Florida voters pitch mail-in election
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.
Florida Democrats yesterday proposed a vote-by-mail presidential primary to solve the high-stakes delegate dispute while acknowledging the plan’s chances are slim.
Democrats in Florida and Michigan have been struggling to come up with an alternative to ensure their delegates are seated at the national convention this summer after the party punished them for holding early primaries. The pressure to resolve the issue has increased amid the protracted fight for every delegate between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.
Karen Thurman, chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, offered a mail-in/in person proposal for voting and urged state leaders, the national party and the presidential candidates to sign on. Under the plan, all of Florida’s 4.1 million Democrats would be mailed a ballot. They could send it back, or cast a ballot in one of 50 regional voting centers that would be set up. The election would end June 3, a week before a Democratic National Committee deadline to name delegates.
DURHAM, N.C.
Two men charged in student’s death
Authorities have charged a suspect in the slaying of the University of North Carolina student president with the January killing of a Duke University graduate student.
A warrant filed yesterday charges 17-year-old Lawrence Alvin Lovette Jr. with first-degree murder in the death of Abhijit Mahato.
The 29-year-old computational mechanics doctoral student was found shot to death inside his apartment in January.
Authorities have charged both Lovette and Demario James Atwater with first-degree murder in the death of Eve Carson. The 22-year-old was found last week lying on a street about a mile from campus.
BAGHDAD
Body of missing Archbishop found
The body of a Chaldean Catholic archbishop was found in a shallow grave in northern Iraq on yesterday, two weeks after he was kidnapped by gunmen in one of the most dramatic attacks against the country’s small Christian community.
The sad discovery of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho’s body came on a day that saw more violence elsewhere in Iraq. A parked car bomb exploded in a commercial district of central Baghdad, killing 18 people and wounding dozens more, police said. Gunmen also killed five members of an anti-al-Qaida group near Tikrit, and a correspondent for a newspaper in Baghdad.
ALBANY, N.Y.
In scandal’s wake, Paterson prepares to step in as Governor
New York Lt. Gov. David Paterson says it’s time for the state to get back on track after Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s stunning resignation because of a prostitution scandal.
The Harlem Democrat takes over Monday, becoming the state’s first black chief executive and the first legally blind governor in the country.
He told reporters and others in Albany yesterday that he didn’t become governor like most politicians do, but he plans to honor the promise he made when he became Spitzer’s running mate in 2006.
– Compiled from Daily wire reports