July 31, 2003
BAGHDAD -- A land mine blast on the road to Baghdad International Airport killed a U.S. soldier and injured three Thursday, the latest attack in a guerrilla campaign that has killed 52 American soldiers since May 1. "One 1st Armored Division soldier was killed and three were wounded when their M-113 Armored Personnel Carrier hit a land mine," a statement from U.S. Central Command said. The blast happened on the road to the airport which is not yet open to passenger traffic and where the U.S. military has a base.
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09:45 AM
JERUSALEM -- Israel and the Palestinians failed on Thursday to agree terms for handing control of two West Bank cities back to the Palestinians, further stalling efforts to implement a U.S.-backed peace plan. Palestinian Security Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan and Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz ended a four-hour meeting at a hotel outside Jerusalem early on Thursday without agreement on any of the key issues.
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09:44 AM
"I am mindful that we're all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take the speck out of the neighbor's eye when they got a log (
Cabin Republican) in their own," the president said, invoking a biblical passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew.
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09:33 AM
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- The 11 Texas senators who exiled themselves to New Mexico to block a GOP-backed redistricting plan denied Wednesday that they are negotiating with their Republican colleagues in Texas. The Democrats _ who refer to themselves as the "Texas 11" _ also stressed that they're footing the bill for their stay at an Albuquerque hotel, and some told of personal sacrifices they've made in being away for home.
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07:26 AM
The Knesset plenum will vote Thursday on the second and third readings of a bill that would prevent Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens from getting citizenship or permanent residency status, Army Radio reported Wednesday. The timing of the vote was moved from Wednesday night due to Arab Knesset members' protests that they did not have enough time to prepare for the vote.
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06:43 AM
Federal officials have approved Bechtel Group's blueprint for Iraq reconstruction, making restoration of electric power the top priority in a $680 million budget that authorities concede will just scratch the surface of what needs to be done. The spending plan, approved last week by the U.S. Agency for International Development, clears the way for Bechtel to hire subcontractors to do everything from repairing bridges to fixing schoolroom toilets.
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05:49 AM
July 30, 2003
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon will abandon a plan to establish a futures market to help predict terrorist strikes, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Tuesday. The little-publicized Pentagon plan envisioned a potential futures trading market in which speculators would wager on the Internet on the likelihood of a future terrorist attack or assassination attempt on a particular leader. A Web site promoting the plan already is available.
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10:59 AM
BAGHDAD -- U.S. forces kept up the hunt for Saddam Hussein Wednesday as an Iraqi crowd gloated over an apparent roadside bomb attack that gutted a U.S. truck. "Destroy America! Destroy it!" yelled one man, as the crowd swung stones to smash the headlights of the military truck, smoldering on the western edge of Baghdad. Locals said the vehicle had hit a tripwire that set off explosives. There was no word on casualties and the U.S. military had no immediate comment.
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10:57 AM
A US tank was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade on the western outskirts of Fallujah, the latest in a string of attacks in this flashpoint town 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad, witnesses said. The ambush just west of the Tigris river appeared to cause little damage, but it was not clear if there were any casualties, the witnesses said. Meanwhile in Baquba, 60 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, US troops were pulled from guard duties outside the town's hospitals after a rash of attacks, most notably a grenade blast on Saturday that killed three soldiers posted by the children's hospital, medical sources said.
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10:55 AM
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Flanked by police on the lookout for bounty hunters, Texas Democrats who fled their home state vowed on Tuesday to stay in neighboring New Mexico as long as it takes to stop a Republican grab for more seats in the U.S. Congress. In a showdown with national implications, 11 Democrats from the Texas Senate accused Republicans of trying to ram through a congressional redistricting plan that could get them seven more seats and add to their narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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10:50 AM
A Los Angeles judge declared a mistrial in the racially-charged case of a white police officer accused of slamming a handcuffed black teenager onto a car and punching him in the face. Police were on alert against a possible violent reaction to the decision in the city, which was rocked by riots 11 years ago when four white cops were cleared of assaulting black motorist Rodney King in another videotaped beating. California Governor Gray Davis called for calm following the verdict, urging residents of the US second largest city to allow the legal process to take its course.
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10:49 AM
WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Tuesday firmly rejected calls to release secret documents that may show Saudi Arabia aided the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers, saying such a move would "help the enemy" in the war on terrorism. The president's decision came just hours before Prince Saud al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, made a personal plea at the White House to make the information public. Al-Faisal said he was "disappointed" but that, after meeting with Bush, "we understand the reason for his not publishing" it.
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08:23 AM
When the Democratic Leadership Council convened its annual ''national conversation'' in Philadelphia on Sunday, there was talk of issues such as commuting patterns and e-governance, befitting the character of this sort-of-centrist, wonkish group that helped propel Bill Clinton to the White House. But there was only one topic uppermost in the conversation: winning back the presidency. And the subtext should read: How to bring God along.
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07:29 AM
July 29, 2003
WASHINGTON -- Saudi Arabian foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal will meet with President George W. Bush to discuss a congressional report that linked the kingdom to the September 11 attacks, a senior US official said.
Al-Faisal is expected to discuss the congressional report, the Middle East, and the war in terrorism in general, the official said.
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02:47 PM
The recently released Report of the Joint Congressional Inquiry Into The Terrorist Attacks Of September 11, 2001, and its dismal findings, have been well reported by the news media. What has not been widely reported, however, is the inescapable conclusions that must be drawn from a close reading of this bipartisan study. Obviously, Republicans were not going to let Democrats say what needed to be said, or maybe Democrats did not want to politicize the matter. But since the facts could not be ignored or suppressed, they reported them without drawing certain obvious, not to mention devastating, conclusions.
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02:45 PM
In a new audiotape attributed to Saddam Hussein and broadcast on Arab satellite station Al-Arabiya, the ousted dictator acknowledged the death of his two sons last week. "Even if Saddam Hussein has 100 children other than Odai and Qusai, Saddam Hussein would offer them the same way," he said on the tape. The two were killed in a gunfight with U.S. soldiers on July 22.
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12:59 PM
TIKRIT, Iraq -- American soldiers overpowered and arrested a bodyguard who rarely left Saddam Hussein's side Tuesday and said they obtained documents and information that could help them close in on the former dictator. As ``one of Saddam's lifelong bodyguards,'' Adnan Abdullah Abid al-Musslit was believed to have detailed knowledge of the former president's hiding places, said Lt. Col. Steve Russell, who led the raid. He said documents taken from the home and information obtained from the men would be useful in the hunt for Saddam.
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09:38 AM
Palestinians were looking to US President George W. Bush to exert pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during talks at the White House as they awaited the return of their own premier, Mahmud Abbas, from his first trip to Washington. Bush saluted Abbas' "courage and vision" in talks at the White House on Friday and the Palestinians are hoping to see the upturn in relations with the United States translate into pressure on Sharon's government.
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09:32 AM
Top US arms control official John Bolton was here for a round of talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis as efforts to engage the Stalinist state in dialogue appeared to have stalled. Bolton arrived from China for a three-day stay in Seoul before heading for Tokyo on the third and final leg of his Asia swing.
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09:30 AM
WASHINGTON -- Federal investigators have dug up thousands of pages of classified documents at more than 10 locations in the Washington area buried by convicted spy Brian Regan, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. "It's pretty explicit information" that could be "very damaging," one source was quoted as saying to the newspaper. The FBI found the items were buried in parks and other secluded areas throughout Virginia and Maryland just outside the nation's capital.
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09:16 AM
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is setting up a stock-market style system in which investors would bet on terror attacks, assassinations and other events in the Middle East. Defense officials hope to gain intelligence and useful predictions while investors who guessed right would win profits.
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09:09 AM
Washington - Saudi officials, furious about a congressional report issued last week alleging possible links between individuals in the Saudi government and some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, have been granted a hastily scheduled meeting today between Foreign Minister Saud Faisal and President George W. Bush. The visit, which will occur after Bush meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, shows the level of Saudi anger and the kingdom's clout with the Bush administration.
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07:18 AM
July 28, 2003
BAGHDAD -- A U.S. soldier was killed in a bomb attack in broad daylight in Baghdad on Monday, bringing to 50 the number of U.S. troops to die from hostile fire since Washington declared major combat over on May 1. The U.S. military said three other troops were wounded when an "improvised explosive device" was dropped from a bridge onto a U.S. convoy in the capital's Rashid district, the latest in an increasingly bold and deadly guerrilla campaign.
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07:02 PM
BAGHDAD -- A grenade attack in downtown Baghdad Monday wounded and may have killed two U.S. soldiers in broad daylight, the latest in an increasingly bold and deadly guerrilla campaign. The U.S. commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, warned it was becoming a "terrorist magnet" for foreigners and said attacks were getting more sophisticated.
Monday's was simple, but devastating -- someone dropped a grenade from a bridge onto a Humvee passing below. Another death would push the number of soldiers killed since the official end of major combat three months ago to 50.
