The US presidential campaign got nastier yesterday as a leading US newspaper revealed that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin used her position as Alaska state governor to give top jobs in her administration to personal friends.
The New York Times reported that Palin had given the US$95,000-a-year directorship of the State Division of Agriculture to a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, who cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the agency.
And Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages, the paper noted in an investigative report.
“Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials,” the Times said.
The revelations came as Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama urged his supporters on Saturday to help victims of monstrous Hurricane Ike while also promising economic relief to hard-pressed Americans suffering “quiet storms” in their own lives.
His Republican White House rival, Senator John McCain, expressed his own sympathy for those upended by Ike, which slammed into Texas packing a massive ocean surge, knocking out power to millions and flooding coastal areas.
But the race grew still more bad-tempered with McCain’s spokesman accusing Obama of bad-taste politicking on the day of a natural disaster and the Obama team alleging McCain was running the “least honorable” US campaign yet.
Obama rolled out a new advertisement, a Web site and a series of events by officials in 16 states to highlight the presence of former corporate lobbyists at the highest echelons of McCain’s campaign team.
Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, said the new offensive was a bid to “challenge the masquerade” of McCain, who has voted in lock-step with US President George W. Bush, claiming to be the real agent of change in this election.
Addressing 7,000 people at a sunny outdoors rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, Obama appealed to his army of more than 2 million donors to open their wallets and volunteer for relief work as Ike tore into Texas.
“During moments of tragedy the American people come together. We may argue, we may differ but we are all American and one of the principles of this great country is that during times of need, we are all in it together,” he said.
The Illinois senator had already appealed to his donors to contribute funds to help victims of Hurricane Gustav, which forced McCain to curtail the first day of the Republican convention on Sept. 1.
In a statement, McCain said he and his wife Cindy offered their “prayers and assistance.” Like Obama, McCain said he had been in touch with federal and state leaders to gauge the official response to Ike.
“Their combined determination to address immediate evacuations and relief support was encouraging, but I am increasingly concerned that there may have been a substantial loss of life,” he said.
Obama said that even while he kept Ike victims in his prayers, “one of the things I’ve learned over the last 19 months is that a lot of people are going through their own trials and their own tribulations.”
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
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
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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