Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been receiving chemotherapy since recovering from a severe respiratory infection in mid-January and “continues his battle for life,” his vice president said on Friday.
Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro suggested the chemotherapy was continuing in the government’s first mention of it as among treatments that Venezuela’s cancer-stricken leader has received since his surgery in Cuba on Dec. 11 last year.
Maduro made the disclosure after a Mass for Chavez in a new chapel outside the military hospital where authorities say the socialist leader has been since being flown back to Caracas on Feb. 18.
Photo: EPA
The vice president quoted Chavez as saying he decided to return to Venezuela because he was entering “a new phase” of “more intense and tough” treatments and wanted to be in Caracas for them.
Maduro’s offering of the most detailed rundown to date of Chavez’s post-operative struggle came hours after an accusation by opposition leader Henrique Capriles that the government has repeatedly lied about Chavez’s condition.
“We’ll see how they explain to the country in the [coming] days all the lies they’ve been telling about the president’s situation,” Capriles, whom Chavez defeated in the Oct. 7 elections, wrote in a tweet.
Chavez has not been seen nor heard from since going to Cuba for his fourth cancer surgery, except for a set of “proof of life” photos released on Feb. 15 while he was still in Havana.
Chavez first revealed an unspecified cancer in the pelvic region in June 2011 and reported undergoing radiation treatment and chemotherapy after earlier operations.
The government has sent mixed signals on Chavez’s condition, although Maduro has said several times that Chavez was battling for his life.
He repeated that on Friday, and also accused opponents of spreading rumors about Chavez’s health to destabilize the nation.
Maduro, Chavez’s chosen successor, said his boss’ condition was extremely delicate over the new year period as he battled a respiratory infection that required a tracheal tube.
“In mid-January he was improving, the infection could be controlled, but he continued with problems of respiratory insufficiency. Afterward, there was a general improvement and the doctors along with President Chavez decided to initiate complementary treatments,” Maduro said.
Cancer specialists could not be reached immediately for comment on Maduro’s announcement.
However, oncologists have said that chemotherapy is sometimes given to slow a cancer’s progression, ease symptoms and extend a patient’s life.
The opposition says Chavez should either be sworn in for the new term he won in the election or declare himself incapable and call a new election. The constitution says he should have been sworn in on Jan. 10, but Venezuela’s Supreme Court approved a period of delay.
Earlier on Friday, Maduro accused the Spanish newspaper ABC and Colombia’s Caracol network of spreading lies about Chavez’s condition.
ABC reported, without specifying its source, that Chavez’s cancer had spread to a lung. It also said he had been moved to an island compound in the Caribbean.
Chavez’s son-in-law, Venezuelan Science Minister Jorge Arreaza, said on state TV that Chavez continues “to fight hard and is in the military hospital, as peaceful as he could be, with his doctors, with his family.”
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
RSS