■ United States
FEMA to foot the bill
Under pressure from state and local leaders who say they cannot move thousands of hurricane evacuees from hotels into longer-term housing by the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Dec. 15 deadline, officials said on Saturday that FEMA would continue paying hotel bills, on a case-by-case basis, for at least three more weeks. The new program, which FEMA plans to announce today, will require evacuees to obtain an authorization number by calling 1-800-621-FEMA and explaining why they still need help.
■ United States
`Sopranos' star arrested
New York police said on Saturday they had arrested television and film actor Lillo Brancato on suspicion of carrying out a burglary in which a police officer was shot and killed. Brancato, 29, appeared several times as a mobster in the hit television show The Sopranos, and in several films including A Bronx Tale opposite Robert De Niro. He was arrested in June for heroin possession. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters that Daniel Enchautegui, a police officer of three years, was shot in the chest early on Saturday after investigating the sound of breaking glass in an unoccupied house in the Bronx. Before the officer died, he shot an unarmed Brancato and his armed accomplice, who have both been arrested, Kelly said.
■ United States
Antiwar activist dies
Eugene McCarthy, a former US senator and an indomitable antiwar activist whose firm stance against the Vietnam War forced a re-evaluation of the US role in the conflict, died on Saturday at the age of 89, Democratic Party officials announced. McCarthy, who represented the northern state of Minnesota in the US Senate for 12 years, passed away in his sleep at his retirement home in the US capital, the officials said, without disclosing the exact cause of the death. McCarthy is largely credited with ending the presidency of another fellow Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, a staunch advocate of a continued US military commitment to the Indochina conflict.
■ Barbados
Postal protest ends
It almost wasn't a merry Christmas in this Caribbean island for Barbadians awaiting gifts and season's greetings. Postal workers, irate over thefts of their delivery motorcycles and bicycles, ended a strike on Friday afternoon, one day after they walked out pledging not to deliver holiday letters or packages until their concerns were heard. The country's 250 postal workers believed thieves known locally as "postal pirates" were targeting them to steal their transport -- which the workers pay for themselves. Since October, the so-called pirates have nabbed seven motorcycles.
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