Listed below are some of the headlines that made news this past week.
President Hugo Chávez won re-election on Sunday, facing down cancer and the strongest electoral challenge of his nearly 14 years in office and gaining a new mandate to deepen his socialist revolution. –The New York Times
Mitt Romney’s strong debate performance Wednesday, Oct. 3, generated $12 million in 48 hours, his campaign said, as well as a surge in volunteers and bigger crowds at his events. –The Wall Street Journal
The Nielsen Co. reported Friday that President Obama’s campaign has run twice as many ads in swing states as Romney’s campaign. Obama ran nearly 230,000 ads in nine battleground states from the beginning of the year through early September, compared to about 87,000 for Romney. –Detroit Free Press
The U.S. economy created just 114,000 new jobs last month, while the unemployment rate skidded to 7.8 percent, the first time it has been below 8 percent in 44 months. –CNBC
The average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline across California was nearly $4.49 on Friday, 32 cents more than that of a week ago and the highest statewide average in the nation, according to AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report. –Fox News
A Vatican court on Saturday sentenced the pope’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, to 18 months in prison for leaking confidential documents to a journalist in one of the most serious breaches of vaunted Vatican secrecy in modern history. –The New York Times
Days of Syrian projectiles entering their country has prompted Turkey to respond with threats and weapons fire, fueling concerns that the Syrian civil war will bleed into a greater regional battle. –CNN
Gaza militants fired a barrage of rockets and mortar shells into Israeli territory on Monday after an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza on Sunday killed one Palestinian and wounded at least nine others. –The New York Times
Recent surveys show widespread support for independence among Venetians, who speak a distinct dialect and feel geographically and culturally distant from Rome. 80% of those polled supported independence. –The Telegraph (UK)
Sept. 26, Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori and other religious leaders asked supporters of traditional marriage to join efforts to overturn Maryland’s new law legalizing same-sex marriage. –Catholic News Service
Bishops from around the world will meet in Rome from Oct. 7-28 to discuss the urgent necessity of the New Evangelization, combating what Cardinal Donald Wuerl called the “tsunami of secularism.” –Press Office of the Holy See
