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Gov. Richardson endorses Obama

(CNN) — Declaring that Sen. Barack Obama is an extraordinary American, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico endorsed Obama for the Democratic nominee for president on Friday.

Richardson — who sought this year’s Democratic nomination for president himself — joined Obama at a rally in Portland, Oregon, where the senator from Illinois is campaigning.

Barack Obama will make a great and historic president, Richardson said, Obama standing at his side. [It] is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our nation and you are a once-in-a-lifetime leader.

Obama said, I am extraordinarily grateful to have the support of one of the great public servants of these United States.

Richardson praised Obama for his speech this week on race in America, saying he appealed to the best in us. Watch the endorsement

As a Hispanic-American, I was particularly touched by his words, Richardson said, putting his arm around Obama and declaring in Spanish that he is a man who understands us.

Richardson is the nation’s only Hispanic governor. Hispanics have tended to support Sen. Hillary Clinton in her quest for the Democratic nomination.

Obama and Clinton both lobbied Richardson for his endorsement after he dropped out of the race January 10.

Clinton shrugged off Richardson’s endorsement of her rival, saying both of us have many great endorsers, and the voters, not endorsers, will decide this election.

There are still millions of voters in upcoming contests who want to have their voices heard, she said.

Richardson was secretary of energy and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Bill Clinton. He said he remains friends with the Clintons, and watched the Super Bowl with Bill Clinton this year.

Richardson’s endorsement may be more important for its influence on superdelegates, the nearly 800 Democratic party officials whose backing will be essential for either candidate to win the party’s nomination, according to CNN’s senior political correspondent, Candy Crowley. As a governor, Richardson is a superdelegate.

It is time … for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and to prepare for the tough fight we will face against John McCain in the fall, Richardson said, referring to the presumptive Republican nominee.

The Clinton and Obama campaigns have been waging an intense battle for the backing of superdelegates, roughly half of whom have yet to declare their support for either candidate.

This is a larger message to superdelegates, those elected officials and party officials who, in the end, may well decide who the nominee will be, Crowley said.

Richardson said his affection for Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton will never waver but that it is now time for a new generation of leadership.

Obama can bring us the change we so desperately need by bringing us together as a nation here at home and with our allies abroad, he said.

He drew laughs with a story about how Obama had bailed him out when a moderator called on him unexpectedly during a Democratic debate.

I was about to ask the moderator to repeat the question when Barack whispered to me ‘Katrina, Katrina.’ And I gave my Katrina answer. He could have thrown me under the bus, but he stood behind me.

Obama had earlier praised Richardson.

Whether it’s fighting to end the Iraq war or stop the genocide in Darfur or prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists, Gov. Richardson has been a powerful voice on issues of global security, peace and justice, Obama said in a statement released before the endorsement.

Richardson is the second former Democratic presidential contender to endorse Obama, after Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut. Two other former candidates, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, have remained neutral.

None of the dropouts has endorsed Clinton.
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Cop: Shooting was ‘last thing I wanted to do’

NEW YORK (AP) — A detective accused in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man on his wedding day testified he shouted Police! Don’t move! and believed the man’s friend was reaching for a weapon before officers began firing.

I felt he had a gun, and I couldn’t wait anymore, Detective Gescard Isnora said in grand jury testimony read in court Thursday.

It was the last thing I wanted to do.

Isnora and detective Michael Oliver were charged with manslaughter in the November 2006 death of bridegroom-to-be Sean Bell as he left a bachelor party at a Queens strip club.

A third detective, Marc Cooper, faces the lesser charge of reckless endangerment.

The death of Bell in a hail of bullets hours before his wedding and the wounding of two of his friends sparked community outrage and raised questions about police use of deadly force. Bell was black, as are the other victims, while the officers involved are Hispanic, black and white.

A judge is hearing the men’s trial without a jury. Prosecutors have portrayed the detectives as trigger-happy and poorly supervised. The defense contends the officers were convinced they were in danger.

Some witnesses have testified they never heard the officers identify themselves as police.

But Isnora told the grand jury he put his detective’s shield on his collar so the men in the car outside the club could see it and yelled police and commands to stop. He said he saw a passenger reach into his waistband and then start to raise his arm.

Isnora fired 11 shots. Oliver unleashed 31 shots, including the one that killed Bell, and Cooper fired four times. Two other officers also fired but have not been charged.

No gun was found in Bell’s car. A lawyer representing Bell’s parents called Isnora’s testimony a creation of his own imagination.

There was no threat, said the attorney, Neville Mitchell.

The trial is to continue Monday. Oliver and Isnora face up to 25 years in prison if convicted; Cooper faces up to one year on the lesser endangerment count.
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Autopsy on tumor woman proves inconclusive

PARIS, France (CNN) — An autopsy conducted on a French woman who had suffered from disfiguring facial tumors and begged for the right to end her life did not conclude whether she died of natural causes, a French prosecutor said Friday.

The prosecutor in Dijon, France told a news conference that it was unclear whether Chantal Sebire died of natural or unnatural causes.

