KATMANDU, Nepal – At age 13, Jordan Romero is headed to Mount Everest in an attempt to become the youngest person to scale the world’s highest mountain — and complete his goal of climbing the highest peaks on all seven continents.

The teenager from Big Bear, California, was busy Saturday with his father Paul and stepmother Karen packing mountaineering gear and planning details of their expedition with three Sherpa guides who will accompany them.

The team leaves Katmandu, Nepal‘s capital, for China on Sunday and then will travel to the base camp on the Chinese side of the 29,035-foot (8,850-meter) mountain.

Jordan has already climbed the highest peaks on six other continents and hopes to reach Everest‘s summit in May.

“I just wanted to do something big, and this was something I wanted to do for myself. It was all about the experience and I just happen to be 13 at this time,” Jordan told The Associated Press.

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered assurances Friday that a new nuclear arms control treaty enables the U.S. to maintain a “strong, flexible deterrent” as she urged divided Republicans and Democrats to ratify the pact signed by President Barack Obama and Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev.

In a speech delivered in Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s hometown, Clinton hailed the treaty signed by U.S. and Russian leaders on Thursday as the “latest chapter in a history of American nuclear responsibility” supported by presidents of both parties and strong majorities in Congress.

The nuclear arms pact now faces a ratification vote in the U.S. Senate, which is near gridlock on many issues, and the Russian legislature.

“There are times when people of good will and great intellect have diverging views on how to deal with complex issues. But I don’t think this is one of those times,” Clinton said in a speech at the University of Louisville.

“We believe strongly that this is in our nation’s best interest and I am confident that once senators have the chance to study this new treaty, we will have the same high levels of bipartisan support as the agreements that this one builds upon,” she said.

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VENTERSDORP, South Africa – Men in camouflage with pistols at their waists and little girls in their Sunday best gathered in northwestern South Africa Friday for the funeral of a white supremacist killed in what has been described as a wage dispute with two young black farmworkers.

Security for Friday’s funeral of Eugene Terreblanche was tight, with a police helicopter circling over the squat, blond-brick church where a few hundred mourners gathered hours before the funeral was to begin.

Terreblanche’s death has not sparked wider violence. South African leaders have acknowledged that racial tensions remain 16 years after apartheid ended, but have played down any threat to the World Cup that starts in June, the first time football’s premier tournament will come to Africa.

White militants who considered Terreblanche their leader say his death proves whites aren’t safe under majority rule. Black leaders say controlling crime — whether its victims are white or black — is a priority in a country with one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world.

On Friday, some mourners linked Terreblanche’s death to the fiery rhetoric of the youth leader of the governing African National Congress. In recent weeks, Julius Malema, leader of the ANC Youth League, has been reviving an anti-apartheid era song that refers to killing white farmers.

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