Iowa man says his dog shot him Chechnya proposes legal changes to help extend Putin’s rule

FORT DODGE, Iowa ( AP) — With best friends like these, who needs enemies?

An Iowa man says his dog inadvertently shot him while they were roughhousing Wednesday.

Fifty- one- year- old Richard Remme, of Fort Dodge, told police he was playing with his dog, Balew, on the couch and tossed the dog off his lap. He says when the pit bull- Labrador mix bounded back up, he must have disabled the safety on the gun in his belly band and stepped on the trigger. The gun fired, striking one of Remme’s legs. He was treated at a hospital and released later that day.

Remme told The Messenger newspaper that Balew is a “big wuss’’ and lay down beside him and cried because he thought he had done something wrong. MOSCOW ( AP) — Provincial legislators in the Russian region of Chechnya have proposed extending a constitutional limit of two consecutive presidential term — a move that could set the stage for President Vladimir Putin to stay on beyond 2024. The 65- year- old Putin was inaugurated Monday for another six- year term that would put him on track to become Russia’s longest- serving leader since Josef Stalin. Putin served two four- year presidential terms in 20002008 before shifting into the prime minister’s seat because of term limits. He reclaimed the presidency in 2012 after the term was extended to six years. Thursday’s proposal to extend the limit to three consecutive terms needs the federal parliament’s approval to become law.

There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin to the move first suggested by Chechnya’s regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov.