Nation & World Digest

Before planned protests, Iran chokes off Internet

TEHRAN, Iran — Government opponents shouted “Allahu Akbar” and “Death to the Dictator” from Tehran’s rooftops in the pouring rain on the eve of student demonstrations planned for today. Authorities choked off Internet access and warned journalists working for foreign media to stick to their offices for the next three days.

The measures were aimed at depriving the opposition of its key means of mobilizing the masses as Iran’s clerical rulers keep a tight lid on dissent. Government opponents are seeking, nonetheless, to get large numbers of demonstrators to turn out today and show their movement still has momentum.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi threw his support behind the student demonstrations and declared that his movement is still alive.

Study: Missing DNA can promote childhood obesity

NEW YORK — Some children get severely obese because they lack particular chunks of DNA, which kicks their hunger into overdrive, researchers report.

The British researchers checked the DNA of 300 children who’d become very fat, on the order of 220 pounds by age 10. They looked for deletions or extra copies of DNA segments.

They found evidence that several rare deletions may promote obesity, including one kind they studied further and found in less than 1 percent of about 1,200 severely obese children.

That deletion, on chromosome 16, apparently causes trouble because it removes a gene that the brain needs to respond to the appetite-controlling hormone leptin, said Dr. Sadaf Farooqi of Cambridge University.

In race in Romania, both candidates claim victory

BUCHAREST, Romania — Both candidates claimed victory in Romania’s presidential runoff Sunday, leaving the outcome uncertain in an election Romanians hope can pull the country out of its worst political and economic crisis in 20 years.

Three exit polls showed the country’s left-leaning ex-foreign minister Mircea Geoana appearing to lead incumbent Traian Basescu by a slim margin following a bitter race marked by allegations of corruption.

Geoana, an ex-foreign minister and leader of the Social Democrats who has branded himself a unifier and team builder, declared himself the winner, calling the results of the exit polls “a victory for normalcy, a victory for decency, for all citizens who want a better life.”

But Basescu claimed the exit polls were deceptive.

4 detained in club fire

PERM, Russia — Grieving relatives on Sunday begin to bury the victims of a nightclub fire that left at least 112 people dead, as four people were ordered held pending an investigation into the country’s worst blaze in decades.

About 130 people remained hospitalized with injuries from the early Saturday blaze, which witnesses said was sparked by onstage fireworks that shot into the decorative twig ceiling of the Lame Horse club in the industrial city of Perm.

The federal Investigative Committee said the suspects — the club’s owner, the executive director, the artistic director and a businessman hired to install pyrotechnics on the night of the blaze — were ordered taken into custody Sunday by Leninsky District Court.

Joel’s daughter released

MELVILLE, N.Y. — Alexa Ray Joel, the daughter of pop singer Billy Joel and supermodel Christie Brinkley, has been released from a Manhattan hospital Sunday, after being rushed there Saturday afternoon for treatment of an overdose of pills.

“She is going to be fine,” said Joel, who lives in Sag Harbor, N.Y.

Two sources close to the family said Sunday Joel had taken Traumeel, an antihistamine. Authorities had yet to confirm what medication she had ingested.

Claire Mercuri, Joel’s publicist, confirmed Joel was released from St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan a few hours after being admitted. Mercuri declined to comment further.

NASA plans to launch sky-mapping spacecraft

LOS ANGELES — NASA’s latest space telescope will scan the sky in search of never-before-seen asteroids, comets, stars and galaxies, with one of its main tasks to catalog objects posing a danger to Earth.

The sky-mapping WISE, or Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, is scheduled to launch no earlier than before dawn Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast aboard a Delta 2 rocket.

Combined dispatches