In brief: Chavez to receive care in Cuba
CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Monday he will return to Cuba next week to undergo a series of medical tests to evaluate his cancer treatment.
“I’ll be in Cuba next week because they have to conduct very rigorous examinations that are possible thanks to Cuban technology,” said Chavez, speaking during a brief telephone interview broadcast on state television.
Chavez said he’s currently undergoing constant treatment, exercising and meeting with doctors as part of his efforts to totally recuperate. He said he even sunbathes under the Caribbean sun.
The president finished four rounds of chemotherapy treatment in Cuba last month.
Chavez underwent surgery in Cuba in June to remove a tumor from his pelvic region. He has not revealed what type of cancer he is battling.
Syrian cleric threatens NATO
BEIRUT – Syria’s top Sunni Muslim cleric has warned Western countries against military intervention in Syria and threatened to retaliate with suicide bombings in the United States and Europe if his country comes under attack.
Western countries have shown no willingness to open a Libyan-style military campaign against the regime of President Bashar Assad, who has launched a bloody crackdown on the seven-month uprising against his rule, and NATO’s chief said last week the alliance has “no intention whatsoever” of intervening in Syria.
Still, the prospect of such an intervention seems to have rattled the Assad regime, although publicly officials say they are confident there would be no such thing because no one wants to foot the bill.
In a speech late Sunday, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun, a state-appointed cleric and Assad loyalist, said: “I say to all of Europe, I say to America, we will set up suicide bombers who are now in your countries, if you bomb Syria or Lebanon. From now on an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
Cholera cases spike in Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The number of cholera cases seen in the Haitian capital has jumped about threefold in recent weeks, an official with a foreign aid group said Monday.
Pascale Zintzen, deputy head of mission for Doctors Without Borders, said the group’s four treatment centers in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area have handled as many as 850 cases in a single week lately. That compares with about 250 cases a week more than a month ago.
The rise is largely attributed to the second rainy season of the year, when showers and floods cause the waterborne disease to spread freely in the crowded and unsanitary capital, Zintzen said.
One cholera treatment center in the densely packed Port-au-Prince area of Martissaint has 90 beds for patients but is almost out of space, she said.
Despite the jump in cases, the weekly number is still far below what foreign aid groups saw in the initial peak last November after the disease surfaced a year ago.