Mail bomb investigators push on with Yemen man hunt

Their first suspect in custody, Yemeni police continued to search for the terrorists believed responsible for mailing a pair of powerful bombs to attack the United States. U.S. and Yemeni officials were increasingly seeing al-Qaida's hand in the failed plot.

Yemeni police arrested a young woman who was a medical student on suspicion of mailing a pair of bombs powerful enough to take down airplanes, officials said Sunday. They also detained her mother.

Investigators were hunting the impoverished Mideast country for more conspirators. U.S. officials included in that group the same bombmaker suspected of designing the explosive for a failed bombing on a Detroit-bound airliner last Christmas.

Authorities were also looking at two language institutions the plotters may have been associated with.

The explosives, addressed to Chicago-area synagogues, were pulled off airplanes in England and the United Arab Emirates early Friday morning, touching off a tense search for other devices. More details emerged Saturday about the plot that exploited security gaps in the worldwide shipping system.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said he believes the explosive device found in central England was intended to detonate on the plane, while British Home Secretary Theresa May said the bomb was powerful enough to take down the aircraft. A U.S. official said the second device found in Dubai was thought to be similarly potent.

But it still wasn't clear whether the bombs, which officials said were wired to cell phones, timers and power supplies, could have been detonated remotely while the planes were in the air, or when the packages were halfway around the world in the U.S. Still, the fact that they made it onto airplanes showed that nearly a decade since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, terrorists continue to probe and find security vulnerabilities.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told reporters that the United States and United Arab Emirates had provided intelligence that helped identify the woman suspected of mailing the packages.

A Yemeni security official said the young woman was a medical student and that her mother also was detained, but officials pointed to additional suspects believed to have used forged documents and ID cards. One member of Yemen's anti-terrorism unit said the other suspects had been tied to al-Qaida.

Yemeni and U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation unfolding on three continents.

Al-Qaida's Yemen branch, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, took credit for the failed bomb last Christmas that used PETN, an industrial explosive that was also in the mail bombs found Friday.

The suspected bombmaker behind the Christmas Day attack, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, is also the prime suspect in the mail bomb plot, several U.S. officials said. Al-Asiri also helped make another PETN device for a failed suicide attempt against a top Saudi counterterrorism official last year. The official survived, but his attacker died in the blast.

The U.S. was already on the lookout for a mail bomb plot after learning terrorists in Yemen were interested in "exploring an operation involving cargo planes," a U.S. counterterrorism official said.

U.S. authorities then acted quickly after receiving a tip "that suspicious packages may be en route to the U.S" - specifically Chicago - the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Sullivan reported from Washington. Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman and Kimberly Dozier in Washington, Raphael G. Satter in London, Adam Schreck in Dubai and Carla K. Johnson and Karen Hawkins in Chicago contributed to this report.

Bill Clinton heads back to Ohio to campaign

BOARDMAN, Ohio —

Former President Bill Clinton is headed back to Ohio to campaign for the state's endangered Democratic governor and members of Congress.

Clinton's appearances in northeast Ohio and Columbus on Saturday are part of a big weekend push by Democrats. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will campaign in Cleveland on Sunday.

Recent polls have shown Republican former congressman John Kasich (KAY'-sik) with a slim lead over Gov. Ted Strickland. Some surveys put the race about even.

Clinton's swing includes stops in Boardman, near Youngstown; Canton; and Columbus.

Canadians upbeat on personal finances

Canadians’ improving personal finances have snapped a four-month slide in consumer confidence, the Conference Board of Canada reported Thursday.

The board’s confidence index rose 1.5% in October to a reading of 79.7%, despite weakness in three of the four measures that make up the survey. An even reading for the index is 100.

The gain was apparent across the country, with the exception of the Atlantic region.

“The share of respondents expressing a positive view of their current finances increased dramatically in October,” the report said.

When asked if their financial situation had improved over the past six months, 17.5% responded positively, a gain of 4.3 percentage points from September and the highest reading of the year.

The advance comes on the heels of a fall stock market surge that has lifted the TSX composite index by more than 13% since early July.

Those saying their finances had worsened fell by 1.5 percentage points to a reading of 21.7%.

But the weakness in other areas of the poll, based on 2,000 telephone interviews conducted in early October, suggested this months’ gains could be elusive

On the employment front, for instance, “consumers are showing little faith in the recovery in Canada’s labour markets,”the report said.

Only 17.8% of respondents said they expect employment in their communities to rise over the next six months. The number who expect fewer jobs rose to 20.5%, up from 20.1% in September.

Weakness in the labour market cuts into consumer spending, another area where the survey showed potential weakness ahead.

Asked if they thought it was a good time to make a major purchase, only 41% said it was. Those saying it was a bad time to do so rose to 47.9%.

“The balance of opinion on this question has completely reversed since the beginning of the year, when positive responses outweighed negative ones by a significant margin,”the report said.

Consumers’ outlook for future finances could also suggest weaker spending ahead, as only 22.9% said they expect their financial situation to improve in the coming six months. The figure is 1.6 percentage points lower than one month ago and 10.6 percentage points lower than at the start of the year.

Regionally, the Prairies remained the region with the highest level of consumer confidence, rising 3.1 percentage points to a reading of 99.3.

Ontario continues to lag “well behind” other regions, with a gain of 1.4 points to 68.7, the report said.

Quebec rose 1.7 points to 80.8, while British Columbia rose 3.5 points to 83.

FCC fines Verizon Wireless $25M for spurious fees

NEW YORK —

Federal regulators say Verizon Wireless has agreed to pay a fine of $25 million and at least $52.8 million in refunds to customers who inadvertently racked up data charges on their phones over the last three years.

The Federal Communications Commission says the fine is the largest in its history.

To forestall action by the FCC, Verizon Wireless said earlier this month that it would issue refunds, mostly of $2 to $6, to about 15 million subscribers.

The FCC started asking Verizon Wireless last year about $1.99-a-megabyte data access fees that appeared on the bills of customers who didn't have data plans but who accidentally initiated data or Web access by pressing a button on their phones.

Indonesia tsunami kills 370; toll expected to rise

MENTAWAI ISLANDS, Indonesia (AP) -- Rescuers searching islands ravaged by a tsunami off western Indonesia raised the death toll to 370 Thursday as more corpses were wrapped in body bags or buried by neighbors. Officials said hundreds of missing people may have been swept out to sea.

Elsewhere in Indonesia, the volcano that killed 33 people earlier this week began erupting again, though there were no reports of new injuries or damage. Mourners held a mass burial Thursday during a lull in Mount Merapi's rumblings.

The twin catastrophes struck within 24 hours in different corners of the seismically charged region, severely testing the nation's emergency response network.

Islanders dug graves and slung up tarps to sleep under in one of the areas hardest hit by a 10-foot (three-meter) wave that swept houses off their foundations and deposited the shattered remains in the jungle. Many residents who fled to the hills were refusing to return home for fear the sea might lash out again.

Officials say a multimillion-dollar warning system installed after a monster 2004 quake and tsunami broke down one month ago because it was not being properly maintained. A German official at the project disputed that, saying the system was working but the quake's epicenter was too close to the Mentawai islands for residents to get the warning before the killer wave hit.

Search and rescue teams - kept away for days by stormy seas and bad weather - found roads and beaches with swollen corpses lying on them, according to Harmensyah, head of the West Sumatra provincial disaster management center.

Some wore face masks as they wrapped corpses in black body bags on Pagai Utara, one of the four main islands in the Mentawai chain located between Sumatra and the Indian Ocean.

Agus Zaenal, of the West Sumatra provincial disaster management agency, raised the official toll Thursday to 370, up from 343 earlier in the day. He said 338 people are still missing.

Harmensyah said the teams were losing hope of finding those missing since the wall of water, triggered by a 7.7-magnitute earthquake, crashed into the islands on Monday.

"They believe many, many of the bodies were swept to sea," he said.

In a rare bright spot, an 18-month-old baby was found alive in a clump of trees on Pagai Selatan island on Wednesday. Relief coordinator Hermansyah said a 10-year-old boy found the toddler and that both his parents were dead.

