Cheney home after surgery to repair aneurysms in legs
Washington – Vice President Dick Cheney went home from a hospital Sunday morning, a day after doctors performed procedures to repair aneurysms in arteries behind both knees.
Cheney, 64, slid his hands along a railing as he walked slowly out of George Washington University Hospital with his wife, Lynne, at his side. Cheney planned to rest Sunday and work from home today.
On Saturday, a team of five doctors performed a minimally invasive procedure to implant flexible stent-grafts in the popliteal arteries behind each knee. Cheney was given local anesthesia during the procedures, which lasted six hours.
Stephen Schmidt, Cheney’s chief spokesman, said that before they started, the vice president’s doctors had expected to perform the procedure only on Cheney’s right knee. But during the procedure, he said, the doctors decided to repair both knees.
Some vascular surgeons who perform the stent-graft technique raised questions about its use in the vice president’s surgery. One concern is that the Food and Drug Administration has not approved any device for use in repairs of popliteal aneurysms, although doctors use them often on an “off-label” basis.
Dr. Eugene Zierler, a vascular surgeon at the University of Washington in Seattle, said patients who undergo surgery similar to Cheney’s usually are advised to take it easy for about a week after such a procedure.
Doctors also said they would advise patients not to fly aboard commercial airplanes for about two to three weeks.
SEATTLE
Tentative accord may end strike at Boeing
The Boeing Co. and its Machinists union have reached a tentative contract agreement, which, if approved, would end a 3 1/2- week strike that shut down the company’s airplane production.
Connie Kelliher, a spokeswoman for Machinists District Lodge 751 in Seattle, confirmed Sunday an agreement had been reached.
Negotiations in the 3 1/2-week- old strike had been stalled since about 18,400 Machinists walked off the job Sept. 2 over health premiums and other issues.
Workers represented in the talks receive an average of $59,000 a year. The company has said they would earn about $62,500 a year by the end of the new contract.
WASHINGTON
McCain says U.S. hurt by abuse of Iraqis
Sen. John McCain said Sunday that abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, alleged anew in a report and under investigation again by the Army, is hurting the nation’s image abroad.
“We’ve got to have it stopped,” McCain, R-Ariz., said on “This Week” on ABC. “I don’t know if these allegations are true or not, but they have to be investigated.”
Human Rights Watch issued a report Friday based on interviews with a captain and two sergeants who served in a battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at a military base near Fallujah that alleged that Army soldiers systematically tortured Iraqi detainees from 2003 into 2004, hitting them with baseball bats and dousing them with chemicals.
WASHINGTON
Okla. congressman may run for governor
Rep. Ernest Istook Jr., R-Okla., plans to vacate his House seat to take on Democratic Gov. Brad Henry in 2006, according to numerous GOP sources.
The sources said a formal announcement is scheduled for early October.
“While we cannot confirm any specific date, the congressman has made it clear that he is strongly leaning toward entering the governor’s race,” said Istook spokesman Matt Lambert.
This is not the first time around the block for Istook, who was expected to run for the open seat of retiring Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., in 2004 but abruptly backed away, citing his influential position as a subcommittee chairman on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
SALTILLO, Mexico
Former ruling party leads in state election
Mexico’s former ruling party had a strong lead Sunday in northern Coahuila state’s gubernatorial race, the last state election before next summer’s presidential poll.
With nearly half the votes counted Sunday, Humberto Moreira had 57 percent, compared with 33 percent for Jorge Zermeno, 56, a lawyer and senator running with President Vicente Fox’s National Action Party.
A victory by Moreira would serve as another boost for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which controlled Mexico’s presidency from 1929 until losing to Fox in 2000.
A win by Moreira in this northern industrial state does not guarantee the PRI’s return to the presidency. Its two potential presidential candidates trail former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party in most national presidential polls.
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico
Violent border city hugs for world record
More than 14,000 people in this infamously violent city on the U.S.-Mexico border embraced and held on tight Sunday for a 15-minute “Giant Hug,” that attempted to set a Guinness World Record.
Mayor Hector Murguia led the gathering, which took place close to a bridge leading over the border and into neighboring El Paso, Texas. The embrace began with the cry “Mexico, Mexico, Mexico” around midday.
Murguia arrived with Javier Canario Nassar, who verified that 14,200 people participated in the hug, and planned to send documentation stating as such to Guinness officials in London.
