On her mainly campaign visit to New Hampshire in February 2007, Hillary Rodham Clinton was confronted by a voter who demanded she explain her 2002 Senate vote authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
“I need to recognize if ideally here, best now, after and for all and without nuance, you can say this war authorization was a mistake,” Roger Tilton queried Clinton. “I, and I am sure a lot of more chief voters — until we hear you say it, we are not more than likely to hear all the a greater amount of exorbitant situations you are saying.”
Clinton replied, as she might repeat in the in the wake of months: “Knowing how we can appreciate now, I might never undergo voted for it.”
Her refusal to admit error failed to satisfy Tilton, a 46-year-old interest analyst from what i read in Nashua a great deal although he loved her position on quality of life attention and capping Iraq troop levels.
That exchange, pounced upon by specific reporters to the displeasure of Clinton’s aides, foreshadowed her demise. Her refusal to coming back off such a vote tethered her to the outside of and to an unpopular war. It embodied her campaign’s rule miscalculation: the decision to most recent her as the standard-bearer for Washington experience, set for office on Day One.
As these it was a telltale second in the former first lady’s dizzying 17-month downturn out of prohibitive front-runner to also-ran — upended by Barack Obama, a first time on the nationwide political scene, and by his message of change, in a year voters hungered for change.
By itself, Clinton’s Iraq vote did not worth her the nomination. There got more and more culprits: her ever-changing campaign themes, unpleasent financing planning, squabbling members and a field organizing program intended for quick victory fairly as opposed to a 50-state delegate hunt.
And there got happenings along the way overly got omens of her downfall — the majority of not completely understood in the bright glow of her near-universal and cr recognition, endorsements according to the party organization and extensively instigate in the beginning of polls.
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The mainly quarter of 2007 finished provided a big shock for the Clinton campaign, the reputed powerhouse of Democratic fundraising: Obama articulated $25 million of a good amount of as opposed to 100,000 donors in individuals 3 months. While the New York senator had cited $26 million of 60,000 donors, only $20 million was for primaries, $6 million for the entire election. Obama’s general included $23 million for the primaries.
At first, word of Obama’s stunning prosperity led to near-panic throughout the Clinton team. Eventually, the agitation gave way to a wary calm. “He talked about a lot, we talked about a lot,” spokesman Howard Wolfson mused. “He’ll buy a lot of ads, we will buy a lot of ads.”
But by now, Obama had eternally shattered the association technique to soliciting campaign cash.
Clinton’s traffic had appear for the most part out of squeezing wealthy those of us for the maximum legal contribution of $2,300 for the primaries and $2,300 for the over&wshyp;arching election. The Obama campaign mined the Internet for pithy donations on individuals who am able to be re-solicited within the campaign.
Obama are able to eventually step up a good amount of as opposed to $265 million for the primaries of a large amount of as opposed to 2 million individuals. Clinton brought up around $215 million, and will end her campaign greater number of as opposed to $30 million in debt. Most important, Obama’s simpleton of little donors brought in for the impressive field company he would build, drawing on grass-roots substantiation around the world and penetrating argues Clinton couldn’t purchase to contest.
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In May of survive year, a leaked memo out of Clinton deputy campaign manager Mike Henry both foreshadowed and helped form dire occurreneces for her campaign. Henry recommended the New York senator skip the leadoff Iowa caucuses. The document roiled her campaign and revealed the principally of most members disputes. It as well ought to boost seal her faulty cropping in the market cycles later, that gave Obama a risk to substantiate such a grey voters are able to substantiation a brown presidential candidate.
All along, Clinton’s advisers had fretted regarding her probability in Iowa. Bill Clinton did not campaign in the neighborhood in his primarily presidential run in 1992, and the couple had never constructed the establishment needed to win the caucuses.
Supporters such as former Gov. Tom Vilsack warned too Clinton was appearing dangerously late and needed to visit the region more. Campaign purchasers troubled such a Clinton was sticking to a rigorous schedule in the Senate, not spending considerable age in Iowa until late summer 2007.
Although the concept overly she wouldn’t vie in the campaign’s initial contest was never majorly thought by top campaign aides, Henry had the thought of different in the campaign — combined with top adviser and delegate-hunter Harold Ickes — and he was encouraged to put his trepidations on Clinton’s Iowa risks in writing.
