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Venezuelan Asamblea Nacional video photo

Crowds of grieving Venezuelans sobbed and threw flowers as his coffin made its way through the streets of Caracas Wednesday. A somber Vice President Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor, walked next to the hearse.

Several close Chavez allies, including the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay, already are in Venezuela for Friday's funeral. Chavez, 58, died Tuesday of cancer.

The United Nations Security Council held a moment of silence Wednesday for Chávez. Cuba, home of Chavez's mentor, Fidel Castro, is observing two days of official mourning. Chinese and Iranian leaders also expressed their sorrow.

​​​​The U.S. Embassy in Caracas is closed until after the funeral. The U.S. delegation to the funeral has not yet been announced. President Barack Obama said he reaffirms his support for the Venezuelan people and is committed to polices promoting democracy and human rights.

Chávez, a staunch socialist, was elected president in 1998. He earned the enmity of the United States and others for such policies as nationalizing major companies and courting world leaders such as Castro, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.

The country's opposition accused him of being a dictator. But millions of poor Venezuelans revered him for using the country's vast oil wealth to give them access to low-cost food, free medical care and other social programs. However, experts say Chávez failed to control crime or use oil wealth to enrich the overall economy.

​​Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan vice president, said:

"We now have to be united more than ever with major discipline and collaboration. We are going to grow. We are going to be dignified, inheritors and children of a great man. He was and will always be Comandante Hugo Chavez. Glory and honor Comandante Hugo Chávez. Long live Chávez!''

Said Latin America analyst Sean Burges, Australian Center for Latin American Studies:

"It’s definitely going to be the economy. Nobody knows what’s going on with the oil company and how much it’s producing. There are balance payments problems. There are production problems. There are supply problems. And these are all things that even if Chávez had stayed in power, he was going to have to deal with in the next four years. So it’s going to be a really titanic exercise in economic management and rationalization."

"Irrespective of what happens, I think some of the social policies and the political, dynamic changes Chávez brought in, those are going to be around forever."


U.S. is expected to send
delegation to the funeral


The United States is expected to send a delegation to Hugo Chavez's funeral later this week in a move that could send a conciliatory message to Venezuela now that its stridently anti-American leader has died.

Senior U.S. officials also said on Wednesday that Washington had no immediate plans to respond in kind to Venezuela's expulsion of two U.S. military attaches, which was announced on Tuesday by Vice President Nicolas Maduro just hours before he told the world of Chavez's death.

​​Maduro, Chavez's chosen successor, said on Tuesday that one of the expelled U.S. diplomats tried to stir up a military plot against Chávez. He also said Chavez's cancer was an attack by Venezuela's enemies, an accusation the United States dismissed as absurd.

A senior State Department official said the United States was reviewing its response to Venezuela's expulsion of the two military officials and said it had the right to reciprocate in kind but for now it would not be doing so.

The U.S. Embassy in Caracas has been without an ambassador since 2010, when Chávez rejected the U.S. appointee. That led Washington to revoke the credentials of Venezuela's ambassador.

U.S. President Barack Obama issued a statement shortly after Chavez's death was announced, expressing an interest in a constructive relationship in the post-Chávez era. But analysts said Washington would be challenged to figure out a way to engage with Venezuelan leaders and the opposition without appearing to meddle in the South American oil-producing nation.

A senior State Department official said the United States would like a more functional relationship with the Venezuelan government going forward.

The official said it was too early to tell how the situation would evolve but said the United States was expected to send a delegation to Chavez's funeral, which will be held Friday. Details of who will be included in the delegation will be announced by the White House.

There have been no signs of security threats in Venezuela since Chavez's death, the official said.

"We have no indication right now that there is any threat to our personnel or Americans in Venezuela," the official said. "After you have the kind of broadside that Vice President Maduro launched against the United States yesterday we obviously have security concerns and will remain very vigilant."


Iran may lose key supporter
for Americas in Venezuela


Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, who died Tuesday, developed a close relationship with the leaders of Iran, despite Western sanctions on Tehran because of its controversial nuclear program. Chávez and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmedinejad visited each other and called themselves allies, friends and even brothers. It was a friendship that was watched closely by many countries, especially the United States.

The relationship between Iran and Venezuela began in the 1960s, in the early days of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. But it was during Hugo Chavez’s presidency that strong ties were formed.

Iran’s nuclear program was a catalyst. Iran says its nuclear aims are peaceful. The West fears it is developing weapons.

In the face of international sanctions, Iran turned to Venezuela, one of its few allies, to break its diplomatic isolation, find new strategic resources, and undermine U.S. influence.

“In Venezuela, the PDVSA, the national oil company of Venezuela, continues to have relations with Iran in ways that break the embargo, that is the sanctions that the United Nations has imposed because of the Iranian nuclear program,” said Christopher Sabatini, with Americas Society/Council of the Americas.

Since the 1980s, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah faction in Lebanon has expanded its operations in Latin America, primarily fundraising, through ties to the illegal trade in drugs and pirated goods. The U.S. considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

In Latin America, Chávez’s Venezuela and other anti-American governments opened their arms to Hezbollah and Iran.

