National / International News

London Welsh must wait to learn whether they will be charged with fielding an ineligible player after the decision was deferred.

Gabe Newell, the boss of games developer Valve, says the firm should be able to offer prototypes of its Steam Box games console within four months.

The bulls continued to run on Wall Street, where the Dow surpassed its all-time high.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The TSA says the changes are part of their risk-based approach to security and bring the U.S. in line with European standards.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The former Florida governor spent Tuesday clarifying statements about immigration in his new book, and some made as recently as Monday. Bush's back-and-forth on what to do about 11 million or so undocumented immigrants already in the country has become the story of a nascent 2016 presidential campaign.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The US Senate panel approves President Obama's nomination of John Brennan to be CIA chief after reviewing White House memos on drones.

With a 12 to 3 vote, the Intelligence Committee gave the nomination of John Brennan as CIA director the go-ahead.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Augusta National Golf Club says the jacket won by Art Wall Jr. in 1959 was later stolen; a Florida collector and a Texas auction house insist the jacket was obtained legally and can be sold to the highest bidder.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Italian police say they have seized 450m euros ($590m; £390m) of assets and arrested 20 people in a series of anti-mafia raids.

Chancellor George Osborne stands isolated after European Union finance ministers vow to press on with proposals to curb bankers' bonuses.

Early March is when Yosemite National Park officials would normally be gearing up for the busy tourist season. Instead, they're figuring out how to cut $1.5 million from their budget because of the recent sequestration that forced across-the-board cuts. The National Park Service must now cut $134 million from sites around the country.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Early March is when Yosemite National Park officials would normally be gearing up for the busy tourist season. Instead, they're figuring out how to cut $1.5 million from their budget because of the recent sequestration that forced across-the-board cuts. The National Park Service must now cut $134 million from sites around the country.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The FBI is investigating a pilot's report of a small unmanned drone aeroplane in the skies near a major New York City airport.

A Soviet soldier who went missing in Afghanistan nearly 33 years ago is found living with Afghans in the western province of Herat.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has died at the age of 58, according to AP reports. Besides his geopolitical influence, Chavez's legacy will be an economic one -- the socialist strongman fused his ideas and his country's oil money to refashion the country, for better or worse.

Chavez economics starts with Chavez ideology. He took office in 1999, pledging to fight corruption and share the wealth.

"People tend to vote with their pocketbooks, even here," said business publisher and consultant Robert Bottome in Caracas, back in January*. "And so Chavez was offering a change. He was going to get the economy growing again. Throw the bastards out. He has tremendous personal appeal."

Early on in his administration, Chavez took control of the biggest piece of his country's economy: oil.

Foreign companies like ExxonMobil and Conoco Phillips operated there. But Bottome says Chavez was unsatisfied with the royalty payment negotiated in a contract. So he doubled it.

"And then he doubled it again," Bottome said. "He didn't like the tax scale. And then finally he said he didn't like my partners. So he told them from now on instead of being majority owners and operators, you can be minority partner if you like. And I am going to run the show. "

Speaking of show, Chavez hosted his own talk show every Sunday. As in him talking.

"He once fired all the top management of the national oil company" during the show, said former Venezuelan trade minister Moises Naim, now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "In other instances of his show, he would nationalize a bank or the electricity company."

What you and I consider independent economic data is hard to come by in Venezuela.

But there's no question Chavez spent money on the poor -- on health care, appliances, subsidized gas. And he drove out lots of foreign companies and private-sector investors.

Pomona College historian Miguel Tinker Salas said Venezuela's now a hybrid economy -- part socialist, part consumption capitalist.

"You can have on the one hand a discourse about socialism, but the malls are full," Tinker Salas said in January. "Venezuela is the highest consumer of scotch whiskey per capita in the world."

Chavez also sent money to neighboring countries, often in the form of cheap energy.

Some were friends of the ideological revolution, like Cuba. Others were marriages of political convenience.

"So if there are votes in organizations that come up about Venezuela," said Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C., "those countries are more likely to be influenced if get good deal on oil to vote with Venezuela as opposed to against Venezuela."

It's been a potent fusion of power, ideology, and economic leverage, says Shifter.

Which raises the question: is this how every strongman economy tends to work?

"I don't think it necessarily has to go this way," Shifter said. "You have Evo Morales who is a close ally of Hugo Chavez. But the Bolivian economy is much better managed than the Venezuelan economy."

Today, Venezuela faces double-digit inflation, billions in debt, and remains highly dependent on the oil sector. When energy prices fall, the economy goes with it.

And yet the socialist experiment continues.

Why? Oil money to bankroll it, said Moises Naim at Carnegie.

"That allows you to experiment, and provides you a cushion to cover your mistakes," Naim said. "The 'oil curse' allows for sustained bad ideas to linger over time."

On his show late last year, Chavez picked a successor.

"I don't think there's any going back," said Tinker Salas. "Venezuela has changed. People who have been in power are not going to retreat into the margins any more. Venezuela will not change, whether Chavez is there or not."

*UPDATED: This article is an updated version of a story on Hugo Chavez that ran on Marketplace in January.

The White House was responding to an online petition signed by more than 114,000 people. The administration said Americans should also be able to unlock tablets.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Federal health officials warned that a dangerous group of superbugs has become increasingly common in hospitals throughout the past decade. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the bacteria are resistant to virtually all antibiotics, including the ones doctors use as a last-ditch option.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Four Army bases are to close as part of a shake-up to accommodate thousands of troops returning from Germany.

Los Angeles voters dribble into polling stations in a city election promising the city's most sweeping leadership change in more than a decade.

Malt is an essential component of beer, but most comes from a handful of industrial processors that pool grains from across the U.S. and Canada. Now, a small but growing number of craft malt houses are malting grains from small regional farmers, enabling microbreweries to offer truly local beers.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us