Monday, 10.15.12 ON THE WEB: www.yankton.net 14 the world PRESS DAKOTAN NEWS DEPARTMENT: [email protected] Skydiver Lands Smoothly After Daring Leap ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) — Extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner Longtime Senator Specter Dies landed gracefully on Earth after a 24-mile jump Sunday from the stratosphere in a daring, dramatic feat that officials said made him the first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound. BY PETER JACKSON lion cast. He went on to easily win Baumgartner came down safely in the eastern New Mexico Associated Press the general election with the help desert about nine minutes after jumping from his capsule 128,100 of organized labor, a traditionally feet, or roughly 24 miles, above Earth. He lifted his arms in victory, HARRISBURG, Pa. — Former Democratic constituency. sending off loud cheers from jubilant onlookers and friends inside U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, the outspo- Specter startled fellow senators the mission’s control center in Roswell, N.M. ken Pennsylvania centrist whose in April 2009 when he announced switch from Republican to Democ- he was switching to the Demo- “When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so rat ended a 30-year career in which cratic side, saying he found himself humble, you do not think about of breaking records anymore, you he played a pivotal role in several “increasingly at odds with the Re- do not think of about gaining scientific date. The only thing you Supreme Court nominations, died publican philosophy.” Earlier in want is to come back alive,” he said after the jump. Sunday. He was 82. the year, he had been one of only Brian Utley, a jump observer from the International Federation Specter, who announced in late three Republicans in Congress — of Sports Aviation, said preliminary figures show Baumgartner August that he was battling cancer, and the only one facing re-election reached a maximum speed of 833.9 mph. That amounts to Mach died at his home in Philadelphia in 2010 — who voted for President 1.24, which is faster than the speed of sound. No one has ever from complications of non- Barack Obama’s economic stimu- reached that speed wearing only a high-tech suit. Hodgkins lymphoma, said his son lus bill. Baumgartner says that traveling faster than sound is “hard to Shanin. Over the years, Arlen He also said he had concluded describe because you don’t feel it.” With no reference points, “you Specter had fought two previous that his chance of defeating a GOP don’t know how fast you travel,” he told reporters. bouts with Hodgkin’s disease, challenger in the 2010 party pri- overcome a brain tumor and sur- mary was bleak. But he said the vived cardiac arrest following by- Democrats couldn’t count on him Syria Accused Of Bombing Its Own People pass surgery. to be “an automatic 60th vote” to BEIRUT (AP) — The Syrian regime was accused Sunday of drop- Specter rose to prominence in give the party a filibuster-proof ma- ping cluster bombs — indiscriminate scattershot munitions banned the 1960s as an aggressive jority. by most nations — in a new sign of desperation and disregard for its Philadelphia prosecutor and as an Specter outspent Sestak, a re- own people. assistant counsel to the Warren tired Navy vice admiral, but Sestak The international group Human Rights Watch cited amateur video Commission, developing the single- attacked him as a political oppor- and testimony from the front lines in making the allegation against bullet theory that posited just one tunist who switched parties to the government of President Bashar Assad. bullet struck both President save his job. A memorable cam- Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Con- paign ad used Specter’s own words Syria and Turkey, meanwhile, declared their skies off-limits to against him: “My change in party each other amid mounting cross-border tensions in Syria’s 19-month- nally — an assumption critical to RAFAEL SUANES/MCT the argument that presidential as- Former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, shown in this 2010 file photo, died on will enable me to be re-elected.” old conflict, now a civil war. Turkey is an outspoken backer of rebels Specter was diagnosed in Feb- trying to oust Assad. sassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted Sunday, Oct. 14, of cancer at 82. He served five terms in the U.S. Senate alone. The theory remains contro- representing Pennsylvania. ruary 2005 with stage IV Hodgkin’s The weekend’s mutual ban on overflights is part of Turkey’s in- versial and was the focus of Oliver disease, a cancer of the lymphatic creasingly assertive stance toward Syria that has stirred concerns Stone’s 1991 movie “JFK.” system. Announcing the diagnosis about a regional conflagration. In the past two weeks, Turkey has re- In 1987, Specter helped thwart President Barack Obama and other cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, with