Paraguay presidential hopeful Oviedo dies

PARAGUAYAN presidential candidate Lino Cesar Oviedo has been killed in a helicopter crash, authorities say.

Oviedo was returning with his bodyguard from a political rally on Saturday night in northern Paraguay when his pilot encountered bad weather.

All three were killed in the crash, said Johnny Villalba, a spokesman for Paraguay's airport authority.

"The causes of the accident and other details are being investigated by experts from the Center for Investigations and Prevention of Air Accidents," he said, an agency that is part of Paraguay's airport authority.

Oviedo, 69, was running in April's elections as leader of Paraguay's third-largest opposition party, the National Union of Ethical Citizens.

A retired general and former army chief, Oviedo had tried for years to lead his nation, and not always through democratic means.

A populist with support among Paraguay's poor indigenous majority, Oviedo was convicted of plotting to overthrow President Juan Carlos Wasmosy in a short-lived rebellion in April 1996, and served half of a 10-year sentence before being released.

The Supreme Court later exonerated Oviedo after military officers denied there had been a coup attempt, freeing him to run for president in 2008.

He came in third, splitting the vote that gave former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo the presidency and ended 60 years of one-party rule by the Colorado party.

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Etch A Sketch creator dies

ANDRE Cassagnes, the French inventor of the Etch A Sketch, a toy beloved of children around the world, has died at the age of 86.

His death in France in mid-January was announced by the Ohio Art Company, which has been making the Etch a Sketch since 1960, according to media reports.

The Etch A Sketch, a grey screen with bold red frame, allows children to draw a picture using a stylus and then erase it with the turn of two buttons.

It has sold more than 100 million copies around the world.

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Fiat boss eyes Chrysler merger in 2014

FIAT boss Sergio Marchionne says he expects the merger of the Italian car giant and its US partner Chrysler will take place in 2014.

"We will succeed in doing it," he said in an interview with the editor of the Repubblica newspaper. "We and VEBA (the United Auto Workers pension fund - a Chrysler shareholder) have different opinions on the value of Chrysler but we will resolve the problem in 2014."

Macchione, who heads both companies, had said on January 30 that the ties between the two automakers were "irreversible" and would merge "as soon as I can afford it" but did not put a date on the merger.

Asked on Sunday if Fiat would keep its Turin headquarters, Macchione said: "We are a big group presence throughout the world; it will depend on access to financial markets and the choices of the Agnelli family" who founded Fiat.

He had "not thought" about the future name of the new entity, he said.

The deal will ultimately give Fiat a 65 per cent stake in Chrysler and full ownership by 2015.

Boosted by increased sales at Chrysler, the Italian giant on Wednesday reported a profitable 2012, announcing a fourth quarter net profit that rose to 388 million euros ($A508 million) from 265 million euros the year before.

The company said it was aiming for profits of between 1.2 and 1.5 billion euros this year.

Fiat took a 20 per cent stake in Chrysler in 2009 as the third largest US automaker emerged from a government-financed restructuring under bankruptcy protection.

It has since steadily expanded its stake by purchasing shares owned by the US government and the VEBA fund.

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Gillard's new ministers to be sworn in

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard is wasting no time getting her new ministers straight into the job with the official swearing-in by the governor-general to be held in Canberra on Monday.

With last week's surprise resignations of Senator Chris Evans and Attorney-General Nicola Roxon, the prime minister took the opportunity to reshuffle the cabinet and bring in new blood.

Mike Kelly gets his first ministry being appointed minister for defence materiel.

Chris Bowen will replace Senator Evans as minister for tertiary education, skills, science and research with responsibility for small business.

Mark Dreyfus will replace Ms Roxon as attorney-general and minister for emergency management, relinquishing the role of cabinet secretary to Jason Clare, who retains home affairs and justice.

Brendan O'Connor will become minister for immigration and citizenship and Mark Butler takes on housing and homelessness.

Ms Gillard said the departure of Senator Evans and Ms Roxon opened the way for fresh talent, new ideas and new energy.

"It means a rejuvenated team who will keep building a smarter, fairer modern Australia," she said in a statement.

New parliamentary secretaries Yvette D'Ath (climate change and energy efficiency), Kelvin Thompson (trade) and Melissa Parke (mental health, homelessness and social housing) will also be sworn in.

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Poor light halts search for missing plane

A SEARCH will resume on Monday morning for an ultralight aircraft and its pilot missing north of Brisbane.

Police said the aircraft, piloted by a woman in her 50s, left Caboolture around 9.15am Sunday on a trip to the Glass House Mountains.

Police received a report about 12.30pm that the plane had failed to return.

An extensive air and land search was launched but had to be called off on Sunday evening due to poor light.

The search will resume at first light on Monday.

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Libyan TV crew 'assaulted' in parliament

SECURITY guards at Libya's parliament have beaten up a crew of Alassema, an independent television network, the channel says.

"A team from (Alassema TV) went to cover a meeting of the national assembly on Friday, entering as they were permitted to," the channel's press office director Fethi Ben Aissa said.

"After interviewing an MP, the team was assaulted by plain clothes guards of the General National Congress," he said, adding that "the public prosecutor has decided to open an inquiry into the incident".

