Puerto Rico votes today, but Romney, Santorum head to Ill.
BAYAMON, Puerto Rico — Looking toward the critical primary in Illinois, Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney wrapped up a shortened campaign trip to Puerto Rico on Saturday as he prepared for more tough contests against chief rival Rick Santorum.
The former Massachusetts governor dramatically curtailed his trip to the U.S. territory, which holds its primary Sunday, in favor of spending more time in Illinois, where polls have shown him slightly ahead of Santorum. Romney had planned to spend the weekend and visit a polling place Sunday, but instead left the island immediately after a morning appearance.
Santorum left Puerto Rico earlier this week and was spending the morning in Missouri, where he already won a primary that awarded no delegates. Missouri Republicans were meeting in county caucuses Saturday, the first step toward choosing delegates to the national convention who are committed to specific candidates. Santorum was headed to Illinois Saturday night.
Romney campaigned Saturday morning with Puerto Rican Gov. Luis Fortuno, shopping for tropical fruit and meeting with voters a day after a massive, energetic rally in San Juan celebrated his arrival here.
“It was Ronald Reagan who very famously in our party said that it was important for the people of Puerto Rico to have the choice to become a state, and if the people of Puerto Rico choose that path, I will be happy to lead that effort in Washington,” Romney said after the crowd began chanting “Statehood now! Statehood now!”
Demjanjuk, former Nazi camp guard,
dies at 91
BERLIN — John Demjanjuk was convicted of being a low-ranking guard at the Sobibor death camp, but his 35-year fight on three continents to clear his name — a legal battle that had not yet ended when he died Saturday at age 91 — made him one of the best-known faces of Nazi prosecutions.
The conviction of the retired Ohio autoworker in a Munich court in May on 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder, which was still being appealed, broke new legal ground in Germany as the first time someone was convicted solely on the basis of serving as a camp guard, with no evidence of involvement in a specific killing.
It has opened the floodgates to hundreds of new investigations in Germany, though his death serves as a reminder that time is running out for prosecutors.
Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk steadfastly maintained that he had been mistaken for someone else — first wounded as a Soviet soldier fighting German forces, then captured and held as a prisoner of war under brutal conditions.
And he is probably best known as someone he was not: the notoriously brutal guard “Ivan the Terrible” at the Treblinka extermination camp. That was the first accusation against him, which led to him being extradited from the U.S. to Israel in the 1980s. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death — only to have the Israeli Supreme Court unanimously overturn the verdict and return him to the U.S. after it received evidence that another Ukrainian, not Demjanjuk, was that Nazi guard.
By wire sources