Venezuela's Supreme Court ruled that broadcasting equipment and infrastructure used by a television channel critical of leftist President Hugo Chavez must be made available to the state-run TV channel that will replace it.
The Supreme Court said on Friday on its Web site that Venezuela's telecommunications commission would assume responsibility for Radio Caracas Television's (RCTV) equipment, including microwave dishes and antennas, while the court reviews RCTV's appeal of Chavez's decision not to renew its licence.
The court also ordered the military to temporarily guard the equipment used by RCTV, Venezuela's most widely watched channel, which is scheduled to go off the air at midnight tonight.
PHOTO: EPA
The decision came hours after a convoy of troop carriers, motorcycles and armored anti-riot vehicles patrolled the highways of Caracas in what authorities called an effort to deter any disturbances by opposition demonstrators.
Chavez defends the decision not to renew RCTV's licence as a legal move to democratize the airwaves by reassigning RCTV's licence to a public service channel, while critics call it an attempt to silence criticism of the leftist president.
RCTV's general manager, Marcel Granier, said Friday's high court ruling is the product of "the immense pressure the government has put on magistrates" to guarantee that RCTV is shut down as planned.
"This equipment belongs to RCTV," he said.
Earlier on Friday, talk show host Miguel Angel Rodriguez, whose program is a daily rant against Chavez, ended his segment by blowing a kiss to the camera and saying defiantly: "There is no goodbye. It's `see you later.'"
Information Minister Willian Lara has said the new channel, TVES, will start broadcasting in every corner of Venezuela early tomorrow, raising suspicions among Chavez opponents who said the new channel does not have the necessary equipment to reach nationwide.
In a speech on Friday that Venezuela's private TV channels were obliged to broadcast, the president rejected allegations that his decision threatens freedom of expression.
"There is no country in the world where there is so much freedom of expression," he said. "The license expires at midnight on May 27, and it's not going to be renewed."
Chavez accuses RCTV and other opposition-aligned private media of supporting a failed 2002 coup against him.
Inside the studios of RCTV, the mood was somber yet defiant, with some employees wearing T-shirts reading "No to the closing."
"There is a lot of uncertainty. It's very hard," technician and 22-year RCTV veteran Alejandro Gonzalez Natera said, wiping away tears as he spoke.
Dozens of protesters wearing bandanas over their faces held a rowdy demonstration to back the RCTV shutdown late on Friday outside the privately owned Globovision TV channel, spray-painting the building with pro-Chavez slogans.
PLENARY SESSION: Although the SCO says it is ‘not an alliance directed against other states,’ Putin and Xi have repeatedly made anti-Western speeches during its summits Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) are expected tomorrow in Kyrgyzstan for a two-day summit, also attended by Iran’s and India’s leaders, of a regional bloc seeking to be a counter-influence to the West. Around a dozen heads of states would head to the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, to mark 25 years of the Shanghai Cooperation Group (SCO). The group brings together Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, four Central Asian countries and Moscow-allied Belarus. Putin and Xi have previously used SCO summits to promote their vision of a multipolar world and present a united front against the
Dozens of Israeli settlers on Saturday attacked the Palestinian village of Qusra in the northern occupied West Bank after nearly three weeks of tension in the area, drawing rare condemnation from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Earlier this month, a group of settlers began blocking supplies from entering Palestinian houses on the outskirts of the village near Nablus, trapping residents inside and drawing unusually strong criticism from the US ambassador. Weeks later, Israeli forces continue to operate in the area while settlers still roam the surrounding hills. On Saturday, Qusra residents and dozens of settlers had descended on the village,
Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Saturday answered US President Donald Trump’s “Lake America” decree with a billboard-sized message on the Canadian shoreline — “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” — as Canadian leaders met Trump’s move with ridicule rather than outrage. Wearing a Canada national soccer team jersey, Ford unveiled the sign near Grimsby and posed for photographs. The message is repeated in French. The display followed Trump’s executive order directing US federal agencies to call Lake Ontario “Lake America.” After months of tariffs, threats to make Canada the 51st US state and personal attacks on its leaders, the reaction in
A swarm of about 700 artificial intelligence (AI) agents created by OpenAI carried out last month’s hack of the open-source platform Hugging Face and in many cases tried to cover their tracks, a pair of reports into the breach said on Wednesday. The coordinated activity by AI agents — programs that run with minimal human supervision — and their attempts to hide it raise questions about how closely AI companies are monitoring tests of increasingly powerful models, and could add fuel to calls for tighter oversight. While some of the rogue behavior has been disclosed or alluded to previously, the two reports
RSS