President Hugo Chavez

Caracas, Venezuela: A Venezuelan supermarket puts a stack of toilet paper on its shop floor, and desperate consumers snatch it up within five minutes. A woman's voice over the loudspeaker reminds shoppers each person can only buy four packages.Few seemed convinced by the government's promise just days earlier that the oil-rich South American nation would promptly import 50 million rolls."It's a sad moment when a rich country like Venezuela reaches this situation," said Yenny Caballero...Read Full Story

By Brian Ellsworth CARACAS (Reuters) - A recording released by Venezuela's opposition purportedly revealing graft and conspiracy in the ruling Socialist Party has stirred a new political storm in the OPEC nation's already traumatic transition after the death of Hugo Chavez. Opposition leaders on Monday played an hourlong, expletive-laced diatribe in which a man identified as powerful state TV commentator Mario Silva lambastes party heavyweight Diosdado Cabello. They said Silva was talking...Read Full Story

Nicolas Maduro elected Venezuela’s president with 50.7% of the votes Nicolas Maduro elected Venezuela’s president with 50.7% of the votes Nicolas Maduro was elected Venezuela’s president today after pledging to deepen 14 years of the late Hugo Chavez’s socialist revolution that cut poverty by half. The 50-year-old former bus driver received 50.7 percent of the votes, the national electoral council said after about 99 percent of ballots were counted. Henrique Capriles Radonski...Read Full Story

Socialist Nicolas Maduro wins Venezuela Hugo Chavez's hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, won a razor-thin victory in Sunday's special presidential election but the opposition candidate refused to accept the result and demanded a full recount. Maduro's stunningly close victory followed an often ugly, mudslinging campaign in which the winner promised to carry on Chavez's self-styled Socialist revolution, while challenger Henrique Capriles' main message was that Chavez put this country...Read Full Story

Venezuela on Sunday made a rare diplomatic overture to the United States, suggesting it could be time for better ties. “We are going to remain open to normalizing relations with the United States,” Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said on Televen television Sunday. “The first thing would be to resume diplomatic representation at the highest level,” he said. The country’s late socialist president Hugo Chavez was a staunch critic of the United States, and his successor Nicolas Maduro is still...Read Full Story