Venezuela’s disputed poll result is bad news for Cuba’s Communist regime, which relied on former leader Hugo Chavez for hard currency and an annual supply of $6bn of subsidized oil. The end of chavista subsidies could trigger “social upheaval” on …

“Violent clashes at opposition protests over Venezuela’s disputed presidential election have killed at least seven people and injured 61, as both sides mobilized supporters nationwide for new demonstrations,” Reuters reports:

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles has demanded a full recount …

The new Oscar-nominated Chilean film NO, set during the highly-charged 1988 plebiscite on General Augusto Pinochet’s authoritarian rule, tells “a tale that has largely gone untold in the quarter century since the end of Pinochet’s regime – the role …

Nicolas Maduro (above), the hand-picked heir to former president Hugo Chávez, is claiming a narrow victory in Venezuela’s presidential election, with 50.7% of the vote against 49.1% for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, the BBC reports.

But the “surprisingly …

“Venezuela’s first post-Chávez presidential election, taking place on April 14, has the unfortunate likelihood of suffering from the same shortcomings of the contest that occurred when Hugo Chávez was re-elected this past October: the vote was neither free nor fair …

“Why would Cuban security agents choose to kill the island’s leading dissident while he was in the company of two Europeans who might bear witness to the crime?” asks The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt:

To outside observers, it’s an …

The daughter of the late Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá will ask the Inter-American Human Rights Commission to investigate her father’s death in a suspicious car crash last year.

Rosa Maria Payá (above, with her father) told an audience at the …

“The daughter of a well-known Cuban dissident who died in a car wreck last year stepped up calls on Thursday for an independent, international investigation of the case after hearing from the man who was driving the vehicle that another …

The failure of young democracies in so many regions of the world has had enormous consequences, writes Joshua Kurlantzick. Most obviously, the renewed strength of authoritarian rule means that billions of people continue to live under repressive or pseudo-democratic …

“Doing business in post-Hugo Chávez  Venezuela is not for the faint of heart,” writes AP’s Fabiola Sanchez:

Thousands of companies suffer under currency controls that all but deny them the U.S. dollars they need to import vital items into …