San Salvador (AFP) - A former leftist guerrilla narrowly missed victory in El Salvador's presidency race Sunday, and will now face a run-off vote with a conservative rival, according to official results. With 81 percent of the vote counted, ruling leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren had nearly 49 percent of the vote, just missing the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. He will now face former San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano, 67, of the...

The presidential candidate from El Salvador's right-wing opposition Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party is extending his narrow lead in the race to win February's election, according to a poll released on Monday. ARENA candidate Norman Quijano has 35.5 percent of voters' support, while former guerilla commander Salvador Sanchez, candidate for the ruling Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation, is close behind with 31.8 percent, according to the survey by polling firm Mitofsky....

During the Heritage Foundation's recent event Insecurity in Honduras and the Upcoming Elections: What's at Stake for Central America, panelists Ambassador Roger Noriega of Vision Americas, Eric Olson of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and Joseph Humire of the Center for a Secure Free Society laid out their concerns about the upcoming electoral processes in Honduras and El Salvador. Ambassador Noriega pointed to a "new strain" of Latin American populism that seeks the...

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced on Friday that he was to request an enabling law next Tuesday to the National Assembly to establish "strict rules that work as pedagogic and punitive rules" against corruption. Maduro also remarked that new laws should also be drafted in order to permit funding of the political activity of both people and political parties. It would be "a public funding system of the democratic and political activities of the citizens, and...

Arbitrarily releasing former President Alberto Fujimori from serving his full prison sentence for human rights crimes would be incompatible with Peru's obligations under international law, Human Rights Watch said today. Fujimori recently received medical treatment, and there have been some calls for a "humanitarian pardon." Although early release of a seriously ill prisoner on humanitarian grounds is a legitimate practice, it should only be granted on the basis of an independent,...

A former governor was arrested Tuesday on suspicion that he embezzled more than $9 million (about 100 million pesos) in federal disaster fund money meant to rebuild hurricane-struck zones in southern Mexico. Pablo Salazar, formerly governor of Chiapas, was detained in the airport of the Yucatan resort of Cancun by Chiapas state police, said Raziel Lopez, the state attorney general. Police flew him to Tuxtla Gutierrez, capital of Chiapas, Tuesday night to be presented before a judge. ...

Representatives from 12 Latin American countries and Spain met in an event called "MPs around the world", in which former governor of the state of Zulia, Oswaldo Álvarez Paz, highlighted the importance of having international observers in the upcoming parliamentarian elections to be held in Venezuela. The former presidential candidate called upon European lawmakers to assess Venezuela's situation. "International observers must witness the disaster Venezuela has...

TAMPA - Keith Stansell and two other men who were held hostage in Colombia for more than five years are suing FARC, the Colombian paramilitary group that held them. Stansell, of Manatee County, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes were captured Feb. 13, 2003, when their drug-surveillance plane crashed in the Colombian jungle after being hit by machine gun fire. They were captured by FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a leftist guerrilla group that wants to overthrow the Colombian...

The charge d'affaires in Tehran Argentina, Mario Enrique Quinteros criticized Western media for using the testimony of the anti-Iranian terrorist organization Mojahedin-e Khalq in the case of bomb attack in 1994 of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires. The Western and Israeli media claims that a number of Iranian officials are wanted by Interpol in connection with the AMIA, left 85 dead and injured more than other 300. Iran has denied the allegations and said Alberto Nisman, the...

Carlos Saúl Menem, an ex-president of Argentina who is currently a senator in the South American republic, was accused on October 1 in Buenos Aires of obstruction of justice charges for his alleged part in covering up the so-called "Syrian connection" and Iranian involvement in the 1994 car-bombing that killed 85 people and injured hundreds more at the Jewish Mutual Association of Argentina (AMIA). Also brought to trial were Menem's brother Munir, police officials Jorge...