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09:41 AM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- The government of a volatile southern Afghan province urged U.S. forces on Sunday to deal with resurgent Taliban guerrillas and said hundreds of them were roaming around freely. A Taliban official said its elusive leader Mullah Omar had approved a new deputy for the south on Saturday to assist a notorious commander suffering from wounds, and ordered him to intensify attacks on U.S. and government forces.
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09:36 AM
Despite official pledges of action to stop militancy, the 'jihad' movement in the country seems to be growing. This appears to be especially true in the Punjab and also the NWFP, where it is said "more people have linked up to jihadi forces in the post-Iraq war scenario than at any other time in years." "Jihad is spreading like wildfire in Pakistan," claims an official in the country's Interior Ministry. He says that according to several jihadi publications between January and June 2003, Islamic groups recruited over 7,000 young boys aged between 18 and 25.
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05:51 AM
A CHIEF executioner to one of Saddam’s sons has revealed how he helped drag two victims into a cage to be devoured by lions.
The executioner said that he was ordered to seize two 19-year-old students and take them to a farm of Uday Hussein, Saddam’s oldest son who was killed by American forces last week.
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05:49 AM
The leader of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), Liberia's main rebel group, say he will not withdraw his fighters from the capital Monrovia. Sekou Conneh said his group will remain until peacekeepers arrive in the country. International appeals for a cease-fire and the urgent deployment of peacekeepers have multiplied in the past month, when LURD launched their most intense siege of Monrovia since taking up arms against President Charles Taylor.
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05:47 AM
LURD was formed in 1999 by Liberian refugees in West Africa led by Sekou Conneh, and is the largest insurgency group in the state. LURD was supported by Guinea from the outset, and has received the tacit support of Britain and the United States. Initially, LURD used Guinea as a base, and it received religious, political and military support from the Muslim–dominated government of Guinea. Observers note that LURD has a significant Muslim element, and it has reportedly received arms from sources such as the United Arab Emirates.
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05:45 AM
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell on Monday said efforts to limit the growth of media companies appears to be an attempt to control television content and may have unintended consequences.
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02:42 AM
July 27, 2003
The U.S. Central Command says a grenade attack outside the Iraqi capital had killed a U.S. Marine and wounded another. The early-morning attack near a village south of Baghdad comes one day after three U.S. troops were killed and four others wounded while guarding a children's hospital northeast of the capital. Separately, a Central Command statement said another soldier was killed and two more were wounded Saturday, when their convoy came under attack near Abu Ghuraib, west of Baghdad.
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12:30 PM
July 26, 2003
WASHINGTON -- Senior officials of Saudi Arabia have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to charitable groups and other organizations that may have helped finance the September 2001 attacks, a still-classified section of a Congressional report on the hijackings says, according to people who have read it. The 28-page section of the report was deleted from the nearly 900-page declassified version released on Thursday by a joint committee of the House and Senate intelligence committees. The chapter focuses on the role foreign governments played in the hijackings, but centers almost entirely on Saudi Arabia, the people who saw the section said.
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04:20 PM
BAQUBA, Iraq -- A grenade attack Saturday killed three U.S. soldiers and wounded four as they guarded a children's hospital northeast of Baghdad, scuttling hopes a widespread guerrilla insurgency might lose strength after the deaths of Saddam Hussein's elder sons. The soldiers killed Saturday were part of the 4th Infantry Division, which came under grenade attack in Baqouba, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad. Witnesses told an Associated Press photographer that the soldiers were guarding the hospital because some of their wounded comrades were being treated there.
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04:17 PM
SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan -- Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar approved a new deputy military commander for southern Afghanistan on Saturday and ordered him to intensify guerrilla attacks on U.S. and government forces, a Taliban official said. Saturday's announcement follows stepped-up activity by suspected Taliban guerrillas in southern Afghanistan which saw nine soldiers of the 11,500-strong U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan wounded in several attacks last weekend.
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04:01 PM
WASHINGTON -- In a highly contentious vote, Japan's Parliament approved legislation today that paves the way for Tokyo to send as many as 1,000 troops to Iraq later this year as part of the American-led occupation. Today's vote, 136 to 102, was a major victory for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who defeated opposition tactics, a no-confidence vote and an 11th-hour filibuster by the bill's opponents to ram the measure through.
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03:51 PM
WASHINGTON -- Four U.S. soldiers have been charged in an investigation into suspected abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war, a U.S. military official said on Saturday. A military trial was expected for the four, Balice said. The abuse investigation centered on events that occurred in mid-May at Camp Bucca, where 7,000 prisoners of war were detained during the war to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
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03:32 PM
July 25, 2003
AUSTIN -- Democrat state senators contemplating a walkout to block congressional redistricting might be constitutionally protected from arrest by state police if they flee the Capitol, a lawyer has advised the senators. Criminal defense attorney Keith Hampton also told the Senate Democrat Caucus that an arrest by a Senate sergeant at arms or a private security agency to force senators to the Senate floor for a vote might be prosecutable as kidnapping under state law.
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08:53 PM
The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the state's comptroller to pay salary increases for Illinois judges that were vetoed by the governor. State Comptroller Daniel Hynes earlier this week said he would not include a 2.8 percent cost-of-living increase when he prints judges' paychecks because the state did not appropriate the money. The salary increase was scheduled to go into effect at the end of July for more than 1,000 Illinois judges. Gov. Rod Blagojevich vetoed pay raises for the state's constitutional officers, judges and lawmakers earlier this month as part of $22 million in cuts to the state budget. The cuts were made in response to an estimated $5 billion budget deficit.
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08:30 PM
The new nationwide survey of 2,002 adults, conducted June 24-July 8 by the Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, shows that there has been an important shift in public perceptions of Islam. Fully 44% now believe that Islam is more likely than other religions "to encourage violence among its believers." As recently as March 2002, just 25% expressed this view. A separate study by the Pew Research Center in June 2003 found a similar change in the number of Americans who see Muslims as anti-American: 49% believe that a significant portion of Muslims around the world hold anti-American views, up from 36% in March 2002.
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07:02 PM
The Bush administration estimated last week that the government will end the current fiscal year with a budget deficit of $455 billion. Over the next five years, the public debt is expected to rise by $1.9 trillion. In the first three years of the Bush administration, government spending has climbed -- in real, inflation-adjusted terms -- by a staggering 15.6 percent. That far outstrips the budget growth in Clinton's first three years, when real spending climbed just 3.5 percent. Under the first President Bush, the comparable figure was 8.3 percent; under Ronald Reagan, 6.8 percent, and under Jimmy Carter, 13.3 percent. No, that's not a mistake: Bush is a bigger spender than Carter was.
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02:52 PM
Liberia is "basically destroyed" and its only hope is for the international community to quickly send more money and soldiers to stop the killing, the U.N. special representative to Liberia said Thursday.
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01:40 PM
WASHINGTON - President Bush on Friday ordered an unspecified number of U.S. troops to be positioned off the coast of wartorn Liberia to assist West African peacekeeping forces. The forces will serve as
peackeepers and their role will be limited, Bush said. "We're deeply concerned that the condition of the Liberian people is getting worse and worse and worse," Bush told reporters in the White House.
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01:40 PM
MONROVIA -- Mortar bombs rained down on Liberia's capital on Friday, crashing into schools packed with refugees and killing at least 14 people as the city's residents begged foreign troops to come and stop the carnage.
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01:34 PM
FAHHAMA, Iraq -- U.S. forces arrested 16 men in a pre-dawn raid north of Baghdad Friday, including two suspected of being behind a bomb and gun ambush that killed a U.S. soldier and Iraqi interpreter in the capital.
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01:31 PM
July 24, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The deputy secretary of defense said Wednesday that some key assumptions underlying the U.S. occupation of Iraq were wrong, tacitly acknowledging the judgment of current and former U.S. officials critical of the occupation planning. Paul Wolfowitz, briefing reporters after a four-and-a-half-day trip to Iraq, said that in postwar planning, defense officials made three assumptions that "turned out to underestimate the problem," beginning with the belief that removing Saddam Hussein from power would also remove the threat posed by his Baathist regime. In addition, they erred in assuming that significant numbers of Iraqi army units, and large numbers of Iraqi police, would quickly join the U.S. military and its civilian partners in rebuilding Iraq, Wolfowitz said.
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02:30 PM
Seeking to provide conclusive proof to a skeptical Iraqi public that Saddam Hussein's two eldest sons are dead, American occupying authorities in Iraq released graphic photographs of the sons' corpses today. The photographs, which were immediately broadcast on international television, showed what the American government said was Uday with a beard and a bloodied face marked by a thick gash.
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01:20 PM
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Some members of Iraq's Governing Council have been shown the bodies of two of Saddam Hussein's sons, which are being kept at Baghdad International Airport, said a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority. "There isn't the slightest doubt in our minds that
these are the bodies of Qusai and Odai," the spokesman said.
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12:33 PM
BAGHDAD -- Three U.S. soldiers died in northern Iraq Thursday in the second fatal attack on troops from the 101st Airborne Division since they tracked down and killed Saddam Hussein's feared sons Uday and Qusay. The U.S. military said the three soldiers from the 101st died when their vehicles were ambushed close to Qayara, south of Mosul, by gunmen who also fired rocket-propelled grenades. Five U.S. soldiers have now been killed since the deaths of Uday, 39, and Qusay, 37, Saddam's heir apparent. In all, 11 have died in the past week alone.
