Racially motivated voting ran somewhat higher than elsewhere: In preliminary exit poll results, two in 10 whites said the race of the candidate was a factor in their vote, second only to Mississippi.

The overwhelming majority of West Virginia Democratic primary voters today were white and 4% were African American.

Clinton won the white vote by 68% to 28%

[...]

She won white women by 74% to 24%, and most white men by, 63% to 33%.

[T]he suggestion has been made that the minimum wage is really swell because it gets rid of low-productivity jobs that only pay the minimum wage. This sounds lovely—if you are the kind of person who has the skills to get one of the higher productivity jobs. Not so great if you're a high-school dropout with no appreciable credentials. In effect what you're talking about is a massive transfer from the weakest members of society.

``This inflation speed-up must be taken seriously as it creates potentially significant challenges to economic stability,'' John Lipsky, the IMF's first deputy managing director, said ... A return to 1970s- style high inflation and rising price expectations ``cannot be discarded out of hand,'' he said.

IMF research indicates that if the dollar hadn't fallen from 2002 to 2007, oil prices would be $25 a barrel lower. Crude oil futures surpassed $120 a barrel this week for the first time. Commodity prices excluding fuel would be 12 percent lower, Lipsky said.

Middle East and Asian countries that keep their currencies linked to the dollar are seeing inflation pressures worsen as a result, Lipsky said.

``In the euro area, the sharp rise in inflation and concerns about potential deterioration in inflation expectations are dampening consumer confidence and spending,'' he said. ``The inflation outlook appropriately is central to the ECB's policy considerations.''

[...]

Crude oil prices have almost doubled in the past 12 months and commodities including corn, wheat, rice and soybeans have all reached records this year. In the U.S., consumer prices climbed 4 percent in March from a year before, up from a 2.8 percent rate in March 2007. Inflation in the 15-nation euro region accelerated to 3.6 percent two months ago, the fastest in almost 16 years.

``Inflation rates are expected to remain high for a rather protracted period of time before gradually declining again,'' ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said at a press conference in Athens today.

Fed officials anticipate that slowing U.S. economic growth and rising unemployment will help curb inflation. Policy makers last week signaled they're ready for a pause in cutting rates after seven reductions since September.

I saw Bobby Jindal talk last week at the National Press Club. He's being widely touted as McCain's potential running mate, though I agree with Ross that this would be a mistake—for Jindal. No one should run for office this year as a Republican who doesn't have to.

Mostly I was incredibly impressed. He looks like the president of the high school chess club, so it's something of a shock to my elitist coastal ears to hear a rich good-old-boy southern accent issuing from him. But he's a hell of a talker, and most of what he says actually makes sense.

He's never run anything at all, not even a small law practice like John Edwards. Besides his campaign, probably the biggest thing he's ever run was the Harvard Law Review.

He has nothing resembling national security experience or even particularly sustained advocacy on the issue before announcing his candidacy in 2007. The man has apparently hardly even traveled to Europe, to pick one example.

He is running in a contested election outside the insular world of Chicago politics for the first time and has never had any sort of responsibility for political leadership.

He's never served in the military and seems to have scarcely any experience even knowing people who served in the military.

His private-sector business background is negligible.

Are any of these things disqualifying from the Presidency? No. But electing a man who is so seriously lacking in all of them is indeed unprecedented. And that is and should be a central issue in this campaign.

In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him.

"No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office."

[...]

Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. "I trust him," Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama's face on Seifert's T-shirt and said: "He's a half-breed and he's a Muslim. How can you trust that?"

* * *

Pollsters have found it difficult to accurately measure racial attitudes, as some voters are unwilling to acknowledge the role that race plays in their thinking. But some are not. Susan Dzimian, a Clinton supporter who owns residential properties, said outside a polling location in Kokomo that race was a factor in how she viewed Obama. "I think if it was somebody other than him, I'd accept it," she said of a black candidate. "If Colin Powell had run, I would be willing to accept him."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will order $2 billion of Russian weapons, including submarines, during a visit to Moscow this month, Kommersant reported, without saying where it got the information.