On Pagai Seatandug island, the wave deposited giant chunks of coral and rocks the size of people into the places where homes once stood in Pro Rogat village, one of the hardest-hit areas with 65 dead. Villagers huddled under tarps in the rain and talked about how many who had fled to the hills were too afraid to return home.

Mud and palm fronds covered the body of the village's pastor, 60-year-old Simorangkir. His corpse lay on the ground, partially zipped into a body bag. Police and relatives took turns pushing a shovel through the sodden dirt next to him to create his final resting place.

His grandson, Rio, 28, traveled by boat to Pro Rogat from his home on a nearby island to check on his relatives after the quake. He said he was picking through the wreckage when someone cried out that he had found a body. Rio walked over and saw his grandfather's corpse partially buried under several toppled palm trees.

"Everybody here is so sad," Rio said, as family members prepared to place his grandfather in the grave.

On nearby Pagai Utara island, more than 100 survivors crowded into a makeshift medical center in the main town of Sikakap. Some still wept for lost loved ones as they lay on straw mats or sat on the floor, waiting for medics to treat injuries including broken limbs and cuts.

Fisherman Joni Sageru, 30, recalled being jolted awake by the quake and running outside to hear screams to run to higher ground on his island of Pagai Selaton.

"First, we saw sea water recede far away, then when it returned, it was like a big wall running toward our village," Sageru said. "Suddenly trees, houses and all things in the village were sucked into the sea and nothing was left."

Officials questioned whether the tsunami warning system had functioned properly. The chief of Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysic Agency, Fauzi, said the special buoys that detect sudden changes in water level broke down last month because of inexperienced operators and poor maintenance.

However, Joern Lauterjung, head of the German-Indonesia Tsunami Early Warning Project for the Potsdam-based GeoForschungs Zentrum, said a warning did go out five minutes after the quake - but the tsunami hit so fast no one was warned in time.

"The early warning system worked very well - it can be verified," he said.

He added that only one sensor of 300 had not been working, and had no effect on the system's operation.

About 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) to the east of the tsunami zone, Mount Merapi in central Java began spewing hot clouds of ash again at around 4:30 p.m. Thursday, according to the Indonesian volcanology agency Subandriyo.

Most residents have been evacuated from the area. It was unclear whether the new activity was a sign of another major blast to come. Tuesday's eruption killed at least 33 people and injured 17, said Agustinus, a doctor at the local health department.

Residents from the hardest-hit villages of Kinahrejo, Ngrangkah, and Kaliadem - which were decimated in Tuesday's blast - crammed into refugee camps. Officials brought surviving cows, buffalo and goats down the mountain so that villagers wouldn't try to go home to check on their livestock.

Thousands attended a mass burial for 26 of the victims six miles (10 kilometers) from the mountain's base. They included family and friends, who wept and hugged one another as bodies were lowered into the grave in rows.

Among the dead was a revered elder who had refused to leave his ceremonial post as caretaker of the mountain's spirits. He was buried in a separate funeral Thursday.

Survey: Nikki Haley's opponent Vincent Sheheen has support of S.C. lawmakers

About 4 in 5 South Carolina lawmakers who responded to a recent survey conducted by The State said Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Kershaw, should be the state’s next governor.

The blind survey is not scientific. Each of the state’s 170 lawmakers was mailed a questionnaire and provided a self-addressed envelope with which to respond anonymously.

A little less than one-third of lawmakers participated, as 48 members of the General Assembly responded. There was a near equal split among the parties, as 26 Democrats and 21 Republicans participated. One lawmaker responded by declining to identify his party.

Of the 48 lawmakers who participated, 38 said they will cast a ballot for Sheheen in the Nov. 2 general election. That includes seven self-identified House Republicans and a Senate Republican. Ten respondents, all of them House Republicans, said they will vote for Republican Rep. Nikki Haley of Lexington.

The rest of the respondents were Democrats, all of whom said they plan on supporting Sheheen. No Democrats who responded said they planned on voting for Haley.

An issue in the race for governor has been which of the candidates would have a better working relationship with the General Assembly. Outgoing Republican Gov. Mark Sanford and the Republican-controlled General Assembly had a tense eight-year relationship.

