title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: The ex-chief of FEPADE said that the accusations against Anaya were minor in comparison to Odebretch and Peña Nieto scandal, adding also the same opinion about the money lost by Secretariat of Social Development, to corrupt governors from the PRI such as Javier Duarte, all while José Antonio Meade was the man in charge of the Secretariat of Social Development. The scandal is known as "La Estafa Maestra" (The Master Robbery), and about 435 million pesos were lost. The same week the PRI legislators were criticized for voting for stopping the investigation of Odebretch against the wishes of Mexican people and organizations campaigning against corruption such as "Mexicanos contra la corrupción" (Mexicans against corruption). The investigation about Odebretch against the Pemex leader at the time, Lozoya, was legally stopped after a judge controversially ordered it days after.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Santiago Nieto said that the PGR was being used by Peña Nieto's government to tamper with elections and benefit Meade by removing Anaya from the race, complaining that it was a politically motivated use of law-enforcement agencies, which had made more efforts to investigate Anaya in a month than towards investigating Peña Nieto's Odebretch money and Meade's lost Secretariat of Social Development funds over the last six years. Santiago Nieto said the PGR and FEPADE were only attacking the rivals of the PRI, and the investigating organizations were not being neutral.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: In an interview with "The Wall Street Journal", Santiago Nieto would later reveal that Peña Nieto's government tried to bribe him to keep him silent, which he refused saying, "Sorry, but I can't receive any money from Peña Nieto." He received menacing phone messages stating: "Death follows you" and "Words of advice: stay out of Trouble", and as a consequence, he feared for the safety of his, and his family's lives.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Additionally as of 2018, many of the politicians of the PRI political party who supported Peña Nieto during his presidential campaign would be later declared criminals by the Mexican government (some already elected, while others were campaigning concurrently with Peña Nieto, and would be elected), near the end of Peña Nieto's time as president.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: A total of 22 state ex-governors, all members from the PRI, were accused of misuse of public funds and misdirection of money (with some money speculated to have been directed to the PRI); only five were sent to jail, with PGR receiving criticism for not investigating further. Among the most prominent criminals were: Tomás Yarrington from Tamaulipas (along his predecessor Eugenio Hernández Flores), Javier Duarte from Veracruz,


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: César Duarte Jáquez from Chihuahua (no family relation between the two Duartes), and Roberto Borge from Quintana Roo, along their unknown multiple allies who enabled their corruption. Although Peña Nieto was not found to be their ally, by being part of the same political party, there were severely negative consequences to Peña Nieto's image as president, as well as of the PRI.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Also, while not a member of the PRI at the time, Meade's image also received damage, because much of the money was lost while he was in charge of the Secretariat of Social Development, the government ministry that supervises the resources received by each state.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Despite the overwhelming evidence against César Duarte, in March 2018 the PGR found him innocent of any crime. The successor governor Javier Corral from the PAN, who previously fought against the Televisa law, gave a similar opinion to Santiago Nieto, saying the PGR was being used to protect the allies of Peña Nieto and the PRI, and attack their rivals.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: López Obrador said that failure to take action against Duarte was one of the main reasons why Mexicans had lost their faith in the PRI, saying the few ex-governors that were declared criminals were only to a pretense of concern.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: After, Meade decided to change his strategy; and due to his poor reception, Ochoa Reza left his position as president of the PRI on 2 May.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Santiago Nieto decided to join AMLO's campaign, with both promising to continue the investigation into the alleged scandal involving Peña Nieto, the PRI and Odebretch.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Meanwhile, César Duarte disappeared before being incarcerated, and was subsequently declared a fugitive from justice by the PGR.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: More than 130 political figures were killed from when the campaign began in September 2017 until July 2018.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: López Obrador promised to end many of the benefits received by ex-presidents, particularly the lifelong pension they receive. He added that he would redirect the money saved to be used to help senior citizens. Zavala said she would also attempt to end the practice, though she had not decided how to use the money saved, while Meade and Anaya said they would keep the practice going.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Anaya promised to implement a basic income for Mexican citizens, Anaya said Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman supported the idea. While well received, "El Economista" criticized how Anaya announced it, and called the idea populist.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Meade proposed to create an office that would track the unique needs of each individual citizen, in what he would call "Registro Único de Necesidades de Cada Persona" (Unique Register of the Necessities of Each Person). Citizens on social media mocked the idea as absurd and impossible to develop, comparing it to writing letters to Santa Claus or just plainly asking for miracles.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Meade has supported Peña Nieto's energy reforms, saying that "everyone wins with the "gasolinazo"", and announcing that if he won he intended to continue it.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: López Obrador promised to end the "gasolinazos" by building two new fuel refineries, which would allow more petroleum to be processed into gasoline domestically, thus lowering the price by not outsourcing the refining to other countries.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Anaya promised to investigate and do everything to make sure President Peña Nieto is sent to jail for his aforementioned multiple presidential scandals, with López Obrador agreeing and suggesting to up the ante by also investigating every living former president.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: On 26 January, López Obrador accused the International Monetary Fund of being an accomplice to corruption in Mexican politics and claimed that its policies are in part responsible for poverty, unemployment, and violence in the country. López Obrador promised that if he won the presidency, Mexico will follow "its own agenda".


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: López Obrador called for a change in security strategy and offered the controversial proposal of giving amnesty for drug dealers as a way to combat the drug cartels.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: During a debate in April, Rodríguez Calderón said "We have to cut off the hands of those who rob (in public service). It's that simple." He later explained that it was intended to be applied to both criminals and government functionaries involved in acts of corruption citing the application of this measure in Saudi Arabia as an example to reduce corruption and violence. Rodríguez Calderón was trending ahead of the other candidates on Twitter during the debate.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Rodríguez Calderón later proposed to bring back the death penalty (currently constitutionally abolished in Mexico and enforced for the last time in 1961) for drug traffickers, hijackers, infanticides and serial killers.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: The candidate put forward by the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, María de Jesús Patricio Martínez (Marichuy), alleged that the process for collecting signatures to attain ballot access unfairly benefits the rich. Marichuy said, "the INE made a list of telephone makes and models so that you must have at a minimum an Android 5.0 operating system or higher and so many hours to begin with the download of the applications in the devices, we find that the list is not true; we find brands that are not included in the list and of those that are included they don’t all work. The download is tedious and can take hours." The INE declared each signature registration would take 4.3 minutes, but each actual signature registration has taken up to 16 hours, or more. 'With these "classist, racist and excluding measures," Marichuy said, you realize "that this electoral system is not made for those peoples below that govern ourselves and that the laws and institutions of the State are made for those above, for the capitalists and their corrupt political class, resulting in a big simulation." Ultimately she was not able to obtain ballot access.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: After the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, in April 2018, Forbes published information from the British news program Channel 4 News that had mentioned the existence of proof revealing ties between the PRI and Cambridge Analytica, suggesting a "modus operandi" similar to the one in the United States. The info said they worked together at least until January.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: The New York Times obtained the 57-page proposal of Cambridge Analytica's proposed collaboration strategy to benefit the PRI by hurting MORENA's candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador; the political party rejected the offer but still paid Cambridge Analytica to not help the other candidates.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: In April 2017, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, John F. Kelly, stated that the election of a left-wing president in Mexico "would not be good for America or Mexico". The statement was widely believed to be a reference to López Obrador, the leftist, frontrunner candidate, and created controversy in Mexico, as it seemed to be an attempt to influence the election against him.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: In December 2017, US National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster claimed that Russia had launched a campaign to "influence Mexico’s 2018 presidential election and stir up division", without defining the methods of the supposed meddling, or indicating which would be the candidate favored by the Kremlin. The Russian government has denied the claims.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: PRI president Enrique Ochoa Reza claimed that "Russian and Venezuelan interests" are supporting López Obrador's campaign.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: López Obrador responded that Ochoa's declarations are part of a smear campaign against him, and later posted a video via social media, where he joked about the claims and called himself "Andres Manuelovich".


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Guatemalan right-wing commentator Gloria Álvarez embarked on a tour through Mexico, calling López Obrador a "dangerous populist" and urging citizens not to vote for him. She was invited to a PAN legislators assembly on 31 January, where she criticized the alliance with the PRD, which she called "a party just like MORENA".


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: US Senators Bob Menendez and Marco Rubio asked US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to "fight Russian meddling" in the Mexican elections. On 2 February during a summit in Mexico, Tillerson stated that Mexico should "beware the Russian interference". Dr. Tony Payan, director of the Mexico Center at Rice University noted that there was no evidence of actual Russian tampering in the Mexican electoral process, and considered the accusations "absurd" given that the Trump administration "will not admit Russia interfered in the US election".


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Bloomberg warned about the possibility of the PRI committing electoral fraud, with Tony Payan, director of the Mexico Center at Rice University's Baker Institute in Houston, United States, suggesting that both vote buyout and computer hackings were possible and citing irregularities in the 1988 electoral process. Bloomberg's article also suggested Meade could be receiving unfair help from the over-budget amounts of money spent on publicity by incumbent president Enrique Peña Nieto.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Additionally, Meade spent more money on pre-campaign efforts than López Obrador and Anaya together, while failing to report where his funds came from; in contrast, López Obrador has attended the most events while spending the least money and successfully reported better than his rivals where he obtained the resources to pay for those events.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: During 2017, the PRI had faced allegations of electoral fraud concerning the election of Peña Nieto's cousin Alfredo del Mazo Maza as Governor of the state of Mexico. Despite the official vote results given by the INE (Electoral National Institute) giving the win to del Mazo, the election was marred by irregularities including reports of vote-buying, spending beyond legal campaign finance limits, and electoral counts that gave del Mazo extra votes that awarded the election to him. In November 2017, left-wing magazine "Proceso" published an article accusing the PRI of breaking at least 16 state laws during the elections, which were denounced 619 times. They said that all of them were broken in order to favor del Mazo during the election.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: López Obrador won the election on 1 July 2018 with over 50% of the popular vote. In terms of states won, López Obrador won in a landslide, carrying 30 out of 31 states plus Mexico City, the most federal entities won by a candidate since Ernesto Zedillo won every state in the 1994 election.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: Around 30 minutes after polls closed in the country's north-west, José Antonio Meade, speaking at a news conference from PRI headquarters, conceded defeat and wished López Obrador "every success".


