Obama link to former radical's group eyed

WASHINGTON — The University of Illinois, Chicago, said Friday it is releasing records of Barack Obama's service to a nonprofit organization linked to former 1960s radical William Ayers.

Supporters of John McCain have been trying to exploit the tie between Obama and Ayers, with a McCain fundraiser donating nearly $2.9 million for an independent ad focusing on Ayers. Ayers' Weatherman group took responsibility for bombings that included nonfatal blasts at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago.

The records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an organization that Obama chaired and that Ayers co-founded, will be made available to the public Tuesday, the university said in a statement.

In the 1990s, Ayers was instrumental in starting the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was awarded nearly $50 million by a foundation to help reform Chicago schools. Ayers is a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He and Obama have other ties.

Inmate charged with sending powder

DENVER — Prosecutors charged a jail inmate Friday with sending a threatening letter and white powder to a Colorado campaign office for GOP presidential candidate John McCain.

Tests showed the white powder wasn't anthrax or any other lethal substance, but authorities had not determined what it was.

Prosecutors said Marc Harold Ramsey, 39, sent a letter to McCain's office in the south Denver suburb of Centennial reading, "If you are reading this, then you are already dead!"

The letter was signed Akeem Ramsey El, but the return address on the envelope had Ramsey's name and "Arapahoe County Detention Facility."

Ramsey is awaiting trial on charges of menacing, harassment and assaulting a peace officer.

The Secret Service said a separate scare triggered by a letter sent to a McCain campaign office in Manchester, N.H., was a false alarm.

Youngest half-sibling of Obama found

The Italian edition of Vanity Fair reports it tracked down George Hussein Onyango Obama, 26 — the youngest of Barack Obama's many half siblings — living in a ramshackle hut on the outskirts of Nairobi.

According to a translation in the United Kingdom's Telegraph, the younger Obama said he does not like to admit his relation to the candidate because he is ashamed of his poverty.

However, George Obama told CNN the Vanity Fair report and similar ones angered him.

"I was brought up well. I live well even now," he said. "There are some challenges, but maybe it is just like where you come from, there are the same challenges."

The brothers met only twice; in his autobiography, the candidate described George as a "beautiful boy with a rounded head."

Seattle Times news services