Venezuelans and their political leaders are facing a week of questions as the country, and the world, wait to see if ailing President Hugo Chavez takes the oath of office January 10.
Thursday is the day designated by the Venezuelan constitution for administering the oath of office. Chavez won re-election in October, but he has been in Cuba for cancer treatment and has not been seen in public for nearly a month.
Accredited Third States
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela has recovered from his recent lung infection and a surgical procedure to remove gallstones, according to an announcement yesterday by President Jacob Zuma.
Doctors say that Mandela, 94, has made "steady progress and that clinically, he continues to improve," according to a statement issued by Zuma's office. Mandela was hospitalised for nearly three weeks in December before going home on December 26.
GEORGETOWN, Guyana - The election which took place yesterday in Venezuela was of a certain significance. It was a poll among legislators to elect the chairman of the National Assembly and pitted Diosdado Cabello, who already held the post, against challenger Blanca Eekhout, who belongs to the Chávista faction led by Vice President Nicolás Maduro. It masked the jostling for power which is going on behind the scenes in the wake of President Chávez’s latest bout of illness, and the cloud hanging over his swearing in for his fourth term on January 10.
KINGSTON, Jamaica - As the world awaits further news on the health of Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, representatives of the governments of Jamaica and Venezuela and a throng of other diplomats gathered yesterday at the Grace Missionary Church in Kingston to offer prayers on his behalf.
Chávez, who is to be sworn in as president for another term, is currently undergoing treatment for cancer.
Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, who was present at the church service, used the occasion to highlight the long-standing relationship between Jamaica and Venezuela.
WASHINGTON D.C., United States, 2013 -Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, has announced new rules reducing the time Caribbean and other nationals who are US citizens are separated from their immediate relatives.
She said these relatives - spouse, children and parents - must be in the process of obtaining visas to become lawful permanent residents of the United States under certain circumstances.
CARACAS - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is still suffering a "severe" respiratory infection that has hindered his breathing as he struggles to recover from cancer surgery in Cuba, the government said on Thursday. The 58-year-old socialist leader has not been seen in public nor heard from in more than three weeks. Officials say he is in delicate condition after his fourth operation in just 18 months for an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has rejected a call by Argentina's president for Britain to give control of the Falkland Islands to Argentina. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner wrote an open letter to the British leader accusing his country of colonialism. More than 30 years have passed since Britain and Argentina fought a 10-week war over the Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory in the southwest Atlantic Ocean, but their dispute continues.
CARACAS, (Reuters) – Vice President Nicolas Maduro returned to Venezuela yesterday after visiting Hugo Chavez in hospital in Cuba, but gave no new details on the cancer-stricken president as rumors grow about his condition.
Flanked by senior government figures including Diosdado Cabello, the head of the National Assembly, Maduro toured a coffee production plant in Caracas – the type of visit that the president made frequently before he fell ill.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s battle with cancer threatens $7 billion of subsidized oil exports that help prop up Cuba’s economy and contain inflation in Caribbean nations from Jamaica to the Bahamas. Chavez, hospitalized in Havana after a fourth operation, sent Cuba $3.6 billion of oil in 2011 through the Petrocaribe program that serves 70 million people across Central America and the Caribbean. Cuba failed to make discoveries in the first offshore drilling effort since 2004 as Repsol SA, Petroliam Nasional Bhd. and Petroleos de Venezuela SA reported dry wells.
CARACAS, Venezuela, (UPI) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is in an induced coma and on life support in a Havana hospital, sources told Spanish newspaper ABC. At the same time, Vice President Nicolas Maduro urged Venezuelans not to believe rumors about Chavez's health. He told Venezuelan broadcaster Telesur Chavez was "aware of the complex and delicate situation he is going through" and said Chavez had "the same strength as always" when Maduro visited him the past few days. Maduro said Chavez squeezed his left hand "strongly" before Maduro left the hospital room.