Venezuela President Hugo Chavez in middle class appeal

The Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, says he wants to open up his socialist political project to the middle classes and private sector.

Mr Chavez said his government had to convince Venezuela's middle classes they were needed.

Speaking by telephone on state television, he said he was entering a more reflective period of his life.

Mr Chavez recently underwent cancer treatment in Cuba, but plans to stand for re-election next year.

The Venezuelan leader made his comments a day after he celebrated his 57th birthday, when - appearing in yellow rather than his characteristic red shirt - he told a rally of cheering supporters that he was in no mood to leave office in the near future.

In Friday's telephone interview, Mr Chavez said the treatment to remove a tumour had led him to radically change his life towards a "more diverse, more reflective and multi-faceted" period.

He told his supporters to eliminate divisions and dogma, and end what he called the abuse of symbols such as the term "socialist".

"Why do we have to always have to wear a red shirt?" said Mr Chavez. "And the same goes for the word 'socialism'."

The president cited the example of a mayor in the governing party who inaugurated a "Socialist Avenue", which Mr Chavez described as "stupid".

"We need to reflect and introduce changes in our discourse and in our actions."

Cuban lessons

Mr Chavez, who came to power in 1999, said the private sector and the middle classes were "vital" to his political project.

He said it was a shame that attempts to be more inclusive of these groups in society had been criticised by some in official circles in Venezuela.

"Raul Castro is leading a process of self-criticism," said Mr Chavez, hinting that Venezuela could learn from the reforms being undertaken by the president of Cuba, who has made some concessions to the private sector since taking over from Fidel Castro in 2006.

Mr Chavez said his government needed to correct the perception that small businesses would be taken over by the state.

"We have to make sure no-one believes that," he said. "We have to convince them about our real project, that we need this sector and that we want to acknowledge their contribution."

 

Air France Rio crash: Pilots 'lacked training'

The pilots of an Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic in 2009 lacked adequate training, French investigators have found.

France's BEA authority said pilots had failed to discuss repeated stall warnings and did not have the training to deal with the hazard. Air France rejected the accusation.

BEA called for mandatory training in high-altitude stalling for all pilots.

All 228 people on board the Airbus 330 from Brazil to France were killed.

'No passenger alert'

BEA head Jean-Paul Troadec said that "the situation was salvageable" during the flight's final minutes.

Investigators said an account of those minutes, captured on flight recorders, concluded that the crew had failed to "formally identify the loss of altitude" despite an alarm ringing for nearly a minute.

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Nothing at this stage can allow the crew's technical competence to be blamed”

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Air France statement

• Air France crash: The long hunt for answers

"The first event which triggered it all is the disconnection of the automatic pilot following the loss of the speed indicators, very probably after they were frozen by ice crystals," said Mr Troadec.

"At this time the pilot should have initiated a procedure known as 'Unreliable IAS (indicated air speed)', a procedure which consists of taking an angle of five degrees, but the angle they took was far superior.

"That is why the plane flew upwards, the plane took a rapid vertical flight of 7,000 feet/minute... The angle they took was too much," Mr Troadec said.

The BEA report said the co-pilots in charge of the plane when the emergency began "had received no high-altitude training for unreliable IAS (indicated air speed) procedure and manual air craft handling".

The report also said that the pilots failed to alert passengers to the crisis as they struggled to regain control.

The authority issued 10 new safety recommendations, including mandatory training for all pilots in France to ensure they could handle a high-altitude stall.

A statement from Air France rejected the BEA's findings, saying that "nothing at this stage can allow the crew's technical competence to be blamed" for the crash.

"The crew on duty showed professionalism and stayed committed until the end to operating the flight. Air France salutes their courage and determination in these extreme conditions," it said.

 

Flight recorders were found this year

"The altitude-loss alarm was activated and deactivated several times, contradicting the real status of the aircraft, which contributed strongly to the crew's difficulty in analysing the situation," Air France said.

Airbus said it welcomed the report and would give full support to the process, so that the industry could "benefit from any lessons to be learnt from this event".

Air France and Airbus are being investigated for alleged manslaughter in connection with the crash.

"The BEA establishes the facts and makes recommendations based on those facts," AFP quoted Environment and Transport Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet as saying on RTL radio.

"As to who is responsible, that is up to the courts," she added.

Flight AF 447 went down on 1 June 2009 after running into an intense high-altitude thunderstorm, four hours into a flight from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to Paris.

