■UNITED STATES
Man suffers rough week
An 80-year-old Ohio man is recovering from a week in which he was beaten during a home invasion and then shot while trying to learn about guns. Ralph Needs was tied up and pistol-whipped when at least three intruders broke into his Columbus-area home, the Columbus Dispatch reported. His nose was broken and his pickup truck, a computer and credit cards were stolen. Four days later, Needs was shot in the hand during a self-defense lesson when a 9mm pistol went off as one of his sons was loading it.
■SPAIN
Love letters cost US$1.7m
For Cristian Garcia, 22, the split with his girlfriend was devastating. Her love letters to him were proof of a passion that had since died, so he took them to a skip near her home in Valencia, set them on fire and drove off. Three years later Garcia has lost a lot more than his girlfriend. A court this week handed Garcia a suspended prison sentence of 18 months and ordered him to pay 1.2 million euros (US$1.7 million) in damages for the forest fire that he inadvertently started when he burnt the love letters. With winds gusting at 65kph, within hours thousands of hectares were burning forcing evacuations, stopped traffic and a port closure. The fire raged for three days.
■UNITED STATES
Climate pact unlikely to pass
The US president’s top aide on climate change acknowledged that legislation requiring major reductions in global-warming emissions is unlikely to pass Congress before December’s Copenhagen summit on climate change. Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, said on Friday that completion of the legislative process before the summit “is not going to happen,” the New York Times reported yesterday on its Web site. Drafts proposed in the Senate would cut emissions by between 17 percent and 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and by more than 80 percent by 2050.
■UNITED STATES
Lonely llama captured
A lone llama wandering near the summit of Pikes Peak for a month has been captured and is heading to a new home. Tracy Ducharme and Mike Shealy of Black Forest, Colorado, trekked up the 4,300m mountain on Friday to find the little white beast of burden. They took two llamas with them. The wandering llama’s herd instincts lured him to them and Ducharme slipped a rope around his neck. “I dubbed him Homer because of his little odyssey,” she said.
■MEXICO
Raids net meth chemicals
Two raids by security forces netted the largest seizures of methamphetamine precursor chemicals in the country’s history, federal officials announced on Friday. Agents seized 20 tonnes of chemicals used to produce methamphetamine at Manzanillo port in Colima and 17 tonnes in Nuevo Laredo, the Attorney General’s Office said. Meanwhile, in Ciudad Juarez, police said at least 11 people, including two police officers and a child, were killed in less than 24 hours. Gunmen killed eight on Friday in five separate attacks, including a policewoman who was shot in the head in broad daylight in a residential area, a state prosecutor’s spokesman said. Gunmen opened fire on a pickup truck late on Thursday, killing a 22-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl playing in a city park. Earlier, a city police officer was killed as she rode on a bus, he said. Also on Friday, a Mexican Air force plane crashed for unknown reasons in Michoacan, killing three soldiers.
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