“State sponsors of terrorism - Iran is included in that list. And so we are looking at how Iran is gaining influence in the Americas, through instruments of, in particular, economic power,” said Celina Reauyo, National Defense University.

The two countries also signed bilateral accords and created committees on cultural and educational cooperation. Some regional analysts saw them as another Iranian tool for gaining influence in the region.

"If you recall the attacks in 1992 and 1994 on the Israeli Embassy and the Jewish cultural center there had been cultural cooperation for 10 years before the attacks. There was a cultural center run by Iranian diplomats, who were doing the same sorts of things: bilateral accords and intercultural exchanges,” said Joseph Humire, of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. The attack was in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

While close ties between Tehran and Caracas have been useful to both countries, with Chavez’s death, that much-watched political romance, may well be set to change, as Tehran loses a key supporter.


Arkansas abortion law
is the most restrictive


Lawmakers in the southern U.S. state of Arkansas have adopted the country's most restrictive state ban on abortion, making the medical procedure illegal after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

The law passed Wednesday by a wide margin in the state's Republican-controlled House, over the veto of Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat. The state Senate voted to override the veto on Tuesday.

Arkansas' new law overrides limits established and upheld in the U.S. Supreme Court decisions, which give a woman the right to an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb -- a development that normally occurs about 24 weeks into pregnancy. Several other states have enacted abortion bans after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

State abortion proponents say they will immediately file a lawsuit to overturn the new legislation.

In a statement Tuesday, Beebe said the override blatantly contradicts the U.S. Supreme Court precedent set in the landmark 1973 ruling known as Roe versus Wade. He also warned that the state will waste money trying to defend the new legislation.


House passes resolution
to keep U.S. running


The U.S. House has approved a continuing resolution to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year and avoid a government shutdown.

The House passed the $982 billion budget measure Wednesday with a tally of 267 in favor and 151 against. The measure would keep in place the $85 billion in automatic government spending cuts known in Washington as the sequester. The House bill would provide the Pentagon with new flexibility within the law, however, to better manage some of its budget cuts.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida, deplored what she called the meat ax cuts that remained in the continuing resolution.

Rep. Tom Latham, a Republican from Iowa, said the resolution, though, was the best alternative that gives government offices certainty about their funding.

The measure is now expected to be taken up in the Senate, which is likely to modify the bill.

The passage comes just days after U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned travelers to get to U.S. airports early because government spending cuts are creating long security and customs lines.

Ms. Napolitano said Monday that several busy airports, including those in Atlanta, Chicago and Los Angeles, now have very long lines after the mandatory spending cuts took effect last Friday.

The cut in airport services is just one result of the $85 billion in government spending cuts that took effect Saturday after Congress and the White House failed to reach a budget agreement.


Heart disease is preventable
with simple steps, experts say


Coronary heart disease is the number one killer, worldwide, of men and women over the age of 60.  But people of all ages succumb to heart attacks each year. And while death rates have declined in the U.S. and many western European countries, mortality is on the rise in the developing world.  Yet most heart disease is preventable.
 
No one would have guessed that Barbara Teng would have a heart attack.  She was not overweight.  She did not smoke.  But she also did not exercise.
 
“In 2004, the week after I turned 49, when I was on a business trip in Chicago, I had a major heart attack," she said.
 
And that changed her life. She now exercises daily, monitors her heart health, and speaks at events held by Sister to Sister, a heart health program for women. Susan Gurley, the organization's director, says the message is urgent.
 
"Heart disease is 82 percent preventable and it is the leading cause of death for women," she said.
 
It's also a leading cause of death for men. The World Health Organization reports that more people die each year from heart disease than from any other cause. WHO says more than 60 percent of deaths from cardiovascular disease take place in low and middle-income countries. It says the heart disease pandemic is on the rise.
 
Dr. Patrice Desvigne-Nickens is with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. She says the key to staying healthy is knowing your numbers.
 
"Your weight, your blood cholesterol, blood sugar and your blood pressure are important numbers that can help you take action and reduce your risk," she said.
 
She says a healthy lifestyle can prevent heart disease.
 
"And the steps to take are simple: don’t smoke, maintain a healthy weight, exercise, know your numbers and talk to your physician and control these risks," she said.
 
African-Americans are at higher-than-average risk for heart disease and stroke, according to Michelle Magee, a physician.
 
"There's a very high prevalence of uncontrolled hypertension and also unrecognized hypertension so people don't even know they have it, which increases the risk for heart disease and stroke," she said.
 
In the nation's capital, Medstar Washington Hospital Center is trying to reach this population.  Neighborhood barbers develop relationships with their clients. With the right training, they can play an important role in community health, for example helping their clients monitor their blood pressure.  
 
These programs operate on the premise that if people realize they are at risk for heart disease, they'll make lifestyle changes: lose weight, exercise, eat the right foods and keep in touch with a doctor. 

A.M. Costa Rica file photo