The wreckage of the plane was discovered after a long search of 10,000 sq km (3,860 sq miles) of sea floor.

 

Aide to former Colombian president faces arrest

 

 

A senior aide of former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is facing criminal prosecution.

A judge has ordered the arrest of Mr Uribe's former chief of staff, Bernardo Moreno, for allegedly spying on judges, journalists and politicians.

It is the second such order this week. Andres Felipe Arias, a former agriculture minister, has been charged with corruption. He denies the allegations.

Alvaro Uribe left office last year.

Mr Moreno served as Mr Uribe's chief of staff for both of his presidential terms, from 2002-2010.

He now faces trial for criminal conspiracy, abuse of public office and other charges.

Mr Moreno would be jailed for at least three years, if convicted. He denies all the charges.

Mr Arias, 38, is suspected of diverting farm subsidies intended for peasant farmers to rich landowners.

He will be held at a jail in the capital Bogota while his case proceeds.

The Colombian Attorney General's office has already disqualified him from public office for 16 years because of what it deemed were irregularities in the subsidy scheme.

 

Plane from New York crashes at Guyana airport

A plane has crashed and broken in two on landing at Guyana's main airport in the capital, Georgetown, causing injuries but no deaths.

The Caribbean Airlines Boeing 737-800 flight BW-523 from New York had 163 people aboard.

The plane apparently overshot the runway at Cheddi Jagan International Airport during wet weather.

"It's an absolute miracle that took place today," said Caribbean Airlines chairman George Nicholas.

A few passengers sustained bruises, with one suffering a broken leg.

The plane halted near a 200-ft (61-m) ravine that could have resulted in dozens of deaths, Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo said.

 

Local resident Ava Hammond sent the BBC pictures of the wrecked plane

"We are very, very grateful that more people were not injured," Mr Jagdeo added, quoted by AP news agency.

There were 157 passengers and six crew aboard the plane when the accident occurred at 0132 local time, according to a statement from Caribbean Airlines.

The plane had made a stop in Trinidad en route from New York.

Rescuers struggled in the dark to free passengers from the wreckage.

A woman quoted by Guyana's Kaieteur News service described hearing a loud sound when it landed in Guyana, and said everyone began screaming.

"It was terror," she said. "I was praying to Jesus."

Her husband opened the emergency door and passengers began escaping, she added.

Another passenger, 42-year-old Adis Cambridge, said: "I realised that everything was on top of me, people and bags. I was the second to last person to get off that plane in the dark.

 

President Bharrat Jagdeo (left) spoke to reporters at the airport

"I hit my head on the roof. It was so scary."

She and other passengers described jumping first onto the wing and then down onto a track below to escape.

Geeta Ramsingh, 41, of Philadelphia, quoted by AP, said passengers applauded as the plane landed, but applause quickly "turned to screams".

"The plane sped up as if attempting to take off again. It is then that I smelled gas in the cabin and people started to shout and holler," she said.

"I am in pain, but very thankful to be alive."

Ms Ramsingh said a taxi driver reached the crash site before rescuers and asked for $20 to drive her back to the terminal.

"I had to pay, but in times of emergencies, you don't charge people for a ride," she said.

'Airport chaos'

 

Kristopher Kimlin, who was not on the crashed plane but was trying to fly out of the airport, told BBC News there was "chaos" after the crash.

"The airport is simply not set up to deal with this kind of situation - they were overwhelmed," he said.

"There were queues of people around the entire terminal building and out of the door. There were maybe 1,000 people.

Caribbean Airlines, which is majority-owned by Trinidad and Tobago with Jamaica holding a minority stake, does not have a history of serious safety problems.

 

Venezuela plans 'to release 40% of prisoners'

Venezuela says it could release up to 40% of inmates in an attempt to ease overcrowding in its prisons.

Newly-appointed Minister for Prisons Iris Varela said 20,000 people who had only committed minor crimes could be conditionally freed.

Ms Varela said those who posed no danger to society could serve their sentences outside the prison walls.

The announcement comes a month after more than 25 people were killed in deadly clashes at El Rodeo jail.

Ms Varela said that of "Venezuela's 50,000 inmates, 20,000 shouldn't be in jail".

The Minister said her office would start checking this week which of the inmates fulfilled the requisites for a conditional release.

