AP News in Brief at 5:58 a.m. EST
All about the L-word: GOP rivals ask voters to follow the leader - and they don't mean Obama
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Republican presidential contenders are making a pitch to voters that sounds a lot like a children's game: Follow the leader.
When Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich aren't puffing up their own leadership credentials, they're running down the leadership skills of one another and President Barack Obama.
If anyone missed Monday's conference call from the Romney campaign about Gingrich's record as a "failed leader," not to worry. They could have tuned in to Tuesday's conference call. Or Wednesday's. Or Thursday's. Or checked out the "unreliable leader" banner splashed across a Romney news release that labeled Gingrich "unhinged." Romney's political biography, meanwhile, is all about his leadership as a businessman, Massachusetts governor and savior of the 2002 Olympic Games.
It's hard to miss Gingrich's frequent broadsides at Romney, meanwhile, for failing to provide consistent, visionary leadership. Or the former House speaker's pronouncements that he, by contrast, offers "exactly the kind of bold, tough leader the American people want." Or Gingrich's muscular descriptions of all that was accomplished in his four years as speaker in the 1990s.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, lagging them in the polls, keeps trying to muscle his way into the leader palooza by offering himself as the steady bet who can be counted on to offer more reliable conservative leadership than "erratic" Gingrich or "moderate" Romney.
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Feisty Gingrich stakes campaign on ability to beat Obama, but some doubt that claim
SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) -- Newt Gingrich has staked his presidential bid on one idea: that he is best positioned to defeat President Barack Obama. Even some of his supporters seem to be struggling to buy the former House speaker's claim, an indication that chief rival Mitt Romney's efforts to undercut him may be working.
"Beating Obama is more important than everything else," Patrick Roehl, a 51-year-old computer software engineer, said in the midst of a packed Gingrich rally inside a Sarasota airport hangar this week. "Can Newt win? I'm not sure. He's got a lot of high negatives. The elections are won and lost in the middle. I'm not sure he appeals to the middle."
John Grainger, a 44-year-old assistant golf pro, doesn't like Romney. But he's having trouble shaking skepticism about Gingrich.
"I want to be a Newt supporter," he said. "This guy's going to have the guts to stand up and speak his piece -- no holds barred." But Grainger said he wasn't quite ready to back the former House speaker.
Interviews with more than a dozen Republican voters at Gingrich's overflowing rallies this week suggest that while many Florida voters love his brash style as they look for someone to take it to Obama, they also have lingering doubts about whether the Republican's intellectual bomb-throwing alone will make him the strongest Obama opponent.
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Public university presidents wary of Obama plan to contain college costs
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Public university presidents facing ever-increasing state budget cuts are raising concerns about President Barack Obama's plan to force colleges and universities to contain tuition prices or face losing federal dollars.
Illinois State University President Al Bowman says the reality is that deficits in many public schools can't be easily overcome with simple modifications. Bowman says he's happy to hear Obama call for state-level support of public universities but adds that, given the decreases in state aid, tying federal support to tuition is a product of "fuzzy math."
Obama spelled out his proposal Friday at the University of Michigan.
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AP Interview: Economist who predicted 2008 crash sees even more tough times ahead
DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) -- Economist Nouriel Roubini, nicknamed "Dr. Doom" for his gloomy predictions in the run-up to the financial meltdown four years ago, says the fallout from that crisis could last the rest of this decade.
Roubini, widely acknowledged to have predicted the crash of 2008, sees tough times ahead for the global economy and is warning that without major policy changes things can still get much worse.
Until Europe radically reforms itself and the U.S. gets serious about its own debt mountain, he said, the world economy will continue to stumble along to the detriment of large chunks of the world's population who will continue to see their living standards under pressure, even if they have a job.
Roubini, a professor of economics and international business at New York University, spoke in an interview this week with The Associated Press at a dinner on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, where he is one of the hotly pursued stars.
Looking at economic prospects this year, he agreed with the International Monetary Fund's latest forecast that the global economy is weakening and said he might be "even slightly more bearish" on its prediction of 3.3 percent growth in 2012.
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Afghan lawmaker criticizes early French withdrawal, says 2013 NATO pullout would be 'mistake'
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- An Afghan lawmaker has sharply criticized France's plans to hand over security in her troubled province to Afghan troops within a few months, saying that her country's forces are unprepared to handle the job and more violence would result.
Tahira Mujadedi, a member of parliament from Kapisa province, also criticized France's decision to withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan early.
She said Saturday that it would be "a big mistake" for President Hamid Karzai to back a French proposal to speed up the overall NATO timetable for handing all combat operations to Afghan forces to 2013, a year earlier than now planned.
