Tom Lantos

Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and, as Congress' only Holocaust survivor, a leading advocate for human rights, said Wednesday that he had been diagnosed with cancer and would not seek reelection in November. Another California Democrat, Howard L. Berman, could succeed him as the committee's chairman. Lantos, who turns 80 next month, is the latest in a wave of veteran lawmakers who have announced their departures from Congress.

Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame), the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress, died Monday of complications from cancer of the esophagus at Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland, his staff said. He was 80. A champion of civil liberties, Lantos founded the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and supported human rights struggles against both right-wing and left-wing regimes in China, Russia, Myanmar, Darfur and wherever official pressure could, as he put it, "prevent another Holocaust."

Outside Rep. Tom Lantos' office, two American flags -- not just one -- stand guard. Inside, though, it looks like a homey sitting room that would not be out of place in the heart of Europe. A coffee table heavy with family portraits and snapshots with statesmen substitutes for a desk. Bookshelves, one with a blue-and-white menorah on top, line the walls. Images of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis, are everywhere.

As a California congressman critical of North Korea's human rights record arrived on a visit to the communist state Saturday, the regime said it was willing to abandon its nuclear weapons programs if the U.S. would drop its "hostile policy." The statement, which echoed earlier remarks, appeared to be timed for the visit by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee.

A California Democrat in the first U.S. congressional delegation to visit North Korea since 2003 expressed hopes Tuesday of restarting stalled talks aimed at ending the regime's nuclear weapons program. "I think this is a potential turning point in North Korean history," Rep. Tom Lantos of San Mateo said during a stopover in Beijing after three days of meetings with North Korean officials.

California Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo) arrived in Tripoli, making the first visit by a member of Congress to Libya in three decades. Lantos will be followed by a larger delegation of his colleagues today, reflecting improved ties after the country last month renounced its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. The lawmakers are expected to meet leader Moammar Kadafi and visit Libya's nuclear sites, which he has agreed to open to U.N. inspectors.

A former Marine apparently distraught over his treatment by the federal Veterans Administration shot himself to death Monday inside the offices of Rep. Tom Lantos. Lantos, a Democrat, was not in the office. Victor Francis, 40, shot himself once in the chest and was declared dead upon arrival at Mills Peninsula Hospital. Police spokesman Terry Reidy said the man entered the offices about midday and talked briefly with a woman working in the lobby.