No image available
/ 11 January 2008
John Kerry, the senator who ran against George Bush in 2004, endorsed Barack Obama yesterday in a slap in the face to Hillary Clinton and to John Edwards, his vice-presidential running mate in 2004. ”Martin Luther King Jr said the time is always right to do what is right,” Kerry told a rally in South Carolina.
No image available
/ 10 January 2008
The unpredictable fight for the White House went national on Wednesday as candidates fanned out across the United States and Democrat Barack Obama bounced back from a surprise loss to Hillary Clinton to grab a coveted union endorsement.
Democrat Hillary Clinton defied the polls and upset Barack Obama in New Hampshire on Tuesday, breathing new life into her United States presidential campaign after a third-place finish in Iowa. Republican John McCain, meanwhile, capped his rise from the political scrap heap with a win over Mitt Romney.
New Hampshire goes to the polls on Tuesday for the second key clash of White House hopefuls, with surging Democrat Barack Obama likely to deal a second defeat to former first lady Hillary Clinton. Just five days after his Iowa triumph spun momentum into his White House quest, Obama enjoyed a solid lead in New Hampshire.
Historians will be able to specify the time and the place where Hillary Clinton started to turn the tide. At 10.15am on Sunday, in the car park of the Puritan Backroom restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire, in front of a couple of hundred unfashionably fervent Hillary supporters, Clinton chose to make what may turn out to be her last stand.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton battled to keep crucial New Hampshire from swinging to rising rival Barack Obama on Sunday but new polls showed him jumping into the lead. In the hotly contested Republican race, Arizona Senator John McCain leaped ahead of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney even as Romney tried to raise doubts about McCain.
Microsoft chairperson Bill Gates took centre stage at the world’s largest technology show for the last time on Sunday and predicted that his industry was on the cusp of the next "digital decade". Gates said computing will become a pervasive part of everyday life through devices like televisions and cellphones.
Hillary Clinton launched a searing attack on surging rival Barack Obama, as polls showed he could inflict a second body blow to her White House hopes in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. Clinton used a tense face-to-face debate, three days before the next crucial 2008 test, to argue her rival was inconsistent and inexperienced.
”They said this day would never come,” said United States Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama at the outset of his barnstorming victory speech on Thursday night. But as he arrived in New Hampshire early on Friday, Americans woke up to the historic possibility that the day when they might have a black president was closer than they thought.
Barack Obama took a big step on Thursday towards becoming the first black United States president as his campaign for change caught fire in Iowa and swept him past Hillary Clinton in the opening Democratic nominating contest. Republican underdog Mike Huckabee capped a stunning political rise to beat rival Mitt Romney in Iowa.
White House foes chased last undecided voters ahead of Thursday’s dead-heat first nominating clashes in Iowa, as comeback Republican John McCain grabbed a new poll lead in the next key state, New Hampshire.
Barack Obama stretched his lead over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in Iowa to seven points, in a new poll late on Monday, two days before the state opens the White House nominating race. The Des Moines Register poll of people likely to attend caucuses on Thursday put Obama on 32%, with the former first lady on 25%.
Millions staged midnight parties at icon landmarks around the world to see in 2008 but bomb attacks and security fears quickly darkened New Year festivities. More than one million people lined Sydney harbour for fireworks that set off the global party and hundreds of thousands packed Hong Kong streets and historic European venues.
No image available
/ 31 December 2007
The presidential candidates in the United States stepped up their personal attacks on Sunday to try to squeeze out an advantage in the extremely tight contest for the Iowa caucuses, now only three days away. As Democratic and Republican candidates toured in the final push before the January 3 caucuses, new polls showed the negative campaigning was effective.
No image available
/ 31 December 2007
Pakistani officials were to meet on Monday to decide the fate of scheduled January 8 elections, after Benazir Bhutto’s party announced it would contest the vote despite her assassination. The vote, seen as a key step in the nuclear-armed nation’s transition back to democracy after eight years of military rule, has been thrown into disarray by her slaying.
No image available
/ 30 December 2007
Clad in an orange and grey hunting jacket and an orange cap, Mike Huckabee raised his 12-gauge shotgun, took aim and fired, bagging a pheasant for the benefit of watching reporters. As another shot flew over their heads, it became too much for one journalist who cried: ”Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Don’t shoot. This is traumatising.”
No image available
/ 29 December 2007
Pakistan was on Saturday gripped by division and uncertainty following the burial of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto as her supporters angrily rejected a government explanation of her death. Bhutto died on Thursday shortly after a suicide attack targeting her vehicle at a campaign rally in the northern city of Rawalpindi.
