Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced on Sunday that a plot to assassinate his friend and ally Evo Morales of Bolivia had been uncovered.
Chavez said the Bolivian president called and told him that authorities in the Andean country had uncovered the plot.
The Venezuelan leader said during a radio broadcast that he wouldn’t go into details — leaving that to Bolivian officials — but he said he told Morales to “be careful.”
Morales’ office declined to comment.
Morales is one of several leftist Latin American allies who share Chavez’s antagonism toward Washington. He has faced persistent protests by opponents but won a recall referendum in August.
Chavez also has said that he himself is a target.
In September, he said his government had detained several suspects who were planning to assassinate him in an operation backed by the US.
US officials have repeatedly denied Chavez’s accusations that Washington has backed attempts to overthrow him.
In other news Chavez ordered construction halted on a major shopping mall in Caracas on Sunday, saying the government will expropriate the unfinished building.
The Venezuelan leader said it would be out of line with his government’s socialist vision to allow the new Sambil mall to take up precious urban real estate — and that unbridled consumerism isn’t his idea of progress either.
Chavez said the mall, scheduled to open in La Candelaria district in downtown Caracas next year, would severely clog an area that already is so crowded “not a soul fits.”
The hulking concrete and brick structure takes up an entire city block and according to the Sambil Web site was to include 273 shops.
“We’re going to expropriate that and turn it into a hospital — I don’t know — a school, a university,” Chavez said to applause during his Sunday television and radio program, Hello, President.
Constructora Sambil, the company building the mall, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It operates Sambil malls in cities across Venezuela, including another vast shopping center in Caracas.
“How are we going to create socialism turning over vital public spaces to Sambil?” said Chavez, who has nationalized Venezuela’s largest phone company, electric utilities and oil fields.
The president also has urged his compatriots to shed their materialism and their taste for designer clothes, sport utility vehicles, Scottish whisky and plastic surgery.
Chavez often urges Venezuelans to rethink their values, and the timing of his announcement appeared to be no accident — just as Christmas shoppers packed malls elsewhere in Caracas.
He didn’t preach against the buying frenzy in general, but did say at another point in his speech that “Christ was a socialist.”
Consumerism has flourished in Venezuela in recent years, with the economy awash with cash and windfall oil earnings rolling in. Malls are often packed, and new shopping centers have been sprouting up quickly.
The president did not say how much the government might pay the mall’s owners in compensation.
BRUSHED OFF: An ambassador to Australia previously said that Beijing does not see a reason to apologize for its naval exercises and military maneuvers in international areas China set off alarm bells in New Zealand when it dispatched powerful warships on unprecedented missions in the South Pacific without explanation, military documents showed. Beijing has spent years expanding its reach in the southern Pacific Ocean, courting island nations with new hospitals, freshly paved roads and generous offers of climate aid. However, these diplomatic efforts have increasingly been accompanied by more overt displays of military power. Three Chinese warships sailed the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand in February, the first time such a task group had been sighted in those waters. “We have never seen vessels with this capability
A Japanese city would urge all smartphone users to limit screen time to two hours a day outside work or school under a proposed ordinance that includes no penalties. The limit — which would be recommended for all residents in Toyoake City — would not be binding and there would be no penalties incurred for higher usage, the draft ordinance showed. The proposal aims “to prevent excessive use of devices causing physical and mental health issues... including sleep problems,” Mayor Masafumi Koki said yesterday. The draft urges elementary-school students to avoid smartphones after 9pm, and junior-high students and older are advised not
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
RSS