« Would it be so strange that they’ve invented the technology to spread cancer and we won’t know about it for 50 years? » Chávez pondered, one day after Argentina’s president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced she had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and would undergo surgery in January.

Speaking on Wednesday during an end-of-year address to the armed forces, Chávez hinted that a spate of cancer among the region’s leaders could be a US plot – although he conceded he had no proof and did not want to make « reckless » accusations.

« It is very hard to explain, even with the law of probabilities, what has been happening to some leaders in Latin America. It’s at the very least strange, very strange, » the Venezuelan president said, according to government radio Radio Nacional de Venezuela.

“I’m buying everything that’s on the price control list that’s going to be regulated,” retired schoolteacher Elena Ramirez, 56, said in an interview at a Dulcinea supermarket in Caracas where she bought 12 packages of toilet paper, each with four rolls. “Everyone is in the same game. It’s madness.”

Under regulations that took effect on Nov. 22, the government can fix the price of 15,000 goods in an attempt to slow inflation that reached 26.9 percent in October, the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Chavez immediately ordered a freeze on the price of 18 personal care items ranging from toothpaste to deodorant until mid-January to prevent monopolies from “ransacking the people.”

Chávez accused Western powers of riding roughshod over international laws by supporting the rebels in their revolt against Gaddafi.

« This is kicking, spitting … on the most basic elements of international law, » he said. « Where are the international rights? This is like the caveman era. »

Venezuela’s socialist leader spoke after rebels overran Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli in what appeared to be the end of his 42-year rule.

With Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez incommunicado and reportedly convalescing in Cuba, his brother told an audience that both arms and the ballot box could be used for Venezuela’s ruling party to retain power.

“As authentic revolutionaries, we cannot forget other forms of fighting,’’ Adán Chávez said at a prayer meeting in Barinas, Venezuela, that was devoted to the health of his 56-year-old brother, who grew up there.

The comments came during a day of intense speculation that the leader may be gravely ill after reportedly undergoing emergency surgery 16 days ago.

But Chavez’s retreat in the region has come as Venezuela’s economy, dampened by dwindling oil production and hampered by state nationalizations of farmland and companies, contracted 3.3 percent in 2009 and 1.6 percent last year. Billions of dollars in capital have left the country, according to recent U.N. economic data for Venezuela, and the heavy consumer spending of the past has dried up. The country’s golden goose, the oil industry, is producing 30 percent less oil than it did a decade ago, industry analysts say.

Opinion polls in Latin America also show that the president’s image has been tarnished as Chavez has resorted to a range of policies his opponents call anti-democratic, including attacking the news media and governing with decree powers. Chavez has also forged ever closer ties to iron-fisted rulers, such as Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Chavez’s support for President Bashar Assad follows his defense of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who is fighting rebels backed by international airstrikes. Venezuela’s socialist leader accused Washington of fomenting the protests in Syria as a pretext for Libya-style airstrikes.

« Now some supposed political protest movements have begun (in Syria), a few deaths … and now they are accusing the president of killing his people and later the Yankees will come to bomb the people to save them, » Chavez said in a televised speech.

The anti-government protests erupted nationwide in Syria on Friday, and follow unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya in what has been called the Arab Spring.

To great fanfare, Ortega pronounced, « I have been speaking with Qaddafi on the telephone … he is again fighting a great battle, how many battles has Qaddafi had to fight. In these circumstances they are looking for a way to have a dialogue, but defend the unity of the nation, so the country does not disintegrate, so there will not be anarchy in the country. » Also displaying solidarity with the murderous Qaddafi regime is Ortega’s guiding light, Fidel Castro, who gamely tried to change the subject by telling the world that, « The government of the United States is not concerned at all about peace in Libya and it will not hesitate to give NATO the order to invade that rich country, perhaps in a question of hours or very short days. »

The soap opera « Chepe Fortuna » features an unscrupulous secretary named « Venezuela » who has a dog called « Little Hugo, » an apparent reference to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

The regulator accused the soap opera of promoting « political intolerance » and notified private Venezuelan TV state Televen on Thursday that it should pull it off the air. It wasn’t clear if the regulator’s order included a sanction for the station if it didn’t.

