President Cardoso wins Latin American of Year poll

The Newsweek international magazine has chosen the President of Brazil, Fernando Enrique Cardoso, as Latin American of the year.

The weekly said it picked Mr Cardoso because he quickly rose to the challenge when October's international market crisis make the Brazilian stock index slide thirty percent and foreign investors withdrew ten billion dollars from the country.

The magazine added that no other Latin leader is in charge of a country that is so vast, so sprawling, so fractious, so potentially wealthy and so effectively ungovernable.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service