The Chávez government will require cable TV to transmit channels and messages. The National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel) will publish in the Official Gazette the rule which shall govern cable TV service, which includes the transmission of presidential channels and official messages. It also notes that station operators must also include their programming in national channels that have 10% of viewers requesting the programming and they may not transmit advertising. The agency will consider national audiovisual production services those whose reception and dissemination of images and sounds are more than 70% rendered in Venezuela, and therefore will be governed by national laws.
Venezuela offered to give to Ecuador ten Mirage 50 aircraft that are in operable condition, and provide technical and logistical support, according yesterday's edition of the newspaper El Universo, citing military sources. The newspaper said technicians from the Ecuadorian Air Force (FAE) returned last week from Venezuela where they verified the operability of the aircraft and that this visit wrote a report that will be delivered to the president. "Accepting the donation will depend on President Rafael Correa," said the daily, which the government considers an opposition publication. The newspaper said that even though FAE sources confirmed the information, Defense Minister Javier Ponce said "what we've been discussing (with Venezuela) is the possibility of donating some tools that can help us be useful in recovering our Mirage fleet. "Everything that refers to this donation is in discussion. Nothing is resolved," the official told El Universo of Guayaquil.
Venezuela's government will open on Thursday a "peace base" in Havana to analyze the "threat" posed to Latin America by the Colombia agreement that allows the United States to using seven of its military bases, said the Venezuelan Embassy yesterday. The peace base, an initiative of President Chávez in response to the pact of Bogotá and Washington, will be inaugurated by the ambassador from Caracas in Havana, Ronald Blanco, in the Bolivarian Computer Center in the building that houses the diplomatic mission. "This peace base will provide information on the peace issue and will organize conferences and forums on various topics related to the threat posed not only to Venezuela but for all Latin America," according to the embassy. Fidel Castro says the United States seeks to "liquidate" the Chávez government and have Latin America in their power "within hours" with the agreement, according to a newspaper article he wrote.
Rafael Poleo, director of the newspaper El Nuevo Pais, said yesterday that he will not go on Thursday to the Public Prosecutor to be charged for saying on the television program Aló Presidente that President Chávez would end his life by hanging. "How am I going to go when all they're going to do is put me in jail at El Rodeo," Poleo asked during a telephone conversation with the program The Interview, broadcast by Radio Caracas Television. He clarified that his remarks at the news channel were made as a preventive measure against President Chávez. "The very fact of pursuing me for one sentence, for an opinion, makes him the transmitter of what otherwise would have been but a passing incident, an odd phrase." Poleo said that the course of the Chávez revolution is very similar to the fascist revolution in Italy in the 1920's and 30 "that ended the revolution leader being dragged through the streets."
The female secretary of Democratic Action (AD), Aitza López, urged the National Assembly (AN) to respond to the petition that has been raised twice to challenge the president of the National Electricity Corporation (Corpoelec), Hipólito Izquierdo, the Minister of Energy and Petroleum Rafael Ramírez and the president of Caracas Electricity (EDC), Daniel Alvarado, for failures occurring in the domestic electricity sector. López said that in 2007 there were 103 failures in the National Interconnected System (SIN), and in 2008 this figure rose to 125 and during the nine months so far in 2009 120 failures have occurred. He said such failures occur because there has been no maintenance or investment required in the electricity sector. He explained that in 2005, the national government announced the injection of $18.886 billion in the sector for the generation, transmission and distribution of electric power. Likewise, he said that recently the government announced maintenance work at several power plants in the country. "My question is that when that announcement was made, why wasn't there an investment? What was done with that money? Where were did the $18.886 billion go?"
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