Daily Herald | Posted: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 11:00 pm
Obama: We can't make bin Laden a martyr
WASHINGTON -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday he would bring Osama bin Laden to justice in a way that wouldn't allow the terrorist mastermind to become a martyr, but he may be killed if the U.S. government finds him.
"First of all, I think there is an executive order out on Osama bin Laden's head," Obama said at a news conference. "And if I'm president, and we have the opportunity to capture him, we may not be able to capture him alive."
He said he wouldn't discuss what approach he would take to bring bin Laden to justice if he were apprehended. But he said the Nuremberg trials for the prosecution of Nazi leaders are an inspiration because the victors acted to advance universal principles and set a tone for the creation of an international order.
"What would be important would be for us to do it in a way that allows the entire world to understand the murderous acts that he's engaged in and not to make him into a martyr, and to assure that the United States government is abiding by basic conventions that would strengthen our hand in the broader battle against terrorism," Obama said.
Obama was questioned about bin Laden after he met with a new team of national security advisers. The meeting came after rival John McCain's campaign said Obama had a pre-9/11 mind-set for promoting criminal trials for terrorists.
McCain proposes 45 new nuclear reactors
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Sen. John McCain called Wednesday for the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 and pledged $2 billion a year in federal funds "to make clean coal a reality," measures designed to reduce dependence on foreign oil.
In a second straight day of campaigning devoted to the energy issue, the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting also said the only time Democratic rival Barack Obama voted for a tax cut it was a "break for the oil companies."
McCain said the 104 nuclear reactors currently operating around the country produce about 20 percent of the nation's annual electricity needs.
"Every year, these reactors alone spare the atmosphere from the equivalent of nearly all auto emissions in America. Yet for all these benefits, we have not broken ground on a single nuclear plant in over thirty years," he said. "And our manufacturing base to even construct these plants is almost gone."
Even so, he said he would set the country on a course to build 45 new ones by 2030, with a longer-term goal of adding another 55 in the future.
Missing hiker in Alaska calls mother, is OK
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- One of two backpackers missing nearly a week in Denali National Park and Preserve called her mother and said they were safe Wednesday, but helicopters sent out after authorities tracked the signal did not immediately find them. The park dispatched two helicopters to pick up Erica Nelson and Abby Flantz, but three hours later they had not been located.
An additional helicopter and an airplane searched the area and 10 ground searchers and two dog teams were being dropped off. The National Park Service said more ground searchers would move to the area Wednesday afternoon if needed.
Nelson, 23, called her mother Wednesday morning while Ellane Nelson was listening to park officials give a briefing on the search. She saw her daughter's caller ID on her cell phone and looked as if she had seen a ghost, park spokeswoman Kris Fister said.
Ellane Nelson heard Erica say that she and Flantz, her 25-year-old roommate, were alive and well. Park officials told the women to stay put, make themselves visible and signal any helicopters that flew overhead.
The cell phone's battery was weak but park officials were able to locate the signal coming from the eastern section of the 100-square-mile area of the park they had been searching for more than four days, Anchorage television station KTUU reported.
Advanced melanoma patient saved by exp-erimental treatment
ATLANTA -- An Oregon man, given less than a year to live, had a complete remission of advanced deadly skin cancer after an experimental treatment that revved up his immune system to fight the tumors.
The 52-year-old patient's dramatic turnaround was the only success in a small study, leading doctors to be cautious in their enthusiasm. However, the treatment reported in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine is being counted as the latest in a small series of successes involving immune-priming treatments against deadly skin cancers.
"Immunotherapy has become the most promising approach" to late-stage, death-sentence skin cancers, said Dr. Darrell Rigel, a dermatology researcher at the New York University Cancer Institute in New York who had no role in the research.
Still, the immune-priming experiments have yet to yield a consistent therapy. Even researchers who worked on the experiment involving nine patients and just one success are quick to couch the result. "This is only one patient," said study co-author Dr. Cassian Yee of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
And two years after his remarkable recovery, the patient fell out of contact with researchers and scientists do not know his current condition. The man, who lives in a small town in Oregon, has declined media interviews, Yee said.
Psychic Uri Geller loses lawsuit over Elvis home
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Celebrity psychic Uri Geller and two partners have lost a federal lawsuit claiming the former owners of Elvis Presley's pre-Graceland house breached an eBay contract to sell the Memphis home.
Geller, who gained fame in the 1970s for his alleged power to bend spoons and other objects with his mind, and his partners bid $905,100 for the ranch-style home in a 2006 auction by owners Cindy Hazen and Mike Freeman.
But the deal fell apart. Hazen said Geller's group altered terms of the real estate deal so that it was unacceptable. Geller said Hazen and Freeman reneged on the deal in order to sell it for more to Nashville record producer Mike Curb, who bought the house for $1 million.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jon McCalla ruled that the eBay auction was more of an advertising vehicle than a binding sale.
Even if it was a contract, the judge said, Geller and his partners breached it when they altered the closing terms after the sale.
Boeing wins key round in Air Force tanker protest
WASHINGTON -- Boeing scored a major victory Wednesday in its battle to wrestle back a $35 billion Air Force contract from Northrop Grumman and its European partner.
The Government Accountability Office upheld Boeing's protest of the refueling tanker contract and recommended the service hold a new competition. The congressional watchdog said it found "a number of significant errors" in the Air Force's February decision, including its failure to fairly judge the relative merits of each proposal.
While the GAO decision is not binding, it puts tremendous pressure on the Air Force to reopen the contract and could pave the way for Boeing to capture part or all of the award from Northrop and Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. And it gives ammunition to Boeing supporters in Congress who have been seeking to block funding for the deal or force a new competition.
The decision also is a setback for Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee in waiting, who was instrumental in the Pentagon's long attempt to complete a deal on the tanker.
The Air Force will determine its next steps after completing a review of the GAO ruling within 60 days. The service will select the "best value tanker for our nation's defense, while being good stewards of the taxpayer dollar," said Air Force Assistant Secretary Sue C. Payton.
Man who took parts from corpses gets 9 to 27 years
NEW YORK -- A man convicted of secretly cutting up corpses -- including that of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke -- has received a sentence of nine to 27 years in prison for his role in a ghoulish multimillion-dollar body parts scheme.
Christopher Aldorasi, 36, was convicted in April of 20 counts, including enterprise corruption, grand larceny and reckless endangerment
Prosecutors said Aldorasi and others took bone and tissue without family permission and sold the pieces to medical companies for use in transplants and other medical procedures.
Aldorasi chose to have a judge hear his case instead of a jury. He could have faced up to 60 years in prison.
The scheme's ringleader, Michael Mastromarino, 44, pleaded guilty earlier this year and admitted that he didn't get consent for any of the hundreds of bodies he plundered.