www.latimes.com

A brawl between several people dressed as action figures erupted in front of the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on Thursday evening, resulting in a Jack Sparrow character being pepper-sprayed by an attacker, police said.

Jack Sparrow was treated for minor injuries in the fracas that included Catwoman, an alien and a second pirate, the Los Angeles Police Department said.

Officers were searching streets in Hollywood after Catwoman, the alien and pirate fled following the free-for-all that played out in front of tourists on busy Hollywood Boulevard, Officer Norma Eisenman said.

The incident was the latest run-in between characters who pose for pictures with tourists and then aggressively demand money, according to police.

In September, a man dressed as SpongeBob SquarePants was detained by police outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood after an altercation with two women. In another incident, Spider-Man was led away in handcuffs.

Police officials acknowledge that maintaining peace in the area has been challenging. At one point, LAPD officials held a summit with characters to improve relations in the popular destination and even resorted to a temporary ban after problems persisted.

City rules allow people to tip characters, but prohibit them from demanding payment.

www.latimes.com

An Arizona man has been indicted for traveling to California and allegedly having sex with an underage boy from Ontario, the FBI said Thursday evening.

Michael Killala, 42, who lives in Peoria, allegedly got the boy intoxicated on vodka at a hotel before having sex, the FBI said.

Killala met the boy online in an Internet chat room and corresponded with the victim for several months, according to the FBI. The Arizona resident allegedly traveled to California in December and again this month to meet the victim.

The boy’s mother contacted the Ontario Police Department on Jan. 22 to report that her son had been in contact with Killala.

He was arrested that day at an Ontario hotel and consented to a search of his room, authorities said. He allegedly admitted that he had sex with the boy twice, gave him vodka and knew that he was underage, the FBI said.

Authorities said that Killala may have been in contact with other underage victims in California and Arizona. Anyone with information is asked to call the FBI at (888) 226-8443. Anyone in Arizona is asked to call authorities at (602) 534-3200.

Photo: Michael Killala. Credit: FBI

www.theatlantic.com

A larger-than-life, but not actually alive, Ruhollah Khomeini is trotted our for a very special military ceremony.

The Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran this morning reenacted a very important moment in their country’s history with a very bizarre ceremony. The solemn event was photographed by the state-run Mehr News Agency, the website of which has since gone down (as it often does). Fortunately, we have preserved the photos and reproduce them below.

But before the photos comes the history. On this day in 1979, Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned home after 14 years in exile. He had been forced out by the secular and U.S.-backed Shah, who rightly feared his popularity. While in exile, he made high-profile sermons, wrote books, and circulated audiotapes explaining his vision for a Shia theocratic state. The revolution began in 1977 and, by the time the Shah fled in January 1979, Khomeini was living in France. When he flew home on February 1 he was joined by U.S. reporter Peter Jennings and others, and was met by millions of cheering Iranians at the airport. He declared his opposition to the interim government, led a popular campaign against it, and by the end of the year had established the Islamic Republic, with himself as Supreme Leader.

Thirty-three years later, Khomeini’s return is still remembered as one of the most important moments in the founding of Iran as we know it today. So you can perhaps forgive the country’s leaders for getting a bit carried away in commemorating the event. The idea to reproduce his arrival on the tarmac of the Tehran airport is an interesting one, but of course Khomeini himself can’t participate, being deceased. So, naturally, someone decided to construct not one, not two, but three giant cardboard constructions of the Islamic Republic’s founder and march them around the Tehran Airport.

Flipping through the photo above, you can watch a couple of sunglassed soldiers dutifully marching Khomeini’s scowling (and enormous) face out of an airplane and down the tarmac in an “inspection” of a waiting regiment. The gathered troops salute solemnly — trying not to laugh? genuinely moved? — as the fake ayatollah glares back. A marching band plays in the background, because why not. At this point, the ceremony switches to a smaller reproduction (presumably because the original is too large to transport), which is gingerly seated in a truck and driven off. My favorite part is the third Khomeini, an enormous free-standing photo of his original 1979 arrival, that stands in the back, watching over the entire ceremony.

http://www.freep.com/detroitcitynews

LOS ANGELES — A veteran elementary school teacher was arrested on horrifying child molestation charges after a film processor gave police photos showing blindfolded children with their mouths taped and cockroaches on their faces, authorities said Tuesday.

