I seriously doubt if this is true.
I ran the headline through Google, and all that came up were right wing blogs and reposts. Nothing from Al Jazeera, The People's Daily, Pravda - organizations you'd expect would carry it -and nothing from CNN's competitors such as Fox, NBC or ABC. Even if the US press is silent, where's the Venezuelan Cuban, Iranian etc. press? Not a peep from those most likely to jump on a story like this, therefore I call shenanigans.
ebear