In Europe, a group of Latin American leaders met with their European counterparts at a summit this weekend in Vienna. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that he wants to offer low-income Europeans discounted heating oil next winter. Chavez also predicted the end of what he described as the American empire.

• Hugo Chavez: “The American empire is in a stage preceding death. As Mao Tze Tung would say, this is an empire made of paper. That’s what it is: an empire made of paper and we will rip it off and throw it away. Then, the ashes of the empire will bring back the land of Abraham Lincoln.”

The summit in Vienna was later disrupted by a Greenpeace activist from Argentina who pushed her way into a photo shoot of the world leaders. The woman, who was wearing a bikini, carried a sign protesting the construction of a pulp mill on the Argentine-Uruguayan border.