Factions

TRIPOLI, Libya - Libya's first nationwide elections in nearly five decades brought hints Sunday of an Arab Spring precedent: Western-leaning parties making strides over Islamist rivals hoping to follow the same paths to power as in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia. While final results from Saturday's parliamentary election could still be days away under a two-tier selection system, unofficial and partial counts from Libya's biggest cities suggested liberal factions were leading the Muslim Brotherhood and allies in a possible first major setback to their political surge after last year's uprisings.

Forget the labels Republican and Democrat, incumbent and challenger. In the Deptford Township primary elections, there are 10 candidates and two factions: those who feel that the town is being run well and those who feel the current administration has become too comfortable. And these factions cross party and incumbency lines. Six of the primary candidates are Republicans who are squaring off to determine which four will represent their party in the November election. Four Democrats are running unopposed.

James E. McGreevey, whose tireless pursuit of the New Jersey governorship consumed most of his adult life, finally stopped running yesterday. In deciding to resign because of a homosexual affair, the governor succumbed to the swirl of political, legal and personal crises that had compromised his ability to govern and destroyed his reelection chances. McGreevey's planned departure on Nov. 15 also touched off a storm in New Jersey politics that has both parties - and factions within the parties - scrambling for supremacy in the post-McGreevey era. After a day of political intrigue and turmoil, McGreevey announced that he would not resign until later this year - making a special election in November impossible and paving the way for State Senate President Richard J. Codey to serve out the final year of McGreevey's term.

A long-brewing family dispute between two factions of Cherry Hill Democrats is getting some ink in campaign literature soon to arrive in Cherry Hill mailboxes. The platforms of the two camps - hard-line barbs that herald a bitter primary fight - are taking shape. A slate of four Township Council candidates led by Mayor Susan Bass Levin rips what it calls the patronage and corruption of its opponents, the Camden County Democratic Party. At the same time, the party-endorsed slate promises no new taxes and criticizes the incumbent candidates for raising them last year by 80 percent.

An alleged feud between two factions of the Philadelphia mob was the focus yesterday in the racketeering trial of Nicodemo Scarfo and 16 associates as the government presented testimony about two men killed and two men wounded. Patricia Tamburrino, the widow of Salvatore "Sammy" Tamburrino, testified that she was at home with her two children on Nov. 3, 1983, when her husband was shot to death in the variety store he operated beneath their Southwest Philadelphia home. She testified that she heard a series of shots, ran downstairs and saw her husband lying unconscious on the floor toward the rear of the store.

There will be no mending of fences between two factions of the Pine Hill Republican Club, whose leaders are separated by a gulf that not even the county Republican Party can bridge. Representatives of the opposing factions - Dreama Biddle and former Mayor Joseph Nunes - met Saturday with county Republican Party Chairman Frederick Fitchett in an attempt to unify the municipal party. In the end, both sides were more convinced than ever that a reconciliation was impossible. "(Nunes)

Ten parishioners of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith in South Philadelphia surrendered yesterday on aggravated assault and related charges stemming from a fight in the church sanctuary last month. Two factions, police said, have been battling for control of the 3,000- member church, at 22d and Bainbridge Streets, since the death of its leader of 30 years, Bishop S. McDowell Shelton, in October. The 10 who surrendered at South Detective Division, 24th and Wolf Streets, were members of the faction led by Kenneth Shelton.

In flashy, suburban, mall-centered Cherry Hill, the politicians are sleeping less and schmoozing more than usual, with only two weeks left in the Democratic primary race for control of township government. As two factions of local Democrats spar away, a slate of uncontested Republicans are lying low, waiting to make their play for the four open seats on Township Council after the bloody Democratic primary. Veteran pols are closely watching Cherry Hill's Democratic tussle, the first outward sign of party division for the second-largest municipality in Democrat-controlled Camden County in a decade.

Pharmaceutical companies live on patent protection. They make their profits in the few years they enjoy a monopoly on the drugs they have discovered. They fight fiercely to protect their turf, and give generously to politicians to make sure they protect that turf too. Who, then, do you think has just issued a report showing that changes in law and regulation have effectively doubled the drug companies' patent protection time? Some tiny, Naderite public interest group? Some other representative of the little guy?

