LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY “Unfortunately, it is impossible to exclude a victory of the
Syrian opposition.” Russian diplomat Mikhail Bogdanov, in the clearest indication to date that Russia believed that Bashar Assad could lose Article, 1AVenezuela’s Chavez has bleeding scare
CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez suffered bleeding during his cancer surgery in Cuba that required “corrective measures” to stanch the flow, his government said Thursday.
But in the latest of a series of unusually frank reports about the president’s delicate condition, Information Minister Ernesto Villegas also said Chavez has been making a “progressive and favorable” recovery after the complications from Tuesday’s surgery.
“This recovery process, nevertheless, will require a prudent period of time as a consequence of the complexity of the surgery performed,” Villegas added.
The government has begun providing regular updates on the president’s recovery after the six-hour surgery in what appears to be a slight easing of the secrecy that has surrounded Chavez’s medical treatment since he fell ill last year.
Kim said to oversee North Korea launch
SEOUL, South Korea - The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, personally supervised the successful launching of a three-stage rocket this week and ordered his government to launch more rockets despite criticism from the United Nations Security Council, the North’s official media reported Thursday.
Kim sent a personally signed approval for North Korean scientists to launch the rocket Wednesday and later visited a control center outside Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, to oversee the procedure, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported.
Nurse left 3 notes, was found hanging
LONDON - A nurse who took a prank call from a pair of Australian radio hosts pretending to be British royalty was found hanging in her room and left three notes behind, authorities said Thursday.
Jacintha Saldanha died Dec. 7, three days after the hoax call from disc jockeys who posed as Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles in order to obtain information about the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge at the hospital where Saldanha worked.
Saldanha was the first person to take the phone call at King Edward VII Hospital and then patched it through to a colleague, who volunteered details about the duchess’s condition to the fake Elizabeth and Charles. The duchess, Prince William’s wife, was being treated for acute morning sickness.
On Thursday, a coroner’s official and a police officer said at an inquest into Saldanha’s death that she was found hanging from a wardrobe in her apartment near the hospital. Her wrists also bore signs of injury, they said.
Saldanha left three notes, the contents of which were not disclosed, officials said.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 12/14/2012