Buenos Aires/La Paz - These are difficult times for US diplomacy in South America. Bolivia and Venezuela expelled the US ambassadors from their countries, in aggressive and often abusive, televised announcements by their presidents.

It started with Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president and an ally of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. In a dramatic television appearance Wednesday he said: "Without fear of the empire, I declare today to the Bolivian people that Mr Goldberg, the ambassador of the United States, is persona non grata."

Buenos Aires  - Argentina is set to pay off its defaulted debt with the Paris Club, some 6.706 billion dollars, using the reserves held by its Central Bank, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said Tuesday in Buenos Aires.

From the presidential palace, Fernandez de Kirchner's remarks sent the financial markets at home and abroad a strong pro-investment signal even as the government's ability to abide by its commitments was being questioned.

Buenos Aires  - Two former high officials of the last military dictatorship in Argentina, Antonio Bussi and Luciano Benjamin Menendez, were sentenced to life in prison Thursday by a federal court in the northern Argentine city of San Miguel de Tucuman.

During the 1976-83 Argentine dictatorship some 30,000 people disappeared, according to human rights organizations. Kidnapping, torture and murder were used systematically by agents of the regime, and the bodies of thousands of people presumed killed during the military regime have never been found.

Buenos Aires - Four couples move around the small dance floor to the tune of a tango coming from a CD player.

Students, who cannot yet dance well, wait their turn and sit on colourful plastic chairs lined up against the wall and watching their friends in the meantime.

One of these onlookers is Martina. She loves to tango, and she proudly shows off her new black leather, high-heeled shoes or real

tango shoes.

Buenos Aires  - A female dog found an abandoned newborn baby girl early Thursday and took the child home with her puppies in a poor suburb of the Argentine city of La Plata, local media reported citing police sources.

The owner of the dog reportedly noticed the baby hours later, when he heard her cry. The man immediately called the police, and the newborn was taken to a hospital in La Plata.

Buenos Aires  - An attempted suicide failed after an 84-year- old Argentine man who shot himself five times in the head miraculously survived.

The man also shot himself once in the stomach, state news agency Telam reported Wednesday, in Punta Alta town.

"Despite the serious injuries he was even conscious when we found him. He could not speak, but he sat on a stool and made himself understood through gestures," police officer Herman Ruben Gab was quoted as saying.