Rep-ublican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin met world leaders for the first time.
It was a tightly controlled crash course on foreign policy for the first-term Alaska governor, who has been outside North America just once.
Palin sat down with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. The private conversation and public pictures were meant to pad her résumé for voters concerned about her lack of experience in world affairs.
"I found her quite a capable woman," Karzai later said. "She asked the right questions on Afghanistan."
The self-described "hockey mom" also asked former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for insights on Georgia, Russia, China and Iran, and she was to see more leaders yesterday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings.
Persuadable voters
Meanwhile, with Wall Street in turmoil and the economy hurting, whichever presidential candidate convinces a swath of persuadable voters that he gets it and can be trusted to lead the country back to fiscal stability could well win the White House.
An AP-Yahoo News poll found that 18 per cent of likely voters are up for grabs – undecided or willing to change their minds – little more than five weeks before Americans choose between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.
A large chunk of these voters say they are hurting on a personal level from the country's economic woes and, like everyone else, they say the economy is the top issue.
Most haven't decided who would best solve their problems as president; neither candidate has an advantage on handling the economy.
Among these uncommitted voters, McCain leads on Iraq, terrorism, taxes, corruption, immigration and gun rights, while Obama has an edge on health care, gay marriage, the environment, stem-cell research, racial equality and education.
Double trouble
Cindy Michaels, right, a television news anchor in Maine bears a resemblance
to the Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Michaels said she has been getting "hate mail and nasty phone calls" from viewers for copying Palin's signature style. Michaels has long brown hair and wears eyeglasses.