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10:57 AM
Rep. Ron Paul, MD: Madam Speaker, the truth about whether or not Saddam Hussein sought to buy uranium from Niger has dominated the news for the past several weeks. Many of those challenging the administration on this issue are motivated more by politics than by policy. Some of today’s critics were strongly in favor of going to war against Iraq when doing so appeared politically popular, but now are chagrined that the war is not going as smoothly as was hoped. I am sure once the alleged attempt to buy uranium is thoroughly debunked, the other excuses for going to war will be examined with a great deal of scrutiny as well. It is obvious that the evidence used to justify going to war is now less than convincing.
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10:56 AM
BAGHDAD -- A U.S. military vehicle blew up in a Baghdad street on Thursday, an amateur cameraman who filmed the smoldering wreckage told Reuters. U.S. soldiers cordoned the area and inspected the site. There was no word on casualties but it seemed likely that no one traveling in the car could have escaped injury. A U.S. military spokesman said he was unaware of any incident.
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10:31 AM
July 23, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon announced a plan on Wednesday to replace weary military personnel in Iraq with fresh American and international troops in the coming months, with most U.S. soldiers facing yearlong deployments. The Army's 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) will be sent home in September and replaced by elements of the 82nd Airborne Division, acting Army Chief of Staff Gen. Jack Keane told a Pentagon briefing.
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11:59 PM
WASHINGTON -- The White House has teamed with GOP congressional leaders in an aggressive damage-control campaign to counter embarrassing questions about prewar intelligence and lapses by President Bush's national security team. But the effort is being hampered by an ever-changing White House story -- from first blaming the CIA and then the British to new revelations by Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley that contradict earlier statements by his boss, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
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10:37 PM
Gov. Gray Davis became the nation's first governor in 82 years to face a recall election, as California's secretary of state announced Wednesday that a Republican-led campaign once discounted as improbable had qualified for the ballot. Davis, a career Democratic politician who was elected in a landslide in 1998 before his popularity plunged amid California's energy crisis and budget deficit, must face the electorate in 60 to 80 days, according to state law.
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10:33 PM
WASHINGTON - The Rev. Pat Robertson, the televangelist who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, is back in the spotlight sounding off in his inimitable way. Robertson also recently launched Operation Supreme Court Freedom, an effort to induce by mass prayer the retirements of three U.S. Supreme Court justices who Robertson said are racked by age and illness. With evangelical Christians a key part of the Republican Party's base, Robertson's strong stands raise questions of whether he is helping or hurting Republicans entering a presidential election cycle.
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08:48 PM
A gunman opened fire inside New York City Council chambers Wednesday afternoon during a routine meeting, killing a councilman and wounding another person on a second-floor balcony. Brooklyn Councilman James Davis, a former police officer, died after being shot twice in the chest, a city official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
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03:49 PM
Saddam Hussein loyalists have vowed to "raise hell" against America for the killing of two of his sons. They have also threatened to take their fight to the countries of the coalition partners, as well as Israel. The videotaped threat, by men with their faces covered and cradling grenade launchers and automatic weapons, has been broadcast on television in the Gulf. One of the men in the video said: "If this news is true that Uday and Qusay are dead, we shall raise hell on Americans. Even the unborn child will take revenge."
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09:23 AM
WHITE HOUSE -- Steven Hadley says he has apologized to President Bush. The president's deputy national security adviser says he takes responsibility for the line in the president's State of the Union address that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium in Africa. Hadley acknowledges that he had gotten three separate warnings questioning the validity of the claim -- two in writing from the C-I-A, the other in a phone call from C-I-A chief George Tenet. Earlier this month, Tenet himself apologized for failing to ensure Bush didn't voice the claim. White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett says the president is upset over the miscues by his staff but still has "full confidence" in his national security and intelligence teams.
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08:06 AM
Do you want to send an e-mail message to the White House and have someone actually read it? Good luck. In the past, to tell President Bush -- or at least those assigned to read his mail -- what was on your mind it was only necessary to sit down at a personal computer connected to the Internet and dash off an e-mail note to
president@whitehouse.gov. Visitors are now encouraged to use a new Web-based mail system -- deployed on the White House Web site for the first time last week -- that requires them to fill out a form on the Internet before a message is sent. It is still possible to send a traditional e-mail message and the sender may receive an automated reply, but there is no guarantee it will be read or responded to, said Jimmy Orr, a White House spokesman.
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08:04 AM
BAGHDAD -- Two American soldiers were killed in ambushes in Iraq Wednesday, dashing any U.S. hopes that the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, would snuff out a guerrilla insurgency against occupying forces. An audio tape, purportedly by Saddam and aired by Al Arabiya television, urged Iraqis to keep fighting occupying U.S. forces. The tape was dated July 20 -- two days before Uday and Qusay were killed. A U.S. military spokesman said one soldier was killed and seven wounded when two vehicles they were traveling in hit a mine or home-made bomb in the northern town of Mosul, where the brothers were killed. In a separate ambush, another soldier was killed and two wounded when their convoy was attacked near the restive town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, in the heart of the "Sunni triangle" from where Saddam drew much of his support.
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08:02 AM
MILWAUKEE - Snap-on Inc. will eliminate 560 jobs, or 4.4 percent of its work force, by early next year when it closes tool factories in Kenosha and Mount Carmel, Ill., the company said. The Kenosha-based company will close two of its four plants that make hand tools and power tools, and work done at those plants will shift to remaining plants in Milwaukee and Johnson City, Tenn., spokesman Richard Secor said.
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08:01 AM
We live and consume in the present, but to survive through time, we need additional resources. To secure a supply of future resources, we sacrifice present consumption. An interest rate is the discount that individuals place on the value of future goods compared to present goods. This discount applies to money and everything else.
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06:55 AM
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06:53 AM
July 22, 2003
Mosul, Iraq -- Reaction is mixed in the Iraqi city where Saddam Hussein's two eldest sons have been killed by U-S troops. At least a thousand people gathered outside the house in Mosul (MOH'-sul) where Odai (oh-DY') and Qusai (koo-SY') died in a raid today. Some were shouting in delight, some were cursing in anger. Others stood silently in mourning. Hours after the raid, gunfire erupted throughout Baghdad -- presumably a celebratory response to news of the deaths. But U-S troops thinking they were under fire shot one man twice in the chest and also shot a six- to eight-year-old girl in the head.
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10:36 PM
Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai were killed in a six-hour firefight Tuesday when U.S. forces surrounded and then stormed a palatial villa in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul, a senior American general said. "We are certain that Odai and Qusai were killed today," said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez at a news conference in Baghdad. "They died in a fierce gunbattle."
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04:08 PM
Mortar shells slammed into the US embassy in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, yesterday during an increasingly bloody battle for the city between rebel and government forces. Several people in the fortified compound were wounded but outside it was much worse. At least 60 people were killed in the latest onslaught in the west African country's civil war. The US military deployed 41 marines from a base in Spain to boost security at the embassy, and 4,500 US troops on three warships were moved into the Mediterranean as a contingency measure.
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10:23 AM
Palestinian prime minister Mahmud Abbas said he will ask US officials to pressure Israel into fulfilling its pledges toward the peace process when he makes his maiden visit to Washington. He has been meeting in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa, before heading to Amman and then Washington for talks this week with US President George W. Bush.
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10:13 AM
BAGHDAD -- A U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded Tuesday when their convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire northwest of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. The soldiers were from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. The attack happened around 9 a.m. in an area populated mainly by minority Sunni Muslims.
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10:10 AM
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is reaching out to its Republican allies in Congress in an effort to counter criticism of President Bush's Iraq policy and his use of discredited intelligence to advance the case for toppling Saddam Hussein. With Bush's job approval ratings slipping, and U.S. casualties in Iraq continuing to climb, the White House is in full damage-control mode. On Monday, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett went to Capitol Hill to urge Republicans to emphasize positive aspects of the broader war against terrorism, administration and congressional officials said.
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10:05 AM
WASHINGTON — Bush administration officials are considering granting North Korea formal guarantees that it will not come under U.S. attack in what would be part of a diplomatic gambit by the White House aimed at resolving a standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.
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09:55 AM
WASHINGTON — It seems possible that the FBI has only one real suspect in the anthrax investigation but so far hasn't found enough evidence to make an arrest even after spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayers dollars (you probably could make that millions). It all has a bit of deja vu to it.
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09:06 AM
BEIJING -- China’s government renewed efforts Saturday to push through a security law feared as a threat to Hong Kong’s civil liberties, backing the territory’s embattled leader in his refusal to quit after mass protests. The official Xinhua News Agency said President Hu Jintao “pledged firm support” for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, who was in Beijing to report on the uproar over the anti-subversion bill demanded by the communist government.
