Trading charges, Romney and Santorum square off in 20th debate in roller-coaster GOP fight
MESA, Ariz. (AP) -- Primed for a fight, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum swapped accusations about spending, taxes and congressional earmarks Wednesday night in the 20th and possibly final debate of the roller-coaster race for the Republican presidential nomination.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul chimed in, saying with a smile that Santorum was a fake conservative who had voted for programs that he now says he wants to repeal.
With primaries in Arizona and Michigan six days distant, Romney said Santorum voted five times while in Congress to raise the government's ability to borrow, supported retention of a law that favors construction unions and supported increased spending for Planned Parenthood. He said federal spending rose 78 percent overall while the former Pennsylvania senator was in Congress.
Santorum retorted that government spending declined as a percentage of the economy when he was in the Senate, and he noted that when Romney was asked last year if he would support a then-pending debt-limit increase, "he said yes."
There was a clash over federal spending earmarks, as well, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich sought to intervene as if serving as a referee instead of a debate participant.
___
Poll: Obama benefits from the economy's slow climb, earns better grades, higher approval
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is reaping political benefits from the country's brighter economic mood. A new poll shows that Republicans and Democrats alike are increasingly saying the nation is heading in the right direction and most independents now approve the way he's addressing the nation's post-recession period.
But trouble could be ahead: Still-struggling Americans are fretting over rising gasoline prices. Just weeks before the summer travel season begins, the Associated Press-GfK survey finds pump prices rising in importance and most people unhappy with how Democratic president has handled the issue.
It's seemingly no coincidence that Obama this week is promoting the expansion of domestic oil and gas exploration and the development of new forms of energy.
It's his latest attempt to show that he, more than any of the Republican presidential contenders, knows that voters' pocketbooks remain pinched even as the economy improves overall. And on that question of empathy, solid majorities continue to view him as someone who "understands the problems of ordinary Americans" and "cares about people like you," the AP-GfK survey found.
There is evidence that the nation is becoming markedly more optimistic, and that Obama benefits from that attitude.
___
Intense government shelling in rebellious Syrian city kills 2 Western journalists
BEIRUT (AP) -- Syrian gunners pounded an opposition stronghold where the last dispatches from a veteran American-born war correspondent chronicled the suffering of civilians caught in the relentless shelling. An intense morning barrage killed her and a French photojournalist -- two of 74 deaths reported Wednesday in Syria.
"I watched a little baby die today," Marie Colvin told the BBC from the embattled city of Homs on Tuesday in one of her final reports.
"Absolutely horrific, a 2-year old child had been hit," added Colvin, who worked for Britain's Sunday Times. "They stripped it and found the shrapnel had gone into the left chest and the doctor said, 'I can't do anything.' His little tummy just kept heaving until he died."
Colvin and photographer Remi Ochlik were among a group of journalists who had crossed into Syria and were sharing accommodations with activists, raising speculation that government forces targeted the makeshift media center, although opposition groups had previously described the shelling as indiscriminate. At least two other Western journalists were wounded.
Hundreds of people have died in weeks of siege-style attacks on Homs that have come to symbolize the desperation and defiance of the nearly year-old uprising against President Bashar Assad.
___
Newark mayor says NYPD misled city on Muslim spying, calls secret report 'deeply offensive'
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- The mayor and police director of New Jersey's largest city said Wednesday the New York Police Department misled their city and never told them it was conducting a widespread spying operation on Newark's Muslim neighborhoods. Had they known, they said, they never would have allowed it.
"If anyone in my police department had known this was a blanket investigation of individuals based on nothing but their religion, that strikes at the core of our beliefs and my beliefs very personally, and it would have merited a far sterner response," Newark Mayor Cory Booker said.
In mid-2007, the NYPD's secretive Demographics Unit fanned out across Newark, photographing every mosque and eavesdropping in Muslim businesses. The findings were cataloged in a 60-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, that served as a police guidebook to Newark's Muslims. There was no mention of terrorism or any criminal wrongdoing.
Officials reacted strongly on Wednesday.
"It is deeply offensive to me to do blanket surveillance for no reason other than religious affiliation," said Booker, who called on his state's attorney general to investigate.
___
Former U.Va. lacrosse player is found guilty of 2nd-degree murder in ex-girlfriend's slaying
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) -- Jurors found a former University of Virginia lacrosse player guilty of second-degree murder Wednesday in the drunken, jealousy-fueled slaying of his ex-girlfriend, rejecting a verdict of first-degree murder and a possible life sentence.
George Huguely V, 24, stood straight, flanked by his attorneys, as jurors returned the verdict after approximately nine hours of deliberations. He was convicted in the slaying of Yeardley Love, who was found bloodied, beaten and bruised in the bedroom of her Charlottesville apartment in the early morning hours of May 3, 2010.
Huguely displayed no outward emotion as the verdict was read, while some sobbing could be heard in the courtroom filled with family and friends of Love and Huguely.
Jurors who returned the verdict immediately began deliberating a sentence, including a guilty finding on a charge of grand larceny. The second-degree murder conviction calls for a sentence of 5 to 40 years, while grand larceny's sentencing range is 1 to 20 years. Formal sentencing will occur at a later date.