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: and independent candidate Jaime Rodríguez Calderón recognized López Obrador's victory shortly afterward.


title: 2018 Mexican general election

text: The results of the INE's official quick count were announced around midnight Mexico City time. It reported a turnout of around 63%, with the following approximate results for the candidates: López Obrador, 53%; Anaya, 22%; Meade, 16%; and Rodríguez Calderón, 5%. This is the first time since 1994 Mexican general election that a presidential candidate was elected with an absolute majority (50%+1) of the votes cast.


title: Staged

text: Staged is a British television comedy series, set during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom and primarily filmed using video-conferencing technology. The first series premiered on 10 June 2020 on BBC One, and the second series premiered on 4 January 2021 on BBC One. A New Year Special was uploaded to the BritBox YouTube page on 31 December 2021. A third series premiered on 24 November 2022 on BritBox.


title: Staged

text: In the first series, Michael Sheen and David Tennant play fictionalised versions of themselves, trying to rehearse a performance of Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author" during lockdown via videoconference, while the underconfident director, Simon, struggles to keep control of the production.


title: Staged

text: The second series follows the "real" Michael and David following the success of the first series of "Staged". Simon begins work on an American remake of the first series but Michael and David are not asked to reprise their roles.


title: Staged

text: The third series starts with Simon trying to get Michael and David to agree to a Christmas staged version of "Six Characters in Search of an Author", before becoming a behind the scenes documentary of the show.


title: Staged

text: The series premiered on 10 June 2020 on BBC One. On 22 October 2020, it was announced that a second series had been commissioned. The second series premiered on 4 January 2021 on BBC One, and all eight episodes were added to BBC iPlayer on the same day. A New Year Special was uploaded to BritBox YouTube page on 31 December 2021, with Michael, David, Simon, Georgia, Anna & Lucy all reprising their roles.


title: Staged

text: The first series was well received by critics. Louis Chilton, in a four-starred review for "The Independent", described "Staged" as "a welcome distraction, an eminently watchable portrait of two artists as petulant, egotistical children". Anna Leszkiewicz, for the "New Statesman", said it was "charming: absurdly silly in a quiet, understated way". Rupert Hawksley, in the "i", described it as "compelling 'lockdown' television". Gabriel Tate, reviewing "Staged" for "Metro", said "Sheen and Tennant shared a warmth and willingness to take the mickey out of each other that felt entirely unforced." Fergus Morgan, writing in "The Stage", gave the production five stars and said: "Tennant and Sheen are excellent, perennially, even when performing as themselves to their own laptops. Here, joined by Evans and by their real-life spouses – the actors Georgia Tennant and Anna Lundberg – they are on top form, crackling with snide chemistry. The whole thing is a treat."


title: Staged

text: The second series received more mixed reviews. Rupert Hawksley of "The Independent" called the first episode "stale and indulgent [...] Perhaps "Staged" was always this smug and we just didn’t notice, so grateful were we to have something new to watch, but the tone is now horribly out of step with the national mood." Writing for "The Telegraph", Anita Singh criticised the meta aspects of the second series, saying ""Staged" is at its best when the duo are being funny, rather than debating whether or not they’re funny."


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The economy of Venezuela is based primarily on petroleum, making the country the 25th largest producer of oil in the world and the 8th largest member of OPEC. Venezuela also manufactures and exports heavy industry products such as steel, aluminum, and cement. Other notable manufacturing includes electronics and automobiles as well as beverages and foodstuffs. Agriculture in Venezuela accounts for approximately 4.7% of GDP, 7.3% of the labor force and at least one-fourth of Venezuela's land area. Venezuela exports rice, corn, fish, tropical fruit, coffee, pork and beef. Venezuela has an estimated USD$14.3 trillion worth of natural resources and is not self-sufficient in most areas of agriculture. Exports accounted for 16.7% of GDP and petroleum products accounted for about 95% of those exports.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Since the 1920s, Venezuela has been a rentier state, offering oil as its main export. From the 1950s to the early 1980s, the Venezuelan economy experienced a steady growth that attracted many immigrants, with the nation enjoying the highest standard of living in Latin America.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: However, this situation was reversed when oil prices collapsed during the 1980s. Since the Bolivarian Revolution half-dismantled its PDVSA oil giant corporation in 2002 by firing most of its 20,000-strong dissident professional human capital and imposed stringent currency controls in 2003 in an attempt to prevent capital flight, there has been a decline in oil production and exports and a series of stern currency devaluations.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Further yet, price controls, expropriation of numerous farmlands and various industries, among other disputable government policies including a near-total freeze on any access to foreign currency at reasonable "official" exchange rates, have resulted in severe shortages in Venezuela and steep price rises of all common goods, including food, water, household products, spare parts, tools and medical supplies; forcing many manufacturers to either cut production or close down, with many ultimately abandoning the country as has been the case with several technological firms and most automobile makers.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Venezuela's economy has been in a state of total economic collapse since 2013. In 2015, Venezuela had over 100% inflation—the highest in the world and the highest in the country's history at that time. According to independent sources, the rate increased to 80,000% at the end of 2018 with Venezuela spiraling into hyperinflation while the poverty rate was nearly 90 percent of the population. On 14 November 2017, credit rating agencies declared that Venezuela was in default with its debt payments, with Standard & Poor's categorizing Venezuela as being in "selective default".


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The United States has been Venezuela's most important trading partner despite the strained relations between the two countries. American exports to Venezuela have included machinery, agricultural products, medical instruments and cars. Venezuela is one of the top four suppliers of foreign oil to the United States. About 500 American companies are represented in Venezuela.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: According to the Central Bank of Venezuela, between 1998 and 2008 the government received around US$325 billion through oil production and exports in general. According to the International Energy Agency (as of August 2015), the production of 2.4 million barrels per day supplied 500,000 barrels to the United States.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: A report published by Transparencia Venezuela in 2022 estimated that illegal activities in the country made up around 21% of its GDP.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: After oil was discovered in Venezuela in 1922 during the Maracaibo strike, Venezuela's dictator Juan Vicente Gómez allowed American oil companies to write Venezuela's petroleum law. In 1943, Standard Oil of New Jersey accepted a new agreement in Venezuela based on the 50–50 principle, described as "a landmark event". Even more favorable terms were negotiated in 1945, after a coup brought to power a left-leaning government that included Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: From the 1950s to the early 1980s, the Venezuelan economy, which was buoyed by high oil prices, was one of the strongest and most prosperous in South America. The continuous growth during that period attracted many immigrants.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In 1958, a new government, again including Pérez Alfonso, devised a plan for an international oil cartel, that would become OPEC. In 1973, Venezuela voted to nationalize its oil industry effective 1 January 1976, with Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) presiding over a number of holding companies. In subsequent years, Venezuela built a vast refining and marketing system in the United States and Europe.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: During Pérez Jiménez' dictatorship from 1952 to 1958, Venezuela enjoyed remarkably high GDP growth, so that in the late 1950s Venezuela's real GDP per capita almost reached that of Ireland or West Germany. Albeit, West Germany was still recovering from WW2 destruction of German infrastructure. In 1950, Venezuela was the world's 4th wealthiest nation per capita. However, Rómulo Betancourt (President from 1959 to 1964) inherited from 1958 to 1959 onward an enormous internal and external debt caused by rampant public spending. He managed to balance Venezuela's public budget and initiate an unsuccessful agrarian reform.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Buoyed by a strong oil sector in the 1960s and 1970s, Venezuela's governments were able to maintain social harmony by spending fairly large amounts on public programs including health care, education, transport and food subsidies. Literacy and welfare programs benefited tremendously from these conditions. Because of the oil wealth, Venezuelan workers "enjoyed the highest wages in Latin America". This situation was reversed when oil prices collapsed during the 1980s.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: With the price collapse, the economy contracted and inflation levels (consumer price inflation) rose, remaining between 6 and 12% from 1982 to 1986. The inflation rate peaked in 1989 at 84%, the year the capital city of Caracas suffered from rioting during the Caracazo following the cut of government spending and the opening of markets by President Carlos Andrés Pérez. After Pérez initiated such liberal economic policies and made Venezuelan markets more free, Venezuela's GDP went from a −8.3% decline in 1989 to growing 4.4% in 1990 and 9.2% in 1991, though wages remained low and unemployment was high among Venezuelans.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Overreliance on oil prices and a fractured political system without parties agreeing on policies caused many of the problems. By the mid-1990s, Venezuela under President Rafael Caldera saw annual inflation rates of 50–60% from 1993 to 1997 with an exceptional peak in 1996 at 100%. The percentage of people living in poverty rose from 36% in 1984 to 66% in 1995, with the country suffering a severe banking crisis (Venezuelan banking crisis of 1994). In 1998, the economic crisis had grown even worse. Per capita GDP was at the same level as 1963 (after adjusting 1963 dollar to 1998 value), down a third from its 1978 peak; and the purchasing power of the average salary was a third of its 1978 level.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Hugo Chávez was elected President in December 1998 and took office in February 1999. In 2000, oil prices soared, offering Chávez funds not seen since Venezuela's economic collapse in the 1980s. Chávez then used economic policies that were more social democratic than those of his predecessors, using populist approaches with oil funds that made Venezuela's economy more dependent on high oil prices. Chávez also played a leading role within OPEC to reinvigorate the organization and obtain members' adherence to lower quotas designed to drive up the oil price. Alí Rodríguez Araque, the Venezuelan oil minister, gave an announcement in 1999 that his country would respect OPEC production quotas, which marked "a historic turnaround from the nation's traditional pro-US oil policy".


