Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday that his mentor and friend Fidel Castro has "recovered his fastball," but needs more time to warm up before returning to the field.
Chavez met with the recovering 80-year-old Castro for six hours behind closed doors during a surprise visit to Cuba's capital.
He said the pair usually talk for longer and could have continued chatting on Tuesday, but that it was "enough already."
"I can tell you that he has recovered his fastball of 90 miles an hour [145kph]," Chavez said on Wednesday, applying a baseball metaphor to Castro, who was an accomplished pitcher as a young man.
Castro "has his uniform hanging near him and he's peeking at it, but he's still warming up his arm," the 52-year-old Chavez told a group of top Cuban government leaders and students from Havana and Venezuela.
"He's not yet ready to take the diamond," he added.
Chavez then told a joke, hinting that when Castro does don his trademark olive-green military uniform anew, his 75-year-old brother Raul, Cuba's acting president, would broadcast the ceremony, panning over the statue with the city's iconic San Cristobal de la Cabana Fortress in the background as a military band played.
Wearing thick sunglasses and his trademark olive fatigues, Raul Castro traded jokes with Chavez, but official microphones did not pick up what was said.
Chavez left Cuba late on Wednesday, but only after Raul saw him off at Havana's airport, state media said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition