Parcel bomb kills 1
A package bearing homemade bombs blew up Thursday in a lawyer’s office on a tony boulevard in central Paris, killing the woman who opened it. The motive for the unusual attack remained unclear. A messenger delivered the package, a wooden box that turned out to contain two homemade explosive devices, authorities said. The office secretary opened the package, and both explosives went off, killing her and seriously injuring a lawyer.
Red Cross visits detainees
The International Red Cross has made its first visit to detainees of the central Iraqi government since the U.S.-led invasion of the country, a spokeswoman said Thursday. The ICRC has visited the detainees of U.S.-led forces — but it took three years of negotiations with Iraqi authorities for similar access to their prisons. The visit took place in October at Ft. Suse, a prison in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish north.
Ex-wife wants limited terms
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s ex-wife said Thursday she is proposing a constitutional amendment to shorten presidential terms. Marisabel Rodriguez said she believes terms should be reduced from six to four years, and they should allow presidents only one opportunity for re-election. Her comments came four days after voters rejected the president’s reforms that would have let him run for re-election indefinitely.
Prosecutor: Kids suffocated
Autopsy results point to suffocation as the likely cause of death for five brothers believed to have been killed by their mentally disturbed mother, a prosecutor said Thursday. The results indicated the boys had been given sleeping pills and then suffocated, a prosecutor in the northern port city of Kiel, Germany, said. Their 31-year-old mother, who has not been identified, is suspected of killing them, he said.
AND FINALLY …
Police bust beer bandits
Ireland’s national police force has arrested two men in connection with an audacious robbery last week on the landmark Guinness Brewery in Dublin — but said Thursday they were still looking for others involved in the beer banditry. Police declined to specify how many kegs have been recovered following the Nov. 29 raid, when a lone man drove a truck into the brewery, hitched up a trailer loaded with 450 kegs and drove straight out through the security gate into rush-hour traffic. Guinness called it the biggest robbery in the 248-year history of the brewery.
