New York Governor David Paterson on Thursday called on the New York Times to clear the air about widely circulated media reports the paper is working on a story so explosive it could force him from office.
“Human decency, if not journalistic ethics, I think would compel an organization, when they see a person being slandered ... to clear the air” and state that the charges being bandied about are not contained in the article, Paterson said on CNN’s Larry King Live program.
“I wish they would” make a clarifying statement “so I could be out of my misery,” Paterson told King, adding: “It’s like a Kafkaesque scenario.”
‘NOT RESPONSIBLE’
CNN quoted a Times spokeswoman as saying the newspaper neither started the rumors nor trafficked in them. CNN said the paper’s metropolitan editor said the Times was “not responsible for what other news organizations are reporting. It’s not coming from the Times.”
The Times did not respond to a request for comment.
Paterson said “clearly somebody is” out to get him with the explosive allegations, although he did not speculate as to who might be behind such an effort. He reiterated his determination to run for governor and again denied allegations of infidelity and recreational drug use.
CHALLENGE
Paterson, facing a probable challenge for the Democratic Party nomination from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, took over as governor in 2008 after then-governor Eliot Spitzer resigned in a prostitution scandal.
Media blogs and New York’s tabloid newspapers have reported the Times will soon publish a story that would force Paterson’s resignation, but Paterson told the newspaper’s editorial board he had no intention of quitting and that he would formally announce his candidacy in the next two weeks.
Paterson’s approval rating has been low for months and last week hit 26 percent in one statewide poll.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema