WASHINGTON: John McCain's campaign raised the stakes ahead of White House rival Barack Obama's expected trip to Iraq, saying the Democrat's plans for immediate troops withdrawals
McCain ally and Republican lawmaker Eric Cantor told reporters Wednesday that ebbing violence in Iraq since the start of the US troop surge policy last year had rendered Obama's policies obsolete.
"What sounded sensible, perhaps to some, a year ago, ... is disingenous to the American people, and again, it ignores the realities on the ground," Cantor said on a McCain campaign conference call.
Cantor said Obama's policy of starting withdrawals immediately after becoming president, at the rate of one or two combat brigades a month, flew in the face of strategic reality.
"I don't think there is any question that Barack Obama should change his plan in Iraq," Cantor said.
Obama's opposition to the Iraq war, first stated in 2002 before the invasion, helped him win votes of fervently anti-war grass-roots Democrats in his nominating campaign triumph over Hillary Clinton.
The Illinois senator is expected to travel to Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming weeks, though details have not yet been released for security reasons.
BERLIN: Henry Kissinger will honor former President George H.W. Bush on Thursday for his commitment to Germany amid the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification.
The Henry A. Kissinger Prize is bestowed annually by the American Academy in Berlin to an American or European deemed to have made an extraordinary contribution to trans-Atlantic relations.
Kissinger, who was born in Germany and served as U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, said in a statement that he was "profoundly moved" that the elder Bush will get the award.
WASHINGTON: Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials have ordered a federal laboratory to stop using radioactive materials until it can show its procedures are safe after a plutonium spill.
A vial cracked June 9 at the National Institute of Standards and Technology lab. About one-fourth of a gram of powder containing plutonium spilled.
Institute officials have said a few employees had internal plutonium exposure and were being treated.
Radiation was found in two buildings and that internal plutonium exposure can lead to cancer, officials said. No threats to public health or the environment have been identified, commission officials have said.
WASHINGTON: Barack Obama and John McCain are taking international detours from the White House trail, with risk-and-reward missions designed to polish commander-in-chief resumes four months from election day.
Both men hope their statesmanlike poses in Europe and the Middle East will impress voters back home and score points in a tussle over sharply divergent foreign policy visions.
But snares lie in wait -- a policy gaffe overseas by Obama for instance would detonate new claims that as only first-term senator, he lacks the grounding and gravitas to serve as a wartime president.
Both men face a balancing act in their presidential auditions: they must win the trust of voters concerned with national security, but not seem disconnected from domestic issues, and economic pain faced by many Americans.
Democratic presumptive nominee Obama has announced plans to travel this month to dominant European powers Germany, Britain and France, and will make his debut in the Middle East in Israel and Jordan.
NEW YORK - Fugitive hedge-fund swindler Samuel Israel turned himself to federal authorities in Massachusetts after nearly a month on the lam, the U.S. attorney's office said Wednesday.
Israel turned himself into Southwick, Mass., police between 9:15 and 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, said Suzanne Anderson, police Chief Mark Krynicki's assistant. She said he was being processed at Southwick Police headquarters and referred all further questions to federal authorities.
Southwick is 95 miles away from the federal prison in Ayer, Mass., where Israel was to report last month to serve his sentence.
Israel disappeared June 9 on the day he was supposed to report to prison. His car was found on a bridge over the Hudson River with the words "Suicide is Painless" — the theme song for the "MASH" television show — scrawled in dust on the hood.
Because no body was found beneath the 150-foot-high bridge where his car was abandoned, authorities believed from the start that he faked his disappearance.
