Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned from Cuba on Friday following cancer-related medical treatment, walking and joking at the airport in a first public appearance in three weeks that quashed rumours he might have been at death's door.
The head of the Ibero-American Secretariat Enrique Iglesias denied that the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, CELAC, to be created next July pretends to take distance from the United States or Spain.
Blackouts blamed on forest fires left without power whole areas of north and central Venezuela, including Caracas, officials said. The power outages began last Thursday due to the collapse of electrical lines located 250 kilometres west of Caracas, Electricity Minister Ali Rodriguez said.
Venezuelan authorities say they recorded 48 homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants last year, making it one of the most dangerous places in South America. Venezuela has a population of 28 million and a report for United Nations last year put the homicide rate for South America as a whole around 20 per 100.000 people.
President Hugo Chavez Venezuelan United Socialist Party, PSUV finally obtained 98 seats in last Sunday’s legislative election while the opposition managed 65, according to the primary proclamations based on official data from the country’s different regions.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that the arrival of the rainy season will help eliminate power rationing on weekends and on weekdays at non-peak hours. Chavez made the announcement during a meeting of an electricity advisory group at the Miraflores presidential palace that was aired by state-run VTV television.
Venezuelan Health and Social Protection Minister Luis Reyes confirmed 15 cases of Chagas disease in the capital Caracas, following an outbreak in the popular quarters of the city. However Minister Reyes flatly discarded the word “epidemics”.
Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Venezuela’s leader Hugo Chávez said “the new world requires a new logic to accept a new order of relationships” during a meeting held at the presidential palace of Miraflores in Caracas.