East Timor’s President José Ramos-Horta was treated for serious chest wounds in an Australian hospital Monday after rebel soldiers shot him and attacked the prime minister during a failed coup attempt. The country’s top fugitive was killed in one of the attacks. The strikes against the two independence icons were a striking reminder of the bitter rivalries beneath the surface in Asia’s newest nation and could trigger more unrest and political turmoil.
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has a narrow lead over likely Republican nominee John McCain in a potential presidential matchup, while rival Hillary Rodham Clinton is about even with the Republican front-runner, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll indicated Monday. Obama, an Illinois senator, led McCain in the poll by 48 percent to 42 percent when people were asked which one they would prefer if the presidential race was held now. Clinton, a senator from New York, got 46 percent to McCain’s 45 percent in their matchup.
Rep. Tom Lantos, who as a teenager twice escaped from a Nazi-run forced labor camp in Hungary and became the only Holocaust survivor to win a seat in Congress, has died. He was 80. Lantos’ spokeswoman Lynne Weil said Lantos, a Californian, died early Monday at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in suburban Maryland. He was surrounded by his wife, Annette, two daughters and many of his 17 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Two spacewalking astronauts floated out of a hatch on the international space station on Monday to help install a new European lab, while a crewmate who was supposed to participate in the outing helped from inside. German astronaut Hans Schlegel was supposed to take part in the spacewalk, but he was pulled from the job Saturday because of an undisclosed illness.
Three armed men in ski masks stole four paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet worth $163.2 million from a Zurich museum in one of Europe’s largest-ever art heists, police said Monday. The robbers stole the paintings Sunday from the E.G. Buehrle Collection, one of Europe’s finest private museums for Impressionist and post-Impressionist art, police said.
