BBC Venezuela has accused US ambassador Charles Shapiro of "personal irresponsibility" after a comedian satirised President Hugo Chavez at a reception at the ambassador's home.

The male comedian dressed as TV journalist Marta Colomina and performed with a puppet dressed to look like Mr Chavez.

"I cannot conceive of any other ambassador accredited to Venezuela who would stoop to this level," Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel told the country's Globovision television station.

He added that his criticism was directed at the ambassador personally, and was not intended to signal a break in relations with the US.

"Despite Mr Shapiro, we want good relations with the United States, with its government and with its people," Mr Rangel said.

The embassy neither knows beforehand nor censors what its guests are going to say

US embassy statement

The US embassy said in a statement that only Mr Shapiro, and not guests, spoke for the mission.

It added that it some of the comedian's performance seemed to be in bad taste - but that it did not control what its guests did or said.

"The embassy neither knows beforehand nor censors what its guests are going to say, neither in the case of a guest speaker nor in the case of a comedian," the statement said.

Mr Shapiro was hosting a reception in honour of press freedom day on Tuesday.

He warned of "deteriorating press freedoms" in the country as he hosted journalism associations and unions at his official residence.

Venezuela, an OPEC member, is one of the world's largest oil exporters and supplies a significant amount of petroleum to the US.

Difficult relations

But relations between Washington and Caracas have been tense since the leftist Mr Chavez took power four years ago.

Mr Chavez has regularly irritated the US

He has been a consistent critic of US foreign policy, condemning the US war in Afghanistan and visiting Saddam Hussein in 2000 - making him the first head of state to do so in nearly a decade.

He has strengthened Venezuela's ties with Cuba and Libya.

For its part, Washington was slow to condemn the short-lived coup that toppled Mr Chavez for several days in April 2002.

He accused the US of being complicit in the action.

Friday, May 16, 2003 Posted: 1721 GMT ( 1:21 AM HKT) Miss Venezuela Ruiz won't make it to Miss Universe pageant. The country's absence this year will be deeply felt. -- Paula Shugart, president, Miss Universe pageant

CARACAS, Venezuela (CNN-Reuters) -- Venezuela's tight foreign exchange controls have stopped the South American country's candidate from competing in the Miss Universe beauty pageant, her main sponsor said Thursday.

Venezuela's private television channel Venevision said Miss Venezuela -- brown-haired Mariangel Ruiz -- would not attend the Miss Universe contest in Panama on June 3 because they were unable to obtain the hard currency needed to send her.

Venevision, which traditionally sponsors the country's candidates, sent a letter on Thursday to the president of the Miss Universe Organization, Paula Shugart, advising her that Ruiz would not be going.

"We are all saddened that Mariangel Ruiz (Miss Venezuela 2003) will not be participating. Venezuela has a very strong following and the country's absence this year will be deeply felt," Shugart responded in a statement sent to Reuters by Venevision.

Venezuelan women have had a remarkable success in such contests, winning four Miss Universe crowns, five Miss World crowns and three Miss International crowns.

Left-wing President Hugo Chavez introduced stringent foreign exchange controls more than three months ago to stem heavy capital flight and a slide in the bolivar currency triggered by an opposition strike in December and January.

Ruiz told Globovision television she was still hoping a last-minute arrangement could allow her to compete in Panama. "I represent a dream and a hope for Venezuela," she said.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Friday, May 16, 2003 By: David Coleman

Three gold mine workers have been killed and six seriously injured after a mine shaft collapse in the Cuasia sector of El Choco 10 in El Callao, southeastern Bolivar State.  Another 40 workers managed to get out safely to alert emergency crews.

El Callao Mayor Coromoto Lugo was quickly on the scene to direct operations as emergency workers tore out tonnes of earth and rock to uncover the dead and injured.  Three bodies were transferred to the El Callao morgue while six injured were ferried to the German Roscio hospital's emergency room.  It is believed there are two miners still missing and rescue crews have been working feverishly to reach any survivors.

Renato Anibal Cedeno (43) was among the first to be rescued but he died only hours later in hospital from his injuries. Jean Efren Basanta (32) had only worked at the mine for three months and leaves a wife and four children. Jesus Grillet (20) from Santa Maria de Upata was transferred directly to the El Callao morgue.

Civil Defense director Jose Garcia says only 20 miners were directly involved in the collapse but that authorities had decided to evacuate the mine pending a full investigation into what happened.

At the German Roscio hospital in El Callao Rolando Febres (37) from Mexico de El Peru is in intensive care with serious facial injuries and a fractured spinal column; Jose Herrera Basanta (31) from Santa Maria de Upata is also in intensive care ... it had been his first day at the mine after more than a year unemployed; Lisandro Pinilla (45) from Remintong El Callao is also in the ICU with Miguel Ramirez (36) from San Felix.

