World Briefs

LA PAZ, Bolivia – President Evo Morales says Bolivia will launch a state newspaper soon and also plans to create a television station with Venezuelan and Iranian backing.

The leftist president says he has asked the government's communication department to inaugurate the newspaper on Jan. 22, with the objective of "reporting the truth."

Morales also said Sunday that Bolivia plans a new state television station with financial backing from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He did not say when he plans to launch the station. Morales has had strained relations with Bolivia's private news media.

MANOKWARI, Indonesia – A series of powerful earthquakes killed at least four people and injured dozens in remote eastern Indonesia and briefly triggered fears of another tsunami in a country still recovering from 2004's deadly waves.

One of the quakes — a 7.3-magnitude tremor — was felt as far away as Australia and sent small tsunamis into Japan's southeastern coast.

Residents near the epicenter in Papua province rushed from their homes in search of higher ground shortly after the first 7.6-magnitude quake struck at 4:43 a.m. local time (1943 GMT), afraid that huge waves might wash over the island.

NAIROBI – Two journalists, from Britain and Spain, were released Sunday after almost six weeks in captivity in Somalia's breakaway Puntland state, police and the two governments said.

"The two journalists are free after their ordeals," said the head of Puntland police, Abdullahi Said Samatar.

"They're taking some rest now and they will be available later. I'm happy to see them recovering their freedom."

DANBURY, CONN. – On the day that Donald Peters died, he unknowingly provided financial security for his wife of 59 years and their family.

Peters bought two Connecticut Lottery tickets at a local 7-Eleven store on Nov. 1 as part of a 20-year tradition he shared with his wife Charlotte. Later that day, the 79-year-old retired hat factory worker suffered a fatal heart attack while working in his yard in Danbury.

On Friday, his widow cashed in one of the tickets: a $10 million winner which, in her grief over her husband's death, she had put aside and almost discarded before recently checking the numbers.

"I'm numb," Charlotte Peters, 78, said at Connecticut Lottery headquarters in Rocky Hill.

"I was in the grocery store and I had it checked and they told me I was a winner," she said. "I had no idea how much it was."

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