Mick Hartley

Iran's President Ahmadinejad is in Venezuela, where he has friends:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dismissed a US warning to avoid close ties with Iran on Sunday, denouncing what he said was Washington’s attempt to dominate the world as he welcomed the Iranian president to the Latin American nation.

Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived at the start of a tour to shore up support from the region’s leftist leaders, as tough new Western sanctions aim to isolate the Islamic republic and target its vital oil exports.

From the region’s leftist leaders? So it's true, finally: all it means now to be on the left is to be anti-American. The leader of a theocratic state that tortures and imprisons dissidents, executes homosexuals, denies the Holocaust, and supports terrorist organisations across the Middle East, now looks to the left for its natural allies. 

Meanwhile Chavez seems to have recovered from his brush with cancer:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has resumed his weekly television and radio broadcast after a seven-month pause.

Mr Chavez's programme, Alo Presidente, had been halted while he was receiving treatment for cancer.

The exact details of his illness have not been made public, but Mr Chavez says he is now cured.

The programme, which sometimes lasts up to eight hours, is considered crucial to his campaign ahead of presidential elections in October…

Last month, Mr Chavez questioned whether the US had developed a secret technology to give cancer to left-wing leaders in Latin America.

Referring to Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Mr Chavez said their cancer diagnoses were "difficult to explain using the law of probabilities".

You can see why he and Ahmadinejad get on so well.