The US didn't have enough troops in Iraq immediately following the removal of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and "paid a big price" for it, the former head of the US occupation said on Monday. Paul Bremer said he arrived in Iraq on May 6 last year to find "horrid" looting and a very unstable situation. "We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," Bremer said during an address on Monday in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to an insurance group, which reported his comments. "We never had enough troops on the ground." Despite the daily reports of violence, "I am optimistic about the future in Iraq," he added. He said his references to troop levels related to the situation when he first arrived in Baghdad.
■ United States
North Korean aid gets nod
The US House of Representatives has given the government the green light to spend US$20 million to provide humanitarian aid to North Koreans inside and outside the country, and moved to make refugees from the country eligible for asylum in the US. But the North Korean Human Rights Act of this year, which was approved by voice vote on Monday and covers a four-year period through fiscal 2008, also contained US$4 million for expanding US radio broadcasts and other programs designed to promote democracy and human rights in the hermetic Stalinist nation.
■ France
Glitch causes highway panic
An electronic glitch created panic on a French motorway and forced a man to drive at nearly 200km per hour for more than one hour, French media reported yesterday. Hicham Dequiedt, 29, told the daily Le Parisien a defect in the electronic speed regulator of his Renault Vel Satis kept him racing late Sunday on the motorway between the cities of Vierzon and Riom. The police had toll-gates evacuated and alerted the local traffic radio station to warn drivers on the roadway to stay on the right. Dequiedt finally managed to remove the chip card that starts the car. "It seems highly unlikely to me," Renault head Louis Schweitzer said.
■ United States
Pioneering astronaut dies
Gordon Cooper, the astronaut who flew the last of the pioneering Mercury space missions and stayed aloft in a Gemini capsule long enough to demonstrate that a trip to the moon was feasible, died on Monday at his home in Ventura, California, NASA announced. He was 77. Cooper was the last Mercury astronaut, and thus the last US astronaut to fly alone in space. His mission, from May 15 to 16 in 1963, covered 34 hours, 20 minutes, more than all five of the previous Mercury shots combined. In an era ripe with firsts, he was reported to be the first American to sleep in space -- seven and a half hours, dreamlessly, he reported -- and the first to fly twice. He was also the first American televised from space.
■ United States
Kilmer's `Moses' retooled
The big-budget stage musical The Ten Commandments, starring Val Kilmer as Moses, has canceled three perform-ances per week in Los Angeles after receiving negative reviews. The show, which opened last week, is being retooled, producers said on Monday. The New York Times called the show a "bland, static, overproduced and underdirected musical." Kilmer got mixed reviews for his role, in which he declaims his lyrics rather than singing them.
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