The leak of Henry’s memo — that accurately pointed out so Iowa was Clinton’s weakest neighborhood and is able to motivate a multimillion-dollar possession which should be proper exhausted elsewhere — was a suck who put her on the defensive in Iowa for the remainder of the campaign.
Sure enough, it prices Clinton $25 million to end third in Iowa — narrowly behind John Edwards but swamped by Obama, whose organizers had dubbed thousands of young, first-time caucus-goers to appear out for him. Henry left the campaign not extensively after.
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Clinton delivered solid performances in a for a long while succession of televised debates, but overly streak came apart in a single second in Philadelphia in late October 2007, when she was surveyed throughout a forum on MSNBC if she should substantiation a proposal by her state’s governor, Eliot Spitzer, to make it easier for illegal immigrants to find driver’s licenses.
“I did not say such a it given that be done, but I positively can make out why Governor Spitzer is working to do it,” Clinton said.
That response, and additionally non-answers too night, acquired her appear evasive and opportunistic. Media coverage, until later more often than not respectful, turned critical.
Privately, the New York senator informed friends that Spitzer had identified her shortly before the debate and surveyed the present she validation him on the issue. “I took a hit for him, and it lose me,” Clinton claimed.
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Until January of the current year, former President Clinton had continued viewed as an asset for his wife amidst her helps and supporters. Although reviled by conservatives for his affair in on a White House intern, Bill Clinton remained a beloved are certain amidst Democratic audiences, truly blacks, who remembered the 1990s as fairly prosperous and his efforts on this behalf.
That adjusted in South Carolina, at which the former president campaigned vigorously for his wife. Her advisers, conscience of his penchant to go off message, had urged him to remain ensured and blabber up her accomplishments, not criticize Obama.
But Bill Clinton chafed at the campaign’s reluctance to issue the Illinois senator, exceptionally in how the former president viewed as conflicts between Obama’s rhetoric of opposition to the Iraq war and his voting record. So he took it on himself to speak out, amongst calamitous results.
Obama soundly won South Carolina, and Bill Clinton when that happens created situations worse. He seemed to reduce Obama’s achievement by noting this civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, never the presidential contender who Obama had presently become, had additionally won the state’s number one decades earlier.
Once so popular amidst blacks he was called the initial brown president by author Toni Morrison, Bill Clinton had helped force folks voters away based on data from his wife. Obama’s currently enduring brown substantiation ought to climb to as a good deal as 90 per cent of the brown vote in subsequent contests.
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Super Tuesday primaries on Feb. 5 looked at chiefly to be a steady shooting for Clinton, even though not the knockout completely stink her camp after anticipated.
In fact, a miscalculation right about the day propelled her extensively and stable decline.
Although she won enormous economy primaries — California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts — she all but ceded caucuses to Obama in properties as Colorado, Minnesota and Kansas. By the closing count a few days later, Obama had collected a few a greater number of delegates as opposed to Clinton of the roughly 1,700 at stake overly day.
Clinton had grown an aversion to caucuses once her bad undergo in Iowa; she nonetheless publicly referred to as them unrepresentative and undemocratic. Combined provided harmful budgeting and a shoddy state of affairs of the party’s method of proportional allocation of delegates, so led to catastrophic strategic planning for the Super Tuesday contests.
When Clinton was that much riding excessive in the polls, campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, primary strategist Mark Penn and further advisers thought she should turn up end to clinching the nomination by lucrative sizeable — if costly — chief states. The campaign had budgeted accordingly.
Other Clinton advisers, and also Ickes, had vainly warned which proportional allocation can aide Obama to select up heaps of delegates in the argues Clinton won on Super Tuesday and dozens a great deal more in the caucus suggests if Clinton did not contest them.
Those concerns headed generally unheeded and the big-state Super Tuesday strategy failed badly. Clinton’s campaign was left almost broke, among no true procedures for how to method the contests to come. Obama scored 11 straight wins in February alone, additonally Clinton was required to to lend her campaign $5 million easily to remain afloat. He took the over&wshyp;arching delegate cause Feb. 12 and never lost it.
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In March, a self-inflicted wound did !no! as opposed to anything and everything else to undermine her contend of out of country policy suffer — and her efforts to reassure voters of her trustworthiness. More as opposed to in the wake of she myself depicted coming up underneath sniper fire as above all lady in an 1996 airport landing in Bosnia.
