Regina Garcia Cano

The president of Ecuador dismissed the legislature in a move that promised more turmoil around a conservative leader unable to enact his agenda aimed at widening business opportunities and attracting more investment.

More than 7.2 million people have left Venezuela since the country’s political, economic and social crisis began last decade.

Peru’s government will allow the extradition to the United States of the prime suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of American student Natalee Holloway on the Dutch Caribbean Island of Aruba, bringing her family hope there will be justice in the case.

The State Department says the U.S. government will pledge more than $171 million for humanitarian and development projects to assist Venezuelans at home and abroad.

A generation of children in Venezuela have only known a country in crisis, plagued over the last decade or more by shortages, inflation and desperation.