In the News

WORLD

SANAA, Yemen – A stampede broke out Tuesday in a stadium packed with thousands of people for an election campaign rally for Yemen’s president, killing at least 51 people and injuring more than 200, including youths bused in for the event.

The tragedy came as President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power for nearly 30 years, is campaigning in the oil-rich nation’s first competitive presidential elections against a single rival who has drawn tens of thousands to his rallies.

“The spontaneous scramble of Yemeni people who rushed out with huge crowds to take part in the electoral rally is a clear evidence that Yemenis are lovers of democracy,” Saleh was quoted as saying by the Yemeni official news agency.

The stadium was filled beyond its capacity of around 10,000, jammed with people carrying gigantic posters of Saleh and banners vowing their support. Government workers and students from schools around the Ibb area had been brought in government buses to participate.

The stampede broke out minutes after Saleh finished addressing the rally and left the stadium.

Participants constantly moved in and out of the stadium. Medical and security officials said the stampede broke out when some people leaving ran into those entering, causing some to trip and fall and be trampled.

NATIONAL

WASHINGTON – By 2010, one in five children is predicted to be obese. Efforts to turn that tide are scattershot and underfunded, and the government has killed one of the few programs so far proven to work, specialists reported Wednesday.

Programs that target youngsters’ growing waistlines are sprouting up around the country, an encouraging sign that the threat to children’s health is being taken seriously, said the report by the Institute of Medicine.

But no one knows which programs really help kids slim down, the institute said in a call for research to identify

best methods.

More troubling, the country lacks the national leadership needed to speed change, lamented an expert panel convened by the prestigious

scientific group.

The report also cites examples of promising federal programs that have yet to reach their potential. Children gobbled fruits and vegetables in an Agriculture Department school snack program, but it reaches only 14 states. And the Center for Disease Control’s main anti-obesity initiative had enough money this year to pay for starting childhood nutrition and exercise programs in just 28 states.

Aside from the federal deficiencies, the report said, some state and local programs, such as a California program to build new sidewalks and bike paths that’s getting more children to walk or bike to school, are praiseworthy.

STATE & LOCAL

RICHMOND – Opponents of a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in Virginia marginally picked up support over the past six weeks, according to a new statewide poll

published Tuesday.

Support for the proposed change in the state constitution dropped from 56 percent in late July to 54 percent in last week’s telephone survey of 625 registered voters likely to participate in the

Nov. 7 election.

Opposition to the measure, meanwhile, increased from 38 percent to 40 percent, Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. found. Six percent remained undecided, a figure unchanged from the

previous survey.

Virginia is one of eight states voting on a constitutional ban on same-sex unions this fall. Voters in 20 states already have approved such amendments, most of them overwhelmingly. Virginia already has a law that forbids same-sex unions, as do 25 other states.