August 30, 2003
Most voters haven't started paying attention to the Democrat presidential race, says a poll released on Labor Day weekend -- the campaign's traditional starting point. Two-thirds of voters -- including two-thirds of Democrats -- were unable to name any of the Democrat candidates for president, said the CBS News poll out Sunday. Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean topped the field in the poll, with relatively low numbers that suggest the race remains wide open.
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01:24 PM
August 29, 2003
WASHINGTON - President Bush's campaign - expected to dwarf Democrat hopefuls by raising $200 million or more for the primaries, with no GOP rival - is appealing for donations by portraying Bush as a fund-raising underdog who won't have enough cash to defend himself against Democrat attacks. Bush has set several fund-raising records, including the most collected for a presidential primary campaign, and the most raised at a single event.
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10:40 AM
The Indian magazine Business Standard reports a team of at least 75 people will man the phones in call centers set up in Noida and Gurgaon, India, as part of a fund-raising blitz. The operators, hired by HCL eServe, a division of HCL Technologies, are required to telephone people in the United States and solicit their support for President George W. Bush and a donation for the Republican cause.
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10:10 AM
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Former POW Jessica Lynch, the petite blonde who became a war hero when special forces rescued her from an Iraqi hospital, has been honorably discharged from the U.S. Army, her lawyer said Wednesday. "As of now, she is not a member of the military anymore," Stephen Goodwin of Charleston said.
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06:49 AM
In January of this year, 2003, a bill was introduced both in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives which would re-institute the military draft. This bill would not only allow the government to draft our sons however (as bad as that is itself), but it would also allow the government to draft our daughters into the military for two years.
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06:48 AM
If certain federal lawmakers have their way, your eighteen-year-old daughters will be registered for selective service and drafted for combat by the next war. Many women's rights advocates claim that Christians have long since abandoned the issue of women in the military. Sadly, far too many pastors and politicians were embarrassingly silent on this issue in the days leading up to the war against Iraq.
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06:46 AM
LOS ANGELES - A coalition of legal groups and backers of Sri Lanka's Tamil community have filed a challenge to a section of the USA Patriot Act that makes it illegal to provide "expert advice and assistance" to groups with alleged links to terrorists. The five organizations and two individuals are seeking an injunction to prevent the government from enforcing the section, arguing it violates constitutional rights of free speech and against self-incrimination. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court, names U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of State Colin Powell as defendants.
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06:44 AM
August 28, 2003
FALLUJA, Iraq -- Four U.S. soldiers in Iraq were wounded on Thursday when a bomb exploded in a hotbed of anti-occupation sentiment west of Baghdad, a military spokeswoman said. Hundreds of local people marched in the town of Falluja after the attack, chanting slogans praising ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and denouncing President Bush. U.S. soldiers sealed off and searched part of the town, about 60 miles from Baghdad, after the attack. A military medical helicopter took casualties from the scene.
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01:31 PM
UNITED NATIONS -- With the Bush administration signaling for the first time it might agree to a U.N.-sponsored multinational force in Iraq, the United States and Britain intend to explore a new U.N. resolution to encourage nations to send troops.
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01:24 PM
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is now open to the possibility of establishing a U.N.-endorsed multinational force in Iraq if it is headed by an American commander, a top State Department official says.
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01:15 PM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - U.S. fighter jets and helicopters bombed suspected Taliban hideouts Thursday in Afghanistan's rugged southern mountains following intense battles between the insurgents and Afghan troops, officials said.
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01:07 PM
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli troops on Thursday cleared bushes in a Palestinian-controlled area of the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire toward an Israeli city, as the Palestinian Authority froze 39 bank accounts of nine Islamic charities in an apparent clampdown on militants sought by the United States.
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01:01 PM
WASHINGTON -- Even fat is the stuff of politics in Washington. And with obesity a growing health problem, lawmakers, lawyers and activists are lining up the way they do for most issues: on two sides. The debate has spilled over into public policy, with proposals for a junk-food tax, limits on food advertising, demands for more details on labeling and lawsuits against food manufacturers. Several states are considering limits on sweets sold in schools; Some are debating whether to force chain restaurants to list nutrition information on menus. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., recently introduced a bill that would prevent people from suing restaurants and food manufacturers for making them fat. Similar legislation has been introduced in the House.
