Authorities say a threatening letter containing an unidentified white powder was sent to a John McCain campaign office in the Denver suburb of Centennial, and a similar letter was sent to a McCain office in Manchester, N.H.

A hazardous materials team was trying to determine if the powder found in Colorado is harmful.

It wasn’t immediately known if the New Hampshire letter also contained a powder, a spokesman with Mr. McCain’s national campaign office in Arlington, Va, Jeff Sadosky, said.

Associated Press

OBAMA ‘HAS MADE THE SELECTION’ FOR VP

Senator Obama said yesterday he’s chosen his running mate, but coyly kept all the details to himself as he campaigned with one leading contender and planned a major rally to present the Democratic ticket Saturday in Illinois.

Mr. Obama refused to say whether he’d notified his pick or when exactly he would send cell phones buzzing with the answer delivered via text message. He seemed to relish the frustrations of scores of reporters following him this week in anticipation of the announcement.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said with a grin when asked by an Associated Press reporter when the text would be sent.

“I’ve made the selection, that’s all you’re gonna get,” Mr. Obama said as he visited a store selling roasted Virginia peanuts as nonchalantly as any other day campaigning in a battleground state.

Obama planned to appear with his pick Saturday at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., where he launched his presidential campaign in February 2007. Mr. Obama then planned to travel to the battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Montana before arriving in Denver to accept his party’s nomination Thursday.

Associated Press

OBAMA INSPIRED HALF-BROTHER TO CHANGE LIFE

The half brother of Senator Obama has said that the American senator has inspired him to turn his life around.

George Hussein Obama, 26, was discovered this week living in a shack on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. He told the Daily Telegraph yesterday that although he had hardly spoken to his half-brother, the presidential candidate’s book “Dreams From My Father” was providing the inspiration to lift himself out of poverty.

“When you have a brother who wants to be the number one most important person in the world, it obviously gives you a lot of inspiration,” Mr. Obama, 26, said at his 6-foot-by-8-foot corrugated tin shack on a muddy road in the Huruma slum.

The Daily Telegraph