http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21679053

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has died, his vice-president has announced.

Mr Chavez had not appeared in public since he returned to Venezuela last month after cancer treatment in Cuba.

An emotional Nicolas Maduro made the announcement on Tuesday evening, flanked by leading Venezuelan political and military leaders.

Earlier, he said the 58-year-old Venezuelan leader had a new, severe respiratory infection and had entered "his most difficult hours".

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He's been very ill for a long time, and I didn't think he would recover, but still, this is going to cause some pretty large tremors in the region, especially in Venezuela itself.

Well, I heard it here first, on VGChartz.

Maybe things will improve for the Venezuelan people. At the very least I hope the political prisoners get realeased since their only crime was criticizing a dictator.

Obama did it again, it's clear the cia gave him cancer

One less enemy for the west is always a good thing imo.

I've heard that cuba has great hospitals and doctors.  Don't know if that's true, though.

Um, you mean more responsible for his people right? Countries being well run =/= friendly to America. See Pakistan.

And now Venezuela is threatening to retaliate.

Oh, no. Please don't give Obama cancer. That would be... terrible.

This is good for Venezuela, definitively. But it's gotta be a slow change.

And by the way, the best doctors in the world are in Cuba, be sure of that. And yes, it is terribly poor. If you're a turist, you don't see it, but if you're cuban and live there, then you see it... It's terrible, cubans can't do anything, even going to a super market is forbidden...

Maybe the CIA slipped him a few grams of Polonium. Nice work guys, Ahmadinejad should be next on the list.