South America

ON A STREET corner in the sleepy provincial capital of Guanare, a man tries to explain Venezuela by using a fresh pastry. From the outside, "it looks big and filled with promise," he says, before biting off a corner. "But look inside. It's less than half-filled." He pokes at the creamy cheese filling. "We expect more."The man whom Venezuelans expect to supply the missing cheese and everything else a country could want is President Hugo Chavez. Since he took office after running as an independent in December's elections, Chavez has promised to break the stranglehold of Venezuela's corrupt two-party system.

Comsat Corp. said yesterday that it has begun service on a satellite link that will connect South America to the main Internet lines in the United States.Bethesda-based Comsat is providing the satellite link through a contract with Telefonica Larga Distancia, a Puerto Rican telecommunications firm. The link will carry Internet traffic between Puerto Rico and South America.The financial terms of the contract were not disclosed.The Comsat link will employ asynchronous transfer mode technology, also known as ATM, to transmit signals.

SINCE OCTOBER, Robert Moton Elementary School first-grader Jennifer Diamond has "flown" to Australia and South America. She also has earned enough "frequent flier" miles to reach Nagano, Japan, where Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski were doing triples for Olympic medals.Jennifer has not been traveling alone. Fourth-graders Christina McNemar and Erinn Will have earned lots of frequent flier miles, too. So have Brittney Sabock, Garrett Vogelberger, Megan Maier, Bradley Sabock, Sarah Reeb, Dawn Legore and other pupils taking part in a school program, "Read Around the World."

Evergreen Marine Corp. has chosen Baltimore as its mid-Atlantic port for service to South America, marking the first new weekly container business for the port in more than two years.The latest service -- which will bring an additional 12,000 containers a year here -- is not expected to produce any new jobs but will mean extra work for longshoremen who load and unload the huge steel boxes known as containers, bay pilots who guide the ships into port, tugboat operators and others.While the new service hardly reverses the downward trend in container business at the port, it is seen as an encouraging sign by port officials.

Alexandre Neault, a French-Canadian sailor four months into a two-year voyage around the American continents, pulled his 20-foot catamaran into an Ocean City marina yesterday in need of sleep, food and a little sun block.In March, Neault, 24, left his home in Trois-Rivieres in Quebec with a catamaran and $20 in his pocket -- the change after he sold all his worldly possessions to outfit himself for the 25,000-mile trip."My boat is my children," he said yesterday in broken English. "No boat, no expedition."

Moviegoers may recall the freeze-frame finale to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," where Butch and Sundance, guns blazing, launch a final, doomed shootout with practically the entire Bolivian army.Turns out that the reality was a bit different, as the February issue of Wild West magazine makes clear. A mere three soldiers, not hundreds, put an end to the careers of the fabled outlaws in 1908, and the Pinkertons ("Who are those guys?" Butch wails in the movie) were not breathing down their necks at the end. But the duo's final days were remarkable in ways the movie did not suggest.

Saturday is for the birds. Really.May 11 is International Migratory Bird Day, when groups among the nation's 65 million birdwatchers will celebrate the return of millions of birds from their winter grounds in South America and the Caribbean."

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Argentina's oldest army base, home to the presidential guard regiment, is for rent.Strapped for cash, the army has leased part of the base to a grocery store and is looking for a commercial tenant to move into another building."

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- To learn what Latin Americans think about each other, listen to the chants at soccer stadiums around South America.At the recent America Cup tournament in Uruguay, Argentine fans belittled their Chilean counterparts as "sons of Pinochet" (translation: Chile is full of militarists).In a match against Bolivia, Chilean fans yelled that no country with a standard of living equal to Uganda could beat them.And finally, when Uruguay took the championship here, thousands of Uruguayans took to the streets to celebrate their victory not by mocking Brazil, the closest contender, but by shouting their joy at having humiliated the continent's most prideful nation, Argentina.

R. Gwin Follis, 93, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Chevron Corp. who led its growth into the nation's ninth largest corporation, died of cancer Monday in San Francisco. He oversaw Chevron's expansion from a western U.S.-based concern to a worldwide presence in the oil industry.Danny Liska, 66, an adventurer who chronicled his continental treks in several books, died Tuesday of leukemia in Bogota, Colombia, where he had lived since 1973. In 1959, the native of Niobrara, Neb., rode a motorcycle from Alaska to the southernmost tip of South America.