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07:27 AM
Zagreb -- The World Bank is pleased to announce that Mr. Anand K. Seth has been appointed Country Director for the South Central Europe (covering Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania) to succeed Mr. Andrew N. Vorkink. The World Bank is pleased to announce that after serving five years as Country Director for South Central Europe, including three years for Croatia, Mr. Andrew N. Vorkink has been appointed Country Director for Turkey. Both appointments are effective August 15, 2003.
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06:28 AM
Skopje -- The IMF mission headed by Franek Rozwadowski arrives Monday in Macedonia to assess the execution of obligations in the Stand-By Arrangement. After signing of IMF Arrangement, the promised donations and credits arrived to Macedonia, i.e. 75 million US$ are already transferred. Macedonia received from the USA 16,5 million US$, there is an influx of 18 million US$ from succession, 17,1 million from World Bank credit for the reforms in the public administration and EU donation and credit amounting to 10 million US$.
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06:28 AM
July 21, 2003
BERLIN -- The U.S. military said on Monday it had sent 41 Marines to Liberia to help reinforce security at the U.S. embassy there and prepare possibly to evacuate U.S. citizens as fighting in the West African nation intensified. The U.S. spokesman said the Marines left from a U.S. military base in Rota, southern Spain, and would arrive in Monrovia later on Monday. The new arrivals will bring the number of U.S. troops in Liberia to about 70, the spokesman said.
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09:24 AM
BAGHDAD -- A U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter were killed and three soldiers wounded in a gun and bomb attack in Baghdad Monday, a military spokeswoman said.
Witnesses reported seeing two U.S. Humvees blown up on a Baghdad street around the same time. The mangled shells of the Humvees, their canvas tops obliterated and tires burned off, smoldered well into the afternoon as military investigators secured the scene.
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09:20 AM
BAGHDAD -- The United States is creating a new Iraqi civil defense force within the next 45 days that will free up thousands of American troops for anti-guerrilla missions and put an Iraqi face on the coalition's postwar security efforts, two top American generals said today. The immediate goal is to field about 7,000 American-trained Iraqi militia in several areas around the country to protect coalition supply convoys and replace American troops that are now guarding buildings like power plants and ammunition depots.
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07:45 AM
Baltimore County is fighting a state requirement that it set up new electronic voting machines by the March presidential primary, despite a federal lawsuit charging that the county's current paper system discriminates against blind voters.
None of the 18 other Maryland counties with the same March deadline has made a similar request. And no other system is the subject of a lawsuit.
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07:26 AM
As anyone in a military uniform knows, service people protect [our Constitutional Republic] without being able to enjoy the liberty of free speech. So the fact that the soldiers risked almost certain punishment by publicly complaining reveals the level of their frustration and disillusionment. I suppose that if President Bush can use military groups for carefully crafted political rallies and carrier landings for photo opportunities, military personnel on the ground should be able to set the record straight for the American people.
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07:08 AM
HOUSTON — President Bush finished his Texas fund-raising trip Saturday in the city his parents call home. But the reception outside of the meeting wasn’t entirely warm. Sculptor Robert Bart carried a 6-foot tall replica of Bush attached to a wooden plank. The sculpted ceramic mannequin, paraded across the street from a Houston hotel where Bush supporters paid $2,000 a person to mingle and munch on taquitos and chicken, was dressed in white slacks and a blue suit coat. No signs were attached to the replica, but one feature stood out — an elongated nose. "I thought it was appropriate that he looked like he’d been telling a lie," Bart said.
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06:59 AM
BAGHDAD -- Amnesty International accused U.S. troops on Sunday of "very severe" human rights abuses in Iraq and complained that it had been denied access to thousands of prisoners held without charge in "appalling" conditions." Amnesty spokeswoman Judit Arenas Licea said some Iraqis had been forced to stand under the blistering sun for up to 48 hours in U.S.-run detention centers that lack proper sanitation and that relatives had no information on their plight.
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06:09 AM
The intelligence unit of the four-month-old Department of Homeland Security is understaffed, unorganized and weak-willed in bureaucratic struggles with other government agencies, diminishing its role in pursuing terrorists, according to some members of Congress and independent national security experts. The vast majority of the department's intelligence analysts lack computers that are able to receive data classified "top secret" and above. The department has only three experts on biological terrorism, a number that lawmakers said falls far short of expectations, given U.S. officials' grave concern about that kind of attack.
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05:36 AM
A high-ranking Arab-American FBI agent is taking the bureau to court, accusing it of racial discrimination for freezing him out of the September 11 investigation. The suit described agent Bassem Youssef as the only polygraph examiner qualified to conduct interviews in Arabic, with extensive experience and Middle Eastern contacts culled from his days with the FBI in Saudi Arabia.
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05:27 AM
At last count, there were 186 Pentagon-subsidized research and development projects under way at 25 major universities throughout the United States. All these projects involve research into the design and building of defensive and offensive weapons.
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05:11 AM
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04:57 AM
July 20, 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Two soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were killed early Sunday and another was injured when their convoy came under rocket propelled grenade and small arms fire in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said. A United Nations convoy was also attacked, killing an Iraqi driver and injuring a U.N. staffer.
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09:27 AM
July 19, 2003
BAGHDAD - Attackers firing guns and rocket-propelled grenades killed a U.S. soldier in Baghdad on Saturday as Washington considered asking the United Nations to help restore order in Iraq and contain a guerrilla insurgency. A U.S. spokesman said the soldier was attacked in the early hours as he guarded a bank in western Baghdad. He was the second soldier killed in Iraq in 24 hours, bringing the number of U.S. troops to die from hostile fire to 149 -- more than the 147 killed in the 1991 Gulf War.
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04:47 PM
BAGRAM -- Three soldiers from the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan have been wounded in a bomb attack on a convoy in the east of the country, the U.S. military said Saturday. The bomb detonated in the middle of the convoy about 5 miles south of the town of Asadabad in Kunar province Friday afternoon, Lt. Col. Douglas Lefforge told a news briefing. "The three soldiers were medically evacuated to Bagram yesterday and are in stable condition," he said, referring to the U.S. headquarters in Afghanistan where he spoke. About 11,500 U.S.-led coalition troops are in Afghanistan pursuing remnants of the former Taliban regime and their allies in the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden. About 9,000 of the coalition troops are American.
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04:46 PM
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is scrambling to find enough fresh troops to begin an orderly rotation program that would bring home some of the 147,000 soldiers spread thinly across troubled Iraq. With the new commanding general of U.S. Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid, confirming what others in the Defense Department had been reluctant to admit - that United States forces face an increasingly deadly guerrilla war - the question of relief and rotation for weary GIs moved to the front burner.
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04:45 PM
Fallujah, Iraq -- Morale is dipping pretty low among U.S. soldiers as they stew in Iraq's broiling heat, get shot at by an increasingly hostile population and get repeated orders to extend their tours of duty. Ask any grunt standing guard on a 115-degree day what he or she thinks of the open-ended Iraq occupation, and you'll get an earful of colorful complaints. But going public isn't always easy, as soldiers of the Army's Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division found out after "Good Morning America" aired their complaints.
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04:44 PM
As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war. It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses.
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04:43 PM
Kufa, Iraq -- A Shiite Muslim preacher in Iraq vows to create a group to rival the U-S picked governing council.In a prayer sermon yesterday, the cleric (Muqtada al-Sadr) said the council is full of "non-believers." Shiites -- who were harshly oppressed by Saddam Hussein's regime -- have a majority on the 25-member council, but most are secular figures or moderate clerics.
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04:41 PM
A Bright, according to the newly launched Brights website, is “a person holding a naturalist, as distinct from a supernaturalist, view of the world”. Brights may be atheist, agnostic, scientific, baffled or merely doubting, but what unites them is a disinclination to believe in God (
Psalms 53:1). Newly-minted Brights are the latest sociopolitical grouping to demand political attention and claim discrimination in the US. We’re Brights; we’ve got rights; get used to it. The term Bright was coined, consciously imitating the gay rights movement.
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04:40 PM
The so-called conservative movement of the last 20 years, starting with the Reagan revolution of the 1980s, followed by the 1994 Gingrich takeover of the House, and culminating in the early 2000s with Republican control of both Congress and the White House, seems a terrible failure today. Republicans have failed utterly to shrink the size of government; instead it is bigger and costlier than ever before. Federal spending spirals out of control, new Great Society social welfare programs have been created, and the national debt is rising by more than a half-trillion dollars per year. Whatever happened to the conservative vision supposedly sweeping the nation?
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04:39 PM
LAS VEGAS – A panel of federal judges Friday let stand a Nevada Supreme Court decision that set aside a state constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds majority vote on tax increases. In a unanimous decision, the seven justices found they have no jurisdiction and any appeal of the state Supreme Court ruling should be directed to the U.S. Supreme Court. During a rare hearing held Wednesday before all the active U.S. District Court judges in Nevada, lawyers for the state argued the Nevada Supreme Court has the final word on interpreting the Nevada Constitution and any appeal should be directed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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04:37 PM
SEA ISLAND- Gov. Sonny Perdue was determined that nothing was going to ruin his day. Here Tuesday for the announcement that Sea Island would be the site for the international G-8 economic summit, Perdue sneaked onto the island to avoid being 'flagged' by protesters, one of the flaggers said. He snuck past us said Jay Lawthorne of Brantley County, one of the die-hard protesters who don't miss a chance to flag the governor when he visits the region. One thing about it: we might not have seen him but he had to see us. About 20 flaggers stood at the entrance to the island at the Sea Island Causeway. They displayed about 25 of the old state flags and St. Andrews Cross flags.