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In the first four years of the Chávez presidency, the economy grew at first (1999–2001), then contracted from 2001–2003 to GDP levels similar to 1997. At first, the economic decline was due to low oil prices, but it was fueled by the turmoil of the 2002 coup attempt and the 2002–2003 general strike. Other factors of the decline were an exodus of capital from the country and a reluctance of foreign investors. GDP was 50.0 trillion bolívares in 1998. At the bottom of the recession in 2003, it was 42.4 trillion bolívares (in constant 1998 bolívares). However, GDP rebounded 50.1 trillion bolívares with a calmer political situation in 2004 and rose to 66.1 trillion bolívares in 2007 (both in constant 1998 bolívares).


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The hardest-hit sectors in the worst recession years (2002–2003) were construction (−55.9%), petroleum (−26.5%), commerce (−23.6%) and manufacturing (−22.5%). The drop in the petroleum sector was caused by adherence to the OPEC quota established in 2002 and the virtual cessation of exports during the PdVSA-led general strike of 2002–2003. The non-petroleum sector of the economy contracted by 6.5% in 2002. The bolívar, which had been suffering from serious inflation and devaluation relative to international standards since the late 1980s, continued to weaken.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The inflation rate as measured by consumer price index was 35.8% in 1998, falling to a low of 12.5% in 2001 and rising to 31.1% in 2003. Historically, the highest yearly inflation was 100% in 1996. In an attempt to support the bolívar, bolster the government's declining level of international reserves and mitigate the adverse impact from the oil industry work stoppage on the financial system, the Ministry of Finance and the central bank suspended foreign exchange trading on 23 January 2003. On 6 February, the government created CADIVI, a currency control board charged with handling foreign exchange procedures. The board set the US$ exchange rate at 1,596 bolívares to the dollar for purchases and 1,600 to the dollar for sales.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The housing market in Venezuela shrunk significantly with developers avoiding Venezuela due to the massive number of companies who have had their property expropriated by the government. According to The Heritage Foundation and "The Wall Street Journal", Venezuela had the weakest property rights in the world, scoring only 5.0 on a scale of 100, with expropriation without compensation being common. The shortage of housing is so significant that in 2007 a group of squatters occupied Centro Financiero Confinanzas, a cancelled economic center that was supposed to symbolize Venezuela's growing economy.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The Venezuelan economy shrank 5.8% in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period of 2009 and had the highest inflation rate in Latin America at 30.5%. President Chávez expressed optimism that Venezuela would emerge from recession despite the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts showing that Venezuela would be the only country in the region to remain in recession that year. The IMF qualified the economic recovery of Venezuela as "delayed and weak" in comparison with other countries of the region. Following Chavez's death in early 2013, Venezuela's economy continued to fall into an even greater recession.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: According to the misery index in 2013, Venezuela ranked as the top spot globally with the highest misery index score. The International Finance Corporation ranked Venezuela one of the lowest countries for doing business with, ranking it 180 of 185 countries for its "Doing Business 2013" report with protecting investors and taxes being its worst rankings. In early 2013, the bolívar fuerte was devalued due to growing shortages in Venezuela. The shortages included necessities such as toilet paper, milk and flour. Shortages also affected healthcare in Venezuela, with the University of Caracas Medical Hospital ceasing to perform surgeries due to the lack of supplies in 2014. The Bolivarian government's policies also made it difficult to import drugs and other medical supplies. Due to such complications, many Venezuelans died avoidable deaths with medical professionals having to use limited resources using methods that were replaced decades ago.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In 2014, Venezuela entered an economic recession having its GDP growth decline to −3.0%. Venezuela was placed at the top of the misery index for the second year in a row. "The Economist" said Venezuela was "probably the world's worst-managed economy". Citibank believed that "the economy has little prospect of improvement" and that the state of the Venezuelan economy was a "disaster". The "Doing Business 2014" report by the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank ranked Venezuela one score lower than the previous year, then 181 out of 185. The Heritage Foundation ranked Venezuela 175th out of 178 countries in economic freedom for 2014, classifying it as a "repressed" economy according to the principles the foundation advocates. According to "Foreign Policy", Venezuela was ranked last in the world on its Base Yield Index due to low returns that investors receive when investing in Venezuela. In a 2014 report titled "Scariest Places on the Business Frontiers" by Zurich Financial Services and reported by "Bloomberg", Venezuela was ranked as the riskiest emerging market in the world. Many companies such as Toyota, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Company, Air Canada, Air Europa, American Airlines, Copa Airlines, TAME, TAP Airlines and United Airlines slowed or stopped operation due to the lack of hard currency in the country, with Venezuela owing such foreign companies billions of dollars. Venezuela also dismantled CADIVI, a government body in charge of currency exchange. CADIVI was known for holding money from the private sector and was suspected to be corrupt.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Venezuela again topped the misery index according to the World Bank in 2015. The IMF predicted in October 2015 an inflation rate of 159% for the year 2015—the highest rate in Venezuelan history and the highest rate in the world—and that the economy would contract by 10%. According to leaked documents from the Central Bank of Venezuela, the country ended 2015 with an inflation rate of 270% and a shortage rate of goods over 70%.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: President Nicolás Maduro reorganized his economic cabinet in 2016 with the group mainly consisting of leftist Venezuelan academics. According to Bank of America's investment division Merrill Lynch, Maduro's new cabinet was expected to tighten currency and price controls in the country. Alejandro Werner, the head of IMF's Latin American Department, stated that 2015 figures released by the Central Bank of Venezuela were not accurate and that Venezuela's inflation for 2015 was 275%. Other forecast inflation figures by IMF and Bank of America were 720% and 1,000% in 2016, Analysts believed that the Venezuelan government has been manipulating economic statistics, especially since they did not report adequate data since late 2014. According to economist Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University, the Central Bank of Venezuela delayed the release of statistics and lied about figures much like the Soviet Union did, with Hanke saying that a lie coefficient had to be used to observe Venezuela's economic data.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: By 2016, media outlets said that Venezuela was suffering an economic collapse with the IMF saying that it expected it to reach a 500% inflation rate and 10% contraction in the GDP. In December 2016, monthly inflation exceeded 50 percent for the 30th consecutive day, meaning the Venezuelan economy was officially experiencing hyperinflation, making it the 57th country to be added to the Hanke-Krus World Hyperinflation Table.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: On 25 August 2017, it was reported that new United States sanctions against Venezuela did not ban trading of the country's existing non-government bonds, with the sanctions instead including restrictions intended to block the government's ability to fund itself.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: On 26 January 2018, the government ended the protected, subsidized fixed exchange rate mechanism that was highly overvalued as a result of rampant inflation. The National Assembly (led by the opposition) said inflation in 2017 was over 4,000%, a level other independent economists also agreed with. In February, the government launched an oil-backed cryptocurrency called the petro.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Bloomberg's Cafe Con Leche Index calculated the price increase for a cup of coffee to have increased by 718% in the 12 weeks before 18 January 2018, an annualized inflation rate of 448,000%. The finance commission of the National Assembly noted in July 2018 that prices were doubling every 28 days with an annualized inflation rate of 25,000%.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The country was heading for a selective default in 2017. In early 2018, the country was in default, meaning it could not pay its lenders.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: 24 August 2017 President Trump imposed sanctions on the state debt of Venezuela which ban to make transactions with state debt of Venezuela including the participation in debt restructuring.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: 13 November 2017 the technical default period ended and Venezuela did not pay coupons on its dollar eurobonds. This caused a cross default on other dollar bonds. 30 November ISDA committee consisting of 15 biggest banks admitted default on state debt obligations what in its turn entailed payments on CDS. According to Cbonds, nowadays there are 20 international Venezuelan bonds which are recognized in default. The overall amount of defaulted obligations is equal to 36 billion dollars.