Democratic party officials disclosed on Thursday that Barack Obama has sanctioned a hunt for a vice-presidential candidate, a further sign that he regards the battle with Hillary Clinton as being over. Time magazine, in a report in its next issue, quotes a friend of Bill Clinton saying he wants his wife to be the vice-presidential candidate.
Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, the brother of assassinated president John F Kennedy and the elder statesman of American liberal politics, has a malignant brain tumour, his doctors said on Tuesday. Kennedy (76) who has been hospitalised in Boston since he had a seizure on Saturday, will likely need chemotherapy and radiation therapy to treat the glioma.
A Democratic win in the solidly conservative Mississippi capped a week in which Senator Barack Obama finally turned his eyes to the coming November election and his opponent, John McCain. Now many Democrats believe the signs are good that the tide of American public opinion is firmly swinging their way.
As the Democratic primary contest heads to its climax, the Republicans are firing the opening shots of an election barrage to come against their probable White House opponent, Barack Obama. Republican John McCain and his colleagues already see Hillary Clinton’s campaign as mortally wounded.
Democrat Hillary Clinton on Wednesday vowed she would not quit the party’s bitter White House race, but faced mounting pressure to step aside in favour of a resurgent Barack Obama. ”I am staying in this race until there is a nominee,” Clinton told reporters in West Virginia, which holds its presidential primary next Tuesday.
Lawmakers on Tuesday debated legislation to remove former South African president Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) from an apartheid-era United States terrorist blacklist. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, recalled that ANC members could travel to United Nations headquarters in New York but not to Washington DC or other parts of the United States.
It looked like yet another jubilant Barack Obama rally. The cavernous Indiana University sports hall in Bloomington jammed with thousands of supporters who stood in their seats and cheered deafeningly loudly. Ever since Obama launched his bid to become America’s first ever black President 15 months ago, hundreds of cities and towns have seen the same huge rallies.
One may wind up as the first woman to lead the United States Senate. Another is relatively young and could run again for president. The third may simply resume his role as a congressional maverick and retire in two years. These are among the options that await the losers in the three-way race for the White House.
Barack Obama bids on Tuesday to knock Hillary Clinton out of the White House race after a mud-slinging campaign that Democratic grandees fear is helping nobody but Republican heir John McCain. But heading into crunch battles in Ohio and Texas, the former first lady is full of fire and has been eviscerating her charismatic rival’s qualifications.
Barack Obama intensified his bid to end Hillary Clinton’s White House quest in Tuesday’s momentous nominating contests in Texas and Ohio, as both rivals geared up massive voter-turnout drives. Clinton, meanwhile, in a wistful moment, said she would examine her options when the results were in.
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/ 18 February 2008
Vote counting got under way on Monday after a lacklustre turnout in Pakistan’s parliamentary elections, which passed off relatively peacefully despite fears of sabotage by Islamic militants. With his future hanging in the balance, President Pervez Musharraf resolved to work with the new civilian government.
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/ 6 February 2008
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama dug in for a protracted slog for the Democratic White House nomination in the United States after battling to a brutal draw in their Super Tuesday showdown. John McCain, meanwhile, strode closer to the top of the Republican ticket, as Mitt Romney failed to halt his charge and Mike Huckabee picked up the slack.
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/ 6 February 2008
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will have no time to pause after yesterday’s Super Tuesday performances before they head off into a fresh 72-hour marathon of coast-to-coast contests. Seven states are at stake, worth 467 delegates, almost a quarter of the 2 025 delegates needed for eventual victory.
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/ 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.
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/ 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.”
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/ 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.
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/ 23 November 2007
”In America a woman can be raped and if she has no health insurance then she can’t get help. That’s fucking ridiculous. So what are we doing here telling the rest of the world how to live? We have enough problems to sort out at home.” David Smith recalls a few of the sentiments expressed by United States troops during his stay in Baghdad.
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/ 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.
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/ 30 September 2007
For Barack Obama it was a daring move: hold a rally last week in the heart of New York, the fortress home of his rival, Senator Hillary Clinton. It seemed to pay off. As he bounded onto the stage in Manhattan’s Washington Square in front of a packed crowd of 25 000, he beamed his broad smile and shouted: ”Look at this crowd!”
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/ 25 September 2007
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clashed with an United States university president who called him a ”petty and cruel dictator” at a forum on Monday where Ahmadinejad criticised Israel and the US and said Iran was a peaceful nation. Ahmadinejad also said in an appearance at Columbia University that Iran’s nuclear programme was purely peaceful.
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/ 11 September 2007
Anti-war Senate Democrats bluntly told Iraq commander General David Petraeus on Tuesday his troop surge strategy was an abject failure in its prime objective — forcing a political settlement. Several senior Senate Republicans also questioned the administration’s approach as the general endured a grilling on a second day of high-stakes testimony to Congress.