No image available
/ 28 December 2007
Barack Obama rejected rival Hillary Clinton’s vow to forge change on Thursday, as polls showed a tight Democratic White House race in Iowa, a week before the state’s lead-off nominating clash. In a soaring new speech, the Democratic senator sharpened his attacks on the former first lady.
No image available
/ 23 December 2007
Bill Clinton has never been one to avoid the limelight. Or stay on message. Last week, as he spearheaded a mission to rejuvenate his wife’s troubled presidential campaign, he showed that old habits die hard. In a publicity stunt at a grocery store in the vital first battleground state of Iowa, the ex-president caused brief chaos by breaking away to chat to the public.
No image available
/ 22 December 2007
A dilemma confronts many Democratic activists in the United States. They respect Hillary Clinton’s intellect. They admire her performance in the debates. But it is difficult for them to commit to a candidate who not only voted in favour of the war on Iraq in 2002, but has refused to express contrition, or any deep emotion, about that choice.
No image available
/ 20 December 2007
A backlash against attempts to smear the presidential hopeful Barack Obama by suggesting he has Islamic connections claimed another scalp on Thursday when a former senator was forced to apologise. Bob Kerrey wrote to Obama to apologise for any insult he had unintentionally caused by bringing up the Muslim link in the process of endorsing Hillary Clinton for president.
No image available
/ 18 December 2007
This morning, facing too many deadlines, I found my brain blocked. I have been reading all three fat Mandela books, trying to find something to say for a commissioned article. In the midst of my writer’s block I have been searching for a high by following the Obama campaign on the internet and ignoring our own political frenzy here in Kenya, for this time it has no grace.
No image available
/ 14 December 2007
Tom Shaheen, one of Hillary Clinton’s senior advisers, was forced to resign on Thursday, 24 hours after raising the drug-taking past of her main rival, Barack Obama. Although the Clinton campaign distanced itself from Shaheen’s remarks, it has been engaged in a negative campaign against Obama for the last week.
No image available
/ 5 December 2007
Celebrity political endorsements do not get much bigger than Oprah Winfrey’s. But political experts say it is doubtful the popular United States talk-show host can sway votes to fellow Chicagoan and first-term Illinois Senator Barack Obama in the way she persuades viewers to turn books into instant bestsellers.
No image available
/ 2 December 2007
Activists and global leaders used World Aids Day on Saturday to warn against complacency in fighting the disease and called on governments to fill a multibillion-dollar funding gap. ”We have made tangible and remarkable progress on all these fronts. But we must do more,” United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said.
No image available
/ 1 December 2007
United States Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton vowed on Friday there would be no change to her campaign, despite a man taking several people hostage at one of her offices. ”I don’t see any changes in my campaign or my schedule,” Clinton told reporters in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
No image available
/ 30 November 2007
A man claiming to have a bomb walked into Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign offices on Friday and took hostages, police and witnesses said. The man had what appeared to be a bomb strapped to himself, said Bill Shaheen, a top state campaign official. He took two hostages, both volunteers, and released others, Shaheen said.
No image available
/ 25 November 2007
Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama once electrified the United States by preaching a ”politics of hope”. Unfortunately Obama then found himself outsmarted and outfought by his chief rival, Senator Hillary Clinton. Now Obama has, in effect, relaunched his campaign, coming out fighting against Clinton.
No image available
/ 16 November 2007
Hillary Clinton regained her frontrunner status in the Democratic race during a two-hour debate in Las Vegas on Friday marked by renewed personal squabbling. Clinton needed a good performance to make up the ground she lost in the last debate on October 30 when her main rivals, Barack Obama and John Edwards, ganged up on her.
No image available
/ 15 November 2007
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told Google employees on Wednesday his meteoric rise in politics mirrored the company’s emergence as the lifeblood of the internet and he surprised his hosts by answering a geeky engineering question.
No image available
/ 11 November 2007
He is a former governor of Arkansas from a town called Hope. He has a nice line in campaign humour and speaks like a Deep South preacher. He is also running for president. But this is not Bill Clinton of 1992. This is Mike Huckabee, a long-shot Republican contender for the 2008 White House who has burst into the leading pack of the race.
No image available
/ 29 October 2007
Argentine First Lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner rode an economic boom and her husband’s popularity to victory in a presidential election on Sunday to become the country’s first elected woman leader. Fernandez, a glamorous lawyer and centre-left senator, will take over from President Nestor Kirchner in December.