Nation, World Briefs: Giuliani support in Florida is fading, latest polls find
Published 10:29 pm Wednesday, January 23, 2008
ESTERO, Fla. — With two new Florida polls showing him trailing badly despite intense campaigning here, Rudy Giuliani tried to shift the spotlight toward his vision for economic recovery as his make-or-break campaign appeared to face a deepening crisis. Giuliani has bet it all on Florida, hoping a win here Tuesday will carry him to victory on Super Tuesday on Feb. 5, when 22 states hold their primaries and caucuses. But with polls showing his efforts falling flat, he has turned up the volume on his economic message in a desperate attempt to connect with voters. A Miami Herald poll released Wednesday reported Giuliani’s one-time lead of 33 percent had plummeted to just 15 percent.
D.C.: Clinton holds strong edge
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., maintains a solid lead in her party’s presidential race among Democrat voters nationwide, despite a surge in support since late last year for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg Poll has found. Clinton was preferred by 42 percent of the likely Democrat voters polled, and Obama by 33 percent — a significant increase for him since a similar poll in early December, when he had 21 percent support. Clinton’s support remained virtually unchanged over that period.
Massachusetts: Cancer exams
Having to pay as little as $10 of a mammogram’s cost leads many older women to skip the breast cancer exam, a large study of Medicare users finds. Screening rates were more than 8 percent lower among women required to pay a co-payment or percentage of the cost compared with those with full coverage, according to a study led by Dr. Amal Trivedi at Brown University. Results were published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine. The authors urge Medicare to consider dropping co-payments for mammograms.
Kentucky: Cops to bill for work
The self-proclaimed “Friendship City” of Erlanger has decided it’s tired of being a doormat for motorists from neighboring communities. When police in this Cincinnati, Ohio, suburb respond to an accident in which an out-of-town driver is at fault, the city plans to start issuing a bill: $14 for the first 30 minutes that an officer is on the scene and an additional $7 for every 15 minutes thereafter. Use of a police car brings an additional $154 charge.
Texas: Needle-exchange charges
Police in San Antonio plan to seek drug paraphernalia charges against three activists who were caught operating their own needle-exchange program. Bill Day, a co-founder of the nonprofit group Bexar Area Harm Reduction Coalition, and board members Mary Casey and Melissa Lujan were initially cited Jan. 5 with possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor. Police confiscated their clean needles, left the group with dirty needles and cited them.
Mexico: Arrest in border death
Mexican authorities said Wednesday they had arrested a man in northern Mexico in the weekend killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent Luis Aguilar. Jesus Navarro Montes, 22, was arrested in the northern state of Sonora on Wednesday, said a spokesman for Mexico’s federal Attorney General’s office. Aguilar was trying to stop a suspected smuggler who had illegally entered the country from Mexico when he was hit by a vehicle, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Yuma, Ariz., sector said.
China: Porn sites are shut down
China shut down 44,000 Web sites and arrested 868 people for Internet pornography last year, state media said Wednesday. China’s Public Security Ministry launched a crackdown on Internet pornography last year, saying it had “perverted China’s young minds.” Nearly 2,000 people involved in Internet pornography activities also were penalized, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Cash, computers and film equipment were also seized, Xinhua said.
Poland: Plane crash kills 18
A military plane carrying 18 officers and crew crashed Wednesday in northwestern Poland, killing at least seven people, officials said. The officers had been attending a flight safety conference in Warsaw. The Spanish-built CASA C-295M military transport plane was approaching an air base at Miroslawiec shortly after 7 p.m. when it crashed, a base spokesman said. He said the passengers were officers attending an annual one-day conference in Warsaw on air safety.
Germany: Workers find 40 bodies
At least 40 bodies found in a mass grave in Kassel could be the remains of slave laborers from a Nazi armaments factory, a city official said Wednesday. The first four skeletons were found last week at a construction site at the University of Kassel, a police spokeswoman said. Twenty-six more were found on Monday and Tuesday, and about 10 more were unearthed Wednesday, she said. The area where the skeletons were found was the site of a factory that built locomotives and tanks during World War II.
From Herald news services
