German president wins re-election to position

German president wins re-election to position

BERLIN — German President Horst Koehler won a second five-year term Saturday, a victory that gave a symbolic boost to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s hopes of forming a center-right government after a national election this September.

Koehler, a former International Monetary Fund head and a member of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats, secured the required majority by a single vote in the first round of voting by a special parliamentary assembly.

That was enough to see off a challenge from center-left Social Democrat Gesine Schwan, who was bidding to become Germany’s first female president — a largely ceremonial job.

Gay diplomats’ benefits to improve, Clinton says

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will soon announce that gay American diplomats will be given benefits similar to those that their heterosexual counterparts enjoy, U.S. officials said Saturday.

In a notice to be sent soon to State Department employees, Clinton says regulations that denied same-sex couples and their families the same rights and privileges that straight diplomats enjoyed are “unfair and must end,” as they harm U.S. diplomacy.

‘Caps for Chemo’ a hoax

HARTFORD, Conn. — People in several communities have been scammed — not financially, but emotionally — by a hoax that promises to provide chemotherapy for a sick child in exchange for plastic bottle caps.

The “Caps for Chemo” fraud apparently originated by e-mail in West Virginia and Virginia last year, and the American Cancer Society said it determined after researching the rumor that no cancer patients were benefiting from the cap collections.

It appears, however, that the rumors were taken seriously in at least a few Connecticut communities. The Child Development Center in Enfield, the Atlanta Bread restaurant in South Windsor and Wells Road Intermediate School in Granby all began collecting caps recently and together have amassed several thousand.

All-digital election in Hawaii deemed a success

HONOLULU — Voting has ended in what is being touted as the nation’s first all-digital election, and city officials say it has been a success.

Some 115,000 voters in Honolulu’s neighborhood-council election were able to pick winners entirely online or via telephone. The voting, which started May 6, ended Friday.

City officials say the experiment appears to have generated few problems; it has even saved the financially strapped city around $100,000.

Web voting, which produces no paper record, cannot be used in city council or state elections because state law bars voting systems that do not include a vote verification process, said Warren Stewart, legislative policy director for Verified Voting Foundation, a nonpartisan advocacy group.

2 Americans die in Iraq

BAGHDAD — An American was found dead in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, the U.S. military said Saturday, the apparent victim of an unprecedented slaying that occurred at a time when blast walls are coming down and Iraqi forces are assuming greater control.

Another American, believed to be a civilian contractor, was killed Friday night when a rocket struck the Green Zone near the U.S. Embassy, the military said. It was believed to be the first fatal rocket attack there this year.

Those deaths have raised concerns about security before the June 30 deadline for all U.S. combat troops to pull out of Baghdad and other cities. At least 66 people were killed nationwide in a two-day string of bombings this week.

U.S. deports Mafia boss

ROME — Italian authorities took into custody on Saturday a top boss from the Gambino Mafia clan who was deported from the United States after spending more than two decades in jail for drug trafficking.

The 67-year-old Rosario Gambino arrived at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport on a flight from Miami. Wearing a gray jumpsuit and looking frail, he sat in a wheelchair as he was escorted out by police officers.

Gambino, an Italian-born New Jersey resident, was considered a top mobster in the New York-based crime family led by his late cousin Carlo Gambino.

In 1984, he was convicted in a multimillion-dollar conspiracy to sell heroin in southern New Jersey and sentenced to 45 years in jail.

Combined dispatches