"I want to promise the Venezuelan people that we won't let the wolves loose," she said.

"But there are people in our prisons who don't pose a danger for society, like those serving time for theft," she added.

Venezuelan prisons are notoriously overcrowded and there has been a series of riots since the beginning of the year.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights says nearly 500 people died in prison violence last year.

More than 25 people died in clashes in Rodeo prison in Guatire, near the capital Caracas, over the past month after a group of inmates armed itself and fought fellow prisoners and national guards sent to restore order.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered the creation of the new ministry in the wake of the clashes and his government allocated almost $100m (£60.1m) to the task of reforming the prison sector.

 

Mexico drug cartel suspect Acosta 'admits killings'

Police in Mexico say a suspected cartel leader they arrested on Friday has confessed to ordering the murder of 1,500 people in northern Chihuahua state.

Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez, 33, is also suspected of masterminding the attack on a US consulate worker and her husband in Ciudad Juarez last year.

Officials say Mr Acosta Hernandez is a key figure in the Juarez cartel.

Juarez is Mexico's most violent city, with more than 3,000 murders in 2010.

The suspect, who is better known as El Diego, is accused of being the leader of the La Linea gang, whose members work as hired killers for the Juarez cartel.

The cartel controls some of the main drug smuggling routes from Ciudad Juarez into the United States.

Police believe El Diego was also behind a car bomb attack which killed four people in the border city, the first such attack in Mexico's spiralling drug-related violence.

Head of Mexico's federal police anti-drug unit Ramon Pequeno said Mr Acosta Hernandez had also admitted to ordering the killing of 15 people, most of them teenagers, at a party in Ciudad Juarez last year.

The Mexican government had offered 15m Mexican pesos ($1,275,000; £778,000) for information leading to his arrest.

US prosecutors said they wanted to try him in the case of the 2010 killing of US consulate employee Lesley Enriquez, her American husband Arthur Redelfs, and the husband of another consular worker, Jorge Alberto Salcedo.

They were shot dead in their car after leaving a social event in the city.

Ms Enriquez, 35, was four months pregnant when she died. The couple's seven-month-old daughter survived the attack and was found crying in the back seat.

Mr Salcedo was killed in a near-simultaneous drive-by shooting as he drove away from the same event.

 

US uproots massive marijuana complex - Americas -

United States law enforcement officials have claimed a major victory against illegal marijuana cultivation on public lands in the heart of northern California's cannabis-growing country.

The two-week operation to purge the Mendocino National Forest of illicit marijuana gardens uprooted 460,000 cannabis plants and led to more than 100 arrests, US lawyer Melinda Haag said.

About 680kg of processed marijuana, 27 guns and 11 vehicles were also seized.

The 364,225-hectare forest spans six counties in a region of mountains and forests known as the Emerald
Triangle for its high concentration of marijuana farms.

Agents raided more than 50 gardens teeming with rubbish, irrigation pipes and chemicals that damage
forestland and waterways, authorities said.

"The Mendocino National Forest is under attack by drug traffickers,'' Haag said.

The operation was part of an annual summer effort to eradicate marijuana from public lands across the state.

Six sheriff's departments, the state anti-drugs bureau and at least half-a-dozen federal agencies took part in the effort in the forest.

Spearheading the raids was Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman, who in his years on the job has had to balance county medical marijuana ordinances with state law and the complete federal ban on the drug.

Allman said none of the gardens raided showed any sign of being used to grow medical marijuana.

Environmental impact

Each summer for the past several years, authorities report seizing millions of cannabis plants from local, state and national parks, forests and other wilderness areas.

Public lands are often favoured by clandestine growers for their remote locations and rugged terrain.

In previous years, officials have blamed Mexican drug cartels for some of the state's largest growing operations.

Haag declined to comment on where those arrested in the current operation were from but said 25 are already facing federal charges.

This year's decision to focus on Mendocino National Forest stemmed from citizen complaints a year ago about an increasing number of confrontations with armed guards protecting areas where cannabis is grown, Allman said.

Forest Service officials and county leaders have also long complained about the environmental consequences of illegal marijuana farms on forest ecology.

California national guard troops, forest service workers and volunteers have removed 46,000 pounds of rubbish, 120 propane tanks, 116,000 feet of pipe, 13 manmade dams, 57 pounds of pesticide and tonnes of fertilizer from sites raided in the forest, Haag said.