“There was projected to be specific sort of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but rather we just recently ran amidst our heads lower to get to the vehicles to get to our base,” Clinton alleged within the duration of a worldwide policy speech in Washington. In the hours and days afterward, her say was discredited by video of the landing that surfaced on television to hear and YouTube. But Clinton stuck to her story for a week before ultimately identifying she misspoke. “A tinier blip,” she referred to as it.
Her helps considered it to be everything but. Privately, properties got horrified by the gaffe and saw basically no feasible way to defend it.
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In New Hampshire on Jan. 4, the day following she lost so catastrophically in Iowa, Clinton was questioned by a reporter whether Obama represented an invincible force this she would be powerless to contest. At the time, Clinton batted going back the question. But she reimbursed to it for the duration of drinks investing in reporters cycles later.
“I are sure you may suffer been heard on to something,” she said.
In the end, none of the mistakes by Clinton and her campaign committe was fatal in and of itself. She and her husband got pros in extricating themselves based on data from death-defying jams.
But Obama proved to be more and more as opposed to recently a traditional opponent. In the end, the Clintons’ standard tactics — big-scale fundraising, high-powered political connections, old-fashioned grit and determination — got no balance for Obama and a candidacy uniquely suited to the moment.
Campaigning in the closing primaries, Clinton said, “I’ve actually enjoyed the system of making able to go out and see currently world anew.”
But how she saw was a earth the present wanted one new.
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By LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD – The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Saturday that al-Qaida’s network in the country has never been closer to defeat, and he praised Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for his moves to rein in Shiite and Sunni militant groups.
Ryan Crocker’s comments came as Iraqi forces have been conducting crackdowns on al-Qaida militants in the northern city of Mosul and on Shiite militiamen in the southern city of Basra. Thousands of Iraqi forces also moved into the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad last week imposing control for the first time in years.
But truces with the powerful Mahdi Army militia that have calmed violence in Basra and paved the way for the Sadr City deployment have been strained in the past two days.
Supporters of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who heads the Mahdi Army, accused al-Maliki on Saturday of seeking to eliminate their movement and warned that “dark clouds” hang over the truce.
Al-Qaida fighters or other Sunni insurgents struck back in Mosul on Saturday. A roadside bomb in the city’s Sumer neighborhood hit an Iraqi army patrol, destroying a vehicle and killing four soldiers, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Near Baqouba — where a U.S. offensive last year targeted al-Qaida in Iraq — gunmen assassinated a member of the local Awakening Council, a U.S.-backed group of Sunni tribesmen who are fighting al-Qaida. The attack occurred in the village of Had, north of Baghdad, police said.
U.S Ambassador Crocker spoke as he visited reconstruction projects in the southern city of Najaf.
“There is important progress for the Iraqi forces in confronting the Sunni and Shiite militias,” he said, speaking Arabic to reporters. “The government, the prime minister are showing a clear determination to take on extremist armed elements that challenge the government’s authority … no matter who these elements are.”
“You are not going to hear me say that al-Qaida is defeated, but they’ve never been closer to defeat than they are now,” Crocker said.
The U.S. military says attacks have dropped dramatically — down to an average of 41 a day across the country, the lowest rate since 2004 — amid the crackdowns and truces. The U.S. military, backed by Sunni Arab tribal fighters, have scored successes in battling al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents in western parts of the country.
The Mosul sweep aims to dislodge the terror network from its most prominent remaining urban stronghold. The operation has met little opposition, suggesting that many al-Qaida militants fled, intending to regroup elsewhere as they have in past crackdowns.
In Baghdad, three men attending a conference at the offices of the National Dialogue Front, a leading Sunni Arab political party, were killed when a bomb exploded under their car as they left the gathering, police said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
Meanwhile, new tensions over the truces in Sadr City and Basra were sparked when Iraqi troops in Basra fired over the heads of al-Sadr followers congregating in a northern square for Friday prayers. Iraqi police recently banned al-Sadr gatherings there after a large cache of weapons was found nearby.
Iraqi troops were deployed and when those gathering refused to disperse, the police fired rounds over their heads, witnesses said.
Iraqi police in Basra said one person was wounded, but al-Sadr officials contended that one person was killed.
