Stimulus money rejected

Stimulus money rejected

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford on Wednesday became the first governor to reject some of his state’s share of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus money, spurning $700 million that he said would harm his state’s residents in the long run.

Sanford, a Republican who served in Congress in the 1990s, made his announcement at three sites across South Carolina in a daylong flight tour that fed speculation that he’s eyeing a 2012 presidential run.

South Carolina’s Republican-controlled General Assembly is poised to rebuff Sanford and seek the stimulus money on its own.

Republican legislators who have clashed with Sanford for years over his radical anti-spending stances joined Democrats in an overwhelming vote Monday to include $350 million in stimulus money in the 2009-10 state budget.

Tariq Aziz sentenced

BAGHDAD — Tariq Aziz, who once represented Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to the world, was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday for his involvement in the 1992 killing of 42 merchants accused of price-fixing.

The court found Aziz guilty of premeditated murder and crimes against humanity. It was the first conviction for the one-time foreign minister and deputy premier; last week the Iraq High Tribunal dismissed charges against him regarding Saddam’s crushing of a 1999 Shiite uprising.

Saddam’s first cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali for his use of chemical weapons against Kurdish populations in the late 1980s, received a 15-year sentence as well.

Al-Majid received a third death sentence last week for his role in suppressing the 1999 Shiite revolt. He had already received two death sentences in two other trials.

China-U.S. agreement

WASHINGTON — The United States and China agreed Wednesday on the need to reduce tensions and avoid a repeat of a confrontation between American and Chinese vessels in the South China Sea, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said.

“We both agreed that we should work to ensure that such incidents do not happen again,” Clinton told reporters after meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi at the State Department.

The two countries remained at odds over the exact circumstances.

Bristol Palin, fianc split

WASILLA, Alaska — Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin, the teenage daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin, have broken off their engagement, he said Wednesday, about 21‚Ñ2 months after the couple had a baby.

Johnston, 19, told The Associated Press that he and 18-year-old Bristol Palin mutually decided “a while ago” to end their relationship. He declined to elaborate as he stood outside his family’s home in Wasilla, about 40 miles north of Anchorage.

He also said some details of the breakup, rumors of which had been swirling on the Internet, were inaccurate.

Bristol Palin said in a statement that she was devastated about a report on Star magazine’s Web site that quoted Levi’s sister, Mercede, as saying Bristol “makes it nearly impossible” to visit the teenagers’ infant son, Tripp. The baby was born Dec. 27.

Somali terrorist concerns

WASHINGTON — An expected merger between al-Qaida and an East African terror group that has recruited young Somali men from Minnesota could increase the danger to the U.S., counterterrorism officials told Congress on Wednesday.

They said that it will likely take time for the Somalia-based al-Shabab to extend its focus beyond its own country and mirror al-Qaida’s global jihadist views.

Andrew Liepman, deputy director of intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center, said that so far, the Somali-American teens who disappeared from their homes in the Minneapolis region and lured back to Somalia to fight are more likely being used as “cannon fodder” there.

U.N.: 9B people in 2050

UNITED NATIONS — The world’s population will hit 7 billion early in 2012 and top 9 billion in 2050, with the vast majority of the increase coming in the developing countries of Asia and Africa, according to a U.N. estimate released Wednesday.

Hania Zlotnik, director of the U.N. Population Division, said that “there have been no big changes” from the previous estimate in 2006.

“We are still projecting that by 2050 the population of the world will be around 9.1 billion,” she said at a news conference. “The projections are based on the assumption that fertility that is now around 2.56 children per woman is going to decline to about 2.02 children per woman in the world.”

Combined dispatches