It’s something few people can tell Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez: stop talking.
Chavez, whose speeches often stretch five hours or more, said on Sunday his doctor told him to stay quiet for three days to help a sore throat.
“I am a little affected by the intensive, continuous and permanent use of this cannon I’ve got here and the doctor has told me not to talk,” Chavez said to audience laughter.
Chavez immediately responded that silence was not the best medicine for him.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, not seen in public for nearly three years, has been for a walk in Havana.
Mr Chavez, who visited Cuba a week ago, said in comments carried by Venezuelan state TV that Mr Castro had seemed in “very, very good” shape.
Media in Cuba have neither reported nor confirmed Mr Chavez’s tale.
Mr Castro, 82, has not made a public appearance since undergoing gastric surgery in July 2006.

Venezuelans yesterday voted to abolish term limits for elected officials, boosting Hugo Chávez’s ambition to rule the country for decades.
Electoral authorities said 54% of voters in the referendum backed a constitutional amendment allowing indefinite re-election, with 46% rejecting it – a margin of almost 1 million voters.
An exultant Chávez appeared on the balcony of the presidential palace in Caracas to address cheering supporters after the result was announced. “It is a clear victory for the people,” he said. “It is a clear victory for the revolution.”

Caracas, Venezuela – Venezuelans in the nation’s capital awoke Sunday to the sound of firecrackers and military bugles summoning them to vote on the longevity of President Hugo Chávez’s leadership.
Polls indicate that Mr. Chávez has a slight edge in the national referendum to lift term limits. But this is a tight race that has already produced verbal outbursts, demonstrations, and violence.
The outcome will likely depend on voters in places such as, Petare, a sprawling district in urban Caracas. This area has long been a bastion of support for Mr. Chávez.

CARACAS, Venezuela: Authorities arrested 11 people, including seven police officers, suspected of carrying out an attack on a Caracas synagogue that raised concerns of rising of anti-Semitism in Venezuela, officials said Sunday.
The Attorney General’s Office said an agent of the federally controlled investigative police force and one of the synagogue’s security guards were among the 11 suspects arrested during raids over the weekend. The suspects are scheduled to be arraigned Monday.

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans streamed through the streets of Caracas on Saturday to protest leftist President Hugo Chavez’s second attempt to change the constitution to let him govern as long as he wins elections.
Opinion polls give a slight lead to Chavez ahead of a February 15 vote on whether to allow the president and other politicians to run for reelection as many times as they like in South America’s top oil exporter.
In 2007, voters rejected a similar proposal.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday warmly greeted President Barack Obama only days after accusing him of “throwing stones” at Venezuela and suggesting he was much like ex-President George W. Bush.
The firebrand socialist, who has promised to end what he calls U.S. imperialism and called Bush “the devil,” praised Obama’s decision to close a prison in Guantanamo, Cuba that has drawn harsh international criticism.
“He is a man with good intentions; he has immediately eliminated Guantanamo prison, and that should be applauded,” Chavez said, speaking to supporters in a televised speech.

The party of El Salvador’s former left-wing guerrillas is poised for victory in the parliamentary election.
With almost 70% of votes counted, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) had a nine-point lead over the governing conservative party Arena.
But Arena took the lead in municipal polls and neither party has gained enough seats for an outright majority.
The FMLN’s victory would be their first since the end of the country’s bloody civil war in 1992.

The former President of Argentina, Carlos Menem, has been formally charged with involvement in arms-trafficking.
Prosecutors said Mr Menem had illegally sold weapons to Croatia and Ecuador in the 1990s, when they were involved in conflicts. He denies the charges.
Mr Menem, who has been ill, took part in the session on a video-link from the northern province of La Rioja.
He governed Argentina from 1989 to 1999. He has been on trial, alongside 17 co-defendants, since October.

Venezuelans have voted in elections to choose new state governors and more than 300 mayors across the country.
The polls are being seen as a critical test for President Hugo Chavez, whose allies won in all but two of the country’s 23 states in 2004.
Such a margin of victory is unlikely this time, correspondents say.
Last year Mr Chavez suffered his first electoral defeat in almost 10 years, losing a referendum that would have let presidents seek indefinite re-election.