Iowa

Celebrities stump for candidates in final days

The presidential campaign trail is looking a bit like Hollywood Boulevard. Or a rock ‘n’ roll stage.

The Boss is stumping for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, while actor Leonardo DiCaprio and rocker Jon Bon Jovi join up with Sen. John Edwards’ entourage. President Bush is countering with a movie and political heavyweight — box office star-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Celebrities are joining the candidates on the trail in the presidential campaign’s final days, providing a little 11th-hour star power in battleground states.

As they have all year, more are turning out for Kerry than for Bush. Still, the president has his big-ticket backers.

California Gov. Schwarzenegger, whose pre-political life included the “Terminator” films, is to join the president today in Columbus, Ohio, for a rally. Country singer Sammy Kershaw and his band warmed up a suburban Cleveland crowd for the president Thursday. A day earlier, boxing promoter Don King accompanied Bush in Pontiac, Mich.

Ohio

Court actions piling up on voter eligibility

The Ohio Republican Party asked a federal appeals court Thursday to allow hearings on thousands of voters whose registrations have been challenged in this pivotal battleground state.

The request asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a lower-court ruling Wednesday that stopped hearings on about 23,000 voters who were challenged by the GOP throughout the state.

Republicans say mail to some of the voters came back undelivered, raising the possibility of fraud.

Democrats say the GOP is trying to keep poor and minorities, who move more often, from voting.

Ohio could end up deciding who wins the White House. No Republican has been elected president without taking Ohio; only two Democrats have done so in 100 years. Polls show the race is too close to call.

Dallas

Marrieds prefer Bush, singles like Kerry

Security moms and single women have been all the rage this campaign season, with pundits focused on the political preferences of the fairer sex.

For all the slicing and dicing of polls, men have merited far fewer mentions.

But recent research suggests that the “marriage gap” extends to men. Bachelors are more likely to support Sen. John Kerry, while President Bush has the edge with married men, according to recent polls.

Among women, a majority of the single set supports Kerry, and more married females prefer the president.

Polls conducted by ABC News and Gallup this month found that about 60 percent of unmarried voters favor Kerry, while nearly 60 percent of married respondents back Bush.

Iowa

Bush campaign to recut ad with doctored photo

President Bush’s campaign acknowledged Thursday that it had doctored a photograph used in a television commercial and said the ad would be re-edited and reshipped to TV stations.

The photo of Bush addressing a group of soldiers was edited to remove both the president and the podium where he was standing. A group of soldiers in the crowd was electronically copied to fill in the space, aides say.

“There was no need to do that,” said Mark McKinnon, head of Bush’s advertising team who shouldered the blame. “Everyone technically works for me so I accept the responsibility.”

McKinnon said a video editor he declined to identify was told to edit the picture to focus on a young boy waving a flag. On his own initiative, the editor removed the podium and copied the faces, McKinnon said.

The ad, released Wednesday, is an emotional appeal in which Bush defends his decision to go to war and empathizes with fallen soldiers and their families.

Ukraine

Presidential vote a test of democracy

After a tense campaign heated by allegations of fraud and official interference, Ukraine’s weekend presidential election shapes up as a stern test of the ex-Soviet republic’s democracy — and whether the country will move closer to Russia’s sphere of influence.

The main candidates are Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, lavishly praised by the Kremlin and seen as likely to continue lame-duck President Leonid Kuchma’s heavy-handed rule, and Viktor Yushchenko, a former prime minister who touts reforms and is seen as favoring Ukraine’s closer integration with the West.

With 23 candidates on Sunday’s ballot, neither Yanukovych nor Yushchenko is expected to get the simple majority needed for a first-round victory.

Thailand

Violence flares again in southern province

Fresh violence erupted Thursday with the bombing of a bar in Thailand’s mostly Muslim south, while villagers had a mass burial for some of the 78 protesters who suffocated while in army custody this week.