Prosecutors said Huguely, of Chevy Chase, Md., killed the U.Va. women's lacrose player after a day of golf and binge drinking, incensed that she had had a relationship with a North Carolina lacrosse player. Love's right eye was bashed in and she was hit with such power, her brain was bruised and she had wrenching head injury that caused bleeding at the base of her brain stem.
___
Police: Stepmother, grandmother charged in death of 9-year-old Ala. girl forced to run 3 hours
ATTALLA, Ala. (AP) -- At a doublewide trailer along a dirt road in rural Alabama, authorities say 9-year-old Savannah Hardin was forced to run for three hours as punishment for having lied to her grandmother about eating candy bars. The severely dehydrated girl had a seizure and her death days later was ruled a homicide.
Her grandmother and stepmother who police say meted out the punishment are in jail, facing murder charges Wednesday.
Witnesses told deputies that Savannah was told to run and not allowed to stop for three hours on Friday, an Etowah County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman said. The girl's stepmother, 27-year-old Jessica Mae Hardin, called police at 6:45 p.m., telling them that Savannah was having a seizure and was unresponsive.
Neighbor Roger Simpson said he saw a little girl running at around 4 p.m., but didn't see anybody chasing or coercing her.
"I saw her running down there, that's what I told the detectives," Simpson said from his home on a hill overlooking the Hardins. "But I don't see how that would kill her."
___
Oregon teenage girl dies after inhaling helium from a tank at drinking party
EAGLE POINT, Ore. (AP) -- Last weekend, 14-year-old Ashley Long told her parents she was going to a slumber party. But instead of spending the night watching videos and eating popcorn two blocks away, she piled into a car with a bunch of her friends and rode to a condo in Medford, Ore., where police say the big sister of one of her friends was throwing a party with booze and marijuana.
After drinking on the drive, and downing more drinks in the condo, it came time for Ashley to take her turn on a tank of helium that everyone else was inhaling to make their voices sound funny.
"That helium tank got going around," said Ashley's stepfather, Justin Earp, who learned what happened from talking to Ashley's friends at the party. "It got to my daughter. My daughter didn't want to do it. It was peer pressure. They put a mask up to her face. They said it would be OK. 'It's not gonna hurt you. It'll just make you laugh and talk funny.'"
Instead, she passed out and later died at a hospital, the result of an obstruction in a blood vessel caused by inhaling helium from a pressurized tank.
It's a common party trick -- someone sucks in helium to give their voice a cartoon character sound.
___
Police say love triangle led to California murder-suicide involving model plane enthusiasts
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- A 73-year-old gunman entangled in a love triangle shot and killed the treasurer of a remote-controlled airplane club who police said was having an affair with the estranged wife of the attacker.
Before turning the gun on himself Tuesday, Robert Gully chased the woman from a parking lot into the lobby of a building where the club was meeting.
He fired multiple times but failed to hit her, Sacramento police Sgt. Andrew Pettit said.
Police said Gully and 62-year-old Jerome Votaw of Sacramento were both romantically involved with the 49-year-old woman, whose name was not released.
"I was shocked when I knew the suspect was in his 70s and the victim was in his 60s," Pettit said.
___
'X Factor' is hiring: Cowell wants 2 female judges, 2 hosts for singing contest's new season
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Simon Cowell is playing it coy about rumors that Fergie, Britney Spears and Janet Jackson are being considered for "The X Factor."
Two judges' spots on the Fox TV singing contest opened up when Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger left after the first season. Cowell told a teleconference Wednesday that two women will replace them, but he declined to comment on who's being considered.
"There's been a load of speculation, some true, some not true," Cowell said. He added that he waited to see who was interested enough to ask about joining the show before focusing on the search.
Judge Antonio "L.A." Reid confirmed there had been discussions about adding Whitney Houston but no contact was made with her. Houston died Feb. 11.
Meetings will be held over the next few weeks with "a number of people," Cowell said, primarily to make it clear to contenders how much of a time commitment "X Factor" represents.
___
Bulk of man's remarkable childhood comic book collection fetches $3.5 million at auction
DALLAS (AP) -- Billy Wright plunked down dime after dime for comic books while growing up in the late 1930s and early 1940s, caring for the collection he started around the age of 9 until his death more than half a century later. On Wednesday, most of that collection sold for a whopping $3.5 million.
Wright's 345 comics, nearly all of which were published from 1936 through 1941, included many of the most prized issues ever, including Detective Comics No. 27, which features the debut of Batman, and Action Comics No. 1, in which Superman's first appears.
Experts say Wright's collection, which included 44 of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide's top 100 issues from comics' golden age, was remarkable for its number of rare issues, but also because it was compiled by a single person in childhood who kept it in good condition until his death in 1994 at age 66.
"This really has its place in the history of great comic book collections," said Lon Allen, the managing director of comics for Dallas-based Heritage Auctions, which oversaw the auction in New York City.
The copy of Detective Comics No. 27, from 1939, drew the highest bid Wednesday, selling for $523,000, including a buyer's premium, Allen said. Wright's Action Comics No. 1, from 1938, sold for about $299,000; Batman No. 1, from 1940, sold for about $275,000; and Captain America No. 2, a 1941 issue with Adolf Hitler on the cover, sold for about $114,000.
sign out Welcome,
(edit)