Devastated, mourning Chavez supporters pour onto streets

Reuters/Reuters - Supporters of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez react to the announcement of his death outside Miraflores Palace in Caracas, March 5, 2013. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

CARACAS (Reuters) - Grieving and stunned supporters of deceasedVenezuelan President Hugo Chavez took to the streets on Tuesday weeping, chanting slogans and vowing to continue their hero's revolution.

Gathering in streets and squares across the South American nation of 29 million people, backers of the socialist leader shouted: "Chavez lives forever!" and "The fight continues!"

"We have to show that what he did was not in vain," said Jamila Rivas, 49, crying outside the military hospital where Chavez died. Hundreds of supporters flocked there.

Venezuelans have been tracking the ups-and-downs of Chavez's two-year battle against cancer, but some supporters felt a sense of disbelief that the flamboyant leader was gone.

"He was our father. 'Chavismo' will not end. We are his people. We will continue to fight!" said Nancy Jotiya, 56, in Caracas' downtown Bolivar Square, named for Venezuela's independence hero and Chavez's idol, Simon Bolivar.

"I admired him. He was a great man," said housewife Aleida Rodriguez, 50, who heard the news as she emerged from Caracas' underground transport system.

Venezuela's opposition leader, Henrique Capriles, offered condolences and called for unity.

Some opponents could not hide their happiness at the end to a rule they viewed as a cruel dictatorship.

"At last!" shouted some women, coming out of their homes in one upscale neighborhood.

Hatred for Chavez ran deep among the wealthier members of Venezuela's population.

Some openly celebrated his death on Twitter.

There were reports of isolated incidents of looting and violence, including the burning of tents belonging to students who had been protesting in a Caracas street for the last week against secrecy over Chavez's condition.

Around Latin America and the Caribbean, where Chavez's oil-fueled largesse was a source of support for various leftist governments, tributes and condolences poured in.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, a close personal friend, wept as he spoke of Chavez.

Brazil's Congress held a minute of silence.

"President Chavez has always been a friend of Brazil, regardless of his political position," said Renan Calheiros, president of the Brazilian Senate.

Colombia, whose pro-U.S. conservative governments have clashed fiercely with Chavez in the past, also paid homage.

"I think in the last two years ... our relations with Venezuela advanced really well, and he was also a very important support for the current peace process," Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin said, referring to her government's rapprochement with Chavez and ongoing peace talks with leftist rebels.

"Hopefully he'll find peace."

Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien told CBC television he met Chavez several times, was quite fond of him, and acted as a facilitator between Chavez and former U.S. President George W. Bush at a 2001 Summit of the Americas.

"He was a great baseball fan and player and he always told me that if I were to visit him in Venezuela we would go to a baseball field and he would throw balls to me for me to hit them," he said. "And we never had the occasion to do that."

(Additional reporting by Latin American bureaux, Louise Egan in Ottawa; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Stacey Joyce)

Winter snowstorm pummels Midwest, heads toward DC

HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — After pummeling the nation's midsection with heavy snow, a late-winter storm made its way Wednesday to the nation's capital, where residents braced for the possibility of power outages.

As the storm closed in, the federal government said its offices in theWashington, D.C., area would be closed Wednesday. Many major school systems around Washington and Baltimore announced pre-emptive closures as well.

By early Wednesday, wet snow was falling in the Washington area. It was accumulating on the grass in some areas, but not on the streets as temperatures hovered above freezing. The worst of the storm was expected to arrive by midday.

The storm brought around 10 inches of snow to weather-hardened Chicago by late Tuesday, when snow was also starting to come down in parts of Virginia. Schools were closed in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois, and more than 1,100 flights were cancelled at Chicago's two major airports, prompting delays and closures at others.

Airlines along the storm's projected path cut flights too, including hundreds more Wednesday at Dulles and Reagan National airports in the Washington area, according to FlightAware.com.

While there were no initial reports of major accidents in the Chicago area, a semi-trailer slid off a snow-covered interstate in western Wisconsin, killing one person. The search for a second person, believed to be a passenger, was suspended overnight.

As the storm pushed toward the Mid-Atlantic states, forecasters were predicting snow accumulations of 3 to 7 inches in the Washington area and up to 16 inches in the western Maryland mountains by Wednesday night. Tidal flooding was possible along the Delaware coast, the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay and the lower Potomac River.