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04:36 PM
July 18, 2003
WASHINGTON - The Army is considering whether to punish soldiers in Iraq who griped about conditions there to a television reporter, a Pentagon spokeswoman said Friday. Some soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division complained to ABC-TV this week after their units were told they would be leaving Iraq soon, then had their homecoming postponed. One called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Criticism of superior officers is a breach of military rules. The Army will determine whether any soldier will be charged with breaking those rules, said Pentagon spokeswoman Chief Petty Officer Diane Perry.
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09:13 PM
DUBAI -- Al Arabiya television station aired a videotape on Friday of men identified as Iraqi militants vowing to attack U.S. and British forces and warning Iraqis against dealing with the occupiers. "We vow in the name of God that in the coming days we will teach a lesson to U.S. forces (in revenge) for our youths who died," said one masked militant.
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03:21 PM
FALLUJAH, Iraq - A U.S. soldier was killed Friday when a bomb detonated under a military convoy in which he was traveling in this violent city west of Baghdad, the Army said. The 3rd Infantry Division soldier died of injuries in the midafternoon attack on the main Fallujah bridge over the Euphrates River, military spokeswoman Sgt. Amy Abbott said.
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03:19 PM
The Federal Register is the official daily publication for Rules, Proposed Rules, and Notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as Executive Orders and other Presidential Documents. This column attempts to summarize the highlights of the Federal Register during the preceding week.
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01:03 PM
Republican state attorneys general in at least six states telephoned corporations or trade groups subject to lawsuits or regulations by their state governments to solicit hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions, according to internal fundraising documents obtained by The Washington Post. The attorneys general were all members of the Washington-based Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). The companies they solicited included some of the nation's largest tobacco, pharmaceutical, computer, energy, banking, liquor, insurance and media concerns, many of which have been targeted in product liability lawsuits or regulations by state governments.
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12:56 PM
Could your political beliefs determine how long you live? New research from sociologist Dr William Cockerham and colleagues from the University of Alabama has found that differences in attitudes to looking after your body and your health are predicted by your political allegiances. It seems those who believe the state should take responsibility for most aspects of life (Socialism) also tend to eschew personal responsibility for taking care of themselves. As a result, they are more likely to engage in lifestyles hazardous to their health, including drinking to excess and not exercising.
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12:52 PM
There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there never will be unless we plant them there. And don't put it past our corrupt government to do just that, special effects and all.
There is no antidote for the venom that spewed from George W. Bush's mouth day after day, month after month, about Saddam Hussein and an oil rich sovereign nation that had been embargoed for more than a decade. No U.S. President has ever used the media so enthusiastically to sell an invasion. And no American media, particularly the war channels of CNN and Fox News, have ever unquestionably supported and extended the drums of war and cowboy diplomacy 24/7 in a blunderbuss that they now hope you forget.
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12:43 PM
Until 2000, the investing public believed that Alan Greenspan could do no wrong. He was untouchable. Now, however, doubts have begun to be voiced in some quarters (1st quarter, 2nd quarter, etc.) – doubts, as the Bible puts it, like clouds no bigger than a man's hand... It all boils down to this: central banking has created the basis of a nightmare scenario. The credit money-induced financial bubbles have only begun to pop. The central banks have only just begun to inflate. We now face a witch's brew: enormous debt, enormous confidence in fiat money, and six decades without a major financial catastrophe have lulled people into complacency.
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11:55 AM
WASHINGTON - Election officials said Thursday that the nation's campaign finance law limits some of the fund raising by federal lawmakers involved in campaigns for state ballot measures.
Republican Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona established the "Stop Taxpayer Money for Politicians Committee" in January to raise money and gather signatures to put an initiative on the 2004 state ballot to rescind the state's campaign finance law.
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08:35 AM
July 17, 2003
CONCORD, N.H. -- Democrat presidential candidate Bob Graham said on Thursday there were grounds to impeach President Bush if he was found to have led America to war under false pretenses. "If in fact we went to war under false pretenses that is a very serious charge," Graham, the senior U.S. senator from Florida, told reporters in New Hampshire. "If the standard of impeachment is the one the House Republicans used against Bill Clinton, this clearly comes within that standard," he said.
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10:29 PM
President George Bush is a "two-faced free trader" and his much-vaunted visit to Africa will have little tangible affect on the impoverished people who make up the majority of the continent's population, according to Christian Aid.
In a feature on their web site the aid agency says that whilst press briefings have concentrated on Washington's 'generosity' in handing over billions to Africa to tackle HIV/AIDS, "no mention has been made of Bush's trade policy which is, in part, responsible for keeping many millions of Africans mired in the swamp of poverty". "Bush is a two-faced free-trader" says the article. "He places massive pressure on weak countries to open their markets to American goods, threatening to reduce aid and support if they don't. Yet as they pull down the protective barriers which support their own fragile markets, the President pumps in massive subsidies to American industries."
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10:23 PM
GAZA -- The United States and Palestinian Authority held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday finalising a $20 million US grant to strengthen the hand of Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas in a new peace process with Israel. "This is the first time we have ever given 20 million bucks straight to the Palestinian Authority," a US embassy spokesman said, adding the money would be transferred electronically to the Palestinian Authority after the ceremony.
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09:02 PM
NEW YORK -- The Pentagon could start a call-up of as many as 10,000 U.S. National Guard soldiers by this winter to bolster forces in Iraq and offset a lack of troops from allies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to sign off later this week on a plan that would set up rotations to relieve Marine and U.S. Army soldiers stationed in Iraq, the newspaper said, citing a Pentagon official.
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08:46 PM
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A U.S. soldier was killed Wednesday in an attack on a convoy in Baghdad, bringing the number of American battle deaths in the Iraqi conflict to 148 surpassing the 147 killed in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Thirty-three of those deaths have come in attacks since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1.
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08:42 PM
NEW DELHI: The U.S. will contribute some $120 million towards India's battle against the looming HIV/AIDS crisis, outgoing U.S. ambassador Robert D. Blackwill has said. In a speech to the Confederation of Indian Industry Thursday, Blackwill also said the $145 million annual USAID programme to India would focus on child and maternal health, sanitation and disaster management among other things.
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08:21 PM
Throughout history, all civilized societies have condemned homosexuality. Until 1961 homosexual acts were illegal throughout America.
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08:20 PM
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08:12 PM
WASHINGTON -- Log Cabin Republicans today praised the selection of Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Gov. Marc Racicot as chairman of the Bush-Cheney re-election committee. Log Cabin Republicans also are pleased with the selection of Ed Gillespie as the new RNC chairman and Maria Cino as deputy chairman. Miss Cino received the "Spirit of Lincoln" award in 2001 from the Log Cabin Republicans. The "Spirit of Lincoln" award is the highest honor LCR bestows on individuals who work to make tolerance and inclusion a permanent part of the Republican party.
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12:29 PM
WASHINGTON -- A Democrat senator charged on Thursday that CIA Director George Tenet had told members of Congress that a White House official had insisted on including a disputed allegation about Saddam Hussein's push for a nuclear weapon in a presidential speech. Durbin told ABC's "Good Morning America" program that Tenet had told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a closed-door session on Wednesday that a White House official had pushed for including a line about Iraq's attempt to get uranium from Africa in President Bush's State of the Union speech last January.
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12:26 PM
SEOUL, South Korea - South and North Korean soldiers briefly traded machine-gun fire in their border zone Thursday, raising tensions even as Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed optimism about diplomatic efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear standoff. South Korean military officials said the North Koreans shot first. The South was investigating whether the shooting was inadvertent or a scheme to rattle nerves, possibly to gain leverage in the dispute over the North's suspected development of nuclear weapons.
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12:16 PM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A speaker purported to be Saddam Hussein exhorted his followers to wage a holy war against U.S. and British forces in a new recording played Thursday — the anniversary of the revolution that put the former leader's party in power in Iraq.
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12:13 PM
THE killing of an Australian missionary in a remote village in eastern India in 1999 was premeditated and well-planned, India's top investigation agency said today. Lawyers representing the Central Bureau of Investigation, India's equivalent of the FBI, said the killing of Graham Staines and his two young sons in Orissa state was the result of a conspiracy hatched by the main suspect, Dara Singh, and a dozen other men.
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11:14 AM
BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- The pro-American mayor of the western city of Hadithah was shot and killed driving through the town Wednesday in escalating violence in Iraq that also took the lives of a U.S. soldier in a supply convoy and an 8-year-old Iraqi in an attack on U.S. forces guarding a Baghdad bank.
