World in brief: Third woman says Lugo fathered child

A third woman came forward Wednesday claiming Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo is the father of her child – this one a 16-month-old boy she named after late Pope John Paul II.

The growing number of paternity claims against Lugo less than a year into his presidency has embarrassed the government and put the opposition on the attack.

The latest woman to claim a child with Lugo is a 39-year-old divorcee with two adult children who said she met Lugo three years ago, after he gave up his church leadership position.

Meanwhile, Paraguayan newspaper Ultima Hora reported that the first woman to come forward, his former parishioner Viviana Carrillo, now 26, moved into the president’s home along with her 2-year-old boy, whom Lugo has acknowledged as his son.

London

British budget calls for more spending

The British government, vowing to spend its way out of the deepening economic crisis, unveiled a budget Wednesday that will increase government borrowing to a record $255 billion this year and impose a 50 percent tax rate on Britain’s highest earners.

“You can grow your way out of recession. You cannot cut your way out. We have made our choice,” said Alistair Darling, Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, or finance minister, presenting the budget to Parliament.

Darling’s budget calls for more than $1 trillion in borrowing over the next five years, which he said would increase Britain’s public debt to 79 percent of national gross domestic product by 2013, levels not seen since World War II.

Ankara, Turkey

Armenians, Turks work on relations

Turkey and Armenia have agreed on a roadmap for normalizing relations and reaching reconciliation, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Wednesday, but it wasn’t immediately clear how they would tackle their bitter dispute over Ottoman-era killings of ethnic Armenians.

Turkish officials would not discuss that issue and the ministry statement said only that the two countries had worked out a framework for reaching a solution that would satisfy both sides.

Armenia says 1.5 million Armenians were slain by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I in what Armenians and several other nations recognize as the first genocide of the 20th century.

From wire reports