Briefly

CUBA

Hero’s son barred from leaving island

HAVANA | The ailing son of one of Cuba’s revolutionary heroes said he was detained by security officials for three days after protesting that authorities wouldn’t let him leave the country for treatment.

Juan Almeida Garcia, whose father fought alongside Fidel Castro during Cuba’s 1959 revolution and rose to the level of vice president before his death this year, told the Associated Press that he was taken into custody Friday while on his way to a protest in central Havana. He was released Monday and said he still hoped authorities would let him go abroad.

“I am asking to leave the country,” Mr. Almeida said in a phone interview an hour after his release. “I am not a dissident.”

Mr. Almeida is seeking treatment for ankylosing spondylitis, a painful, progressive form of spinal arthritis.

URUGUAY

Former guerrilla wins presidency

MONTEVIDEO | A former guerrilla fighter has achieved through the ballot box what he could never earn by bombing, kidnapping and attacking his political enemies - the power to legitimately lead an entire nation.

Jose Mujica won 53 percent of the vote, to 43 percent for Luis A. Lacalle, with 97 percent of the vote counted, the electoral court announced Monday.

Mr. Mujica has repeatedly denied Mr. Lacalle’s claims that he would hijack Uruguay’s stable parliamentary democracy and install a radical socialist state modeled on Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. He said he’s inspired instead by Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who also rose from militancy, as a union chief, to become a popular centrist at the helm of government.

ARGENTINA

Beauty queen dies after plastic surgery

BUENOS AIRES | A 38-year-old former Miss Argentina, Solange Magnano, died over the weekend from complications resulting from cosmetic surgery, friends of the woman said Monday.

Ms. Magnano, Miss Argentina 1994, a married mother of 8-year-old twins, went under the knife Thursday at a plastic surgery center in the capital city, Buenos Aires, hoping to tone up her derriere.

She was rushed to the hospital Friday suffering from a pulmonary embolism and died on Sunday, her friends said.

There were about 50,000 plastic surgery procedures performed in Argentina in 2008, a 60 percent increase from 2003, with a growing number of foreigners seeking inexpensive cosmetic enhancements accounting for much of the increase.

CANADA

Bodies recovered from plane crash

VANCOUVER | Searchers have recovered the bodies of six people, including an infant, who died when a float plane crashed into the ocean off Canada’s Pacific Coast, officials said Monday.

Two survivors were pulled from the water, including the pilot of the Seair Seaplanes aircraft that went down on Sunday while taking off from Saturna Island on a flight to Vancouver, according to the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre. The other survivor was a female passenger.

The cause of the crash is unknown, but investigators hope to interview the pilot and pull at least some of the wreckage of the de Havilland Beaver to the surface. Divers were used to remove the bodies from the submerged wreckage.

From wire dispatches and staff reports