Miners Angel Sanchez (23) and Armando Palma (40) have been flown to Ciudad Guayana for specialist medical care as a result of the serious injuries they received in the mine collapse.  Emergency room doctor Jose Garcia says the hospital was put on a state of alert at 4 in the morning after a call from Civil Defense organizer Reinaldo Pasarela who immediately informed the State Governor to authorize a rescue helicopter and extra paramedics and crews.

An initial survey shows that the collapse may have been caused by heavy rains in the area, causing a gallery ceiling to collapse on support structure.  Working conditions, especially for small-scale miners, are such that safety regulations are often set aside as being prohibitively expensive and authorities are waging an endless battle to contain illegal mining operations centered on traditional gold mining zones in El Callao, Sifontes, Raul Leoni, El Manteco, Sucre and Cedeno.

smh.com.au May 17 2003

The "mail" in blackmail (at various times also spelt maill, male) is an old Scots word for rent. This was usually paid in what was often called white money, silver coins. It comes from Old Norse "mal", meaning an agreement, later a contract, and then the payment specified by the contract.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, chieftains in the Scottish Highlands and along the border between Scotland and England ran protection rackets in which they threatened farmers with pillage and worse if they didn't pay up. This amounted to an informal tax or extra rent and the farmers, with twisted humour, thought of it as the opposite of the legitimate white money, or white mail, that they paid. Black has for many centuries been associated with the dark side of human activities, hence blackmail. The term was extended in the 19th century to other ways of extorting money with menaces, and in particular to the threat of exposing a person's secrets.

Ian Blair Hamilton, Byron Bay

Why have the Dutch produced so many famous painters but hardly any composers or writers?

When Holland had its "Golden Age" in the 17th century, it was the burghers, and in particular the merchants, who amassed huge fortunes. While the wealthy aristocracy in other European countries (then a republic, Holland had no royal house) entertained their friends with their own court orchestra, the Dutch tried to impress their friends with works by the great masters (like Rembrandt) in their grand canal houses. Catholic churches (also the sponsors of music) were closed due to the Reformation, and the Dutch Reformed Church frowned upon large orchestras in churches. Anne Frank is probably the most famous Dutch writer, with more translations in other languages than any other book, apart from the Bible.

Johan de Ruiter, Surry Hills

I have noticed some Asian tourists giving the V-sign when having their photos taken. Why do they do this?

If you watch Japanese cartoons, you'll notice that the main characters tend to pose with a V-sign after they have accomplished their "missions". So V is more likely to stand for victory (or in this case, "I have made it here") rather than a sign of peace.

Adrian Lee, St Ives

It's predominantly Japanese tourists who display this for a photo. It symbolises victory. It's also a message of good fun or a good time. Generally, the former interpretation is for sporting team photos and the latter for holiday pix. I've observed this in Taiwan, but not so in Hong Kong.

Steven Katz, Gordon

Why is the abbreviation for number "No." and not "Nu."? "No." for number is a type of abbreviation called a contraction, meaning that you take out the middle of a word. In this case, the word is the Italian "numero", which means number. It was devised by Italian shipping clerks, who also contracted "ditto" and made do with that.

Torbjorn Lundmark, Manly

If you catalogued the Bible, would it be regarded as a work of fiction or non-fiction? Although the Bible contains material that some believe is fictional, it also contains historical information that has been verified as factual. On the basis of the latter it presumably would be catalogued as non-fiction.

David Gordon, Cranebrook

Is it cheaper to leave lights on if going in and out of a room, or to turn them on and off? The flick of the light switch completes the electrical circuit, after which point energy is being consumed. When using normal tungsten filament light bulbs, every second the light is on will lead to a more expensive electricity bill. In the case of fluorescent tubes, the energy consumption to electrically charge the gas in the tube (when the light flickers before starting up) is eight times greater than the general energy consumption of the same tube once started.

Assuming it takes a maximum of four seconds to start up a fluorescent light tube, it would only be cheaper to leave the light on if you were to be back in the room within 32 seconds - otherwise turning the light off as you exit the room would be the most cost-effective option.

Jason Carroll, Turramurra

Why do so many place names, especially countries, start and end with the letter A? Blame it on the Romans, the Latin language and the Renaissance. The ancient Romans, in their conquest of the then-known world, named many countries and towns/settlements with either masculine names, ending in "um" (such as Londinium and Belgium), or feminine names ending in "a" (Britannia, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Romania, Bulgaria). But the latter seemed to be preferred.

The period of the European Renaissance, the 14th to 16th centuries, saw a strong swing to the much-admired standards of the Roman and Greek civilisations. The Renaissance also saw the emergence of European world exploration and settlement. So many of the new colonies and their cities were given stylised names with "a" endings (Australia, America, Canada, Alaska, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, India, Malaya and so on).

