Joomla! site syndication http://www.fiepymes.com/english 2010-09-08T20:02:13+01:00 http://www.fiepymes.com/english http://www.fiepymes.com/english/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png text/html 2010-08-31T01:00:00+01:00 http://www.fiepymes.com/english http://www.fiepymes.com/english/content/view/270/91/ The situation in Venezuela is becoming dangerously tense. Ramón Guillermo Aveledo says that the Sept. 26 parliamentary elections may be the last ones in the country -- ever.Aveledo, a prestigious lawyer, writer and former president of Congress, is the executive secretary of the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, the umbrella organization for the united opposition.What's happening in the country? Possibly, Hugo Chávez could lose, so he's looking for a way to tamper with the results. One month away from the elections, the most reliable survey -- by Consultores 21, as disclosed by expert Joaquín Pérez Rodríguez -- gives the victory to the opposition, 52 to 42 percent. That fact is reinforced by another question that is even more revealing. When voters are asked whether they like or reject Chávez, 37 percent say they like him, 56 percent don't. text/html 2010-08-30T01:00:00+01:00 http://www.fiepymes.com/english http://www.fiepymes.com/english/news/estados-unidos/roll-your-own-cigarette-machines-help-evade-steep-tax.html Scores of tobacco retailers in the U.S. are taking advantage of a federal tax loophole to offer deep discounts on roll-your-own cigarettes. But the practice is attracting scrutiny from regulators and cigarette manufacturers.At Smoke Zone, a store in this Chicago suburb, customers one recent afternoon flocked to two high-speed rolling machines that produce a carton of cigarettes in eight minutes. The price: $21—less than half the cost of a carton of Marlboro cigarettes. People have waited an hour for these some days, said Taren DeNicolo, the store's manager.About 150 tobacco outlets in some 20 states are deploying the novel roll-your-own machines to tempt recession-weary smokers, according to an estimate by one maker of the devices. But some regulators say the stores may be violating U.S. and state laws that govern cigarette manufacturing. text/html 2010-08-25T01:00:00+01:00 http://www.fiepymes.com/english http://www.fiepymes.com/english/articles/all-america/europe-2030.html The European Council in December 2007 established a Reflection Group to identify the challenges that the European Union must face in the following twenty years and review what the answers to this event could be. The group was lead by Felipe Gonzalez and the result of their deliberations were made public 30 months later, just when the international crisis reached that country, causing huge political tensions as a result of the needed economic adjustment that had to be taken to face it and achieve mitigating them.The timing of the report is undeniable. It precisely addresses the issues that are the core of the dilemmas which entails the loss of wealth with increasing unemployment rates and the problems of competence for wage and salary, costs, an aging population, the loss of force of the European economies. Added to all the above, we have to mention the destabilizing fiscal deficit; the debt reappearance as a sword of Damocles, the fragility of financial markets and their intermediaries; the environmental damage as well as the long horizon for the return of all the roads which these economies require to maintain their global poise and not lose the leading role they have achieved and is threatened by the presence of several emerging economies that are climbing in their participation within the global economy. text/html 2010-08-24T01:00:00+01:00 http://www.fiepymes.com/english http://www.fiepymes.com/english/news/ecuador/public-finances-and-growth-famished-alliance.html Excessive weight of current expenditure, the inability to sustain high levels of public investments, shortages of foreign direct investment and lack of incentives and security for private investments, a weak institutionalization and rule of the law; deficient infrastructures, narrow minded attitude towards trade and globalization; low competitiveness and productivity among others, are the adverse factors to the imperative of achieving a sustained and high growth and sound public finances. text/html 2010-06-14T01:00:00+01:00 http://www.fiepymes.com/english http://www.fiepymes.com/english/news/all-america/google-helps-build-trade-case-over-web-censorship.html Google shut down its mainland Chinese-language portal earlier this year over censorship concerns and a cyber attack it said it traced to China. China has the world's largest number of Internet users and while the market has boomed, Beijing has kept a tight grip over sensitive content on subjects like politics and ethnic unrest. Robert Boorstin, Google's director of corporate and policy communications, said the company is working with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the State Department, Commerce Department and European officials to build a case to take to the World Trade Organization. Such a case could help U.S. tech companies seeking greater access to Chinese consumers while furthering the U.S. government's human rights agenda.U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her technology advisers have promoted Internet freedom as a basic human right.