Mark Berndt, 61, was arrested Monday at his Torrance home and remained jailed on $2.3-million bail, according to a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department statement.

The charges involve 23 boys and girls ages 6-10 between 2008 and 2010.

The investigation started when the film processor gave authorities 40 photos depicting blindfolded children in a classroom with their mouths taped shut.

Berndt worked for more than 30 years at Miramonte Elementary in an unincorporated area of south Los Angeles before being fired as a result of the investigation. Miramonte serves a poor, mainly Hispanic neighborhood. More than half of its approximately 1,400 students still are learning English, according to the school’s website.

Some of the photos showed Berndt with his arm around children or with his hand over their mouth. Other pictures depicted girls with what appears to be a spoon up to their mouths as if they were going to ingest a clear-white liquid.

Sheriff’s Lt. Carlos Marquez of the Special Victims Bureau said it was determined the children were given semen on a spoon or on a cookie. A blue plastic spoon and container found in trash in Berndt’s classroom tested positive for semen, the sheriff’s statement said.

None of the photos showed the students actually eating the semen, but Marquez said the children reported they didn’t like the taste. Authorities are recommending the children be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

Some of the children’s mouths and faces had large, live Madagascar-type cockroaches on them, according to the statement.

The incidents occurred during school hours, but not all the children were students of Berndt, Marquez said.

None of the alleged victims told anyone about the incidents, Marquez said. “They didn’t know they were being violated in that manner. They just thought it was a game,” he said.

Berndt is unmarried, has no children and there’s no indication of a previous arrest record, authorities said.

“I am sickened and horrified by the behavior of Mark Berndt,” Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy said in a statement.

More than 80 current and former students and school employees were interviewed for the investigation. Searches of the classroom and Berndt’s home turned up about 390 photos depicting children, Marquez said.

In addition, a DVD depicting adult sexual bondage “which mirrored the bondage-type photos of the children” was found during the search, the sheriff’s department said, noting that those images are not a crime.

CNN.COM

(CNN) — Top International Atomic Energy Agency officials arrived in Iran Sunday, state media reported, after the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog expressed fresh concerns that the Islamic republic was trying to develop nuclear weapons.
The six-member delegation, including chief inspector Herman Nackaerts, arrived at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, Press TV reported.
“We are trying… to resolve all the outstanding issues with Iran,” Nackaerts told reporters earlier, as he was about to leave Vienna, Austria, according to Press TV. “We are looking forward to the start of a dialogue, a dialogue that is overdue.”
A mission to Iran by such a senior team — which also includes the agency’s second-in-command, Rafael Grossi — is unusual, the agency said when it announced the visit on Monday. The team is due to be in Iran through Tuesday, the IAEA says.

The announcement of the mission came shortly after the European Union imposed a tough round of new sanctions on Iran, aimed at cutting off funding to the country’s nuclear program. The United States and Australia have also ramped up sanctions on Iran in the past week.
The United States and its allies think Tehran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran denies it.
Speaking Friday at the Davos Forum in Switzerland, energy agency Director General Yukiya Amano told reporters the visit is intended “to clarify the issues with possible military dimensions.
“We are not very sure whether Iran has declared everything and, therefore, we are not very sure that everything stays in peaceful purpose,” he said. “In addition, we have information that Iran has engaged in activities related to the development of nuclear weapons. Therefore, we need to clarify.”
“The preparations have gone well, but we need to see what actually happens when the mission arrives,” he said.
Inspectors are in and out of the country regularly, an agency spokeswoman said Monday, but a high-level visit of the kind taking place at the end of the month is more unusual.
Iran’s envoy to the energy agency said Saturday he was hopeful the trip will “resolve any ambiguity and show (our) transparency and cooperation with the agency.”
“This trip is aimed at neutralizing enemy plots … and baseless allegations, and proving the peaceful nature of our nuclear activities,” Ali Asghar Soltanieh told state-run Islamic Republican News Agency.
Amano said that the energy agency proposed the mission, and Iranian authorities “agreed to accept” it. But the Islamic news agency reported Nackaerts is traveling at Tehran’s invitation.
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he was ready to discuss the program with a group of world powers that have been having on-and-off negotiations with the country over its nuclear ambitions — including Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.
The energy agency reported in November that it can no longer verify that the Iranian nuclear program remains peaceful, and Iran is under increasing international pressure to halt its nuclear fuel work.
Western sanctions have targeted its currency, the rial, driving up prices for goods within Iran, and the European Union announced Monday that it would stop importing Iranian oil as of July 1 in an effort to starve the country’s nuclear program of funding.
In response, an Iranian official said Sunday that Tehran would stop oil exports to “certain countries,” soon, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. Oil Minister Rostam Qassemi made the statement after a cabinet meeting Sunday, as Iranian lawmakers are debating whether to halt oil exports to European countries, IRNA reported.