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: A report published by Transparencia Venezuela in 2022 estimated that illegal activities in the country made up around 21% of its GDP. According to the report, drug, oil and gold trafficking, as well as illegal activities in ports and customs had generated over 9.4 billion dollars for organized crime protected by corrupt officials. In 2021, gold extraction generated around 2.3 billion dollars, of which the State received only 25%.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Under the tenures of Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro, many businesses abandoned Venezuela. In 1999, there were 13,000 companies in the country. By 2016, less than a third of companies remained in Venezuela, with only 4,000 companies operating in the nation.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves, totaling 302.81 billion barrels at the end of 2017. The country is a major producer of petroleum products, which remain the keystone of the Venezuelan economy. The International Energy Agency shows how Venezuela's oil production has fallen in the last years, producing only daily, down from 3.5 million in 1998. However, the oil incomes will double its value in local currency with the recent currency devaluation. Venezuela has large energy subsidies. In 2015, the cost of petrol was just US$0.06 per gallon, costing 23% of government revenues. In February 2016, the government finally decided to raise the price, but only to 6 bolívar (about 60¢ at the official rate of exchange) per litre for premium and just 1 bolívar (10¢) for lower-grade petrol.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: A range of other natural resources, including iron ore, coal, bauxite, gold, nickel and diamonds, are in various stages of development and production. In April 2000, Venezuela's president decreed a new mining law and regulations were adopted to encourage greater private sector participation in mineral extraction. During Venezuela's economic crisis, the rate of gold excavated fell 64.1% between February 2013 and February 2014 and iron production dropped 49.8%. In the production of gold, until 2009 the country produced an annual average between 11 and 12 tons per year. After that, due to the political and economic problems, mining activity plummeted: in 2017 the country only extracted 0.48 ton.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Venezuela mostly utilizes hydropower resources to supply power to the nation's industries, accounting for 57% of total consumption at the end of 2016. However, persistent drought has severely reduced energy production from hydropower resources. The national electricity law is designed to provide a legal framework and to encourage competition and new investment in the sector. After a two-year delay, the government is proceeding with plans to privatize the various state-owned electricity systems under a different scheme than previously envisioned.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Manufacturing contributed 12% of GDP in 2014. The manufacturing sector is experiencing severe difficulties, amidst lack of investment and accusations of mismanagement. Venezuela manufactures and exports steel, aluminum, transport equipment, textiles, apparel, beverages and foodstuffs. It produces cement, tires, paper, fertilizer and assembles cars both for domestic and export markets.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In 2014, General Motors Venezolana stopped automotive production after 65 years of service due to a lack of supplies while the Central Bank of Venezuela announced that the shortage rate of new automobiles was at 100%. By the first half of 2016, only 10 vehicles were manufactured per day in Venezuela with production dropping 86%.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Agriculture in Venezuela accounts for approximately 3% of GDP, 10% of the labor force, and at least a quarter of Venezuela's land area. Venezuela exports rice, corn, fish, tropical fruit, coffee, beef and pork. The country is not self-sufficient in most areas of agriculture. Venezuela imports about two-thirds of its food needs. In 2002, American firms exported $347 million worth of agricultural products, including wheat, corn, soybeans, soybean meal, cotton, animal fats, vegetable oils and other items to make Venezuela one of the top two American markets in South America. The United States supplies more than one-third of Venezuela's food imports. Recent government policies have led to problems with food shortages.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products. Due to internal economic and political problems, sugar cane production dropped from 7.3 million tons in 2012 to 3.6 million in 2016. Corn production dropped from 2.3 million tons in 2014 to 1.2 million in 2017. Rice fell from 1.15 million tons in 2014 to 498 thousand tons in 2016.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In livestock, Venezuela produced, in 2019: 470 thousand tons of beef, 454 thousand tons of chicken meat, 129 thousand tons of pork, 1.7 billion liters of cow's milk, among others. The production of chicken meat decreased progressively, from year to year, from 1.1 million tons in 2011 to 448 thousand tons in 2017. The production of pork fell from 219 thousand tons in 2011 to 124 thousand tons in 2018. The production of cow's milk dropped from 2.4 billion liters in 2011 to 1.7 billion in 2019.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Venezuela is a founding member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Organization of Gas Exporting Countries (GECF), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Petroleum constitutes 80% of Venezuela's exports with a value of $22.2 billion in 2017. Thanks to petroleum exports, Venezuela usually posts a trade surplus. From 2005, nontraditional (i.e. nonpetroleum) private sector exports have been declining rapidly. By 2015, they constitute 8% of total exports. The United States is Venezuela's leading trade partner. During 2002, the United States exported $4.4 billion in goods to Venezuela, making it the 25th-largest market for the United States Including petroleum products, Venezuela exported $15.1 billion in goods to the United States, making it its 14th-largest source of goods. Venezuela opposes the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Since 1998, China–Venezuela relations have seen an increasing partnership between the government of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and the People's Republic of China. Sino-Venezuelan trade was less than $500m per year before 1999 and reached $7.5bn in 2009, making China Venezuela's second-largest trade partner and Venezuela China's biggest investment destination in Latin America. Various bilateral deals have seen China invest billions in Venezuela and Venezuela increase exports of oil and other resources to China. China has demanded payment in oil for its exports to Venezuela because of its unwillingness to accept Venezuelan currency and the inability of Venezuela to pay in dollars or gold.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Under Chávez, Venezuela has also instituted worker-run "co-management" initiatives in which workers' councils play a key role in the management of a plant or factory. In experimental co-managed enterprises, such as the state-owned Alcasa factory, workers develop budgets and elect both managers and departmental delegates who work together with company executives on technical issues related to production.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In November 2010, workers spent a week protesting outside factories in Valera and Valencia following the expropriation of the American bottle-maker Owens-Illinois.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Labor disputes have continued to increase since the financial crisis in 2008. According to the World Economic Forum, Venezuela is ranked as 134th of the 148 countries for economic competitiveness. Many in the private sector attribute these findings to the inflexible labor market.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In recent years, a barrage of pro-worker decrees have been passed. The most significant could be the 2012 labor laws known as the LOTTT. These laws included the virtual ban on dismissal, shorter work week, improved holidays and enhanced maternity benefits. The LOTTT offers job security to most workers after the first month. Employers have reported an absenteeism rate of up to 40% which they blame on the leniency of these labor laws. As expected, employers have been less willing to recruit.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: On 17 November 2014, President Maduro issued a decree to increase the minimum salary for all workers by 15%. The decree became effective on 1 December 2014. As part of the May Day celebrations in honor of workers' day, President Maduro announced on 28 April 2015 that the minimum wage would increase 30%; 20% in May and 10% in July, with the newly announced minimum wage for Venezuelans being only about $30 per month at the widely used black market rate.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In September 2017, the National Union of Workers (UNETE) announced that Venezuela had lost 3,345,000 jobs since the election of President Maduro. By December 2017, the number of lost jobs increased by 400,000 to over 3,850,000 lost jobs since the start of Maduro's tenure.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In the 20th century when Venezuela benefitted from oil sales, infrastructure flourished in Venezuela. However, in recent years Venezuela's public services and infrastructure has suffered, especially utilities such as electricity and water.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Venezuela has an extensive road system that was initially created in the 1960s helped aid the oil and aluminum industries. The capital Caracas had a modern subway system designed by the French that was finished in 1995, with the subway tunneling more than 31.6 mi (51 km).


