Romney questions Obama’s candor Romney questions Obama’s candor ADVERTISING WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney unleashed a strong attack on President Barack Obama’s truthfulness Wednesday, accusing him of running a “hide-and-seek” re-election campaign designed to distract voters from his first-term record while
Romney questions Obama’s candor
WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney unleashed a strong attack on President Barack Obama’s truthfulness Wednesday, accusing him of running a “hide-and-seek” re-election campaign designed to distract voters from his first-term record while denying them information about his plans for a second.
Addressing an audience of newspaper editors and publishers, Romney said Obama’s recent remarks to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on a second-term arms reduction treaty had called “his candor into question.” Romney, the likely GOP opponent for Obama in November, also accused the president of undergoing “a series of election-year conversions” on taxes, government regulation and energy production.
“He does not want to share his real plans before the election, either with the public or with the press,” Romney said. “By flexibility, he means that what the American public doesn’t know won’t hurt him. He is intent on hiding. You and I will have to do the seeking.”
Romney himself has been sharply criticized by Rick Santorum and other Republican rivals for changing his own positions on issues ranging from abortion to climate control as part of an attempt to win the backing of conservative primary voters. Earlier this year, he reversed course on the minimum wage to bring his stance in line with party orthodoxy, saying he no longer believes it should rise along with inflation.
Romney spoke to the Newspaper Association of America and the American Society of Newspaper Editors as the Republican nominee-in-waiting, his standing confirmed by three primary victories Tuesday night in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington, D.C.
Nursing program director was intended target in Calif. shooting
OAKLAND, Calif. — Police confirmed Wednesday that the nursing program director of the California college where a former student is suspected of going on a shooting rampage was the suspect’s intended target.
Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan told The Associated Press that investigators believe Ellen Cervellon was the person sought by suspect One Goh.
Police said that when Goh was told Cervellon wasn’t there at the time, he began shooting in classrooms.
Goh had been upset after dropping out of the nursing program because school officials would not fully refund his tuition, Cervellon said.
Meanwhile, prosecutors filed seven murder charges against Goh. He also was charged Wednesday with three counts of attempted murder and faces a special circumstance allegation of multiple murders that could make him eligible for the death penalty.
Yahoo laying off
2K employees
SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo is laying off 2,000 employees as new CEO Scott Thompson eliminates jobs that don’t fit into his plans for turning around the beleaguered Internet company.
The cuts announced Wednesday represent about 14 percent of the 14,100 workers employed by Yahoo.
Yahoo estimated it will save about $375 million annually after the layoffs are completed later this year. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company will absorb a pre-tax charge of $125 million to $145 million to account for severance payments. The charge will reduce Yahoo’s earnings in the current quarter.
Workers losing their jobs were being notified Wednesday. Some of the affected employees will stay on for an unspecified period of time to finish various projects, according to Yahoo.
The housecleaning marks Yahoo’s sixth mass layoff in the past four years under three different CEOs. This one will inflict the deepest cuts yet, eclipsing a cost-cutting spree that laid off 1,500 workers in late 2008 as Yahoo tried to cope with the Great Recession.
By wire sources
