Venezuela President Chavez passes away

CARACAS, March 6: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez lost his battle with cancer, silencing the leading voice of the Latin American left and plunging his divided oil-rich nation into an uncertain future.

"We have received the toughest and tragic information that... comandante President Hugo Chavez died on Tuesday," a tearful Vice President Nicolas Maduro announced on television directly from a Caracas military hospital.

"Long live Chavez," the officials surrounding him shouted. Chavez, who was 58, had been checked into the hospital on February 18 to continue chemotherapy after two months in Cuba, where in December he had undergone his fourth round of cancer surgery since June 2011.

After 14 years under the charismatic former paratrooper, Venezuelans now face the prospect of snap elections, with Maduro hand-picked to succeed him.

The once ubiquitous symbol of Latin America's "anti-imperialist" left had disappeared from public view after flown to Cuba on December 10, an unusual absence that fueled rumors about his health.

Chavez died five months after winning an October election, overcoming a resurgent opposition and public frustration over a rising murder rate, regular blackouts and soaring inflation.

Italy at impasse after vote, rattling markets

ROME, Feb 26: Italy was at an impasse after an election seen as crucial for the eurozone failed to produce a clear winner and provided a shock debut for a populist anti-austerity party, rattling world markets and setting off alarm bells across Europe.

The Milan stock market plunged and Italy's borrowing rates jumped after centre-left Democratic Party leader Pier Luigi Bersani scraped a razor-thin victory today in the lower house of parliament but the Senate remained up for grabs.

Stock markets in Europe, Asia and the United States also fell on fears of instability in the eurozone's third biggest economy.

A majority in both chambers of parliament is required to form a government, leaving Italy in a state of limbo with a hung parliament that is unprecedented in its post-war history.

"It is clear to everyone that this is a very delicate situation for the country," Bersani said late yesterday.

European capitals, which fear the deadlock could plunge Italy back into the debt crisis storm, sounded alarm.

"It's a leap into the unknown, which bodes poorly both for Italy and the rest of Europe," said Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo.

Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing forces came a close second, winning 29.18 percent of the vote to 29.54 percent for Bersani in the lower house.

A third force - the populist, anti-government Five Star Movement (M5S) of former comic Beppe Grillo won big, reaping a resounding protest vote from an electorate fed up with austerity policies and a grinding recession to score 25.5 percent in the lower house.

European powerhouse Germany, as well as France, also reacted nervously, with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle calling for a new government to be formed "as quickly as possible".

"The politicians in Rome know that Italy still needs a policy of reform, a policy of (budgetary) consolidation," he said.

"The country which most needs stability will not have a government that lasts for more than a few months," said James Walston, a professor of international relations at the American University in Rome.

The big loser was outgoing prime minister Mario Monti, who was drafted to run a technocratic government in the debt-strapped country after Berlusconi was ousted at the height of the financial crisis in 2011.

In contrast to Grillo's shock success, Monti won just 10.56 percent in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies.

While he won praise in Europe, he was increasingly criticised at home for his austerity measures.

North Korea carries out biggest nuclear test

PYONGYANG, Feb 12: North Korea has carried out its third, most powerful nuclear test despite UN warnings, and said "even stronger" action might follow. It described the test as a "self-defensive measure" necessitated by the "continued hostility" of the US. Its main ally, China, criticised the test, which was condemned worldwide.

Nuclear test monitors in Vienna say the underground explosion had double the force of the 2009 test, despite apparently involving a smaller device.

If, as North Korea reports, a smaller device was tested successfully, analysts say this could take Pyongyang closer to building a warhead small enough to arm a missile.

All we know at the moment was that the event was magnitude 4.9, significantly larger than the 2006 and 2009 tests.

Learning more than that will be difficult. Monitoring stations in the region can pick up radioactive elements and particles that may - or may not - have been released from the test site; that would indicate whether the device was based on plutonium, as earlier tests, or the more worrisome uranium.

But that could take days, and may be frustrated by weather conditions; it will be virtually impossible to determine if the device was "miniaturised", as North Korea claims.

North Korea announced last month that it would conduct a third nuclear test following those in 2006 and 2009 as a response to UN sanctions that were expanded after the secretive communist state's December rocket launch, a move condemned by the UN as a banned test of missile technology.

Seismic activity was then detected by monitoring agencies from several nations at 11:57 (02:57 GMT) on Tuesday. A shallow earthquake with a magnitude of 4.9 was recorded, the US Geological Survey said.

Confirmation of the test came three hours later in a statement from the state-run KCNA news agency.

"It was confirmed that the nuclear test, that was carried out at a high level in a safe and perfect manner using a miniaturised and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously, did not pose any negative impact on the surrounding ecological environment," it said.

North Korea said the nuclear test - which comes just before US President Barack Obama's State of the Union address - was a response to the "reckless hostility of the United States".