Also Friday, Iraqi and U.S. troops carried out a sweep in two Mahdi Army strongholds of western Baghdad, the Amil and Bayaa districts, arresting around 100 people, police officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
Iraqi forces in the operation cordoned off a cultural center in Amil where Sadrists were gathering to hold prayers and arrested some worshippers, the officials said.
Sadrist lawmakers denounced the moves saying there was a “nationwide conspiracy against Friday prayers” and a government move to “eliminate” their movement.
Sadrist lawmaker, Aqeel Abdul-Rahman, said the group was still committed to Sadr City truce. “But we see black clouds on the horizon, being brought by the government to rain on the sons of the Sadr Movement,” he said.
The Sadrists’ angry rhetoric may in part be aimed at warning al-Maliki not to take more aggressive steps against the Mahdi Army in Sadr City, such as confiscating heavy weapons or arresting key figures. The government has said it plans to do so, but has not begun any raids in the district, wary of sparking retaliation.
SOurce:news.yahoo
By JOE MILICIA, Associated Press Writer
RITTMAN, Ohio – The cracking of rifle fire silenced the twittering blue jays, blackbirds and killdeer.
As members of the color guard lowered their rifles, the smell of bitter smoke drifted over the family and friends of former Army Sgt. Ellis Hale, a Vietnam War veteran who died of prostate cancer at age 59. Sniffles and gentle sobs accompanied a recording of taps.
Moments after the final note, Sherry Hale walked down a curved brick walkway past the saluting line of representatives of the country’s past wars. Head bowed, she clutched to her chest the American flag that covered her husband’s casket.
The scene at the Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery is repeated nationwide more than 100 times a day. Military veterans are being buried at such a rapid rate that national cemeteries use heavy equipment to make room.
“We’re still in growth mode right now,” said Bill Tuerk, under secretary for memorial affairs at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. “We’re in a very high demand time period and we’re trying to respond to it.”
An average of 1,800 veterans die each day, and 10 percent of them are buried in the country’s 125 national cemeteries, which are expected to set a record with 107,000 interments, including dependents, this year. And more national cemeteries are being built.
The peak year for veterans’ deaths will be either 2007 or 2008, Tuerk said. An estimated 686,000 veterans died in 2007. While many World War II veterans are dying, so are an increased number of Korean War and Vietnam veterans.
Ohio Western Reserve, a 273-acre expanse south of Cleveland, opened in 2000 and has about 11,000 veterans and dependents buried there. It has enough land to keep it open 92 more years and accommodate a total of 106,000 burials.
Thirty-four veterans groups volunteer for services. Every seventh Thursday members of American Legion Post 548 from Louisville, Ohio, dressed in black coats, ties and pants with white belts, gloves and shoulder cords, come to pay tribute to fellow veterans.
One crisp spring morning, dozens of mourners for Hale more than filled the benches inside a stone open-air shelter tucked into a wooded corner.
Several jumped as the seven members of Post 548 fire the first of three volleys. The shell casings faintly ping and clatter as they landed on the brick walkway.
“Every time I fire, I say ‘This is for you,’” says Navy veteran Dave Scanlon, choking up while referring to his father, “Skip,” a World War II veteran who died in 1999.
Ohio Western Reserve averages 7 1/2 burials a day. The busiest national cemetery is Riverside National Cemetery, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles. It averages about 30 burials, followed by Florida National Cemetery, 50 miles north of Tampa.
Third busiest is Calverton National Cemetery, about 50 miles east of Manhattan, although it has handled as many as 55 burials in a day, said Michael Picerno, director of Calverton National Cemetery in New York.
To accommodate so many burials, hundreds of crypts are preplaced at Calverton, then covered with dirt and grass. When it comes time for a burial, the sod is cut away, the crypt opened and the casket lowered in.
Six new national cemeteries are under construction under a fiscal year 2008 budget of $167.4 million, triple the previous year. It’s the largest number of cemeteries constructed at one time.
Despite handling burials at an assembly-line pace, the National Cemetery Administration has the highest customer satisfaction score of any federal government agency and any private sector company, according to the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index. It tops companies such as Heinz, Amazon.com, and Hershey’s.
“We are ever-conscious of the fact that with each family we get one chance to get it right,” Tuerk said.
Part of streamlining the process involved holding services at committal shelters — open-air, gazebo-like structures — instead of graveside. Calverton has seven shelters; Western Reserve has two.