Still recovering from Superstorm Sandy, the Jersey Shore was preparing for another possible hit Wednesday and Thursday. The storm should bring rain and snow, but one of the biggest problems could be flooding in areas where dunes were washed away and many damaged homes still sit open and exposed. Those areas could get 2 to 4 inches of snow, with Monmouth and some inland counties possibly getting as much as 6 inches.

An upper-level, low-pressure system coming in from the northwest and a surface low sweeping up from Kentucky were expected to converge along the Virginia-West Virginia line, bringing heavy precipitation, cold temperatures and winds gusting up to 35 mph.

"Whenever you're talking about that much heavy, wet snow and those winds of 20-30 mph with some higher gusts, there's a concern for numerous power outages," said National Weather Service meteorologist Jared Klein in Sterling, Va.

Both Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. and Pepco in the Washington area said they would have extra line crews available.

The Maryland State Highway Administration pre-positioned tow trucks at rest stops and park-and-ride lots, and told its tree-trimmers to get ready.

"We certainly anticipate some signal outages. We certainly anticipate some trees down, which can cause power outages," spokesman David Buck said.

The closure of many schools and offices was expected to alleviate snarled traffic in the District of Columbia. The Metro transit system was operating normal train service but said some bus routes would be suspended. Subway workers were focused on clearing snow from tracks, platforms and parking lots.

The Maryland Transit Administration was monitoring overhead power lines for snow and ice accumulation.

In Virginia, the storm was expected to dip along the coast and dump moisture-laden snow inland totaling a foot in the Blue Ridge Mountains and up to 21 inches in higher elevations.

Dominion Virginia Power had also alerted out-of-state utilities it might require assistance if the storm lived up to its billing.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell directed executive branch agencies to allow eligible nonessential employees to work remotely or to "be generous" in approving leave requests for workers who live in regions under a storm watch or warning.

The state's emergency operations center was to open Wednesday morning, and state transportation officials advised motorists to avoid travel at the height of the storm.

"The snow is going to come down at a very fast rate," agency spokesman Sandy Myers said. "We just need folks to stay off the roads so the plow drivers can hopefully keep up with the storm."

The Baltimore-Washington area's last snowstorm struck Jan. 26, 2011. It hit Washington during the evening rush hour, causing some motorists to be stuck in traffic nearly overnight. It dropped 5 inches on Washington and 7.8 inches on Baltimore, knocked out power to about 320,000 homes and contributed to six deaths.

Since then, the federal government has changed its bad-weather policies to allow workers to leave their offices sooner or to work from home if major storms are expected.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which sets leave policies for 300,000 federal workers, said non-emergency employees of the federal government would be granted excused absences for Wednesday. The agency was criticized after the 2011 storm for waiting too long to tell workers to go home, leading to gridlock.

Still, some Mid-Atlantic residents were looking forward to the snow. "I love it — I love it when we have snow days," Baltimore homemaker Mary White said Tuesday afternoon as she hurried to finish errands.

The current storm is part of a system that started in Montana, hit the Dakotas and Minnesota on Monday and then barreled through Wisconsin and Illinois on its way to Washington.

___

Fact and fantasy collide in NYC cannibalism trial

NEW YORK (AP) — A teenager posts a Twitter message saying he's going to blow up a school. A husband grumbles that he's looking for a hit man to kill his wife. A wannabe jihadist says in anInternet chat room that he is ready to become a martyr.

Are any of them serious? Or is it all bluster?

Separating real threats from idle talk is a workaday task for law enforcement. It is rarely easy, but it has taken on extreme complexity in the lurid case of Gilberto Valle, a New York City police officer charged with plotting to kidnap, cook and eat women he knew.

At a conspiracy trial now in its second week, a jury has heard how Valle was part of an international community of fetishists who got their kicks trading wild fantasies online about violent acts against women.

By all accounts, he was into some sick stuff. After fighting crime at his day job, Valle spent his free time logging in to websites like Dark Fetish, where users posted accounts of rape, necrophilia and women being strangled and burned at the stake.

The site carried a disclaimer: "This place is about fantasies only." But prosecutors claim Valle took steps to get into closer contact with some of the women he wrote about, including using a police department database to look up their personal information, emailing and texting them more often and meeting with at least one of them.

Jurors in what the tabloids have dubbed the "Cannibal Cop" case will have their hands full when they begin deliberations, possibly as early as Thursday.

