Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton launched a trailblazing campaign for the White House on Saturday, a former first lady turned political powerhouse intent on becoming the first female president. "I'm in, and I'm in to win," she said. In a videotaped message posted on her Web site, Clinton said she was eager to start a dialogue with voters about challenges she hoped to tackle as president -- affordable health care, deficit reduction and bringing the "right" end to the Iraq war.
A 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck Sunday in northeastern Indonesia, 100 miles east of Sulawesi Island in the Molucca Sea, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The quake was large enough to cause a tsunami, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said in a statement, but no tsunami warning was immediately issued. The epicenter of the major quake was about 80 miles from the city of Ternate, in northeastern Indonesia, the center said. The quake had a depth of more than six miles below the ocean floor.
Saturday, Turkish police detained a teenager suspected of slaying an ethnic Armenian journalist, acting on a tip from the boy's father after his picture was broadcast on Turkish television, senior officials said. Ogun Samast, who is either 16 or 17 years old, later confessed to the killing, a prosecutor said. He was caught on a bus in the city of Samsun, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. He was apparently traveling from Istanbul back to his hometown of Trabzon, Istanbul Gov. Muammer Guler said.
The Taliban said it will open its own schools in areas of southern Afghanistan under its control, an apparent effort to win support among local residents and undermine the Western-backed government's efforts to expand education. The announcement follows a violent campaign by the fundamentalist Islamic group against state schools in the five years since its ouster by U.S.-led forces. The Taliban destroyed 200 schools and killed 20 teachers last year, and President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that 200,000 children had been driven from the classroom.
Serbians voted Sunday in parliamentary elections closely watched by European Union leaders hoping the troubled Balkan nation will keep pursuing Western-style reforms and a peaceful solution to the dispute over Kosovo. The vote was the first since Serbia became independent last year with the end to its union with Montenegro, its last partner from the former Yugoslav federation. Soon after the vote, a U.N. plan for the future of Serbia's breakaway Kosovo province is expected to be proposed.
Two leading Senate Democrats sought to build support Sunday for a bipartisan resolution opposing President Bush's war strategy in Iraq, cautioning that division over whether it goes far enough could spell defeat. "The worst thing we can do is to vote on something critical of the current policy and lose it," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who chairs the Senate Committee on Armed Services. "The public doesn't support his policy, a majority of Congress doesn't support his policy."
Bindi Irwin, the media-savvy 8-year-old daughter of the late "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin is doing her bit to promote her native Australia, adding music to her prowess with animals. She appeared on stage Saturday as part of the annual Australia Week tourism promotion, singing about snakes and eagles while fellow cast members held live animals.
