CARACAS, Venezuela

Chavez will return to Cuba for more cancer treatments

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced Friday that he will return to Cuba to begin a new phase of cancer treatment that will include chemotherapy.

Chavez said he was seeking legislative approval to go back to Havana today “to begin what we’ve called the second phase.”

He said he was sending a letter to the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Fernando Soto Rojas, to request immediate “legislative authorization” for his trip as required by the constitution. It was not clear how long Chavez, 56, planned to remain in Cuba.

Chavez’s cancer diagnosis has thrown uncertainty into Venezuela’s political landscape during the past two weeks. Chavez has said he’s confident he will rebound but has also admitted that a long road to recovery remains.

Chavez underwent surgery in Cuba on June 20 to remove a cancerous tumor from his pelvic region.

ROME

Italy approves austerity plan in effort to avert debt crisis

Italy cleared a $99 billion austerity package Friday to reassure nervous investors that the eurozone’s third-largest economy will not succumb to the debt crisis.

Berlusconi’s government fast-tracked approval of the package measures — initially set for later this summer — and increased their scope after markets fell this week on worries over Italy’s financial stability.

The country’s future is crucial to Europe’s hopes of surviving the debt crisis because Italy would be far too expensive to bail out.

The lower house of parliament passed the austerity measures by a vote of 314-280, hours after Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s government survived a confidence vote. The package was approved by the Senate on Thursday.

HONOLULU

Woman: Fatal geyser site lacking in warning signs

The fiancee of the Northern California man who was sucked into a blowhole to his apparent death said Friday there should have been signs warning people of the dangers of the geyser-like creation along a rugged stretch of the Maui coastline.

Tika Hick, who has been diagnosed with breast cancer, said by phone Friday from San Anselmo, Calif., that David Potts, 44, disappeared into the ocean during a vacation to enjoy time in the sun before she undergoes a double mastectomy next week.

Eyewitness accounts from tourists said Potts was dancing inches from the hole’s opening and playing in the sprays of water when he vanished.

Hick disputed that description and took local officials to task for not posting warning signs at the site. She was not at the blowhole at the time, but said her brother and sister-in-law were there.

“He slipped because it was slippery,” said Hick.

The only signage at the Nakalele blowhole is a quarter-mile away. The handmade sign cautions visitors, “Blowhole, park and walk at your own risk.”

WASHINGTON

House votes to block rules boosting light bulb efficiency

The GOP-led House on Friday cut 20 percent from President Obama’s budget request for energy and water projects. Republicans called the bill a model of restraint but the White House said it jeopardized economic growth and clean energy.

The $30.6 billion bill, covering Energy Department and Army Corps of Engineers programs, was down $1 billion from this year and was nearly $6 billion less than the White House wanted.

An amendment to the bill would allow companies to make and sell old 100-watt light bulbs after Jan. 1, when they are scheduled to be phased out.

The bill also steered $1 billion away from high-speed rail projects and used the money instead to pay for flood relief along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. And it provided $1.3 billion for renewable energy programs, about $491 million below this year’s level.

Maine Reps. Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree joined all but 10 other Democrats in voting against the bill. The bill now moves to the Democratic-controlled Senate.

KANSAS CITY, Mo.

Man, 53, convicted in rapes, home invasions from 1980s

A 53-year-old man was convicted Friday in a string of sexual assaults and home invasions that terrorized a middle-class Kansas City neighborhood in the 1980s.

After a weeklong trial, Jackson County jurors declared Bernard Jackson guilty of seven counts each of rape and sodomy, and four counts of robbery in attacks on four women in or near the midtown neighborhood of Waldo in 1983 and 1984.

Jackson was arrested in May 2010 after five sexual assaults were reported in the city from September 2009 through February 2010. Charged in two of those attacks, he has pleaded not guilty. No trial dates have been set for those charges.

In all of the cases from the 1980s, the victims’ hands were bound behind their backs while they were being assaulted. The victims also said their assailant blindfolded them. None were able to identify Jackson in testimony this week as their attacker.

Prosecutors largely relied on witness testimony and DNA evidence taken from the crime scenes that they said linked Jackson to the attacks.

Defense lawyer Carie Allen, who left the courtroom without comment, has said that the evidence collected nearly 30 years ago was unreliable