- published: 27 Jan 2016
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Neris ( pronunciation (help·info), Belarusian: Ві́лія Viliya, Polish: Wilia) is a river rising in Belarus. It flows through Vilnius (Lithuania) and becomes a tributary of the Neman River (Nemunas) at Kaunas (Lithuania). Its length is 510 km (320 mi).
For 275 km (171 mi) the river runs through Belarus, where it is called Viliya, and 235 km (146 mi) runs through Lithuania, where it is called Neris.
The Neris connects two old Lithuanian capitals - Kernavė and Vilnius. Along its banks are burial places of the pagan Lithuanians. At 25 km (16 mi) from Vilnius are the old burial mounds of Karmazinai, with many mythological stones and a sacred oak.
The reasons for the dual naming of the river as Neris by the Lithuanians and Viliya (formerly Velja, meaning "big, great" in Slavic) by the Slavs are complex. Even in Vilnius, there are toponyms including both names, e. g. Neris remains in the riverside names of Paneriai and Paneriškės while Velja is a part of the name Valakampiai, which means "an angle of Velja" in Lithuanian.
Efraín López Neris is a Sephardi Puerto Rican actor, producer and cinematographer that has had a long trajectory in Puerto Rico's national artistic scene.
Born in Caguas in April 1937, he had his start in Puerto Rican television in the 1960s by joining the cast of various comedy shows. Among his memorable television characters, "Don Florito" parodied great opera singers and operatic arias, a concept that predated that of Adam Sandler's Opera Man by at least fifteen years. His "Candido" had López portray an extremely naive married man who placed too much confidence in his wife and their mutual house painter friend ("mi amigo, el pintor"), whose profession led quite well to dozens of double entendres about his wife's proclivities, acknowledged by everyone but himself. Perhaps his "Don Lolo" character was his most popular one, as a very old man with a very sharp tongue. He originally portrayed the character as having Parkinson's disease, a trait which he later discontinued after protests from patient advocates. A recent character, "Vázquez", has López portraying a dimwitted security guard, with a penchant for food, Spanglish and politics, who is also a strong -and rather inept- supporter of the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico. López played this character on some of Sunshine Logroño's comedic productions.