South America | featured news

The government sent top investigators Thursday to hunt for Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos, whose abduction has shaken Venezuela's elite athletes and focused attention on the nation's sharp rise in kidnappings for ransom....

Venezuelan federal authorities on Thursday dispatched their "best investigators" to track the kidnappers of Major League Baseball catcher Wilson Ramos, the country's justice minister said.

President Cristina Fernandez, buoyed by Argentina's booming economy, was re-elected by a landslide Sunday, exit polls predicted. The polls aid Fernandez won 54 percent to 55 percent of the votes cast -- the widest victory margin for any Argentine president since democracy was restored in the country three decades ago.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez likely has less than two years to live, his former doctor said, as the ailing firebrand traveled to Cuba for a checkup following cancer treatment.

All 21 people aboard a military plane that went missing off Chile's Pacific coast, near the Juan Fernandez islands, are dead, Defense Minister Andres Allamand said Saturday, CNN Chile reported.

President Hugo Chavez will undergo a third round of chemotherapy for cancer at home in Venezuela beginning Sunday, he said, instead of traveling to Cuba where he had two previous rounds of treatment.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez got half the votes against a divided opposition in Sunday’s primary, giving her re-election campaign a feeling of invincibility.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez revealed that he is fighting cancer after having a tumor removed in Cuba.

Venezuelan prosecutors say a newspaper columnist who was also an opposition political activist has been shot to death.

President Obama arrived in Brazil Saturday for his first trip to South America, a five-day tour intended to underscore economic ties to the region.