Venezuela fired live missiles from fighter jets and ships Friday during exercises intended to demonstrate the firepower of President Hugo Chavez’s military.
Smoke rose from ships off the La Orchila island military base as Otomat MK2 missiles arced into the sky and Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jets flew in formation.
The televised war games allowed the military to showcase some of the hardware bought under Chavez, who says Venezuela’s main threat is the US. A US Navy plane last month flew over the same Caribbean island base, drawing a diplomatic protest from Venezuela.
PHOTO: AP
US officials said the plane accidentally strayed into Venezuelan airspace during a counter-drug mission, but Chavez accused Washington of espionage.
Defense Minister Gustavo Rangel Briceno commanded the troops during Friday’s exercises, ordering them to fire at mock “enemy units.” It was the first time in 13 years that such drills were held with live missile fire at sea, he said.
The ships and planes hit their target -- an old tugboat -- with missiles and a 500kg bomb, sinking the vessel 36km offshore, Rangel said.
He declared the exercises a success, saying “we’ve been able to show our power of dissuasion and defense.”
The US denies having designs on Venezuela, which is its fifth largest oil supplier. But Chavez insists his government is under a real threat, citing the US Navy’s decision earlier this year to re-establish the Fourth Fleet to direct naval forces in the Caribbean, Central and South America.
Opposition politician Enrique Ochoa Antich said Chavez’s perpetual verbal conflicts with the US aim to rally nationalist sentiment around the threat posed by the “empire,” as Chavez calls the US.
But Ochoa said the approach has been used by Chavez for so long that it “isn’t very effective anymore at this point.”
Chavez frequently accuses the US of plotting his overthrow to snatch the OPEC nation’s oil reserves, and in recent weeks has said the US attitude toward Venezuela echoes US “aggression” in Iran and Iraq.
The test was the first display of firepower purchased from Russia and China using profits from its record oil revenues.
Venezuela has the fourth-largest military budget in Latin America, and analysts say its military spending is relatively low in relation to its GDP.
Tensions remain high between the US, Venezuela and its neighbor, US-ally Colombia, which accuses Chavez of helping Marxist insurgents fighting the government.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Four days after last scanning in for work, a 60-year-old office worker in Arizona was found dead in a cubicle at her workplace, having never left the building during that time, authorities said. Denise Prudhomme, who worked at a Wells Fargo corporate office, was found dead in a third-floor cubicle on Aug. 20, Tempe police said. She had last scanned into the building on Aug. 16 at 7am, police said. There was no indication she scanned out of the building after that. Prudhomme worked in an underpopulated area of the building. Her cause of death had not been determined, but police said the preliminary
‘DISCONNECTED’: Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, a professor said, adding that people who do not trust the government are more likely to tune it out Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good. Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair. Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people