Odds & Ends for May 13

TV show claims plot in crossword

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Government critics, and even some supporters, are ridiculing a state TV host’s allegation that a newspaper crossword puzzle may have had a hidden call for a plot to kill President Hugo Chavez’s elder brother.

Intelligence agents questioned the author of the puzzle after state TV presenter Miguel Perez Pirela pointed out that Wednesday’s crossword contained the word “ASESINEN,” or kill, intersecting with the name of Chavez’s brother, “ADAN.” He noted they were below the word “RAFAGAS,” meaning either gusts of wind or bursts of gunfire.

Neptali Segovia, an English teacher who has prepared crossword puzzles for the newspaper Ultimas Noticias for 17 years, said it was nonsense to think there was a hidden code in the puzzle. He told the newspaper that he went voluntarily to be questioned Thursday after intelligence agents showed up at the paper asking about him.

“I went because I’m the first one interested in having all this cleared up. I have nothing to hide,” Segovia said in an article published Friday.

Tenn. sweethearts to wed 60 years later

DYERSBURG, Tenn. (AP) — Two residents of a Tennessee assisted living center plan to marry on Sunday, more than 60 years after they first met.

Peggy Schuster and the Rev. Henry Freund were college sweethearts in the early 1950s.

Freund said the couple often sat together in class at Rhodes College in Memphis (then Southwestern) and frequently dated. But they eventually went their separate ways and married other people.

While attending a church meeting in Memphis in 2001, Freund learned that Schuster had been widowed.

Freund, who had lost his wife, wrote his college sweetheart to offer sympathy. A decade later, Schuster gave Freund her email address and the couple, both in their 80s, began corresponding.

Freund said a spark that had survived for more than 60 years “burst into flames.”