News Journal

What did Japanese researchers hope to prove when they created a mouse that is not afraid of cats?
That fear is genetically programmed and not the product of experience

What did Hugo Chávez claim was the reason for creating a new time zone for Venezuela?
To allow schoolchildren to arrive for lessons with more energy

What did Nicolas Sarkozy say after Gordon Brown failed to attend a ceremony at which all the other EU heads of government signed the Lisbon treaty?
We need Gordon

How did Fabio Capello welcome the first British journalist to track him down at his house in Lugano, Switzerland?
"You go outside my house"

What does Barney the White House dog want for Christmas?
To become a park ranger along with fellow presidential pet Miss Beazley

1. Amid growing frustration with United States over deadlocked negotiations at a United Nations conference on global warming, the European Union threatened Thursday to boycott separate talks proposed by the Bush administration in Hawaii next month. The escalating bitterness between the European Union and the United States came at a conference this week in Bali as former Vice President Al Gore told delegates in a speech that “My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali.”
2. The financial services giant Citigroup moved on Thursday to rescue seven affiliated investment funds that have been upended by the running crisis in housing-related debt. The decision, which reverses earlier statements made by bank executives and in regulatory filings, marks the biggest move yet by a bank to bail out ailing structured investment vehicles. Several European banks, including HSBC and Société Générale, have taken similar measures.
3. A new Arizona law against employing illegal immigrants has shaken businesses, scared workers, delighted advocates of stricter immigration controls and added to tensions in a state split over who belongs here and who does not. And that is even before the law’s scheduled effective date, Jan. 1. The law is an example of the scores of state and municipal laws meant to address illegal immigration on the belief that the federal government has not done enough to thwart it. But the Arizona version is among the toughest and could test states’ ability to crack down on the countless businesses that have relied on illegal workers.
4. At a moment when the shortage of low-income housing in the city is causing significant hardship, the federal government is beginning this week to tear down thousands of apartments in New Orleans four biggest public housing projects. Though local and federal housing officials say the storm-damaged projects were inhuman places to live and should not be rebuilt, some protesters accused the government of a darker motive behind the demolition plan. They contended that the government’s real aim was to keep the poor, mostly female, almost entirely black residents of public housing from returning to their city, to their homes.
5. The Republican presidential candidates sought to embrace Hispanics in a Spanish-language debate Sunday, striving to mark common ground with a growing voter bloc while softening the anti-illegal immigration rhetoric that has marked past encounters. Univision, the Spanish language television network, and the University of Miami hosted the debate. Republicans have had trouble courting Hispanics, who have become an increasingly significant source of votes. A recent poll by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center found Hispanic registered voters favor Democrats over Republicans by a margin of 57 percent to 23 percent, a wider gap than in July 2006.
6. Thousands of fishermen, soldiers and volunteers struggled on Sunday to clean up an oil spill that has caused an environmental disaster in South Korea. It has blackened once scenic beaches, coated birds and oysters in sludge and driven away tourists with its stomach-churning stench. But the 7,000 people mobilized were too few to clean up the oil slick, which has been washing up since Saturday along a 12-mile-long shoreline of the nation’s west coast. Strong tides, which dragged the sludge before pushing it ashore again, hampered the cleanup operations by villagers, who complained of headaches and nausea from the stench.
7. Facing the worst drought in a century and the prospect that climate change could yield long-term changes on the Colorado River, the lifeline for several Western states, federal officials have reached a new pact with the states on how to allocate water if the river runs short. State and federal officials praised the agreement as a landmark akin to the Colorado River Compact of 1922, which first outlined how much water the seven states served by the river — California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — would receive annually.
8. The New JerseySenate voted Monday to make the state the first in the country to repeal the death penalty since 1976, when the United States Supreme Court set guidelines for the nation’s current system of capital punishment. For those opposed to capital punishment, New Jersey’s repeal would represent a victory that has eluded them in the modern history of the death penalty. Though legislatures across the country have tried to abolish capital punishment since 1976, none have succeeded. This year alone, the legislatures in Nebraska, Montana, Maryland and New Mexico have debated bills to repeal those states’ death penalties, but each measure failed, often by a slim margin.
9. The state of Maine is seeking to reclaim one of the earliest copies of the Declaration of Independence from a collector who bought it at auction, citing a state statute that says a public document remains public until explicitly relinquished by the government. Maine officials say the state is not obligated to pay anything to get the document back. It is unclear whether the state’s statute regarding public documents will hold up in a Virginia court.Only two other copies are known to survive in Maine, and they are preserved in the State Archives and the State Museum.
10. In the months since his convictions in July on fraud and obstruction of justice charges, Conrad M. Black, the fallen press baron who once presided over the world’s third-largest newspaper empire, was not above poking fun at himself as he waited to see how long he would spend in prison. He received his answer Monday as Judge Amy J. St. Eve of United States District Court sentenced Mr. Black to 6 1/2 years in prison on three fraud charges and one charge of obstruction of justice for removing 13 boxes of documents from the Toronto offices of his media company, Hollinger International, an infraction caught on videotape.
11. Israeli troops accompanied by about a dozen tanks moved into southern Gaza on Tuesday, killing at least six Palestinians and wounding 12 others, a day before Israelis and Palestinians were due to hold their first talks on a comprehensive peace following the American-led conference in Anapolis. The Israelis went as far as two miles into Hamas-run Gaza, near the towns of Khan Yunis and Rafah, and engaged Palestinian gunmen along the border, according to Palestinian residents and spokesmen for the Israeli Army.
12. Twin car bombs near United Nations offices and Algerian government building killed dozens of people Tuesday in what may have been the deadliest attack there in more than a decade. Two European diplomats in Algiers said that reports from rescue and medical workers led them to believe that 60 or more people had died. By Tuesday evening, 26 deaths had been confirmed by the Algerian Interior Ministry.
13. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies were attacked Tuesday at Tehran’s major university in an unusual speech by his predecessor, who warned that political suppression, questionable economic policies and defiance on the nuclear issue were leading Iranians in the wrong direction. Mr. Khatami’s criticism of Mr. Ahmadinejad has long been known. But his public denunciation of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s policies was unusual because of its high visibility at a site of youthful dissent. Mr. Khatami condemned the political and social crackdown against activists since Mr. Ahmadinejad’s election and criticized the president’s plans for strengthening Iran’s economy, the ISNA news agency reported.
14. At least 27 people died and 150 were wounded Wednesday when three car bombs ripped through a southern Iraqi city where the local authorities had recently taken over security responsibility from the British military and rival Shiite groups had been battling for control of oil and power. The triple bombing, in Amara, the capital of Maysan Province, was one of the deadliest attacks in Iraq in months and highlighted both the volatility of the south and the potential risks of turning over security to Iraqi forces in areas where tensions still run high. Iraqi security officials said that the blasts came in quick succession around 10 a.m., collapsing buildings, charring cars and filling hospital hallways with victims who barely knew what hit them. Police reports on the death toll ranged from 27 to 41.