Nicolas Sarkozy earned a decisive victory today over Ségolène Royal, according to projections, keeping the right in power for another five years. Turnout was estimated at 85 percent.
The Pentagon this week released its fourth report on the mental health of troops serving overseas. What emerges from the latest Mental Health Advisory Team survey, the fourth in a series of such studies since 2003, is a troubling picture of troops who are experiencing increasing levels of anxiety and depression with each successive deployment. "We looked under every rock–and what they found wasn't always easy to look at," said Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. The Pentagon is now examining "how we can do better," he said. "There are ways we can do better."
Jon Kyl was a NASCAR fan long before he was a politician. The No. 3 GOP leader in the Senate, he recalls his days as an official track observer in the 1960s at Phoenix International Raceway. "You call the race in your part of the track," he says. Now, as the Senate Republican message maker, the racing fan calls the political situation on his side of the aisle, and his NASCAR roots are fast coming into play. That's because NASCAR, like Kyl's progression, has grown into a major sport that is starting to maneuver its way around Washington, and its Hill allies are helping to open doors.
Move over, David Beckham: Another Brit is heading our way to cash in, just like the soccer star did. Retiring British Prime Minister Tony Blair plans to hit the lecture tour in the United States before or after he sets up a foundation to fund humanitarian work in Africa. He should do well: Yanks love him. "He's probably more popular in the U.S., and there's more money there, too," says Peter Riddell, a Blair biographer. It's a path that Blair's buddy, former President Bill Clinton, blazed overseas. Blair is also considering a Bubba-like memoir. And we hear that if the embattled World Bank boss leaves, both could become candidates for the job.
AP - Roadside bombs killed eight American soldiers in separate attacks Sunday in Diyala province and Baghdad, and a car bomb claimed 30 more lives in a wholesale food market in a part of the Iraqi capital where sectarian tensions are on the rise.
AP - The wreckage of a Kenya Airways jetliner missing for nearly two days was found Sunday in a dense mangrove forest outside Cameroon's commercial capital, aviation officials said. There was no information on survivors.
AP - Rescue workers on Sunday searched for anyone still buried in the heaps of splintered wreckage left after a massive tornado obliterated most of this south-central Kansas town.
Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy was elected Sunday to a five-year term as France's president and quickly signaled that France will be a U.S. ally. Sarkozy told his "American friends that they can rely on our friendship ... France will always be next to them when they need us." But he added that "friends can think differently" and called on the United States to lead the fight against global warming.
Rescue workers today continued sifting through rubble -- some towering as high as 30 feet -- looking for survivors from a wave of tornadoes that killed 10 people and leveled Greensburg, Kansas. Meanwhile, forecasters expect the "development of a few strong tornadoes over parts of the Central Plains Sunday afternoon and Sunday night."
The U.S. military reported nine soldiers died in Iraq on Sunday -- all but one in combat -- bringing to 22 the number of American service members who have died in Iraq in the first week of May.
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