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08:54 AM
HOUSTON - Gov. Rick Perry had just finished promoting the proposed constitutional amendment capping some damages on medical malpractice cases Wednesday when a protester carrying a notebook in his hand yelled a question. "Proposition 12 is not about medical liability. It's about all lawsuits, every single lawsuit," John Cobarruvias shouted. "Why aren't you discussing that? Why don't you just answer that now, sir?" "No sir, no sir, no sir," Perry sternly talked over the question. "I want you to go back with the media." Cobarruvias, president of the Texas chapter of Homeowners Against Deficient Dwellings, was detained briefly in a hallway and not permitted to attend a news conference that followed in a separate room.
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06:32 AM
LONDON -- British drugs firm Acambis, contracted by the United States to supply smallpox vaccine, said on Wednesday it had made and tested all 155 million doses and delivered over half to the U.S. stockpile. Acambis said the remaining vials would be handed over in the coming weeks after discussions with U.S. regulators over labelling. The delay means some revenues expected in the second quarter would now flow through in the third and fourth. Fears of biological attack have persuaded governments to build up stocks of smallpox vaccine to protect the population.
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06:30 AM
OKLAHOMA prosecutors filed the first criminal charges today against WorldCom and former CEO Bernard Ebbers in the $US11 billion ($17.2 billion) accounting scandal that plunged the long-distance giant into bankruptcy. The company, Ebbers and five other former executives were accused of falsifying the books in violation of Oklahoma securities law.
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06:29 AM
August 27, 2003
The loner who shot Ronald Reagan in 1981 is said by his doctors to have been cured of the mental illness that led to his assassination attempt. John Hinckley, 48, has been confined to secure wards in St Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington for more than 20 years after being found not guilty of attempted murder by reason of insanity, but could soon be released without supervision.
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11:17 AM
Last week a quietly scathing report by the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed what some have long suspected: In the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse, the agency systematically misled New Yorkers about the risks the resulting air pollution posed to their health. And it did so under pressure from the White House. The Bush administration has misled the public on many issues, from the budget outlook to the Iraqi threat. But this particular deception seems, at first sight, not just callous but gratuitous. It's only when you look back at budget politics in 2001 that you see the method in the administration's mendacity.
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11:15 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two more U.S. soldiers were killed in combat Wednesday, and the international relief agency Oxfam said it pulled its foreign staff out of Iraq because of the increasing danger. In the latest U.S. deaths, a soldier was killed and three were wounded in a roadside bombing in Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad. The soldier was from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, the military said, providing no other details. A second soldier was killed in another attack on a military convoy in Baghdad. The dead soldier from the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, the military said. A third soldier was reported to have died of a non-hostile gunshot wound in a separate incident.
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11:09 AM
BAGHDAD -- Iraq's U.S. occupiers had banned Saddam Hussein's image from public display but Wednesday they began plastering pictures of him all over central Baghdad. Instead of the giant portraits on almost every street corner during his rule, this time Saddam features on wanted posters advertising the $25 million reward offered by Washington for information leading to his capture or proving he is dead.
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10:55 AM
OKLAHOMA CITY - The Oklahoma attorney general's office filed criminal charges Wednesday against bankrupt telecommunications giant WorldCom Inc. Wednesday, alleging the company, former CEO Bernard Ebbers and other executives violated state securities laws by giving false information to investors.
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10:49 AM
Bioterrorism expert Dr. Steven J. Hatfill is going to court for what he says was a malicious campaign by the government to use him to make up for its failure to find the person responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks. Hatfill filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Attorney General John Ashcroft and other government officials saying that by labeling him a "person of interest" in the case, circulating his photo and leaking aspects of the investigation to the media, they have damaged his reputation and made him virtually unemployable.
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06:56 AM
August 26, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday forecast a federal budget deficit of $480 billion in 2004, a record shortfall that could pose problems for President Bush as he seeks re-election. In its bi-annual budget outlook, details of which were obtained by Reuters from congressional sources, the nonpartisan agency also confirmed an earlier prediction of a $401 billion deficit in 2003 and forecast a cumulative budget deficit of $1.4 trillion over the next decade.
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09:45 AM
A U.S. soldier was killed and two others were wounded when an ``improvised explosive device'' was used in an attack on a military convoy in Iraq today, the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, said in an e-mailed statement. The bombing happened near the town of Hamariyah at about 9:30 a.m. Iraq time, according to the statement. The soldiers were members of the 3rd Corps Support Command.
