Colombia

The Battle of Pork Chop Hill comprises a pair of related Korean War infantry battles during the spring and summer of 1953. These were fought while... the U.S. and the Communist Chinese and Koreans negotiated an armistice. In the U.S., they were controversial because of the many soldiers killed for terrain of no strategic or tactical value. The first battle was described in the eponymous history Pork Chop Hill: The American Fighting Man in Action, Korea, Spring 1953, by S.L.A. Marshall, from which the film Pork Chop Hill was drawn. The United Nations, primarily supported by the United States, won the first battle when the Chinese broke contact and withdrew after two days of fighting. The second battle involved many more troops on both sides and was bitterly contested for five days before United Nations Command conceded the hill to the Chinese forces by withdrawing behind the main battle line. The hill, 300 meters high, first was seized by the U.S. 8th Cavalry Regiment in October 1951, again in May 1952 by Item Company of the U.S. 180th Infantry Regiment, then defended by the 21st Thai Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Division in November 1952.
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The Caribbean Development Bank is a financial institution which assists Caribbean nations in financing social and economic programs in its member... countries. Created on October 18, 1969, by a conference of eighteen countries and territories in Kingston, Jamaica, it has its headquarters located in Bridgetown, Barbados adjacent to the campus of the Samuel Jackson Prescod Polytechnic . In 2004 and 2010, Standard & Poor's gave the CDB a rating of Triple A, the firm's highest rating. According to Standard and Poor if the Caribbean Development bank "continues its prudent financial policies of the past, its rating should remain stable over the medium term." At the end of 2000, the bank had shareholders' equity of US$426 million. The United Nations launched Development Business in 1978 with the support of the Caribbean Development Bank, the World Bank, and many other major development banks from around the world.
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The Union of South American Nations - UZAN, Portuguese: União de Nações Sul-Americanas - UNASUL, Spanish: Unión de Naciones... Suramericanas - UNASUR is an intergovernmental union integrating two existing customs unions: Mercosul and the Andean Community of Nations , as part of a continuing process of South American integration. It is modeled on the European Union. The UNASUR Constitutive Treaty was signed on May 23, 2008, at the Third Summit of Heads of State, held in Brasília, Brazil. According to the Constitutive Treaty, the Union's headquarters will be located in Quito, Ecuador. The South American Parliament will be located in Cochabamba, Bolivia, while the headquarters of its bank, the Bank of the South are located in Caracas, Venezuela. The combined population of the 12-member Union as at 1 July 2010 was estimated at 396,391,032. On 4 May 2010, at an extraordinary heads of state summit held in Campana, 75 km north of Buenos Aires, former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner was unanimously elected the first Secretary-General of UNASUR for a two-year term.
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The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programs. The World Bank's official... goal is the reduction of poverty. According to the World Bank's Articles of Agreement all of its decisions must be guided by a commitment to promote foreign investment, international trade and facilitate capital investment. The World Bank differs from the World Bank Group, in that the World Bank comprises only two institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association , whereas the former incorporates these two in addition to three more: International Finance Corporation , Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency , and International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes . The World Bank is one of five institutions created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. The International Monetary Fund, a related institution, is the second. Delegates from many countries attended the Bretton Woods Conference.
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The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was an international relief agency, largely dominated by the United States but... representing 44 nations. Founded in 1943, it became part of the United Nations in 1945, was especially active in 1945 and 1946, and largely shut down operations in 1947. Its purpose was to "plan, co-ordinate, administer or arrange for the administration of measures for the relief of victims of war in any area under the control of any of the United Nations through the provision of food, fuel, clothing, shelter and other basic necessities, medical and other essential services". Its staff of civil servants included 12,000 people, with headquarters in New York. Funding came from many nations, and totaled $3.7 billion, of which the United States contributed $2.7 billion; Britain $625 million and Canada $139 million. UNRRA cooperated closely with dozens of volunteer charitable organizations, who sent hundreds of their own agencies to work alongside UNRRA.
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Rafael Orozco Maestre, was a Colombian singer of vallenato music. He was one of the major representatives of that Colombian popular folk music and... lead singer and owner, along fellow accordionist Israel Romero, of the vallenato group Binomio de Oro de América, very popular in Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. Orozco was assassinated by gunmen. It is believed they were hired by an angry drug lord whose wife Orozco was having an affair with. From 1977 to 1991 the Binomio de Oro recorded 20 albums not counting special contributions to other artist of the "Fiesta Vallenata" compilations, interrupted with the death of lead singer Rafael Orozco.
