Strongman

The strongman of the NFL scouting combine? It's Memphis defensive tackle Dontari Poe, who bench-pressed 225 pounds 44 times, the most repetitions of any player. "I think I'm explosive, very explosive," Poe said. "That's probably my biggest strength. Most people think just because I'm big I do nothing but power... I try to use my quickness to my advantage. " This draft class is deep in interior defensive linemen, and the NFL Network's Mike Mayock ranks Poe as the third-best defensive tackle in the group.

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a barrel-chested former paratrooper who tapped his nation's oil wealth to deliver social welfare programs for the impoverished masses, died Tuesday at a Caracas military hospital where he was moved last month after a 10-week stay in Cuba for cancer treatment , Vice President Nicolas Maduro told national television. Maduro said Chavez died at 4:25 p.m. Chavez, 58, had been elected to a fourth term as head of state in October but signaled before his departure for Cuba on Dec. 9 that his prolonged battle with pelvic cancer might preclude him from attending the constitutionally mandated Jan. 10 inauguration.

Panamanians on Friday marked the 11th anniversary of the death of Gen. Omar Torrijos, the nationalist strongman who negotiated for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Panama by the year 2000. A small group of supporters gathered at a former U.S. military fort to lay a wreath at a monument dedicated to Torrijos, who was killed in a 1981 plane crash in Panama. The pro-U.S. government of President Guillermo Endara, sworn in on the eve of the 1989 U.S.

SEOUL - Park Geun-hye, the daughter of the strongman who ruled South Korea for much of the 1960s and 1970s, was elected Wednesday as the country's first female president after a divisive, hotly contested election. Park, a member of the conservative New Frontier ruling party, has been a legislator since 1998. But her claim to fame before now came from her father, Park Chung-hee, who seized power in 1961 in a military coup and led the country until his assassination in 1979. Park, whose mother was killed in 1974, served as de facto first lady at state functions for the last five years of her father's presidency.

Writer-director Noah Buschel's ambitious, stylish neo-noir "The Missing Person" starts so self-consciously that it verges on parody but impressively gathers steam, gaining depth and breadth as it evokes 9/11 post-traumatic stress. It's a great-looking movie, with an evocative use of music and, in rugged-yet-sensitive Michael Shannon, has an actor whose forceful, focused presence is the film's sturdy linchpin. Shannon's John Rosow, a martini-loving, hardscrabble Chicago private eye, is awakened in the middle of the night with an offer he can't afford not to take.

From the American perspective, the transition now underway in Egypt confirms John Kenneth Galbraith's famous appraisal of politics as a choice between "the disastrous and the unpalatable. " What the Obama administration must dread is not the prospect of Cairo repeating the disaster that was Tehran in 1979 but St. Petersburg in 1917, when one revolution ? its leadership democratic but hopelessly divided ? was followed within months by a second, its leaders murderously disciplined and malevolently focused.

Hundreds of Soviet and Afghan government commandos overran a large guerrilla base at Maro in eastern Afghanistan, and the insurgents fled into the surrounding mountains, guerrilla sources said. They reported about 70 guerrilla casualties in more than a week of combat. In Kabul, meanwhile, diplomatic sources said that a large bomb exploded in what may have been an assassination attempt against the new Afghan strongman, Najib.

Panamanian authorities rounded up 26 people for allegedly conspiring to mount a U.S.-financed coup against military strongman Manuel A. Noriega. Lt. Col. Guillermo Wong, chief of intelligence for the Panama Defense Forces, said the coup was being organized from Panama and the United States and was funded through the U.S. embassies in Mexico City and Panama City. Wong said 26 Panamanians have been detained since last Thursday on charges of involvement in the alleged coup.

Let's add one more piece of evidence to the impressive list enumerated in your article. We've wondered why, aside from poor judgment, Bush would choose the sophomoric Dan Quayle as his running mate. Bush is implicated in Iran-Contra, in the scheme to abort the Constitution, in a cozy relationship with Panama strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega. Now the October Surprise. A clever Bush might, with reason, believe that the best insurance against an impeachment proceeding would be Quayle sitting as vice president.

Conrad's cartoon, unfortunately, is all too true. For several years lawyers, legislators, public defenders, ex-members of the CIA and FBI are among the many who have tried to convey the truth of Bush's involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, illegal sales of arms and drugs and covert dealings with Panama strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega and his government, but the public in general has failed to listen. Although Conrad's cartoon will no doubt draw ire from those who refuse to face the truth or learn the facts, he has made a statement with his cartoonist's pen which is more powerful than all the written and spoken words of many others.

