McCain has 22% death risk in 4 yrs

London, Oct. 24: An American doctor has estimated that the Republican presidential candidate John McCain has a six per cent risk of dying of a skin cancer recurrence each year, about 22 per cent over four years.

"There is a one-in-four to one-in-five chance that he would not survive a first term," New Scientist magazine quoted Mr John Alam of Cambridge, Massac-husetts, as saying. His estimate is higher than that of Mr McCain’s physician at the Mayo Clinic, who had once said that the senator had a less than 10 per cent chance of deadly relapse.

Mr Alam’s estimate is based on studies of the survival rates of others with melanoma, where the patients were grouped by the size and location of their tumour, their gender, and age. His estimate, though nothing more than an educated guess, attains significance as it falls between the previous estimates of 10 and 60 per cent. Though Mr Alam is a supporter of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, he insists that he performed the analysis independently.

—ANI

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Palin: I’m frugal spender

Washington, Oct. 24: Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin insisted she is a "frugal" spender as she denied she had a $150,000 Republican Party clothes budget for her and her family for the White House campaign.

"That whole thing is just, bad!" the Alaska governor told the Chicago Tribune. "Oh, if people only knew how frugal we are," she said, after political ethics campaigners lodged a formal complaint over Republican National Committee’s expenditures, which were first reported this week. —AFP