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Toronto council looks to complete stripping mayor of his powers amid widening drug scandal
• TORONTO (AP) -- The Toronto City Council moved a step closer to making Rob Ford a mayor in name only following months of publicity surrounding his excessive drinking and drug use, and will look to complete those efforts next week when council resumes.
• Ford vowed to take City Council to court after it voted overwhelmingly Friday to strip him of some of his powers over his admitted use of crack cocaine, public drinking and increasingly erratic behavior.
• The motion, approved in a 39-3 vote, suspends Ford's authority to appoint and dismiss the deputy mayor and his executive committee. The council, which lacks the authority to force the mayor from office unless he is convicted of a crime and jailed, also voted to give the deputy mayor authority to handle any civic emergency.
• The effort will continue Monday when the council moves to strip the mayor of most of his remaining powers, including his office budget. It would also appoint the deputy mayor to lead of his executive committee. That motion has already been signed by 28 of the council's 44 members.
• The votes capped another frenzied week of twists and turns in a scandal that has been the talk of Canada's largest city and financial capital for months.
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News of JFK's shooting sent 'wave of grief' around world that echoes in hearts 50 years later
• RUNNYMEDE, England (AP) -- There is a quiet and somber feel to this small piece of America on an English hillside, near where the Magna Carta was signed eight centuries ago.
• Only a trickle of visitors come to the John F. Kennedy Memorial, located on about a half-hectare (an acre) of land given to the people of the United States by Queen Elizabeth II in an unprecedented act of British affection for the fallen president.
• Here, near the Thames River meadow where the founding charter of civil liberties was signed in 1215, the queen came to dedicate the austere monument to a president killed 1½ years previously.
• Accompanied by Kennedy's widow, his two children and two surviving brothers, the queen spoke of "the unprecedented intensity of that wave of grief, mixed with (Continued on page 26)
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