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Choice for Venezuelans: Hugo Chavez's heir or fresh start with emboldened challenger
• CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Voters who kept Hugo Chavez in office for 14 years decide Sunday whether to elect the devoted lieutenant he chose to carry on the revolution that endeared him to the poor but that many Venezuelans believe is ruining the nation.
• Nicolas Maduro sought to ride Chavez's endorsement to victory with a campaign nearly bereft of promises but freighted with personal attacks that was otherwise little more than an unflagging tribute to the polarizing leader who died of cancer March 5.
• The 50-year-old longtime Chavez foreign minister pinned his hopes on the immense loyalty for his boss among millions of poor beneficiaries of a socialist government's largesse and the heft of a state apparatus that Chavez skillfully consolidated.
• The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela deployed a well-worn, get-out-the-vote machine spearheaded by loyal state employees. It also enjoyed a pervasive state media apparatus as part of a near monopoly on institutional power.
• Challenger Henrique Capriles' aides accused Chavista loyalists in the judiciary of putting them at glaring disadvantage. Prosecutors and state regulators impoverished the campaign and opposition broadcast media by targeting them with unwarranted fines and prosecutions, they said
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Prisoners clash with guards at Guantanamo Bay during forced move over hunger strike protest
• MIAMI (AP) -- Months of increased tension at the Guantanamo Bay prison boiled over into a clash between guards and detainees Saturday as the military closed a communal section of the facility and moved its inmates into single cells.
• The violence erupted during an early morning raid that military officials said was necessary because prisoners had covered up security cameras and windows as part of a weekslong protest and hunger strike over their indefinite confinement and conditions at the U.S. base in Cuba.
• Prisoners fought guards with makeshift weapons that included broomsticks and mop handles when troops arrived to move them out of a communal wing of the section of the prison known as Camp 6, said Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a military spokesman. Guards responded by firing four "less-than-lethal rounds," he said.
• There were no serious injuries from the rounds, which included a modified shot (Continued on page 19)
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