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mn .ii i; frarTrw^jgmiTiTwmTr : •>- ■ PHOTO COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS A forensic policewoman examines the remains of a carriage of a local train where a bomb exploded Thursday morning.. Spanish voters expel ruling party BY EP MCCULLOUGH ■■ THE ASSOCIATED PBESS MADRID, SPAIN - Voters oust ed Spain’s ruling party in elec % tions Sunday, with many saying they were shaken by bombings in Madrid and furious with the gov ernment for backing the Iraq war and making their country a target for al-Qaida. The Spanish Socialist Workers Party declared victory with 96 percent of the votes counted. The party soared from 125 seats in the outgoing 350-seat legislature to 164 in the next one. The govern ing Popular Party fell to 148 from 183. Turnout was high at 76 percent. Many voters said Thursday’s bombings, which killed 200 people and wounded 1,500, was a decisive factor, along with the govern ment’s much-criticized handling of the initial investigation. - “The Popular Party has made ^ me lose faith in politics,” said Juan Rigola, 23, a biologist in Barcelona. “It deserves to lose and to see the Spanish people turn against them.” Until the bombing, the conser vative Popular Party was project ed by most polls to beat the Socialists. But the disaster, which the gov ernment initially blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA, threw the election wide open. The attack was followed by emotional rallies across the country. Critics accused the govern ment, which had trumpeted its crackdown on ETA, of manipulat ing the investigation for political gain, striking a chord with voters. Some voters were angry at out going Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, accusing him of making Spain a target for Islamic ex tremists because of his support for the Iraq war, despite the op position of most Spaniards. Aznar sent 1,300 Spanish troops to Iraq after the conflict, and 11 have died. “I wasn’t planning to vote, but I am here today because the Popular Party is responsible for murders here and in Iraq,” said Ernesto Sanchez-Gey, 48. Other voters, however, ex pressed support for the ruling par ty precisely because it endorsed the Iraq war, and for its crack down on ETA. Mari Carmen Pinadero Martinez, 58, a housewife, said she "voted to help the government end terrorism” as she cast her ballot near the downtown Atocha rail way station where trains were bombed. In El Pozo northeast of Madrid, the site of one of the four blasts, a ruined train car was in clear view of the polling station. The Interior Ministry has an nounced five arrests in the bomb ing, including three Moroccans, and discovery of a videotape in which a man speaking Arabic says Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida net work claimed responsibility for the attack. “All Signs Point to al-Qaida,” the country’s largest circulation newspaper, El Pais, said in a front page banner headline Sunday. The videotape was recovered from a trash basket near a Madrid mosque after an Arabic-speaking man called a Madrid TV station to say it was there, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said. In Morocco, authorities said one of the five detainees had been under surveillance for months and was suspected of ties to Islamic radicalism. On Sunday, a Basque-language daily published a statement by ETA in which the group for a sec ond time denied involvement in the attacks. A handful of young protesters screamed “murderer” at Mariano Rajoy, the ruling party candidate for prime minister, as he cast his vote in an elementary school out side Madrid. Rajoy declined to comment on the arrests or videotape. “These elections come at a time of great pain,” he said. Before the attacks, polls gave Rajoy’s party a 3-5 percentage point lead over the Socialists in the race for the 350-seat Congress of Deputies. Aznar did not seek re-election, complying with a pledge to not seek a third four-year term. San Francisco mayor still fights for gay marriage BY BETH FOUHY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SAN FRANCISCO - Slapped down by California’s Supreme Court, Mayor Gavin Newsom re mained defiant in his quest to make same-sex marriages legal. He immediately approved a new constitutional challenge, predicting that his view will ul timately prevail. “I hope every elected official in the United States takes a look at that Constitution that they swore to uphold,” he told a crowd at City Hall, where his brazen move allowed 4,000 gay and lesbian couples to wed. “I hope they conclude exactly what I’ve concluded — that there’s nothing in the Constitution that allows me to discriminate against people.” wnetner Newsom is ahead ot his time or has doomed his po litical future, he clearly has fired up a national debate already sim mering after Massachusetts’s highest court declared gay mar riage legal there. Scores of gay couples have since wed in other cities that have followed San Francisco’s lead. All this from a mayor who had been in office less than two weeks when he decided to thrust the city into the center of the na tion’s culture wars. Newsom was considered to be about as conservative as politi cians come in left-leaning San Francisco, narrowly winning a December runoff against a pop ular Green Party candidate. He claims the decision to al low gay marriage — which caused his approval ratings to soar to 65 percent among city vot ers — was made almost entirely without political calculation. “The one thing that tran scends everything else are prin ciples. If I just wanted to get ahead politically, this issue is the last issue I would have,touched.” Most prominent Democrats were initially shocked into re treat, as gays and lesbians lined up outside City Hall. Some criti cized the weddings as a self-con scious vanity crusade on behalf of the country’s most gay-friend ly city that would set back gay rights efforts elsewhere. But Newsom didn’t back down, even after President Bush cited the San Francisco wedding spree as a key reason for en dorsing a constitutional amend ment banning same sex mar riage. The.straight, Catholic, married mayor went on national television and became a princi pal antagonist in the fight. In California, where politics are now dominated by the col orful presence of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Newsom’s star has temporarily eclipsed other longtime Democratic leaders such as Treasurer Phil Angelides and Attorney General Bill Lockyer — both likely to run for gover 11U1 111 But the move could prove po litically challenging for other Democrats, said Leon Panetta. “The’general rule in politics is don’t nrnke waves, and most people in office feel generally this type of wedge issue has lots of dangerous aspects to it,” Panetta said. Democratic presidential can didate John Kerry has come out against gay marriage, but in fa vor of civil unions that confer the same rights. Newsom said he’s been sur prised by the lack of support from public figures he expected to stand with him. Even if the city loses the next court battle, it has already suc ceeded in humanizing the de bate, demonstrating that “you can’t deal with discrimination in the abstract,” Newsom said. .- .. I °K I ice0fr$r x I I Jousting! ■ University Housing Presents: 1 March 16, 2004 11am - 2pm Russell House Patio ✓ ■ -Sc| mac*gray $ * * I CAHOLKA mimar PLACE