He was annoying. Now he’s just plain stupid.

After receiving power to rule by decree and moving to abolish the country’s presidential term limits, President Hugo Chavez intends to stake a claim on a new frontier: the country’s clocks. During Chavez’ seven-hour weekly radio broadcast on Sunday, he revealed he would order all of the country’s clocks to be set half an hour forward on January 1, 2008.

Chavez claimed the move would have positive effects on metabolism through extended sunlight exposure, and enable people to perform better at work and school.

By the way, anyone up for a can of HugoFish?

A humanitarian crisis is a great excuse for a few rounds of political point-scoring. And last week’s massive earthquake in Peru has proved to be no exception.

It isn’t so unusual for donors to stamp their mark on food aid, but thousands of cans of tuna reportedly distributed in the Peruvian quake zone south of Lima appear to have taken the practice to a new level. Peru’s Expreso newspaper carries a photo of a tin with a label sporting photos of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Peruvian opposition politician Ollanta Humala, who lost to Alan Garcia in last year’s presidential election.

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, a message on the label reads: “The Peruvian government acts in an inefficient, slow and heartless manner, notwithstanding the pain of the victims, leaving them to the mercy of hunger, thirst and delinquency.”

And to think we stamp “USA” on the side of our food donations. Here’s the HugoFish can:

Classy.