World Briefly

By The Associated Press | Clanton Advertiser

Published Thursday, July 24, 2008

Obama tells enormous Berlin crowd there are more walls to be torn down in fighting extremism

BERLIN (AP) — Cheered by an enormous international crowd, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama on Thursday summoned Europeans and Americans together to "defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it" as surely as they conquered communism a generation ago.

Obama said he was speaking as a citizen, not as a president, but the evening was awash in politics as the first-term U.S. senator sought to burnish his international credentials for the fall campaign at home. His remarks before a crowd estimated at more than 200,000 inevitably invited comparison to historic speeches in the same city by Presidents Kennedy and Reagan.

Now a presidential candidate himself, Obama borrowed rhetoric from his own appeals to campaign audiences this year in the likes of Berlin, N.H., as he spoke in one of the great cities of Europe.

"People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time," he declared.

"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand," Obama said, speaking not far from where the Berlin Wall once divided the city.

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South Texas residents assess Hurricane Dolly damage; losses estimated at $750 million

HARLINGEN, Texas (AP) — Residents across south Texas slogged through knee-deep muddy waters, tiptoed around downed power lines and dug through debris Thursday, but were thankful that Hurricane Dolly didn't pack the wallop they had feared.

Downed power lines remained the greatest danger, and South Texas officials urged people to stay home one more day "unless it's life or death." One person in Matamoros, Mexico, died from electrocution after walking past a power line on the ground.

Residents picked up the pieces of their houses and businesses blown apart by the storm. But as dry skies spread over the region, they were struck by relief that the storm didn't take many lives. Even so, there will be substantial cleanup: President Bush declared south Texas a disaster area to release federal funding to 15 counties, and insurance estimators put the losses at $750 million.

By Thursday afternoon, with the storm's maximum sustained winds blowing around 35 mph, forecasters downgraded Dolly to a tropical depression. The storm was expected to break up by Friday, and was centered about 35 miles south of Eagle Pass at 5 p.m. EDT.

Rain and wind from Dolly probably doomed much of the cotton crop in Texas' Rio Grande Valley. About 92,000 acres of cotton in the region was awaiting harvest but driving rains and high winds knocked bolls to the ground, making them unsalvageable, Texas Agri Life Extension agent Rod Santa Ana said. Sorghum acres damaged by rain in early July also could be doomed, he said.

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GOP kills effort to release oil from US stockpile; Dems hoped move would lower pump prices

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans on Thursday scuttled a bill that Democrats hoped would help lower gasoline prices by forcing the Energy Department to release 70 million barrels of oil — about a three-day supply — from the national stockpile.

Democrats promised that the action would have produced immediate relief at the pump, as was the case with similar releases in 1991, 2000 and 2005. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve now holds about 700 million barrels.

Despite winning a clear 268-157 majority, the measure still lost. Democratic leaders had brought the proposal up for debate under rules requiring a two-thirds vote to pass.

But passing the bill by just a majority would have meant allowing Republicans to force a vote on new offshore drilling leases.

"They're hiding from a vote," said GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio. "They're scared to death to allow us to ... force their members to vote on drilling."

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Crane collapses on car during church construction in Oklahoma City, killing man watching

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Church members watching the steeple being raised on their new building looked on in horror Thursday as a crane holding the structure toppled, crushing a car and killing a 79-year-old man who had been watching from inside the vehicle, firefighters said.

The man's 78-year-old wife, who was also in the car, was transported to a hospital in good condition, ambulance officials said.

A group of people had gathered in southwest Oklahoma City to watch the installation of the steeple when the crane collapsed in the parking lot, said Deputy Fire Chief Cecil Clay.

The state medical examiner's office identified the victim as Winfred Stafford of Oklahoma City. Grace Assembly of God Pastor Joe Hancock said he and his wife were longtime church members.

"Just great people," he said. "It's just a huge loss."

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Newly released Justice memo: 'Good faith' would protect against torture charges

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department in 2002 told the CIA that its interrogators would be safe from prosecution for violations of anti-torture laws if they believed "in good faith" that harsh techniques used to break prisoners' will would not cause "prolonged mental harm."

That heavily censored memo, released Thursday, approved the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques method by method, but warned that if the circumstances changed, interrogators could be running afoul of anti-torture laws.

The Aug. 1, 2002, legal opinion signed by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee was issued the same day he wrote a memo for then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales defining torture as only those "extreme acts" that cause pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure.

The Bybee legal opinion defining torture was withdrawn more than two years later. Justice spokesman Peter Carr said the conclusions of the opinion approving specific interrogation methods are still in force.

Waterboarding is a form of simulated drowning that critics call torture. CIA Director Michael Hayden banned waterboarding in 2006 but government officials have said it remains a possibility if approved by the attorney general, the CIA chief and the president.

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Former New York mayor's son sues Duke University over dismissal from golf team

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The son of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani is suing Duke University, claiming his golf coach manufactured accusations against him to justify kicking him off the team to whittle the squad.

Andrew Giuliani, a 22-year-old rising senior, contends he had dreams of becoming a professional golfer and was dismissed without cause from the golf team in February without a chance to defend himself. He said in a statement Thursday that he sued "to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else at Duke."

Duke spokesman Michael J. Schoenfeld said the university would "vigorously defend this lawsuit" and insisted on fairness for all participants in its sports programs.

Giuliani was dismissed because coach O.D. Vincent III wanted to cut the team from 13 players to about half its size, the lawsuit said. He claims a breach of contract because he was recruited by Duke's previous coaching staff.

"This has been heartbreaking," Giuliani's mother, Donna Hanover, said in a statement. "We tried for many months to convince members of the Duke administration that this situation should be corrected and we are sad that we have now had to turn to the court."

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Scientists expose some of the mystery behind northern lights and their dancing power

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Scientists have exposed some of the mystery behind the northern lights.

On Thursday, NASA released findings that indicate magnetic explosions about one-third of the way to the moon cause the northern lights, or aurora borealis, to burst in spectacular shapes and colors, and dance across the sky.

The findings should help scientists better understand the more powerful but less common geomagnetic storms that can knock out satellites, harm astronauts in orbit and disrupt power and communications on Earth, scientists said.

A fleet of five small satellites, called Themis, observed the beginning of a geomagnetic storm in February, while ground observatories in Canada and Alaska recorded the brightening of the northern lights. The southern lights — aurora australis — also brightened and darted across the sky at the same time.

These auroral flare-ups occur every two or three days, on average.

A team led by University of California, Los Angeles, scientist Vassilis Angelopoulos confirmed that the observed storm about 80,000 miles from Earth was triggered by a phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection. Every so often, the Earth's magnetic field lines are stretched like rubber bands by solar energy, snap, are thrown back to Earth and reconnect, in effect creating a short circuit.

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Brazil boy bites pit bull to fend off attack, loses just a tooth; dog may be killed

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) — An 11-year old boy is in Brazil's media spotlight after sinking his teeth into the neck of a dog that attacked him.

Local newspapers reported on Thursday that Gabriel Almeida was playing in his uncle's backyard in the city of Belo Horizonte when a pit bull named Tita lunged at him and bit him in the left arm.

Almeida grabbed the dog by the neck and bit back — biting so hard that he lost a canine tooth.

Almeida tells the O Globo newspaper: "It is better to lose a tooth than one's life."

Stonemasons working nearby chased the dog away before it could attack again.

The Folha de S. Paulo newspaper says the boy received four stitches at a local hospital while the dog was taken to a pound and may be killed.

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