Republican John McCain on Thursday intensified character attacks on Democratic opponent Barack Obama, who is climbing in the polls as the voters’ preferred candidate to handle a deepening financial crisis and plunging stock market.
The US economy has been the consuming voter issue for months, but anxiety has grown as home values plummet, retirement savings vanish and unemployment grows. On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged to its lowest level in just over five years — falling more than 7 percent.
McCain is seen as struggling on economic issues since the administration of fellow Republican George W. Bush first confronted the financial crisis and asked Congress to pass a US$700 billion rescue plan.
Since earlier this week, his campaign has sought to change the subject, deploying running mate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to question Obama’s character. Last weekend, she charged that Obama sees the US differently than most Americans and had been “palling around with terrorists,” a reference to William Ayers, a founder of the violent Vietnam-era group the Weather Underground.
In his own strongest criticism of Obama, McCain told a Wisconsin town hall crowd on Thursday: “We need to know the full extent of the relationship” with Ayers.
Loud cheers from 4,000 people gathered at a sports complex near Milwaukee greeted McCain’s attacks.
“Look, we don’t care about an old, washed-up terrorist and his wife,” McCain said. “That’s not the point here.”
“He’s a terrorist,” a man in the audience screamed, without making clear to whom he was referring.
“We need to know the full extent of the relationship,” McCain said.
McCain told supporters that Obama had not been truthful in describing his relationship with Ayers, adding that Obama has “a clear radical, far-left pro-abortion record.”
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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