After taps, two uniformed members of an Army honor guard, wearing white gloves, perform the third and final ritual — the folding of the flag. They make each of the traditional 13 folds with precision as mourners look on in silence.
The flag was presented to Hale’s wife of 36 years. She was seated on a bench in the front row.
“I feel so blessed to be an American and that America has furnished something like this for our soldiers. It gives you such a wonderful feeling,” she said. “I feel proud.”
A cemetery employee politely asked the mourners to leave the shelter so the next service could begin.
Men and women in dark suits and dresses, some holding hands or with arms around one another for comfort, climbed into their Fords and Buicks and slowly drove away.
Source:news.yahoo
By TOBY MUSE, Associated Press Writer
BOGOTA, Colombia – The Colombian Defense Ministry said Saturday it believes the legendary leader of Latin America’s largest guerrilla army is dead.
Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda, commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, died on March 26, the ministry said in a statement, citing “different military intelligence means.”
“We know that inside the FARC, the version is that he died of natural causes, specifically from a heart attack,” the ministry said. “Whether the death of Marulanda came in a bombardment or from natural causes, this would be the most serious blow this terrorist group has suffered.”
Marulanda, whose real name is Pedro Antonio Marin, was believed to be about 80, and had led the peasant-based FARC since its founding in 1964.
Colombia’s government has announced his death various times over the past 15 years, but each time proof that he was alive cropped up months later.
“If (the FARC) are going to say that the information we have is not true, they should show him,” said the statement, which was read by the military’s chief of staff, Adm. David Moreno.
The FARC did not immediately respond on the Web sites that publish rebel communiques.
Colombia has tried for years to bring down the FARC, which the government says is currently holding 700 hostages, including three U.S. military contractors and French-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt, who was running for president when the rebels kidnapped her in 2002.
President Alvaro Uribe has made defeating the FARC his chief objective.
First word of Marulanda’s possible death came earlier Saturday when the newsmagazine Semana quoted Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos as saying he had information that Marulanda died in the guerrillas’ southern Colombian stronghold at the time of three bombing raids.
In the Semana interview, Santos said that the government had been told of the rebel leader’s death from a “source who has never failed us.”
A senior defense official told The Associated Press that the military’s main intelligence source is human and that communications intercepts support the claim — but he cautioned that Marulanda’s actual death remains to be confirmed. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the issue, spoke on condition of anonymity.
The ministry’s announcement and the Semana interview Saturday follow a series of rebel setbacks. The past year’s blows include the March killings of rebel commander Raul Reyes and another member of the rebel’s seven-man ruling Secretariat and the defection last weekend of a female leader well regarded inside the rebel group.
The military also said that Marulanda has been replaced as FARC leader by a rebel ideologue known as Alfonso Cano. The army has for months said it has Cano cornered in the southwest Colombian jungle and that his death or capture is imminent. FARC statements have denied Cano is in the area.
Born to a poor peasant family, Marulanda was radicalized by the vicious civil wars that ravaged Colombia in the middle of the last century, pitting Liberals against Conservatives.
He and other survivors of a 1964 army attack on a peasant community escaped to the mountains and formed the FARC, which grew over the decades to include some 15,000 fighters. The defense minister now estimates the FARC’s strength at around 9,000.
The guerrillas remain strong in many parts of Colombia’s countryside, but many Colombians believe they have abandoned their communist ideology as the movement has come to rely chiefly on drug trafficking as its main funding source.
Marulanda’s deadly aim in combat against the army earned him the name “Sureshot.”
Notoriously reclusive, he is said to have never set foot in Colombia’s capital or to have left the country, giving just a handful of interviews over the course of his life.
Even senior commanders within the FARC speak of Marulanda with awe, and he is known to have the final word over any major decision taken by the FARC.
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Associated Press Writer Frank Bajak contributed to this report.
Source:news.yahoo
By CHRISTOPHER WILLS, Associated Press Writer
BAYAMON, Puerto Rico – Barack Obama told veterans Saturday that he can’t understand why Republican John McCain opposes legislation that would provide college scholarships to people who have served in the U.S. military.
“Now, let me be clear: No one can dispute John McCain’s love for this country or his concern for veterans. But here’s what I don’t understand. I don’t understand why John McCain would side with George Bush and oppose our plan to make college more affordable for our veterans,” the Democratic presidential candidate said. “George Bush and John McCain may think our plan is too generous. I could not disagree more.”
