Reuters reported yesterday: "Brazilian investigators said on Friday a Greek-flagged ship carrying Venezuelan crude was the source of oil tarring Brazil’s coastline over the past two months..." It goes on to claim "A federal police document seen by Reuters said the tanker, Bouboulina, owned by Greece’s Delta Tankers Ltd, appears to have spilled the crude about 700 km (420 miles) off Brazil’s coast around July 28-29,

Sometimes, being a Venezuelan national is actually a "good" thing. Take Victor Vargas, captain of #team_ricoecuna, read “People write stories about me saying I have a Ferrari, a plane, and a yacht, but it’s not true. I have three planes, two yachts, and six houses. I’ve been rich all my life.” Truth is, Vargas has most definitely not been rich all his life.

The rumour mill is in overspin regarding Rafael Ramirez. A prevalent gossip is that he is "collaborating" in the provision of information highly damaging to Nicolas Maduro, which is "being used" by the Trump administration to "advance" its agenda. Another line of gossip has it that ENI, the Italian oil conglomerate, is providing "legal protection" to Ramirez, who spends most of his time nowadays in Italy. Ramirez, Luisa Ortega Diaz and Hugo Carvajal, as per another line, form a triumvirate of "decent" chavistas, folks with whom the U.S.

A little update on Twitter's decision to permanently suspend my verified @alekboyd account. On 27 August, Twitter placed a temporary lock on my account. The intention was to get me to delete tweets that "violated" Twitter's rules. Since I didn't consider that I was in violation of Twitter rules, and I did not want to delete the tweet in question without first explaining why, I didn't delete the tweet. No communication was ever established with Twitter. No chance of arguing why I did not want to delete the tweet was ever given.