Valle's lawyer has argued that it was all clearly fiction. The plans Valle gruesomely described were never carried out. He never purchased the torture implements he described in emails with his fetishist pen pals. He never met the men accused of being his co-conspirators. The women he wrote about learned of the plans only after his arrest, with the exception of his wife, who discovered her husband's pastime after installing spyware on his computer.

As strange as the case is, experts said it touches on a common challenge in law enforcement: deciphering intent without running afoul of the First Amendment right to free speech.

"Simply thinking bad thoughts is not a crime anywhere," said David Raskin, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted terrorism conspiracies.

Nor is spouting off about violence on the Internet. So when terrorist sympathizers go online and talk about wanting to blow up buildings, the FBI will often send in an operative to tease out how far they are really willing to go.

"Obviously, they are very, very different types of offenses," Raskin said. "But it's the same challenge from the law enforcement perspective, which is, 'How do we get inside the guy's head and figure out if he will act on the things he is saying?'"

Last year, the FBI ran that type of test on Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, a college student from Bangladesh who fell under scrutiny after he began using social media to seek support for a terror attack.

The sting ended with the 21-year-old sitting in a van in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, trying to detonate what he believed was a bomb. It was a fake, supplied by undercover agents. He pleaded guilty in February.

The FBI agents who investigated Valle never tried putting together a similar sting. The case against him is based mostly on his email exchanges.

Valle's attorney, Julia Gatto, opened her defense by arguing that the officer was being prosecuted purely for private speech.

"We don't convict people for sharing their thoughts, no matter how scary and disgusting they may be," she told the jury. "If we did, our prisons would be full with the directors of horror movies, with the producers of violent video games, with famous authors like Stephen King. We don't convict people because we don't like their thoughts. And you, ladies and gentlemen, are not deputy agents of the thought police."

A similar argument prevailed in the case of Jake Baker, a University of Michigan student who posted violent short stories about a female classmate in an Internet forum in 1994 and later exchanged emails with a man in which they discussed carrying out murder.

A federal appeals court ruled that the emails weren't "true threats," and the men were merely trying to "foster a friendship based on shared sexual fantasies."

If a jury reaches the same conclusion about Valle, it should acquit, said Andy Sellars, a staff lawyer for the Digital Medial Law Project at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

"If this forum was nothing more than the sharing of repugnant stories, then we shouldn't hold them responsible," he said. "One of the things we protect in free speech is giving a person the opportunity to vent in order to relieve whatever disturbing thoughts they have on their mind."

Criminal law, he said, has historically given the benefit of the doubt to people who contemplate a crime but back away.

The catch in Valle's case is that he and the men he corresponded with talked in great detail about the twisted things they wanted to do. Maybe that was just to make the fantasy seem more real and feel more exciting. But maybe not.

The Russian entrepreneur who created Dark Fetish said in a video deposition taken in February that he himself had trouble discerning fact from fiction in some postings on his site, and had kicked users off for discussing things that sounded like real crimes.

"Let's say that it seemed not to be fantasy anymore," Sergey Merenkov said. "It could have led to something bad, yes."

Raskin, the former federal prosecutor, said that in arresting Valle, authorities did the safe thing. What if he really did kill someone?

"Just think of the story you would write if you found out that people knew about this guy before he did it. ... Half of law enforcement in New York City would get fired because of that story," Raskin said. "That is constantly on the mind of the people who are in charge of investigating these things. What if this is the guy who really isn't a wacko?"

Even after death, Chavez gets choice of successor

Maduro becomes Venezuela's interim leader and will run for president, just as Chavez ordained

Associated Press -

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- A flag-draped coffin carrying the body of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez floated over a sea of supporters Wednesday on its way to a military academy where it will lie in state. Away from the procession route, jittery Venezuelans facing an uncertain future without their larger-than-life leader flocked to supermarkets and gas stations to stock up on supplies, preparing for the worst a day after Chavez succumbed to cancer.

Tens of thousands lined the streets or walked with the casket in the capital, many weeping as the body approached, led by a grim drum major. Other mourners pumped their fists and held aloft images of the late president, amid countless waving yellow, blue and red Venezuelan flag.

"The fight goes on! Chavez lives!" shouted the mourners in unison, many through eyes red from crying late into the night.

Chavez's bereaved mother Elena Frias de Chavez leaned against her son's casket, while a priest read a prayer before the procession left the military hospital where Chavez died at the age of 58. Vice President Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's anointed successor, walked with the crowd, along with Cabinet members and uniformed soldiers.

"I feel so much pain. So much pain," said Yamile Gil, a 38-year-old housewife. "We never wanted to see our president like this. We will always love him."

