World in brief: Japan calls off humpback hunt
Humpback whales are safe – at least for now.
Giving in to U.S. pressure and worldwide criticism, Japan’s government on Friday announced a whaling fleet now in the Southern Ocean for its annual hunt will not kill the threatened species as originally planned. The fleet will, however, kill about 935 minke whales, a smaller, more plentiful species, and 50 fin whales.
Japan dispatched its whaling fleet last month to the southern Pacific off Antarctica in the first major hunt of humpback whales since the 1960s. Commercial hunts of humpbacks have been banned worldwide since 1966, and commercial whaling overall since 1986.
The fleet was to kill 50 humpbacks for scientific research.
Jerusalem
Official supports truce with Hamas
Israel’s infrastructure minister said Friday that he favored a conditional cease-fire with Hamas, becoming the highest-ranking Israeli official to welcome the militant group’s proposal.
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a former defense minister, said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may consider discussing a long-term cease-fire with Hamas if the group stops smuggling arms into the Gaza Strip and negotiates the release of an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas-affiliated militants last year.
“The prime minister I know doesn’t totally rule anything out,” Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio. “If a serious, realistic proposal is put on the table and Hamas is willing to discuss a long-term cease-fire and is willing to stop the terror, to stop the smuggling and is willing to open talks on the release of Gilad Shalit, I would go to negotiations.”
Israel’s official position is that it will not talk with Hamas unless the group renounces all violence, recognizes Israel’s right to exist and accepts previous peace agreements.
CIENFUEGOS, Cuba
Chavez presides at oil summit
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez presided Friday at a regional petroleum summit in Cuba, pressing his efforts to counter U.S. influence in Latin America and the Caribbean by suggesting more of his neighbors could pay for cheap oil with goods or services in lieu of cash.
In his opening speech to the Petrocaribe summit in Cienfuegos, a southern coastal city about 155 miles from Havana, Chavez said his plan to provide low-cost oil to the region should go beyond financing mechanisms. He offered other countries the option of following the model of Cuba, which repays by sending doctors who offer free services to the poor in Venezuela.
Chavez also called for creating an international fund to promote solar, wind, geothermal and other alternative energy sources.
GUATEMALA CITY
698-pound man dies after surgery
A man who weighed 698 pounds died Friday of heart failure after undergoing an operation to remove 80 percent of his stomach in a desperate effort to reduce his weight.
Carlos Marroquin, 47, was so heavy at the time of Thursday’s operation that hospital workers used a forklift to place him on the operating table, said surgeon Isaias Sandigo.
“He had two heart attacks in 20 minutes, there was nothing we could have done for him,” Sandigo said. He said Marroquin’s heart and kidneys had begun failing even before the procedure.
MANAGUA, Nicaragua
American freed amid public furor
American Eric Volz was freed by a judge on Friday despite an uproar in Nicaragua after an appeals court overturned his conviction and 30-year-sentence in the slaying of his Nicaraguan girlfriend.
The 28-year-old from Nashville, Tennessee, accompanied by his mother, was freed from a prison hospital where he was being treated for kidney stones, driven by police-escorted ambulance to sign his release papers, then rushed to the airport where mother and son boarded a flight to Atlanta.
An appeals court on Monday overturned Volz’s conviction in the November 2006 death of 25-year-old Doris Ivania Jimenez, enraging prosecutors, human rights and women’s rights activists who believe Volz is guilty.
From wire reports