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The Chavez government launched a National Railway Development Plan designed to create 15 railway lines across the country, with of track by 2030. The network is being built in cooperation with China Railways, which is also cooperating with Venezuela to create factories for tracks, railway cars and eventually locomotives. However, Venezuela's rail project is being put on hold due to Venezuela not being able to pay the $7.5 billion and owing China Railway nearly $500 million.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Lufthansa said it would stop all flights to Venezuela on 18 June 2016, citing difficulties with currency controls. Other airlines also cut back on flights and required that passengers pay fares in US$.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The Venezuelan electrical grid is plagued with occasional blackouts in various districts of the country. In 2011, it had so many problems that rations on electricity were put in place to help ease blackouts. On 3 September 2013, 70% of the country plunged into darkness with 14 of 23 states of Venezuela stating they did not have electricity for most of the day. Another power outage on 2 December 2013 left most of Venezuela in the dark again and happened just days before elections.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The Macroeconomic Stabilization Fund (FIEM) decreased from US$2.59 billion in January 2003 to US$700 million in October, but central bank-held international reserves actually increased from US$11.31 billion in January to US$19.67 billion in October 2003. On the black market, the bolívar fell 28% in 2007 to Bs. 4,750 per US$ and declined to around VEF 5.5 (Bs 5500) per US$ in early 2009.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The economy recovered and grew by 16.8% in 2004. This growth occurred across a wide range of sectors—the oil industry directly provides only a small percentage of employment in the country. International reserves grew to US$27 billion. Polling firm Datanalysis noted that real income in the poorest sectors of society grew by 33% in 2004.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: On 7 March 2007, the government announced that the Venezuelan bolívar would be redenominated at a ratio of 1 to 1,000 at the beginning of 2008 and renamed the "bolívar fuerte" ("strong bolivar") to ease accounting and transactions. This was carried out on 1 January 2008, at which time the exchange rate was 2.15 "bolívar fuerte" per US$. The ISO 4217 code for the "bolívar fuerte" is VEF.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Government spending as a percentage of GDP in Venezuela in 2007 was 30%, smaller than other mixed economies such as France (49%) and Sweden (52%). According to official sources from the United Nations, the percentage of people below the national poverty line has decreased during the presidency of Hugo Chávez, from 48.1% in 2002 to 28% in 2008.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: With the 2007 rise in oil prices and rising government expenditures, Venezuela's economy grew by 9% in 2007. Oil prices fell starting in July 2008, resulting in a major loss of income. Hit by a global recession, the economy contracted by 2% in the second quarter of 2009, contracting a further 4.5% in the third quarter of 2009. Chavez's response has been that these standards mis-state economic fact and that the economy should be measured by socialistic standards. On 17 November, the Central Bank reported that private sector activity declined by 4.5% and that inflation was averaging 26.7%. Compounding such problems is a drought which the government says was caused by El Niño, resulting in rationing of water and electricity and a short supply of food.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The year 2010 saw Venezuela still in recession as GDP has fallen by 5.8% in the first quarter of 2010. The Central Bank of Venezuela has stated that the recession is due largely "to restricted access to foreign currency for imports, lower internal demand and electricity rationing". The oil sector's performance was also particularly troubling, with oil GDP shrinking by 5%. More importantly, the Central Bank hints at the root cause of the oil contraction, saying that "the bank said it was due to falls in production, "operative problems", maintenance stoppages and the channeling of diesel to run thermal generators during a power crisis". While the public sector of the economy has fallen 2.8%, the private sector has dropped off 6%.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The year 2013 proved to be difficult for Venezuela as shortages of necessities and extreme inflation attacked the nation's economy. Items became so scarce that nearly one quarter of items were not in stock. The bolívar was devalued to 6.3 per US$ in early 2013 taking one third of its value away. However, inflation still continued to rise drastically in the country to the point President Maduro forced stores to sell their items just days before elections. Maduro said that the stores were charging unreasonable prices even though the owners were only charging so much due to the actual devaluation of the bolívar.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In 2014 The Central Bank of Venezuela stopped releasing statistics for the first time in its history as a way to possibly manipulate the image of the economy. Venezuela has also dismantled CADIVI, a government body in charge of currency exchange.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In May 2019, the Central Bank of Venezuela released economic data for the first time since 2015. According to this release, the inflation of Venezuela was 274% in 2016, 863% in 2017 and 130,060% in 2018. The new reports imply a contraction of more than half of the economy in five years, according to the "Financial Times" "one of the biggest contractions in Latin American history". According two undisclosed sources from "Reuters," the release of this numbers was due to pressure from China, a Maduro ally. One of this sources claims that the disclosure of economic numbers may bring Venezuela into compliance with the IMF, making it harder to support Juan Guaidó during the presidential crisis. At the time, the IMF was not able to support the validity of the data as they had not been able to contact the authorities.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2021 (with IMF staff estimates in 2022–2023). Inflation below 10% is in green.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The parallel exchange rate is what Venezuelans believe the Venezuelan currency is worth compared to the US$. In the first few years of Chávez's office, his newly created social programs required large payments in order to make the desired changes. On 5 February 2003, the government created CADIVI, a currency control board charged with handling foreign exchange procedures. Its creation was to control capital flight by placing limits on individuals and only offering them so much of a foreign currency. This limit to foreign currency led to a creation of a currency black market economy since Venezuelan merchants rely on foreign goods that require payments with reliable foreign currencies. As Venezuela printed more money for their social programs, the bolívar continued to devalue for Venezuelan citizens and merchants since the government held the majority of the more reliable currencies.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: As of January 2018, the strongest official exchange rate was 1 US$ to 10 VEF while the free market exchange rate was over 200,000 VEF to 1 US$. Since merchants can only receive so much necessary foreign currency from the government, they must resort to the black market which in turn raises the merchant's prices on consumers. The high rates in the black market make it difficult for businesses to purchase necessary goods since the government often forces these businesses to make price cuts. This leads to businesses selling their goods and making a low profit, such as Venezuelan McDonald's franchises offering a Big Mac meal for only $1. Since businesses make low profits, this leads to shortages since they are unable to import the goods that Venezuela is reliant on. Venezuela's largest food producing company, Empresas Polar, has stated that they may need to suspend some production for nearly the entire year of 2014 since they owe foreign suppliers $463 million. The last report of shortages in Venezuela showed that 22.4% of necessary goods are not in stock. This was the last report by the government since the central bank no longer posts the scarcity index. This has led to speculation that the government is hiding its inability to control the economy which may create doubt about future economic data released.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Like most Latin American countries, Venezuela has an unequal distribution of wealth. Although distribution improved when the surplus of rural labor started to diminish and the educational system improved in the middle of the 20th century, equality is far from coinciding with western standards. The rich tend to be very rich and the poor very poor. In 1970, the poorest fifth of the population had 3% of national income while the wealthiest fifth had 54%. For comparison, the United Kingdom 1973 figures were 6.3% and 38.8% and the United States in 1972, 4.5% and 42.8%.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The more recent income distribution data available is for distribution per capita, not per household. The two are not strictly comparable because poor households tend to have more members than rich households, thus the per household data tends to show less inequality than the per capita data. The table below shows the available per capita data for recent years from the World Bank.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Poverty in Venezuela increased during the 1980s and early 1990s, but it decreased greatly in the mid to late 1990s. The decreasing trend continued through the Chávez presidency, with the exception of the troubled years 2002 and 2003. Under the Bolivarian government, poverty decreased initially when Venezuela acquired oil funds, though poverty began to increase to its highest level in decades in the 2010s.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The table below shows the percentage of people and the percentage of households whose income is below a poverty line which is equal to the price of a market basket of necessities such as food.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In the early 2000s when oil prices soared and offered Chávez funds not seen since the beginning of Venezuela's economic collapse in the 1980s, Chávez's government became "semi-authoritarian and hyper-populist" and consolidated its power over the economy in order to gain control of large amounts of resources. Domestically, Chávez used such oil funds for populist policies, creating the Bolivarian missions, aimed at providing public services to improve economic, cultural and social conditions. From 1999 to 2009, 60% of government revenues focused on social programs while social investment went from 8.4% of GDP in 1988 to 18.8% in 2008. Despite warnings near the beginning of Chávez's tenure in the early 2000s, Chávez's government continuously overspent in social spending and did not save enough money for any future economic turmoil, which Venezuela faced shortly before and after his death. On the year of Chávez's death, Venezuela was still categorized as having high human development on its Human Development Index in 2013 according to the United Nations Development Programme, although human development began to decline in Venezuela within a year, with the country dropping 10 ranks by 2014.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Extreme poverty and lack of food and medicines has pushed more than three million Venezuelans to leave the country in recent years. Andres Bello Catholic University conducted a study of poverty that found the poorest 20% of Venezuelans had 1.4% of the nation's wealth, down from 3.4% in 2014, while the richest 10% had 61% of the nation's wealth, up from 30%.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: According to government figures released in April 2017, 1,446 children under the age of 1 died in 2016, representing a 30 percent increase in one year. As of August 2017, 31 million people suffered from severe food shortages. The ENCOVI universities survey found that 73% of Venezuelans said they had lost 9 kg (19 lbs) of body weight in 2016 and 64% had lost 11 kg (25 lbs) in 2017.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: When the country's economy collapsed in 2014, hunger and malnutrition became a severe problem. In 2015, close to 45% of Venezuelans said they were unable to afford food at times. In 2018, this figure rose to 79%, one of the highest rates in the world.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Although poverty initially declined under Chávez, Venezuela's poverty rate increased to 28% by 2013, with extreme poverty rates increasing 4.4% to 10% according to the Venezuelan government's INE. Estimates of poverty by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and Luis Pedro España, a sociologist at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, showed an increase of poverty in Venezuela. ECLAC showed a 2013 poverty rate of 32% while Pedro España calculated a 2015 rate of 48%. The Venezuelan government estimated that 33% were in poverty in the first half of 2015 and then stopped producing statistics. According to Venezuelan NGO PROVEA, by the end of 2015 there would be the same number of Venezuelans living in poverty as there was in 2000, reversing the advancements against poverty by Chávez. The ENCOVI annual survey by three universities estimated poverty at 48% in 2014, 82% in 2016 and 87% in 2017.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In relation to hunger, under-nutrition, undernourishment and the percentage of children under the age of five who are moderately or severely underweight decreased earlier in Chávez's tenure. However, shortages in Venezuela as a result of price control policies left the majority of Venezuelans without adequate products after his death.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The total net enrollment ratio in primary education for both sexes increased from 87% in 1999 to 93.9% in 2009. The primary completion rate for both sexes reached 95.1% in 2009 as compared to 80.8% in 1991. The literacy rates of 15- to 24-year-olds in 2007, for men and women, were 98% and 98.8%, respectively. During the Bolivarian diaspora, a large percentage of the millions of Venezuelans who left the country were highly educated, resulting in a brain drain in the country.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Since starting in 2003, the free government program Mission Robinson had taught more than 2.3 million people to read and write as of 2012. The program also focused much of its attention on reaching out to geographically isolated and historically excluded members of the population, including indigenous groups and Afro-descendants. In 2008, Francisco Rodríguez of Wesleyan University in Connecticut and Daniel Ortega of IESA stated that there was "little evidence" of "statistically distinguishable effect on Venezuelan illiteracy" during the Chávez administration. The Venezuelan government claimed that it had taught 1.5 million Venezuelans to read, but the study found that "only 1.1m were illiterate to begin with" and that the illiteracy reduction of less than 100,000 can be attributed to adults that were elderly and died.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Following the Bolivarian Revolution and the establishment of the Bolivarian government, initial healthcare practices were promising with the installation of a free healthcare system parallel to the existing national public health system, with the assistance received from Cuban medical professionals providing aid. The Bolivarian government's failure to concentrate on healthcare for Venezuelans, the reduction of healthcare spending and government corruption eventually affected medical practices in Venezuela, causing avoidable deaths along with an emigration of medical professionals to other countries.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Venezuela's reliance on imported goods and its complicated exchange rates initiated under Chávez led to increasing shortages during the late-2000s and into the 2010s that affected the availability of medicines and medical equipment in the country. The United Nations reported an increase in the maternal mortality ratio, which increased from 93 per 100,000 in 1990 to 110 per 100,000 in 2013. Following shortages of many medical and common goods in 2014, Venezuelan women have had difficulties accessing contraceptives and were forced to change prescriptions or search several stores and the Internet for their medications. Shortage of antiretroviral medicines to treat HIV/AIDS affected about 50,000 Venezuelans in 2014 as well, potentially causing thousands of Venezuelans with HIV to develop AIDS.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: Venezuela is also the only country in Latin America where the incidence of malaria is increasing, allegedly due to illegal mining. In 2013, Venezuela registered the highest number of cases of malaria in the past 50 years, with 300 of 100,000 Venezuelans being infected with the disease.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: In 1990, the number of Internet users in Venezuela was minimal, but 35.63% of Venezuelans were Internet users by 2010. In fact, the number of Internet subscribers has increased sixfold. Programs such as the National Technological Literacy Plan, which provides free software and computers to schools, have assisted Venezuela in meeting this goal. However, several experts state that the poor infrastructure in Venezuela had created a poor quality of Internet in Venezuela, which has one of the slowest Internet speeds in the world. The lack of US$ due to the Venezuelan governments currency controls has also damaged Internet services because technological equipment must be imported into Venezuela.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The number of fixed telephone lines per 100 inhabitants was 7.56 in 1990. The number increased to 24.44 in 2010. In 2000, 2,535,966 Venezuelans had landline telephones. By 2009, this had increased to 6,866,626.