Obama’s criticism renews a clash that turned personal after the Senate approved the scholarship bill Thursday.
During the Senate debate, the Illinois senator questioned why McCain a Navy veteran and former prisoner of war would oppose the measure.
McCain responded with a sharp statement saying that he wouldn’t listen to any lectures on veterans’ affairs from Obama, “who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform.”
Obama, speaking to reporters aboard his plane Saturday, countered that the idea that he can’t speak on veterans’ issues because he didn’t serve in the military “makes no sense whatsoever.”
“I didn’t serve, as many people my age, because the Vietnam war was over by the time I was of draft age and we went to an all-volunteer Army. But obviously I revere our soldiers and want to make sure they are being treated with honor and respect,” he added.
The Arizona senator opposes the scholarship measure, as does the Pentagon, because it applies to people who serve just three years. He fears that would encourage people to leave the military after only one enlistment even as the U.S. fights two wars and is trying to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps.
Instead, McCain and Republican colleagues proposed a bill to increase benefits in conjunction with a veteran’s length of service. Senate Democrats blocked that measure.
“While Barack Obama engages in the same tired partisan politics that has failed our veterans time and again, John McCain has offered legislation that will expand needed education benefits for veterans while promoting retention in our armed forces,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said Saturday.
Only three primaries are left in the battle for the Democratic nomination, and Puerto Rico is holding one of them. Puerto Ricans can vote in party primaries but not in the fall general election.
Clinton spoke at an evening rally in Aguadilla, where she reminded the crowd of her ties to Puerto Rico as a first lady and then as senator from New York, which has approximately 1 million Puerto Rican residents.
“My commitment to Puerto Rico did not start last month or last year,” she said. “I will always be your voice as president.”
Through her speech, Clinton drew applause by insisting Puerto Ricans should get the same tax breaks, health care and economic opportunity afforded mainland U.S. citizens.
“You deserve a president who will give Puerto Rico’s issues as much attention as the president gives to any state,” she said.
Both candidates are hoping to increase their share of the 55 delegates who will be chosen June 1.
After Obama’s speech, he led a caminata a short political parade through the streets of Old San Juan. With an oceanfront park on one side and colorful colonial buildings on the other, Obama shook hands with cheering fans as scores of supporters marched behind.
Occasionally, he clapped or wiggled his hips to the Latin beat of his campaign song.
About 100 pro-independence advocates noisily protested a couple of blocks away. “Presidential primary is colonial trickery!” they chanted, criticizing both Obama and Clinton for not pledging to resolve Puerto Rico’s status remain a territory, become a state or declare independence.
But Obama was careful not to get caught up in the controversy, repeatedly saying that Puerto Ricans should be given a chance to decide their status for themselves.
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Associated Press Writers Andrew O. Selsky and Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.
Source:news.yahoo
By JEFF LATZKE, Associated Press Writer
OKLAHOMA CITY – A slow-moving storm packing tornadoes and hail battered rural Oklahoma on Saturday, destroying several buildings, tearing up trees and tossing a mobile home onto a highway. The bodies of two storm victims were found in Kansas.
A twister destroyed three barns at a hog farm near Lacey in Kingfisher County, about 75 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, said Michelann Ooten, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Emergency Management Department.
No injuries were reported at the farm or elsewhere in the state.
“It’s all been out mostly in the countryside,” Kingfisher County Sheriff’s dispatcher Lonnie McDade said. “But that farm happened to be in the path and took a direct hit.”
John Hardaway, a production manager at the farm, said the 3,900 pigs housed at the farm were kept in crates and most were not hurt.
In Garfield County, a trailer was blown onto State Highway 74 near Covington and power lines were downed, said the county’s emergency manager, Mike Honigsberg.
The pace of the storm was slow for a system producing so many tornadoes, Daryl Williams, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Norman.
“It gives us time to get the warnings out, but where the tornadoes are on the ground, it creates a lot more damage,” Williams said. “We’ve been lucky because this has been mostly rural areas, but it’s not lucky if it’s your farm.”
Saturday’s storm followed two days of violent weather in the Midwest. In Kansas, cleanup was under way a day after a storm system raked the state with at least 17 tornadoes.
That storm killed at least two people, injured at least six others and heavily damaged at least 19 homes, authorities said.
