In brief: Perry surges in presidential poll

Austin, Texas – Just days after announcing his candidacy, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has jumped into first place in the race for the Republican presidential nomination in one survey, grabbing the lead from former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports poll.

Perry was the favorite of 29 percent of the poll respondents. Romney came in second with 18 percent. And Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, winner of Iowa’s straw poll Saturday, was third with 13 percent. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a close second in the straw poll, was fourth in the Rasmussen survey with 9 percent.

Although 16 percent of the respondents to the Rasmussen survey were undecided about the candidates, pollster Scott Rasmussen said Perry’s ascent into an 11-point lead “marks a significant jump in support.”

The national survey was conducted Monday night among 1,000 likely Republican primary voters. The margin of error was 3 percentage points.

Man climbs down after stint on tower

Tulsa, Okla. – A man with a history of mental illness who scaled an Oklahoma TV tower and resisted attempts to coax him down for nearly a week voluntarily surrendered to authorities Tuesday night, police said.

The 25-year-old man was taken to a hospital to be treated for dehydration and was expected to be transferred to a mental health facility for observation, Tulsa police spokesman Leland Ashley said.

“He was very weak. We didn’t force him to come down,” Ashley said of the man, who climbed about 100 feet up the Clear Channel communications tower last Thursday.

During the six days he was on the tower, rescue crews offered him food and water, conditional on him agreeing to come down from his perch, but he rebuffed them until Tuesday evening.

Washington – Pentagon investigators have begun an inquiry into whether the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which helps develop cutting-edge technology for the military, showed favoritism when it gave $1.75 million to a company co-owned by the DARPA director and run by her father.

The Pentagon’s inspector general said it will examine DARPA’s contracts over the last two years with RedXDefense, a Maryland-based defense contractor that builds devices to detect trace amounts of explosives. The technology is used to help find roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Regina Dugan was a senior official at DARPA before she left in 2005 to co-found RedX with her father, Vince Dugan. She was president of the company until she returned to DARPA as director in July 2009, records show.