Questions have been raised about whether Haley, a Sanford political ally, would maintain a working relationship with the General Assembly. After winning the Republican nomination for governor, Haley sought to assure legislative and business leaders she would not antagonize lawmakers as Sanford did.

Young Mr. Obama

When journalist David Remnick’s book “The Bridge” was released earlier this year, it was – justly – greeted as the Barack Obama biography we had been waiting for, a work that explains the 44th US president and his importance and context. Remnick’s book excelled at placing Obama in the context of African-American history, but was less successful in explaining the new president in terms of the Chicago political scene.

With Young Mr. Obama, Edward McClelland finishes what “The Bridge” started, showing how Obama navigated Chicago political life, which can be as rough as a Blackhawks game. A writer for the Chicago Tribune when the young Obama was a state senator, McClelland is a veteran local reporter, giving him a terrific understanding of the political terrain and state geography.

The book begins with Obama applying to be a community organization on Chicago’s South Side, an unusual, praiseworthy career choice for someone who could have built a much bigger bank account for himself working for a big corporation. Several reporters – and Obama himself – have identified the future president’s experiences as a community organizer as formative to his development. It was an experience that schooled him in the possibilities and limits of grass-roots-oriented social change.

“Young Mr. Obama” skips over Obama’s Harvard years, proceeding to his 1996 election to the Illinois Senate, his ill-fated run for Congress in 2000, and his subsequent, successful US Senate run in 2004.

Among the book’s revelations are Obama’s prospective success as a scholar – professors thought the future president would have been a first-rate academic. The dean of the University of Chicago Law School personally asked Obama to become a full-time scholar.

McClelland also offers an interesting portrait of Obama as professor. “Just don’t go with your gut,” Obama told his minority students. “As a Latino or African-American or an Asian lawyer, you’re going to have issues, but you’re going to have to keep that out of thinking like a lawyer.” The anecdotes taken from the classroom are of interest also because the moderate tone Obama adopted as a professor is so entirely at odds with the right-wing attempts to portray Obama as a radical.

In fact, much of the book implicitly destroys the conservative caricature of Obama as a revolutionary anti-American. This is all the more impressive because McClelland rarely interjects political commentary into the narrative. He simply lets the facts do the talking. Obama’s successor at his community organization project once commented on a book that was critical of capitalism. “Yeah, but, John,” [Obama] retorted, “if you want to be honest about it, where else can you find a system that allows you to do as much as you can do in this country?” In the Illinois Senate, Obama was closer to his white colleagues than his fellow African-Americans, McClelland notes in a telling aside.

Another nugget that derives its strength from McClelland’s political experience is the bravery of Obama’s famous 2002 speech against the Iraq war. Derided by some as easy because the war was unpopular, McClelland points out that Obama was the lone state senator at the rally, which some of his friends had warned him against attending. “As a legislator, he wasn’t expected to have a position on foreign policy,” he writes. “As a Senate candidate, he could hurt himself Downstate by speaking out against what might be a quick, popular war.”

“Young Mr. Obama” is not all flattering, by any means. Obama comes off as ambitious, talented, arrogant, astute, detached, calculating, principled, well-intentioned, and elitist. With a Harvard degree and white grandparents, Obama is not necessarily a natural fit with either the working class or the hard-core black community. He has been known to use people who can be valuable to his career and then abandon them when they are no longer helpful to him.

McClelland’s book is long on reporting and narrative, and short on meditation and analysis – for which readers can be thankful. So many books are too long, with authors incapable of self-editing and eager to be definitive. “Young Mr. Obama” mercifully avoids the inauguration address-like grandiloquence that often surrounds recounting of the 44th president.

The only complaint to be registered about the book is the lack of sourcing. There are important interviews throughout, but it’s not always clear when McClelland is cutting from previously reported stories and when he is getting fresh material.

For the many Americans who remain fascinated with the American president, “Young Mr. Obama” makes for insightful, enlightening reading, a worthy supplement to Remnick’s book and a valuable contribution to the record on the 44th president.