Kunduz, Afghanistan (CNN) — Police in the northern Afghanistan province of Kunduz are looking for a man they say strangled his wife after she bore him a third child that was not a son.
Sher Mohammed, 29, married his 22-year-old wife, Storay, four years ago, police said.
The couple had three daughters, the last of whom was born three months ago, said Khanabad district police chief Sufi Habib.
After the youngest daughter was born, Mohammed blamed his wife for not being able to deliver a boy, Habib said.
“Finally on Saturday, the man, with the help of his mother, first beat the woman and then strangled her to death,” the police chief said. Khanabad is about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Kunduz city.
Police arrested the mother, Wali Hazrata, and detained her at the Kunduz city jail. But her son fled.
In a jailhouse interview, Hazrata said her son’s wife committed suicide out of guilt.
“My son did not commit the crime,” Hazrata said. “… But after three daughters, Storay herself felt guilty and committed suicide.”
The report comes weeks after Afghan police said they rescued a 15-year-old girl who was locked up in the basement of her in-laws’ house, starved, and had her nails pulled out.
The girl, Sahar Gul, was married off to a 30-year-old man last year. Authorities in the northern Baghlan province said the girl reportedly was tortured after she refused to submit to prostitution.
Activists say women continue to suffer in parts of Afghanistan despite overall progress since the fall of the Taliban.
In the second quarter of last year, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) registered 1,026 cases of violence against women. In 2010, 2,700 cases were recorded.
In December, gunmen attacked and sprayed an Afghan family with acid in their home after the father rejected a man’s bid to marry his teenage daughter.
In another case, a 21-year-old, identified only as Gulnaz for her own protection, was sentenced to 12 years in prison after she reported that her cousin’s husband had raped her.
Her plight attracted international attention when it came out that she had agreed to marry her attacker to gain her freedom and legitimize a daughter conceived in the attack.
She was eventually freed, following the president’s intervention.

Washington (CNN) — Occupy DC demonstrators spent Sunday afternoon discussing how to respond to a call by the National Park Service to stop camping overnight at sites a few blocks from the White House.
The park service notified protesters on Friday that they “may be subject to arrest and their property subject to seizure as evidence” if there are evident “camping violations” by around noon Monday.
The notice for those in McPherson Square and nearby Freedom Plaza said that to comply with the federal agency’s camping regulations, demonstrators must remove all camping material from the sites and leave one side of all temporary structures open at all times. Authorities describe the purpose of the order as necessary to ensure public health and safety.
Oakland cleans up after “Occupy” clash
Video posted online from early Sunday showed a man appearing to walk away from U.S. Park Police members as he yelled out, “I have done nothing wrong.” Two officers tried to grab him before a third officer used a stun gun on the man, who was then handcuffed.
A CNN crew witnessed the arrest, which protesters said came after the man went from tent to tent removing notices posted by the National Park Service. There was no immediate comment from park police on the incident, including whether the man was charged.
Later in the day, a small group of protesters met for about three hours under the statue of Civil War hero Maj. Gen. James McPherson, which is in the middle of the park.
A protester named Eli — who would only give his first name, and who wasn’t participating in the meeting — said one of the ideas being mulled if Monday’s deadline were imposed would be to hold a “sleep strike,” in which demonstrators would play board games and do other things throughout the nights to avoid the “sleeping activities” banned by the Park Service.
“I plan on not leaving and not sleeping as long as possible,” Eli said.
Pastor Brian Merritt of Washington’s Palisades Community Church said area churches have discussed helping house some of the protesters overnight so that they could continue a 24-hour vigil if park police began enforcing the rules against overnight encampments.
Rich Coffman, a Dallas, Texas, resident who has been camping in the Washington park for three weeks, said demonstrators from Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee, and New York are expected to come Monday to show solidarity with the capital demonstrators.
Whatever happens with the camps and police, Caty McClure said it would not alter her and fellow demonstrators’ commitment to their cause or their activism.
“The park and the occupation of the park is a tactic, it’s not the movement,” she said, calling the camps “a really important symbolic statement.” “If we can’t sleep here, that does not end the movement.”
Occupy DC is part of a larger activist surge that began last year in New York and quickly spread. While the protesters have highlighted a number of causes, the overarching theme has remained largely the same: populist anger over what activists portray as an out-of-touch corporate, financial and political elite.
Demonstrators in Washington have been camping out in McPherson Square since the beginning of October. There was a daylong confrontation December 4 when protesters erected a wood structure overnight. It was eventually removed, after being deemed unsafe.
On Saturday, some of them made noise — and generated headlines — in Washington outside the 99th annual Alfalfa Club dinner thrown for high-level dignitaries, including President Obama.
As guests arrived, they were forced to pass through Occupy protesters. While police assisted attendees, demonstrators began throwing glitter. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, and other guests accompanying him were among those who were doused with the glitter.

