■ United StatesBush, Kerry resort to science
The battle for the US presidency entered new territory yesterday with both candidates turning to scientific journals to set out their election promises. US President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry outline their positions in interviews in yesterday's issue of Nature and today's Science. Bush told Nature he is "committed to pursuing stem cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line," while Kerry said he would lift the "ideologically driven" limits. Kerry said he would "end the pursuit of a new generation of nuclear weapons," and Bush said "the evolving security environment requires a flexible and responsive weapons-complex infrastructure."
■ United States
`Goofy' worker suspended
A Walt Disney World worker who was acquitted of charges he fondled a 13-year-old girl while dressed as Tigger has been suspended again, accused of shoving two people while in a Goofy costume. His lawyer said the man was just "goofing around because he was Goofy." Two photographers at Disney's Animal Kingdom said Michael Chartrand, a native of England, came up to them in his Goofy costume and shoved each in the chest, Orange County Sheriff's Capt. Bernie Presha said Wednesday. The photographers, a male and a female whose names were not released, work for Kodak at the park.
■ Peru
Protesters block mine
Newmont Mining Corp curtailed mining at its Yanacocha Mine in Peru Wednesday after thousands of protesters blocked a road to the mine for two weeks, worried that new drilling operations could endanger water supplies. Blasting and hauling of ore stopped as some 10,000 workers protested in Cajamarca, Peru, about 350km north of Lima, company spokesman Doug Hock said. Residents began blocking the road Sept. 2 after the company started exploratory drilling on the Cerro Quilish gold deposit, which sits in the same watershed as the village.
■ Canada
Healthcare aid pledged
Canada's federal government has agreed to pump extra billions into the ailing public healthcare system in return for a commitment by the country's provinces to cut waiting times for treatment, federal and provincial officials said early yesterday. The development capped three days of sometimes acrimonious negotiations between the two sides on how to reform the medicare system, which is funded jointly by Ottawa and the provinces but run solely by the latter. Ottawa will invest an extra C$18 billion (US$14 billion) in the system over the next six years and a total of C$41.2 billion over the next 10 years. "Canada's first ministers have agreed and just signed on a 10-year plan," Prime Minister Paul Martin said.
■ United States
Twin dies in surgery
One of the year-old conjoined twin girls who underwent surgery to separate their heads died shortly after the procedure was completed, a spokeswoman for the Johns Hopkins Children's Center said early yesterday. Lea and Tabea Block, from Lemgo, Germany, were successfully separated at 12:15am Thursday, but Tabea died later "after an exhaustive resuscitative effort," hospital spokeswoman Staci Vernick Goldberg said. Lea was in critical but stable condition and "doing well" in the hospital's pediatric intensive care unit, Goldberg said. "We extend our deepest sympathy to the parents and family of Tabea Block," Goldberg said.
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