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Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It has a territorial extension of 916,445 km² (353,841 sq mi), and its population was estimated at 28 million in 2019. The capital and largest urban agglomeration is the city of Caracas.

The continental territory is bordered on the north by the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Colombia, Brazil on the south, Trinidad and Tobago to the northeast and on the east by Guyana. The Venezuelan government maintains a claim against Guyana to Guayana Esequiba. Venezuela is a federal presidential republic consisting of 23 states, the Capital District, and federal dependencies covering Venezuela’s offshore islands. Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America; the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north and in the capital.

The territory of Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522 amid resistance from indigenous peoples. In 1811, it became one of the first Spanish-American territories to declare independence from the Spanish and to form part, as a department, of the first federal Republic of Colombia (historiographically known as Gran Colombia). It separated as a full sovereign country in 1830. During the 19th century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, remaining dominated by regional military dictators until the mid-20th century. Since 1958, the country has had a series of democratic governments, as an exception where most of the region was ruled by military dictatorships, and the period was characterized by economic prosperity. Economic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s led to major political crises and widespread social unrest, including the deadly Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of a President for embezzlement of public funds charges in 1993. The collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 Venezuelan presidential election, the catalyst for the Bolivarian Revolution, which began with a 1999 Constituent Assembly, where a new Constitution of Venezuela was imposed. The government’s populist social welfare policies were bolstered by soaring oil prices, temporarily increasing social spending, and reducing economic inequality and poverty in the early years of the regime. The 2013 Venezuelan presidential election was widely disputed leading to widespread protest, which triggered another nationwide crisis that continues to this day.

Venezuela is a developing country and ranks 113th on the Human Development Index. It has the world’s largest known oil reserves and has been one of the world’s leading exporters of oil. Previously, the country was an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, but oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The excesses and poor policies of the incumbent government led to the collapse of Venezuela’s entire economy. The country struggles with record hyperinflation, shortages of basic goods, unemployment, poverty, disease, high child mortality, malnutrition, severe crime, and corruption. These factors have precipitated the Venezuelan migrant crisis where more than three million people have fled the country. By 2017, Venezuela was declared to be in default regarding debt payments by credit rating agencies. The crisis in Venezuela has contributed to a rapidly deteriorating human rights situation, including increased abuses such as torture, arbitrary imprisonment, extrajudicial killings, and attacks on human rights advocates. Venezuela is a charter member of the UN, Organization of American States (OAS), Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), ALBA, Mercosur, Latin American Integration Association (LAIA), and Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI). Wikipedia

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The New York metropolitan area, also commonly referred to as the Tri-State area, is the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass, at 4,669.0 sq mi (12,093 km²), and one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. The metropolitan area includes New York City (the most populous city in the United States), Long Island, and the Mid and Lower Hudson Valley in New York State; the six largest cities in New Jersey: Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Elizabeth, Lakewood, and Edison, and their vicinities; and six of the seven largest cities in Connecticut: Bridgeport, New Haven, Stamford, Waterbury, Norwalk, and Danbury, and their vicinities. The New York metropolitan area sits within the larger Northeast Megalopolis.

The New York metropolitan area is the most populous in the United States, as defined by both the Metropolitan Statistical Area (20.1 million residents in 2020) and the Combined Statistical Area (23.6 million residents in 2020). The metropolitan area is home to approximately 6% of the United States’ population. It is the tenth-largest urban agglomeration in the world. The New York metropolitan area continues to be the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States, with one of the largest foreign-born populations of any metropolitan region in the world. The MSA covers 6,720 sq mi (17,405 km²), while the CSA area is 13,318 sq mi (34,493 km²), encompassing an ethnically and geographically diverse region. The New York metropolitan area’s population is larger than that of the state of New York, and the metropolitan airspace accommodated over 130 million passengers in 2016.

As a center of many industries, including finance, fintech, international trade, news, and traditional media, real estate, education, fashion, entertainment, tourism, biotechnology, law, and manufacturing, the New York metropolitan region is one of the most important economic regions in the world. Indeed, New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, diplomatic, and media capital of the world. As of 2019, the New York metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of $1.7 trillion. If the New York metropolitan area were a sovereign state, it would have the eighth largest economy in the world. Metropolitan New York is home to the highest number of billionaires of any metropolis in the world. According to Forbes, in 2014, the New York metropolitan area was home to eight of the top ten ZIP codes in the United States by median housing price, with six in Manhattan alone. The New York metropolitan area also houses five of the top ten richest places in America, according to Bloomberg. These are Scarsdale, New York; Short Hills, New Jersey; Old Greenwich, Connecticut; Bronxville, New York; and Darien, Connecticut.

The New York metropolitan region’s higher education network comprises hundreds of colleges and universities, including New York University and three Ivy League universities: Columbia, Yale, and Princeton.

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget utilizes two definitions of the area: the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) and the combined statistical area (CSA). The MSA definition is titled the New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA Metropolitan Statistical Area, and includes a population of 20.3 million people by 2017 Census estimates, roughly 1 in 16 Americans and nearly 7 million more than the second-place Los Angeles metropolitan area in the United States. The MSA is further subdivided into four metropolitan divisions. The 23-county MSA includes 10 counties in New York State (coextensive with the five boroughs of New York, the two remaining counties of Long Island, and three counties in the Lower Hudson Valley); 12 counties in Northern and Central New Jersey; and one county in northeastern Pennsylvania. The largest urbanized area in the United States is at the heart of the metropolitan area, the New York–Newark, NY–NJ–CT Urbanized Area (which had a land area of 3,450 square miles in 2010 according to the 2010 census). The New York state portion of the metropolitan area (the Five Boroughs, the lower Hudson, and Long Island) accounts for over 65 percent of the state’s population. Wikipedia

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North Africa or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in the west, to Egypt’s Suez Canal.

Varying sources limit it to the countries of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, a region that was known by the French during colonial times as “Afrique du Nord” and is known by Arabs as the Maghreb (“West”, The western part of Arab World).

The United Nations definition includes Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, and the Western Sahara, the territory disputed between Morocco and the Sahrawi Republic.

The African Union definition includes the Western Sahara and Mauritania but not Sudan. When used in the term Middle East and North Africa (MENA), it often refers only to the countries of the Maghreb.

North Africa includes the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, and plazas de soberanía and can also be considered to include other Spanish, Portuguese and Italian regions such as Canary Islands, Madeira, Lampedusa, and Lampione.

The countries of North Africa share a lot of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic identity with the Middle East.

Northwest Africa has been inhabited by Berbers since the beginning of recorded history, while the eastern part of North Africa has been home to the Egyptians. Between the A.D. 600s and 1000s, Arabs from the Middle East swept across the region in a wave of Muslim conquest. These peoples formed a single population in many areas, as Berbers and Egyptians merged into Arabic and Muslim culture. This process of Arabization and Islamization has defined the cultural landscape of North Africa ever since. Wikipedia

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