The Purple One to reign at Target Prince is coming to a Target near you. The superstar is releasing a three-disc set through the retailer at the end of this month. The set will include two new albums as well as one by his new artist, Bria Valente, for $11.98. Prince is just the latest entertainer to release new music exclusively through a major retailer. AC/DC and the Eagles were among the acts who sold millions of CDs through their partnership with Wal-Mart. The CD set will be on sale at Target and its Web site on March 29. Honoring Milk Fresh from his best actor Oscar for his performance as Harvey Milk, Sean Penn is pushing California to officially recognize the late gay politician's birthday.

You have my permission to stay in bed today. It's Friday the 13th, after all. Your employer will understand. This is the second and final Friday the 13th for 2007. The first was in April. Nothing bad happened? Maybe we have it all wrong. Guy Ottewell's Astronomical Calendar assures us that Tuesday's unlucky in South America. Italians fear the 17th. In Iran, women avoid bad luck by staying outdoors on the 13th day of the year. Maybe you'd better get to work. Good luck.

Planning to escape winter in the Caribbean? Better have your passport ready. Beginning Jan. 23, everyone, including U.S. citizens, traveling by air between the United States and Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean and Bermuda will be required to present a valid passport. Passport applications usually take about six weeks but can be expedited for an additional $60 fee. For rules, go to travel.state. gov / passport.

Hugo Chavez, the newly re-elected president of Venezuela, has at various times this year referred to President Bush as the Devil, a donkey, and Mr. Danger. Sober analysts of foreign affairs should be deeply troubled by these jibes, but they're so dopey it's hard not to be amused. Certainly the alliterative Mr. Chavez is plenty popular among Venezuelans. Now he says he's going to make his country "really, really red." But let's not panic. Communism has run its course and it's unlikely that Venezuelans who are enjoying the fruits of high oil prices would want to plunge in just as Cuba is on the verge of heaving itself out. Mr. Chavez is spending money like crazy on social programs and though that runs counter to free-market economics it's hardly what you'd call Totalitarianism.

GEOGRAPHY QUIZ-- The highest mountain system in the Southern Hemisphere is on which continent? (Answer below) Quiz answer (FROM ABOVE) South America. Source: National Geographic Bee

CASTELNUOVO DI PORTO, Italy - A book of numbers at his side, a pendulum in his pocket and his wife upstairs plotting astrological charts, Fabrizio Shamir predicts that the next pope will come from South America. "I held the pendulum over a map for 30 minutes and it drifted south," said Shamir, known in Italian gossip pages as a numerologist skilled at playing the lottery using the birthdays of saints. "As a man, I think the pope should come from Asia because of all its poverty. But as a professional, my numbers and instincts tell me South America."

Nell Caroline Roberts, 106, a globe-trotting bon vivant and one of Tennessee's oldest residents, died Sunday. Working in New York as an administrator at the Greenwich Village YWCA for 33 years, she befriended the likes of novelist Thomas Wolfe, sports journalist Red Smith and Frederick Franklin, a primary dancer with the Ballet Russe. When she retired from the YWCA in 1961, Ms. Roberts went on a months-long sailing voyage around the world. She had traveled to South America, Africa, Thailand and all the capitals of Europe.

Lovely, heartfelt and unforced, Walter Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries is a portrait of a revolutionary as young man. The revolutionary is Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and Salles' film, based on journals kept by the young Ernesto during an 8,000-mile trek in the 1950s through South America, as well as an account written later by his traveling companion, doesn't lionize its subject. Instead, it explores what might turn a 23-year-old medical student into a man determined to overthrow what he viewed as repressive regimes everywhere.

SANDGATES - Shrimpy, the kelp gull star of St. Mary's County, soars in from the Patuxent River, lands gracefully on a utility pole and stands there puffing out its chest like a best-actor nominee at the Academy Awards show. With its snowy-white head and breast and black wings with white spots like pearl studs, the bird looks quite elegant on the pole, an old-school gentleman in a dress suit. Its bill, a yellow schnozzola worthy of W.C. Fields, undercuts the elegance a bit. The reddish gonys spot even suggests Fields' overindulgent imbibing.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - He's a one-time fiery labor leader who has enlisted a conservative textile magnate as a running mate. He's a vocal critic of U.S. domination of Latin America but insists he won't bring radical change to South America's largest economy. Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva might be a mystery to many outside Brazil, but within this sprawling nation the man known simply as "Lula" is riding a wave of popularity as the front-runner heading into Sunday's presidential election.