The World

Romney flip-flops: Obama

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. -- U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday followed up on the last presidential debate by accusing his Republican challenger Mitt Romney of shifting his positions, as the two candidates entered the two-week home stretch before election day.

The two are neck and neck in the race for the White House, and Romney presented a more centrist approach to foreign policy during the Monday-night debate -- the last of three, and this one on foreign policy. The Republican's performance, however, gave the Obama campaign more ammunition to allege Romney is willing to shift from or lose his more conservative positions to satisfy his more mainstream constituents.

"We are accustomed to seeing politicians change their position from four years ago," Obama told a Florida rally. "We are not accustomed to seeing politicians change their positions from four days ago."

Obama's campaign released a 20-page booklet called the Blueprint for America's Future on Tuesday to promote a second-term agenda, responding to Republican criticism that the president has not clearly articulated a plan for the next four years.

Romney and running mate Paul Ryan's schedule reflected the strategy of driving up Republican vote totals in areas such as the Denver suburbs and Cincinnati, Ohio. They start their two-week dash in Nevada, before moving to the Denver area for a rally with rocker-rapper Kid Rock and country music's Rodney Atkins.

The key to victory lies in the nine U.S. states that do not reliably vote for the candidate of one party or the other.

Not too big to die: warden

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The warden of the prison where Ohio puts inmates to death says the state's execution table can easily hold a 400-pound condemned inmate who has argued he is so big it might collapse.

The table was tested by placing an equally heavy prison employee on it and by placing weights on it.

Ronald Post's attorneys said last month he weighs 480 pounds, while the state says Post weighed 396 pounds last week.

Post, 53, is scheduled to die Jan. 16 for the 1983 shooting death of Helen Vantz.

Vantz's son, Bill Vantz, has called Post's arguments "laughable."

Post argues his weight, vein access, scar tissue, depression and other medical problems raise the likelihood his executioners would encounter severe problems.

Shark kills surfer

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- A shark killed a surfer Tuesday off a beach at coastal Vandenberg Air Force Base following a summer of shark sightings along California's Central Coast, authorities said.

Francisco Javier Solorio Jr., 39, died in the attack off the coast of Surf Beach in Lompoc, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department said in a statement.

He was bitten in his upper torso.

Solorio "had a friend who he was surfing with who saw the shark bite or hit the man," said sheriff's Sgt. Mark A. Williams. "His friend ended up swimming over and pulling him from the water where he received first aid."

The friend started first aid while another surfer called paramedics help, but Solorio was pronounced dead by at the scene.

Informant goes public

NEW YORK -- A paid informant for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit was under orders to "bait" Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press.

Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bangladeshi descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture." He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.

Rahman said he now believes his work as an informant against Muslims in New York was "detrimental to the Constitution."

Dropped in the desert

FARMINGTON, N.M. -- A paraplegic man who says he was stranded in the New Mexico desert without his wheelchair dragged himself more than six kilometres down a dirt road for three days before he found help.

The Farmington Times reports 49-year-old Ricky Gilmore was found last week. He is being treated in hospital for acute kidney failure from dehydration, a sprained wrist and a blood infection.

Gilmore says he was dropped in the desert by a couple he met while he was hitchhiking.

-- from the news services

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 24, 2012 A10