■ Venezuela
Love on the campaign trail
Talk of love is in the air as campaigning heats up ahead of the Dec. 3 presidential election. Newspaper ads by President Hugo Chavez's campaign include a solemn "message of love" for Venezuelan that reads: "I have always done everything for love." The opposition has hit back, taking out its own ads with a wilted rose and a "love note" reading in part: "Don't ask for more time. Don't talk to me about love." Polls show Chavez in the lead ahead of opposition candidate Manuel Rosales, the governor of western Zulia state.
■ Brazil
Rio's Christ now a sanctuary
Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer statue, which looks down on the city from its mountaintop perch, was raised to the status of an official Roman Catholic sanctuary on Thursday, 75 years after it was inaugurated. Rio de Janeiro Cardinal Eusebio Scheid said he decided to consecrate the space, which includes the 38m-tall monument and the church at its base, because the statue was becoming known more as a tourist site than a religious destinantion. Hundreds of nuns and priests from Rio mingled with tourists during the mass celebrated under sunny skies on Thursday morning. The Archdiocese hopes the monument's new status will attract more religious pilgrims to the site. More than 300,000 tourists visit the monument each year.
■ United States
Military dissenter jailed
A 24-year-old Fort Bragg, Carolina, paratrooper who says he left his base because he disagreed with the US mission in Iraq was sentenced to three months' confinement after pleading guilty on Thursday to going absent without leave. Sergeant Ricky Clousing will also receive a reduction in rank and forfeit two-thirds of his pay during the time of his confinement before getting a bad conduct discharge. Clousing's attorney, David Miner, said his client "no regrets" about his decision to leave his barracks in June last year after a five-month tour in Iraq, where he worked as an interrogator in a military intelligence battalion. Clousing claims to have witnessed another soldier kill an innocent Iraqi man in Mosul, but said his superiors dismissed his account.
■ United States
New population mark due
The Census Bureau said on Thursday that with a net gain of one person every 11 seconds, the nation's population will reach 300 million at about 7:46am on Tuesday. The estimate assumes that an American is born every seven seconds, one dies every 13 seconds and the nation gains an immigrant every 31 seconds. Whoever the 300 millionth American is, his or her arrival is bound to be a relief to Robert Woo, a Georgia lawyer who was anointed by Life magazine as the 200 millionth American in 1967. "Forty years is enough," Woo said on Thursday.
RSS