McCain puts Obama on the spot in final debate

Sen. John McCain played offense against Sen. Barack Obama during much of the final presidential debate as he challenged his rival on his policies, judgment and character.

Sen. Barack Obama says Sen. John McCain has made Bill Ayers the “centerpiece” of his campaign.

Obama said that he is the candidate who can bring “fundamental change” to the country and continued to try to link McCain to President Bush.

In one of the more forceful moments of the debate, McCain turned to Obama and said, “I am not President Bush.”

“If you want to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago. I’m going to give a new direction to this economy and this country,” the Arizona senator said.

Going into the debate, Obama was leading McCain by 8 percentage points in CNN’s average of national polls.

McCain asked Obama to clarify his relationship with Bill Ayers, a former 1960s radical who belonged to the Weather Underground.

“Mr. Ayers is not involved in this campaign, he has never been involved in my campaign, and he will not advise me in the White House,” Obama said.

McCain’s campaign has charged that Obama’s association with Ayers should cause voters to question his judgment.

Ayers was a founding member of the radical Weather Underground, a group that was involved in bombings in the early 1970s, including attacks on the Pentagon and the Capitol.

Obama said Wednesday that the fact the McCain keeps bringing Ayers up “says more about your campaign than it says about me.”

McCain again said that Obama has not repudiated comments made last weekend by Rep. John Lewis.

Lewis on Saturday compared the feeling at recent GOP rallies to those of segregationist George Wallace.

“I think Congressman Lewis’ point was that we have to be careful about how we deal with our supporters,” Obama said.

“I do think that he inappropriately drew a comparison between what was happening there and what had happened during the civil rights movement, and we immediately put out a statement saying that we don’t think that comparison is appropriate,” he said.

Asked why would the country be better off if their running mate became president rather than their opponent’s running mate, Obama said Sen. Joe Biden is “one of the finest public servants that has served in this country.”

Obama said Biden has a “consistent pattern” of “fighting for the little guy.”

“That’s what he’s done when it comes to economic policies that will help working families get a leg up,” he said.

McCain praised his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, as a “role model to women and reformers all over America.”

“It’s time that we had that breath of fresh air coming into our nation’s capital and sweep out the old-boy network and cronyism that’s been so much a part of it,” McCain said the first-term governor of Alaska.

Obama offered measured praise for Palin, whose qualifications have been widely scorned by Democrats. “I think that obviously she’s a capable politician,” Obama said, adding that she had “excited the base in the Republican party.”

McCain and Obama also went back-and-forth over the negative rhetoric that has dominated the campaign trail in recent days.

McCain accused Obama of spending “more money on negative ads than any campaign in history.”

Obama responded that McCain’s campaign had been running exclusively negative ads, and that the public found McCain to be running a more negative campaign than Obama.

McCain said he has a record of crossing party lines to get things done and told Obama that his “argument for standing up to the leaders of your party isn’t very convincing.”

Obama promised that he would “go through the federal budget page by page, line by line, and cut programs that don’t work” as president, echoing a vow his rival has made repeatedly.

McCain in turn promised an “across the board spending freeze.” He said he would balance the federal budget in four years, and went on to name specific programs including subsidies for ethanol when moderator Bob Schieffer pressed both candidates to identify specific budget cuts they would make.

The candidates also butted heads over tax policy during the debate.

Both candidates made frequent mention of “Joe the plumber.”

Last weekend, while Obama was canvassing for support in Holland, Ohio, the Democratic nominee ran into a man since dubbed Joe the plumber.

He asked Obama if he believed in the American Dream — he said he was about to buy a company that makes more than $250,000 a year and was concerned that Obama would tax him more because of it.

Obama explained his tax plan in depth, saying it’s better to lower taxes for Americans who make less money, so that they could afford to buy from his business. McCain characterized Obama’s plan as trying to “spread the wealth around.”

“We’re going to take Joe’s money, give it to Sen. Obama, and let him spread the wealth around. I want Joe the plumber to spread the wealth around,” McCain said.

He added, “Why would you want to increase anybody’s taxes right now? Why would you want to do that to anyone, anyone in America, when we have such a tough time?”

Obama countered that both he and McCain want to cut taxes, but that his plan would cut taxes for “95 percent of American families,” more than McCain’s plan.

McCain insisted that the government needed to help keep people in their homes, “putting a floor” under falling home ownership in the face of the mortgage crisis.

Obama charged that McCain’s plan could end up being a giveaway to “the banks” rather than to homeowners.

The national general election poll of polls consists of six surveys: LATimes/Bloomberg (October 10-13), CBS/New York Times (October 10-13), American Research Group (October 11-13), Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby (October 11-13), Gallup (October 11-13) and Diageo/Hotline (October 11-13). It does not have a sampling error.

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China admits mismanaged funds

Chinese officials admit that corruption is a huge problem

China’s government departments misused, embezzled or mismanaged more than 46bn yuan ($6.7bn) in 2007, the state auditor has said in an annual report.

China’s national audit office said offences included using disaster relief funds to build government offices.

Auditor General Liu Jiayi said that 14 central government officials had been detained and nearly 200 other people had been punished.

Beijing authorities admit that fighting corruption is one of their key tasks.

Chinese President Hu Jintao has repeatedly warned that endemic corruption threatens the Communist Party’s grip on power.

‘Irregularities’

Every year, China’s auditor-general gives the public a glimpse of how widespread government corruption is in this vast nation.

In this latest report to parliament, Mr Liu said an audit of more than 50 government departments and their subsidiaries had discovered that 4.5bn yuan ($660m) had been misused or embezzled in 2007.

He said the offences included diverting public funds to speculate in stocks and using disaster relief money to build government offices.

The report also found “managerial irregularities” in the use of another 41.7bn yuan ($6bn) of public money.

It said the country’s education and commerce ministries, along with the statistics and tax offices, were among the major offenders.

Despite admitting that tackling corruption is a top priority, China’s rulers have a poor track record, correspondents say.

Previous crackdowns have failed, and critics believe that without an enquiring free press and an independent judiciary, corruption in China will continue to spread.

Sex workers ‘targeted’ in Nigeria

Islamic authorities in the Nigerian city of Bauchi have reportedly launched a crackdown on sex workers identified by the Red Cross in a census.

The BBC’s Shehu Saulawa in Bauchi says that the local Sharia commission has begun rounding the women up.

But a commissioner said no arrests had been made and authorities were merely “supervising” against illicit acts.

The Red Cross carried out the census amid efforts to tackle the spread of HIV in the north-eastern state.

Muslim majority Bauchi is governed by the Islamic Sharia law.

After the census had identified 320 women, the local Sharia commission ordered that they be rounded up, our correspondent reports from Bauchi.

He says the Sharia commission seems to have been prompted to act by the perception that it was unable to enforce a ban on commercial sex workers in the state.

The Red Cross identified sex workers amid efforts to tackle HIV

The Sharia commission normally liaises with the police, he says, but this time they acted directly, using their own security force to raid hotels housing an unknown number of sex workers.

Mustapha Babe, a member of the Sharia commission in Bauchi, denied that any women had been detained, saying the committee responsible for law and order was only supervising parts of the city.

“In every nook and corner and cranny, illegal acts were being committed contrary to Sharia law,” he said.

“As a result of this, we sent them to supervise the areas where something has happened.”

Between 75 and 100 of the 320 women have so far tested positive for HIV.

Several of Nigeria’s Muslim majority northern states introduced Sharia law starting in 2000, despite opposition from Christians, sparking clashes and riots between rival groups.

The new laws reintroduced some of the harsher Islamic penalties which had been removed under colonial rule.