About 500 Cuban doctors have defected from Venezuela to the United States, most of them bribing officials with the payments of various amounts, from $300 to $2,000, according to sources from Cuban exile groups in Miami. The last case occurred on Wednesday when seven Cuban doctors managed to leave the Maiquetia airport in Caracas, after being held several hours and paying hundreds of dollars per person. "The Venezuelan and Cuban officials in Maiquetía subjected the doctors to strong psychological pressure until they finally paid a bribe," Cuban doctor Keiler Moreno, who left Caracas for five months, told EFE.
The director general of Private Security and Surveillance Services in the Ministry of Interior and Justice, Sabeck Haitam, 31 years old, was shot last night after being taken by force by strangers to his apartment to rob him. Haitam was intercepted when he arrived at his residence, located on the corner of Avenida Fuerzas Armadas. After looting his apartment, Haitam was taken on board his truck toward Caricuao Meru, and left there with six bullet wounds. He is stable after being treated at the Vista Alegre Clinic and then transferred to the Hospital de Clinicas in Caracas.
The savings plan of 558 MW that the government will apply to basic industries puts more in doubt the future of Guyana's industrial and manufacturing sector throughout the country. "We're in a survival situation," said Fernando Goyenechea, president of the Chamber of Industry and Mineros de Guayana. Such is the fear unleashed by the official action and a hypothetical suspension of basic business that the $1 billion debt these businesses have is now in the background. "The situation now is on another scale, conceptually the problem is more serious," said Goyenechea. In the opinion of management, if the production decline that these industries showed before the energy savings plan is added the partial shutdown of furnaces in Sidor and the closure of 320 cells in CVG Venalum, the picture darkens and the effects will be devastating . "If basic companies are paralysed, Guyana freezes. There is no way to circumvent the dependence of these businesses," said Goyenechea.
The Venezuelan Episcopal Conference (CEV) called "unacceptable" the presence and actions of irregular groups that operate "with impunity" on the border. The CEV's president, Archbishop Ubaldo Santana, called on people to be more aware and authorities to implement concrete measures to protect the citizenry. He noted a climate of violence is in the country, which is accentuates during the weekend, becoming "one of the most serious problems of everyday life of our peoples." "The weekends have become a tragedy that involves many families in a bloody blanket," he said. He said that in Venezuela we are losing the sacred value of human life and existence." Monsignor Santana stressed the need to replace confrontation with dialogue in Venezuelan society to reduce the climate of violence in the country, according to a document prepared by the Plenary Council.
A director from of the National Confederation of Associations of Agricultural Producers (Fedeagro), engineer Antonio Pestana, expressed concern over the significant losses throughout the northern-summer cycle that farmers have been experiencing throughout the country with the sowing of seeds such as sunflowers, sorghum, rice and sesame. Pestana said the atypical climate conditions of the winter weather also affected the northern-summer production, because the soils lack the necessary moisture required for germination of crops. We're seeing, he said, some extremely bad seedlings of sorghum, sunflower and sesame. Unfortunately, the projections given by weather professionals indicate that during the months of January, February, March and even April, the rains will be virtually zero, which also affect the active cultures.
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