title: Economy of Venezuela

text: The Bolivarian government has also launched an aerospace program in cooperation with the People's Republic of China who built and launched two satellites that are currently in orbit—a communications satellite called Simón Bolívar and a remote sensing satellite called Miranda. In July 2014, President Maduro announced that a third satellite would be built by Chinese–Venezuelan bilateral cooperation.


title: Round-robin scheduling

text: As the term is generally used, time slices (also known as time quanta) are assigned to each process in equal portions and in circular order, handling all processes without priority (also known as cyclic executive). Round-robin scheduling is simple, easy to implement, and starvation-free. Round-robin scheduling can be applied to other scheduling problems, such as data packet scheduling in computer networks. It is an operating system concept.


title: Round-robin scheduling

text: The name of the algorithm comes from the round-robin principle known from other fields, where each person takes an equal share of something in turn.


title: Round-robin scheduling

text: To schedule processes fairly, a round-robin scheduler generally employs time-sharing, giving each job a time slot or "quantum" (its allowance of CPU time), and interrupting the job if it is not completed by then. The job is resumed next time a time slot is assigned to that process. If the process terminates or changes its state to waiting during its attributed time quantum, the scheduler selects the first process in the ready queue to execute. In the absence of time-sharing, or if the quanta were large relative to the sizes of the jobs, a process that produced large jobs would be favored over other processes.


title: Round-robin scheduling

text: Round-robin algorithm is a pre-emptive algorithm as the scheduler forces the process out of the CPU once the time quota expires.


title: Round-robin scheduling

text: For example, if the time slot is 100 milliseconds, and "job1" takes a total time of 250 ms to complete, the round-robin scheduler will suspend the job after 100 ms and give other jobs their time on the CPU. Once the other jobs have had their equal share (100 ms each), "job1" will get another allocation of CPU time and the cycle will repeat. This process continues until the job finishes and needs no more time on the CPU.


title: Round-robin scheduling

text: Consider the following table with the arrival time and execute time of the process with the quantum time of 100 ms to understand the round-robin scheduling:


title: Round-robin scheduling

text: Another approach is to divide all processes into an equal number of timing quanta such that the quantum size is proportional to the size of the process. Hence, all processes end at the same time.


title: Round-robin scheduling

text: In best-effort packet switching and other statistical multiplexing, round-robin scheduling can be used as an alternative to first-come first-served queuing.


title: Round-robin scheduling

text: A multiplexer, switch, or router that provides round-robin scheduling has a separate queue for every data flow, where a data flow may be identified by its source and destination address. The algorithm allows every active data flow that has data packets in the queue to take turns in transferring packets on a shared channel in a periodically repeated order. The scheduling is work-conserving, meaning that if one flow is out of packets, the next data flow will take its place. Hence, the scheduling tries to prevent link resources from going unused.


title: Round-robin scheduling

text: Round-robin scheduling results in max-min fairness if the data packets are equally sized, since the data flow that has waited the longest time is given scheduling priority. It may not be desirable if the size of the data packets varies widely from one job to another. A user that produces large packets would be favored over other users. In that case fair queuing would be preferable.


title: Round-robin scheduling

text: If guaranteed or differentiated quality of service is offered, and not only best-effort communication, deficit round-robin (DRR) scheduling, weighted round-robin (WRR) scheduling, or weighted fair queuing (WFQ) may be considered.


title: Round-robin scheduling

text: In multiple-access networks, where several terminals are connected to a shared physical medium, round-robin scheduling may be provided by token passing channel access schemes such as Token Ring, or by polling or resource reservation from a central control station.


title: Round-robin scheduling

text: In a centralized wireless packet radio network, where many stations share one frequency channel, a scheduling algorithm in a central base station may reserve time slots for the mobile stations in a round-robin fashion and provide fairness. However, if link adaptation is used, it will take a much longer time to transmit a certain amount of data to "expensive" users than to others since the channel conditions differ. It would be more efficient to wait with the transmission until the channel conditions are improved, or at least to give scheduling priority to less expensive users. Round-robin scheduling does not utilize this. Higher throughput and system spectrum efficiency may be achieved by channel-dependent scheduling, for example a proportionally fair algorithm, or maximum throughput scheduling. Note that the latter is characterized by undesirable scheduling starvation. This type of scheduling is one of the very basic algorithms for Operating Systems in computers which can be implemented through a circular queue data structure.


title: Infinity Gems

text: The Infinity Gems (originally referred to as Soul Gems and later as Infinity Stones) are six fictional gems appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, named after and embodying various aspects of existence. The gems (Mind, Power, Reality, Soul, Space, and Time) can grant whoever wields them various powers in accordance to the aspect of existence they represent, and have the potential of turning the wielder into a god-like being when the main 6 (Mind, Power, Reality, Soul, Space, and Time) are held together. Thus, they are among the most powerful and sought-after items in the Marvel Universe; playing important roles in several storylines, in which they were wielded by characters such as Thanos and Adam Warlock. Some of these stories depict additional Infinity Gems or similar objects. Although, the Infinity Gems altogether give its user nigh-omnipotence, the Gems only function on the universe they belong to and not on alternate realities.


title: Infinity Gems

text: The Gems have appeared in several media adaptations outside of comics, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe film franchise, where they are called Infinity Stones and have their colors altered. These changes were later adapted into the comics.


title: Infinity Gems

text: The first appearance of an Infinity Gem occurred in 1972 in "Marvel Premiere" #1. It was originally called a "Soul Gem". In 1976, a second "Soul Gem" appeared in a "Captain Marvel" story which established that there were six Soul Gems, each with different powers. One year later, two more "Soul Gems" were introduced in a Warlock crossover involving Spider-Man. The main six Gems appeared when the death-obsessed villain Thanos attempted to use them to extinguish every star in the universe. In a 1988 storyline in "Silver Surfer" vol. 3, the Elders of the Universe tried to use 6 of the "Soul Gems" to steal the energy of the world-eating entity Galactus.


title: Infinity Gems

text: In the 1990 limited series "The Thanos Quest", Thanos refers to the entire main set as "Infinity Gems" for the first time. In this storyline, he steals most of the Gems for the second time and reveals the Gems to be the last remains of an omnipotent being. Thanos then places all six main gems within his left gauntlet. In the miniseries "The Infinity Gauntlet", Thanos uses the Gems to become nearly omnipotent and kills half the universe's population as a gift to his love, the cosmic embodiment of Death. Although he easily repels an attack by Earth's heroes and other cosmic entities including Eternity, the Gauntlet is eventually stolen from him by Nebula, who undoes the last 24 hours, including his mass killings. Adam Warlock then recovers the Gauntlet and, by order of the Living Tribunal, divides the Gems that fit in the gauntlet among a group he calls "the Infinity Watch", consisting of himself, the superheroes Gamora, Pip the Troll, Drax the Destroyer, Moondragon, and his former adversary Thanos. The group's adventures in defending the Gems appear in the series "Warlock and the Infinity Watch" (1992–1995).


title: Infinity Gems

text: The 6 main Gems are next gathered by Warlock's evil alter ego, the Magus, in the 1992 limited series "The Infinity War", where he is defeated by Warlock and Earth's heroes, including Thanos. In the 1993 limited series "The Infinity Crusade", the embodiment of Warlock's goodness, the Goddess, attempts to destroy evil in the universe by destroying free will. The 6 main Gems are then once again retrieved by the Infinity Watch.


title: Infinity Gems

text: Then, 6 of the gems appeared in the crossover between the Marvel universe and the Ultraverse, when the vampiric Rune, stole the gems from the Infinity Watch. The gems were dispersed in the Ultraverse and Loki looked for them. The reunion of the gems with a seventh gem, the Ego Gem, revealed the existence of the entity Nemesis, that said that she was the conscience of the gems. Nemesis was slain and the gems dispersed again.


title: Infinity Gems

text: In a story arc of the "Thanos" series (2003–2004), Galactus gathers six of the Gems but accidentally allows an interdimensional entity named Hunger access to the Marvel universe. Thanos and Galactus banish the entity and the Gems are scattered again with the exception of the Soul Gem, which Thanos retains for its customary custodian Adam Warlock. In "", a 2007–2008 limited series, a cabal of Earth's heroes gather the Gems and attempt to wish them out of existence but discover that they must exist as part of the cosmic balance. Instead, the Illuminati divide and hide the Gems.


title: Infinity Gems

text: In a 2010 "Avengers" storyline, the human criminal known as the Hood steals several Gems but is defeated by use of the remaining Gems; the Illuminati attempt to hide them again. The Illuminati later wield the 6 main Gems to stop another universe from collapsing into their own but the cost of this however, was the destruction of the gauntlet and all gems minus the Time Gem which simply disappeared. Afterwards, the previously vanished Time Gem appears to Captain America and some of the Avengers and transports them into future realities, shattering time in the process.


title: Infinity Gems

text: As a result of the Incursions, the entire Multiverse is destroyed. However, Doctor Doom combines fragments of several alternate realities into Battleworld. Doctor Strange gathers the 6 main Infinity Gems from various realities into a new Infinity Gauntlet, which he leaves hidden until the surviving heroes of Earth-616 return. The Gauntlet is subsequently claimed by T'Challa (the Black Panther), who uses it to keep the Beyonder-enhanced Doom occupied until Mister Fantastic can disrupt his power source.