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09:41 AM
KHALIS, Iraq -- The toll of U.S. troops killed in postwar Iraq surpassed the number killed in major combat on Tuesday, reaching 139 with the death of a soldier in a roadside bombing. Two other soldiers were wounded when the bomb hit a support convoy in the town of Hamariyah, 16 miles northwest of Baghdad, the military announced.
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09:31 AM
STUDIES quoted by the government as evidence that vaccines containing mercury – linked to autism in children – are safe, are being withheld from the public. “Factsheets” issued by the Committee on Safety of Medicines to those concerned about research which suggests that vaccines containing mercury can trigger autism in some children claim that two new studies prove that the jabs are safe. But these studies have not been scrutinised by independent experts as part of the peer review process which all scientific studies must go through to be considered valid.
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09:10 AM
WASHINGTON -- Advocacy groups from across the political spectrum blasted the U.S. government's proposed air passenger screening program on Monday, calling it a "quantum leap" in surveillance that violates privacy and civil rights. Under the plan, the government will take basic information of all potential airline passengers -- name, date of birth, address and phone number -- as they book their ticket. It will run that information through a commercial data service to confirm the passenger's identity.
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09:09 AM
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft is scheduled to visit Las Vegas this week to continue defending the U.S.A. Patriot Act, a law passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Critics have charged that the act, which aims to crack down on terrorism, violates civil liberties. Ashcroft is scheduled to speak at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the Carol Fitzgerald Jury Assembly Hall at the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse.
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08:49 AM
BOISE - U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's visit to Boise on Monday is expected to draw protest. Ashcroft is hitting 18 cities in three weeks to gain support for the Patriot Act. His visit is not open to the public. But, it'll bring out many who strongly oppose the Patriot Act.
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08:32 AM
Attorney General John Ashcroft has launched a publicity campaign to save the USA Patriot Act, a misnamed piece of legislation if ever there was. It should be called the Anti-Bill of Rights Act. Ashcroft is out on the hustings because opposition to the Patriot Act, passed hurriedly in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attack, is itself coming under attack. More than 134 local governments have passed resolutions denouncing it. The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging a portion of it in federal court.
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08:31 AM
August 25, 2003
BOMBAY, India -- Consecutive bombs exploded in a crowded jewelry market and a historical landmark in Bombay on Monday, killing at least 42 people, wounding 150 others and shaking buildings in India's financial capital. The two bombs were hidden in the trunks of taxis and exploded within five minutes of each other, the city's police commissioner R. S. Sharma said, according to the Press Trust of India.
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09:13 AM
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- The militant group Hamas promised revenge Monday after Israel killed four of its members in a missile strike and declared anyone in the group a legitimate target for "liquidation." Palestinian officials warned Sunday night's airstrike - part of Israel's response to a suicide bombing last week that killed 21 people - would undermine efforts to rein in militants, a key requirement in a fading U.S.-backed peace plan.
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09:12 AM
WASHINGTON -- The US House of Representatives has approved funds for the creation of a radio and television network in the Middle East aimed at promoting American views. Funds for the new media network will come out of $1.3bn allocated to international broadcasting. Correspondents say the network is seen as Washington's response to the popular Qatar-based Arabic television news station "Al-Jazeera".
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09:11 AM
ARNOLD Schwarzenegger’s bid to become governor of California could be overshadowed by Jewish groups investigating the Nazi past of the film star’s father. Gustav Schwarzenegger joined the Sturmabteilung, or SA - the notorious Nazi storm troopers also known as brownshirts - on 1 May, 1939, the year after Germany annexed Austria and six months after the brownshirts played a crucial role in the bloody Kristallnacht riots.
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09:09 AM
A leader in Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign for governor Sunday urged the remaining high-profile Republicans in the recall election to consider dropping out, a day after conservative Bill Simon pulled the plug on his campaign. ``The message is that I think it's time we be united. That's what we're trying to do,'' said U.S. Rep David Dreier, R-Glendora, a co-chairman of the Schwarzenegger campaign. ``Bill Simon did the courageous thing.''
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08:40 AM
A weeklong gasoline shortage seemed a distant memory Sunday as fuel began pouring into the Valley through a bypass around a damaged portion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline. Petroleum began moving through the rerouted pipeline, closed since Aug. 8, about 8:20 a.m.
