"Yes, he's dead," Franklin Brito's son, who has the same name as the farmer, told Reuters.

The death of Brito, whose case had become a cause celebre for opposition parties and rights groups, came at a sensitive time as political passions rise before a September 26 vote for Venezuela's parliament.

Some had compared Brito's case to that of Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata, who died in February after an 85-day hunger strike for improved prison conditions, drawing international condemnation of Havana's rights record.

Brito, who looked emaciated in recent photos circulating on the Internet, had been at Caracas' military hospital against his will since December after being picked up by authorities from a city square where he had camped out in protest.

Authorities said Brito was mentally unstable and accused the political opposition of trying to exploit his case.

His 59 acres (24 hectares) of yucca and watermelon plants in southern Bolivar state were seized in 2003 -- part of the roughly 6.2 million acres (2.5 million hectares) expropriated in recent years by Chavez's government.

Brito had camped for months outside the Caracas office of the Organisation of American States, sewed shut his mouth and even chopped off a finger in front of television cameras.

López spent his early years studying at the Colegio Santiago de León de Caracas. Between 1989 and 1993, he studied Economics at Kenyon College in the U.S. state of Ohio. He subsequently attended Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government where he obtained a Master of Public Policy in 1996. In 2007, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from his Alma Mater, Kenyon College. In May 2007 he married Lilian Tintori, with whom he had a daughter on 20 September 2009 named Manuela López.

López' mother, Antonieta Mendoza, is the daughter of Eduardo Mendoza Goiticoa, who is the great-grandson of the country’s first president Cristobal Mendoza and descended from the same family of Simon Bolivar himself. More specifically, Leopoldo López is the great-great-great-great-nephew of Simón Bolívar.

López worked as an economic consultant to the Planning Vice-President in Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) between 1996 and 1999, and has served as a professor of Institutional Economy in the Economics Department at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello


Political life
López cofounded the Primero Justicia political party. In 2007 he joined Un Nuevo Tiempo, the most popular party among Venezuela's opposition.

López was elected mayor of Chacao in 2000 with 51% of the vote, and re-elected in 2004, gaining 81% of the vote; the LA Times describes him as "immensely popular".

On 5 December 2009 in the state of Carabobo, Lopez launched the party People's Will(Voluntad Popular). People's Will, according to Lopez, aims to overcome poverty without concentrating more power or eliminating the state of law.



Opposition leader: target of violence

The United States Department of State mentioned actions taken against López by the Venezuelan government in its 2005 annual Country Report on Human Rights Practices. López was suspended in November 2005 from political activity after his term as mayor expires in 2008 because of allegations of misuse of funds; according to the US State Department, the charges were part of "a strategy by the Chávez government to eliminate the political opposition". According to the Los Angeles Times, López says "his real offense is that he poses an electoral threat as he builds a social democratic alternative to the socialist, anti-American 'Bolivarian Revolution'." According to the Times article, Chávez critics say all government dissidents are being targeted, but "Lopez seems to be the object of a full-out campaign". His aunt was also a victim of violence in Venezuela, shot during a peaceful rally.

As a leader of the Chávez opposition, López says he has experienced several violent attacks: the Los Angeles Times says he has been shot at and was held hostage in February 2006 by armed thugs at a university where he was speaking and his bodyguard was shot while sitting in the passenger seat of the car where López normally sits. According to the LA Times "the killing of his bodyguard was meant to send a message". According to Jackson Diehl, writing for the Washington Post, in June 2008, after Lopez returned from a visit to Washington, D.C., he was detained and assaulted by the state intelligence service.


Lopez is considered to be "an early frontrunner for the 2012 opposition Presidential nomination. The Associated Press calls Lopez "the man who is challenging President Hugo Chavez's grip on power.

The bonds were priced at 100% of face value with a 12.75% coupon, and were sold in the local currency but could be re-sold abroad in dollars.

Demand for the 2022 bonds, Venezuela's first new issue in 10 months, reached a heavy $9.2 billion, or 307%, demonstrating the increasing need for greenbacks in Venezuela, where the government of President Hugo Chavez has made access to dollars increasingly difficult.

The terms of the sale were seen as a very good opportunity for Venezuelan importers and individuals to get their hands on U.S. currency at a good rate. Re-selling the bonds abroad for dollars is likely to provide an implied exchange rate of somewhere around VEF5 bolivars for $1.