The two people killed in the storm were found Saturday in a car near Pratt, the Pratt County Sheriff’s Office said. The vehicle had been blown 150 yards off a highway. Gary S. Whitlow, 33, and Kimberly S. Whitlow, 29, died.
Authorities are looking into whether lightning killed a camper in Osage County.
A Kansas Highway Patrol aircraft flew along the path of the tornado to search for other possible victims.
In northern Colorado, where a tornado struck Thursday, killing one person and damaging hundreds of homes, residents of the hard-hit farming town of Windsor were allowed into their neighborhoods Saturday to assess the damage and in some cases, salvage what they could.
“Our house is not too bad,” said Courtney Schinner. “Our roof is gone, a lot of windows are blown out, but the interior is OK.
“We got really lucky compared to a lot of people,” she said as she gathered her valuables and prepared to move into a hotel while her apartment is repaired.
Officials advised residents of the dangers in the area: exposed electrical wires, severed gas lines, nails, broken boards and other debris.
Of the 596 homes officials said were damaged by the Colorado storm, 102 were deemed unsafe to occupy.
About 100 people have died in U.S. twisters so far this year, the worst toll in a decade, according to the weather service, and the danger has not passed yet. Tornado season typically peaks in the spring and early summer, then again in the late fall.
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Associated Press writers David Twiddy in Kansas City, Mo., Ivan Moreno in Denver and Murray Evans in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.
Source:news.yahoo
By JAY REEVES, Associated Press Writer
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – A line of severe storms swept across the Southeast on Thursday, damaging homes and businesses in at least four states. One person was killed and three were injured by a tornado in North Carolina, authorities said.
An apparent tornado wrecked a shopping area in Mississippi and strong winds flipped a mobile home in Alabama. In south-central Tennessee, at least four homes and a few barns were damaged.
A tornado touched down late Thursday on the outskirts of Greensboro, N.C., blowing three tractor-trailers off Interstate 40, authorities said. One person was killed and two were injured in the freeway accidents, and a third was hurt when a wall collapsed.
Two businesses and one house were damaged in Guilford County, said state Department of Crime Control and Public Safety spokeswoman Patty McQuillan. Two houses collapsed in Clemmons, probably because of high winds, and more than 32,000 were without power, officials said.
In Alabama, at least 15 school systems released students early, while others held students late as squalls passed. Winds blew a piece of metal roofing off Hamilton High School, about 90 miles northwest of Birmingham.
“For 10 minutes, it was pretty good wind with lightning and thunder and rain blowing sideways,” said Todd Page, who works at a car dealership in Hamilton.
There were no confirmed reports of tornadoes in Alabama but winds gusting up to 60 mph flipped a mobile home, said George Grabryan, emergency management director in Lauderdale County. A house and a building in the rural county were also damaged.
In Tupelo, Miss., an apparent tornado wrecked a furniture store where William Felks and Allan Jackson had to brace themselves during the storm.
“Me and Allan hid behind a door, and I was holding on to his belt as tight as I could. Then in seconds it stopped,” Felks told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal. “It took less than a minute to mess this whole building up. Man, I was scared.”
A home improvement store and a farm supply retailer near Tupelo were also damaged, said Paul Harkins, Lee County’s director of emergency communications. “There were power lines and trees down around it and a car was lifted off the ground and pushed into a tree,” Harkins said.
The same weather system struck Oklahoma a day earlier.
Severe weather experts there picked through debris and damage Thursday to determine whether tornadoes touched down after severe storms moved through the state, toppling trees and knocking out power to thousands of people.
A tornado reported near the southern Oklahoma town of Paoli apparently picked up a mobile home off the ground with a woman and her son inside, said Garvin County Emergency Management Director Buck Pearson.
The woman, Cindy Ward, suffered some broken toes and was bruised, but the boy was not hurt. Ward managed to get her son into an interior closet just before the storm hit the home.
“There was no shaking, no rattling, no sound like a freight train,” Ward told the Pauls Valley Daily Democrat. “It wasn’t a calm before the storm. It just pickled it up and slammed it down. The only noise we heard was ‘kaboom’ when the house landed.”
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Associated Press writers Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City and Chris Talbott in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this report.
Source:news.yahoo
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
CRAWFORD, Texas – President Bush stuck out his right elbow Thursday, jokingly demonstrating how he’ll escort his daughter down the aisle at her wedding this weekend.
