Alva Review-Courier -

PUNTO FIJO, Venezuela (AP) — Nieves Ribullen, a Venezuelan oil worker sick of struggling to get by as his country falls apart, is betting it all on far-away Iraq's Kurdish region to give his family a better life.

Over the years he's watched dozens of co-workers abandon poverty wages and dangerous working conditions at the rundown complex of refineries in Punto Fijo on Venezuela's Caribbean coast for jobs in far-flung places like Kuwait, Angola and Chile.

Now it's his turn. Leaving his wife and three children behind, he'll soon ship out to Iraq's semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, where h...