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Published: November 30, 2009
Updated: 11/30/2009 01:15 am
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay -- A plain-talking former leader of leftist guerrillas who once sought power through kidnappings and bombings is now the president-elect of Uruguay.
Jose Mujica won more than 50 percent of the votes cast in a runoff election yesterday, according to exit polls by the South American country's three leading pollsters, giving the center-left Broad Front coalition five more years in power.
Former President Luis A. Lacalle of the center-right National Party conceded defeat.
Honduras' new president faces test of legitimacy
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Hondurans elected a new president yesterday whose first challenge will be defending his legitimacy to the world and ending a crisis over a June coup that has isolated the country.
Porfirio Lobo and Elvin Santos, two prosperous businessmen from the political old guard, are the front-runners. But their campaigns have been overshadowed by the debate over whether Hondurans should vote at all in an election largely shunned by international monitors.
The dispute has split Western Hemisphere countries, and voter turnout could determine how widely the next government is recognized.
The United States, hoping to resolve its first major policy test in Latin America, is defending the election; leftist governments allege it whitewashes Central America's first coup in 20 years.
Chef missing from ship may have gone overboard
ROME -- Colombian maritime authorities searched yesterday for an Italian chef believed to have gone overboard from a U.S. cruise ship off Colombia's Caribbean coast, officials and the man's family said.
There were different accounts about when and where Angelo Faliva, 31, was last seen as the Princess Cruises Coral Princess sailed from Aruba to Cartagena, Colombia, Wednesday and Thursday.
Julie Benson, a spokeswoman for Princess, said Faliva was last seen on a deck about 8:30 a.m. Thursday.
France restores relations with Rwanda after 3 years
PARIS -- France and Rwanda have restored diplomatic ties, officials in both countries said yesterday, three years after relations were severed when a Paris judge accused Rwandan President Paul Kagame of ordering his predecessor's assassination.
President Nicolas Sarkozy's chief of staff, Claude Gueant, had discussions with Kagame in Rwanda's capital yesterday. Afterward, Sarkozy and Kagame "decided to re-establish diplomatic relations," a statement from the president's office said.
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