Obama honors Polish history

May 28, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

WARSAW, Poland

President Barack Obama on Friday honored the memories of those slain in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazis, telling one elderly man that the memorial was a “reminder of the nightmare” of the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were killed.

The president also helped place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, dedicated to all unidentified soldiers who have given their lives to Poland in past wars. By paying homage to Poles who fell in World War II at two symbolically potent sites, Obama’s gestures were sure to carry great weight in a country whose identity is still profoundly shaped by the death and destruction inflicted on it by Nazi Germany.

Texas governor mulls 2012 run

AUSTIN, Texas

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the longest-serving chief executive in the state’s history and a politician who never has lost an election, said Friday he will consider seeking the Republican nomination for president.

The outspoken conservative, who for months said he wasn’t interested in running for the White House, said he will consider entering the race after the Texas Legislature adjourns Monday.

It was a stark reversal from his previous insistence that he would not seek the presidency, and one that could shake up the GOP race.

11 words still secret in Pentagon Papers

WASHINGTON

Forty years after they hit front pages, the Pentagon Papers will be released by the government next month. But wait! Eleven words of the finally declassified history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam will remain secret.

The National Declassification Center will say only that the 11 words are all on one of the work’s 7,000 pages.

Set for the week of June 13, the hard copy and online release comes 40 years after excerpts from the study first appeared in The New York Times.

The resulting public uproar led to a major legal victory for press freedom when the Supreme Court upheld the right of newspapers to publish the papers. The upcoming release will be the complete study, unlike the version leaked by former Defense Department special assistant Daniel Ellsberg.

Mladic could be extradited Monday

BELGRADE, Serbia

Ratko Mladic is eating strawberries and receiving family visits in a Serbian jail, but as early as Monday the ex-general could be on his way to face a war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, possibly joining his former ally Radovan Karadzic on trial for some of the worst horrors of the Balkan wars. The former Bosnian Serb army commander known for his cruelty and arrogance began issuing demands from behind bars Friday, calling for a TV set and Tolstoy novels, and regaining some of his trademark hubris after a pre-dawn raid in a Serbian village the day before he ended his 16 years on the run.

Clinton: Pakistanis concede support

ISLAMABAD

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that Pakistani officials had conceded that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden must have had a support network in Pakistan to have remained undetected for at least five years in the city of Abbottabad, home to the country’s premier military academy.

But she stepped back from suggestions, made in Washington in the days after the U.S. special forces raid May 2 that killed bin Laden, that the Pakistani military or government knew he was hiding here.

Combined dispatches