Venezuela, which has bought $4 billion of Russian arms in the last three years, will order four Project 636 diesel subs, Mi-28 combat helicopters and airplanes made by Ilyushin Co., Kommersant said.

The computer files hint at the depth of Mr. Chávez's antipathy towards the U.S., which he often describes as an "empire" oppressing Latin America. According to one document, Venezuela's interior minister, Ramón Rodríguez Chacin, last November asked the FARC to train Venezuela's military in nuts-and-bolts guerrilla tactics — including "operational tactics, explosives, ... jungle camps, ambushes, logistics, mobility" — so that soldiers would be prepared to fight a guerrilla war if the U.S. were to invade Venezuela.

One email, apparently sent by a FARC commander known as "Timochenko" to the guerrillas' ruling body in March 2007, describes meetings with Venezuelan naval-intelligence officers who offer the FARC assistance in getting "rockets." The Venezuelans also offer to help a FARC guerrilla travel to the Middle East to learn how to use the rockets.

Colombian military analysts believe the reference is to shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, a weapon that the guerrillas desperately need if they hope to blunt Colombia's recent gains. "The FARC realizes that its military problem is air power," says Gen. Oscar Naranjo, who heads the country's national police.

In another email dated early 2007, FARC commander Iván Márquez describes meetings with the Venezuelan military's intelligence chief, Gen. Hugo Carvajal, and another Venezuelan officer to talk about "finances, arms and border policy." Mr. Márquez relates that the Venezuelans will provide the guerrillas some 20 "very powerful bazookas," which Colombian military officials believe is a reference to rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

An officer reached at Gen. Carvajal's office said the general was the only person authorized to comment and he couldn't be reached because he was traveling.

At the meeting with Gen. Carvajal, another Venezuelan general is described as offering the port of Maracaibo to facilitate arms shipments to the guerrillas. The general suggests piggybacking on shipments from Russia — from which Venezuela itself is buying everything from Kalashnikovs to jet fighters — to "include some containers destined to the FARC" with various arms for the guerrillas' own use.

A spokesman at the Russian embassy in Washington declined to comment.

The proposals to obtain weaponry are part of a broad program of economic and political support for the FARC from Mr. Chávez's government, some of which was detailed in emails that were made public in the days just after the cross-border military raid that yielded the computer files.

Another email describes a November meeting between two FARC commanders and Mr. Chávez. The commanders, Ricardo Granda and Iván Márquez, report back in the email that Mr. Chávez gave orders to create "rest areas" and hospital zones for the guerrillas to use on the Venezuelan side of the border.

Many documents talk about how to fit generous offers of Venezuelan aid to the FARC's long-term "strategic plan" of taking power in Colombia. In one document dated January 2007, one top FARC commander speaks of a "loan" for $250 million to buy arms which the FARC will pay back once it has reached power. "Don't think of it as a loan, think of it as solidarity," says Mr. Rodríguez Chacin, the interior minister, in another document.

There have been some recent indications that the computers contain accurate information. Police in Costa Rica staged a successful raid on a home belonging to alleged FARC sympathizers, and recovered $480,000 in cash, guided by information from the documents suggesting the money would be located there.

In addition, Ecuador's interior minister confirmed that he had met with Mr. Reyes, after an email describing the previously secret meeting was found on the laptops and made public by Colombia.

Former US Representative Bob Barr of Georgia announced that he will run as a Libertarian this year. He first must win that party's nomination at its national convention that begins May 22.

A conservative former Republican, Barr could end up hurting presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — just as some Democrats fear that Ralph Nader's independent candidacy could bleed votes from the Democratic nominee.

Barr, 59, who served in Congress from 1995 to 2003, helped lead Bill Clinton's impeachment. He quit the Republican Party two years ago, saying he had grown disillusioned with its failure to shrink government and its willingness to scale back civil liberties in fighting terrorism.

