PORTLAND, Ore. — Sen. Barack Obama’s Democratic presidential campaign received a needed boost Friday with an endorsement from Bill Richardson, the nation’s only Hispanic governor and a former member of Bill Clinton’s Cabinet. Obama and Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton had courted the New Mexico governor, who could influence the pivotal Hispanic vote. As a superdelegate, Richardson also could sway other superdelegates — elected officials and party VIPs — if the nomination goes to the convention floor. He called his decision to not back his former boss’s wife “difficult” and “painful.”
D.C.: Robert Gates ready to come home
Defense Secretary Robert Gates regularly carries in his pocket a digital device that counts the days, hours, minutes and seconds that remain in his tenure at the Pentagon. Tapped by Bush to replace Donald Rumsfeld in November 2006, Gates was a reluctant warrior who says he took the job out of a sense of duty. A friend gave him the counter as a gag gift. When January 2009 comes, Gates has said he will head home to Washington state.
Nebraska: Pool-drain victim dies
A 6-year-old girl whose intestines were partially sucked out by a swimming pool drain, leading to tougher safety legislation, has died, her family’s attorney said Friday. Abigail Taylor’s parents were with her when she died Thursday at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, where she had surgery in December to receive a new small bowel, liver and pancreas several months after she was injured. She suffered setbacks, including a cancerous condition sometimes triggered by organ transplants, the attorney said.
New York: Support for traffic fee
New York’s new governor provided support Friday for a plan by New York City’s mayor to reduce traffic by charging motorists fees in part of Manhattan. Gov. David Paterson said he supports the recommendations of the New York City Traffic Mitigation Commission. That plan, if accepted by city and state lawmakers, could draw $4.5 billion in mass transit improvements to help reduce traffic. Paterson backed a congestion pricing zone that would charge drivers $8 to use streets in the lower half of Manhattan during the day on weekdays, except on some holidays.
Tennessee: Spelunkers are rescued
Rescuers found four cavers cold and wet but otherwise safe after they didn’t return as planned from an overnight spelunking trip in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The four were found around 2 p.m. Friday in Rainbow Cave. They had left Maryville, Tenn., around 10 p.m. the night before and had expected to return five hours later. They had “little or no experience in caving and were very poorly equipped,” a park spokesman said.
Florida: Ray’s barb didn’t kill woman
A boater who was killed when a ray jumped out of the water in the Florida Keys and hit her face died of skull fractures and brain injuries, not from the animal’s barb, a medical examiner said Friday. Judy Kay Zagorski, 57, a community leader around her hometown of Pigeon, Mich., was in the front of a boat going 25 mph on Thursday when a 75-pound spotted eagle ray leapt from the water and hit her in a freak collision. Spotted eagle rays can grow to about 17 feet long, including the tail, and weigh up to 500 pounds.
New Mexico: Mexican police chief seeks asylum
The police chief of a Mexican border town racked by smuggling-related violence fled to the U.S. seeking asylum after his deputies abandoned him, officials said Friday. Emilio Perez, the chief of Palomas, Mexico, showed up at the port of entry in Columbus, N.M., late Tuesday, saying his two deputies had left and that he now needed protection, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman in El Paso said. “With the escalating violence in Palomas, we understand why this individual sought asylum,” he said.
Israel: Missile protection for airliners
Israel will within weeks begin outfitting its airliners with systems designed to thwart missile attacks, Israeli military officials said. The officials said the system fires flares that distract an incoming missile’s heat-seeking mechanism. It will be installed first on planes flying to destinations considered dangerous, especially in Africa and parts of Asia. Other nations, including the United States and Singapore, have said they also were working on similar anti-missile defenses for jetliners.
Spain: Basque car bomb explodes
A car bomb exploded Friday outside a police station the city of Calahorra after a warning call from the Basque separatist group ETA, police said. One officer was slightly injured. The attack suggests that ETA, which ended a cease-fire in 2006 and killed a ruling Socialist party politician two days before the general election on March 9, is determined to remain high on Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s agenda as he begins a second term in office. Since ending the cease-fire, ETA has carried out more than a dozen mostly minor bombings.
From Herald news services
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