The world at a glance . . . Americas

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

Storm smothers West: A giant winter storm swept across the U.S. this week, prompting avalanche warnings in Colorado and Washington state. The storm dumped up to 2 feet of snow from Washington to northern Arizona. Roofs in Coeur d’Alene collapsed under 20 inches of snow, and the city’s schools canceled classes for the first time since 1996. Colorado authorities rescued two of three snowmobilers reported missing, but heavy winds and subzero temperatures were hampering the search for the third. Barreling into the Midwest, the storm touched off thunderstorm and apparent tornadoes that were blamed for two deaths in Indiana.

Detroit

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Mayor’s affair exposed: Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, falsely claimed they weren’t romantically involved and may face perjury charges, the Detroit Free Press reported last week. Romantic text messages obtained by the newspaper indicate that the 37-year-old married mayor and his 37-year-old aide, since divorced, were carrying on an affair that both denied during testimony in a civil case last summer. “I’m madly in love with you,” Kilpatrick wrote in 2002. Beatty replied, “I hope you feel that way for a long time.” Kilpatrick and Beatty testified in a lawsuit brought by a former deputy police chief and a former mayoral bodyguard, who both had claimed that they were fired for cooperating with a police investigation that could have exposed the affair. Kilpatrick said the text messages were “profoundly embarrassing” and “reflect a very difficult period” in his life, but so far he has brushed aside calls for his resignation. Beatty resigned her post this week.

Altagracia de Orituco, Venezuela

Hostage siege: Police this week captured four bank robbers who had held some 50 hostages for two days before being allowed to flee with five of them. The incident started after a police officer happened upon a bank robbery in progress. The robbers, armed with pistols and a hand grenade, then seized dozens of hostages and threatened to kill them unless they were allowed to escape. After a 48-hour standoff, police agreed to let the gunmen flee in an ambulance with five hostages. Authorities promised the gunmen they would not follow. But that’s apparently what they did, arresting the men not long after they drove off. None of the hostages was injured.

Caracas, Venezuela

Chavez wants joint force: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez this week called for a Latin American and Caribbean military alliance against the United States. Chavez made the appeal at a summit meeting of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a trade organization that includes Bolivia, Cuba, the Caribbean island of Dominica, and Nicaragua, as well as Venezuela. The Socialist leader argued that such an alliance is necessary

to counter what he called U.S. efforts to “destabilize” the region. “If the U.S. threatens one of us, it threatens all of us,” he said. “We will respond as one.” The U.S. State Department had no immediate comment.

Rio de Janeiro

‘Holocaust float’ stirs outcry: Brazilian Jews this week are protesting a macabre “Holocaust float” featuring a pile of fake dead bodies that is slated to appear in the annual Carnival parade next week. The float, said its sponsor, the Viradouro samba school, was meant to commemorate

the Nazi genocide of European Jews. “It’s a warning,” said Paolo Barros, Viradouro’s artistic director. “It’s something shocking that we don’t want to happen ever again.” But leaders of Rio’s Jewish community said the float did not belong in Rio’s celebration of Mardi Gras, which includes raucous music and scantily clad dancing girls. Barros said dancers would be barred from the Holocaust float. “That,” he said, “would indeed be disrespectful.”

Look out below!

A U.S. spy satellite, loaded with toxic rocket fuel, will fall to Earth within weeks, federal officials confirmed last week. The officials said the orbit of the 20,000-pound, minivan-size satellite had decayed, and NASA was unable to transmit commands that would boost it back to a safe height. “It’s not necessarily dead, but it’s deaf,” said Harvard astronomer John McDowell. NASA can’t say where the satellite, launched in 2006, will land. But most of the craft, including its fuel, is likely to burn up as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere. And because a vast majority of the planet is either open ocean or uninhabited land, scientists say there’s little chance the craft will do any damage on Earth.