Saturday, November 22, 2008
Gates says he wants to add troops in Afghanistan
CORNWALLIS, Nova Scotia — Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday he would like to add significant U.S. forces to the war in Afghanistan before national elections scheduled for next year, and that grim depictions of backsliding in the seven-year-old war are “far too pessimistic.”
Gates said the additional forces would give greater security for fall elections in Afghanistan, and predicted that security conditions will “be under enough control to allow the elections to take place.” Secure successful elections are probably the most important goal for Afghanistan next year, Gates said.
President Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed leader, has said he intends to run again. Registration has begun but is spotty, and the Taliban is expected to try to disrupt registration and voting.
1st Barack Obama school
NEW YORK — At the behest of its pupils, an elementary school near New York City has been renamed after President-elect Barack Obama.
The Hempstead Union Free School District board voted unanimously Thursday night to rename Ludlum Elementary School as Barack Obama Elementary School. The change went into effect immediately, school officials said Friday.
Officials for the Long Island district say they think the school is the country’s first to be named after the first black president-elect, although similar efforts to rename schools, parks and streets are under way elsewhere.
Arrest in campus shooting
SAVANNAH, Ga. — A 19-year-old man faces aggravated-assault and possibly other charges in the shooting of a fellow student Friday on the campus of Savannah State University, police said.
Devon McIntosh surrendered after a police dog sniffed him hiding in the trunk of his car on campus about five hours after the late-morning shooting, police said.
McIntosh and the wounded student knew each other, authorities say.
“It was not a random shooting,” campus Police Chief Thomas Trawick said at a news conference.
The victim, whose name was not released, had surgery for wounds to the arm and abdomen, Trawick said.
“It sounds like he’s going to make it,” he said.
Bush seeks China’s help to deal with North Korea
LIMA, Peru — In a last dash of diplomacy, President George W. Bush on Friday sought China’s help in pinning down North Korea to keep its shaky promises of nuclear disarmament.
Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao privately tried to push along a way to verify North Korea’s nuclear declarations — the latest hang-up in a showdown that has vexed six nations.
The meeting came as Bush began his last scheduled foreign journey as president, at a yearly Asia-Pacific forum, where the world’s economic collapse and the North Korea standoff dominated.
Government witness in Stevens trial recants
WASHINGTON — One of the government’s witnesses against convicted Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska says he didn’t tell the truth on the stand about an immunity deal with the Justice Department in exchange for his testimony. But federal prosecutors said Friday that his current story is the false one.
“I testified to the fact that there was never immunity for me or my family and friends,” welder David Anderson said in a November letter to a federal judge placed in court files by Stevens’ lawyers. “That is simply not true.”
The Justice Department responded quickly, saying the government never made any agreement of immunity for Anderson or any of his family or friends.
Stevens’ lawyers have asked U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to hold a hearing on Anderson’s charges and to let them investigate it. It was not immediately determined when Sullivan would make a ruling.
Child-killer executed
EDDYVILLE, Ky. — Kentucky has executed a confessed child-killer who resisted all appeals.
In the state’s first execution in nine years, 37-year-old Marco Allen Chapman was given a lethal injection Friday at the Kentucky State Penitentiary. He was pronounced dead at 7:34 p.m. CST.
Chapman pleaded guilty in 2004 to killing two children in their northern Kentucky home in a 2002 attack that wounded their mother and another child.
He asked to be put to death and fought for the right to fire his attorneys to clear the way.
Associated Press