He said the investigation will continue and more tests will be done, but results are not expected soon.

Sebire, 52, was found dead Wednesday night.

For nearly eight years, she had endured esthesioneuroblastoma, a rare form of cancer that spawned tumors in her nasal passages and sinuses, distorting her face and causing her nose and eyes to bulge.

Sebire had described the pain as excruciating and said morphine and other painkillers didn’t work.

It is not only the face. Some of my bones are eaten into. I don’t have any more upper and lower jaws, she said in an interview last month, according to an Associated Press translation.

At the moment we don’t know by what miracle my teeth are still holding. My gums are falling apart. You see the deformation of my face. It compresses inside, she said.

Sebire, from Dijon, eastern France, insisted there was no reason her doctors should not be permitted to help her commit suicide.

I ask to be helped to die because I don’t want this tumor to have the last word. I didn’t fight for seven and a half years to have it having the last word, she said in the February interview.

Assisted suicide is illegal in France. The law permits only passive euthanasia — removing feeding and hydration tubes when a person is in a coma, or inducing a coma and then removing the tubes — not actively assisting in someone’s death.

Sebire’s lawyer had tried to convince a French court that it was barbaric to put her through the ordeal of dying slowly in an artificial coma, something that could take up to two weeks while her three children looked on in anguish.

The court turned down the appeal Monday.

Sebire also wrote a letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy appealing for help, but he responded by suggesting top doctors should re-examine her for a second opinion.

Her plight and the questions it raised caused so much public debate in France that Sebire’s death was front-page news in France.

Right-to-die advocates believe French laws must be changed to take cases like Sebire’s into account. But France is a nominally Catholic country, and many others — including the Church — disagree about the need for new legislation.

France’s prime minister and its health and justice ministers also opposed new legislation. E-mail to a friend

CNN’s Jim Bittermann contributed to this report.

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Aloha files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

HONOLULU (AP) — Aloha Airlines has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a little more than two years after emerging from bankruptcy.

Aloha Airgroup Inc. says it was unable to generate sufficient revenue due to what it called predatory pricing by Mesa Air Group’s go! airline.

Phoenix-based Mesa Air Group Inc. launched go! into the interisland market later in 2006 to compete with Aloha and Hawaiian Airlines Inc.

In January, go! reported a $20 million operating loss in its first 16 months of operations. Meanwhile, Aloha and Hawaiian reported combined losses of nearly $65 million since go! began operating.

Aloha emerged from bankruptcy protection in February 2006, just 14 months after filing under Chapter 11. E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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State Department: Someone snooped in Obama’s passport file

(CNN) — On three occasions since January, Sen. Barack Obama’s passport file was looked at by three different contract workers, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

The contractors accessed information in the file in an unauthorized way, he said.

Two contractors were fired and one was disciplined by the contractor’s company, McCormack said.

He said the contractors are not linked.

The State Department hires contractors to design, build and maintain their systems and help employees with searches. McCormack said two of the contractors in the Obama case were low-level personnel and the other was in a mid-level position with no management role.

The breach seems like imprudent curiosity among the contract workers, said McCormack, adding that senior management at the State Department was not aware of the incidents until Thursday afternoon. Breaches occurred January 9, February 21 and March 14.

Obama’s campaign is asking for a complete investigation to find out who looked at Obama’s passport file and why.

This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years, said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton in a statement.

Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes.

Doug Hattaway, a spokesman for Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama’s rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, said, If it’s true, it’s reprehensible, and the Bush administration has a responsibility to get to the bottom of it.

The White House declined comment Thursday evening, just hours after the State Department upper management learned of the breach.

State Department officials say Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was told Thursday what happened and that she told her staff she wanted a full investigation.

The department would not speculate whether the information had been shared with anyone else.

That obviously is something we are investigating, said Under Secretary of State Pat Kennedy. I have no reason to believe they did, but I certainly am not going to be dismissive of what is a serious and valid question.

Kennedy said he will brief Obama’s senior staff on Friday.

The news was reminiscent of a breach of Bill Clinton’s passport information during the 1992 presidential campaign. The FBI launched an investigation after the State Department reported that someone had ripped out pages from his passport file from the late 1960s and ’70s.

The department concluded that a search of Clinton’s passport records was an attempt to influence the presidential election, reportedly by trying to show that Clinton tried to seek citizenship in another country to avoid the draft. Clinton was running against President George H.W. Bush.

Then-State Department Inspector General Sherman Funk found no evidence the White House ordered department staffers to dig for political dirt in Clinton’s passport files. However, Funk said the White House probably knew it was happening.

Sen. Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a statement late Thursday.

I am deeply troubled that State Department contract employees sought access to Sen. Barack Obama’s passport files. Firing or disciplining those responsible is an important first step. But we need to understand why these employees had access to this information in the first place, why they sought the information, and why it took over two months for this matter to come to light. I urge the Secretary of State to promptly refer this matter to the State Department Inspector General for investigation.
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