Nation in brief

Fewer blacks cast votes in primary

Black voter turnout in the city’s first election after Hurricane Katrina was down, while white voter turnout was roughly the same, according to statistics released Friday.

Thirty-one percent of registered black voters cast ballots in the April 22 primary, compared with 45 percent in the 2002 primary. Roughly half of registered white voters cast ballots in both years, according to figures released by Secretary of State Al Ater.

Overall, 110,000 voters, or 37 percent of those registered, cast ballots.

Before Katrina struck Aug. 29, wiping out much of the city, New Orleans was roughly two-thirds black, and civil rights activists have said many of those who remain outside the city are black.

To accommodate the unprecedented conditions in this year’s election, officials allowed displaced voters to cast ballots at satellite polling places around the state and to vote by fax and mail.

WASHINGTON

Rice predicts minority president

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she expects to see a U.S. president from an ethnic minority during her lifetime, but it will not be her.

Rice’s audience of young Latinos laughed and applauded when she said it Friday, and she responded with an embarrassed grin.

Rice, who is black, has been asked repeatedly whether she plans to run for the open Republican candidacy in 2008, when her boss, President Bush, completes his second term and cannot run again. She is considered a prospect for the 2008 GOP nomination in some Republican circles.

NEW YORK

Valerie Plame agrees to book deal

Valerie Plame, the former CIA operative whose unmasking led to a federal investigation and the indictment of a top vice presidential aide, has agreed to a book deal with the Crown Publishing Group.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but two sources close to the negotiations said the deal was in the low seven figures. Several publishers had competed for the memoir, scheduled to come out in the fall of 2007.

Compiled from wire reports