CNN.COM

It seems the controversy surrounding TLC’s “Toddlers & Tiaras” and its pint-sized stars is never-ending.

After one contestant dressed as Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman,” another, Isabella Barrett, was filmed singing LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” at an event.

Barrett’s mother, Susanna, has since filed a lawsuit against TMZ, Huffington Post and Daily Mail Online, among other media outlets, for running stories that she alleges “sexualize” her 5-year-old daughter, according to court documents obtained by CNN.

“After this firestorm, I quickly protected my daughter by having cease and desist orders sent to most media outlets that ran the story,” Susanna said in a statement provided to CNN, adding, “I intend to clear my daughter’s name.”

Barrett also detailed her version of the events shown in a video published by TMZ. (In the video, Isabella can be seen singing along to “Sexy and I Know It” at a DJ booth with a microphone in her hand.)

News organizations reported that the Barrett’s were at a nightclub, however, Susanna said in her statement that she and her daughter were actually at “a pet friendly charity event at an American bistro restaurant in New York City at 7:19 p.m. It was a private well-lit event with vendor tables and pets in attendance.”

CNN.COM

Los Angeles (CNN) — “The Help,” a movie about the treatment of maids in a Mississippi town during the civil rights era, took top honors at the Screen Actors Guild Awards Sunday night, making it the movie to watch as the Oscar awards approach next month.
Viola Davis won the best actress trophy, while Octavia Spence was given the best supporting actress honor. Both women portrayed maids.
“The Help” also won the best cast ensemble SAG award.
“The stain of racism and sexism is not just for people of color and women,” Davis said. “It’s all of our burden, all of us.”
Davis’ best actress win seemed to throw the Oscar competition into a frenzy, since she beat Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams, actresses who won Golden Globes two weeks ago.
Streep was nominated for her portrayal of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in “Iron Lady,” and MIchelle Williams, was nominated for playing movie legend Marilyn Monroe in “My Week With Marilyn.”
Jean Dujardin won the SAG best actor in a film award for his lead role in “The Artist,” a black-and-white, silent film.
The win gives Dujardin an apparent edge against George Clooney and the three other nominees in next month’s Oscar best actor competition.
Spencer’s supporting actress SAG award makes her a clear frontrunner for the supporting actress Oscar, considering she also won the Golden Globe.
“These women represent our mothers and grandmothers,” Spencer said, referring to the maids portrayed in “The Help.” “By honoring me, you’re honoring them.”
Christopher Plummer, 82, also earned frontrunner status for in the Academy Award best supporting actor competition by winning the SAG honor Sunday night for his role in “The Beginners.”
“I just cannot tell you how much fun I’ve had being a member of the world’s second oldest profession,” Plummer said as he accepted his SAG trophy.
Hollywood’s awards season neared mid-point Sunday night with the 18th annual Screen Actors Guild honors — the only industry awards that solely recognize performers.
The SAG actor trophies go to both television and film actors, and the winners are chosen by their acting peers.
SAG President Ken Howard also used the event to announce the actor union’s board approved a proposal to merge with AFTRA, another acting union, pending approval of their memberships.
On the prime-time television side, HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” won for best ensemble cast in a drama series for a second straight year. It was also the second consecutive time for the show’s star Steve Buscemi to win the SAG best actor in a TV drama award his role of Enoch “Nucky” Thompson.
Jessica Lange won the SAG trophy for best actress in a TV drama series for her work in the FX’s “American Horror Story.” It is her first SAG honor.
“It was a real leap of faith for me to jump into it, but it’s been a wonderful ride,” Lange said of her role as “Constance.”
In the television movie or miniseries categories, best actress award went to Kate Winslet for “Mildred Pierce.” Paul Giamatti won best actor for his portrayal of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in “Too Big To Fail.”
“Modern Family” won the best ensemble cast in a TV comedy series for a second year.
Alec Baldwin won SAG’s best actor in a TV comedy series for “30 Rock,” while 89-year-old Betty White was given the best actress in a comedy award for “Hot in Cleveland,” which she won last year.
“I don’t think they can read,” White said as she accepted. “I think they made a terrible mistake.”
White, the darling of last year’s SAG telecast, will turn 90 just days before the next awards show.
The show at the Shrine Exposition Center aired on TNT and TBS. Both TNT and TBS are units of Time Warner, the parent company of CNN.

