Powerful Ivan bearing down on Jamaica
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Hurricane Ivan, packing 145 mph winds, bore down on Jamaica Friday after leaving smaller Caribbean islands in shambles.
Ivan was expected to bring floods, power outages and its Category 4 winds to southeastern Jamaica sometime Friday evening, CNN reported.
At 5 a.m. EDT Ivan's center was near latitude 15.9 north and longitude 74.2 west or about 225 miles southeast of Kingston, moving west-northwest about 13 mph.
More than 1,000 shelters have been opened, and as many as 500,000 residents could be asked to evacuate low-lying areas in the nation of 2.7 million.
After Jamaica, Ivan is expected to move toward the Cayman Islands and Cuba before possibly reaching the Florida Keys Monday afternoon.
At least 17 people died in Grenada as a result of the storm, officials there said. Grenada's 90,000 residents have no water or power, and inmates from a prison flattened by the storm are at large. Looting also was widespread in the island nation's capital.
Elsewhere in the Caribbean, Ivan left fatalities in Barbados, Venezuela, Tobago and the Dominican Republic.
CBS papers on Bush guard duty questioned
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Top U.S. forensic document specialists say papers described by CBS News as proving President Bush shirked military duty may have been faked.
Earlier this week, CBS' "60 Minutes II" said newly discovered documents indicate Bush did not fulfill his obligations to the Texas Air National Guard in the early 1970s, the Washington Post reported Friday.
However, forensic document specialists contacted by the Post said the font, spacing and use of superscriptions used were either rare or unknown in the early '70s.
For example, William Flynn said documents generated by the kind of typewriters used in 1972 spaced letters evenly across the page, so that an "i" used as much space as an "m." In the CBS documents -- by contrast -- each letter uses a different amount of space, a post-1972 development.
Flynn also said the CBS documents appear to use proportional spacing both across and down the page, a relatively recent innovation. Further, the documents include superscripted "th" in phrases like "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron."
Phil Bouffard, a forensic document examiner from Cleveland, said the font used in the CBS documents appeared to be Times Roman, widely used by word-processing programs but rare on typewriters.
CBS says its forensic document experts verified the papers' authenticity, but the network is declining to identify any of its experts.
Bush leading Kerry in battleground states
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- President Bush's New York convention gave him a political first in this campaign: a majority of probable voters saying they plan to vote for him.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Friday found among those most likely to vote in November, Bush holds a lead of 52 percent to 43 percent over Kerry, with independent Ralph Nader getting 2 percent of the hypothetical vote.
Among all registered voters, Bush leads Kerry 50 percent to 44 percent.
In 19 closely contested states Bush holds a narrower lead among likely voters, 50 percent to 46 percent, the poll found.
Among all voters in these states, the two candidates are running even.
A total of 1,202 randomly selected adults, including 952 self-described registered voters and 788 likely voters were interviewed by telephone Sept. 6-8. The margin of sampling error is 3 percentage points.
Sudan fires back at U.S. use of 'G' word
KHARTOUM, Sudan, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Sudan's top diplomat says his U.S. counterpart's charge that genocide has been taking place in Darfur is political cynicism.
Mustafa Osman Ismail, responding to Colin Powell's charge that Arab militias had committed genocide against black Africans in western Sudan, said Powell was just trying to win African-American votes for President Bush in November's election, the BBC reported Friday.
Ismail also said the United States was "isolated" in its use of such strong language.
The United States is seeking a new U.N. resolution that threatens Sudan with sanctions and calls for more African Union monitors to go to the western region.
As many as 50,000 people may have died and 1 million have been made homeless during the conflict in Darfur between government-sponsored forces and rebel groups.
