Argentine election may shake up Congress
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – President Cristina Fernandez’s ruling Front for Victory lost ground in congressional elections Sunday, giving up seats in Argentina’s four largest districts and dashing the bloc’s hopes that it would could win enough seats to revise the constitution and let her run for a third term.
The president’s former Cabinet chief and now political rival, Sergio Massa, gained the most votes nationwide, one of his allies predicted.
It was too early to tell based on exit polling alone whether the government and its allies lost the thin majorities they have used in the lower house and Senate to dominate the country’s political agenda. The first official results weren’t due until late Sunday night.
Juliana di Tullio, a ruling front candidate for the lower house, said the government believed it wouldn’t lose majorities in either chamber.
Myanmar’s Suu Kyi honored in Rome
ROME – Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi has picked up an overdue honor from Rome, a city she fondly recalled enjoying, along with its gelato, 40 years earlier.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner received Rome’s honorary citizenship Sunday night in City Hall on the ancient Capitoline Hill.
In 1994, Rome had conferred the honor in absentia on Suu Kyi, a champion of democracy who spent years as a political prisoner in her homeland.
Colombian rebels free former American GI
BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombia’s main leftist rebel group on Sunday released a former U.S. Army private who the guerrillas seized in June after he refused to heed local officials’ warnings and wandered into rebel-held territory.
Kevin Scott Sutay, who is in his late 20s, was quietly turned over to Cuban and Norwegian officials along with the International Committee of the Red Cross in the same southeastern region where he had disappeared four months earlier.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry immediately thanked Colombia’s government in a statement for its “tireless efforts” in securing the Afghanistan war veteran’s release. Kerry also thanked the Rev. Jesse Jackson for advocating it.
Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed dies at 71
NEW YORK – Lou Reed was a pioneer for countless bands who didn’t worry about their next hit single.
Reed, who died Sunday at age 71, radically challenged rock’s founding promise of good times and public celebration. As leader of the Velvet Underground and as a solo artist, he was the father of indie rock, and an ancestor of punk, New Wave and the alternative rock movements of the 1970s, ’80s and beyond.
He influenced generations of musicians from David Bowie and R.E.M. to Talking Heads and Sonic Youth.
Reed and the Velvet Underground opened rock music to the avant-garde – to experimental theater, art, literature and film, from William Burroughs to Kurt Weill to Andy Warhol, Reed’s early patron.
Associated Press
