In Doral and Weston, South Florida's Venezuelans loudly celebrated Hugo Chávez's death last month. But it appears his revolution didn't die with him. Chávez's handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro, has won the keys to the presidency. With 99 percent of the ballots counted last night, Maduro was beating opposition leader Henrique Capriles by a little more than 230,000 votes.

Capriles refused to concede, calling on electoral authorities to count all the paper ballots cast and alleging more than 3,200 irregularities documented by his supporters.

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Excited about the first pope from Latin America? Well, apparently you have recently deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez to thank. At least that's according to his handpicked successor and interim president, Nicolas Maduro.

Maduro is theorizing that Chávez went up to Heaven and made arrangements with Jesus himself to ensure the new pope would be from South America.

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During his political life, Hugo Chavez took more than a few pages out of the playbook of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, and the emulation will continue even in death.

To this day, Lenin's embalmed body is still on display in Red Square in Moscow. Now, acting Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro announced today that Chavez's body will be permanently displayed in a similar fashion in Caracas.

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Taiwan's NMATV is known for bizarre CGI takes on current events, but its take on the death of Hugo Chávez is bonkers even by the network's standards. It involves the Venezuelan president in ghost form, a devil-horned George W. Bush, the former pope in a Hawaiian shirt, and, of course, Martians in man-kinis being whipped by a capitalist fat cat.

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One locally hated strongman refused to honor another last night.

You could trace the Miami Marlins' tailspin to last April, when new manager Ozzie Guillen pissed off the most important exiles in town by praising Fidel Castro. Surely the team had that fiasco in mind when news of the death of Miami's second-most-hated strongman, Hugo Chávez, was announced shortly before an exhibition game against the Venezuelan national team yesterday.

The ballplayers from Caracas requested a moment of silence for their fallen leader, and the Marlins promptly refused.

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The last photo released of Chavez in the hospital last month.

After months of battling a recurring bout of cancer, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has died. His vice president, Nicolas Maduro, announced the news on Venezuelan television about a half-hour ago, at 4:30 p.m., CNN reports.

His death is likely to lead to political turmoil in a nation he's dominated for the past 14 years. The constitution calls for a new election in the next 30 days, but his government has already called on supporters to be "on war footing."

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Venezuela's government inched closer last night to admitting what its opponents have been saying for months: Hugo Chávez is on death's door. A government spokesman announced that Chávez's condition has become "very delicate" after another round of strong chemotherapy.

More worrying, Communications Minister Ernesto Villegas also called on Chávez's supporters to "be on war footing" in case the president dies.

See also:
- Hugo Chavez Is Dead, According to Questionable CNN Chile Report
- Hugo Chavez Is "Battling for His Life," Venezuelan VP Confirms

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OK, so those rumors flying around Twitter that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has been brain dead since last weekend may not be true. But that doesn't mean Chavez is recovering well from his latest bout with cancer.

Venezuela's vice president confirmed this morning that Chavez is in fact "battling for his life."

See also:
-- Hugo Chavez is Dead, According to Questionable CNN Chile Report
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El Pais even splashed the photo on its early editions this morning.

The dramatic photo went viral last night, shared hundreds of times on Facebook and splashed across Latin American blogs. It showed Hugo Chavez in exactly the kind of dire condition so many of his opponents believed he was in since missing his inauguration earlier this month: Strapped into a breathing machine, bald and struggling for breath. The photo even had a legit back story: It ran on the front page of this morning's El Pais, the respected Spanish daily.

Sorry, anti-Chavistas. It's a fake.

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