DAVENPORT, Iowa — With a stunning $25 million fundraising haul for his presidential campaign, Democrat Barack Obama affirmed his status Wednesday as Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief rival.

The freshman Illinois senator’s three-month money total stopped just short of the record $26 million Clinton brought in. By any measure, it was an astonishing figure for a political newcomer elected to the U.S. Senate just two years ago.

Obama began his campaign with a relatively small donor base concentrated largely in Illinois, his home state. But his early opposition to the Iraq war and voter excitement over his quest to be the first black president quickly fueled a powerful fundraising machine. He attracted Wall Street executives and big-money Hollywood moguls like billionaire David Geffen, a former Clinton supporter who shifted allegiances.

BEIJING — Rural Chinese children increasingly risk being sold or forced to become beggars, petty thieves or sex workers as their farmer parents flock to cities looking for work, an international rights group said Wednesday.

China has a thriving black market in girls and women who are sold as brides, as well as babies who are abducted or bought from poor families for sale to others. The government says that it has cracked down harshly on such cases, and that the trend is decreasing.

But Kate Wedgwood, Save the Children’s country director for China and North Korea, said mass migration from farms to cities is sure to make the problem worse. In recent years, an estimated 150 million to 200 million rural residents have moved to urban areas to find jobs in factories and on construction sites.

More than a dozen protesters confronted White House adviser Karl Rove as he tried to leave a speaking engagement at American University. Rove was attending a guests-only discussion of electoral politics Tuesday night sponsored by the American University College Republicans in Washington, D.C. “It was their last meeting of the year, and Mr. Rove spent about an hour with the students,’’ said Maralee Csellar, a university spokeswoman.

When Rove tried to leave a campus building, he was confronted by protesters who surrounded his car. Campus police lifted some demonstrators from the asphalt and carried them out of the vehicle’s path so Rove could leave the campus. There were no arrests or injuries, police said.

In Provo, Utah, on Wednesday more than 200 protesters held a quiet rally against Vice President Dick Cheney at Brigham Young University. Cheney will be the commencement speaker April 26 at BYU. The demonstration was held under strict rules set by the Mormon-owned school: Stay in the designated area. No shouting. No bullhorns. No baiting Cheney supporters.

SAN FRANCISCO — The lawyer and parents of American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh asked President Bush on Wednesday to commute his 20-year prison term, citing the case of an Australian man who was sentenced to less than a year for aiding terrorism.

Lindh, 26, was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 by American forces sent to topple the Taliban after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was charged with conspiring to kill Americans and support terrorists but pleaded guilty to lesser offenses, including carrying weapons against U.S. forces.

Attorney James Brosnahan, brokered Lindh’s plea deal and said it was the best he could do in the political climate immediately after the 2001 attacks. “In the atmosphere of the time, the best John could get was a plea bargain and a 20-year sentence,” said Lindh’s father, Frank Lindh.

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