Japan to hold elections

Japan to hold elections
TOKYO -- Japan's ruling party formally decided today to hold an election later this month to replace Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, setting the stage for a likely contest between the party's two biggest factions.
The Liberal Democratic Party's election management committee set April 24 as the date for the party to choose its new president, a post Mori now holds.
Mori, who is one of Japan's most unpopular leaders in decades, announced last week that he would step down once the new leader is chosen.
Although applications to succeed Mori will not be accepted by the party until Thursday, the faction within the ruling party headed by Mori endorsed former Health Minister Junichiro Koizumi as its candidate.
That would likely pit him against former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who heads the party's largest faction. Hashimoto has not formally announced his intention to run, but was widely expected to do so.
Car rolls into lake; 6 die
LEWISVILLE, Texas -- Six people, including a woman and two children, died after the vehicle they were in rolled into a lake in this suburb north of Dallas.
A seventh person who was in the car but survived was detained by police. Authorities wouldn't say why the man was being held.
The vehicle was on a road that had been closed to traffic when it rolled into Lewisville Lake Sunday night.
"They went through a barricade," Capt. Kenny Wilkins of the Lewisville Fire Department said.
Lewisville is about 20 miles north of Dallas.
A new AIDS team
WASHINGTON -- President Bush will soon announce a reorganized White House AIDS office that will tie efforts to combat the disease into a key domestic policy team and two Cabinet agencies, an administration official said Sunday.
The Office of National AIDS Policy will be led by a director who is a member of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said the official, who insisted on anonymity. It will also include one staff member from the State Department and another from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Scott Evertz, an AIDS activist from Wisconsin and political ally of HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor, will be named the office's director, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported in today's editions.
Inclusion of a State Department staffer would mark an expansion of the AIDS office's structure under President Clinton, the official said. That person would work to address AIDS-related issues overseas, particularly in Africa.
Ex-Rep. Annunzio dies
CHICAGO -- Former Illinois Rep. Frank Annunzio, who represented Chicago in Washington for 28 years, died Sunday. He was 86.
Annunzio, who had Parkinson's disease, slipped into a coma about a week ago, family spokesman Dominic DiFrisco said.
A Democrat who served in the U.S. House from 1965 to 1993, Annunzio was a shoeshine boy, high school teacher and labor leader before being elected to Congress, DiFrisco said.
Friends and former colleagues said Annunzio was a tireless advocate for issues important to him.
In 1989, Annunzio urged credit card holders to cut up or burn their cards in an effort to try to force down interest rates.
Annunzio, then a subcommittee chairman of the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee, said consumers should "hold their credit card up to a mirror and say, 'I'm addicted to this darn thing and I'm better off without it."'
Annunzio fought to make Columbus Day a national holiday and battled negative portrayals of Italian-Americans. Recently, he gave his name to a campaign against the HBO series "The Sopranos."
Name recognition
FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- The ticket of Busch and Miller is a winner, after all.
Justin Busch and Brian Miller, whose surnames are synonymous with two famous breweries, ran for president and vice president of the student body at Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne.
But their victory was almost overturned when the student election board voted 4-0 that the Busch-Miller campaign violated copyright infringement. Busch and Miller had used popular slogans from the beer companies as their election catch-phrases.
University officials overruled the student board to ensure the victory, much to the chagrin of student body rivals.
Associated Press