title: Infinity Gems

text: Following the recreation of the Multiverse, the Infinity Gems (now known as the Infinity Stones) are recreated and scattered across the universe, with their colors switched and some taking on uncut ingot forms. In "Marvel Legacy" #1, the Space Stone (now colored blue) appears on Earth where a Frost Giant working for Loki steals it from a S.H.I.E.L.D. storage facility, however he is intercepted and defeated by a resurrected Wolverine. Star-Lord discovers an extra-large Power Stone (now colored purple) being protected by the Nova Corps, and an alternate universe Peter Quill named Starkill has the Reality Stone (now colored red). A future version of Ghost Rider is revealed to possess a shard of the Time Stone (now colored green), while in the present the complete stone restores the ruined planet of Sakaar and is claimed by the Super-Skrull. The Mind Stone (now colored yellow) is found on Earth in the hands of petty crook Turk Barrett, and the Soul Stone (now colored orange) is mentioned to Adam Warlock to be in the hands of his dark aspect, the Magus; however, Ultron is able to claim it after ambushing and killing him. The Stones are shown to have a pocket universe existing within each of them. Loki would later discover the Stones are originated from the primordial universe where Celestials reside, guarding a deposit of countless Infinity Stones which they infuse with their cosmic energy and deliver to different realities across the Multiverse. Adam Warlock would use the Soul Stone to grant sentience to each of the Stones, which then travel the universe, finding a suitable host and bonding with them.


title: Infinity Gems

text: Each Gem is shaped like a small oval and is named after, and represents, a different characteristic of existence. Possessing any single Gem grants the user the ability to exert great control over the aspect of existence the Gem represents. If a user is able to tap into the full potential of a Gem, the user gains complete control over a Gem's aspect of existence. The Gems are not immutable. For instance, on two occasions, one or more of the Gems have appeared as deep pink spheres several feet in diameter, while on other occasions, the Gems have appeared in their small oval shape but with different coloring. (e.g. the Soul Gem being colored red when worn by the Gardener). In the Ultraverse, after merging into their original form of Nemesis, the Gems were again separated after a battle with Ultraforce and the Avengers. As part of the "Marvel Legacy" initiative, the Infinity Gems (now known as the Infinity Stones), had their colors altered to match the colors of the Infinity Stones from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.


title: Infinity Gems

text: Additional Gems have appeared in crossover media and alternate universes outside the Marvel Universe.


title: Infinity Gems

text: The Reed Richards of Earth-616, in an attempt to "solve everything", meets with a council of alternate universe Reeds. Three of them wear Infinity Gauntlets, and they learn that the gauntlets only work in their respective universes of origin..


title: Infinity Gems

text: In the "Contest of Champions" miniseries, an alternate version of Tony Stark uses the Reality Gem to win the superhero civil war and affect the outcome of a presidential election. When he tries to use the Gem on Battleworld, he is killed by the Maestro, who says the Gems do not work in any universe other than their own.


title: Infinity Gems

text: In an alternate reality depicted in the "Heroes Reborn" miniseries, the Infinity Gems are in the possession of Thanos, who has them placed in his Infinity Rings.


title: Infinity Gems

text: During the "Incursion" storyline, the Avengers travel to a parallel Earth where a pastiche of the Justice League have replaced this Earth's Avengers who all died in a previous cataclysm. Here the Gems are all square planes of "forever glass" which are assembled into the "Wishing Cube", a composite of the concepts of the Infinity Gems and the Cosmic Cube.


title: Infinity Gems

text: After various alternate universes are combined into Battleworld, Doctor Strange gathers Infinity Gems from other universes into a new Infinity Gauntlet that works in the area where Doom has built his palace. Strange leaves the Gauntlet hidden until he has access to someone he can trust it with. After his death, the Gauntlet is claimed by T'Challa, who uses it against Doom in the final battle.


title: Infinity Gems

text: A separate section of Battleworld known as New Xandar also has a Gauntlet fought over by multiple factions until the majority of the Stones, except the Reality Stone, were taken by Thanos. Thanos eventually tracks the missing Stone to Nova Corps member Anwen Bakian. When Thanos confronts her to get the Stone, Anwen gives him a duplicate of the Reality Stone she created called the 'Death Stone'. When used along with the other five Stones, the Death Stone corrupts Thanos with black matter and turns him to dust.


title: Infinity Gems

text: In the "Ultimate Marvel" universe, an Infinity Gauntlet is seen in Project Pegasus. The Mind Gem (stolen by Hydra) is used by Modi (Thor's son) to control both Director Flumm and Cassie Lang, but are stopped by the Ultimates. The Power Gem is later revealed to be in the possession of former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sayuri Kyota, while a second Infinity Gauntlet is recovered from an A.I.M. base by Thor and Susan Storm. Kang the Conqueror later allies himself with the Hulk, Reed Richards and Quicksilver as part of a plan to steal the two Gauntlets, which results in the destruction of the Triskelion. Quicksilver recovers two additional Gems allowing the villains to teleport away. Richards is later able to recover another of the Gems, which is found lodged in Tony Stark's brain. He informs Stark that the Infinity Gems are needed to save the world from a coming cataclysm that will destroy the entire universe. After brainwashing Johnny Storm and forcing him to travel to the Earth's core, the Dark Ultimates are able to recover the final gem, but are defeated by the Ultimates. The gems then shatter, rendering the Gauntlets useless.


title: Infinity Gems

text: In a reality where Doctor Doom retained the power of the Beyonder, Doom acquired the Infinity Gems from the Elders of the Universe and used them to defeat the Celestials in a 407-year-long war before finally forsaking his power.


title: Infinity Gems

text: In an alternate reality where the original Fantastic Four died, a new Fantastic Four – consisting of Spider-Man, Hulk, Wolverine, and Ghost Rider – was formed. With Iron Man replacing Ghost Rider, they were the only heroes available to fight Thanos when he initially assembled the Infinity Gauntlet. Despite Iron Man's use of Negative Zone-enhanced Celestial armor, Thanos still easily defeated the team until Wolverine tricked Thanos into erasing Mephisto from existence before cutting off Thanos's left arm, and therefore the Infinity Gauntlet. With Thanos powerless, Spider-Man used the gauntlet to undo the events of Thanos's godhood.


title: Infinity Gems

text: The Infinity Gems, renamed Infinity Stones, play important roles in the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), referred to collectively as the "Infinity Saga". The Infinity Stones also make minor appearances in the television series "Loki", "WandaVision", and "What If...?".


title: Neverland

text: Neverland is a fictional island featured in the works of J. M. Barrie and those based on them. It is an imaginary faraway place where Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Captain Hook, the Lost Boys, and some other imaginary beings and creatures live.


title: Neverland

text: Although not all people who come to Neverland cease to age, its best-known resident famously refused to grow up. Thus, the term is often used as a metaphor for eternal childhood (and childishness), as well as immortality and escapism.


title: Neverland

text: The concept was first introduced as "the Never Never Land" in Barrie's theatre play "Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up", first staged in 1904. In the earliest drafts of the play, the island was called "Peter's Never Never Never Land", a name possibly influenced by the 'Never Never', a contemporary term for outback Australia. In the 1928 published version of the play's script, the name was shortened to "the Never Land". Although the caption to one of F. D. Bedford's illustrations also calls it "The Never Never Land," Barrie's 1911 novelisation "Peter and Wendy" simply refers to it as "the Neverland," and its many variations "the Neverlands."


title: Neverland

text: Neverland has been featured prominently in subsequent works that either adapted Barrie's works or expanded upon them. These Neverlands sometimes vary in nature from the original.


title: Neverland

text: The novel says that the Neverlands are compact enough that adventures are never far between, and that a map of a child's mind would resemble a map of Neverland, with no boundaries at all. Accordingly, Barrie explains that the Neverlands are found in the minds of children; although each is "always more or less an island" as well as having a family resemblance, they are not the same from one child to the next. For example, John Darling's Neverland had "a lagoon with flamingos flying over it," while his little brother Michael's had "a flamingo with lagoons flying over it."


title: Neverland

text: The exact situation of Neverland is ambiguous and vague. In Barrie's original tale, the name for the real world is the Mainland, which suggests Neverland is a small island, reached by flight. Peter—who is described as saying "anything that came into his head"—tells Wendy the way to Neverland is "second to the right, and straight on till morning." In the novel, the children are said to have found the island only because it was "out looking for them." Barrie additionally writes that Neverland is near the "stars of the milky way" and it is reached "always at the time of sunrise."


title: Neverland

text: In Barrie's "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens" (1906), a proto-version of Neverland, located in the Serpentine in Kensington Gardens, is called the Birds' Island, where baby Peter reaches by flight, or by sailing in a paper boat or thrush's nest.


title: Neverland

text: Walt Disney's 1953 "Peter Pan" suggests Neverland is located in outer space, adding a "star" to Peter's directions: "second star to the right, and straight on till morning." From afar, these stars depict Neverland in the distance. The 2003 live-action film (produced by Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Revolution Studios, Red Wagon Entertainment and Allied Stars Ltd) repeats this representation, as the Darling children are flown through the solar system to reach Neverland. In the 1991 film "Hook" (produced by TriStar Pictures and Amblin Entertainment), Neverland is shown to be located in the same way as the 1953 Disney film. While flying is the only way to reach it, the film does not show exactly how Captain Hook manages to get from Neverland to London in order to kidnap Peter's children, Jack and Maggie. In "Peter Pan in Scarlet" (2006), by Geraldine McCaughrean, Neverland is located in waters known as the 'Sea of One Thousand Islands'. The children get to the island by flying on a road called the High Way.


