Obama, McCain, cautiously watch financial debate

Presidential rivals Barack Obama and John McCain warily addressed the nation's financial crisis and a proposed $700 billion response Tuesday, demanding changes in the Bush administration's plan without specifying exactly what would trigger their outright opposition.

The financial meltdown is bedeviling both candidates, who know the Nov. 4 election could turn on voters' sense of who can best keep the country from a deep recession. They have acted cautiously so far, avoiding the intense debate in Congress and offering similar calls for greater oversight and taxpayer protections, which rank among the less controversial criticisms of the plan.

Neither campaign has …

First head off in the right direction

When heading out on this walk from Saltford, I was reminded of aletter that I once received complaining about the inaccuracy of mywalk directions.

It started "We are 2 PhD students from Bristol University" -presumably to lend some sort of kudos - and it went on to cataloguemore than three sheets of A4 what appeared to be a series ofdisasters.

None of the described stiles was in place, footpaths were blockedby fences, what should have taken two hours took all day and, withdarkness approaching and finding themselves on the wrong side of theRiver Avon, the friends had no choice but to catch an expensive taxiback to their vehicle.

Their mistake was a …

Obama's Sister Debuts As Campaigner

HONOLULU - Maya Soetoro-Ng, debuting Saturday as an enthusiastic campaigner for brother Barack Obama, recalled that he could be "bossy" but was never mean to his little sister.

Soetoro-Ng said their mother, Ann Dunham, had a huge impact on Obama before she died in 1995, especially with her community organizing in Africa and Asia.

"She embraced everybody," said Soetoro-Ng, 36. "There was so much good in her that there wasn't any room for smallness or meanness or violence."

She spoke to more than 100 Obama supporters in the state where the Illinois senator was born. Hawaii's Democratic caucus is scheduled for Feb. 19.

Soetoro-Ng, who was joined by her …

Woman who sued police dog over buttocks bite fined

A woman sued a police dog that she blamed for injuries after it bit her in the buttocks. To a suburban Detroit judge, the bottom line was that the lawsuit was frivolous. So Warren District Judge David Viviano slapped 55-year-old Inez Starks with a $500 fine.

The Eastpointe woman filed a lawsuit last August against the city of Warren, several police officers and Liberty, a German shepherd dog in the police department's K-9 unit.

Starks claims she …

US troops fire shots to disperse Afghan protesters

U.S. troops fired warning shots to disperse a protest in eastern Afghanistan over the arrest of a religious leader suspected of a rocket attack, NATO said Tuesday.

The alliance said no civilian injuries were reported from the protest Monday, but Gen. Faqir Ahmad, the deputy police chief of Parwan province, said one civilian was killed by shots fired from an unknown source.

NATO said about 300 people surrounded a patrol and attacked vehicles with rocks and iron bars outside the massive coalition air base at Bagram, in Parwan province.

"After several attempts to stop the attack and disperse the crowd, coalition troops received small-arms fire …

MEDIA MIX

AN INNOVATIVE, LOW-BUDGET VIDEO PRODUCTION: One of the more interesting uses of video this primary season was for the campaign of Dr. Steve Miles, a DFL primary candidate for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Sen. Rod Grams of Minnesota. Miles enlisted media consultants Joe Slade White and Company to create a video that would introduce his speech at the party's nominating convention in June. With little money, the firm arranged a still photo shoot in the state and a sound interview with Miles and others who knew him. The video, according to producer Joe Slade White, "combines the arresting quality of great black and white documentary photography with the power of unscripted, v�rit� 'radio …

Serbian Election Runoff Appears Likely

Independent monitors predicted Sunday that an ally of late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic would come out slightly ahead of the pro-Western incumbent but neither would win an outright majority in Serbia's presidential election, forcing a runoff.

Radical Party leader Tomislav Nikolic had received about 39 percent of the first-round vote, compared with incumbent Boris Tadic's 35 percent, according to Belgrade's Center for Free Elections and Democracy, which independently counted votes alongside election officials.

"We can conclude that there will be a runoff," said Zoran Lucic, an official of the independent monitoring group. "The runoff will be …