his trademark doggedness, taliated for stray Syrian shells and mortar rounds, intercepted a Syr- the Supreme Court nomination of Democratic leaders. Sestak lost and supported several labor- Specter said: “I have beaten a brain ian passenger plane on suspicion it carried military equipment, and former federal appeals Judge Specter’s seat to conservative Re- backed initiatives in a GOP-led tumor, bypass heart surgery and — according to a Turkish newspaper Sunday — sent more warships Robert H. Bork — earning him con- publican Rep. Pat Toomey by 2 Congress. He also doggedly sought many tough political opponents to naval bases north of the Syrian coastline. servative enemies who still bitterly percentage points. federal funds for local projects in and I’m going to beat this, too.” Inside Syria, rebel fighters and regime forces have been locked in refer to such rejections as being A political moderate, Specter his home state. He wrote of his struggle in a a bloody stalemate for weeks, with rebels holding large rural “borked.” was swept into the Senate in the The former Democrat was not 2008 book, “Never Give In: Battling stretches in the heavily populated western area, but unable to dis- But four years later, Specter Reagan landslide of 1980. shy about bucking fellow Republi- Cancer in the Senate,” saying he lodge Assad’s troops from urban centers. During the summer, the was criticized by liberals for his He took credit for helping to de- cans. wanted to let others facing similar regime escalated shelling and airstrikes on rebel-held neighbor- tough questioning of Anita Hill at feat President Clinton’s national In 1995, he launched a presiden- crises “ought to know they are not hoods. Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court health care plan — the complexi- tial bid, denouncing religious con- alone.” nomination hearings and for accus- ties of which he highlighted in a gi- servatives as the “fringe” that Cancer handed him “a stark ing her of committing “flat-out per- gantic chart that hung on his office plays too large a role in setting the look at mortality” and an “added Expect Small ’13 Social Security Benefit Raise jury.” The nationally televised wall for years afterward — and party’s agenda. Specter, who was sense of humility,” Specter told WASHINGTON (AP) — Social Security recipients shouldn’t ex- interrogation incensed women’s helped lead the investigation into Jewish, bowed out before the first The Associated Press. pect a big increase in monthly benefits come January. groups and nearly cost him his Gulf War syndrome. Following the primary because of lackluster Intellectual and stubborn, Preliminary figures show the annual benefit boost will be be- seat in 1992. Iran-Contra scandal, he pushed leg- fundraising. Specter played squash nearly tween 1 percent and 2 percent, which would be among the lowest Specter, who had battled can- islation that created the inspectors Despite his tireless campaign- every day into his mid-70s and since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975. Monthly bene- cer, was Pennsylvania’s longest- general of the CIA. ing, Specter’s irascible independ- liked to unwind with a martini or fits for retired workers now average $1,237, meaning the typical re- serving senator when Democrats As a senior member of the pow- ence caught up with him in 2004. two at night. He took the lead on a tiree can expect a raise of between $12 and $24 a month. picked then-U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak erful Appropriations Committee, Specter barely survived a GOP pri- wide spectrum of issues and was The size of the increase will be made official Tuesday, when the over him in the 2010 primary, de- Specter pushed for increased fund- mary challenge by Toomey by no stranger to controversy. government releases inflation figures for September. The announce- spite Specter’s endorsements by ing for stem-cell research, breast 17,000 votes of more than 1.4 mil- ment is unlikely to please a big group of voters — 56 million people get benefits — just three weeks before elections for president and Congress. The cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, is tied to a government Debate Preparation Trumps CDC Scientists Fight measure of inflation adopted by Congress in the 1970s. It shows that consumer prices have gone up by less than 2 percent in the past year. Fungus Blamed For “Basically, for the past 12 months, prices did not go up as rap- idly as they did the year before,” said Polina Vlasenko, an econo- 2012 Campaigning Sunday Meningitis Outbreak mist at the American Institute for Economic Research, based in BY STEVE PEOPLES AND JULIE PACE In recent days, Romney Great Barrington, Mass. ATLANTA (AP) — Scattered across the Associated Press has promised his tax plan carefully landscaped main campus of the This year, Social Security recipients received a 3.6 percent in- would not benefit the crease in benefits after getting no increase the previous two years.