavez's surprise announcement, made during an official trip to Barinas state, came amid swirling rumors published this week in Brazil's O Globo newspaper that his cancer had metastasized to his liver. "It's a small lesion, about 2 centimeters in diameter, very clearly visible, which requires new surgery, which one supposes will be less complicated than the last one," Chavez said as he visited the Santa Ines industrial complex.

For more than a decade, political opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have sought to unseat the fiery populist. Yet his rivals have proved to be their own worst enemy. They've bickered among themselves, waged electoral boycotts that played into Chavez's hands, and failed to show that they understand the plight of the country's poor. But this past weekend, the opposition did the unthinkable: It coalesced behind a single candidate, Henrique Capriles, a youthful governor from the state of Miranda, to challenge Chavez in this year's presidential elections.

Fresh from a sweeping victory in the Venezuelan opposition's joint primary, Henrique Capriles declared Monday that the larger-than-expected voter turnout underscored the country's hunger for peace and progress, its "exhaustion" with President Hugo Chavez's divisive oratory and the vulnerability of the longtime socialist incumbent. Capriles, the 39-year-old governor of Miranda state, said at a news conference that he would run as an experienced pragmatist who will promote investment to reactivate a severely weakened economy.

Venezuelan presidential candidate Henrique Capriles easily won Sunday's primary vote to become the single challenger against President Hugo Chavez, setting the stage for an intense campaign season leading to the general election in October. Capriles, the governor of Miranda state, was declared the winner late Sunday with about 95% of the votes counted, officials said. Zulia state Gov. Pablo Perez came in a distant second. Speaking to thousands of supporters in east Caracas on Sunday night, Capriles thanked voters who "overcame obstructions and intimidation" to vote for him. "This is a country in crisis," the 39-year-old Capriles said.

When Deborah Borda, president of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, talks about her orchestra's 10-day concert tour to Venezuela that begins Friday, she uses two pointed descriptive terms. One is "critical mass. " Another, delivered with a chuckle, is "insane. " She also might have added potentially "transformative" and, perhaps, "risky. " Borda calls the tour, a multi-pronged endeavor built around the L.A. Phil's performances of Gustav Mahler's nine finished symphonies, "the biggest thing we've done since we opened Walt Disney Concert Hall" in 2003.

How many performers does it take to pull off Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8, popularly and dauntingly known as the "Symphony of a Thousand"? The answer isn't as obvious as it appears. For the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which performs the gargantuan symphony Saturday at the Shrine Auditorium, the tally is 1,011, with a lingering asterisk or two. It marks a rare, but certainly not unique, instance of the symphony being performed on the scale that the composer intended. The bulging roll call consists of 18 different groups coming together for an unprecedented undertaking by the orchestra: 91 musicians from the L.A Philharmonic, 99 from the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, 813 singers from 16 local choruses and eight vocal soloists.

Venezuela's foreign minister was detained at a New York airport Saturday, prompting an apology from the U.S. government and compounding already tense relations between the two countries. "We were the object of an illegal detention by the U.S. government," Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro told reporters at Venezuela's mission to the United Nations. He and President Hugo Chavez attended last week's U.N. General Assembly session.

Venezuela's state oil company said a U.S. petroleum engineering firm certified that a block in the country's Faja del Orinoco region contains 28.7 billion barrels of oil. The study by Houston-based Ryder Scott estimated the total amount of oil in the Carabobo 3 block, Petroleos de Venezuela said in a statement. The block may have proved reserves of 5.7 billion barrels, based on the expectation that 20% of the oil in the deposit can be recovered, the statement said.

It's appropriate that when Tricia Tunstall first entered the world of Gustavo Dudamel, her guide was the daughter of the musician Dudamel regards as one of his spiritual mentors: Leonard Bernstein. In winter 2008, Jamie Bernstein, a writer and broadcaster, went to hear Dudamel conduct the Israel Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in a program that included her father's Concerto for Orchestra ("Jubilee Games"). She brought along her friend Tunstall, a New York musician, music educator and author of the just published book "Changing Lives: Gustavo Dudamel, El Sistema, and the Transformative Power of Music.

Reporting from Glendale, Ariz. -- Juergen Klinsmann called Saturday's friendly with Venezuela a good test for his U.S. national soccer team. Good thing it wasn't the final exam. Because while the Americans did a lot of things well in their first match of the year, they needed to go deep into stoppage time to make that pay off, with Ricardo Clark scoring on a header to give the U.S. a 1-0 win before a crowd of 22,403 at University of Phoenix Stadium. Since replacing Bob Bradley as national team coach in July, Klinsmann has pushed a fast, aggressive European style of play new to the U.S. — one his players haven't always been able to keep up with.