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Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known... affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, and is the earliest remaining living recipient. He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in his leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on, he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha; they have two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo. He started as a journalist, and has written many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera .
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Jonathan Alberto "John" Leguizamo is a Colombian-American actor, producer, voice artist, and comedian. John Leguizamo was born in Bogotá,... Colombia, to Alberto and Luz Leguizamo, According to Leguizamo, his paternal grandfather was of Puerto Rican and Italian descent and his maternal grandfather was Lebanese. Leguizamo has also described himself as being of Amerindian and Mestizo heritage. Leguizamo's father was once an aspiring film director and studied at Cinecittà, but eventually dropped out due to lack of finances. When Leguizamo was four years old, his family emigrated to the United States and lived in various neighborhoods of Queens in New York City, including Jackson Heights. He later credited growing up as one of the first Latino children in his Jackson Heights neighborhood as formative in his acting ability: "It was tough. There were lots of fights. I would walk through a park and be attacked, and I had to defend myself all the time. But this helped me to become funny so that I wouldn’t get hit." Leguizamo attended the Joseph Pulitzer Middle School and later the Murry Bergtraum High School.
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Lillo Brancato, Jr. is a Colombian-born American actor, known for his performance as "Calogero Anello" in Robert De Niro's 1993 directorial debut, A... Bronx Tale. He also played Matthew Bevilaqua, a young mobster on The Sopranos. In December 2005, Brancato was charged with second-degree murder for his role in a burglary in the Bronx, New York in which an off-duty police officer, Daniel Enchautegui, confronted two burglars and was killed in a shootout. Brancato was subsequently acquitted of murder, but he was convicted of first-degree attempted burglary and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Co-defendant Steven Armento was convicted of firing the fatal shot in a separate trial and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Brancato was born in Bogotá, Colombia. Adopted when he was four months old, he was raised by Italian-American parents, Lillo, Sr., and Domenica , in Yonkers, New York. Brancato went to catholic school Mount St Michael. Although he is of Colombian descent, Brancato has said "I consider myself Italian. I was raised to eat pasta".
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Peru /pəˈruː/ , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and... Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. Peruvian territory was home to ancient cultures, spanning from the Norte Chico civilization, one of the oldest in the world, to the Inca Empire, the largest state in Pre-Columbian America. The Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century and established a Viceroyalty, which included most of its South American colonies. After achieving independence in 1821, Peru has undergone periods of political unrest and fiscal crisis as well as periods of stability and economic upswing. Peru is a representative democratic republic divided into 25 regions. Its geography varies from the arid plains of the Pacific coast to the peaks of the Andes Mountains and the tropical forests of the Amazon Basin. It is a developing country with a high Human Development Index score and a poverty level around 31%.
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Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South... America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The capital is Panama City. Explored and settled by the Spanish in the 16th century, Panama broke with Spain in 1821 and joined a union of Nueva Granada, Ecuador, and Venezuela, named the Republic of Gran Colombia. When the latter dissolved in 1830, Panama and Nueva Granada remained joined. Nueva Granada later became the Republic of Colombia. With the backing of the United States, Panama seceded from Colombia in 1903, allowing the Panama Canal to be built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between 1904 and 1914. In 1977, an agreement was signed for the complete transfer of the Canal from the United States to Panama by the end of the century. Revenue from canal tolls represents today a significant portion of Panama's GDP.
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Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on... the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border with Brazil. The country also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000 kilometres west of the mainland. The main spoken language in Ecuador is Spanish. Ecuador straddles the equator, from which it takes its name, and has an area of 275,830 km . Its capital city is Quito, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1970s for having the best preserved and least altered historic center in Latin America. The country's largest city is Guayaquil. The historic center of Cuenca, the third largest city in the country, was also declared a World Heritage Site in 1999, for being an outstanding example of a planned inland Spanish style colonial city in the Americas.
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Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders... Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south. Its northern coastline of roughly 2,800 kilometres includes numerous islands in the Caribbean Sea, and in the north east borders the northern Atlantic Ocean. Caribbean islands such as Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Curaçao, Bonaire, Aruba and the Leeward Antilles lie near the Venezuelan coast. Venezuela's territory covers around 916,445 square kilometres with an estimated population of 29,105,632. Venezuela is considered a state with extremely high biodiversity, with habitats ranging from the Andes mountains in the west to the Amazon Basin rainforest in the south, via extensive llanos plains and Caribbean coast in the center and the Orinoco River Delta in the east. Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522, overcoming the resistance from indigenous peoples.
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