Jim Martyn, Mollymook

What is the difference between a government and a regime? The use of the regiment.

Michael Flatt, Byron Bay

A "free" press, or maybe Rupert Murdoch's personal support for your junta.

Timothy Aley, Federal

What's the difference between a government and a regime? Bail.

Conrad Mathias, Cooma

Any answers?

• Why do seasons start at the beginning of the month in Australia, but on the 21st of the month in the northern hemisphere?
• When Tasmania broke free of the mainland, why did it stop so close?
• Why doesn't toothpaste have a use-by date?
• Why is there beef and chicken stock but no lamb stock?
• What sort of event or collision would it take to make the planet explode?

READERS' RESPONSES: Email your answers, or any questions you want answered, to bigquestions@ smh.com.au or write to Big Questions, Spectrum, SMH, GPO Box 506, Sydney 2001. Limit questions to one short sentence and answers to a maximum of 130 words, and state your name and suburb/town.

<a href=www.iol.co.za>IOL, May 16 2003 at 06:12AM By Sid Astbury

Sydney - So long in coming, so sublime to behold, the euphoria that suffused East Timor's independence day almost a year ago has burned away like the morning mists on the hills that ring Dili, the new nation's sparkling seaside capital.

Helping lance the irrational exuberance of that day was rioting in December that took the lives of at least two young demonstrators and which left houses and businesses smouldering.

Also conspiring to deliver a painful dose of reality were the daily departures from Comoro Airport of the United Nations staff that had shepherded the half-island to freedom.

The 800 000 East Timorese are finally rid of their colonial masters - the Portuguese had been in charge for 400 years, the Indonesians for 24 - but independence is still a notional concept.

The border with the Indonesian province of West Timor is patrolled by the 3 800 UN peacekeepers that give the dirt-poor territory its security backbone.

The annual budget of the left-leaning administration of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri is $77-million (about R610-million), 40 per cent of which is foreign aid.

Alkatiri has promised the mostly Roman Catholic East Timorese that true independence will come when oil and gas revenues from fields in the Timor Sea start rolling in next year.

From $7-million in 2004, the value of oil money sluicing through government coffers should rise to $300-million in 2013.

The cash comes courtesy of the Timor Sea Treaty, which gives Dili 90 per cent of petroleum revenues from one part of the Timor Sea and Canberra the remaining 10 per cent.

It's a huge windfall that could either underpin the prosperity of the world's newest nation or tip it into a cycle of massive corruption and revolving door governments - witness Nigeria and Venezuela.

"The equitable, sustainable, and transparent management of petroleum revenues is a heavy responsibility," Alkatiri has admitted. "The East Timorese desperately need the revenues."

They do indeed: with an annual average income of less than $500, they are the poorest people in South East Asia.

The East Timorese are in some ways worse off than they were when the Portuguese simply upped and left in 1975. Then, the territory was self sufficient in food, but is now reliant on imports of rice - despite over half the workforce being in agriculture.

Coffee, the biggest cash crop and only sizeable export, was being harvested at an annual rate of 45 000 tons before Indonesian troops carriers ran up Dili's beaches. This year, the coffee harvest should reach just 10 000 ton.

But optimism that East Timor will make a good go of independence has yet to fracture.

The December riots, described by President Xanana Gusmao as a little local difficulty unlikely to be repeated, did not prove the first of a series.

The administration in Jakarta, despite sending gunships into Dili harbour unannounced in the hours before independence, has caused little trouble to its counterpart in Dili over the past 12 months.

Paul Dibb, an academic at Canberra's Australian National University, has complimented the East Timorese on not riling their former masters.

"The Indonesians see the taking away of their East Timor province as an enormous humiliation - even though they clearly brought it upon themselves," Dibb wrote recently. "The East Timorese leadership know they must learn to live with a strongly resentful giant neighbour."

Another phenomenon the East Timorese must accept is the withering of international interest in their fate.

Before independence, Foreign Minister Ramos Horta said he would like to see East Timor become "almost an Australian protectorate".

He is likely to be disabused. Canberra is keen to get its relationship with Dili onto an equal footing, where there is no sentimentality and no residual special treatment.

An indication of this new climate came last month when Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock rejected a plea by Gusmao that the 1 600 East Timorese who hold temporary visas be allowed to stay in Australia.

Ruddock said it was "a little disingenuous" of Gusmao to appeal to East Timorese stuck in refugee camps in West Timor to return home but not extend the same entreaty to those availing themselves of Australia's hospitality.

That the relationship was going to be businesslike rather than patron-client was underlined when giant Australian phone company Telstra shocked the East Timorese by not extending its contract to run the territory's telecommunications system.

Expatriates in Dili may moan about creeping corruption, burdensome taxation and the high-cost economy, but the transition to self-rule has gone better than most expected. - Sapa-DPA