The former paratrooper will remain at the military academy until his Friday funeral, which promises to draw leaders from all over the world. Already, the presidents of Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia have arrived to mourn a man whose passing leaves an enormous void in the region's anti-American left.

"The Chavez-less era begins," declared a front-page headline in Caracas's El Universal newspaper.

But even in death, Chavez's orders were being heeded in a country covered with posters bearing his image and graffiti pledging "We are all Chavez!"

Maduro will continue to run Venezuela as interim president and will stand as candidate of Chavez's socialist party in an election the country's constitution requires be called within 30 days.

In a late-night tweet, Venezuelan state television said Defense Minister Adm. Diego Molero had pledged military support for Maduro's candidacy against likely opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, despite a constitutional mandate that the armed forces play a nonpolitical role.

For die-hard Chavistas who camped out all night outside the military hospital, Wednesday was the first full day without a leader many described as a father figure, an icon in the mold of the early-19th century liberator Simon Bolivar. Others saw the death of a man who presided over Venezuela as a virtual one-man show as an opportunity to turn back the clock on his socialist policies.

For both sides, uncertainty ruled the day.

It was not immediately clear when the presidential vote would be held, or where or when Chavez would be buried following Friday's pageant-filled funeral.

Venezuela's constitution specifies that the speaker of the National Assembly, currently Diosdado Cabello, should assume the interim presidency if a president can't be sworn in.

But critics say the officials left in charge by Chavez before he went to Cuba in December for his fourth cancer surgery have not been assiduous about heeding the constitution, and human rights and free speech activists are concerned they will flaunt the rule of law. Many took to Twitter to cite Article 233 of the constitution, which they said establishes Cabello as the rightful interim president.

Just a few hours before announcing Chavez's death, Maduro virulently accused foreign and domestic enemies, clearly including the United States, of trying to undermine Venezuelan democracy. The government said two U.S. military attaches had been expelled for allegedly trying to destabilize the nation, and Maduro insisted that Chavez was purposefully "attacked" with cancer. He said a scientific commission would be set up to investigate.

There has been no word on any plans for an autopsy, and while the government has said Chavez suffered from cancer, it has never specified the exact location or type of cancer.

Many mourners Wednesday took their cue from Maduro, venting anger at Washington and accusing Venezuela's opposition of conspiring with far-right U.S. forces to undermine the revolution.

"The government of the United States is not going to rest," said Oscar Navas, a 33-year-old fruit vendor and Chavez supporter who joined the procession. "It's going to continue conspiring against our revolution because we are anti-imperialists. I don't have the slightest doubt the CIA is here, undercover, doing whatever it can to destabilize our country."

Venezuela and the United States have a complicated relationship, with Chavez's enemy to the north remaining the top buyer of Venezuelan oil. But Chavez's inner circle has long claimed the United States was behind a failed 2002 attempt to overthrow him, and he has frequently used anti-American rhetoric to stir up support. Venezuela has been without a U.S. ambassador since July 2010 and expelled another U.S. military officer in 2006.

U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell denied Washington was trying to destabilize Venezuela and said the claim "leads us to conclude that, unfortunately, the current Venezuelan government is not interested in an improved relationship."

Ventrell added that the suggestion that the United States had a hand in Chavez's illness was "absurd." He hinted the U.S. could reciprocate with expulsions of Venezuelan diplomats.

Capriles, the youthful governor of Miranda state who lost to Chavez in October presidential election, was conciliatory in a televised address Tuesday. He is widely expected to run against Maduro.

"This is not the moment to highlight what separates us," Capriles said. "This is not the hour for differences; it is the hour for union, it is the hour for peace."

Although the armed forces chief, Gen. Wilmer Barrientos, reported "complete calm" in the country late Tuesday, several incidents of political violence flared after Chavez's death.

A group of masked, helmeted men on motorcycles, some brandishing revolvers, reportedly attacked about 40 students on Tuesday who had been protesting for more than a week near the Supreme Court building to demand the government give more information about Chavez's health.

The assailants, who didn't wear clothing identifying any political allegiance, burned the students' tents and scattered their food just minutes after Chavez's death was announced.

"They burned everything we had," said student leader Gaby Arellano. She said she saw four of the attackers with pistols but none fired a shot.

Outside the military hospital, an angry crowd also roughed up a Colombian TV reporter.

"They beat us with helmets, with sticks, men, women, adults," Carmen Andrea Rengifo said on RCN TV. Video images showed her bleeding above the forehead, but she was not seriously injured.

