Venezuela diplomat ordered out of U.S.

Responding to Venezuela’s expulsion of a U.S. naval officer from Caracas, the State Department on Friday declared a senior Venezuelan diplomat persona non grata and gave her 72 hours to leave the United States.

Spokesman Sean McCormack said Jeny Figueredo Frias, the embassy chief of staff, has been ordered to leave.

On Thursday, President Hugo Chavez said Venezuela was expelling U.S. naval attaché John Correa for allegedly passing secret information from Venezuelan military officers to the Pentagon.

The tit-for-tat expulsions marked another chapter in the steady decay of U.S.-Venezuelan relations under Chavez, who has warned repeatedly that Washington has plans to invade Venezuela.

Baghdad, Iraq

Dozens arrested in Iraq crackdown

Iraqi police and soldiers rounded up nearly 60 people Friday in security crackdowns in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra, and the U.S. military reported the death of an American soldier.

At least 22 people were detained and weapons were seized in raids launched before dawn Friday in Basra.

An additional 37 people – including five Palestinians and a Syrian – were arrested in pre-dawn raids in Baghdad’s Dora district. The neighborhood is a mostly Sunni Arab area and has been the scene of frequent bombings and ambushes.

The U.S. command said Friday that an American soldier was killed the previous evening in a roadside bombing north of the capital. It was the sixth U.S. military fatality this month.

Vienna

Vote on Iran delayed by IAEA

The board of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday delayed voting on a proposed resolution to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council, in part because of a dispute over whether to add wording that would in effect rebuke Israel as an undeclared nuclear power.

Among the changes being discussed, according to a senior Western diplomat, was a request by one or two countries for a paragraph calling for the Middle East to be a nuclear weapons-free zone.

The proposal could be read as a slap at Israel, which is widely believed to have nuclear weapons but has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it was facing strong opposition from the United States.

Rome

Alpine iceman may have been sterile

New DNA analysis indicates that a 5,000-year-old mummy found frozen in the Italian Alps may have been sterile – a hypothesis that would support the theory that he may have been a social outcast, officials said Friday.

Franco Rollo, an anthropologist and ancient DNA specialist, also determined that the man’s genetic makeup belonged to one of the eight basic groups of DNA occurring in Europe.

A group of hikers discovered the well-preserved body in 1991. Since then, the mummy and his clothing and tools have opened a window on the previously little-known world of Copper Age Europe.