Haitian protesters say president failed

Haitian protesters say president failed

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti

Haitian protesters marched to the collapsed national palace for a second-straight Monday to criticize President Rene Preval, saying he failed the nation in the aftermath of its catastrophic earthquake.

At least 1,000 people marched to the center of the wrecked capital, where local police and U.N. peacekeepers stood guard. Tens of thousands more watched from the plastic-tarp-covered plots where they have lived since the Jan. 12 disaster.

The protesters said that Preval has failed to help an estimated 1.5 million people left homeless by the quake and that he overstepped his authority by saying he would remain in office for up to three months beyond his term if elections cannot take place by late November.

Greek official leaves over husband’s taxes

ATHENS, Greece

Greece’s deputy tourism minister resigned after tax officials said her husband, a popular singer and former film star, owes millions of euros in unpaid taxes, a major embarrassment for the cash-strapped government, which is waging a war on tax evasion.

A government statement Monday said Angela Gerekou — a 51-year-old former actress who once posed topless for a Greek men’s magazine — stepped down hours after the scandal broke in a daily newspaper.

Bomb suspect’s e-mail revealed

NEW YORK

Times Square bomb suspect Faisal Shahzad believed Muslims were under siege around the world, and he was struggling to find a way to fight back, according to an e-mail disclosed Monday by CNN.

In his message, Shahzad, who is in federal custody at an undisclosed location after his arrest May 3, appears since 2006 to have become increasingly disaffected with life in the United States.

“Everyone knows the current situation of Muslim World,” he stated in one e-mail dated February 2006 that CNN posted on its website. “Everybody knows the kind of Hypocrite government in Muslim world. Everybody knows how the Muslim country bows down to pressure from the west. Everyone knows the kind of humiliation we are faced with around the globe.”

CNN said it received the e-mails from Dr. Saud Anwar of Connecticut, one of the co-founders of the American Muslim Peace Initiative.

McCain loses two campaign officials

WASHINGTON

Sen. John McCain’s re-election bid lost its campaign manager and another veteran Republican official, part of a shake-up for the Arizona lawmaker locked in a tight primary race with radio host and former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.

The pair of GOP hands — who started before Hayworth entered the race — will instead work on the Republican National Committee’s effort in Arizona. Campaign spokesman Brian Rogers said neither Shiree Verdone nor Mike Hellon, a former Arizona GOP chairman, was fired.

Poll: Vacationers plan to spend more

The “staycation” is so last year.

Americans who plan to vacation this summer will spend more money and stay away longer than last year, when staying home was more the norm, according to a new survey released Monday.

Although the percentage of Americans who will travel this summer has remained about the same (51 percent), of those who will hit the road, 67 percent will spend more money than they did a year earlier, and 74 percent will take the same length of vacation or longer, according to a survey of 2,000 Americans commissioned by American Express Co.

Combined dispatches