Over the past couple of years, captured documents and other evidence have established beyond any reasonable doubt that Mr. Chávez's regime has provided haven and material support to the FARC movement in neighboring Colombia -- a group that is known for massacres of civilians, hostage taking and drug trafficking, and that has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and the European Union. That places Mr. Chávez in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and, at least in theory, exposes him to U.S. and international sanctions.

Investigators have been reviewing Banco Federal's books over the past two months to determine what to do with it. Chavez confirmed last month that the bank wouldn't go back into private hands.

Finance Minister Jorge Giordani said in a press conference Tuesday that some of the bank's assets would be sold off. Over the past two months, the government has been paying out the deposits owed to bank customers.

Government officials claim Mezerhane took off with some of the bank customers' deposits, a charge he also denies. Giordani said "net worth losses" at the bank amount to some VEF4.8 billion ($905 million).

There is an arrest warrant outstanding for Mezerhane, but he is in the U.S. and said he has no immediate plans to return to Venezuela.

Mezerhane, one of Venezuela's most-powerful businessmen, also owned a 26% stake in Globovision, which is the only opposition television channel left in Venezuela.

Given that Mezerhane is a fugitive from justice, Chavez said recently that he plans to take ownership of Mezerhane's stake in Globovision and would appoint someone to take a seat on Globovision's board of directors.

-By Dan Molinski, Dow Jones Newswires; 58-414-120-5738; dan.molinski@dowjones

For Chavez, Bolivar is an obsession.

The president's admiration for "El Libertador," who has been his guiding light since Chavez was a rank-and-file soldier, goes far beyond the conventional reverence most Venezuelans hold for the independence leader who is being honored Saturday on the 227th anniversary of his birth.

The socialist Chavez views himself as the modern emissary and disciple of Bolivar, and sees parallels between his hero's efforts to free South America from Spanish rule and his own crusade to challenge U.S. influence in the region.

Critics say he is trying to cast himself as Bolivar's reincarnation - an allegation Chavez vehemently denies.

Chavez's fascination with Bolivar has been on display like never before this month as he has exhumed Bolivar's bones in hopes of using modern forensics to confirm his identity - and investigate the president's theory his idol was felled by a murder conspiracy.

The move came minutes after Bogota presented to the Organisation of American States (OAS) what it claimed was evidence showing that 1,500 left-wing Colombian guerrillas were hiding in western Venezuela.

The situation is dangerous because the two countries' volatile and militarised border is infested with leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary fighters. A violent incident could spark a larger reaction.

The two nations have been at the brink before but all-out war is unlikely because both have lost billions of dollars in bilateral trade stemming from the high tensions between their ideologically opposed leaders: the leftist Mr Chavez and Colombia's outgoing conservative President, Alvaro Uribe.

Both sides have been hoping for improved ties when newly elected Juan Manuel Santos takes over from Mr Uribe on 7 August. Mr Santos has distanced himself from the Uribe government's latest accusations and, so far, Mr Chavez has taken a wait-and-see approach with Colombia's President-elect.

In 2008, a Colombian bombing raid on a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia camp in Ecuador triggered a furious reaction from Mr Chavez, who sent troops to the border. The crisis was quickly defused, with Mr Chavez shaking hands with Mr Uribe days later – a gesture that suggested his bark is often worse than his bite.

This time, Bogota, despite having what it says is firm evidence of a prolonged guerrilla presence in Venezuela, has chosen noisy diplomacy over military action against the rebel camps, a sign Colombia may not want to provoke armed conflict.

Over the years, Mr Chavez has put his troops on alert several times, re-equipped them with billions of dollars of new weapons and told his generals to prepare for defensive war. However, the ex-paratrooper always insists he would never start a conflict.

While Venezuela's big banks are generally seen as structurally sound, a number of takeovers of small failing banks since last year triggered rumors of impending disaster in the sector, worrying savers.

"Anybody who spreads malicious rumors by any means, emails, SMS messages on cellphones, Twitter, Facebook ... or any other means of communication is committing a crime and should answer for it before the competent authorities," Wilmer Flores Trosel, head of the CICPC national investigative police unit, said in a statement.

He said a man was arrested in possession of a cellphone used to send the first illegal Tweet, and that detectives had also detained a woman and seized hard discs and computer equipment from her.

Both suspects were picked up in the eastern city of Ciudad Bolivar, CICPC said, following a four-month investigation into the posting of false information about the nation's financial system on Twitter "with the aim of creating runs on banks."

