Latin America

Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro and the vice president of the Council of Ministers, Rafael Ramirez, arrived in Cuba on Wednesday, amid reports from government sources about Chavez progressive recovery and the possibility that he can return soon to Caracas.

Premiering this week at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, the new documentary “Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield” follows investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill to Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen as he chases down the hidden truths behind America’s expanding covert wars.

Addressing the Peace Ball in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, the renowned author, educator and political activist Angela Davis urges those content with President Obama’s re-election to continue pushing him for social change.

Welcome to this Week in Palestine, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for January 12 to 18th 2013. New models in protesting Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank, meanwhile, Hamas declares its readiness for conciliation, these stories and more, coming up.

In Algeria, at least 22 foreign hostages remained unaccounted for in what has been described as one of the biggest international hostage crises in decades. Islamist militants opposed to the French air strikes in neighboring Mali seized a gas facility near the Libyan border.

Outrage is growing over the U.S. Justice Department’s prosecution of the 26-year-old who committed suicide last week just weeks before he was to go on trial. Pioneering computer programmer and cyber activist Aaron Swartz was facing up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted for using computers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to download millions of academic articles provided by the nonprofit research service JSTOR.

Throughout its history, the National Rifle Association has portrayed itself as an advocate for individual gun owner’s Second Amendment rights. But a new investigation finds the group has come to rely on the support of the $12-billion a year gun industry — made up of firearms and ammunition manufacturers and sellers.

Cyber activist and computer programmer Aaron Swartz took his life on Friday at the age of 26. We air an address of Swartz’s from last May where he speaks about the battle to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA — a campaign he helped lead.