Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez will have to stay in jail through his trial, which is now expected to begin in August.  Lopez is charged with instigating mob violence in anti-government demonstrations that resulted in three people getting killed in February.

Conservative Popular Will Party leader Lopez turned himself in to authorities a couple of days after the deaths, in a grandiose spectacle in which he clung to a statue of a Latin American hero and shouted revolutionary slogans.  But he won’t answer for the three people killed; the charges are damaging property, arson and instigating violence.

Despite the loss of life through the demonstrations against the democratically elected government, critics say the detention of Lopez is politically motivated.

While the US and some human rights groups have condemned Venezuela for jailing Lopez before his trial, human rights activists on the ground in Venezuela are trying to get some international sympathy for the prolonged disappearance of ruling party activist, Jonathan Hernandez.  He was volunteering as a teacher to end illiteracy and provide high school education for adults in the Andean city of El Vigia, near Merida when he went missing a month ago.  But the area has seen trouble lately, mostly from right-wing and Colombian narco-paramilitaries.