WhiteBoard News for Thursday, June 5, 2003
Sao Paulo, Brazil (Reuters):
Brazilian politician Jose Genoino can thank his sense of vanity for narrowly escaping a kidnapping on Monday night.
Genoino, the president of Brazil's ruling Workers' Party and a key adviser to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was about to leave his Sao Paulo apartment to take part in a TV talk show when he realised he had forgotten his comb.
He left his driver and press assistant waiting in the car and returned to his apartment to get the comb.
"All the journalists know how he is: Before giving an interview, he always combs his hair," his press assistant Daniela Farah Antunes said on Tuesday.
While waiting, Antunes and Genoino's driver were kidnapped and robbed. Genoino, a former left-wing guerrilla fighter with a thick mane of grey-white hair, waited for his companions on the street, thinking they had gone to get cigarettes.
The driver and Antunes were released unharmed shortly after.
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Fairfield, Maine (AP):
More than 50 years after leaving high school to serve in World War II, Richard Charity will graduate from high school together with his grandson and namesake, Richard Charity III.
"I would have graduated in 1943 the year I got drafted," the elder Charity said Monday. "I got my draft notice. They picked me. They said 'I want you,' and I was gone."
By the time Lawrence High School held its commencement ceremonies in June 1943, the United States was deep into war on two fronts and Richard Charity Sr. was on his way to Fort Benning, Ga., for basic training.
From there his outfit, Company B, 326th Glider Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army's 13th Airborne Division went to Europe.
He returned in April 1946, got married and raised three children. He now has seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
One of those grandchildren, Richard Charity III, is a graduating member of the Lawrence High School Class of 2003.
Grandfather and grandson will receive their diplomas on Friday thanks to legislation passed two years ago in Maine making veterans who missed graduation because of military service in World War II or Korea eligible to graduate.
Richard III, known as Rick, is 18 and played basketball for the Lawrence Bulldogs. He is headed to the University of Connecticut to study pharmacology in the fall.
Richard Sr., known as Chick, is now 77 and in a wheelchair, but that's not slowing him down.
How does the old soldier feel about finally getting his high school diploma with his grandson?
"I never imagined it," he said. "I know I'll break down, hopefully not too bad, anyway."
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St Gallen, Germany (Ananova):
German police driving their water cannons home after riots in Switzerland came to the aid of a motorist when his car caught fire.
The officers trained one of their cannons on the car and put out the fire, said St Gallen police.
The driver had stopped in the emergency lane after spotting smoke coming from the underside of the vehicle.
The police, usually based in the southern German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, had been on loan to Geneva to help control demonstrations against the G8 Summit.
The water cannons had been used in the city on Monday night.
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Oslo, Norway (Ananova):
A Norwegian air ambulance crew almost ignored the smell of an on board fire because they thought it was just the patients farting.
They noticed a cabbage-like smell which turned out to be a blaze near the front window of the aircraft.
An investigation has traced the smell to burning wire insulation.
"Everyone who has flown knows that gases arise that need to slip out. It isn't unusual that this happens to our patients," said ambulance chief Geir-Arne Soerensen of Air Transport, the company responsible for the flight.
The flames flared up three times, despite attempts to extinguish them and smoke soon started to fill the cabin, according to Aftenposten.
The co-pilot managed to bring the plane down, where an emergency evacuation took place.
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