Morning Brief: Hugo Chavez has died, Venezuela in mourning

Top news: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez died Tuesday afternoon, succumbing to a long battle with cancer and bringing to a close a tumultuous political career that reshaped Latin American politics. Speaking through tears, Chavez's hand-picked heir, Vice-President Nicolas Maduro, announced the news on state television.

Capitalizing on an ingenious combination of anti-imperialist rhetoric and massive social spending underwritten by his country's huge oil revenues, Chavez placed his country's poor at the center of his political program, and with his death, Venezuela became consumed with grief. Crying supporters stammered disbelief at his death, at a loss to explain how a politician with such dynamism could be felled by disease. "I can't believe that he's dead," said Corinna Perez, a 30-year-old nurse in Caracas. "What's going to happen to us now? Chavez was Venezuela."

The country now enters what is likely to be a tumultuous political transition. Maduro will serve as interim president until new elections can be held, which, according to Venezuelan law, should take place within 30 days. The opposition candidate will likely be Henrique Capriles, a regional governor who lost to Chavez in last fall's presidential election. Barring an internal power-struggle within the Chavista movement, Maduro will be the government's candidate and attempt the difficult task of continuing Chavez's Bolivarian revolution.

Chavez leaves behind a country fraught with deep political divisions, and the path forward for the country's two political movements will be extremely difficult. A complete lack of information about Chavez's health prior to his death created a constitutional crisis of power that left the opposition incensed. Meanwhile, Chavez's death is likely to plunge his own political movement into despair, as a movement built around a personality cult has suddenly been left without its rudder. Police and army were quickly deployed onto the streets of Caracas Tuesday, but unrest still plagued the capital as the tents of anti-Chavez student demonstrators were lit on fire.

Kenya: Election authorities in Kenya have abandoned an electronic system of counting votes and are tabulating votes by hand, causing delays that are raising serious concerns about the integrity of the election. Uhuru Kenyatta, a deputy prime minister who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for his role in orchestrating violence following the 2007 election, leads in the early returns. But delays with the system and a large number of void ballots are making it likely the eleciton will head to a run-off.