In a news conference, Barr said "only a fool" would specify a date and timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. But he said it's "extremely important" and in the best interest of national defense to draw down dramatically the US troop presence in Iraq and decrease the military and political footprint in Iraq.

After spending several weeks staking out positions on taxes, Iraq and judges designed to appeal to conservatives, John McCain is shifting his attention to independents and Democrats, with proposals on climate change.

The Republican presidential candidate also is using his stance on energy and the environment to draw distinctions between himself and President Bush, whose popularity is at a near-record low.

Sen. McCain's support of regulating global-warming gases like carbon dioxide — the biggest environmental issue before Congress — more closely resembles the stance of his Democratic rivals, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, though he disagrees with them on how such regulations should be structured.

Besides championing legislation to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, Sen. McCain has opposed the administration's call to open parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, citing the refuge as a natural treasure on par with the Florida Everglades and the Grand Canyon in his home state of Arizona.

"He's certainly better than Bush, and ... the average Republican senator" on environmental matters, but "dramatically worse than the average Republican governor," Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in an interview.

Another major Democratic Party figure, who supports her for president, agreed: "It's not going to be a quiet exit. ... Obama has got a terrible situation. He marches to a different drummer. He won't want to take her on the ticket. But he might have to, even though the idea of Vice President Hillary with Bill in the background at the White House is not something — especially after what [the Clintons] have thrown at him that he relishes. I believe she'll go for it."

However, several important Democrats aligned with Obama predicted that he — and Michelle Obama — will vigorously resist any Clinton effort to get on the ticket. Rather, Obama is more likely to try to convince Clinton to either stay in the Senate or accept another position in an Obama administration, should he win the presidency.

Earlier this year, Mr. Bush derided a modest plan to provide $4 billion to states and localities to buy foreclosed properties, saying that buying up empty homes helps only "the lenders or the speculators." Actually, it protects entire neighborhoods and local economies from the effects of foreclosures by preventing a greater buildup of unsold homes and a further drop in prices.

Three hundred miles south of Baghdad, the oil-saturated city of Basra has been transformed by its own surge, now seven weeks old.

In a rare success, forces loyal to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki have largely quieted the city, to the initial surprise and growing delight of many inhabitants who only a month ago shuddered under deadly clashes between Iraqi troops and Shiite militias.

"The ground has changed for them," said Jalaluddin al-Sagheer, a member of Parliament from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a rival party to the Sadrists. "They are suffering a lot of losses and defeats, and they are politically isolated."

Conversely, he added, "there is national, political unity" coalescing behind the government.

Every few weeks Gordon Elliott drives 22 miles to the Hare and Hounds pub in Marple, Cheshire, collects a barrel of waste cooking oil from his stepdaughter and takes it back to his personal oil refinery in his garage in Leigh, near Bolton. The retired construction site manager then decants the liquid into a machine and adds a few chemicals.

Twenty-four hours later the waste oil has been purified, filtered and refined and is ready to be used in one of his family's two diesel cars. Instead of paying £1.25p a litre at the local supermarket, he has paid 15p to make his own biodiesel. He says he is saving nearly £100 a month - as well as 90% of the greenhouse gases he would normally emit from driving. The cars perform perfectly, the equipment will be paid for within a year and the pleasure of making his own fuel is intense. "It's the principle. I do it for the environment and to spite the exchequer," he said.

Elliott, 79, is part of a cottage industry of people who have turned to making their own recycled "biodiesel" in response to the doubling of fuel prices in just over a year. Companies making biodiesel "reactors" report booming sales and demand for cheaper diesel is outstripping anything they can produce.

Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) comments about climate change Friday have sparked a flurry of speculation among national environmentalists, who are now optimistic the presumptive GOP nominee will vote next month for a bill limiting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

McCain didn't say for sure whether he would back the bill authored by Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.), both of whom have campaigned actively for him on the trail. But he said they were coming closer to satisfying his concerns about the bill, which is slated for a vote in early June and does not boast the same generous subsidies for nuclear power as the bill McCain and Lieberman co-sponsored in the past.

