Hillary Clinton returned to Washington, D.C., Wednesday to take a breather from the campaign trail and enjoy a convincing victory in West Virginia before re-launching her longshot bid to defeat front-runner Barack Obama for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Clinton rallied supporters with her decisive win Tuesday, but she will have to shout to be heard in the final three weeks of the Democratic contest as Obama increasingly turns his attention toward the general election.
The Illinois senator was campaigning and meeting with newspaper editorial boards in Michigan Wednesday, a state in which he refused to appear on the ballot to support the Democratic National Committee’s decision to penalize the state for holding its primary ahead of Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.
With Clinton vowing to stay in the race until every vote is counted — and the party likely to find a mechanism to seat Michigan as well as the also-penalized state of Florida at the Democratic National Convention in August — Obama may be trying to sew up some loose ends.
But the Illinois senator is talking like he is already the nominee, and heading to Michigan could be his attempt to signal that he has moved on to the general election and is preparing to fight for the potential battleground state against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. Obama headed to Michigan Tuesday night from Missouri, another expected battleground, where he delivered a speech at an economic forum without ever mentioning Clinton’s name.
With his wide lead in total delegates and much of the political talking class in Washington ready to designate Obama the Democratic nominee, Clinton has quite a mountain to climb to convince Democrats she’s the best candidate. But she tried her best to signal that her 40-point margin of victory in West Virginia proves the race is far from over.

elections.foxnews.com

Facing another must-win political battle, Sen. Hillary Clinton emerged victorious Tuesday in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, but it’s unclear how much the victory will help close her delegate deficit against the better-funded Sen. Barack Obama.
“It’s fair to say she had the entire political establishment in the state,” syndicated columnist Mark Shields said Tuesday night on the NewsHour. “He had the money. There was a kind of parity of resources.”
In the six weeks since the Mississippi contest, Clinton worked to show her blue collar bona fides in the Keystone State and highlight her Pennsylvania family roots — and went on to win more of the blue-collar workers, women and white men in an election where the economy was the dominant concern.
Obama, meanwhile, was favored by black voters, the affluent and those who recently switched to the Democratic Party, a group that comprised about one in 10 Pennsylvania voters, according to the surveys conducted by The Associated Press and TV news networks.
“The future of this campaign is in your hands,” Clinton told supporters at a Philadelphia victory rally. “Some people counted me out and said to drop out, but the American people don’t quit and they deserve a president who doesn’t quit either. Because of you, the tide is turning.”
On Earth Day, Clinton proposed creating more “green jobs” to kick-start the flagging economy and help minimize climate change.
“We’re going to end the war on science and have a renewed commitment to science and research,” she said.
Clinton ended her speech by co-opting Obama’s “Yes, we can” slogan into a more determined “Yes, we will.”
Obama’s most politically powerful supporter in Pennsylvania, Sen. Bob Casey, said the Illinois senator managed to cut into Clinton’s polling lead, which was well into the double digits as recently as the beginning of April.

pbs.org

Nepalese turned out to vote for peace and democracy in their millions in historic elections marred by a few outbreaks of violence.
Two people died in separate incidents and polling was suspended in 33 out of 21,000 polling stations.
The elections for a new assembly are likely to spell an end to the country’s 239-year-old monarchy and see a new constitution drafted that will bring peace after 10 years of Maoist insurgency.
After widespread fears in recent weeks that the country was too unstable to hold elections at all, the day was greeted as a great success.
There had been no election in the country of 27 million people since 1999.
The slogan raised by all the major parties is for a “new Nepal”, and the electoral system guarantees greater representation to the country’s many disempowered castes and ethnic groups.
At a polling station in the capital, 84-year-old Bhanudas Mahajan was pushed in a wheelchair to cast his vote.
“I’m satisfied,” he said, explaining that he chose the Maoists because “it is a new party.” Like many, he was demanding change.
Polling stations across the city witnessed a rush of voters in the morning and had recorded a 50 per cent turnout by midday. The election commission estimated turnout at 60 per cent nationally.
Watching the polling was Devendra Raj Pandey, a former finance minister turned democracy campaigner. “I’m so excited I can’t tell you,” he said. “After all the fears of violence we can be very proud of ourselves.
“When you look at the people you feel hope,” he said. “It’s when I look at the political leaders that I feel numb in a way.”
The results may not be known for several weeks due to the need for re-running the polling in some areas before the complicated proportional representation system can be calculated.

telegraph.co.uk