American teen climbs Everest

hAmerican teen climbs Everest

BEIJING

The youngest climber to reach the peak of Mount Everest hugged his tearful companions and told them he loved them. Then 13-year-old Jordan Romero took the satellite phone and called his mom.

“He says, ‘Mom, I’m calling you from the top of the world,’” a giddy Leigh Anne Drake told The Associated Press from California, where she had been watching her son’s progress minute by minute on a GPS tracker online.

“There were lots of tears and ‘I love you! I love you!’” Drake said. “I just told him to get his butt back home.”

With Saturday’s success on the world’s highest mountain, at 29,035 feet above sea level, Jordan is just one climb from his quest to reach the highest peaks on all seven continents.

Diplomacy needed to lead, Obama says

WEST POINT, N.Y.

The U.S. must shape a world order as reliant on the force of diplomacy as on the might of its military to lead, President Barack Obama said Saturday as he outlined a foreign-policy vision that repudiated the go-it-alone approach forged by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Addressing nearly 1,000 graduating cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, many of whom likely will head to war in Iraq and Afghanistan under his command, Obama said all hands are required to solve the world’s newest threats: terrorism, the spread of nuclear weapons, climate change and feeding and caring for a growing population.

The U.S. military is the “cornerstone of our national defense,” but Obama said the men and women who wear America’s uniform cannot bear that responsibility by themselves. “The rest of us must do our part,” he said.

Jailed Americans’ moms return home

NEW YORK

The mothers of three Americans jailed in Iran returned to the United States on Saturday, pained to leave their children behind yet heartened to find they’re being treated well and are “in reasonable health.”

At a brief news conference at John F. Kennedy International Airport shortly after they returned to New York, Cindy Hickey thanked the Iranians for allowing the women to see the three and said they were disappointed they could not return with their children.

“The pain is almost more than we can bear,” Hickey said, but “we will forever savor the precious moments we were able to spend with our children.”

Cuomo announces run for governor

NEW YORK

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo declared his candidacy for governor Saturday, delivering a full-throated call for political reform and pledging to make the notoriously dysfunctional state government more accountable to its citizens.

The announcement by Cuomo to seek the governorship once held by his iconic father, Mario Cuomo, had been widely expected. The Democrat disclosed his candidacy in a video released on his website before appearing before supporters later in the day.

Associated Press