The US and Cuban authorities have announced a project to restore American Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway's home near Havana, where he penned one of his most famous and last pieces of fiction, "The Old Man and the Sea". Hemingway stayed in Cuba for a long period of time, from 1939 until just before he committed suicide on July 2, 1961. The famous writer originally stayed in the Ambos Mundos hotel in Havana and then moved out to his colonial-style residence, Finca Vigia. An American foundation, restoring the legendary writer's home in Cuba, signed an agreement with the Cuban government to import construction material directly from the US to aid the preservation efforts, CNN reported on June 21. The joint US-Cuban project will build a workshop adjacent to Hemingway's home in Cuba to restore and maintain thousands of the famed writer's documents, rough drafts and letters. Mary-Jo Adams, the executive director of the Boston-based Finca Vigia Foundation, named after the writer's house, said the foundation has received approval from the American and Cuban governments to bring US$ 860,000 worth of supplies from the US for the new construction. In January, as part of a shift in the US policy towards Cuba, President Barack Obama authorized the exportation of building materials to the island for the first time since the US broke relations with the island following the 1959 revolution. His widow, Mary, donated the house to the Cuban government, which displays Hemingway's books, clothing and even a collection of fermented lizards. Many of Hemingway's works are considered classics of American literature. Some of the most famous include "A Farewell to Arms" (1929), "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1940) and "The Old Man and the Sea" (1951) for which he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Venezuela said on Tuesday it would start crushing abandoned cars and bicycles to provide raw materials for housing construction and supplement drastically reduced amounts of local steel, reported the Reuters. "We have sent 10,485 automobiles, 9,651 motorbikes and 539 bicycles to the national steel industry," Maria Martinez, a deputy justice minister, said during a visit to an abandoned car deposit outside Caracas. That quantity of steel, she said, could be used for rebars, which reinforce concrete, in the construction of tens of thousands of housing units. In one of late socialist leader Hugo Chavez's most popular policies, the "Great Venezuelan Housing Mission," authorities built or refurbished more than 250 thousand housing units in 2012 for low-income families. That fell to around 150 thousand last year. Production of rebars in March 2014 was at an 18-year monthly low of 8,796 tonnes, down from 46,051 tonnes in March last year. Venezuelan steelmaker Sidor has an installed annual capacity of 5 million tonnes, but output has declined since its nationalization six years ago due to frequent protests and insufficient investment. Total steel output reached a 16-year low of 1.5 million tonnes in 2012, and was only slightly higher at 1.6 million in 2013. The steelmaker's problems are part of a general malaise in the South American OPEC nation's once-buoyant metals industry.

Construction of gas pipeline "South Stream" begins at the 'Russkaya' compressor station site near Anapa. The 900 kilometer long and maximum 2 kilometer deep "South Stream" will carry Russian gas to southern Europe through the Black Sea. South Stream begins from Russia's Anapa on the Black Sea shore, crosses the sea and comes to Bulgaria. Further transportation will be made via territories of Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia to northern Italy. From the territory of Serbia, there will be gas transporting lines to Croatia and to the Republic of Srpska. The new pipeline will be able to carry 63 billion cubic meters gas. The first gas is expected to be pumped through the pipeline in 2015, and export some 63 billion cubic meters to southern Europe. After beginning of construction, Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yildiz told reporters, that Turkey is not planning to take part in the South Stream gas pipeline project, being more interested in Nabucco-West and the Trans-Anatolian natural gas pipeline projects. However, Turkey is interested to increase Russian gas imports to satisfy its growing domestic demand, he said and added that it had not yet been decided which route to use for that, either the Blue Stream pipeline or a pipeline traversing Bulgaria.