Around The World

Obama even with Clinton in New Hampshire: poll
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are locked in a dead heat among New Hampshire voters ahead of the state's primary contest next month, according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll released on Friday.
Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, and Obama, an Illinois senator, are tied at 32 percent, with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards at 18 percent, according to the poll.
New Hampshire is one of the hotly contested early primaries in the state-by-state process to pick the Democratic and Republican candidates who will face off in the November 4, 2008 presidential election.
In the tightening Republican race there, Mitt Romney, former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, leads Arizona Sen. John McCain 34 percent to 27 percent.
Just last month most New Hampshire polls showed Clinton and Romney with double-digit leads, USA Today said.
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First clashes in Iowa set tone over immigration
Thu Dec 20, 2007 2:24pm EST
By Tim Gaynor
PHOENIX (Reuters) - Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain lost ground to his presidential rivals over support for what his opponents called "amnesty" for illegal immigrants.
Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York stumbled in a recent debate when asked to define her position on illegal immigrants and drivers licenses.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who leads the Republican field in Iowa, had to backtrack on comments he once made that supported providing education for the children of illegal immigrants.
As campaigning builds for the Democratic and Republican nominations for the U.S. presidential election in November, taking a tough stance on illegal immigration has become vital to their chances of being selected to represent their parties.
"It is like taking an oath in blood," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the nonpartisan National Migration Institute think tank, of the scrabble by candidates to prove their bona fides on the issue before the January 3 Iowa caucuses.
"(This time around) everyone wants to know that candidates will have a position on illegal immigration," he added.
The question of what to do with 12 million illegal immigrants has been a hot-button topic for months in the United States, where a bill seeking tougher enforcement and a path to legal status for many was killed by the U.S. Senate in June.
In Iowa it has joined concerns over the wobbly economy and handling of the war in Iraq as a defining issue at the start of the grueling state-by-state contests.
Other hopefuls who have had to come into line on illegal immigration in the Midwestern state include Republican Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who was shamed in recent weeks into firing a landscaper employing illegal immigrants who worked at his residence.
Rudy Giuliani, whose lead in national polls has shrunk or in some cases disappeared, had to roll back his stated tolerance for illegal immigrants as New York's Republican mayor after facing attacks that he provided them with sanctuary.
Analysts say illegal immigration became a key issue for candidates in the long, drawn-out race owing to the shifting demographics in the state hosting the first caucus.
"Iowa happens to be one of those states that has had a large influx of illegal immigrants in recent years, and when you go very fast from zero to 60, it has an impact," said Tamar Jacoby, senior research fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank, who supported the bipartisan Senate immigration bill.
"We are starting out in an area where the campaign polls say go for broke, make hay on this," she added.
SETTING THE TONE OF THE DEBATE
Iowa is just the first in a series of state-by-state contests to decide who will replace President George W. Bush following the November 4 presidential election.
While candidates are presently struggling to demonstrate their tough stance on illegal immigration, analysts say differences between the Democrats and Republicans will likely open up as the general election campaign begins following their respective party conventions in August and September.
"It's too risky for the candidates to stick their necks out too far ... particularly in the primary season ... they see it almost as a no win situation," said Bruce Merrill, a political analyst at Arizona State University.
"When the primaries are over, it will become more of a partisan issue," he added.
Analysts say the Republicans are likely to reach out to their base with a hard line message hoping to parlay discontent over illegal immigration into votes in November, and will be unlikely to move back toward the middle ground.
"Now, McCain and Giuliani have given themselves some ability to run back to the center, but not much," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which backs immigration reform.
Democrats may soften their rhetoric in coming months to reach out to moderates seeking a pragmatic solution and to Hispanic voters, the country's fastest growing bloc.
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Quarter of New Hampshire female voters watching Iowa

By Michelle Nichols
NEW YORK (Reuters) - One-quarter of women voters in New Hampshire say they will cast their ballot in next month's presidential primary election based on the results of the Iowa caucus a few days earlier, a survey showed on Wednesday.
The women said if their favorite candidate for the presidential nomination did not win on January 3 in Iowa, they would vote for someone else in the January 8 New Hampshire primary, the Lifetime/Zogby poll found.
The Midwestern state of Iowa holds the first of the state-by-state battles to pick Democratic and Republican candidates for the November 4, 2008, presidential election with New Hampshire voting five days later.
More than 40 percent of women in New Hampshire had not decided on a candidate and 30 percent are "leaning" toward a candidate, the poll showed. Only one in four women in the New England state had definitely decided who would get their vote.
"Women are largely undecided about which presidential candidate they are supporting, and in New Hampshire, the primary is still very much up for grabs," said Meredith Wagner, Lifetime Networks executive vice president for public affairs.
Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York had 39 percent support among decided female Democrats in New Hampshire, followed by Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois with 25 percent. Among Republicans, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney had 23 percent support and Arizona Sen. John McCain had 16 percent.
The poll, conducted as Obama campaigned with talk show host Oprah Winfrey, also found one third of female voters under 30 in New Hampshire felt Winfrey's involvement would make them less likely to vote for him.
The Lifetime/Zogby poll was conducted between December 6 and December 8 among 500 New Hampshire adult women. The margin of error in the New Hampshire sample was 4.5 percentage points.
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Stuff You Wouldn't Know if You Didn't Read This Blog!!


