World / Nation Briefs December 3, 2011

Cain to address future of White House bid today

ATLANTA - Rapidly becoming a mere footnote in the presidential race, Herman Cain sent mixed signals Friday on whether he would abandon his beleaguered White House after a woman's allegation of an extramarital affair.

He said he would make a "major announcement" today on whether he would press on - at an event still being billed as the grand opening of a new headquarters.

It is the latest - and perhaps final - twist in a campaign saga that has taken the Georgia businessman from unknown longshot to surprise frontrunner to embattled tabloid subject.

He arrived at his suburban Atlanta home on Friday afternoon to talk with his wife of 42 years, Gloria, about whether to press on after his campaign was rocked by multiple sexual harassment allegations and this week's claim that he had a 13-year affair. He denies wrongdoing. It was their first face-to-face meeting since the allegation was made public.

As night fell, campaign aides who were optimistic earlier Friday that Cain would press on said privately they expected that he would exit the race.

Ultraconservative party to push for Islamic Egypt

CAIRO - Anticipating a strong presence in the new Egyptian parliament, ultraconservative Islamists outlined plans Friday for a strict brand of religious law, a move that could limit personal freedoms and steer a key U.S. ally toward an Islamic state.

Egypt's election commission announced only a trickle of results from the first round of parliamentary elections and said 62 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the highest turnout in modern history.

However, leaked counts point to a clear majority for Islamist parties at the expense of liberal activist groups that led the uprising against Hosni Mubarak, toppling a regime long seen as a secular bulwark in the Middle East.

The more pragmatic Muslim Brotherhood is poised to take the largest share of votes, as much as 45 percent. But the Nour Party, which espouses a strict interpretation of Islam in which democracy is subordinate to the Quran, could win a quarter of the house, giving it much power to affect debate.

McGovern hurt after falling prior to TV interview

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern was hospitalized Friday after he fell and hit his head on the pavement outside a library bearing his name, where he was set to be interviewed on C-SPAN.

McGovern's daughter Ann McGovern said her father was to be treated at a Sioux Falls hospital after being flown by helicopter from Mitchell, S.D., where the live interview was to take place at the Dakota Wesleyan University's McGovern Library.

McGovern has lived in St. Augustine, Fla., since 2008 but also has a home in Mitchell.

Rural church may reverse ban on interracial couples

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - When Stella Harville brought her black boyfriend to her family's all-white church in rural Kentucky, she thought nothing of it. She and Ticha Chikuni worshipped there whenever they were in town, and he even sang before the congregation during one service.

Then in August, a member of Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church told Harville's father that Chikuni couldn't sing there anymore. And last Sunday, in a moment that seems from another time, church members voted 9-6 to bar mixed-race couples from joining the congregation.

The policy has drawn a firestorm of criticism in just a few days and sent church leaders scrambling to overturn it, perhaps as early as Sunday. The executive secretary of the church's national organization said he has been inundated with angry phone calls, and had an inch-high stack of emails printed out on his desk.

"We are not a group of racist people," said Keith Burden of the National Association of Free Will Baptists. "We have been labeled that obviously because of the actions of nine people."

The resolution approved by the Gulnare church says it does not condone interracial marriage and "parties of such marriages will not be received as members, nor will they be used in worship services and other church functions, with the exception being funerals."

Californians face huge mess after windstorms

TEMPLE CITY, Calif. - As the hurricane-force winds that pummeled the West eased Friday, hundreds of thousands of people in Southern California remained without electricity. Residents and crews struggled to clean up smashed trees, toppled power lines and debris-strewn roadways.

Several cities in an area northeast of Los Angeles were the hardest hit in Wednesday night's windstorms.

Schools in Pasadena and more than a dozen others in the Los Angeles Unified School District remained closed Friday.

In Temple City, a row of toppled power poles with wires attached blocked a street. The city's main street remained a shuttered ghost town as cars inched past darkened stop lights and shop signs in Chinese.

- The Associated Press