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06:44 AM
VIRGINIA BEACH -- After several days of speculation, the sniper trial of John Allen Muhammad was officially moved Wednesday to Virginia Beach. Circuit Judge LeRoy F. Millette Jr. of Prince William County announced his decision early Wednesday morning, concluding that Muhammad, 42, could not get a trial with an unbiased jury in Northern Virginia. ``Good cause has clearly been shown that such a change of venue is necessary to ensure a fair and impartial trial,'' Millette wrote. That means South Hampton Roads will be the host of the first two capital-murder trials stemming from last fall's sniper rampage in Virginia, Maryland and Washington.
Earlier this month, a Fairfax County judge moved the trial of 18-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo from Northern Virginia to Chesapeake. Many people had speculated that Muhammad's trial would follow Malvo's to Hampton Roads because the cases share evidence and witnesses.
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06:09 AM
JERUSALEM - Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas plans to make his first visit to President Bush in Washington on July 25, to press for Israeli concessions to advance the new Middle East peace plan, Palestinian officials said Wednesday.
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05:58 AM
Saying "company's coming," Gov. Sonny Perdue extended a hand of Southern hospitality to world leaders at next summer's G-8 summit - and to throngs of protesters expected to follow them.
Speaking from the shade of a towering oak on the Cloister resort grounds, Perdue told reporters he would welcome peaceful protests as an example of American freedom rather than discourage them as an unwanted nuisance. Still, Perdue said Sea Island and neighboring St. Simons Island, both linked to the mainland by 9 miles of causeway, would be off limits to protesters.
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05:38 AM
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05:06 AM
July 16, 2003
WASHINGTON/ABU GHRAIB, Iraq -- The head of U.S. forces in Iraq said on Wednesday troops faced a classic guerrilla war as a grenade attack killed a U.S. soldier and attackers fired a surface-to-air missile at a military plane. The latest U.S. combat death brought the total to 147, equaling the toll in the 1991 Gulf War, and increased pressure on President Bush, who is under political fire over the spiraling cost of the war and accusations that he misled Americans into the war.
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08:31 PM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - In a marked escalation in attacks, suspected insurgents tried to shoot down a U.S. transport plane with a surface-to-air missile Wednesday, killed an American soldier in a convoy and gunned down the mayor of an Iraqi city.
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08:29 PM
WASHINGTON - When the Bush administration issued its pre-war claims that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa, the CIA had not yet obtained the documents that served as a key foundation for the allegation and later turned out to be forged, U.S. officials say. The CIA didn't receive the documents until February 2003, nearly a year after the agency first began investigating the alleged Iraq-Africa connection and a short time after it assented to language in President Bush's State of the Union address that alleged such a connection, the officials said. Without the source documents, the CIA could investigate only their substance, which it had learned from a foreign government around the beginning of 2002. One of the key allegations was that Iraq was soliciting uranium from the African country of Niger.
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08:28 PM
WASHINGTON - Senators pressed CIA Director George Tenet on Wednesday about whether President Bush's use of false information on Iraq's weapons program was the result of an isolated error, deeper intelligence problems or political manipulation. A senior law enforcement official said the FBI has opened an investigation into the documents. The focus is on who could benefit from putting false information into U.S. hands. But the official said the FBI is not investigating the U.S. government.
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08:25 PM
PHILADELPHIA - At secret locations in at least 31 cities, the government has deployed devices that scour the air for deadly agents like anthrax and smallpox with hopes of sniffing out bioterrorism. But the effort has been viewed with skepticism.
Some security experts said the system is unlikely to catch a bioterrorism attack in time to save many lives. And they said it is powerless to spot an attack in an enclosed area, like an airport terminal or subway line, and unable to detect attacks unless they are big enough to scatter over several blocks.
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08:16 PM
WASHINGTON - Four crew members were killed Wednesday in a fiery crash of a U.S. Navy helicopter in Italy, a Pentagon spokesman said. Lt. Dan Hetlage said the MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter crashed Wednesday evening about 10 miles southwest of the Navy base at Sigonella on the island of Sicily. Names of those killed are being withheld while next of kin are notified, he said.
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08:13 PM
Intercepting missiles while their rockets are still burning would not be an effective approach for defending the U.S. against attacks by an important type of enemy missile. This conclusion comes from an independent study by the American Physical Society into the scientific and technical feasibility of boost-phase defense, focusing on potential missile threats from North Korea and Iran.
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07:50 PM
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq -- A grenade attack killed a U.S. soldier in Iraq Wednesday, bringing the total combat deaths to 147, equaling the total in the 1991 Gulf War. The latest death heaped pressure on U.S President Bush, facing mounting criticism for the cost of the war and accusations the United States exaggerated intelligence on Iraq's weapons to justify the conflict. Nearly four hours after the first attack, a U.S. military Humvee car was hit by a blast in Baghdad which inflicted casualties among U.S. soldiers, witnesses said.
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10:15 AM
WASHINGTON - The military campaign in Iraq has cost the Pentagon about $48 billion so far, a number expected to rise by $10 billion by the end of September, the military's budget chief said Tuesday. The estimated monthly average of $3.9 billion includes $1.1 billion in salaries for reservists called to active duty; $2.6 billion for such requirements as logistics and transportation; and $200 million for food, health costs and other support. Over the nine months, that $3.9 billion average comes out to $35 billion. It doesn't include replacement of damaged equipment and replenishing munitions and other materiel consumed in the war. Those expenses amount to a further $23 billion, for the total $58 billion expected by year's end, Pentagon calculations show.
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10:13 AM
WASHINGTON - Bush administration officials say it's unclear whether North Korean officials were bluffing or telling the truth when they claimed to have finished producing enough plutonium for about a half-dozen nuclear bombs. North Korea declared completion of the plutonium extraction in New York last week at a meeting of North Korean diplomats with Jack Pritchard, a State Department official who handles North Korean issues.
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10:08 AM
MANASSAS, Va. - The trial of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad will be moved 200 miles from Prince William County to Virginia Beach, a judge ruled. Circuit Judge LeRoy Millette said it "has been clearly shown that such a change of venue is necessary to ensure a fair and impartial trial." His ruling, dated Tuesday, was issued early Wednesday.
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10:04 AM
A powerful bomb, apparently hidden in an abandoned vehicle, blasted a truck in a U.S. supply convoy west of Baghdad Wednesday, killing a soldier who was hurled from his vehicle and wounding two others, soldiers at the scene said.
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08:31 AM
BRUNSWICK -- President Bush has decided to conduct next year's G-8 Summit on Sea Island, bringing thousands of government officials, diplomats and journalists to coastal Georgia, Gov. Sonny Perdue said yesterday. The event is expected to generate $500 million for the region's economy.
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07:24 AM
As calls mount for a full-scale investigation into the Bush administration's manipulation of intelligence on Iraq's nonexistent nuclear and chemical weapons program, let's hope that the other causus bellum on which the administration based its war – the alleged link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein – also gets the scrutiny it deserves. While the link was hyped less by administration officials than by right-wing idealogues and the conservative press, an organized campaign was nonetheless launched to persuade the American public that such a connection was real – and represented a mortal threat.
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07:14 AM
A U.N. group is working toward establishment of an international system to register and regulate civilian possession of firearms, according to a former congressman. The ultimate aim of many members of the conference on small arms is to outlaw personal ownership of guns altogether, said Georgia Republican Bob Barr.
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06:31 AM
A report by a leading Islamic lobby group accuses the U.S. Justice Department of targeting Arabs and Muslims amid a rise in "Islamophobic" rhetoric, violence, discrimination and harassment in the United States.
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06:28 AM
July 15, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The White House was expected on Tuesday to forecast a record budget deficit approaching a half trillion dollars this fiscal year -- $150 billion worse than its earlier projections -- with little hope of a turnaround any time soon. Administration officials said the budget projections would include, for the first time, initial costs of the war in Iraq. Military operations there and in Afghanistan have cost roughly $4.8 billion a month -- $58 billion on an annual basis -- which is well over initial estimates.
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10:25 AM
BAGHDAD -- The U.S. military announced thousands of key soldiers would be staying in Iraq indefinitely even as the number of American combat deaths neared the 1991 Gulf War total. In an abrupt about-face, the U.S. military said Monday thousands of troops from the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) would stay in Iraq until further notice instead of returning by September in line with an announcement only last week.
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10:23 AM
WASHINGTON -- President Bush indicated he was open to a "limited" deployment of U.S. troops to prop up a cease-fire in turbulent Liberia. Bush said on Monday he had a "a meeting of minds" with visiting U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has been pressing him to intervene in the West African nation, where protracted warfare has destabilized the region.
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10:21 AM
NEW ORLEANS - A federal appeals court rejected an attempt by survivors to collect damages from the government for the deadly 1993 confrontation outside Waco, Texas, between federal agents and members of the Branch Davidian cult. Without dissent, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Monday turned aside contentions that a lower court judge who ruled against the survivors was biased.
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10:16 AM
Former President Bill Clinton was rightly impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives for lying under oath. Of course, his crimes were not limited to that. However, if lying is reason enough to impeach, there would not be many politicians left in Washington, D.C. And that includes the current occupant of The White House.
