USA UK and Malta News
12/04/2008 22:33

USA today Editoweb, 12 april 2008


Obama concedes remarks were ill chosen - Pope Benedict XVI ready to meet America - World finance leaders tackle bank reform - Clinton, in Phila., focuses on crime fight, jabs Obama - A 26-year-old secret could free inmate.



Obama concedes remarks were ill chosen
Democrat Barack Obama on Saturday conceded that comments he made about bitter working class voters who "cling to guns or religion" were ill chosen, as he tried to stem a burst of complaints that he is condescending. "I didn't say it as well as I should have," he said at Ball State University. As he tried to quell the furor, presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton hit Obama with one of her lengthiest and most pointed criticisms to date. "Senator Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch," she said, campaigning about an hour away in Indianapolis. "They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans."

Pope Benedict XVI ready to meet America
Next up for Pope Benedict XVI, a welcoming nation that wants to get to know him. Benedict's first trip to the United States as pope begins Tuesday — a five-day visit to Washington and New York, including a speech at the United Nations. Anyone expecting strident speeches from the man once called "God's rottweiler" for his role defending Roman Catholic doctrine will be disappointed. Benedict will deliver an unwavering message that society needs religious values, but this intellectual pontiff will do it in the most positive way possible. After making relatively little headway in his efforts to re-ignite the faith in Europe, America's roughly 65 million Catholics seem anxious to hear him.

World finance leaders tackle bank reform
World financial leaders facing the gravest economic crisis in at least a decade are pledging tighter control of banks and other financial institutions and hoping the U.S. slump is short. The 185-nation International Monetary Fund and the World Bank readied for weekend discussions following talks among the world's seven richest industrial countries. The IMF, the lender of last resort for countries in trouble, is facing its own hard times. One proposal on the agenda would trim 15 percent of the agency's staff and sell about $11 billion in the institutions' vast gold reserves.

Clinton, in Phila., focuses on crime fight, jabs Obama
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, campaigning yesterday in West Philadelphia, announced a $4-billion-a-year anticrime plan that would put 100,000 new police officers on the streets and help state and local governments reduce the flow of repeat offenders back to prison. She also would eliminate the mandatory federal five-year sentence for crack-cocaine users as part of the package's emphasis on steering nonviolent offenders away from incarceration.

A 26-year-old secret could free inmate
For nearly 26 years, the affidavit was sealed in an envelope and stored in a locked box, tucked away with the lawyer's passport and will. Sometimes he stashed the box in his bedroom closet, other times under his bed. It stayed there — year after year, decade after decade. Then, about two years ago, Dale Coventry, the box's owner, got a call from his former colleague, W. Jamie Kunz. Both were once public defenders. They hadn't talked in a decade. "We're both getting on in years," Kunz said. "We ought to do something with that affidavit to make sure it's not wasted in case we both leave this good Earth."

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