CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's government-controlled parliament on Wednesday set up an inquiry into violence over its disputed election that authorities blame on opposition leader Henrique Capriles.
Nine people died and dozens were injured after opposition protests against Nicolas Maduro's narrow April 14 presidential poll win turned violent around the South American nation.
The government asserted that the unrest was evidence the opposition was planning a coup. Capriles' camp has rejected that, saying officials have exaggerated the violence and have tried to use deaths from common crimes to bolster the toll discredit the opposition.
"The government is desperately sowing lies," said Capriles, who called supporters onto the streets after the disputed election results, but has since urged only peaceful protests.
The National Assembly said on Twitter that a special committee would begin meeting on Monday to investigate the violence. "The commission will determine responsibility for violent actions directed by Capriles," it said.
Government legislator Pedro Carreno, who will head the committee that does not include any opposition parliamentarians, called Capriles a "murderer" during Wednesday's announcement.
"Sooner rather than later, he will have to pay for those crimes," Carreno said, describing the death of an 11-year-old girl as the result of "fascism."
Inside Venezuela, reports of the violence have varied, with state media painting an image of pro-opposition mobs burning government offices and health facilities. The opposition media quoted family members of victims saying that some of the deaths had nothing to do with the political tensions.
In a sustained assault against Capriles from numerous senior officials, National Assembly head Diosdado Cabello called him a "fascist murderer," while Prisons Minister Iris Varela said a jail cell and rehabilitation therapies awaited him.
Capriles, a 40-year-old state governor who promises Brazilian-style pro-business policies mixed with strong social protections, confounded opinion polls to run a close finish against Maduro in the election to succeed late socialist leader Hugo Chavez.
Despite an initial large gap in the polls, emotion around the death of Chavez who had endorsed him as successor as well as a powerful state apparatus behind his election campaign, Maduro won by less than 2 percentage points.
Capriles said the ballot was marred by thousands of irregularities, including intimidation of voters at poll centers, and demanded a recount.
The election board is carrying out a partial audit but has said that will not change the result.
Both Maduro and Capriles have called on supporters to march again on May 1 in another potential flashpoint for the OPEC nation of 29 million people.
"The government spokesmen don't understand that threatening Capriles, the leader of half the country, means threatening the trust of more than 7.5 million Venezuelans," said opposition leader Antonio Ledezma.
"They'll have to turn all the football and baseball stadiums into concentration camps because they'll have to jail millions of Venezuelans who are going to stand with Capriles."
In 2004, Capriles was jailed for four months after being accused of stirring up violence during a protest at the Cuban embassy two years earlier. He denied the accusation, saying he was mediating there. The case was set aside.
(Additional reporting by Diego Ore and Marianna Parraga.; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; editing by Christopher Wilson)
Robert Todd Harrell in his Nashville Police Department mugshot.
By Natalie Finn, E! Online
Todd Harrell is a free man for now.?The 3 Doors Down bassist has been released from jail on a $100,000 bond after being charged with vehicular homicide for allegedly causing a fatal crash in Nashville late Friday night while under the influence, E! News confirmed Tuesday.
Harrell, 41, is reportedly due in court on Thursday.
NEWS: DUI trouble for Todd Harrell in 2012
According to the Nashville Police Department, Harrell was speeding on the I-40 highway in his 2011 Cadillac CTS when he clipped a 2003 Ford F-150 truck, which then struck a guardrail, skidded down an embankment and overturned. The driver of the truck, Paul Howard Shoulders, Jr., died a short time later at a nearby hospital.
Harrell told authorities that he had been drinking hard cider that night and had taken the prescription drugs Lortab and Xanax, police said. He is also charged with bringing controlled substances into a jail after a search allegedly turned up Oxycodone, Xanax and Oxymorphone pills in a plastic bag stuffed in his sock.
Following his arrest, 3 Doors Down announced that they were canceling four upcoming shows and would not resume performing until May 31 in Moscow.
BEIJING (AP) ? An American business group appealed to China on Wednesday to improve online security and ease restrictions on Web use by companies, warning that deteriorating access speeds might discourage foreign investment.
The American Chamber of Commerce suggested the Chinese government could speed up Internet access by permitting some companies to circumvent its extensive system of Web filters.