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08:19 AM
Amendment 27, the campaign-finance reform measure voters put into the state Constitution last fall, is under attack in court. But its supporters say they fear that the real chink in its armor may be a loophole that could result in nastier campaigns. The amendment limits individual campaign contributions to $200 for legislative candidates each election and $500 for statewide candidates, including the governor. And it caps campaign spending at $65,000 for state House candidates, $90,000 for state Senate candidates and $2.5 million for gubernatorial candidates.
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07:35 AM
August 23, 2003
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When President Bush comes to St. Paul's RiverCentre for a $2,000-a-head fundraiser on Tuesday, he'll be well on his way to setting another record for presidential fundraising. In the first six months of the year, Bush raised $35 million, more than twice as much as any of the nine Democrat candidates seeking to run against him. Bush got nearly half of the money from four states -- California, Texas, New York and Florida -- according to federal disclosure reports. But the Fundraiser-in-Chief is hardly overlooking smaller states.
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10:59 PM
Attorney General John Ashcroft will sweep into town Monday as part of his U.S. tour to shore up the USA Patriot Act. But even in Republican-heavy Utah -- one of more than a dozen stops on what critics are calling the "Patriot Tour" -- the antiterrorism law Congress quickly passed after 9-11 has met protest. Abortion protesters complain the act may classify their activities as domestic terrorism. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent Ashcroft a letter saying he should "desist from further speaking engagements" or explain why his speeches do not violate restrictions on political activities by government officials, The New York Times reported Friday.
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10:58 PM
Unable to generate the attention or support that helped him nearly upset Gov. Gray Davis last November, Republican millionaire Bill Simon dropped out of the recall race Saturday and left the GOP field to actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and two others who trail him badly in the polls.
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10:57 PM
WEST COVINA – Apparent arson fires destroyed or damaged dozens of Hummers and other SUVs early yesterday at a dealership vandalized by spray-painted anti-pollution slogans. imilar graffiti was found on SUVs at three other dealerships in nearby cities.
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10:56 PM
WASHINGTON -- Freddie Mac's board of directors will replace Chief Executive Greg Parseghian after a successor is found, the mortgage finance company says. Freddie Mac's board has also agreed to remove General Counsel Maud Mater under orders from its regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO). The shake-up is further fallout from an accounting scandal that caused the company to replace its senior management, including Parseghian's predecessor Leland Brendsel, in June.
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10:55 PM
August 22, 2003
WASHINGTON -- Joining a growing chorus of families, the widow of a soldier in Iraq who died of a mysterious pneumonia-like illness said Thursday she fears the military may be lying about her husband's death. She said she worries that he may have died from the anthrax vaccine shots the Army gave him. "More and more I think it was the shots," said Stephanie Tosto, whose husband, Army Sgt. Michael L. Tosto, died June 17. Tosto said the military has given her little information about her husband's death. "I think they [the Army] might be lying about this stuff," Tosto, 22, said in a telephone interview from Baumholder, Germany. "I really feel like it. Nobody can tell me anything. If it is the shots, then of course they are lying."
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10:23 AM
A half million U.S. soldiers were inoculated for the war with Iraq. When Army Reservist Rachael Lacy got her military shots last spring, she became deathly ill in a matter of weeks. The coroner listed "recent smallpox and anthrax vaccination(s)" as contributors to her death. Yet the military doesn't mention Lacy under "Noteworthy Adverse Events" in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association touting its smallpox vaccine success. It claims no deaths.
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10:23 AM
WASHINGTON -- The government is threatening the American Red Cross with thousands of dollars in fines for allegedly violating a court settlement that was supposed to end continuing disputes over blood safety rules. In April, the Food and Drug Administration reached an agreement to settle charges that the Red Cross had committed "persistent and serious violations" of federal blood safety rules dating back 17 years. That settlement spelled out changes the Red Cross must make to comply with FDA rules - such as ensuring that no patient receives potentially unsafe blood and rejecting donations from improper donors.
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10:22 AM
BAGHDAD -- A U.S. soldier has been killed in action south of Baghdad in the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force operating area, the U.S. armed forces said on Friday. The military also said another U.S. soldier was killed and six were wounded in a fire at a small arms range in Baghdad. A spokesman had no information on the cause of the blaze. The military said the soldier in the Marines' zone had been killed on Thursday but had no more information. The Marines are responsible for a mainly Shi'ite Muslim area south of the capital which includes the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala.
