Denver

Judge who blocked national do-not-call registry is on list

The office phone number of a federal judge who ruled last week that a national do-not-call registry is unconstitutional was among the thousands already on the list.

U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham’s number was added in July to the registry, which was designed to block telemarketers’ calls.

It wasn’t clear whether Nottingham himself registered the number or knew it had been registered. A call to the office Saturday was not immediately returned.

Nottingham on Thursday stopped the Federal Trade Commission from implementing the registry, ruling it was an unconstitutional infringement on free speech.

The FTC Web site was set up to allow anyone to register their number, remove it or verify whether a number was registered. An automated response from the site verified that Nottingham’s number was registered on July 28.

The Boston Globe reported the listing in its Saturday editions and said Nottingham did not return its messages seeking comment Friday.

South Korea

North Korea denounces Rumsfeld as a ‘psychopath’

North Korea called U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld a “psychopath” and a “stupid man” on Saturday, denouncing him for predicting that the country’s isolated communist regime will one day fall.

Speaking before a group of U.S. and South Korean businessmen, Rumsfeld said last week that freedom would eventually come and “light up that oppressed land with hope and with promise,” casting aside the dictatorship that has ruled the North for more than half a century.

North Korea, whose media regularly churn out anti-American vituperations, is especially thin-skinned when outsiders attack its political leadership.

KCNA, North Korea’s official news agency, said Saturday that Rumsfeld’s “outbursts … can not be construed (other) than a desperate shrill cry of a psychopath on his death bed.”

Rome

Blackout darkens Italy

Power went out across Italy before dawn today, plunging the nation into darkness, police and news reports said. Authorities did not immediately know the cause.

The first power outages were reported about 4 a.m. local time in Rome, where the city was celebrating an all-night festival with museums and restaurants open around the clock.

Later, the national electricity company ACEA said power was out across the nation of 57 million, the ANSA news agency said.

“As far as we know it’s all across Italy,” police official Franca Sesti Miraglia said in Rome.

ANSA said that hundreds of people attending the all-night “White Night” festivities in Rome were stuck in subways because of the blackout. Police could not immediately confirm the report.

Authorities repeatedly have said that power demand was growing faster than supply.