President Hugo Chavez

Casting more uncertainty on the health of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday that it has canceled a summit of foreign leaders scheduled for next week that Chavez was to have presided over to mark Venezuela's bicentennial independence celebration. The ministry statement said the Latin America and Caribbean Summit on Development and Integration would not be held because Chavez is in a "process of recuperation and extremely strict medical treatment" in Cuba.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced Tuesday that he will undergo surgery to repair a 1-inch "abscess" in the same abdominal area where Cuban doctors removed a cancerous tumor in June. Chavez's surprise announcement, made during an official trip to Barinas state, came amid swirling rumors published this week in Brazil's O Globo newspaper that his cancer had metastasized to his liver. "It's a small lesion, about 2 centimeters in diameter, very clearly visible, which requires new surgery, which one supposes will be less complicated than the last one," Chavez said as he visited the Santa Ines industrial complex.

A retired general and onetime confidant of President Hugo Chavez has been sentenced to prison in a case that revealed the divisions in Venezuelan society. The retired general, Raul Isaias Baduel, was sentenced to a nearly eight-year prison term Friday night by a military court on charges of abuse of power, misappropriation of funds and violation of the military code while he was an officer. Baduel's family criticized the verdict as unjust and said imprisoning him was a means of silencing a prominent critic.

For more than a decade, political opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have sought to unseat the fiery populist. Yet his rivals have proved to be their own worst enemy. They've bickered among themselves, waged electoral boycotts that played into Chavez's hands, and failed to show that they understand the plight of the country's poor. But this past weekend, the opposition did the unthinkable: It coalesced behind a single candidate, Henrique Capriles, a youthful governor from the state of Miranda, to challenge Chavez in this year's presidential elections.

Reporting from Bogota, Colombia, and Caracas, Venezuela -- Nurse Luisa Perez Garcia thought there was no time to lose. So, first thing Monday morning, she rushed down to the Electropolis appliance store in the Sabana Grande section of Caracas and bought a new TV and refrigerator, purchases she had hoped to defer until later this year. Garcia was among the thousands of Venezuelans flocking to stores to snap up appliances, auto parts, electronics and other imports before they feel the full impact of President Hugo Chavez's decision last week to officially adjust the nation's currency for the first time since 2005.

The crowd at the hospital went wild when the president arrived. They broke through the phalanx of soldiers in red berets, calling his name, pushing letters at him, rushing him with such fervor that the first lady was shaken up in the crush and retreated to the motorcade. President Hugo Chavez--a boxily built ex-athlete sporting a blue suit and the easy smile of a working man among working people--kept going.

Reporting from Bogota, Colombia, and Caracas, Venezuela -- A Venezuelan judge on Wednesday ordered a former state governor and critic of President Hugo Chavez to remain in custody without bail while facing charges of conspiracy, incitement and spreading false information. The incorrect information, government prosecutors said, was an assertion by former Zulia state Gov. Oswaldo Alvarez Paz in a March 8 television program that Venezuela has become a drug-trafficking hub. "Venezuela has converted into a center of operations that facilitates the business of drug trafficking," Alvarez Paz said without directly accusing Chavez of being involved in illicit activity.

Eight opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez were imprisoned for up to six years for an act of rebellion during a 2002 coup against the left-wing leader, a defense attorney said.

President Hugo Chavez lobbed a litany of insults at President Bush, including "donkey" and "drunkard," in response to a White House report branding Chavez a demagogue. Chavez, one of Bush's fiercest critics, has accused the U.S. government of seeking to oust him from the presidency of Venezuela, which supplies about 15% of U.S. crude oil imports.

The United States, which has clashed politically with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, strongly backed plans for a national referendum on whether he should stay in office. "The United States, like other nations in the hemisphere, backs a constitutional solution to the crisis," spokesman Stephen McFarland at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas told a news conference.

Casting more uncertainty on the health of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday that it has canceled a summit of foreign leaders scheduled for next week that Chavez was to have presided over to mark Venezuela's bicentennial independence celebration. The ministry statement said the Latin America and Caribbean Summit on Development and Integration would not be held because Chavez is in a "process of recuperation and extremely strict medical treatment" in Cuba.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' hospitalization and subsequent disappearance from public view while visiting Cuba has stirred rumors about the seriousness of his medical condition and controversy over whether he should delegate power temporarily. Chavez, 56, has not been seen in public since June 8, when he arrived in Havana on a Latin American tour. Two days later, he underwent surgery for a "pelvic abscess," and the Venezuelan government has offered little detail on his condition.

Last month, one of Latin America's top journalism prizes went to a man whose only known investigative coup was a recent finding that capitalism may have destroyed life on Mars. Yes, none other than Hugo Chavez, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, waltzed off with the Rodolfo Walsh Prize, given by Argentina's National University de la Plata and named after one of the 20th century's genuine martyrs to the profession. It was hard not to suppose that the honor was promoted by Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who has lately chosen to play Tonto to Chavez's neo-socialist Lone Ranger.

When Elbert Santiago, a poor messenger service employee and father of three, heard about a chance to trade up from his "hole" of a slum apartment to a place a short stroll from the presidential palace, he didn't think twice. After all, the price was the same for both places: practically nothing. Santiago is a squatter, one of the army of poor who with the encouragement of leftist President Hugo Chavez have taken over an estimated 155 office, apartment and government buildings here in the Venezuelan capital.

As Eugenio Suarez took some practice swings in the batting cage at the Detroit Tigers' baseball academy, the anti-U.S. bluster of President Hugo Chavez couldn't have been further from his mind. He was too intent on his coach's instructions to keep his hands tight, take a short stride and turn his hips quickly through his swing. "I'm just trying to make my dream come true, to make it to the big leagues," said Suarez, a 19-year-old shortstop, who hit one solid line drive after another, the balls crashing against the home run fence 350 feet from the plate.

? The Obama administration revoked the visa of the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States on Wednesday in a tit-for-tat diplomatic response to Venezuela's rejection of the U.S. choice to be the next envoy to the South American country. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday dared the U.S. government to expel his ambassador, saying he will not allow the U.S. diplomat, Larry Palmer, to be ambassador because he made what Chavez described as blatantly disrespectful remarks about Venezuela.

President Hugo Chavez said Cuba's ailing former president is alive and active -- dismissing rumors that Fidel Castro is gravely ill or dead. Concerns over Castro's health have grown since he sent a terse, one-line message to the Cuban people Jan. 1, his revolution's 50th anniversary. Chavez said last week that it was unlikely Castro would be seen in public again.

President Hugo Chavez threatened to imprison the popular governor of Venezuela's western Zulia state for allegedly plotting to kill him. Chavez leveled the accusation against Manuel Rosales -- one of Venezuela's four opposition governors -- just weeks before Nov. 23 gubernatorial and municipal elections. Rosales, the two-time governor of Zulia, is running for mayor of Maracaibo, Venezuela's second-largest city. He ran against Chavez for the presidency in 2006, but Chavez handily defeated him.

Venezuela's National Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly approved a law giving President Hugo Chavez broad discretionary powers for 18 months, a measure that opponents claim is meant to undercut their strength in the upcoming assembly session starting next month. The law gives Chavez power to govern by decree for the fourth time since he took office in 1999 and is necessary, he said, to deal with flooding that has left 40 people dead and 133,000 homeless. During the final debate, the bill was modified to give Chavez more than the 12 months of special powers he had initially requested.