LITTLE ROCK — Pope Benedict XVI, speaking during a vespers service at the Vatican to mark the beginning of Advent, called for politicians, the media and world leaders to show more respect for human life at its earliest stages, saying embryos aren’t just biological material but dynamic, autonomous individuals.
Thomas Menino, 67, the Democratic mayor of Boston, was released from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and returned to his Hyde Park home after being treated for a bacterial infection in his elbow.
Alan Garcia, the Peruvian president, told a radio station that an inbred national melancholy must be to blame for his low approval ratings at a time when the economy is booming, saying, “We are what we are: sad, distrustful. ... We have a natural lack of trust.”
Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, promoted Gen. Henry Rangel Silva to the rank of generalin-chief, elevating an official who had suggested in a recent interview that the military would not accept an electoral return to power by government opponents and that officers are loyal to Chavez’s socialist political project.
Jose Alencar, 79, the Brazilian vice president who has fought abdominal cancer since 1997, underwent a successful surgery for an intestinal blockage and hemorrhage and is in stable condition, according to the Sirio-Libanes Hospital.
President Barack Obama
said in an ABC News interview that his 12- and 9-year-old daughters, Malia and Sasha, “are not watching cable TV. If they have got an option of watching the news or watching SpongeBob, I think it’s pretty clear the choice that they are going to make.”
Norm Coleman, a former U.S. senator from Minnesota, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that he won’t pursue the Republican National Committee chairmanship as long as the current leader, Michael Steele, wants to keep the job.
Bea Leach, a 76-year-old in Macomb County, Mich., told the Times Herald in Port Huron that on opening day of firearm season she took her second deer, a five-point buck.
Thomas Wulff, 28, and his brother, 27-year-old Michael, both of Pennsylvania, were sentenced in Seneca County, N.Y., to 60 days in jail for beating up an upstate New York winery owner, David Mansfield, who tried to eject them for drunkenness Feb. 13.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/28/2010