Venezuela election race starts, sources say Capriles to run

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela will hold a presidential election on April 14, officials said on Saturday, as acting President Nicolas Maduro tries to benefit from an emotional outpouring for his late mentor, Hugo Chavez, and win his own term in office.

Maduro, a physically imposing former union leader who served as foreign minister and vice president under Chavez, has vowed to keep Chavez's self-styled socialist revolution alive.

He will likely face off against Henrique Capriles, 40, the centrist governor of Miranda state. Capriles, who lost to Chavez in a vote last October, thanked Venezuela's opposition coalition on Saturday for backing him as its candidate, but stopped short of explicitly accepting the nomination.

Opinion polls have shown Maduro as the likely winner, but Chavez's opponents said they wanted a chance to end "Chavismo" at the voting booth.

Opinion polls have shown Maduro as the likely winner, but Chavez's opponents said they wanted a chance to end "Chavismo" at the voting booth. "We want change. We are tired of the Chavez era. It's been 14 years," said Yesenia Herrera, 33, a cook at a Chinese restaurant in an affluent quarter of Caracas.

Maduro was sworn in as acting president in Congress on Friday and handed the red, yellow and blue presidential sash.

"I asked (the election authority) to comply with legal and constitutional obligations and immediately call elections," Maduro, 50, told Congress as he cemented his position as heir-in-waiting.

Chavez was immensely popular among the poor and they have vowed to back Maduro. Millions have filed past his casket to pay their last respects and were still visiting him on Saturday.

The Supreme Court has ruled Maduro does not need to step down in order to campaign, but the move was denounced by opponents as a violation of the constitution and a "fraud."

As Maduro spoke in Congress, residents of some wealthy neighborhoods of Caracas banged pots and pans in a traditional form of protest. At one building in a wealthy corner of Caracas, people drank wine and whisky around a swimming pool, rejoicing at Chavez's demise. They toasted each other, "Happy goodbye, Chavez, we will not miss you!"

HERO OR AUTOCRAT?

Chavez was a hero to millions of mostly poor supporters for using Venezuela's oil wealth to finance heavy social spending, but he was seen as an autocrat by his opponents. He died on Tuesday at age 58 after a two-year battle with cancer.

"The excluded and invisible, the 'losers' of savage capitalism, were made visible and victorious with Chavez," Information Minister Ernesto Villegas said on Twitter.

Like communist leaders Lenin, Stalin and Mao, Chavez's remains are to be embalmed and put on display "for eternity."

An eclectic cast of celebrities, leftist and center-right presidents attended Chavez's state funeral on Friday. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a close ally, broke with protocol to kiss the coffin, while Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn was also in attendance.

It is likely to be a particularly bitter election campaign in the OPEC heavyweight nation, which boasts the world's largest proven oil reserves.

The opposition had accused the government of trampling on the constitution during its handling of Chavez's battle with cancer, and is furious that Maduro was allowed to take on the job of caretaker president while he campaigns for the job.

"This transgression is unprecedented in the history of the republic," opposition lawmaker Maria Corina Machado said on Twitter.

Capriles called it an abuse of power.

"To become president, the people have to elect you," he said on Friday. "No one elected Nicolas president."

(This story has been refiled to delete repeated line in paragraph four)

(Reporting by Simon Gardner, Daniel Wallis, Andrew Cawthorne, Terry Wade, Deisy Buitrago, Marianna Parraga, Pablo Garibian, Diego Ore, Patricia Velez and Ana Isabel Martinez; Editing by Eric Beech and Todd Eastham)

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Cyrus Cylinder, ancient decree of religious freedom, starts U.S. tour

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Cyrus Cylinder of ancient Persia, a landmark in religious freedom and a potent symbol of Iranian national identity, will begin its first U.S. tour with an exhibit that opens Saturday in Washington.

The barrel-shaped clay artifact, 2,500 years old and only 9 inches long, has been described as the first declaration of human rights and an influence on leaders from Alexander the Great to Thomas Jefferson.

It has been celebrated by the shah of Iran and that country's post-revolutionary leaders, as well as by the ancient Hebrews and the founders of modern Israel.

"The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia" exhibit, opening at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, "is about understanding the way Iranians see themselves in the world, and that's obviously important at the moment," said Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, which loaned the piece.

The artifact bears inscriptions proclaiming the victory of Persian ruler Cyrus over Babylon in the sixth century B.C. It records the Persian emperor's restoration of shrines dedicated to different gods and his intention to allow freedom of worship to people displaced by defeated ruler Nabonidus.

Such declarations of religious tolerance were not uncommon at the time, but Cyrus' was unique in its nature and scope.

"The cylinder has acquired a special resonance, and is valued by people all around the world as a symbol of tolerance and respect for different peoples and different faiths," the British Museum says on its website.

More than a million people flocked to see the cylinder when the museum lent it to Iran in 2010, in one of the most-viewed exhibits in the country's history.

Cyrus' proclamation was written in spiky Babylonian cuneiform on the soft clay cylinder, which was buried in Babylon, now in modern-day Iraq. It was dug up in 1879 and has since been in the British Museum.

The exhibit runs through April 28 at the Sackler, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution, then travels to Houston, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

TOLERACE, JUSTICE

Cyrus' declarations of tolerance, justice and religious freedom inspired philosophers and policymakers for centuries.

Scholars say it shows that Cyrus allowed displaced Jews to return to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon and to rebuild the Temple.

In the fourth century B.C., the Greek historian and soldier Xenophon wrote "Cyropedia," a text that portrays Cyrus as the ideal ruler and that greatly influenced Alexander the Great.

Xenophon's portrayal also carried weight with Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers. Thomas Jefferson owned two copies of the cylinder and it influenced his writing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

The United Nations building in New York also has a copy.

The shah of Iran used Cyrus and the Cylinder, which he called a "charter of human rights," to bolster his prestige before he was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"This is a great statement about how a society thought about running itself. And to that extent it's like the Magna Carta," MacGregor told Reuters.

Julian Raby, the Sackler's director, said the show was small in terms of numbers of objects but had a big potential impact.

"We're at a very, very tough moment in terms of how we view Iran and how we view Israeli-Iranian relationships. Anything that gets us to reflect on these things is, I think, a good thing," he said.

The Sackler show includes lectures, other artifacts, a workshop on how to tweet in cuneiform, concerts and a showing of the 1916 silent film "Intolerance," directed by D.W. Griffith.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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At least four police killed in Kenya as vote starts

MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - Two Kenyan police officers, deployed to keep the peace in a tense presidential election following hundreds of deaths after a 2007 vote, were hacked to death by unidentified attackers before polling stations opened on Monday, a government official said.

Julius Marwa, district commissioner in the area of Mombasa, said the police officers were killed in the region of Changamwe, a few kilometers outside the port city. Amdrose Munyasia, chief of police intelligence in the Coast area, confirmed there had been two deaths but gave no more details.

(Reporting in Joseph Akwiri in Mombasa; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Eric Beech)

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