Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for the White House Thursday in a timely slap at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as well as his own vice presidential running mate. Quoting a black American hero in endorsing the man who hopes to be the first black president, Kerry told a cheering crowd, “Martin Luther King said the time is always right to do what is right.” Now is the time, Kerry said, to declare “that Barack Obama can be, will be and should be the next president of the United States.”
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pledged Thursday to slash interest rates yet again to prevent housing and credit problems from plunging the country into a recession. The Fed chief made clear the central bank was prepared to act aggressively to rescue a weakening economy. “We stand ready to take substantive additional action as needed to support growth and to provide adequate insurance against downside risks,” he said. Bernanke showed his hand in terms of the Fed’s next move amid mounting concerns that the economy may be in danger.
A suicide bomber blew himself up among police deployed outside a court in eastern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 24 people and wounding more than 70, officials and witnesses said. The blast in front of Lahore High Court was the latest in a wave of attacks targeting politicians and security forces ahead of Feb. 18 parliamentary elections. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion will likely fall on militants linked to Taliban and al-Qaida. It came as Scotland Yard investigators visited forensic laboratories elsewhere in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, to examine evidence in the assassination two weeks ago of opposition leader Benazir Bhuttoin Rawalpindi, a city to the north.
Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan agreed Thursday to take over talks to end the deadly turmoil linked to Kenya’s presidential election, after days of international pressure resulted in nothing more than a fresh round of accusations from both sides. The Dec. 27 election returned President Mwai Kibaki to power for another five-year term, with his opponent, Raila Odinga, coming in a close second after a vote tally that foreign observers say was rigged. More than 500 people have been killed in the ensuing violence.
Sweden and Norway dropped plans Wednesday to send about 400 troops to the U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur because of opposition from Sudan’s government. The two Scandinavian countries had planned to send a joint engineering unit to the peacekeeping force in the troubled region, but their foreign ministers said in a joint statement that “Sudan’s opposition makes it impossible to maintain the offer of a Norwegian-Swedish contribution.”
Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time. A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000. In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation “was halted due to untimely payment,” the audit found.