The bomb exploded Thursday evening at a bar in the town of Sungai Kolok in Narathiwat province, on the border with Malaysia, killing at least two people and wounding 21 others, police said. No one claimed responsibility for the bombing and police named no suspects.

Belarus

KGB refuses immunity for arrested U.S. citizen

The United Nations demanded Belarus free an American arrested while working on a U.N. project in the ex-Soviet republic, but the country’s spy service on Thursday insisted the man was not protected by diplomatic immunity.

Ilya Mafter, who works for philanthropist George Soros’ Open Society Institute but was on contract to the U.N. Development Program, was arrested Oct. 15 by agents of the Belarusian State Security Committee — which still goes under its Soviet-era abbreviation KGB.

Belarusian KGB spokesman Alexander Bazanov said Thursday that Mafter had been charged with inflicting material damage on Belarus and being involved in entrepreneurial activities without a license.

United Nations

U.S. again urged to end 43-year Cuba embargo

For the 13th straight year, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly urged the United States to end its more than four-decade trade embargo against Cuba, rejecting Washington’s argument that Fidel Castro is “a tyrant” who denies basic human rights.

The Cuban-sponsored resolution calling for the embargo to be repealed “as soon as possible” was approved by a vote of 179-4 with one abstention, similar to last year’s vote of 179-2 with two abstentions.

The resolution is not legally binding and Cuba’s Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said the U.S. government had ignored it for the past 12 years. But he said “that does not diminish the importance and momentousness” of the vote to the Cuban people and to show the worldwide opposition to the 43-year-old trade embargo.

Havana

Customers line up to convert U.S. dollars

Cuba’s banks and exchange houses began large-scale conversions of U.S. money into a local currency Thursday as Fidel Castro’s communist nation moved to dump the dollar from general circulation.

Cubans lined up several hours before exchange houses opened to convert the American dollars, widely used here for 11 years, for the local Cuban convertible pesos that will now be the main currency accepted for consumer goods.

After Nov. 8, changing American money will carry a 10 percent commission fee.

Authorities, meanwhile, said they were considering wider use of the euro as Cuba began rebuilding the hard currency base built mostly on dollars for more than a decade.

Afghanistan

Foreign election workers kidnapped in Afghan capital

Armed men in military uniforms stopped a U.N. vehicle Thursday in Kabul, beating the driver and abducting three foreigners who are in Afghanistan to help oversee landmark presidential elections.

The daylight kidnapping followed warnings that Taliban militants could target foreigners in an echo of the brutal insurgency roiling Iraq. It came less than a week after a suicide attack killed an American translator in Kabul.

Two of the kidnap victims were women: one with joint British-Irish nationality, and another from Kosovo. The third was a male diplomat from the Philippines. All work for Afghanistan’s U.N.-sponsored election body.

Washington, D.C.

U.S. considers importing 5 million flu shots

The Bush administration said Thursday it was working to buy another 5 million doses of flu vaccine from manufacturers in Canada and Germany, mixing the ticklish issue of prescription drug imports with the flu shot shortage.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said government inspectors next week would visit plants where the vaccine was made to assess whether it was safe for Americans’ use.

With 48 million doses of flu vaccine — roughly half the anticipated U.S. supply — unexpectedly withdrawn from the market because of bacterial contamination, the administration is scrambling to make up the shortage.

New York

O’Reilly, plaintiff agree to settle harassment dispute

Fox News Channel television host Bill O’Reilly and a former producer of his talk show have agreed to settle their legal dispute about her allegations of sexual harassment, O’Reilly’s lawyer announced Thursday.

Andrea Mackris had claimed O’Reilly made a series of explicit phone calls to her, advised her to use a vibrator and telling her about sexual fantasies involving her.

O’Reilly actually sued Mackris hours before her case was filed Oct. 13. The talk show host said he was fighting an extortion attempt, that Mackris and her lawyer demanded $60 million in “hush money” to make the case quietly go away.

O’Reilly, who’s married, is host of the top-rated prime-time cable news program — and he’s seen his ratings go up by 30 percent since the case was filed.