cnn.com

Jacksonville, Florida (CNN) — Front-runners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich got the most attention and Romney appeared to get the better of his opponent on a couple of occasions during the final debate before Tuesday’s critical Florida primary.
While his attacks Thursday night on his rival weren’t sharp, Romney was forceful and had Gingrich on his heels when he brushed accusations aside and turned them back on Gingrich at the CNN/Republican Party of Florida debate in Jacksonville.
“Romney won two ways tonight,” said CNN contributor and Republican strategist Alex Castellanos. “One, by having a good debate and two by having [Rick] Santorum have his best debate yet.”
Romney appeals to the more moderate wing of the Republican Party while Santorum and Gingrich are competing for the conservative vote.
Asked to address the housing crisis, one of the major problems facing Florida voters, Gingrich began by claiming that Romney was knowingly and “unfairly” attacking him on his consulting record for mortgage giant Freddie Mac, sparking a fiery back-and-forth over which candidate has had a closer relationship with troubled lenders.

Gingrich claimed that Romney had profited off of investments in both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In turn, Romney tried to explain the nature of his investments, quickly pointing out that he may own bonds, but anything he owns is controlled by a “blind trust.”
Then he asked, “Have you checked your own investments, Mr. Speaker?” and pointed out that Gingrich also has investments in the mortgage lenders, a remark that got a response from the crowd.
Thursday’s audience did play a bigger part in the debate, in contrast to the other Florida debate on Monday, at which attendees were asked to hold their applause.
Also in contrast was Romney’s approach, standing casually with a hand in his pocket for most of the two hours, directing his answers to the audience instead of at Gingrich as he had in Monday’s debate.
Florida is the next state to vote in the already volatile nominating season with Santorum, Romney and Gingrich winning the first three contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, respectively.
Romney drew frequent applause early in the debate when he pushed back attacks by Gingrich over immigration.
Gingrich charged Romney’s immigration policy would result in the deportation of grandmothers who are in the country illegally. Romney has advocated for “self-deportation,” a policy that involves making economic conditions so difficult for undocumented workers that they choose to leave the country to find better opportunities.
The former House speaker said Romney was the most anti-immigrant candidate on the debate stage, which prompted outrage from Romney.
“I’m not going to go find grandmothers and take them out of them homes and deport them,” Romney said, accusing Gingrich of using “highly-charged epithets” irresponsibly. “Our problem is not 11 million grandmothers.”
However, Gingrich and Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, did agree with Romney that at least some illegal immigrants would be likely to “self-deport” if the government were to crack down on employers who hired illegal immigrants. All three men advocated a system of identification for immigrants that would help employers verify an employee’s legal status.
Trying to widen what was becoming a two-man debate, moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the candidates flanking Gingrich and Romney, if they believed any profits earned from investing in the government-backed entities should be returned.

