Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez checked in to a military hospital on Saturday night to begin a third round of chemotherapy, this time getting the cancer treatment at home rather than Cuba.
Chavez walked into the Dr. Carlos Arvelo Military Hospital accompanied by his daughter Maria and aides. He said his treatment has been going well and aims to prevent reappearance of cancer cells two months after he underwent surgery.
“I’m coming in the best shape,” Chavez said on TV as he was led through the hospital. “I’ll come out of here strengthened.”
Photo: AFP
He said earlier on television that he and his team of Cuban and Venezuelan doctors decided it would be all right for him to undergo chemotherapy in Venezuela after his latest round of medical tests on Friday.
“The conditions are in place to do this third cycle here,” he said.
“I’m determined to continue living,” Chavez said at the hospital. “It’s not time to die. What we have to do still is a great deal.”
Chavez, who was first elected in 1998, has vowed to bounce back and win re-election next year.
Before going to the hospital, Chavez appeared on a balcony of the presidential palace waving to a crowd of cheering supporters. They included a group that played Afro-Venezuelan music, beating on drums and dancing. Some chanted: “Onward, commander!”
The leftist leader swung his hips to the music and saluted black Venezuelans, saying: “Down with racism.”
Chavez expressed optimism that he is overcoming cancer, referring to the “illness I had.” He said he was making arrangements with Venezualan Vice President Elias Jaua and other officials in order to “continue with this rhythm of treatment.”
Chavez underwent surgery in Cuba that removed a cancerous tumor from his pelvic region in June. He said the follow-up tests haven’t detected any sign of malignant cells in his body. He said the chemotherapy is a preventive measure.
Chavez has appeared with his head shaved the past few weeks after his hair began to fall out as a result of chemotherapy.
The president said during a televised Cabinet meeting on Saturday that he expects to disappear from public view in the coming days, but will remain in contact with government officials and his supporters by phone and Twitter.
“In the coming hours, between today [yesterday] and tomorrow [today] we’ll be preparing for the third cycle,” Chavez said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the