He made the gesture at Andrews Air Force Base before boarding Air Force One for the flight to Texas, where Jenna Bush will be married Saturday before about 200 guests at the family’s 1,600 acre, secluded ranch. Asked if he was excited, the president smiled and gave a thumbs-up.
“He’s looking forward to it,” White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters aboard the plane as it flew from rainy Washington to sunny Texas. “He’s excited like any proud father is to see one of his daughters get married.”
“I think he’s also going to make sure he gets a good night’s sleep tonight so he can stay up late the rest of the weekend and enjoy all the activities.”
First lady Laura Bush is already at the ranch getting ready for the outdoor wedding on the 1,600-acre spread in central Texas. Jenna Bush, 26, is tying the knot with longtime boyfriend Henry Hager, who turns 30 on Friday.
The bride-to-be and Hager of Richmond, Va., opted for a more low-key affair, thinking a White House wedding would be too formal and stuffy.
The White House says it will be a closed affair. No details are expected to be released, although White House officials say the family might agree to release a photo or two of the wedding on Sunday.
“This is really a private event for the family,” Johndroe said. “I think the activities of the weekend are going to be really a private celebration for Jenna and Henry’s family and friends.”
Marvin Bush, one of the president’s brothers, and his family flew down with Bush on Air Force One. The group, along with White House advisers, hopped on the Marine One presidential helicopter with Bush, who hurried them up with a wave and a smile.
On Thursday evening, the president and Mrs. Bush drove about five miles from their ranch to dine at another ranch owned by Donald Ensenat and Joseph Canizaro, both from New Orleans. Ensenat, one of Bush’s fraternity brothers at Yale University and a former ambassador to Brunei, stepped down after six years as U.S. chief of protocol, saying the job was taking a toll on his family and wife, who divided time between Washington and New Orleans. He went into business with Canizaro, a real estate developer, venture capitalist and Republican contributor.
On Friday night, the couple is hosting a rehearsal dinner; and on Saturday, a barbecue lunch is being planned.
Bush has joked that he has had little to do with the wedding planning — that he’s mostly just expected to open his wallet. Vice President Dick Cheney noted that on Thursday when he visited one of the government’s financial centers in Philadelphia where the economic stimulus checks are being processed.
“He’s on his way to Texas for his daughter’s wedding this weekend,” Cheney said about Bush. “So you can bet he’ll be writing a few checks, too.”
Tricia Nixon, one of President Richard Nixon’s daughters, was the last child of a president to get married at the White House. She married Edward Cox on June 12, 1971. Since then, other children of presidents have gotten married, but their weddings were not held at the White House.
Source:news.yahoo
LONDON (Reuters) - British singer Amy Winehouse has been released from police custody after being arrested on suspicion of drug offences, police sources said on Thursday.
The Grammy-winning soul singer, who was cautioned for assault less than two weeks ago, was held after she handed herself in at an East London police station on Wednesday and was questioned by detectives for more than nine hours.
The arrest related to a video published by a British tabloid newspaper showing the singer smoking what it said was crack cocaine. The 24-year-old singer has not been charged.
“At 1 p.m. (8:00 a.m. EDT) on Wednesday, a 24-year-old woman attended a London police station by arrangement,” police said in a statement. “She was arrested in connection with alleged possession of a controlled drug.”
A spokeswoman said on Thursday that the woman, based in Camden, north London, was released on bail until later this month pending further inquiries. She did not name the woman and declined to give more details.
Media reports said Winehouse looked anguished and disheveled as she arrived at the Limehouse police station.
She was held overnight in a cell last month but was released without charge after admitting assault by slapping a man.
The latest Sunday Times Rich List said Winehouse, whose battle against drug addiction has often overshadowed her recording success, is worth about 10 million pounds ($20 million).
She did not attend the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in February, but still managed five big wins, including record and song of the year for “Rehab” and best pop vocal album for her breakthrough release, “Back to Black.”
Her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, 25, is due to stand trial in June charged with trying to pervert the course of justice and inflicting grievous bodily harm.
Fielder-Civil, who is in custody, denies the charges, which relate to an East London pub brawl in June 2006.
(Reporting by Andrew Hough and Avril Ormsby; Editing by Jeremy Lovell and Tim Pearce)
Source:News.yahoo
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