White House candidates battled in dueling rallies and airwaves saturated with "attack ads" on Saturday, five days before Iowa activists make their picks in the first of next year's nominating contests.
Democratic hopeful Barack Obama turned his fire on rival John Edwards and kept up the heat on former first lady Hillary Clinton in the latest hostilities in a running soundbite joust over who can best spark change.
Republican rivals Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney meanwhile swapped jabs, betraying rising tensions as candidates criss-crossed the frigid state chasing wide-open party nominations, ahead of the leadoff caucuses on Thursday.
Edwards, locked in a cut-throat chase with Clinton on Obama in Iowa, and knowing he needs a strong performance to keep his populist campaign alive, vowed to stamp out the influence of big business on government.
"I want to make an announcement today," the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee said in Washington, Iowa.
"No corporate lobbyist or anyone who has lobbied for a foreign government will work in my White House. We will not replace corporate Republicans with corporate Democrats," he said.
Obama's campaign had earlier accused Edwards of accepting cash from a group run by a former aide outside campaign finance limits.
"If Edwards can't stand up to his own former aides, how can he stand up to the special interests in Washington?" Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said.
Obama, meanwhile, took another shot at Clinton.
"You can't argue that you are the master of a broken system in Washington and you've been there for years and you are somehow ... the best qualified to bring about change," he said, according to the Des Moines Register.
Romney, overtaken in an Iowa poll surge by folksy Baptist preacher Huckabee, opened a two-front war by hammering Senator John McCain, who is on the rise in New Hampshire which votes Jan. 8.
"McCain championed a bill to let every illegal immigrant stay in America permanently," the ad warned, hitting the Arizona senator for backing an ill-fated Senate bill which provided a long path to citizenship for illegals.
Illegal immigration is a boiling issue for Republicans and helped drive down McCain this year. Recently though, the 71-year-old has been rising again, prompting one Iowa columnist on Saturday to dub him "The Comeback Codger."
Polls show Romney, who needs wins in both early voting states, trails Huckabee in Iowa and is under fierce pressure from McCain in New Hampshire.
Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, hopes to capitalize on discontent among next year's challengers with the Republican field, particularly among evangelical Christian voters who helped elect US President George W. Bush.
"The world's eyes will be on Iowa on the night of Jan. 3," Huckabee told supporters in the small town of Indianola, Iowa.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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