Venezuela said on Friday it will expand a program to provide cheap home heating oil to poor US citizens, bringing savings to low-income families in Vermont and Rhode Island, as well as four Indian tribes in Maine.
Venezuela's Citgo Petroleum Corp. has already begun selling millions of liters of discounted fuel in Massachusetts and the Bronx in New York City as part of a plan by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to aid poor communities that he says are neglected by Washington.
Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela's ambassador to the US, said he will sign an agreement on Thursday in Maine to start providing heating oil to four Indian tribes -- the Penobscot, Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians.
PHOTO: AP
"The Penobscot Nation is very grateful," tribal chief James Sappier said by phone from the reservation near Bangor, Maine. "This is probably one of the greatest decisions for our tribe in years."
Many in the tribe of 2,261 people are facing tough times economically as jobs have moved out of the area, and the discounted fuel could save a family US$1,000 or more this winter, he said.
Sappier said heating oil prices have been hovering around US$2.40 in the area recently, and Venezuela estimates participants in will save US$0.15-US$0.20 cents per liter.
Alvarez said Venezuela also will extend the deal next week to Vermont and Rhode Island. Other communities in New York City -- Harlem, Queens and Brooklyn -- will soon begin benefiting, he said.
Chavez's opponents accuse him of using Venezuela's oil wealth to win friends while trying to embarrass US President George W. Bush, whom he calls a "madman." But Chavez's supporters defend the heating oil program an example of generosity by a president leading a socialist revolution for the poor.
Alvarez was accompanied by a group of US activists on a tour of a state-funded cooperative in Caracas where the poor receive free health care and hundreds work in textile and shoemaking shops.
The visitors included singer Harry Belafonte, actor Danny Glover, Princeton University scholar Cornel West and farm worker advocate Dolores Huerta.
"It was impressive for everyone to see that progress is being made," said Tavis Smiley, who joined the group and hosts a talk show on PBS television.
Belafonte, who has praised the heating oil program, said the group came to learn about the situation in Venezuela. He was sharply critical of the situation in the US, noting poverty and a huge prison population.
West, a professor of religion, spoke admiringly of Chavez's programs, saying they show "this revolution is real; it's not something that people are just talking about."
Meanwhile, Sappier said snow was falling in Maine, and his tribe was grateful for Chavez's help.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has