President Hugo Chavez's government closed 11 small banks last year that had been run into the ground by businessmen with links to public officials.

Then last month it took over the mid-sized Banco Federal, which had close ties to the opposition Globovision TV station, citing liquidity problems and risk of fraud.

Every move Chavez's government makes is commented on and critiqued, often sharply, by local Twitterers.

The social networking site's popularity has exploded in Venezuela this year and Chavez has joined in. His @chavezcandanga account was launched in April and quickly overtook the Globovision feed to become the country's most closely watched with more than 645,000 followers.

(Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Kieran Murray)

© Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved.

Politics
Jorge Cardinal Urosa Savino issued a statement from Rome saying that President Hugo Chávez Frías has no right to insult, defame or slander any Venezuelan.

"The president has insulted me several times, thus exposing me to mockery. I strongly reject such attacks that are unbecoming for such a person," Cardinal Urosa said in his statement.

He reiterated his complaints about the situation facing Venezuela. "Today, I am responding to the assaults against the bishops and against me, because rather that rejecting the offenses we are trying to denounce the dangerous situation facing our beloved motherland."

The Church leader clarified that he is not under pressure from any sector. Urosa Savino added that he has made some statements about Venezuela's situation in the media that have been "regrettably" misinterpreted by President Hugo Chávez.

He said that the Venezuelan ruler "rather than reflecting upon the arguments and changing his behavior is discrediting and attacking us."

Cardinal Urosa Savino said in a statement that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his government are disregarding the Constitution and "want to impose a Socialist-Marxist system in the country to control all sectors. This system is totalitarian and is leading to dictatorship; not to proletarian dictatorship but to dictatorship led by the elite who is ruling the country."

He stressed that attempts at leading the country to this system of government opposes to the wishes of the Venezuelan people who already rejected the implementation of a socialist system in previous elections.

"The government wants to impose a Marxist regime through unconstitutional laws, as the president has proclaimed," Cardinal Urosa said.

He criticized government attempts to "control all production means through gradual monopolization of imports, distribution and marketing of foodstuffs." He said that this position is "in line with the purpose of dismantling the domestic production system. The aim is to make people depend on the government to eat."

He recalled President Chávez that the appointment of all bishops depends on the Catholic Church and "more precisely depends on the Holy Father, following serious consultations with the Church community. They are not appointed by politicians," he said.

Translated by Gerardo Cárdenas

Ocarina Espinoza
EL UNIVERSAL

Banco Federal, whose president Nelson Mezerhane is an outspoken critic of Chavez, was taken over by authorities June 14 for alleged liquidity problems. Investigators have said they've been reviewing the mid-sized bank's books over the past couple weeks to determine whether it could be brought back to health.

"Banco Federal will not go back into the hands of the private sector," Chavez wrote in a weekly column posted on his blog. He indicated authorities are still determining whether the bank may be liquidated altogether or will be perhaps brought under the umbrella of a state-run bank.

"We will take a decision on its destiny soon, but rest assured it will be whatever's best for the interests of the nation," Chavez said.

Banco Federal president Mezerhane denied the bank had liquidity problems and said the takeover was a political move by Chavez to repress the opposition.

Mezerhane is also a large shareholder in Globovision, the last remaining opposition-aligned television station in Venezuela. Critics of Chavez say the government's decision to take over Banco Federal was part of a possible plan to take over Globovision.

Just days before the bank was seized, an arrest warrant was issued for Guillermo Zuloaga, Globovision's main shareholder, and a long-time business partner of Mezerhane. The arrest order was for charges last year that Zuloaga illegally stored at his private residence more than 20 brand new vehicles from a car dealership he owns.

An arrest warrant was also issued Thursday for Mezerhane on charges related to his interests in Banco Federal.

Both Mezerhane and Zuloaga are presumed to be outside of Venezuela, perhaps in the U.S. The businessmen have each denied guilt for any wrongdoing, and have said in recent weeks they don't plan to return to Venezuela for the time being.

Chavez, meanwhile, suggested a couple days ago that if Zuloaga and Mezerhane don't come back to answer to authorities, then the government may soon have to "do something" with Globovision. Many viewed this as a threat by Chavez to nationalize Globovision ahead of key legislative elections in September.

-By Dan Molinski, Dow Jones Newswires; 58-414-120-5738; dan.molinski@dowjones