MEXICO CITY -- That big, hulking statue of the Caucasian strongman has got to go. Such was the recommendation Friday of a special committee appointed to resolve one of the odder controversies to beset this capital. At issue: the city government's decision to allow Azerbaijan to erect a monument to its late president, Heydar Aliyev, on the iconic Reforma Boulevard, prime real estate in the sprawling megalopolis. The bronze and marble statue generated protests and a running debate in the media.

Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, a rebel leader in the Cuban revolution who went from fighting alongside Fidel Castro to spending 22 brutal years in prison after trying to overthrow him, has died. He was 77. Gutierrez Menoyo died Friday of a heart attack at a Havana hospital, said his wife, Flor Ester Torres Sanabria. After vacationing in Cuba in 2003, he decided to stay to promote democracy. Until his health began to fail in 2010, he had frequently spoken out against the communist government, but in measured tones that kept him out of jail.

The strongman of the NFL scouting combine? It's Memphis defensive tackle Dontari Poe, who bench-pressed 225 pounds 44 times, the most repetitions of any player. "I think I'm explosive, very explosive," Poe said. "That's probably my biggest strength. Most people think just because I'm big I do nothing but power... I try to use my quickness to my advantage. " This draft class is deep in interior defensive linemen, and the NFL Network's Mike Mayock ranks Poe as the third-best defensive tackle in the group.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has rejected an Arab League plan that would have eased him out of power and laid the groundwork for elections, calling it "flagrant interference" in Syria's internal affairs. That's not surprising, but it's too bad. The proposal was a sensible one that could have stopped the bloodshed. The problem is that Assad lacks sufficient incentive — at this point anyway — to comply with it. The Arab League had already imposed sanctions on Syria, suspended the country's membership and dispatched a team of monitors.

In 1967, Kim Young-soon was a dancer in Pyongyang, North Korea, when her best friend visited with crazy news. "I'm going to live in the 5th House," announced Sung Hye Rim, then a noted North Korean actress, Kim recalled. She was referring to the residence of Kim Jong Il, the crown prince of the Hermit Kingdom, leader in waiting behind his powerful father, Kim Il Sung. To Kim Young-soon, the sudden romance seemed like some perverse fairy tale with little chance of a happy ending. Worse, the actress was already married.

The career of Kim Jong Il, North Korea's "Dear Leader," was marked by a series of historical firsts — most of them dubious at best. He was, to begin, the first ruler of a Marxist-Leninist state to inherit absolute power through hereditary succession from his father, "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung, founder of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK. He was also the first ruler of an urbanized, literate society to preside over a mass famine in peacetime: The Great North Korean Famine of the 1990s, which erupted shortly after his father's death, is believed to have killed hundreds of thousands of his subjects, and perhaps more.

An exhibit of modern idiocy--two Times articles on May 13: 1) Negotiate a "plea bargain" and drop charges of drug smuggling and assorted pernicious human crimes (too numerous to itemize) against Panamanian dictator, strongman and oppressor Gen. Manuel Noriega if he promises to go away and not do it again. 2) Prosecute to the fullest extent of military law and imprison a Navy lieutenant for falling in love and marrying an (unbeknown to her) enlisted man in another branch of service, citing the "moral implications" and "conflict of interest" of this "dubious" union.

Moammar Kadafi is a fitting target for the arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court. Whatever one's opinion of the court — and The Times' editorial board has been divided on the subject — the charges lodged against the Libyan strongman and two relatives dramatize the worldwide condemnation of Kadafi's war against his own people. He is now formally what he has been in fact since the Arab Spring came to Libya: an outlaw. The grounds for the warrant, according to the court, are that Kadafi allegedly committed crimes against humanity — specifically murder and persecution.

Indirect talks on the future of Libya have been taking place between representatives of Moammar Kadafi's government and rebels based in the eastern city of Benghazi, a spokesman for the opposition said Wednesday. Mahmoud Shammam of the Transitional National Council said the private mediation efforts, which have yet to bear fruit, have been held in South Africa and France through intermediaries. He said the opposition has held firm that Kadafi and his family be excluded from any future government, but added it was possible the dictator could live out his last years in Libya at an isolated location.