USA Today: Swing States poll: A shift by women puts Obama in lead
President Obama has opened the first significant lead of the 2012 campaign in the nation's dozen top battleground states, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, boosted by a huge shift of women to his side.
In the fifth Swing States survey taken since last fall, Obama leads Republican front-runner Mitt Romney 51%-42% among registered voters just a month after the president had trailed him by two percentage points.
The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-February, just under half of those voters supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney's support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group.
USA Today: Voice experts say 911 tape supports Trayvon Martin
The voice crying for help in the background of a 911 call moments before the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was not that of shooter George Zimmerman, experts in voice identification tell the Orlando Sentinel.
Tom Owen, forensic consultant for Owen Forensic Services, used voice identification software to rule out Zimmerman, the Sentinel says. Another expert utilizing different techniques came to the same conclusion, the Sentinel reports.
A woman called 911 to report someone crying out for help in her gated Florida community in Sanford on Feb. 26. Moments later, Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, shot Trayvon during a confrontation.
Zimmerman claims self-defense in the shooting and told police he was the one screaming for help.
BBC: Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi wins by-election: NLD party
Burma's Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has won a by-election for parliament, her party says, after a landmark vote which saw 45 seats contested.
Ms Suu Kyi's opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) said she had easily won the vote in Kawhmu, though official counts have not yet finished.
The NLD was competing in its first elections since 1990.
The vote is a key test of promised political reforms, though the military-backed ruling party remains dominant.
BBC: Opposition says Syrian rebel fighters to get salaries
Rebels fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria will be paid salaries, the opposition Syrian National Council has announced.
Money will also be given to soldiers who defect from the government's army, the SNC added, after a "Friends of the Syrian people" summit in Turkey.
Conference delegates said wealthy Gulf Arab states would supply millions of dollars a month for the SNC fund.
The meeting recognised the SNC as the "legitimate representative" of Syrians.
AP: Bus inspections get lax oversight despite crashes
Months after their state-certified vehicle inspection station was cited by federal authorities for failing to notice defects in a bus that crashed in North Texas, killing 17 passengers, brothers Alam and Cesar Hernandez shuttered their firm. But that didn't mean they were out of the vehicle inspection business.
Instead, they opened another station in the same Houston neighborhood and continued to inspect buses like the one involved in the accident. And they did it with the approval of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The Hernandez brothers' story underlines a phenomenon that highway safety advocates say has long existed with deadly consequences - the lack of oversight for the businesses that perform state inspections of buses and other large commercial vehicles.
Records examined by The Associated Press show that three of the deadliest bus crashes in recent years raised questions about the commercial vehicle inspection programs in Texas, Illinois and Mississippi and prompted calls from the National Transportation Safety Board for better oversight. Forty people died in those wrecks, yet the agency to which the recommendations were directed, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, has refused to act.
Reuters: Britain set for sweeping Internet, phone monitoring
Britain is to allow one of its intelligence agencies to monitor all phone calls, texts, emails and online activities in the country to help tackle crime and militant attacks, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday.
"It is vital that police and security services are able to obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public," a Home Office spokesman said.
The proposed law already has drawn strong criticism, from within the ruling Conservative Party's own ranks, as an invasion of privacy and personal rights.
"What the government hasn't explained is precisely why they intend to eavesdrop on all of us without even going to a judge for a warrant, which is what always used to happen," Member of Parliament David Davis told BBC News.
Washington Post: Santorum vows to stay in race
Rick Santorum insisted Sunday that he would remain in the Republican presidential race for the long haul, defying mounting pressure from party elders to coalesce around front-runner Mitt Romney and focus on the fall contest against President Obama.
Santorum vowed to stay in the race until it is clear that the former Massachusetts governor has secured the 1,144 delegates required for the nomination, something that is unlikely until just about the end of the primaries in June.
As both men campaigned across Wisconsin on Sunday, it was Romney eyeing victory in this state’s Tuesday primary and Santorum looking ahead to his home state of Pennsylvania, where he predicted a win that could reignite his insurgent candidacy.
Yet the chorus calling for Republicans to rally behind Romney grew louder Sunday. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who stopped short of an official endorsement, said that Romney’s chances of winning the nomination are “overwhelming” and called on Republicans to turn their attention to the general election.
New York Times: Roger C. Molander, Nuclear Protest Leader, Dies at 71
Mr. Molander drew from his expertise as a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering to become an influential arms control analyst in the Defense Department and on National Security Council in the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. He became frustrated with the slow pace of negotiations with the Russians on nuclear weapons issues, and even more upset with the matter-of-fact approach some colleagues took toward atomic war.
In April 1982, he told The New York Times about a meeting at the Pentagon that helped change his life.
“A Navy captain was saying that people here and in Europe were getting too upset about the consequences of nuclear war,” Mr. Molander recalled. “The captain added that people were talking as if nuclear war would be the end of the world when, in fact, only 500 million people would be killed.”
“Only 500 million people!” Mr. Molander exclaimed. “I remember sitting there and repeating that phrase to myself: ‘Only 500 million people!’ Only one-eighth of the world’s population!”
Google: Ex-Mexican President De la Madrid dies at age 77
Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, who led Mexico from 1982 to 1988 during economic crisis and a devastating earthquake, died Sunday at age 77, Mexican officials and his personal secretary said.
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In 1985, a magnitude-8.1 earthquake killed an estimated 9,000 people and flattened parts of the capital. A fiery explosion at a government gas facility killed more than 500 people on the outskirts of Mexico City. The government's handling of the election to replace De la Madrid caused a political scandal that later helped topple the political system that dominated Mexico for most of the 20th century.
But the initial economic panic was so deep that many thought De la Madrid did well just by not making things worse.
As he put it just before leaving office, "I took a country with great problems and leave it with problems."