Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton was endorsed Sunday by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, whose owner and publisher, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, personally funded many of the investigations that led to President Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. It was one of a handful of endorsements the New York senator has received from Pennsylvania newspapers before the state’s primary Tuesday. Most of the state’s major papers have endorsed Barack Obama. In its endorsement, Tribune-Review editors said Obama is too inexperienced to be president and that his recent comments about bitter voters living in small towns showed a lack of respect for middle-class values.
A platoon sergeant accused of shooting an unarmed Iraqi and then ordering another U.S. soldier to “finish him” faces a court martial this week for premeditated murder. Sgt. 1st Class Trey Corrales, of San Antonio, faces a minimum of life with parole if convicted. The Iraqi man was shot multiple times in the head and chest near the town of Kirkuk when Corrales’ platoon raided a suspected insurgent hideout on June 23. The U.S. military hasn’t been able to identify the man by name.
The Olympic flame arrived in Malaysia on Sunday ahead of a relay in which it will be guarded by 1,000 police watching for protests against China’s Tibet crackdown and human rights record. The flame arrived from Bangkok on a plane dedicated to carry it to all 19 international destinations on the torch relay before it lands in Beijing for the Olympic Games’ opening ceremony in August. A Buddhist group held special prayers Sunday at a temple in Kuala Lumpur to call for a trouble-free run of the torch Monday and a peaceful Olympics.
U.S. troops killed 12 militants during an “uptick” in fighting Sunday, the military said, as fierce clashes broke out in Baghdad’s Sadr City district after radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warned he will declare war if a crackdown against his followers persists. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, arrived in Baghdad for a trip she said was intended to promote fresh political gains she sees to be flowing from the government-led assaults on radical militias. Rice told reporters she sees signs that last month’s assaults on militia forces in Basra have brought sectarian and ethnic groups together in an unprecedented way, and she said she wants to capitalize on that cohesion.
