Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez reveled in his role as host to Hollywood star Sean Penn as they traveled together through the Venezuelan countryside in an open jeep, stopping to greet adoring crowds.
The Oscar-winning actor hardly said a word on Friday, saying he was working as a freelance journalist, following up on reporting stints in Iraq and Iran. In any case, his star power was clearly eclipsed by the populist president, who took the wheel, honking to the crowds, signing autographs and gathering letters from people asking for help.
"I'm going to write. I'm here as a journalist," Penn said. "So I'm not going to give quotes to anyone. But I'm having a great trip, very interesting."
PHOTO: AP
"I'm just here to take it in like everybody else," he said.
Penn was the latest in a series of US celebrities and public figures to visit with Chavez, including actor Danny Glover, singer Harry Belafonte and Cindy Sheehan, who became a peace activist after her 24-year-old soldier son Casey was killed in Iraq.
FELLOW CRITIC
Like the others, Chavez has embraced Penn as a fellow critic of US President George W. Bush.
"He's a courageous man, he's very quiet," Chavez said as he introduced Penn to reporters and foreign dignitaries during the flight from Caracas to western Venezuela. "But he has a fire burning inside."
Chavez also talked about the havoc an economic crisis in the US might wreak.
"When the economic crisis in the United States breaks out, it's going to hit the world," Chavez said. "We'll help them. The United States must be helped because the United States is going to implode."
Later in the jeep, Penn stayed in the back seat, wearing sunglasses and taking in the spectacle.
Screaming women tried to flag down Chavez, who stopped to kiss young children and braked for a cow that wandered across the road as he led a caravan of trucks through fields of potatoes, beets, lettuce and corn.
It was a familiar scene for Chavez, who grew up poor in a small town in rural Venezuela, and who loves to show visitors what his government is doing for everyday Venezuelans. The highlight of the trip came when Chavez and Penn donned white lab coats and toured an agricultural research laboratory.
BEING USED
Some Chavez opponents say Penn is being used by the president for political purposes.
Cuban-born actress Maria Conchita Alonso, who grew up in Venezuela, said Penn's visit lends support to a "totalitarian" leader who wants increasing control of society -- a charge Chavez denies. Speaking by telephone from her home in Beverly Hills, California, Alonso said she respects Penn as an actor, but hoped he "comes to his senses and he realizes that he's being used."
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has fired his national police chief, who gained attention for leading the separate arrests of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on orders of the International Criminal Court and televangelist Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list for alleged child sex trafficking. Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin did not cite a reason for the removal of General Nicolas Torre as head of the 232,000-member national police force, a position he was appointed to by Marcos in May and which he would have held until 2027. He was replaced by another senior police general, Jose
POWER CONFLICT: The US president threatened to deploy National Guards in Baltimore. US media reports said he is also planning to station troops in Chicago US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to deploy National Guard troops to yet another Democratic stronghold, the Maryland city of Baltimore, as he seeks to expand his crackdown on crime and immigration. The Republican’s latest online rant about an “out of control, crime-ridden” city comes as Democratic state leaders — including Maryland Governor Wes Moore — line up to berate Trump on a high-profile political stage. Trump this month deployed the National Guard to the streets of Washington, in a widely criticized show of force the president said amounts to a federal takeover of US capital policing. The Guard began carrying
Ukrainian drone attacks overnight on several Russian power and energy facilities forced capacity reduction at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant and set a fuel export terminal in Ust-Luga on fire, Russian officials said yesterday. A drone attack on the Kursk nuclear plant, not far from the border with Ukraine, damaged an auxiliary transformer and led to 50 percent reduction in the operating capacity at unit three of the plant, the plant’s press service said. There were no injuries and a fire sparked by the attack was promptly extinguished, the plant said. Radiation levels at the site and in the surrounding
‘DELIBERATE PROVOCATION’: Pyongyang said that Seoul had used a machine gun to fire at North Korean troops who were working to permanently seal the southern border South Korea fired warning shots at North Korean soldiers that briefly crossed the heavily fortified border earlier this week, Seoul said yesterday after Pyongyang accused it of risking “uncontrollable” tensions. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung has sought warmer ties with the nuclear-armed North and vowed to build “military trust,” but Pyongyang has said it has no interest in improving relations with Seoul. Seoul’s military said several North Korean soldiers crossed the border on Tuesday while working in the heavily mined demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas. The incursion prompted “our military to fire warning shots,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff