CARACAS, Monday October 19, 2009 | Update
Politics
The Caracas 3rd Control Court issued on Monday a bench warrant against student leader in central-northern Carabobo state and a member of NGO Asoesfuerzo Carlos Graffe.
Jesús Loreto, the student's attorney, said that based on the evidence produced, the case showed "lack of seriousness to determine people's identity."
He said that the police did not use the Venezuelan Administrative Service of Identification, Migration and Citizenship (Saime), but social network Facebook.
"The Attorney General Office itself, the police themselves, found that my principal is not guilty, because, I insist, the Attorney General Office has a photo of a person completely different from Carlos Graffe."
For this reason, Loreto claimed that the detention of the young student is a crime. "It is illegitimate deprivation of freedom, because they have used the picture of someone else to imprison him."
01:11 PM.
Economy.
Domestic inflation rate in Venezuela was 1.7 percent in January, at the same rate as in December 2009, despite currency devaluation at the start of the year decreed by President Hugo Chávez, a senior government source told Reuters on Tuesday.