■ Venezuela
Banned channel on YouTube
Forced off the air by President Hugo Chavez, an opposition-aligned TV channel has begun taking its news shows to popular video-sharing Web site YouTube. Since it went off the airwaves last Sunday, Radio Caracas Television has kept taping programs and is uploading its news show The Observer each day to YouTube, RCTV vice president Maribel Morales said on Friday. YouTube listed the program as its most-subscribed feed of the week. Chavez refused to renew the channel's license, accusing it of inciting a failed coup in 2002 and violating various broadcast laws.
■ United States
Tongan royals' trial begins
A teenage girl involved in a highway crash that killed two members of the Tongan royal family often drove fast and recklessly and should be convicted of vehicular manslaughter, a prosecutor said during opening statements of her trial. Edith Delgado, 19, was racing another car in July when her car sideswiped a car carrying Tongan Prince Tu'ipelehake, 55; his wife, Princess Kaimana Aleamotu'a Tuku'aho, 46; and their driver, Vinisia Hefa, 36, San Mateo prosecutors said on Friday. Investigators said Delgado was driving between 137kph and 160kph when she crashed into their car, which flipped over, killing everyone inside.
■ Brazil
US pilots indicted
A federal judge on Friday indicted two US pilots and four local air traffic controllers for contributing to Brazil's worst air crash, which killed 154 people last year. The prosecutor's office in western Mato Grosso State, where a Boeing 737 operated by Brazilian carrier Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes crashed after clipping wings with a Legacy business jet on Sept. 29, said Judge Murilo Mendes accepted its case and the accused will stand trial. Lenita Violato, a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor's office, said the Legacy pilots, Joseph Lepore and Jan Paladino, and three controllers are accused of unintentional crime of exposing aircraft to peril.
■ United States
Arnie's cigar sparks row
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger lit a cigar during his trip to Canada this week, but did he break US law? The celebrity governor was in Ottawa on Wednesday on his way to the airport when his motorcade made a detour to a hotel. There, he picked up a Cuban Partagas cigar in a shop, with the bill paid by an aide, the Ottawa Citizen reported. US citizens are prohibited from buying Cuban cigars anywhere in the world. His office would not confirm or deny that the governor indulged in a forbidden smoke while in Canada, where he was on a trade mission. "He stopped and bought a cigar and smoked it on the way to the airport," spokesman Aaron McLear said. "There's no way of telling now because he smoked it." Americans convicted of violating trade regulations can be sentenced to fines or prison.
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