Mujadedi argued that Afghan forces in Kapisa are not ready to go it alone in fighting the Taliban insurgency, which is especially strong in several of the province's districts. She warned that if NATO forces pull back from Kapisa, it could also destabilize nearby Kabul, the Afghan capital.
"We have had so many attacks, ambushes and also suicide attacks in Kapisa," Mujadedi said. "Unfortunately, our national police and army, while present in Kapisa, are unable to provide good security for people."
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From self-immolations to mass protests: China crackdowns breed heightened violence in Tibet
BEIJING (AP) -- A young man posts his photo with a leaflet demanding freedom for Tibet and telling Chinese police, come and get me. Protesters rise up to defend him, and demonstrations break out in two other Tibetan areas of western China to support the same cause.
Each time, police respond with bullets.
The three clashes, all in the past week, killed several Tibetans and injured dozens. They mark an escalation of a protest movement that for months expressed itself mainly through scattered individual self-immolations.
It's the result of growing desperation among Tibetans and a harsh crackdown by security forces that scholars and pro-Tibet activists contend only breeds more rage and despair.
That leaves authorities with the stark choice of either cracking down even harder or meeting Tibetan demands for greater freedom and a return of their Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama -- something Beijing has shown zero willingness to do.
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Need for court sketch artists fades away, with cameras taking their place, as states lift bans
CHICAGO (AP) -- One marker in hand and one in his mouth, Lou Chukman glances up and down from a sketchpad to a reputed Chicago mobster across the courtroom -- drawing feverishly to capture the drama of the judge's verdict before the moment passes.
Sketch artists have been the public's eyes at high-profile trials for decades -- a remnant of an age when drawings in broadsheet papers, school books or travel chronicles were how people glimpsed the world beyond their own.
Today, their ranks are thinning swiftly as states move to lift longstanding bans on cameras in courtrooms. As of a year ago, 14 states still had them -- but at least three, including Illinois this month, have taken steps since then to end the prohibitions.
"When people say to me, 'Wow, you are a courtroom artist' -- I always say, 'One day, you can tell your grandchildren you met a Stegosaurus," Chukman, 56, explained outside court. "We're an anachronism now, like blacksmiths."
Cutbacks in news budgets and shifts in aesthetic sensibilities toward digitized graphics have all contributed to the form's decline, said Maryland-based sketch artist Art Lien.
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911 recording reveals frantic efforts by friends to help Demi Moore who was convulsing
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A 911 recording revealed frantic efforts by friends of Demi Moore to get help for the actress who was convulsing as they gathered around her and tried to comfort her.
Moore was "semi-conscious, barely," according to a female caller on the recording released Friday by Los Angeles fire officials.
The woman tells emergency operators that Moore, 49, had smoked something before she was rushed to the hospital on Monday night and that she had been "having issues lately."
"Is she breathing normal?" the operator asks.
"No, not so normal. More kind of shaking, convulsing, burning up," the friend says as she hurries to Moore's side, on the edge of panic.
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Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana celebrate the premiere of their Sundance-closing film, 'The Words'
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) -- Bradley Cooper and Zoe Saldana are in Park City to promote their film, "The Words," which is closing the Sundance Film Festival.
The two actors play a married couple in the film, which follows an aspiring writer who gains fame when he finds an old manuscript and passes it off as his own.
The pair avoided any appearance of their reported off-screen romance by staying apart from one another while posing for photos and giving interviews to support the film. Saldana did affectionately touch Cooper as they passed in a hallway, though.
"The Words" was among the first films acquired at Sundance. CBS Films is set to release it in the fall.
The drama, which also stars Dennis Quaid, Jeremy Irons, Ben Barnes and Olivia Wilde, premiered Friday.
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3's a crowd: James scores 31, Wade 28 in return, and Heat top Knicks 99-89
MIAMI (AP) -- LeBron James scored 31 points, Dwyane Wade scored 28 in his return from a sprained right ankle, and the Miami Heat beat the 3-point-obsessed New York Knicks 99-89 on Friday night.
Chris Bosh scored 13 points and James finished with eight rebounds and seven assists for Miami, which plays host to Chicago on Sunday in a rematch of last season's Eastern Conference finals.
Bill Walker scored 21 points for New York, which took 43 shots from 3-point range, the most in the NBA this season and a total that had the Knicks flirting with Dallas' NBA record of 49 set in 1996. The Knicks connected on 18 from beyond the arc, Walker making seven of them.
Toney Douglas scored 16 points, Landry Fields had 14 and Amare Stoudemire finished with 12 for New York, which tried more 3's than 2-point shots (41).
Wade shot 11 for 19 from the field in his return, after missing six games with the ankle issue. The Heat were outscored 54-6 from 3-point range, but held the Knicks to 36 percent shooting and only 18 points in the final quarter.
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