Venezuela: Panel Will Investigate Roots of Cancer That Killed Chávez

(New York Times) Venezuela will create a scientific panel to investigate the illness of Hugo Chávez, after an accusation by the interim president last week that the former president’s cancer was mysteriously caused by his enemies. “We have this intuition that our Commander Chávez was poisoned by dark forces that wanted to get rid of him to destroy the Bolivarian revolution and strike at Latin America and the Caribbean,” Nicolás Maduro, the interim president, said Monday night. Mr. Chávez, a charismatic leftist, died last week after 14 years in office. The government has refused to say what type of cancer Mr. Chávez had, but Mr. Maduro said that it had behaved in a very unusual way. Mr. Maduro said that the United States and other countries had developed programs in the 1940s and 1950s to experiment with intentionally causing cancer, but he added, “I’m not accusing the United States at this moment.” He did not say when the scientific panel would be created or who would be on it. (Full article)