Maduro and other government officials have railed against international media for allegedly reporting rumors about Chavez's health, although RCN wasn't one of those criticized.

Chavez leaves behind a political movement in control of a nation that human rights activist Liliana Ortega, director of the nongovernmental group COFAVIC, describes as a badly deteriorated state where institutions such as the police, courts and prosecutor's offices have been converted into tools of political persecution and where most media are firmly controlled by the government.

Javier Corrales, an Amherst College political scientist, said he was concerned about the "virulent, anti-American discourse" under Maduro. "It seems to me this is a government that is beginning to blame the United States for all its troubles."

"This is very dark," he said. "This is the most nebulous period, the most menacing that the government has been, and the actions have been pretty severe."

___

Associated Press writers Christopher Toothaker, Fabiola Sanchez and Paul Haven in Caracas contributed to this report.

___

Senate Republicans block vote on Obama's CIA pick

FILE - In this Feb. 11, 2013 file photo, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. testifies at the Capitol Annex in Frankfort, Ky. Senate Democrats push for quick confirmation vote on John Brennan's nomination to head CIA, but Republican senator mounts lengthy debate. (AP Photo/James Crisp, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican critic of the Obama administration's drone policy succeeded Wednesday in blocking a vote on John Brennan's nomination to be CIA director over questions about the possible use of the unmanned weapons against American citizens.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., mounted a filibuster against PresidentBarack Obama's pick to lead the spy agency and he demanded thatObama or Attorney General Eric Holder issue a statement making clear that drones would not be used in the United States to kill terrorism suspects who are U.S. citizens.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he planned to file a motion to bring debate over Brennan's nomination to lead the spy agency to an end. But he would need 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to do that. Reid had been pushing for a confirmation vote to be held Wednesday, but those plans were dashed by Paul's lengthy floor speech.

Paul began speaking shortly before noon on what he said was the Obama administration's refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes inside U.S. borders against American citizens. Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Jerry Moran, R-Kan., Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., joined Paul several hours after he began speaking. Wyden has long pressed for greater oversight of the use of drones.

Paul said he would be willing to end his filibuster and proceed to a vote if he received the statement from the president or the attorney general. Holder came close to making such a statement earlier in the day during an exchange with Cruz at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, according to Paul.

Cruz asked Holder if the Constitution allowed the federal government to kill a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil who doesn't pose an imminent threat. Holder said the situation was hypothetical, but that he did not think that in that situation the use of a drone or lethal force would be appropriate. Cruz criticized Holder for not simply saying "no" in response.

In a letter sent Tuesday to Paul, Brennan said the CIA does not have authority to conduct lethal operations inside the U.S.

Despite the delays, Brennan's bid to lead the spy agency received a boost when Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Wednesday that he is leaning toward voting for Brennan after receiving detailed information about the attack last September on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Graham, along with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had said they would oppose the nomination on the Senate floor if they didn't get classified information detailing the Obama administration's actions immediately following the attack that killed four Americans.

Graham also criticized his GOP colleagues, calling the prospect of drones being used to kill people in the United States "ridiculous."

"I think it's paranoia between libertarians and the hard left that is unjustified," Graham said. "I trust this president and other presidents to exercise commander-in-chief authority in a time of war."

Holder told Paul in a March 4 letter that the federal government has not conducted such operations and has no intention of doing so. But Holder also wrote that he supposed it was possible under an "extraordinary circumstance" that the president would have no choice but to authorize the military to use lethal force inside U.S. borders. Holder cited the attacks at Pearl Harbor and on Sept. 11, 2001, as examples.

Paul said he did not dispute that the president has the authority to take swift and lethal action against an enemy that carried out a significant attack against the United States. But Paul said he was "alarmed" at how difficult it has been to get the administration to clearly define what qualifies as a legitimate target of a drone strike.

"No president has the right to say he is judge, jury and executioner," Paul said.

Brennan's nomination won approval Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee after the White House broke a lengthy impasse by agreeing to give lawmakers access to top-secret legal opinions justifying the use of lethal drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects overseas.

If confirmed, Brennan would replace Michael Morell, the CIA's deputy director who has been acting director since David Petraeus resigned in November after acknowledging an affair with his biographer.

Brennan currently serves as Obama's top counterterrorism adviser in the White House. He was nominated by the president in early January and the Intelligence Committee held his confirmation hearing on Feb. 7.