Chavez warns U.S. on spying
Caracas, Venezuela Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened Friday to arrest American officials if they are caught gathering intelligence about Venezuela’s military.
Chavez’s warning came hours after his vice president, Jose Vicente Rangel, claimed that officials at the U.S. Embassy were involved in a spying case involving the arrest of several Venezuelan military officers, allegedly for passing sensitive information to the Pentagon.
“We’ve just discovered a case, one more espionage case,” Chavez said, speaking about the accusations.
“I warn the U.S. government: the next time we detect a soldier or civilian official – but above all American soldiers – trying to obtain information about our armed forces, we’re going to put them in prison.”
Chavez has repeatedly accused the U.S. government of spying and plotting to oust him, while U.S. officials have firmly denied the allegations. The latest accusations have brought new tension to an already rocky relationship between Washington and Chavez’s government.
No injuries reported from Indonesia quake
Jakarta, Indonesia A magnitude 7.7 undersea earthquake rocked eastern Indonesia early today, the U.S. Geological Survey said. There was no danger of a tsunami, and no injuries were reported.
The earthquake occurred in the Banda Sea about 120 miles south of Ambon city, the USGS said. It occurred at a depth of 212 miles. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said no destructive tsunami threat existed.
Amran, an official at Indonesia’s meteorological agency in the capital, Jakarta, said there were no immediate reports of damages or injuries. Like many Indonesians, he goes by only one name.
Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location atop a volcanically active region known as the “Ring of Fire.” A Dec. 26, 2004, earthquake of magnitude 9 off the Indonesian coast generated a tsunami that left at least 216,000 people dead or missing and nearly 2 million homeless in 11 countries.
Serial killer had grudge against her mother
Mexico City A female wrestler suspected of killing at least 10 elderly women in Mexico City said she acted out of anger, apparently because her mother abandoned her and she was sexually abused, according to police and a videotaped confession broadcast Friday.
“I felt rage, anger, rancor,” 48-year-old Juana Barraza told two interrogators who could be heard but not seen on the video, played on the Televisa television network. Barraza said she killed the women because “they looked at me.”
“I never used my hands to strangle them,” she said, noting the killings were performed “with whatever I had in my hands … stockings, or scarves they had in their homes.”
The short-haired, robust Barraza – whose physique originally led police to question transvestites in the case – may have been acting out of anger for her own mother, around the same age as the victims.
“She had a very difficult life,” Bernardo Batiz, the city’s attorney general, said Thursday. “Her mother gave her away when she was little, and the man who took her in had sex with her and she had a daughter.”
Batiz said Barraza was fully conscious of, and responsible for, the consequences of her acts.