A video posted on the internet, purportedly of the same incident, showed a cameraman being pushed and hit by men in civilian clothing, provoking an online uproar.

A joint statement by dozens of journalists said "this act of aggression essentially constitutes an attack against freedom of the media and is a return to the era of the stifling of the press".

It called for "the creation of a journalist union ... to ensure the defence of people's rights to obtain correct and timely information from different media outlets".

Under the regime of slain dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was ousted by a popular uprising in 2011, independent media outlets and any criticism of government were banned.

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UK police use stun gun on man at palace

A MAN waving large knives outside Buckingham Palace in the presence of tourists has been shocked with a Taser stun gun and arrested, police say.

The Queen and Prince Philip were at one of their weekend retreats, in Sandringham, eastern England, at the time of the incident just before noon (2300 AEDT) on Sunday.

"A man was seen outside the (palace's) centre gate in possession of two knives," said a spokesman for the capital's Metropolitan Police force.

"He was not making threats to members of the public but he was challenged by police. He acted aggressively and a Taser was discharged.

"He is thought to be in his 50s. He was arrested on suspicion of affray and has been taken to a central London police station," the spokesman added.

A video on YouTube showed the man placing a large blade to his neck before waving it about. Moments later he fell to the ground after being shocked with the Taser gun and was quickly surrounded by police officers.

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Assad made grave error on reform: Medvedev

SYRIAN President Bashar al-Assad made a "grave, perhaps fatal error" by delaying political reforms, Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev says.

"He should have acted much more quickly and reached out to the peaceful opposition, which was ready to sit at the negotiating table with him," Russian news agencies quoted Medvedev as saying.

"It's a grave error on his part, perhaps fatal," he said, in a rare criticism of Assad by Syria's traditional ally Moscow.

"It seems to me that his chances of staying (in power) are shrinking day by day," Medvedev said in remarks to CNN television on the sidelines of the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

He reiterated Russia's position that only the Syrian people can decide the fate of Assad, whose departure the West has long called for in the face of the nearly two-year-long conflict in Syria.

"I repeat once again: It is for the Syrian people to decide. Not Russia or the United States or any other country."

Moscow has long opposed any foreign intervention in the conflict that the United Nations says has killed at least 60,000 people since March 2011.

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NSW land valuations to be examined

MORE than two million official land valuations in NSW will be examined by a new inquiry, prompted by concerns that property owners are overpaying land tax and council rates.

The concerns have been sparked by reports indicating the system used by the Office of the Valuer-General is out of step, Fairfax Media reported on Monday.

It said the inquiry would examine confidential data for all 2.4 million land valuations between 2000 and 2012 to pinpoint council areas with the biggest discrepancies between official estimates and market values.

A land valuations analysis conducted by a private firm hired by competitive tender will help the inquiry by parliament's joint standing committee on the Office of the Valuer-General decide whether to recommend changes to the system.

The consultant will be asked to test whether official valuations have outstripped market values and if property owners have lost out in particular local government areas.

The inquiry opens in Broken Hill on Thursday and will take public submissions until March 8.

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Mozambique flood toll rises to 40

THE death toll from heavy flooding in Mozambique has climbed to about 40 after four more bodies were discovered in the worst-hit southern town of Chokwe, its mayor says.

"They found four bodies in the last 24 hours," Jorge Makwakwa told AFP, adding that Chokwe's flood-ravaged streets were littered with rotting animal carcasses.

"I am mobilising workers to remove the bodies but we need masks and gloves," he said.

According to a toll from the United Nations on Friday, the severe flooding in the impoverished country had killed at least 36 people and displaced nearly 70,000, most in the southern province of Gaza.

The deadly floods, which have also hit neighbouring South Africa and Zimbabwe, are the result of days of torrential rains this month that swelled the Limpopo river.

UN agencies said on Sunday that 23,000 families had sought shelter in camps in Gaza and the World Food Program had begun feeding some 75,000 flood-affected people.

UNICEF said it had set up three field hospitals and was broadcasting radio messages urging locals to take basic hygiene measures to ward off diarrhoea and cholera.

While the Limpopo river started to recede in Chokwe on Sunday, the 9000 residents who had stayed behind were in urgent need of clean water and food, mayor Makwakwa said, as a major clean-up operation got under way.

While some tried to salvage what they could and laid their possessions out to dry, others walked through the streets inebriated, having helped themselves to alcohol in flood-damaged stores, an AFP reporter on the scene said.

With relief efforts focused on the camps, some locals said they were struggling to get their hands on emergency supplies.

In the village of Guija, children told AFP they had had no water or food since Wednesday, while a doctor said two mothers had given birth on rooftops after they were marooned by the rising waters.

Mozambican authorities were also scrambling to protect the partly inundated coastal tourist city of Xai-Xai on the Limpopo river, where some 45,000 people were thought to be at risk from the deluge.

Helicopters would be dispatched to try to rescue those trapped by the floodwaters, Disaster Relief Management Institute spokeswoman Rita Almeida told AFP.

"Our biggest priority is to reach the people (who have taken refuge) in trees," she said.

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