Last year, Conatel also threatened to sanction Televen if it didn’t stop airing the U.S. program « Family Guy, » which Chavez’s government accused of promoting the consumption and legalization of marijuana. It currently airs « Family Guy » only late at night.

He suggested the prize should not have gone to Liu Xiaobo, who has drawn praise from Western governments as an advocate of gradual political change without any violent confrontation with Chinese leaders.

Speaking in his weekly radio and television program, Chavez scoffed at his Venezuelan political opponents who praised the giving of the peace prize to Liu. Chavez said the opposition’s support for the prize showed that « they are lackeys » of the West. « They are worse than the Yankees. »

« Our greetings and solidarity go to the government of the People’s Republic of China, » Chavez said, adding: « Viva China! And its sovereignty, its independence and its greatness. » The Chinese government reacted angrily to the announcement of the peace prize for Liu. It said the Norwegian Nobel Committee violated its own principles by honoring a « criminal. »

Until now, members of the militia have regularly trained at weekend boot camps, but their guns have usually been locked away in military depots when not in use. « Who has seen a militia without weapons? » Chavez said during his Sunday television and radio program. He said he was surprised when he met some militiamen standing guard recently and learned they had no guns.

« The militias are the people with weapons in hand, » Chavez told an audience including military officers and high-ranking officials in rural Guarico state. « We need to break old paradigms because we’re still seeing the militias as if they were a complementary force, some battalions that get together once a month over there, or go and march somewhere, » Chavez said. « No, buddy. The militia is a permanent territorial unit and it should be armed, equipped and trained – campesinos, workers. »

With most of the votes counted, the Democratic Unity coalition won at least 65 of 165 seats in the assembly – well short of a majority, but enough to inhibit Chávez’s ability to appoint judges and other officials and to push through laws.

The opposition claimed that it had won 52% of the popular vote but argued also that changes in electoral rules favouring rural areas, where Chávez is popular, meant that this support had failed to translate into proportional seats.

The measure could easily become a mechanism to control the population, according to civil society groups.

« We see that in short-term this could become a rationing card probably similar to the one used in Cuba, » Roberto León Parilli, president of the National Association of Users and Consumers, told El Nuevo Herald. « It would use more advanced technological means [than those used in Cuba], but when they tell you where to buy and what the limits of what you can buy are, they are conditioning your purchases. »

Chávez said Tuesday that the card could be used to buy groceries at the government chain of markets and supplies. Former director of Venezuela’s Central Bank, Domingo Maza Zavala, said this could become a rationing card that would limit your purchases in light of the country’s recurring problems with supplies.

Luis Enrique Acosta and Carmen Cecilia Nares are suspected of violating a provision in the country’s banking laws prohibiting the dissemination of « false information, » the attorney general’s office said in a statement. They were detained last week for posting online messages « against the Venezuelan financial system, » the statement said, and were later arraigned and released by a court pending legal proceedings.

The two were detained Thursday in southeastern Ciudad Bolivar. They were ordered to appear in court every 15 days and barred from posting similar online messages, the statement said. It said they could receive from nine to 11 years in prison if convicted.

The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders condemned the case, calling it part of a government strategy to clamp down on the Internet. « The authorities are now targeting ordinary Internet users whose only crime is to express views on Twitter, » the Paris-based organization said in a statement.

The scandal emerged just weeks after Mr Chavez launched an « economic war on the bourgeoisie owners » of supermarkets, mills, rice plants and food distribution companies. The « battle for food » coincided with a botched devaluation in January that pushed up the cost of imports.

The result has been an economic catastrophe in the only Latin American economy in recession. Inflation leapt to 21 per cent in May as food prices rose 41 per cent over the level of a year ago. Soldiers have been deployed to raid private homes for food stores. Long lines regularly form on streets for basic commodities.

The former paratrooper, who is an avowed fan of Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean dictator, and Fidel Castro, Cuba’s Communist tyrant, boasted that he has launched a new era of socialist supremacy. He said: « Socialism is necessarily better than capitalism across the board and, that’s what we’re proving. »

Observers are now wondering how much longer the government may allow Caracas-based Globovision to remain on the air, given its owner is an international fugitive. Government critics say shutting down the anti-Chavez station, if only temporarily, might work well for the ruling socialist party ahead of September legislative elections, which promise to see tight races. Authorities had Zuloaga in their hands back in March, when he was arrested for making allegedly « offensive and disrespectful » statements about Chavez on a television show.

