Hugo Chavez muses on cancer

VENEZUELAN president Hugo Chavez has speculated that the United States might have developed a way to give Latin American leaders cancer, after Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez this week joined the list of presidents diagnosed with the disease.

Mr Chavez, who underwent surgery in June to remove a tumour from his pelvis, stressed that he was just thinking aloud.

“It would not be strange if they had developed the technology to induce cancer and nobody knew about it until now … I don’t know. I’m just reflecting,” he said in a televised speech.

Left-wingers Mr Chavez, Ms Fernandez, Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff and former Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have all been diagnosed with cancer.