RIODE JANERIO /Bloomberg Latin America’s largest economy contracted less than economists expected late last year as a boost in agriculture output helped offset an overall decline in production. Gross domestic product contracted 1.4 percent in the three months ended in December, after a 1.7 percent drop the previous quarter, the national statistics institute said on Thursday in Rio de Janeiro. …

BLOOMBERG As Governor Henri Falcon takes his morning jog through Barquisimeto, the hub of Venezuela’s farming heartland, he crosses a bleak landscape. It’s not yet dawn and hundreds of perspiring shoppers are lining up for food, neighborhoods are dark from rolling blackouts and hospitals so crowded that the sick share beds. Falcon is a rarity in a deeply polarized country: …

Tunis / AFP Government neglect in central Tunisia, where poverty and unemployment rates are several times the national average, risks undermining the gains of its revolution and creating a breeding ground for extremism, experts say. Five years after Tunisia’s popular uprising, which set the tone for the momentous Arab Spring wave of protests, the wealth gap between its impoverished interior …