A1A South

JACKSONVILLE — The Australia Day Challenge rugby league match Jan. 26 at the University of North Florida is shaping up to be the biggest and most unique international sporting event hosted here.

The South Sydney (Australia) Rabbitohs, partly owned by Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe, will face the Leeds (U.K.) Rhinos, champions of the engage Super League, at 1 p.m. in the first meeting of British and Australian teams in the United States.

The novelty of rugby league here, international attention from passionate fans across two oceans and the star power of a Hollywood icon have contributed to a growing buzz and sense that the event’s significance is greater than the 10,000 spectators expected in Hodges Stadium would suggest.

“It’s just grown by leaps and bounds,” said Michael Bouda, manager of sports and entertainment for the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission. “An event of this magnitude with the quality of the teams opens us up to other teams that maybe didn’t think about coming here to play.”

Besides the teams, the New South Wales government sees the event as a way to reach a desirable market, said Kristina Keneally, a member of the New South Wales Parliament sent to Jacksonville as Sydney’s ambassador. The Web site SydneyAustralia.com is sponsoring the Rabbitohs and is on the front of the players’ jerseys. Besides tourism, Sydney hopes people will visit the site to learn about international business opportunities.

“We’re sending a message that Sydney is a great place for investment, particularly in technology and financial services,” said Keneally, who is the only U.S.-born woman ever elected to the state Parliament and will flip the coin before the match. “We see Florida as a great market to promote our brand, our message and our city.”

Visit Jacksonville President John Reyes said that for an organization whose budget doesn’t permit much overseas marketing, “this is more than we could ever wish or hope for getting our message out to the U.K. or Australia.”

For a sports town, the event “broadens our horizons on what we can host here,” Mayor John Peyton said. “It’s an opportunity to put us on the map with Australia and England.”

People from 41 states and nine countries have bought tickets to the Australia Day Challenge, including friends Carol Stevens and Lois Bachynski from Ontario, Canada.

“We’re loving it,” said Stevens, a Crowe fan whose affection for the actor spilled over to his team. “We’re here for a week and we’re making a vacation of it.”

Source:  Jacksonville Business Journal

I believe the tickets were $10 each.  I’d love to go if there are any still available.

Amid the worst food shortages in Venezuela in decades, the government of President Hugo Chávez has put aside its anti-American rhetoric and bought tons of products from U.S. food companies.

A food supply plan launched this week by Chávez includes rice from Texas and Arkansas, black beans from Idaho, and cooking oil from Tennessee and Iowa.

During the launch of the plan, dubbed Food Combo, Chávez acknowledged that the shortages ”are hurting half the world” in Venezuela and said his government will spend $800 million to buy about 150 tons of food around the world, including the United States.

Food production in Venezuela dropped after Chávez froze most prices, saying he wanted to make more food available to the country’s poor.

The government runs a string of subsidized markets, which must import 70 percent of their products.

The Combo — the name refers to a basket of foodstuffs that will be offered — will include a liter of vegetable cooking oil bought from the Houston-based Cal Western Packaging Co.

The company is one of the biggest U.S. distributors of vegetable cooking oil, co-owner Ron Phelps told El Nuevo Herald in a telephone interview.

Several tons of black beans, a staple of the Venezuelan diet, were bought from the Trinidad Benham Corp. in Denver, the largest U.S. distributor of grains and rice.

The rice comes from Gulf Pacific, also based in Houston, which has processing plants in Arkansas and Texas.

The government also said it plans to import other foodstuffs such as eggs, milk products, beef, and chicken.

”Everyone is looking like crazy for containers of powdered milk and chicken to take to Venezuela,” said a South Florida businesswoman who is negotiating contracts with U.S. suppliers.

Chávez has said the Combo plan aims to supply about one-third of the national consumption — about 300,000 tons per month, to be sold through neighborhood shops and councils.

Source:  Miami Herald

How’s that deal on forcing farmers/shopkeepers to grow and sell food for under the price of production going again? 

A Venezuelan lawyer who got a call from his government’s spy agency last summer to coordinate a coverup of an $800,000 campaign contribution to Argentina’s new president admitted Friday to being an illegal foreign agent in the United States.

Moises Maionica, 36, pleaded guilty in Miami federal court to charges of conspiring and acting as an unregistered agent for the Venezuelan government.

Maionica, who works as a corporate lawyer, is cooperating with the federal investigation, which has implicated four others in a plot to cover up the Venezuela government’s role in the highly controversial election donation to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

News of the donation spread soon after a suitcase stuffed with the cash was confiscated by Argentine authorities from a passenger on a chartered plane that had flown from Caracas to Buenos Aires on Aug. 4.

A hemispheric political scandal escalated when U.S. authorities charged Maionica and four other men in December with plotting to silence the passenger, a Key Biscayne businessman named Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, who is wanted on related customs charges in Argentina.

Prosecutors have since stirred up intrigue with these allegations:

• The governments of Argentina and Venezuela collaborated in the coverup.

• The cash-filled suitcase was meant for Fernández, who was then campaigning for president.

• The cash belonged to national oil giant Petróleos de Venezuela, which chartered the flight.

According to a new court document, Maionica received a call from the director of the Venezuelan intelligence agency known as DISIP to join the conspiracy after the cash was seized from Antonini by customs officials in Argentina.

On Aug. 23, Maionica met with two other accused conspirators, Franklin Duran and Carlos Kaufman, and Antonini at Jackson’s Steakhouse in Fort Lauderdale.

Antonini, who reached out to the FBI after he was released in Argentina, was wearing a wire.

”During the meeting, Duran told Antonini that foreign government authorities would pursue Antonini if Antonini said that the seized funds did not belong to him,” according to the court record, which accompanied Maionica’s plea agreement.

”During the meeting Maionica further advised Antonini that Petróleos de Venezuela would pay for all the expenses and financial penalties that Antonini might incur as a result of the seizure of the $800,000,” the document said.

Maionica continued to play a central role in the alleged coverup in other meetings and phone calls with Antonini through December.

Miami attorney Ruben Oliva, who is representing Maionica, said his client got the call from the Venezuelan intelligence director to join the conspiracy just before he and his family were going on a Disney cruise last August.

After Friday’s hearing, Oliva said his client did not realize he was breaking the law, though added that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.”

The others charged in the case: Kauffmann, 35, and Duran, 40, both of Venezuela, and Uruguayan Rodolfo Edgardo Wanseele Paciello, 40, who lives in Miami. They were arrested last month. A fifth defendant, Antonio Jose Canchica Gomez, 37, of Venezuela, is still at large.

Each is charged with being unregistered agents of the Venezuelan government. A trial date is set for March 17 before U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard. Maionica, who faces up to 10 years in prison, will be sentenced April 4.

According to the federal indictment, the coverup was orchestrated by the director of Venezuela’s intelligence service, who used the code name “Alvero.”

Maionica coordinated a call in which ”Alvero” contacted the Key Biscayne businessman in November to address concerns about Antonini’s role in the plot.

On Friday, Mulvihill said Antonini was carrying the suitcase at the request of one of the other seven passengers aboard the chartered plane.

”Mr. Antonini was unaware that the $800,000 was in the suitcase, as the suitcase belonged to one of the other passengers,” Mulvihill said.

He said the suitcase containing the cash was taken on the plane by an assistant to a ”high level official” of Petróleas de Venezuela.

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Maybe it would be easier to just register the people in south Florida who are NOT agents of a foreign government.