Former Cuban president Fidel Castro, who has not been seen in public since undergoing surgery in 2006, went on a walkabout in Havana, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Friday after a visit to Cuba.
If confirmed, the walkabout — for which Chavez gave no date — would be the ailing Castro’s first appearance in public since taking seriously ill in July 2006.
The former president, now 82 and still the Cuban Communist party leader, has been replaced as president by his brother, Raul Castro, 77.
“Fidel Castro, whom a lot of people have been saying is in his dying days, Fidel surprised all of us, and you know what he did? He went for a walk. Fidel went out,” said Chavez, Castro’s closest political ally in Latin America.
“And he was being seen. But this is Fidel, walking around Havana! A miracle. People were weeping,” he added at a public appearance in Caracas.
Chavez maintained that “of course, he planned it all so there would be no record of anything. There are a few photos, which I have seen. I consider myself a humble and fortunate person in that regard.”
Chavez said Castro sent him four letters on Thursday and in one of them told him about his walkabout, from the undisclosed location in Havana where he is still recovering from his illness.
“He told me in one [of these letters] he went somewhere quite far away. This is like a miracle,” Chavez said.
Official media in Havana have not reported the story.
Earlier Chavez said Castro was “really, really well,” seemingly at his best since Castro he took ill.
Castro was “much better than all the times I have visited him in the past three years,” Chavez told state television.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
RSS