Three explosions precede election
Caracas, Venezuela Three explosions went off at a military base and near a government office as Venezuela prepared for a congressional vote today amid a boycott called by opposition parties, the attorney general’s office said.
One homemade explosive went off near a government legal office Friday afternoon, injuring two people. Two other explosives thought to be grenades went off in Fort Tiuna military base in Caracas, seriously injuring a police officer.
“I don’t want to blame all the opposition, but there are absolutely irrational sectors in the opposition camp who believe they can disturb the process with those acts,” Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel told reporters Saturday, citing reports of the explosions.
President Hugo Chavez has accused major opposition parties of staging a U.S.-backed conspiracy by pulling out of elections days before the vote.
The U.S. government has denied involvement, while major opposition parties say they will not participate because they do not believe conditions are in place for a fair vote.
Atlantic hurricane strengthens at sea
Epsilon, a rare December hurricane in a record-breaking season, strengthened Saturday as it moved out into the open Atlantic, where it posed no threat to land.
The record 14th hurricane of the season had top sustained winds near 80 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. Epsilon was centered about 930 miles west of the Azores on Saturday and moving east at nearly 12 mph.
Bird flu outbreak confirmed in Ukraine
Kiev, Ukraine Ukraine recorded its first bird flu outbreak on Saturday, prompting the president to declare a state of emergency in four Crimean villages where more than 1,600 chickens and geese have died of the disease.
Dead birds found over the past two months in the Black Sea peninsula tested positive for the H5 subtype, officials said. Bird flu had already been detected in neighboring Romania nearly two months ago, and Ukrainian officials scrambled to reassure this nation of 47 million that they were well-prepared.
Ukrainians, meanwhile, began debating whether to stop buying poultry – the only meat many in this poor nation can afford.
Skyscraper suspected as cause of tremors
Taipei, Taiwan The weight of the world’s tallest skyscraper – specially built to withstand Taiwan’s frequent earthquakes – could be causing a rise in the number of tremors beneath it, a professor from the island wrote in a scientific journal.
Lin Cheng-horng, an earthquake specialist at the National Taiwan Normal University in the capital, Taipei, says the 1,679-foot Taipei 101 building – named for the number of floors – might rest on an earthquake fault line.
In the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, Lin wrote that the pressure of the building’s 700,000 tons on the ground may be leading to increased seismic activity. The tremors “could be a direct result of the loading of the mega-structure,” said an abstract of Lin’s article, published on the American Geophysical Union’s Web site.
However, Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau said on Friday that the one year since the building’s completion was too short a time in which to evaluate its effect on tremors.
Early Christmas card sold for $16,000
London A 162-year-old Christmas card – one of the first ever printed – sold at auction Saturday for $16,000.
The hand-colored card, which shows a family celebrating around a table, is one of about 10 surviving from an original batch of 1,000 printed in 1843, auctioneer Henry Aldridge said.
The card was bought at the auction in the town of Devizes in southern England by Jakki Brown, editor and co-owner of Progressive Greetings magazine and general secretary of the Greeting Card Association.