Sarah Palin is back on the campaign trail

Sarah Palin is back on the campaign trail

ATLANTA — Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss enlisted Sarah Palin to rally conservatives while Democratic challenger Jim Martin pushed to activate black voters, as they grappled for advantage in a Tuesday runoff that will shape Democrats’ hold on power in Washington.

Palin, the Alaska governor who was John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, attended private fundraisers Sunday night and was set to speak at rallies across the state Monday. McCain carried Georgia with 52 percent of the vote on Nov. 4.

Martin planned to campaign with prominent Georgia Democrats, including U.S. Rep. John Lewis, as he sought to rekindle the strong showing by African American voters in the general election that President-elect Barack Obama sparked.

Laura Bush will miss most the people near her

WASHINGTON — Laura Bush soon will no longer live in the country’s most famous mansion or be able to get away to the coveted Camp David presidential retreat. But beyond the perks, she says what she will miss most about being first lady are the staff and friends who surround her.

“I’ll miss all the people that are around us all the time, from the ushers and butlers who are there for every president ... to our own staff, of course, that we love to laugh with and talk with and solve problems with,” she said in a televised interview broadcast Sunday. “So I’ll miss the people the most.”

President George W. Bush’s tenure ends on Jan. 20, when President-elect Barack Obama will take office. The Bushes plan to return to Texas, where they will likely spend their weeks in Dallas and weekends at their secluded ranch in Crawford.

More violence in Mexico

TIJUANA, Mexico — The bodies of nine decapitated men were found in a vacant lot in Tijuana Sunday, part of a wave of violence that claimed at least 23 lives over the weekend in this border city plagued by warring traffickers, authorities said.

The heads were discovered in plastic bags near the bodies in a poor neighborhood of Tijuana, across from San Diego, Baja California state police said in a statement. Three police identification cards were also found at the site.

The statement gave no motive for the killings, but they came as Mexico’s drug cartels wage a bloody fight for smuggling routes and against government forces, dumping beheaded bodies onto streets, carrying out massacres and even tossing grenades into a crowd of Independence Day revelers — an attack that killed eight people in September.

More than 4,000 people have died so far this year in drug-related violence in Mexico.

Heroin legalized

GENEVA — The world’s most comprehensive legalized heroin program became permanent Sunday with overwhelming approval from Swiss voters who simultaneously rejected the decriminalization of marijuana.

The heroin program, started in 1994, is offered in 23 centers across Switzerland. It has helped eliminate scenes of large groups of drug users shooting up openly in parks that marred Swiss cities in the 1980s and 1990s and is credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts.

The nearly 1,300 selected addicts, who have been unhelped by other therapies, visit one of the centers twice a day to receive the carefully measured dose of heroin produced by a government-approved laboratory.

Political crisis in Thaland escalates; planes take off

BANGKOK, Thailand — Airlines were flying dozens of empty planes out of Bangkok’s international airport today as authorities struggled to clear it of protesters to reopen international links and move 100,000 travelers stranded by the crisis, the airport said.

Some 30 planes had been flown out starting Sunday and an additional 50 were to be moved later Monday, some of them to protest-free airports elsewhere in Thailand so that stranded travelers can fly out of the country, said Serirat Prasutanont, director of the Airports Authority of Thailand.

Thailand’s political crisis escalated Sunday when thousands of pro-government activists converged on Bangkok to counter rival protesters who seized the city’s two airports last week and have forced the prime minister to run the country from outside the capital.

Associated Press