■ Venezuela
Chavez threatens oil cut
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened Sunday to suspend oil exports to the US if someone tries to assassinate him, adding that US President George W. Bush would be to blame. "If they kill me, there will be a really guilty party on this planet whose name is the president of the United States, George Bush," Chavez said on his weekly radio program, Hello, Mr. President. "If, by the hand of the devil, those perverse plans succeed ... forget about Venezuelan oil, Mr. Bush," he said. Venezuela is the only Latin American member of OPEC, and sells about 1.5 million barrels daily to the US, nearly as much as Saudi Arabia.
■ Mexico
PRI likely to win
Early election results strongly favored Mexico's former ruling party as it battled to hold on to the governor's seat in the small, central state of Hidalgo on Sunday. With 42 percent of votes counted in Hidalgo, Miguel Angel Osorio, a candidate supported both by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Mexico's small Green Party, had 53 percent of the vote. He was trailed by Jose Guadarrama, a professor, former senator and member of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, with 28 percent, and Jose Antonio Haghenbeck, a surgeon and member of President Vicente Fox's conservative National Action Party, with 11 percent.
■ United States
Man kills family, self
A man burst into a trailer home and shot to death his two children, his estranged wife and her boyfriend before killing himself along a road in southern Indiana. Arthur Lee Smith, 36, entered the home his estranged wife shared with her boyfriend and shot both of them in the head, police said. Smith then entered a bedroom and shot his and his wife's two children, ages 4 and 5. Minutes after a neighbor reported the gunfire to police, an officer confronted Smith, who was walking along a roadway, telling him to stop. "He just kept on walking and then pulled out a 9mm Luger pistol, put it to his head and killed himself," said police.
■ United States
Man survives crash
Rescuers trudging through waist-deep snow to the site of a plane crash in a Colorado canyon found the pilot sitting outside a snow shelter he had built and named "Motel 6" after the motel chain. Scott Thurner, 57, was the only person aboard the Cessna when it crashed, and survived the accident with only minor bruises. Thurner dug a shelter in a snow bank and used a door from the twisted wreckage of his plane for a roof. He started a fire with papers from his briefcase and donned all the ski clothes in his suitcase. The team located Thurner by following signals from the plane's emergency beacon, for which Thurner fashioned a makeshift antenna. A military satellite picked up the signals; then the Montrose County sheriff launched a search and rescue team.
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