The Buzz (Publick Occurrences)

NEED-TO-KNOW NEWS

The world in brief

Ending a formal three-year period of mourning, the reclusive son of North Korea's national founder Kim Il Sung took formal control of the nation Oct. 8, assuming the post of general secretary of the ruling Korean Worker's Party. According to The Washington Post, 55-year-old Kim Jong Il, who has been de facto strongman since his father's death, "has inherited and cultivated the personality cult created by his father" that pictures Mr. Kim as the spiritual as well as political leader of the nation's 24 million people. In Cuba, Fidel Castro keeps going, and going, and going. In an Oct. 8 speech to Cuba's Communist Party congress, Mr. Castro spoke for 6 hours, 43 minutes. Then, after a break to allow the 1,500 party delegates to stretch and grab a bite to eat, the 71-year-old Cuban leader got a second wind and spoke again, going well into the night. Mr. Castro denounced the United States for waging "total economic and political war" on his island nation. He also celebrated the memory of communist revolutionary and former comrade-in-arms Che Guevara, and, according to Reuter, scorned capitalism as an economic system that "cannot have a moral future."

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