Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's president for more than 14 years and the most outspoken of Latin America's populist leftists, died after a long battle with cancer. Nicolás Maduro, the acting president and Mr Chávez's chosen successor, declared seven days of official mourning. A new election could be called within 30 days. See article Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party changed its statutes to allow its legislators to support plans by the new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to expand private investment in the country's nationalised oil industry and to extend taxes to processed food and medicines. Argentina's president, Cristina Fernández, responded to the refusal by the country's courts to back her in a dispute with a media group by proposing to "democratise justice" by holding an election for the body that chooses judges. Jumping off a fiscal cliff In America the deadline passed for avoiding the "sequester" of severe cuts to spending. Barack Obama met Republicans to try to secure a deal on the deficit and said he would strive to find a "caucus of common sense." Mr Obama signalled that he will give green issues more priority in his second term by nominating Ernest Moniz, an academic and nuclear physicist who specialises in energy and the environment, to be his new energy secretary, and Gina McCarthy, an expert in air quality, to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile, a study by the State Department concluded that the Keystone XL pipeline would have little effect on greenhouse-gas emissions. The ultimate aim of the pipeline is to transport oil from Canada's tar sands to refineries on the Gulf coast, but opposition from greens has caused the White House to delay a final decision. The Republican-controlled legislature in Arkansas overrode the veto of the state's Democratic governor of a bill that bans abortion after the 12th week of pregnancy. It would be by far the strictest limit to abortion in the United States, though it will probably be struck down by the courts. Higher frequency A bomb killed at least 45 people in a mainly Shia area in Karachi, Pakistan's commercial capital, the latest of several big sectarian attacks against Pakistan's Shia minority over the past year. Schools and businesses closed in protest. Malaysian troops continued to search for armed members of a Filipino clan embroiled in a three-week conflict in the Malaysian province of Sabah. More than 200 Filipinos landed last month to enforce the claim on the province by the sultanate of Sulu in the southern Philippines, which ruled parts of Borneo for centuries. Malaysia launched a raid on the group, but the clan members escaped. The conflict has so far killed at least 27 people. The United States proposed a resolution to expand UN sanctions on North Korea for conducting a third nuclear test. North Korea raised its bellicose rhetoric by threatening to scrap an armistice that ended the Korean war in 1953 and launch a nuclear attack. Police in the Maldives arrested Mohamed Nasheed, a former president, for alleged abuse of office. Mr Nasheed is accused of illegally ordering the arrest of a senior judge. That incident had sparked unrest, which led to Mr Nasheed's forced resignation in 2012. Rumbling thunder in the shires In Britain there were more murmurs of discontent among Conservative MPs after the party came third in a parliamentary by-election in Eastleigh, a leafy southern suburb. The Tories came behind the United Kingdom Independence Party, which is outflanking them on the populist right. The Liberal Democrats, the smaller coalition partner, retained the seat, much to the relief of its leader, Nick Clegg. Frank Stronach, an Austro-Canadian car-parts billionaire, passed his first electoral test when his new anti-euro party took 12 seats in two Austrian state elections. Team Stronach still has to present a full policy platform ahead of a federal election later this year. Latvia made a formal application to become the 18th member of the euro zone. In 2009 it became the first country in the European Union to ask for assistance from the EU and the IMF, but it has now the EU's highest GDP growth. The upper house of the Czech Republic's parliament charged Vaclav Klaus, the outgoing president, with treason because of his wide-ranging judicial amnesty at the start of the year, which stopped several high-profile corruption prosecutions. The charges will go before the constitutional court, though Mr Klaus will have left office before any ruling is handed down. An Italian court sentenced Silvio Berlusconi, a former prime minister, to a year in jail for releasing details of a private telephone call recorded during investigations into a banking scandal. Mr Berlusconi, fresh from a strong performance in Italy's elections, has protested his innocence and can appeal against the decision. At the ballot box Preliminary results of Kenya's elections suggested that Uhuru Kenyatta, a son of the country's first post-independence president, was ahead of Raila Odinga in the race for the presidency. But if neither candidate gets more than 50% of the votes in the first round, a run-off will take place, probably on April 11th. Widespread violence that had marred the last elections in 2008 had not so far recurred. The new American secretary of state, John Kerry, on a nine-country tour of Europe and the Middle East, said that the administration supported efforts by other governments to funnel arms to the Syrian rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar Assad. But he said the arms should go to the less extreme groups. Meanwhile, one of the many rebel factions in Syria kidnapped 21 Filipino UN peace observers in the Golan Heights. The area is contested by Israel and Syria but has been comparatively stable since the 1970s. Egypt's general election, planned for April 22nd, may be delayed, after an administrative court ruled that the electoral law must first be reviewed by the Supreme Constitutional Court. The opposition had threatened to boycott the vote because it claimed that the law favoured the ruling Islamists.