In a case that appears to be related to the Zuloaga case, the government seized control Monday of a mid-sized bank called Banco Federal, claiming the bank was not meeting its liquidity requirements. The bank’s president, Nelson Mezerhane, is a major investor in Globovision, and Chavez critics say that connection is the actual reason the bank was seized. Bank officials claim they were meeting minimum liquidity requirements. Mezerhane, like his business partner Zuloaga, has been known to make critical remarks of Chavez in public. Mezerhane has also fled the country.

The Central Bank and National Statistics Institute on Friday reported a 5.2% increase in consumer prices during April, driving up the annual rate to 30.4%.

President Hugo Chavez’s government has been struggling against the highest inflation rate in Latin America and a weakening economy in general.

Prices increased 11.3% from January to April, up from 6.7% inflation in the same 2009 period. Venezuela’s economy shrank by 3.3% last year amid a downturn in its all-important oil industry. It’s the nation’s first recession since 2003.

The country imports most of its food, and Chavez on Friday announced the government will create an import-export corporation aiming to break with the private sector’s « hegemony. » It wasn’t immediately clear how the new state entity would operate.

The collapse of the coffee industry is emblematic of the wider economic catastrophe brewing in the country. For more than a decade Mr. Chávez has employed price controls, capital controls and hyper-regulation in an attempt to meet his socialist goals. When the predictable shortages have arisen, the government has responded by using the salami approach to nationalization, slicing off a bit of the private sector at a time and taking it for the state.

Now the economy is sinking: The International Monetary Fund forecasts that while GDP growth will pick up in most of Latin America this year, it will contract by 2.6% in Venezuela. Core inflation has been running above 30% for two years.

Putin visited Venezuela late last week to meet with President Hugo Chavez and pledged to sell more weapons to the country but gave no concrete figures.

« Our delegation has just returned from Venezuela, and the total volume of orders may exceed $5 billion, » Putin said in televised remarks.

Russia on Friday agreed to lend Venezuela up to $2.2 billion for the new arms deals.

Mr. Zuloaga was released several hours later and told not to leave the country while the investigation continued. International human rights groups and the Organization of American States had pressed the government to release him.

Attorney General Luisa Ortega said that Mr. Zuloaga had been arrested in connection with comments he made this month at an Inter American Press Association meeting in Aruba that were considered false and “offensive” to Mr. Chávez. Among other remarks at the meeting, Mr. Zuloaga pointedly criticized methods used by Mr. Chávez’s government to shut down news outlets, and was quoted as saying it meant the country lacked freedom of expression.

The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV), whose data is widely followed in the absence of official statistics, said the South American nation has one of the highest crime rates on the continent, with 54 homicides per 100,000 citizens in 2009.

Crime repeatedly comes first on Venezuelans’ list of worries. It has also begun to drag on Chavez’s traditionally high approval ratings as well as scare tourists who come to Venezuela. Briceno, a criminology professor at the Central University of Venezuela and at the Sorbonne in Paris, blamed a weak judicial system and ineffective and corrupt policing in Venezuela, where he said 91 percent of crimes go unsolved.

Spanish National Court Judge Eloy Velasco alleged Monday that the Venezuelan government had collaborated with Basque separatist group ETA and Colombia’s main guerrilla group in a plot against leaders living in or traveling to Spain that began in late 2003.

The allegations were part of an indictment that ordered 12 alleged members of ETA and of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to stand trial on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and terrorism, according to a copy reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

« There is evidence…showing the cooperation of the Venezuelan government in the illegal collaboration between FARC and ETA, » according to the indictment.

The biggest confrontation occured in Caracas, where police fired tear gas and plastic bullets to scatter thousands of students who tried to march on the headquarters of Venezuela’s state-run telecommunications agency. At least six demonstrators and a journalist were treated for injuries.

In the western city of Merida, a youth was killed during fighting between anti- and pro-Chavez forces and clashes when police tried to separate the rival groups, Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami said late Monday

Demonstrations erupted over the government ordering cable companies to drop Radio Caracas Television Internacional early Sunday. RCTV had defied new rules requiring local cable channels to carry mandatory programming, including some of Chavez’s speeches.