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Poll: Obama favored as Democratic nominee

WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) -- Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has a 10-point lead over Hillary Clinton to be the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee, a Washington Post-ABC poll indicates.

The poll released Wednesday also shows Democrats apparently don't care when the heated delegate contest ends.

Overall, 51 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they prefer the freshman Illinois senator facing presumptive Republican presidential nominee Arizona Sen. John McCain in November. Forty-one percent said they would prefer the senator from New York as the party's nominee.

In hypothetical match-ups, Obama holds a 5-point lead over McCain, while McCain is 3 points ahead of Clinton, within the poll's 3 percentage point margin of error.

The closeness of the primary contests and McCain's momentum may worry party leaders about Democrats' chances in November, the survey said. Two-thirds of respondents said the protracted race would not have much of an impact (50 percent), or may help (17 percent). A third of Democrats said they thought the long primary contest may cost the party as it tries to gain the White House and congressional seats.

The poll interviewed 1,197 adults by phone Thursday through Sunday.

Poll: Clinton lead down to 6 points in Pa.

PHILADELPHIA, April 16 (UPI) -- Sen. Barack Obama is six points behind Democratic rival Sen. Hillary Clinton among likely Pennsylvania voters, a Daily News/Franklin & Marshall Poll indicates.

The April 8-13 poll shows the New York senator holding a 46 percent to 40 percent lead over her rival from Illinois, down from a 16-point lead in March, the Philadelphia Daily News said Wednesday.

The telephone survey among 914 registered and likely Democrats in Pennsylvania had a 4 percent margin of error.

Analysts cautioned the poll may not reflect the current situation because it does not consider fallout from the row surrounding a recent Obama statement about bitter Americans finding solace in "guns or religion."

The general trend favors Obama, analysts said.

G. Terry Madonna with Franklin & Marshall said Obama gained ground from his Pennsylvania television ads and Clinton suffered by saying she arrived under sniper fire during a 1996 visit to Bosnia.

Clinton beats Obama by 14 points among likely white voters and has a double-digit lead among union members and Catholics. Obama holds a 48 percent lead among non-whites and a 23 percent lead among newly registered voters.

FBI in gross violation of privacy rights

WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) -- The U.S. Justice Department inspector general said the FBI committed more than 6,000 violations of intelligence laws in its use of national security letters.

National security letters, or NSLs, give the FBI authority to mine personal data from phone conversations, e-mails and financial records without a warrant

Inspector General Glenn Fine told a House Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday a 10 percent review of FBI NSL requests found 640 violations. Fine used that value to give an estimate of 6,400 total violations between 2003 and 2006.

FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni told committee members 90 percent of those errors came from third party or clerical mistakes, ABC News reported Wednesday.

Information gathered from a Freedom of Information Act request found the FBI was excessive in its data collection, mining information for entire e-mail servers rather than focusing on individual suspects. Caproni insisted, however, there was "no violation" of privacy rights.

Committee members examined a proposal by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., calling for an overhaul of FBI use of NSLs to bring the system back "in line with the Constitution.

The FBI opposes the legislation.

Chinese arrest Tibetans, seize weapons

BEIJING, April 16 (UPI) -- Chinese officials say they arrested more than 2,000 Tibetan protesters amid outbreaks of violence and weapons discoveries at several monasteries.

Authorities seized nearly 25 pounds of dynamite Tuesday at a monastery in northeastern China. Bullets, knives and flags of the "Tibetan government in exile" were found at four other monasteries in the Tibetan-populated region, officials said.

Chinese police said they released 1,870 of 2,204 protesters who surrendered following anti-government protests in the northeast city of Gannan that left 94 injured, the Indo-Asian News Service reported Wednesday.

The weapons seizures come as a Chinese Foreign Ministry official blamed the Dalai Lama for holding up effective dialogue, the Xinhua news agency said.

"Our position towards the Dalai Lama is consistent and clear cut. The government has been exerting maximum patience to maintain contact with the Dalai Lama. The barrier now is not on our side but on the Dalai side," the official said.

Zimbabwe politics may turn to the U.N.

HARARE, Zimbabwe, April 16 (UPI) -- Zimbabwe opposition movement officials Wednesday said the ruling party detained some of its members as the United Nations prepares to weigh in.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, said around 50 of its members were arrested by members of President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party for staging a strike, the BBC reported Wednesday.

MDC called for a general strike to protest the failure to disclose results from the March presidential elections.

South African President Thabo Mbeki called for a special meeting at the United Nations to discuss the issue. The scheduled agenda focuses on the conflicts in Somalia and Darfur, but the BBC said officials from England, France and the United States plan to discuss Zimbabwe.

The meeting comes as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon again called for the release of the election results.

The ruling ZANU-PF party said opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai lacks the ability to bring change to Zimbabwe, which faces an inflation rate of over 100,000 percent and 80 percent unemployment.

Analysts said ZANU-PF defined the rules of the game in such a way that Tsvangirai has few options to mount an effective protest except a run-off election in a system ZANU-PF largely controls, Voice of America said.