NEW YORK — President Barack Obama is mocking Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri for his remarks about a woman’s body being able to avoid pregnancy during what Akin called a “legitimate rape.” Obama mocks Akin over pregnancy remark ADVERTISING
Obama mocks Akin
over pregnancy remark
NEW YORK — President Barack Obama is mocking Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri for his remarks about a woman’s body being able to avoid pregnancy during what Akin called a “legitimate rape.”
Obama tells a group of donors in New York that the Republican congressman from Missouri “somehow missed science class” even though he sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
Obama says Akin’s remarks are representative of what Obama called “the desire to go backwards instead of forwards and fight fights that we thought were settled 20 or 30 years ago.”
Akin has refused calls from within the GOP to drop his bid to challenge Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. He made the remarks in a TV interview last Sunday while defending his opposition to abortion in all circumstances.
Assad influence in Lebanon declining
BEIRUT — The Syrian civil war has spilled over into Lebanon, bringing with it sectarian street clashes, mob violence and general government paralysis in Beirut.
But it was the dramatic arrest earlier this month of a former Lebanese government minister and prominent supporter of Syria’s embattled president that has suggested the conflict may be causing Lebanon to slip further away from Damascus’ long domination.
The bloodshed in Syria has drawn Lebanon deeper into the unrest — a troubling sign for a country that has gone through its own 15-year civil war and has an explosive sectarian mix as well as deep divisions between pro- and anti-Syrian factions, many of which are armed.
The chaos could give Sunni Muslim fighters in northern Lebanon more leeway to establish supply lines to the rebels inside Syria in their battle to oust President Bashar Assad.
Tensions and intermittent fighting in the northern Lebanon city of Tripoli continued Wednesday following two days of clashes between pro- and anti-Assad groups that killed at least six people and wounded more than 70.
Woman allegedly decapitates son, 2
CAMDEN, N.J. — The 911 call from Chevonne Thomas was rambling and incoherent, but authorities said she made one thing clear: Her 2-year-old son had been stabbed, and “I did it.”
What police found at her Camden rowhouse early Wednesday was even more horrifying. Thomas had decapitated her son and placed his head in the freezer.
The 33-year-old mother later fatally stabbed herself after hanging up on emergency dispatchers, a violent end to a troubled life.
Thomas only recently regained custody of son Zahree after allegedly leaving the boy unattended in a car, telling police she had smoked marijuana laced with the hallucinogenic drug PCP and blacked out in a nearby park.
Judge strikes down Nevada’s ‘none of the above’ voting option
RENO, Nev. — A quirky Nevada law that Republicans feared could siphon votes from a disgruntled electorate and sway the outcome of close presidential and U.S. Senate races in the state was struck down Wednesday by a federal judge.
U.S. District Judge Robert Jones said the state’s decades-old ballot alternative of “none of the above” was unconstitutional because votes for “none” don’t count in the final tallies that determine winners.
The ruling came at the end of a lively hearing where the judge challenged both sides in the legal arguments with hypothetical questions and ramifications of possible rulings he was considering.
In the end, he struck the option down altogether for both federal and statewide races, and refused to grant a stay while his decision is appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Secretary of State Ross Miller said his office would pursue “an immediate and expedited appeal.’
By wire sources
