In the news

Turnout steady as New Orleans picks mayor

NEW ORLEANS – A steady stream of New Orleans voters, some from storm-scarred neighborhoods and others by the busload from evacuee havens across the nation, cast their first ballots since Hurricane Katrina in a crucial election Saturday to decide who will lead the rebuilding of this devastated city.

Incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin was leading with 38 percent of the vote as of press time, but he faced 21 challengers, including the state’s lieutenant governor. If none gets more than 50 percent, a runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held May 20.

Because of the Aug. 29 storm, what ordinarily would be a routine municipal race has become an unprecedented experiment in democracy.

Of the city’s 297,000 registered voters, tens of thousands are spread out across the United States. More than 20,000 cast ballots early by mail, fax or at satellite voting stations around the state, and thousands more made their way to 76 polling stations that opened at daybreak Saturday.

“We’re still citizens of New Orleans,” said 24-year-old J. Todd Smith, who made the trip by bus from Atlanta. “We still want to know what’s going on there. I still have my driver’s license. My license plate still says Louisiana.”

Alaskan students arrested for elaborate school rampage plan

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Police said a group of seventh-graders hatched an elaborate plan to cut off power and telephone service to their middle school, slay classmates and faculty with guns and knives, then escape from their small Alaska town.

The arrest Saturday of six students in North Pole, a town of 1,600 people about 14 miles southeast of Fairbanks, marks the nation’s second breakup of an alleged Columbine-style school attack this week. Five Kansas teenagers suspected of planning a shooting rampage at their high school were arrested Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the massacre in suburban Colorado.

The Alaskan seventh-graders had been picked on by other students and wanted to seek revenge, Police Chief Paul Lindhag said. They also disliked staff and students, he said.

The students had planned to disable North Pole Middle School’s power and telephone systems, allotting time to kill their victims and flee from town, Lindhag said.

A parent alerted police of rumors of an attack, Lindhag said. He would not elaborate on the case or what kind of documented evidence led to the arrests.

IMF Gets the Green Light for Reform

WASHINGTON – Economic powers gave the world’s financial firefighter, the International Monetary Fund, the green light Saturday to remake the 61-year-old institution so it can better prevent and cope with crises.

The strategy was embraced by the IMF’s steering committee during the weekend meetings of the 184-nation IMF and World Bank.

“We resolve to make the IMF more fit for purpose in a global economy and more able to address challenges that are quite different from those of 1945 when the IMF was created,” said Gordon Brown, Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer.

“Specifically, we agreed the IMF must focus more on crisis prevention as well as crisis resolution,” said Brown, chairman of the IMF’s policy-setting panel.

Cheering Vietnamese greet Microsoft leader

HANOI, Vietnam – Thousands of cheering Vietnamese students welcomed Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Saturday with a raucous adulation normally reserved for rock stars.

The excitement that greeted Gates during his first visit to Vietnam reflects the communist country’s eagerness to follow the route of high-tech meccas like India and its belief that he can help pave the way.

“I’ve been waiting for Bill Gates to come to Vietnam for a long time,” said Le Tuan Anh, 21, a second-year computer engineering student who clutched a copy of Saigon Entrepreneur magazine that profiled Gates on its cover. “Hopefully this will boost IT development in Vietnam.”

During a speech at the close of his whirlwind, daylong tour, Gates said the country has the potential to become one of the Asian “miracle” economies by investing in its young people.

“The key element to allowing IT to help the economy grow, and become an export sector itself, comes back to investment in education,” he said. “Clearly I see that over the next decade Vietnam will join those miracles.”