"I'm pleased in negotiations and discussion with Senator Lieberman that there will be a far more important nuclear component of this legislation that's going to be coming to the floor," McCain said in a press conference at Jersey City's Liberty Science Center. "I hope that it will be passed and I hope that the entire Congress will join in supporting it and the president of the United States would sign it."

McCain has repeatedly pushed hard for nuclear power as one of the primary ways the U.S. can cut its greenhouse gas emissions and reduce its energy dependence on foreign countries. But several Senate Democrats, who back the idea of a mandatory cap on carbon emissions, oppose providing additional subsidies for building nuclear power plants.

McCain advocates cutting U.S. carbon emissions 60 percent by 2050, compared to 1990 levels, while the Lieberman-Warner bill would cut them by nearly 70 percent by mid-century. Both Democratic Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) support the bill, though they advocate a more ambitious reduction goal of 80 percent by 2050.

The question of how drastically the U.S. should limit its carbon emissions does not appear to be a sticking point for McCain, and Lieberman said in an interview yesterday he believed his friend would back the bill once it reaches the floor next month.

"I'm confident that he is going to support the bill," Lieberman said, adding the two men had discussed the matter this morning, and their aides were continuing to work out details of the legislation's nuclear provision.

However Daniel J. Weiss, who directs climate strategy for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, questioned whether the GOP nominee's support would come with too high a price.

"John McCain's reliance nuclear power to solve global warming would require billions of dollars in federal subsidies, millions of gallons of water, and 10 more Yucca Mountains to dispose of all the waste," Weiss wrote in an e-mail. "It is a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem."

Jeremy Symons, National Wildlife Federation's global warming campaign executive director, said it could encourage other Republicans to come on board in the weeks to come.

Myanmar's military regime distributed international aid Saturday but plastered the boxes with the names of top generals in an apparent effort to turn the relief effort for last week's devastating cyclone into a propaganda exercise.

"We have already seen regional commanders putting their names on the side of aid shipments from Asia, saying this was a gift from them and then distributing it in their region," said Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, which campaigns for human rights and democracy in the country.

"It is not going to areas where it is most in need," he said in London.

"It's a race against the clock," Byrs said. "If the humanitarian aid does not get into the country on a larger scale, there's the risk of a second catastrophe," she said, adding that people could die from hunger and diseases.

Health experts have warned there was a great risk of diarrhea and cholera spreading because of the lack of clean drinking water and sanitation.

Farmaner suggested that aid be delivered to the country, also known as Burma, even if the regime does not give its permission.

"We have had a week to convince the regime to behave reasonably, and they are still blocking aid," he said. "So the international community needs to wake up and take bolder steps."

However, aid providers are unlikely to pursue unilateral deliveries like airdrops because of the diplomatic firestorm that it could set off.

The government's abilities are limited. It has only a few dozen helicopters, most of which are small and old. It also has about 15 transport planes, primarily small jets unable to carry hundreds of tons of supplies.

"Not only don't they have the capacity to deliver assistance, they don't have experience," said Farmaner, the British aid worker. "It's already too late for many people. Every day of delays is costing thousands of lives."

Followers of rebel cleric Muqtada al Sadr agreed late Friday to allow Iraqi security forces to enter all of Baghdad's Sadr City and to arrest anyone found with heavy weapons in a surprising capitulation that seemed likely to be hailed as a major victory for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.

In return, Sadr's Mahdi Army supporters won the Iraqi government's agreement not to arrest Mahdi Army members without warrants, unless they were in possession of "medium and heavy weaponry."

The agreement would end six weeks of fighting in the vast Shiite Muslim area that's home to more than 2 million residents and would mark the first time that the area would be under government control since Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. On Friday, 15 people were killed and 112 were injured in fighting, officials at the neighborhoods two major hospitals said.

It also would be a startling turnaround in fortunes for Maliki, who'd been widely criticized for picking a fight with Sadr's forces, first in the southern port city of Basra and then in Sadr City.