“That subject doesn’t really interest me,” Paul replied.
For his turn, Santorum launched into a screed against the personal turn the campaign has taken of late, asking that the debate shift back to the issues facing the country rather than the financial dealings of two candidates.
“The bigger issue here is, these two gentlemen, who are out distracting from the most important issues — we have been playing petty personal politics, can we set aside that Newt was a member of Congress and used the skills that he developed as a member of Congress to go out and advise companies — and that’s not the worst thing in the world — and that Mitt Romney is a wealthy guy because worked hard and he’s going out and working hard? And you guys should leave that alone and focus on the issues.”
The day before the debate, Gingrich told an audience on Florida’s Space Coast, hit hard by the end of the space shuttle program, that he would build a colony on the moon by the end of his second term in office — a plan that found little support among his rivals on stage. Santorum said the depth of the debt crisis was too severe to consider such proposals. Romney said that even as a private sector suggestion, the idea was deeply flawed.
Citing his business experience, Romney said that if an executive had come to him suggesting spending “billions” of dollars on a colony on the moon, “I’d say ‘You’re fired.’”
Paul continued to walk his lonely path, vowing to cut back on many of the United States’ investments in the military, health care and other government services. The candidate often injected humor into the debate when he proclaimed himself uninterested in many of the topics argued over by the other candidates in favor of a strict constructionist view.
Earlier in the day, Gingrich lashed out at Romney, accusing him of engaging in sleazy negative politics and being part of a fragile establishment desperate to stop the former House speaker from winning the GOP nomination.
“Many of you have probably noticed a number of attack ads and all sorts of junk, and that’s what it is,” Gingrich told a crowd in Mount Dora. “This is the desperate last stand of the old order throwing the kitchen sink, hoping something sticks.”

They’re trying to “drown us in enough mud, raised with money from companies and people who foreclosed on Floridians,” Gingrich claimed. “Remember the Republican establishment is just as much as an establishment as the Democratic establishment, and they are just as determined to stop us. … This is a campaign for the very nature of the Republican Party and the very opportunity for a citizen conservatism to defeat the power of money and to prove that people matter more than Wall Street.”
Romney, meanwhile, said before Thursday’s debate he would focus on his opponent in the general election rather than his rivals on stage.
“We’re going to have some choice time talking about the president and his failures, we’ll probably talk a great deal about his State of the Union address and how badly mischaracterized he has described our nation at a time when so many people are suffering in this state and across the country,” he said.
But “we may talk about the differences between ourselves as well,” he added. “There may be some give and take.”
One of Romney’s most prominent supporters, however, didn’t hesitate to attack Gingrich on Thursday. Former GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole released a statement through the Romney campaign characterizing Gingrich as erratic, unreliable and certain to lead the Republican Party to defeat in November.
When Gingrich was in Congress, he “was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway,” Dole, a former U.S. senator from Kansas, said. As speaker, Gingrich “had a new idea every minute and most of them were off the wall. … Democrats are spending millions of dollars running negative ads against Romney as they are hoping that Gingrich will be the nominee.”
The latest public opinion polls suggest that the battle for Florida’s 50 winner-take-all delegates — the largest catch so far this primary and caucus season — is turning into a two-man race between Romney and Gingrich. According to a CNN/Time/ORC International survey released Wednesday, 36% of people likely to vote in Tuesday’s Republican primary in Florida say they are backing Romney as the party’s nominee, with 34% supporting Gingrich. Romney’s 2-point margin over Gingrich is well within the survey’s sampling error.
The other two candidates are far behind, with Santorum at 11% and Paul at 9%, with 7% unsure of who they’ll vote for.
Gingrich received a boost in the polls after his double-digit victory in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, but Wednesday’s CNN poll and another by the American Research Group indicate that the former House speaker’s momentum might be waning.
And Monday’s debate in Tampa might not have helped Gingrich, as he repeatedly came under attack by Romney, Santorum and Paul over his record as House speaker in the 1990s, characterizations of influence-peddling after getting out of government and his past stance on health care reform. Gingrich didn’t seem to mount an effective response to many of the attacks.
With five days to go until the primary, the CNN/Time/ORC poll indicates that a quarter of likely primary voters say they may change their mind on which candidate they are backing.