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World News Quick Take

PHOTO: AP

■ VENEZUELA
Government cooks up record
Officials claimed a world record on Saturday for the world's largest pot of soup, a giant cauldron of stew prepared by President Hugo Chavez's government. The hulking stainless steel cooking pot, set up outdoors in downtown Caracas, contained about 15,000 liters of sancocho stew, Food Minister Rafael Oropeza said. That would dwarf the current record-holder listed on the Guinness World Records Web site, a pot of 5,350 liters of spicy soup prepared in Durango, Mexico, in July. Oropeza called it "Bolivarian stew" -- a play on the name of Chavez's socialist movement, named in honor of South American independence hero Simon Bolivar. He said it was enough to feed 60,000 to 70,000 people.

■ MEXICO
Bus crash kills 17
A bus carrying tourists including passengers of a flight from Phoenix, Arizona, crashed on Saturday, killing at least 17 and injuring 13, the bus company and government officials said. The Vallarta Plus bus was carrying 35 passengers from the resort city of Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara before dawn when it ran off a mountain road and plunged down a 250m ravine, the Nayarit state prosecutor's office said in a news release. The office reported 17 dead: 13 men, three women and a one-year-old child. The bus driver, identified as 28-year-old Madiel Coronado, was among the injured.

■ UNITED STATES
Corn field thanks to Ford
It's a corny tribute to the late US president Gerald Ford -- and it can be fully appreciated only from the air. A farm not far from where Ford grew up created a maze in a cornfield in the likeness of the nation's 38th president, who died last December. Each year, Gull Meadow Farms near Richland, Michigan, cuts a maze in its corn fields. A company that specializes in corn maze design drew up the plans for the Ford portrait, which says "president Ford" across the top and "thanks" below.

■ UNITED STATES
Douglas Savoy dies at 80
Douglas Eugene "Gene" Savoy, an explorer who discovered more than 40 lost cities in Peru and led long-distance sailing adventures to learn more about ancient cultures, has died. He was 80. Savoy died of natural causes on Tuesday at his Reno, Nevada, home, his family said on Saturday. Dubbed the "real Indiana Jones" by People magazine, Savoy was credited with finding four of Peru's most important archaeological sites, including Vilcabamba, the last refuge of the Incas from the Spanish Conquistadors. Savoy discovered more than 40 stone cities of a mysterious pre-Inca civilization known as the Chachapoyas.

■ UNITED STATES
Judge blocks video release
A judge issued an order prohibiting a doctor's wife from releasing a 1994 videotape documenting breast augmentation surgery for Anna Nicole Smith, who died earlier this year. Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff's preliminary injunction on Friday against Alana Johnson was similar to one he issued last month against Gerald Wayne Johnson, a Texas doctor who performed the surgery. Both injunctions were sought by Smith's former attorney and executor of her will.

■ IRAN
Belgian hostage released
A Belgian tourist freed after being held for more than a month by bandits in the southeast part of the country was reunited on Saturday in Tehran with his family as diplomats from both countries hailed his release. Stefan Boeve, 28, appeared at a press conference with his parents and Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki and his Belgian counterpart Karel De Gucht. Boeve was released "two days ago thanks to comprehensive action, part of which was intensive negotiation," Mottaki said, adding: "But as you know the police and security organs never tell us about their procedures."

■ IRAQ
Cartoonist put on hit list
An al-Qaeda front organization has offered rewards to anyone who kills two Swedes behind a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a dog, in a statement posted on the Internet. The self-proclaimed Islamic State placed a bounty of at least US$100,000 on the head of the cartoonist Lars Vilks and US$50,000 on Ulf Johansson, editor in chief of the Nerikes Allehanda newspaper which published the caricature. "We call for the liquidation of the cartoonist Lars who offended our prophet," said the statement issued in the name of the group's leader Sheikh Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. The statement also threatened attacks on Swedish firms unless unspecified "crusaders" issued an apology.

■ MOROCCO
Security alert lowered
Authorities cut their national security alert to intermediate from a maximum rating imposed in July after repeated al-Qaeda threats to hit the kingdom and other North African states, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday. It did not give a reason for the decision to lower the warning level to intermediate, which came after peaceful parliamentary elections on Sept. 7. "The public authorities, conscious of the persistence of the terrorist threat against our country, will continue their efforts to protect the kingdom," the ministry said.

■ Switzerland
Body of missing girl found
The body of a young child was discovered on Saturday in the region where police have been looking for a 5-year-old girl kidnapped in July. Authorities in the canton of St. Gallen said a private individual found the body in woods after animals appeared to have dug it up from underground. Specialists have yet to officially identify the body, but criminal investigation chief Bruno Fehr said it is almost surely that of Ylenia Lenhard, who disappeared July 31 in Appenzell. Police have been investigating in nearby St. Gallen since finding the body of suspected kidnapper Urs Hans Von Aesch, who killed himself with a gunshot to the head later that day.

■ RUSSIA
Lugovoi running for office
Andrei Lugovoi, the former agent wanted by Britain over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, is running for election as an ultra-nationalist candidate, the party's leader said on Saturday. Lugovoi declined to comment ahead of the ultra-nationalist LDPR party's congress today but told Moscow Echo radio he deeply respected the party and its firebrand leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky. London has demanded the extradition of Lugovoi over the radiation poisoning of outspoken Kremlin critic Litvinenko last November.

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