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09:46 AM
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department acknowledges its defiance of a judge's order may cause dismissal of charges against accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, but says it won't produce an al-Qaida prisoner for questioning by the defendant.
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09:22 AM
SALT LAKE CITY -- U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer was hospitalized in serious condition this morning as attorneys gathered to present their final arguments in a lawsuit challenging the operation of the the LDS Church's secondary school seminary program. Brimmer's illness, reported to be stomach problems, forced an indefinite postponement of the final arguments.
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09:14 AM
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson is asking his nationwide audience to pray that God will remove three judges from the United States' highest court so conservatives can replace them. ``We ask for miracles in regard to the Supreme Court,'' Robertson prayed on Monday while hosting the Christian Broadcasting Network's ``The 700 Club.'' The request for divine intervention is part of ``Operation Supreme Court Freedom,'' an ongoing, 21-day ``prayer offensive'' Robertson is promoting on the show and on CBN's Web site.
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08:12 AM
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08:12 AM
July 14, 2003
BAGHDAD -- The United States lost its 32nd soldier in postwar combat in Iraq Monday, underscoring the hardships a U.S.-backed Governing Council faced in quashing Iraqi resentment as it began work choosing a leader. A group that said it was an Iraqi branch of the al Qaeda network claimed responsibility for attacks on U.S. soldiers in an audio tape broadcast Sunday but its rhetoric was more reminiscent of former president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party than Osama bin Laden's group.
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09:28 AM
WASHINGTON - President Bush, mulling whether to send U.S. troops to enforce a fragile cease-fire in Liberia, is ready to face the world leader who has pushed most aggressively for American intervention in the strife-torn West African nation.
Bush and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan were to sit down Monday to an agenda jammed with global hotspots and seemingly intractable problems.
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09:24 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq took a confident step down an uncertain path toward democracy with the founding of a broadly representative governing council, even as fresh violence struck U.S. forces trying to bring stability to the country. One soldier was killed and six wounded in an attack by insurgents firing multiple rocket-propelled grenades at their convoy early Monday. The violence followed an apparent failed car-bombing Monday night on a police station full of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police, local police said.
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09:21 AM
The Supremes may be gone until October—off for cushy "teaching" jobs in Europe, most of them—but the controversy they created with their last-minute decision in Lawrence vs. Texas is sure to be waiting for them when they return... For now, however, the politician with the most to lose is President Bush. His low-key response to the Lawrence decision enraged many conservatives, and some are threatening to stay home next November.
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07:47 AM
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A gang of masked men shot and critically injured a policeman and a school teacher in Indonesia's Central Sulawesi province, a region that was once ravaged by bloody Muslim-Christian fighting, police said Saturday.
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07:34 AM
A ministry that works to empower persecuted Christians has learned that a legal dispute involving a Catholic School and its Muslim former principal, led to the murder of a priest in Pakistan. Gary Lane of Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) says the murder can be traced back to a 1972 government decision that resulted in the nationalization of the Catholic convent school and the appointment of Muslim teacher Sazina Siddiqui as principal.
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07:13 AM
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05:52 AM
July 12, 2003
CIA Director George Tenet took the blame for allowing President George W. Bush last January to mislead the American people into thinking Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material in Africa. In his first public statement on the intelligence, Tenet confirmed what the White House had been saying for the past week, that Bush made the claim in good faith after the information had been cleared by intelligence agencies.
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01:26 PM
FALLUJA, Iraq -- U.S. soldiers remained posted on Saturday inside an Iraqi police station in anti- American Falluja despite protests from police eager to take over security in the flashpoint town. U.S. military officials said American troops were planning a gradual withdrawal from Falluja, but that strategy could backfire because many Iraqis see local policemen as U.S. puppets who will not command respect on the streets.
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01:23 PM
ABUJA -- President Bush said on Saturday the United States would be "active" in Liberia but said he had not determined whether that would mean sending American troops to the war-torn West African country. Asked in the Nigerian capital Abuja if it would come next week, perhaps when he meets U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan at the White House on Monday, Bush replied: "I'm not sure." "
I told the president we'd be active," Bush said before talks with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo. "The definition of that will be when we understand all the parameters."
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01:21 PM
WASHINGTON -- The CIA wrongly allowed President Bush to tell the American people that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa, despite analysts' doubts about the information, the agen-cy's director, George Tenet, acknowledged Friday. "These 16 words should nev-er have been included in the text written for the president," Tenet said, referring to a section of January's State of the Union address in which Bush said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Tenet goes on to suggest that the agency only went along with the final text because of a technicality -- the fact that the allegation was attributed to British intelligence. This appears somewhat at odds with Rice's description of events. In a lengthy interview with reporters on Air Force One, she said the only changes sought by the CIA were to remove specific references to amounts of uranium and countries from which Iraq was seeking to obtain it.
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01:16 PM
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Saturday he had confidence in CIA Director George Tenet despite his agency's failure to warn Bush against making allegations about Iraq's nuclear weapons program later found false. "Yes I do, absolutely," Bush said. "I've got confidence in George Tenet. I've got confidence in the men and women who work at the CIA and I look forward to working with them as we win this war on terror."
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01:05 PM
NORFOLK, Va. - The USS Ronald Reagan, the first American carrier to bear the name of a living president, officially enters naval service on Saturday with a commissioning ceremony at Norfolk Naval Station.
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01:01 PM
NEW YORK - When Enron filed for bankruptcy in December 2001, it claimed assets worth $62 billion. That estimate in retrospect turns out to have been off by about $50 billion as the company will, in a filing expected Friday, say that it has something like $12 billion with which to pay creditors.
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11:34 AM
A cabinet minister yesterday called for the beheading of the parents of the 12-year-old boy who confessed to the murder of a another boy. Yoshitada Konoike, who is the minister in charge of disaster prevention, said the parents of the 12-year-old should first be dragged through the streets before being executed. "It is better to have the parents decapitated for punishment after dragging them around town," said Mr Konoike, 62, who is also in charge of a government panel on raising juveniles. His comments followed the 12-year-old's confession this week to the slaying,
a crime that has shocked the nation.
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09:19 AM
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08:37 AM
July 11, 2003
The US Senate unanimously called on the White House to consider asking for NATO and UN troops to be sent into Iraq as former commander Tommy Franks said US troops may have to stay as long as four years. US Secretary of State Colin Powell for his part conceded he was uncertain how responsive allies would be to sending troops into Iraq to back Washington and London. In a 97-0 vote, senators said President George W. Bush "should consider requesting formally and expeditiously that NATO raise a force for deployment in post-war Iraq similar to what it has done in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo."
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08:39 AM
A US tank fired a shell for the first time since the end of the US war on Iraq in clashes overnight with guerrilla fighters in the flashpoint town of Ramadi 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad, a military spokesman said. Attacks on US troops have occurred daily in the central Iraq region, to the west and north of Baghdad, a bastion of mainly Sunni Muslim followers of Saddam's ousted regime, since the war was declared over on May 1.
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08:36 AM
WASHINGTON -- The White House ignored a request by the CIA to remove a statement in President Bush's State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for its nuclear weapons program, CBS Evening News reported on Thursday.
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08:33 AM
FALLUJAH, Iraq - For the first time since U.S. forces captured Fallujah three months ago, American soldiers withdrew from the town mayor's office Friday, a police official told The Associated Press. U.S. troops also left a police station in this tense western town after Iraqi officers complained the American presence was putting local police at risk.
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08:29 AM
WASHINGTON - The government is loosening restrictions on how much scientific proof is required to advertise a food's possible health benefits on its package, a move welcomed by food makers but one that critics fear will leave consumers prey to quackery in the grocery aisles.
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06:08 AM
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court justices have scattered for the summer, chased nonetheless by the paperwork for a major constitutional challenge to the nation's new campaign finance law. Hundreds of pages of new filings arrived at the court Tuesday from politicians, political advocacy groups and others fighting new restrictions on campaign fund raising and advertising. The high court has scheduled a special session to hear the case in September and must work over the summer to prepare.
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05:03 AM
July 10, 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Several dozen Iraqi police, most wearing new uniforms provided by the U.S. military, marched on the mayor's office in Fallujah, a restive town west of Baghdad, insisting American soldiers stop using their station as a base. The Iraqis said they would quit their posts if the soldiers don't find a new home within 48 hours.
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04:43 PM
WASHINGTON - American troops may still be in Iraq four years from now, Gen. Tommy Franks told Congress on Thursday. There are nearly 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, some of them under fire from anti-U.S. forces. "We need to not develop an expectation that all of these difficulties will go away in one month or two months or three months," Franks testified.
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04:41 PM
JERUSALEM - Palestinians on Thursday opened fire on a car on a main highway that runs next to the West Bank, police said, but no one was hurt. The attack took place on Highway 6, a toll road that runs north to south and passes next to the line with the West Bank, near the Palestinian town of Qalqiliya. Police were searching the area. Initial reports said an Israeli was seriously wounded.
