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Venezuela

Chavez Goes To Cuba For More Cancer Treatment, Appoints Successor

BBC MUNDO (UK), EL NACIONAL, EL UNIVERSAL (Venezuela)

Worldcrunch

CARACAS- On Monday, the Venezuelan Minister for Communication and Information, Ernesto Villegas, tweeted that Hugo Chávez has returned to Cuba for a new operation for his cancer according to Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional.

BBC Mundo reports that despite a year and a half of treatment that included three surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatments, this is the first time that Hugo Chávez has suggested that he may not return, naming Vice-President Nicolás Maduro as his successor. Chávez has handled his cancer treatment with absolute secrecy until now and said that this new surgery is “absolutely essential”.

Chávez sought permission yesterday from the National Assembly to travel to Havana for an indefinite amount of time after finding more malignant cells in the same place as his cancer from last year, according to El Universal.

After being elected for a fourth term in October with 55% of the vote, Chávez is due to be inaugurated for another six years on January 10.

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Society

Why Every New Parent Should Travel Alone — Without Their Children

Argentine journalist Ignacio Pereyra travels to Italy alone to do some paperwork as his family stays behind. While he walks alone around Rome, he experiences mixed feelings: freedom, homesickness and nostalgia, and wonders what leads people to desire larger families.

Photo of a man sitting donw with his luggage at Athens' airport

Alone at Athens' international airport

Ignacio Pereyra

I realize it in the morning before leaving: I feel a certain level of excitement about traveling. It feels like enthusiasm, although it is confusing. I will go from Athens to Naples to see if I can finish the process for my Italian citizenship, which I started five years ago.

I started the process shortly after we left Buenos Aires, when my partner Irene and I had been married for two years and the idea of having children was on the vague but near horizon.

Now there are four of us and we have been living in Greece for more than two years. We arrived here in the middle of the pandemic, which left a mark on our lives, as in the lives of most of the people I know.

But now it is Sunday morning. I tell Lorenzo, my four-year-old son, that I am leaving for a few days: “No, no, Dad. You can’t go. Otherwise I’ll throw you into the sea.”

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