Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced on Sunday that a plot to assassinate his friend and ally Evo Morales of Bolivia had been uncovered.
Chavez said the Bolivian president called and told him that authorities in the Andean country had uncovered the plot.
The Venezuelan leader said during a radio broadcast that he wouldn’t go into details — leaving that to Bolivian officials — but he said he told Morales to “be careful.”
Morales’ office declined to comment.
Morales is one of several leftist Latin American allies who share Chavez’s antagonism toward Washington. He has faced persistent protests by opponents but won a recall referendum in August.
Chavez also has said that he himself is a target.
In September, he said his government had detained several suspects who were planning to assassinate him in an operation backed by the US.
US officials have repeatedly denied Chavez’s accusations that Washington has backed attempts to overthrow him.
In other news Chavez ordered construction halted on a major shopping mall in Caracas on Sunday, saying the government will expropriate the unfinished building.
The Venezuelan leader said it would be out of line with his government’s socialist vision to allow the new Sambil mall to take up precious urban real estate — and that unbridled consumerism isn’t his idea of progress either.
Chavez said the mall, scheduled to open in La Candelaria district in downtown Caracas next year, would severely clog an area that already is so crowded “not a soul fits.”
The hulking concrete and brick structure takes up an entire city block and according to the Sambil Web site was to include 273 shops.
“We’re going to expropriate that and turn it into a hospital — I don’t know — a school, a university,” Chavez said to applause during his Sunday television and radio program, Hello, President.
Constructora Sambil, the company building the mall, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It operates Sambil malls in cities across Venezuela, including another vast shopping center in Caracas.
“How are we going to create socialism turning over vital public spaces to Sambil?” said Chavez, who has nationalized Venezuela’s largest phone company, electric utilities and oil fields.
The president also has urged his compatriots to shed their materialism and their taste for designer clothes, sport utility vehicles, Scottish whisky and plastic surgery.
Chavez often urges Venezuelans to rethink their values, and the timing of his announcement appeared to be no accident — just as Christmas shoppers packed malls elsewhere in Caracas.
He didn’t preach against the buying frenzy in general, but did say at another point in his speech that “Christ was a socialist.”
Consumerism has flourished in Venezuela in recent years, with the economy awash with cash and windfall oil earnings rolling in. Malls are often packed, and new shopping centers have been sprouting up quickly.
The president did not say how much the government might pay the mall’s owners in compensation.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home