Obama: If I were Weiner, I’d resign

Obama: If I were Weiner, I’d resign

WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama says that if he were in Rep. Anthony Weiner’s position, he’d resign.

The president said Monday that what Weiner did in exchanging sexual messages over the Internet with several women was “highly inappropriate” and that Weiner had embarrassed himself, his wife and his family.

The president didn’t explicitly call for Weiner to resign but said that when a politician gets to the point where he can’t serve as effectively as needed, in his words, “then you should probably step back.”

The comments were the president’s first on Weiner’s sex scandal. Obama made them in an interview for NBC’s “Today Show.”

Volcanic ash leads to canceled flights

SYDNEY

More Australian flights were canceled today because of ash from a Chilean volcano, this time out of a midsize southern airport, as airlines scrambled to fly out thousands of passengers who had been stranded for two days in Melbourne.

National carrier Qantas and budget airline Jetstar said they planned to add capacity to and from Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, and hoped to get all passengers in the air by the end of the day.

More than 60,000 passengers have been stranded by the disruptions, which came amid a three-day holiday weekend in Australia.

WWII bomber consumed by fire

OSWEGO, Ill.

A World War II bomber made what appeared to be an emergency landing in a cornfield Monday, and all seven people on board escaped before it was consumed by fire, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The accident happened right after the plane took off from the Aurora Municipal Airport, and the plane landed in an Oswego cornfield outside Chicago, Cory said. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

No cause found for Ferris wheel fall

TRENTON, N.J.

Investigators say they don’t know what caused an 11-year-old girl’s deadly fall from a Ferris wheel on an amusement pier at the New Jersey shore.

The state Department of Community Affairs released a preliminary incident report Monday. It found no mechanical defects.

Abiah Jones was alone in a gondola of the Giant Wheel at Morey’s Piers in Wildwood on June 3 when she plunged 100 feet.

Lead singer of Coasters dies at 83

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.

Carl Gardner, original lead singer of the R&B group the Coasters, has died in Florida. He was 83. Gardner’s wife, Veta, says her husband died Sunday at a Port St. Lucie hospice after a long bout with congestive heart failure and vascular dementia. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, the Coasters had a string of hits in the late 1950s. Their single “Yakety Yak” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 after its 1958 release. It also spent seven weeks as the No. 1 rhythm-and-blues song.

High court: Votes not ‘free speech’

WASHINGTON

The Supreme Court upheld ethics laws across the nation that forbid legislators and city council members from voting on matters in which they have a conflict of interest, rejecting the argument that governmental votes cast by elected officials are “free speech” protected by the First Amendment.

Conflict-of-interest rules “have been commonplace for over 200 years,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, and they have never been thought to infringe on the free-speech rights of lawmakers, he said.

Combined dispatches