Sen. Barack Obama cruised past a fading Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Wisconsin primary and Hawaii caucuses Tuesday night, gaining the upper hand in a Democratic presidential race for the ages. The twin triumphs made 10 straight for Obama, and left the former first lady in desperate need of a comeback in a race she long commanded as front-runner. “The change we seek is still months and miles away,” Obama told a boisterous crowd in Houston in a speech in which he also pledged to end the war in Iraq in his first year in office.
Sen. John McCain moved closer to clinching the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday. McCain won at least 34 delegates Tuesday, with six delegates still to be awarded in Wisconsin and 16 in Washington state. Overall, McCain has 942 delegates and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has 245. It will take 1,191 delegates to claim the Republican nomination at this summer’s national convention.
Space shuttle Atlantis and its crew returned to Earth on Wednesday, wrapping up a 5 million-mile journey highlighted by the successful delivery of a new European lab to the international space station. The shuttle and its seven astronauts landed at 9:07 a.m. at NASA’s spaceport at Kennedy Space Center, where the crew’s families and top space program managers gathered to welcome them home. Commander Stephen Frick safely guided Atlantis down through a sky dotted with thin, wispy clouds and onto the runway. “It’s been a great mission. We’re extremely happy to be home,” Frick told Mission Control.
President Bush said Wednesday that talk of the U.S. building new military bases in Africa to expand its influence is “baloney.” The Defense Department created Africa Command last October to consolidate operations that had been split among three other regional commands, none of which had Africa as a primary focus. Several African countries, including Libya, Nigeria and South Africa, have expressed deep reservations, fearing the plan signals an unwanted expansion of American power on the continent or is a cover for protecting Africa’s vast oil resources on the U.S. behalf.
The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that individual participants in the most common type of retirement plan can sue under a pension protection law to recover their losses. The unanimous decision has implications for 50 million workers with $2.7 trillion invested in 401(k) retirement plans. The issue in the LaRue case was whether the Employee Retirement Income Security Act permits an individual account holder to sue plan administrators for breaching their fiduciary duties.