Jingle-bang! Santa's chopper shot up over slum!
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Not even Santa Claus is safe as the violent Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro celebrates the Christmas season.
Drug traffickers in a Rio slum opened fire on a helicopter carrying a Santa to a children's party, apparently mistaking it for a police helicopter, police said Tuesday.
"They thought it was a police operation and started shooting. Luckily, nobody was hurt," a police official said.
The helicopter had to return to its base after the attack. Two bullet holes were found in its fuselage.
Police said the pilot, contracted to take an actor dressed as Santa to the party in the Nova Mare slum, was flying over the neighboring Vila Joao shantytown when it was fired upon on Sunday.
Santa later returned to Nova Mare by car to distribute Christmas presents.
Most of Rio's 700-plus slums are controlled by drug traffickers and are not regularly patrolled by police, who instead go into the slums in military-style raids, often using helicopters and armored vehicles

Even CEOs Say CEOs Are Paid Too Much

BOSTON (Reuters) - With many U.S. chief executives taking home millions of dollars in pay, it is no shock that average workers regards them as overpaid. But that attitude extends to the corner office as well.
Sixty-four percent of top executives view CEO compensation as excessive, according to survey released on Tuesday.
The poll of 1,572 readers of BNET.com, a business Web site, found that, overall, 77 percent of employees regarded CEOs as overpaid. The survey, of readers of the Web site, was conducted June 11 through 18. About 90 percent of respondents were from the United States.
Fifty percent of CEOs surveyed said their leadership style was effective, but only 38 percent of employees agreed.
BNET.com is a unit of U.S. media technology company CNET Networks

Should we go back for those, Sarge?

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Boxes of hand grenades tumbled out of a Serb Army truck Thursday when the driver pulled up to pay his highway toll, officials in southern Serbia said.
The toll-gate was sealed off and the bomb squad called in to recover 18 cases of grenades, part of a bigger shipment on its way for safe destruction at a military facility.
The mayor of nearby Batocina, Radisa Milosevic, said military police were quickly on the scene, assuring backed-up motorists the grenades could not detonate because they were defused for transport.



YES, UFOs Do Exist A Top Government Spokesman Says
TOKYO (Reuters) - Yes, UFOs do exist, Japan's top government spokesman said Tuesday. The comment by chief cabinet secretary Nobutaka Machimura drew laughter from reporters at his regular briefing on government policy.
Earlier the cabinet, responding to an opposition lawmaker's question, issued a statement saying it could not confirm any cases of unidentified flying objects.
"This is an issue that the nation is interested in -- it is a defense issue and a confirmation operation needs to take place," Ryuji Yamane, a lawmaker from the main opposition Democratic Party who submitted the question to the cabinet, told Reuters.
"But the government does not even try to collect information necessary for the confirmation."
Machimura, asked about the government's view on UFOs at a regular press conference, told reporters that the government can only offer a stereotyped response.
"Personally, I definitely believe they exist," he said, apparently tongue in cheek.
But the prime minister stuck to the official view.
"I have yet to confirm (that UFOs exist)," Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda told reporters later in the day



K/news/specialsSpecialCoverageHYPERLINK/news/videoVideoHYPERLINK/news/picturesPicturesHYPERLINK/youwitnessYouWitnessHYPERLINKhttp://blogs.reuters.com/us/BlogsHYPERLINKhttp://blogs.reuters.com/gbuReaderFeedbackHYPERLINKhttp://clk.atdmt.com/FXM/go/rtrsleng0010000129fxm/direct/01/1472268HYPERLINKhttp://clk.atdmt.com/FXM/go/rtr Itsy-bitsy pink bikini gets serviceman jail
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A Singapore national serviceman who sashayed into a lift early one morning wearing only a pink bikini has been handed a day's jail and a S$11,000 ($7,529) fine by a court in the city-state, a newspaper said on Tuesday.
Tan Wen Zhong, 21, admitted to five charges, including "outraging the modesty" of the woman who shared the lift with him and "fraudulent possession of women's underwear," Singapore's Straits Times reported.
The paper said a subsequent police search of his apartment turned up 46 pieces of women's underwear and bikinis as well as four obscene films.
Tan, who was completing Singapore's mandatory national service when he committed the offence in April, was also accused of grabbing a 23-year-old woman's buttocks a year ago and of shoplifting a pair of sunglasses two years ago.
In mitigation, Tan's lawyer said his client had been badly affected by his parents' divorce during his formative years.


You think Christmas trees grow on trees?
RIGA (Reuters) - Latvian authorities have given residents something to cheer about when they invited them to cut their own Christmas trees for free -- only to be chased away by forest rangers.
A Riga forestry agency said on Wednesday a state body had invited residents to cut their trees from forests located 50 km (30 miles) or more outside the capital, but people had instead descended on protected areas around the city.
The authority was quoted by news agency LETA as saying that rangers in charge of forests around Riga had been struggling to keep people away to protect the few fir trees that grow around there.
"The authority's staff are being driven to despair," said a spokeswoman.