title: Neverland

text: In Peter David's 2009 novel "Tigerheart", Neverland is renamed the Anyplace and is described as being both a physical place and a dream land where human adults and children go when they dream. Additionally, there is a location called the Noplace which is cold and devoid of colour where people in a coma and those who are "lost" live. In the 2011 miniseries "Neverland", inspired by Barrie's works, the titular place is said to be another planet existing at the centre of the universe. It is accessible only via a magic portal generated by a strange sphere. In the 2015 American film "Pan", Neverland is a floating island in a sky-like dimension.


title: Neverland

text: The passage of time in Neverland is similarly ambiguous. The novel "Peter and Wendy" mentions that in Neverland there are many more suns and moons than on the Mainland, making time difficult to track. One way to tell the time is to find the crocodile, and wait until the clock inside it strikes the hour. Although Neverland is widely thought of as a place where children don't grow up, Barrie wrote that the Lost Boys eventually do grow up, having to leave, and fairies there lived typically short lifespans.


title: Neverland

text: In "Peter Pan in Scarlet" (2006), by Geraldine McCaughrean, time freezes as soon as the children arrived in Neverland. In the 2011 miniseries "Neverland", in which Neverland is said to be another planet entirely, time has frozen due to external cosmic forces converging on the planet, preventing anyone living there from ageing.


title: Neverland

text: In J. M. Barrie's play and novel, most of the adventures in the stories take place in the Neverwood, where the Lost Boys hunt and fight the pirates and Native Americans.


title: Neverland

text: Peter and the Lost Boys live in the Home Under The Ground, which also contains Tinker Bell's "private apartment." The Home is accessed by sliding down hollowed tree trunks, one for each boy. It consisted of one large room, ... with a floor in which you could dig if you wanted to go fishing, and in this floor grew stout mushrooms of a charming colour, which were used as stools. A Never tree tried hard to grow in the centre of the room, but every morning they sawed the trunk through, level with the floor." The Little House is built from branches by the Lost Boys for Wendy after she is hit by Tootles' arrow. At the end of the play, one year after the main events in the story, the house appears in different spots every night, but always on some tree-tops. The Little House is the original "Wendy house," now the name of a children's playhouse.


title: Neverland

text: The Jolly Roger is the pirates' brig, described by Barrie as "a rakish-looking craft foul to the hull."


title: Neverland

text: The mermaids live in the Mermaids' Lagoon, which is also the location of Marooners' Rock, the most dangerous place in Neverland. Trapped on Marooners' Rock in the lagoon just offshore, Peter faced impending death by drowning, as he could not swim or fly from it to safety. The mermaids made no attempt to rescue him, but he was saved by the Never bird.


title: Neverland

text: In the many film, television, and video game adaptations of "Peter Pan", adventures that originally take place in either the Mermaids' Lagoon, the Neverwood forest, or on the pirates' ship are played out in a greater number of more elaborate locations.


title: Neverland

text: In the Disney-franchise version of Neverland, many non-canon locales are added which appear variously throughout different instalments, as well as adding or giving names to implied locations within Barrie's original Neverland. These locales include:


title: Neverland

text: In Steven Spielberg's 1991 film "Hook", the pirates occupy a small port town peppered with merchant shopfronts, warehouses, hotels, pubs, and an improvised baseball field, and many ships and boats of varying sizes and kinds fill the harbour. The Home Underground has also been replaced by an intricate tree house structure, which is home to a larger number of Lost Boys. In certain areas, the territory surrounding the tree house has its own unique weather (i.e; spring, summer, autumn, winter).


title: Neverland

text: The Mermaids' Lagoon is directly connected to the Lost Boys' tree house structure by a giant clam-shell pulley system. The Home Underground is discovered buried and forgotten by an adult Peter in the film, underneath the new home of the Lost Boys. Neither the redskins nor their territory appear in the film, though they are mentioned by Hook during a conversation with Smee.


title: Neverland

text: The Black Castle, which is referred to in the 2003 film, is an old ruined and abandoned castle, decorated with stone dragons and gargoyles. It is one of the places where Tiger Lily is taken by Captain James Hook. This sequence is based on the Marooner's Rock sequence in the original play and book: like Disney's non-canon 'Skull Rock', Black Castle replaces Marooners's Rock in this film.


title: Neverland

text: Neverpeak Mountain is the huge mountain that is right in the middle of Neverland. According to "Peter Pan in Scarlet", when a child is on top of Neverpeak Mountain, he or she can see over anyone and anything and can see beyond belief.


title: Neverland

text: The Maze of Regrets is a maze in "Peter Pan in Scarlet" where all the mothers of the Lost Boys go to find their boys.


title: Neverland

text: Fairies are arguably the most important magical inhabitants of the Neverland, and its primary magic users. A property of their nature is the production and possession of fairy dust, the magic material which enables flying for all characters except Peter, who was taught to fly by the birds, and later by the fairies in Kensington Gardens. The only-named fairy is Tinker Bell, Peter Pan's companion, whose name alludes to her profession as a 'tinker', or fixer of pots and pans. Tinker Bell is essentially a household fairy, but far from benign. Her exotic, fiery nature, and capacity for evil and mischief, due to fairies being too small to feel more than one type of emotion at any one time, is reminiscent of the more hostile fairies encountered by Peter in Kensington Gardens.


title: Neverland

text: In Barrie's play and novel, the roles of fairies are brief: they are allies to the Lost Boys against the pirates, the source of fairy dust and where they act as "guides" for parties travelling to and from Neverland. They are also responsible for the collection of abandoned or lost babies from the Mainland to the Neverland. The roles and activities of the fairies are more elaborate in "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens" (1906): they occupy kingdoms in the Gardens and at night "mischief children who are locked in after dark" to their deaths or entertain them before they return to their parents the following day; and they guard the paths to a "Proto-Neverland" called the birds' island. These fairies are more regal and engage in a variety of human activities in a magical fashion. They have courts; can grant wishes to children; and have a practical relationship with the birds, which is however "strained by differences." They are portrayed as dangerous, whimsical and extremely clever, but quite hedonistic. After forgetting how to fly, unable to be taught by the birds, Peter is given the power to fly again by the fairies.


title: Neverland

text: Barrie writes that "when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, ... and that was the beginning of fairies." Neverland's fairies can be killed whenever someone says they don't believe in fairies, suggesting that the race of fairies is finite and exhaustible. When dying from Hook's poison, Tinker Bell is saved when Peter and other children and adults across the Neverlands and Mainland call out "I do believe in fairies, I do, I do," so their deaths are not necessarily permanent. At the end of Barrie's novel Wendy asks Peter about Tinker Bell, whom he has forgotten and he answers, "I expect she is no more."


title: Neverland

text: The "Disney Fairies"–"Peter Pan" franchise has elaborated on aspects of Barrie's fairy mythology. The Never Fairies (and associated sparrow men) live in Pixie Hollow, located in the heart of Neverland. As stated in the "Tinker Bell" film, after the baby's first laugh enters a flower, it breaks the flower into numerous pieces (the seeds), any piece that can blow with the wind and survive the trip to Pixie Hollow becomes a fairy, who then learns his/her specific talent.


title: Neverland

text: In the novel and the play, between the flight from the Mainland (reality) and the Neverland, they are relatively simple animals which provide entertainment, instruction and some limited guidance to flyers. These birds are described as unable to sight its shores, "even, carrying maps and consulting them at windy corners."


title: Neverland

text: The Never Bird saves Peter from drowning when he is stranded on Marooners' Rock, by giving him her nest which he uses as a sailing vessel.


title: Neverland

text: In Barrie's "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens", birds have a far more prominent role on a proto-Neverland called the Birds' Island. On the island, the various birds speak bird-language, described as being related to fairy language which can be understood by young humans, who used to be birds. The birds are responsible for bringing human babies into the Mainland, whose human parents send folded paper boats along the serpentine "with 'boy' or 'girl' and 'thin' or 'fat' (and so on) written", indicating to the official birds which species to send back to transform into human children, who are described as having an "itch on their backs where their wings used to be" and that their warbles are fairy/bird talk.


title: Neverland

text: The Lost Boys are a tribe of "children who fall out of their prams when the nurse is not looking;" having not been claimed by humans in seven days, they were collected by the fairies and flown to the Neverland. There are no 'lost girls' because, as Peter explains, girls are much too clever to fall out of their prams and be lost in this manner.


title: Neverland

text: There are six Lost Boys: Tootles, Nibs, Slightly, Curly and the Twins. They are not permitted to fly by Peter, as it is a sign of his authority and uniqueness. They live in tree houses and caves, wear animal skins, have spears and bows and arrows, and live for adventure. They are a formidable fighting force despite their youth and they make war with the pirates, although they seem to enjoy a harmonious existence with the other inhabitants of Neverland.


title: Neverland

text: The crew of the Pirate ship "Jolly Roger" have taken up residence off-shore, and are widely feared throughout Neverland. How they came to be in Neverland is unclear. Their captain is the ruthless James Hook, named after the hook in place of his right hand.


title: Neverland

text: There is a tribe of wigwam-dwelling Native Americans who live on the island, referred to by Barrie as "Redskins" or as the Piccaninny tribe. Their chief is Great Big Little Panther, whose daughter Tiger Lily has a crush on Peter Pan. The Piccaninny tribe are known to make ferocious and deadly war against Captain Hook and his pirates, but their connection with the Lost Boys is more lighthearted. For "many moons" the two groups have captured each other, only to promptly release the captives, as though it were a game.