Astrologer released after predicting death of Venezuela president By Vivian Sequera ASSOCIATED PRESS CARACAS, Venezuela - An astrologer who predicted 80 year-old President Rafael Caldera's "death" next year was released by political police Thursday after two days of questioning in detention. Jose Bernardo Gomez, 47, said he was detained "because I spoke about the possibility of the death of President Caldera." The widely feared Department of Intelligence and Prevention Services wanted to know where Gomez At his information, he said, and whether he was connected to leftist political groups. Caldera's astrological chart ,show that "Uranus is over the sun, Pluto is in ascendancy and Mars is going behind its moon" - not a good sign for the president, Gomez told police. "I've been sustaining the possibility of the death of the president of the republic for a long time," Gomez said, adding that the word "death" is "symbolic language that could be physical or something of another order." The arrest of the rotund, boarded and jovial 47-year old philosophy professor at Venezuela Central University was treated as front-page news by the mainstream daily newspaper El Nacional and other media. Government officials, perhaps a little embarrassed, played down the incident. "He's not accused of anything," Interior Minister Jose Guillermo Andueza said tersely. Political police merely wanted to know "what basis he has for making this kind of statement." Gomez, an academic with postgraduate degrees in history, education, psychology and philosophy from three Venezuela universities, said he meant Caldera no wrong and, in fact, voted for Caldera for his first term in 1968. "I wish the president good health. I'm not betting on his sicknesses, much less on his death," Gomez said in an interview in his home two hours after his release. "It's just that from an astrological point of view, 1997 looks dark for Caldera." Gomez spoke publicly on the topic at a conference of businessmen on Oct. 12.