Correction: non-fiction should read fiction.Albany, New York-AP -- A new poll says Americans aren't swayed much in their opinion of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by reports of her memoir.But most voters surveyed say they've either read or heard about the book, called "Living History."
The poll says eight percent of those aware of the book think more favorably of her for writing it, while 18 percent view her less favorably.
The head of the Quinnipiac (KWIN'-ihp-ee-ak) University polling institute says the message from Americans is clear: "We're talking about your book, but it doesn't much change how we think of you."
One bookstore chain says sales of Clinton's book have set a one-day record for non-fiction.
Heavily armed child soldiers are just one of the perils facing a Canadian aid worker in eastern Congo struggling to help the thousands of starving, homeless people displaced by tribal violence."It's a scary place," Philip Maher said yesterday in a satellite telephone interview from the equatorial jungle near Beni in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The 47-year-old relief officer with World Vision is originally from Toronto, but now lives in Guelph with his family.
"There are two things you see as you move around ... thousands upon thousands of displaced people and soldiers, particularly child soldiers. They are armed with AK-47s (assault rifles) and rocket launchers."
Maher said the presence of United Nations soldiers — enforcing a ceasefire between ethnic Hema and Lendu militias battling for control of Bunia, capital of the mineral-rich Ituri province — has subdued the aggression of the child soldiers and their older colleagues.
However, he had to pass through five checkpoints in the 45 minutes it took him to make his way from where he slept to the area where aid was being dispensed.
The U.N. says 500 civilians have been massacred in inter-ethnic fighting around Bunia in the past month and 50,000 have been killed since 1999.
That is just a fraction of the dead in the long civil war that has killed an estimated 3 million people, mainly from disease and starvation, since 1998 in the former Zaire.
Maher said the current fighting has displaced close to 1 million people from the Bunia region. It took refugees, fleeing the fighting, two weeks to walk to Beni.