A rift over leadership in the Gloucester County Republican Party has created a bitterly contested primary for two seats on the freeholder board. The ordinarily unified party has split into three factions that will battle on June 2 for a piece of county government, which has been controlled by Democrats for 20 years. This year, Democrats are fielding incumbent Freeholders Joe Chila and Robert Damminger, with Carmel Morina running for reelection as sheriff. On the Republican side, county party chairwoman Loran Oglesby has been criticized by members of two party blocs, who say she has been ineffective in her four years in charge.

BEIRUT - Opponents and supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad traded heavy machine-gun fire and mortar shells in the Lebanese port city of Tripoli, leaving five people dead in what was described as some of the heaviest fighting there in years, officials said Thursday. Tripoli has been a frequent flashpoint of sectarian tensions stoked by the civil war in neighboring Syria. The latest overnight deaths brought to 16 the number of people killed in clashes there this week, and the overall number of wounded rose to 190, said a security official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.

BRUSSELS - The newly formed Syrian opposition coalition received backing from the European Union on Monday in a significant vote of confidence for a movement struggling to prove its credibility and gain the trust of the country's factions. EU foreign ministers stopped short of offering official diplomatic recognition because that can only be decided by each member country individually. But the endorsement of the coalition as a legitimate voice for Syria's people represents a major step forward in the West's acceptance of the group.

By David M. Kennedy Barack Obama made history in 2008. It may now be his fate merely to mark time. Obama's election as the first black president closed a chapter - though surely not the book - in America's long, vexed racial history, just as John F. Kennedy's election amounted to a major cadence in the nation's turbulent religious history. Kennedy proved to be both the first and last Catholic president, in the sense that Catholicism has never since defined political identity as it did for most of the republic's first two centuries.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - An international mediator told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that he hoped a four-day holiday truce could take hold in Syria this week, warning that another failure would worsen the fighting and increasingly threaten neighboring countries. Yet even this modest effort - the international community's only plan for scaling back the violence - appears doomed to fail. Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League envoy, said the Syrian regime and some rebel groups promised to lay down their arms during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which begins Friday.

MINGORA, Pakistan - Pakistani police have arrested a number of suspects in the case of a 14-year-old girl shot and wounded by the Taliban for promoting education for girls and criticizing the fundamentalist Islamic movement, officials said Friday. The shooting of Malala Yousufzai along with two classmates while they were on their way home from school Tuesday horrified people in Pakistan and internationally. It has been followed by an outpouring of support for a girl who earned the enmity of the Taliban for publicizing their acts and speaking about the importance of education for girls.

TRIPOLI, Libya - Libya's first nationwide elections in nearly five decades brought hints Sunday of an Arab Spring precedent: Western-leaning parties making strides over Islamist rivals hoping to follow the same paths to power as in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia. While final results from Saturday's parliamentary election could still be days away under a two-tier selection system, unofficial and partial counts from Libya's biggest cities suggested liberal factions were leading the Muslim Brotherhood and allies in a possible first major setback to their political surge after last year's uprisings.

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney will need independent voters in November, but he isn't abandoning his "severely conservative" record. The likely Republican presidential nominee has embarked on an aggressive campaign against President Obama that straddles two sometimes-conflicting political ideologies. On some days, the former Massachusetts governor is a social conservative and social moderate, a right-wing conspiracy theorist and promoter of political compromise. It's an evolving balancing act that, so far, is leaning decidedly right.

DHAKA, Bangladesh - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Bangladesh's feuding political leaders Saturday to work together and end their most recent bout of discord for the good of their impoverished country. Clinton said weeks of strikes and protests that have paralyzed the country and killed at least five people had undermined development and scared off foreign investors. The actions stem from the disappearance of an opposition leader last month. She appealed to Bangladeshis to respect the rule of law and called for a robust government investigation of the missing politician and allegations by the opposition of a brutal crackdown on dissent.

THE IMAM and members of the board of a prominent West Philadelphia mosque went to court yesterday in an effort to overturn a hostile takeover by rival factions, which include supporters of the ousted imam, Shamsud-din Ali - a central figure in the 2005 City Hall bugging scandal. Elected officials of the Philadelphia Masjid, the city's oldest continuous African-American mosque, filed an emergency injunction Jan. 13, a week after fights erupted inside the mosque. Court documents allege that some rival members interrupted religious services on Jan. 6 and assaulted Imam Malik Mubashshir and Rafiq Kalam id-din, chairman of the mosque's board.