
Uruguay Sunday's presidential runoff results have been so tight that the Electoral Court will only make a definitive announcement sometime late this week after it has completed counting all votes, including some 34.000, classified as “observed”. This is because the difference between the two candidates is some 29.000 votes.

A US$1.35 billion appeal has been launched to meet the increasing humanitarian needs of Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean and to support the communities hosting them. The ongoing political and economic crisis in Venezuela has forced more than 4.6 million citizens to flee, nearly 80% of whom are sheltering in the region.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Saturday his government is alert and prepared for any possible social unrest after weeks of protests that have sent shockwaves across the region in recent weeks, but added he was not concerned.

Industrious billionaire, a three-term mayor of New York and a climate change activist, Michael Bloomberg is now eyeing one last prize: the US presidency. The 77-year-old giant of the financial world officially announced that he was joining the race for the 2020 Democratic nomination on Sunday, but he has some catching up to do.

The United States is the world's biggest source of instability and its politicians are going around the world baselessly smearing China, the Chinese government's top diplomat said on Saturday in a stinging attack at a G20 meeting in Japan.

Interim Bolivian President Jeanine Añez agreed to withdraw the military from protest areas and repeal a law giving them broad discretion in the use of force as part of a preliminary “pacification” deal struck early on Sunday with protest leaders.

President Ivan Duque, the target of unprecedented anti-government protests in Colombia, on Sunday opened a national dialogue aimed at assuaging popular anger. Duque, a conservative who is deeply unpopular 18 months after his election, initiated the social dialogue with mayors and other officials at 3:00 pm, the presidency said in a statement.

This Sunday 2.7 million Uruguayans will cast their ballots in the presidential runoff, which according to all opinion poll forecasts, will have Luis Lacalle Pou, the leader of an opposition multicolor alliance as head of the Executive next March, but equally significant, power switching, it will mark the end of fifteen years of almost undisputed predominance of a catch-all coalition, Broad Front, which ruled South America's smallest country for three consecutive five-year mandates.

In 2014, Michelle Bachelet a Socialist swept into Chile’s presidency for a second time on a program of radical reform of tax, education and pensions. She also aspired to enact a new constitution that would guarantee “more balance between the state, the private sector and society”, as she told your columnist over tea at the Moneda presidential palace. She argued that her “struggle against inequality” was the last chance to deal with discontents that, if neglected, could push Chile towards populism.

Swiss investigators have executed search warrants at addresses linked to Vitol and Trafigura, their counterparts in Brazil said on Thursday, as a sprawling probe into the global commodity trading industry intensifies.