Boy impersonates officer

Boy impersonates officer

CHICAGO — Chicago police arrested a 14-year-old boy for impersonating one of their own Saturday.

The boy, who has been charged as a juvenile for impersonating an officer, walked into the Grand Crossing (3rd) District station, dressed in a Chicago police uniform, police spokeswoman Monique Bond said. The boy was with another police officer for a period of time, but did not get behind the wheel of a squad car, she said.

The boy was also savvy enough to sign out a police radio and a ticket book, according to a source. The source also said the boy went on traffic stops with the officer he went on the street with.

After his tour was over, a ranking officer became suspicious of the boy. The source said the ranking officer discovered he was not a real police officer when he couldn’t produce any credentials.

“The boy was not armed and the matter is under investigation with Internal Affairs,” Bond said.

Biden: Expect casualties

WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden says the nation should expect more U.S. military casualties as the Obama administration plans to send additional troops to Afghanistan.

Pentagon officials say they plan to send up to 30,000 additional troops to the Afghan war, where the Taliban is resurgent and violence has been on the rise. The request for more troops from military commanders was endorsed by the Bush administration and has been favored by the Obama government, too.

Biden spoke on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

2-ton cheesecake is tops

MEXICO CITY — Mexico has long been known for tacos and tequila — but cheesecake?

Chef Miguel Angel Quezada says 55 cooks spent 60 hours making the world’s biggest cheesecake — a 2-ton calorie bomb topped with strawberries.

The monster cake used nearly a ton of cream cheese, the same amount of yogurt, 772 pounds of pastry, 551 pounds of sugar and 331 pounds of butter.

Carlos Martinez of Guinness World Records declared the cheesecake the world’s largest on Sunday at an event sponsored by Kraft Foods, maker of Philadelphia cream cheese.

Organizers gave out 20,000 slices around Mexico City.

Cleaning up after storms

PARIS — French authorities deployed 10,000 cleanup and recovery workers, and Spain let evacuated villagers return home Sunday a day after deadly storms pounded southwest France and northeast Spain.

Authorities in Spain reported at least 12 deaths linked to the storm, including four children crushed as a sports facility buckled in high winds in Barcelona. In France, at least eight people died — including two couples who died of carbon-monoxide poisoning from generators they had turned on as power outages swept the region, officials said.

New Bolivian constitution

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivian voters embraced a new constitution Sunday that promises more power for the long-suffering indigenous majority and grants leftist President Evo Morales a shot at remaining in office through 2014.

The charter passed easily in a country where many can still recall when Indians were forbidden to vote. But its sometimes vague wording and resistance from Bolivia’s mestizo and European-descended minority foreshadows more political turmoil in an Andean nation polarized by race and class.

Morales, Bolivia’s first Indian president, says the charter will “decolonize” South America’s poorest country by recovering indigenous values lost under centuries of oppression dating back to the Spanish conquest.

Rape comment denounced

ROME — Premier Silvio Berlusconi sparked outrage Sunday for suggesting that Italy’s women were so beautiful they needed military escorts to avoid being raped.

Berlusconi made the comments in response to questions about his proposal to deploy 300,000 soldiers in the streets to fight crime. A series of violent attacks, including a rape in Rome on New Year’s Eve and another outside the capital this week, have put pressure on the government to crack down on crime.

But Berlusconi said that, even in a militarized state, crimes such as rape can happen. “You can’t consider deploying a force that would be sufficient to prevent the risk,” the ANSA and Apcom news agencies quoted him as saying. “We would have to have so many soldiers because our women are so beautiful.”

Giovanna Melandri of the opposition Democratic Party said Berlusconi’s comments were “profoundly offensive,” saying the pain of rape could never be joked about in such a way.

Combined dispatches