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04:39 PM
BOSTON - The company Chuck Taylor's shoes made famous is getting a Nike swoosh. Nike Inc., the top maker of high-tech athletic shoes, said Wednesday (early Thursday in Manila) it is buying Converse Inc., which dominated the basketball shoe market from the 1920s to the 1970s and is best known for its famed "Chuck Taylor All Star" sneakers. The deal calls for Nike to pay $305 million, plus the assumption of certain Converse liabilities.
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02:27 AM
In New York Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced the Secret Service will coordinate the city's security during the Republican presidential nominating convention next August.
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12:44 AM
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12:39 AM
July 09, 2003
LOS ANGELES - A judge has indicated she may drop three charges against a woman accused of stealing classified information from her FBI handler to pass on to China.
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03:28 PM
WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday the United States did not go to war with Iraq because of dramatic new evidence of banned weapons but because it saw existing information on Iraqi arms programs in a new light after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
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01:51 PM
WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats on Wednesday killed a proposal to limit pain and suffering awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, an idea strongly backed by many U.S. physicians who say high malpractice insurance costs are driving them out of business.
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01:50 PM
ACCRA -- West African countries plan to send 1,000 peacekeepers to Liberia within two weeks and expect help with logistics from the United States, a spokesman for the ECOWAS regional bloc said on Wednesday. A U.S. military survey team is currently in Liberia and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday that more teams would be dispatched elsewhere in the region to look at how best the United States could help.
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01:47 PM
There are certain pundits who are inclined to cut Bush a lot of slack. For instance, these folks say that if it turns out that Iraq really had no "weapons of mass destruction," – hey, well, we knew all along that that wasn't the real reason we had to pursue "regime change." No, it was to liberate the Iraqi people. And should it turn out that the Iraqi people don't actually feel they have been liberated? Well, then we went to war because it was in our strategic interests to eliminate Hussein's government. But Andrew Sullivan recently has made a strong, perhaps unbeatable, claim to the title of "Chief Bush Slack Cutter."
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01:01 PM
WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved $369 billion in defense funds for the next fiscal year and a Senate panel advanced a similar measure as the Republican-led U.S. Congress moved to give President Bush largely what he wanted for the Pentagon.
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01:58 AM
The Pentagon on Tuesday raised its count of Americans killed by hostile fire in Iraq since the war began in March to 143, a figure that approaches the 147 killed in the 1991 Gulf War.
When President Bush declared major combat operations had ended on May 1, the number killed in action stood at 114. Since then, guerrilla-style attacks have taken another 29 American lives, and Bush as well as U.S. military commanders have said the war is not yet over.
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01:51 AM
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration, signaling it is encouraged by Palestinian efforts to establish a legitimate government and crack down on violence against Israel, is considering sending direct financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Tuesday that an aid proposal is being discussed.
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01:47 AM
The President announced last week that the first six of the terrorist suspects being held in Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta at Guantanamo, Cuba, have been designated for trial by military commission. Their cases now go to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to determine which will be tried, and on what charges.
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01:20 AM
WASHINGTON — Lawyers for a Qatari student who was jailed by the military last month asked a federal court today to free him and challenged President Bush's authority to treat terrorism suspects as "enemy combatants."
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01:18 AM
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court justices have scattered for the summer, chased nonetheless by the paperwork for a major constitutional challenge to the nation's new campaign finance law. Hundreds of pages of new filings arrived at the court Tuesday from politicians, political advocacy groups and others fighting new restrictions on campaign fund raising and advertising.
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12:26 AM
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12:04 AM
July 08, 2003
A federal appeals court Tuesday rejected the Bush administration's bid to stop a lawsuit that seeks to delve into the energy industry's ties to Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force. In a 2-1 ruling, the court said administration officials must turn over some information about the task force or list specific documents that they intend to withhold from the proceedings.
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03:48 PM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents dropped a homemade bomb from a bridge onto a passing U.S. military convoy in Baghdad on Tuesday, while another military vehicle struck a land mine in the capital. At least seven U.S. troops were injured in those and other attacks throughout the country, the military said.
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11:18 AM
JERUSALEM - Muslims from Palestinian group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a bombing in central Israel that killed a 65-year-old Israeli woman, apparently violating last week's cease-fire pledge. A fax to The Associated Press carrying the Islamic Jihad logo threatened more violence if Israel does not agree to a mass release of Palestinian prisoners. "Release the prisoners or the consequences will be grave," the leaflet warned.
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11:15 AM
Rear Adm. Rodney P. Rempt, who steps down tomorrow as president of the Naval War College, has been officially nominated by President Bush to be superintendent of the Naval Academy, the Defense Department announced yesterday.
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09:27 AM
The chief executive, who was hand-picked by communist party bosses to steer Hong Kong after the transfer from British rule, undermined his authority and embarrassed his superiors on the mainland by announcing that he would delay an anti-subversion law in the face of an overwhelming display of people power and the loss of a key ally. The climbdown marks a victory for the 500,000 residents who took to the streets last week in the biggest demonstration in the territory since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests - and challenges the communist party to show whether it has changed since the murderous crackdown that followed.
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09:13 AM
Britain has a "fantastic opportunity" to shift the direction of the Europe when new member states join the European Union, Tony Blair has said.
The prime minister told a "super committee" of Parliament's most senior MPs that the EU had to change the way it worked to make European enlargement work.
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09:07 AM
"One of Norway’s most highly profiled and right-wing politicians, Carl I. Hagen, is urging the nomination of former U.S. President Bill Clinton as new NATO boss," reported Norway’s Aftenposten on June 17th. Hagen, head of Norway’s Progress Party, insists that "NATO’s new leader should have international authority," continued the report. "He thinks Clinton, therefore, is the perfect choice."
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12:49 AM
TEHRAN -- Iran has successfully conducted the final test of a midrange missile, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry here confirmed yesterday. The missile, called Shahab-3, was first tested in 1998 and has a range of 806 to 930 miles, which means it can reach Israel and American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
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12:46 AM
July 07, 2003
The US Embassy in New Zealand had lodged a complaint with a brothel that calls itself The White House. After brothels were legalised in New Zealand this month, The White House in Auckland, which previously described itself as a massage parlour, advertised for prostitutes in a newspaper advertisement last week. "We believe that any likeness of a national government symbol in a commercial advertisement is in extremely poor taste," embassy spokeswoman Janine Burns told the Sunday Star-Times.
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11:42 PM
Two US soldiers and two Iraqis were killed as violence against the US-led coalition escalated, while Ankara said the US arrest of Turkish troops had sparked a "crisis" between the NATO allies.
The latest shootings -- which raised to three the number of US soldiers who died within 24 hours -- overshadowed the "historic" inaugural meeting of a Baghdad city council.
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11:34 PM
WASHINGTON -- A federal judge agreed Monday to a settlement fining WorldCom $750 million for its $11 billion accounting scandal, saying tougher measures might harm the giant telecommunications company's 50,000 employees and quash hopes for investors. In approving the agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff of New York said he did not want to drive the beleaguered company out of business.
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11:26 PM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's cascade of violence claimed more American lives, with a bomb attack on a military convoy in Baghdad early Monday killing one U.S. soldier and gunmen slaying two others in attacks hours earlier. Insurgents threw a homemade bomb at a U.S. convoy in northern Baghdad early Monday, killing a soldier, said Sgt. Patrick Compton, a spokesman for the military. Late Sunday, two assailants fired on another U.S. military convoy killing another soldier.
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08:12 AM
WASHINGTON – US troops facing extended deployments amid the danger, heat, and uncertainty of an Iraq occupation are suffering from low morale that has in some cases hit "rock bottom." Some frustrated troops stationed in Iraq are writing letters to representatives in Congress to request their units be repatriated.
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08:07 AM
Who are the "Sodomy 6"? Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens and Anthony Kennedy. These are the Supreme Court justices who have found hidden in the U.S. Constitution a right to practice homosexual sodomy.
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03:04 AM
WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress are returning from Independence Day celebrations with a substantial to-do list for the summer. They must figure out how to allocate money for government programs next year while fulfilling promises of prescription drug coverage for older people and tax rebates to poorer families with children. Also on the agenda are multibillion-dollar proposals to repair crumbling highways, curtail asbestos lawsuits so companies and people harmed by the product are helped and make medical malpractice insurance more affordable.
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03:01 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two American soldiers were killed in separate attacks on their convoys late Sunday and early Monday morning in the Iraqi capital, the military said. U.S. troops on patrol in Baghdad and other areas have been attacked several times a day, and Iraqi police and civilians perceived to be working with the occupying forces also have been targeted.
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02:00 AM
A US soldier died of his injuries after being shot in Baghdad a day after seven Iraqi police recruits were killed in a bombing, as a tide of violence in Iraq showed no sign of receding. The soldier was guarding Baghdad University's campus in the centre of the city when he was shot, a US military spokeswoman said. An officer at the scene said the soldier had been shot in the head.
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01:56 AM
July 06, 2003
The US Government announced last week plans for the disbursement of a $30 million Palestinian aid package through the United States Agency for International Development West Bank and Gaza Mission (USAID/WBG).
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09:12 PM