"When we compare the Internet in China to the Internet as it exists in other countries such as South Korea or the European Union or the United States, what we see is that it is significantly slower. It is also less reliable and less secure," said the chamber's president, Christian Murck.
Beijing's Internet controls and attitude toward data security have become politically sensitive after Mandiant, an American security firm, released a report in February on a wave of hacking attacks against U.S. companies it said were traced to a Chinese military cyberwarfare unit.
The American chamber warned that while two-thirds of its member companies use cloud computing, the number willing to base those operations in China has declined to below 50 percent due to security concerns.
In an annual "white paper" on policy recommendations, the chamber appealed to Chinese authorities to repeal restrictions imposed in 1999 on use of foreign encryption and security technology for sensitive data.
China has the world's biggest population of Internet users, with 564 million people online at the end of last year.
The government encourages Web use for business and education but tries to block access to material deemed subversive using filters that slow access and prompt widespread complaints.
The American chamber said its member companies have "noted deterioration in access speeds" to websites outside China and warned that will "eventually discourage investment in China."
It suggested Chinese authorities might certify companies that would be allowed high-speed international access that circumvents the filters. It said those companies might promise to use such networks only for business-related correspondence.
The chamber also appealed to Beijing to increase the size of stakes foreign investors are allowed to own in Chinese Internet and data storage companies.
It warned that security policies that "diverge from global practices" might hamper China's development and appealed to the government to embrace international standards.
U.S. officials are pressing Beijing to help combat Internet-based industrial spying. Pressure increased following the Mandiant report, which said a wave of attacks were traced to a building in Shanghai that is occupied by a Chinese military cyberwarfare unit. The attacks have prompted threats of commercial sanctions by Washington.
An American undersecretary of state, Robert Hormats, warned during a visit to Beijing this month that hacking from China was undermining its relations with Washington.
BRAIN initiative seeks tools to understand human thought, behavior, consciousnessPublic release date: 24-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 202-872-6042 American Chemical Society
The newly proposed scientific project to understand the most complicated 3 pounds of material in the world the human brain is the topic of an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.
In the article, Lauren Wolf, C&EN associate editor, focuses on the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, previously known as the Brain Activity Map project, which President Barack Obama announced earlier in April. Sometimes compared to the Human Genome Project in its scope and potential impact on medicine, BRAIN would enlist teams of scientists to develop the technology for an unprecedented new understanding of how the brain works. It could establish the basis for new treatments for clinical depression, autism, schizophrenia, Parkinson's and other brain conditions.
The article explains the emerging realization that thoughts, memories, consciousness and brain disorders result from communication among networks of nerve cells, or neurons, in the brain. An estimated 80 billion of those cells with 100 trillion interconnections complicate the task of understanding brain activity. Until now, scientists have been able to study the activities of only a relative handful of neurons at a time. Taking the next big step in understanding the brain requires new tools, which BRAIN would supply, to listen to conversations among millions of neurons.
###
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C. and Columbus, Ohio.
To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society contact newsroom@acs.org.
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BRAIN initiative seeks tools to understand human thought, behavior, consciousnessPublic release date: 24-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 202-872-6042 American Chemical Society
The newly proposed scientific project to understand the most complicated 3 pounds of material in the world the human brain is the topic of an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.
In the article, Lauren Wolf, C&EN associate editor, focuses on the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, previously known as the Brain Activity Map project, which President Barack Obama announced earlier in April. Sometimes compared to the Human Genome Project in its scope and potential impact on medicine, BRAIN would enlist teams of scientists to develop the technology for an unprecedented new understanding of how the brain works. It could establish the basis for new treatments for clinical depression, autism, schizophrenia, Parkinson's and other brain conditions.
The article explains the emerging realization that thoughts, memories, consciousness and brain disorders result from communication among networks of nerve cells, or neurons, in the brain. An estimated 80 billion of those cells with 100 trillion interconnections complicate the task of understanding brain activity. Until now, scientists have been able to study the activities of only a relative handful of neurons at a time. Taking the next big step in understanding the brain requires new tools, which BRAIN would supply, to listen to conversations among millions of neurons.
###
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C. and Columbus, Ohio.
To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society contact newsroom@acs.org.
Follow us: Twitter Facebook
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 24-Apr-2013
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