Prosecutors in Venezuela formally charged Caracas mayor and opposition politician Antonio Ledezma Tuesday with staging a U.S.-funded attempted coup against President Nicolas Maduro.

The charge comes as Maduro -- an elected socialist -- heads to a regional leaders' summit in Panama Friday at which Obama is to meet with Maduro's key political ally Cuban President Raul Castro.

Uruguay expressed concern Monday over the human rights situation in Venezuela, citing reports of torture, arbitrary detentions and an authorization for the military to use lethal weapons against protesters.

Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa called on Venezuela to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit its prisons and report on conditions there.

Stage left is Josefina, a rough-talking working girl; stage right, Sofia, a swankily dressed bourgeois who has fallen on hard times.

The two characters in Venezuelan playwright Virginia Urdaneta's new play come together doing something that real people in her homeland spend long hours doing, across the country, every day: waiting in line to buy scarce products from barren supermarket shelves.

Costa Rica said Wednesday it has sacked its ambassador to Caracas for breaking the diplomatic service's rule against talking about local politics.

The ambassador had said that he believed Venezuela enjoys wide press freedom -- an opinion not shared by opposition figures and critics who say the government of President Nicolas Maduro restricts media liberties.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday he opposed sanctions against Venezuela that were imposed last week by the United States.

President Barack Obama rubbed many governments in the region the wrong way by declaring Venezuela an "extraordinary threat to the national security" of the United States.

Venezuela alleged Tuesday that Spain's former socialist prime minister Felipe Gonzalez had joined a plot of ultraconservatives to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro's embattled government.

Leftist Maduro, whose country is in economic freefall after adopting a government-run economy while oil prices slide, said the leftist Spanish statesman had signed up with a group of far-right plotters in Spain, Colombia and the United States.

Ten Venezuelans have been arrested over a shipment of cocaine found in a plane that traveled from Caracas to the Dominican Republic, prosecutors said Thursday.

Five of them were arrested in the airport of the Venezuelan capital -- three military officials, one working in customs and the fifth employed by a state-run security firm.

Cuba and the United States said Tuesday they had wrapped up a third round of talks on normalizing relations, but gave few details beyond praising the "constructive" environment.

Monday's closed-door talks between Roberta Jacobson, the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America, and Josefina Vidal, Cuba's top diplomat for U.S. affairs, focused on "reestablishing diplomatic relations and reopening embassies," a State Department spokesperson said.

Venezuela took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times Tuesday to tell the American people that Caracas was not a threat and to demand that President Barack Obama abolish sanctions.

The open letter from the Venezuelan foreign ministry to the U.S. people ran on page seven of America's most prestigious newspaper and appealed directly to "our American brothers and sisters."

Cuba's Fidel Castro warned Tuesday that Venezuela was prepared to confront U.S. "threats and impositions," and said Washington could no longer count on the Venezuelan military to do its bidding.

Venezuela "will never allow a return to the shameful pre-revolutionary past," Castro said in a letter to Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro published in Cuba's state-run media.