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10:21 AM
UNITED NATIONS - Secretary of State Colin Powell launched a fresh drive on Thursday to get more nations to send troops to Iraq but made clear the United States would not cede any control of the country. However, the push for a new Security Council resolution that would draw more troops, police or financial assistance met with opposition from France, Russia and Germany, who said the United Nations should be given a larger role in Iraq's future and asked for a timetable to end the occupation.
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10:20 AM
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Now that all three sniper-style slayings at area convenience stores have been linked to the same .22-caliber rifle, investigators say they have "a direction to go in." Ballistics tests confirmed Thursday what authorities and many residents had suspected that the shootings unnerving this city were linked. Whether they were random has yet to be determined.
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10:14 AM
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Police in West Virginia have released a composite sketch of a suspect in last week's shootings in the Charleston area that claimed three lives. The sketch is that of a heavyset white male. Witnesses have told the police they saw a large white man in a truck the night two of the victims were killed.
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10:12 AM
WASHINGTON -- The long, hot summer is growing more uncomfortable for residents of the nation's capital because of a rise in violence, an increasing threat from street gangs and an unsolved serial arson case. Some of the crimes have been brazen, others especially tragic. Last week, five women and three men, ages 17 to 24, were shot outside a nightclub where police already had increased patrols.
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10:10 AM
The Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the state may be responsible for the costs of caring for indigent undocumented immigrants even after they have been moved out of acute-care wards. The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System cannot stop paying hospitals for treating such immigrants just because the patients have been stabilized to the point where they can be transferred from acute-care wards, the Supreme Court said.
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09:35 AM
August 21, 2003
The loan guarantee agreement, which Israel and the United States signed Wednesday after several months of exhaustive negotiations, enables Israel to raise $9 billion in government bonds on American financial markets over the coming three years. Israel has agreed to report on the way in which it uses the money according to the same system that had been in place when the 1992 loan guarantee agreement was signed, Treasury director-general Ohad Marani said.
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10:46 AM
The World Bank has decided to pull its staff out of Iraq after the bomb attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad. Staff at the institution, a key part of the US-led coalition's efforts to rebuild Iraq's economy, would be relocated to Jordan "for security reasons until we are certain the situation has improved", it said.
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10:45 AM
against banks and corporations they say helped former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein build chemical weapons that poisoned them and caused birth defects in their children. The suit, filed in Brooklyn federal court, seeks class action status on behalf of some 100,000 veterans suffering from illnesses including memory loss, deterioration of the central nervous system and chronic fatigue.
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10:44 AM
BERLIN -- The majority of Germans are against an expansion of the country's military engagement from the Afghan capital Kabul to surrounding areas, the online edition of Der Spiegel reported yesterday.
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10:42 AM
UNITED NATIONS - U.S. and U.N. officials are working on language of a draft resolution "that might call on member states to do more" in Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday after meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Powell said that discussions on the draft in the Security Council might include "issues with respect to the role the U.N. might play" in Iraq.
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10:41 AM
WASHINGTON - Two House lawmakers, frustrated by a system in which their colleagues go directly from election victories to raising cash for a new campaign, are proposing that terms of office in the House be doubled to four years. Such a change would require a constitutional amendment, which Reps. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas, and Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., acknowledge would be difficult. Two-year terms were intrinsic to the Founding Fathers' concept of a House responsive to the will of the people.
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08:42 AM
A federal judge rejected an effort to delay California's Oct. 7 gubernatorial recall election because of potential problems with punch card voting machines, as major candidates held carefully staged events to position themselves before voters.
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08:38 AM
AUSTIN -- What some see as skipping work, the 11 Texas Senate Democrats holed up in Albuquerque consider political expression. And on Wednesday, they asked a federal court to protect that First Amendment right. The stakes in a summerlong battle over congressional redistricting intensified 24 days ago when the Democrats bolted for New Mexico, shutting down the Texas Capitol and provoking fines and sanctions by their Republican colleagues.
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08:25 AM
A plan to vaccinate nearly half a million healthcare workers in the US against smallpox in case of a bioterrorist attack has ground to a halt. Only 38,257 people have accepted vaccination, less than a tenth as many as planned. But the failure may run deeper. In a damning report released last week, the US Institute of Medicine, an independent advisory body, says the problem is not that so few have been vaccinated, but that so much time and money has been spent on the vaccination programme. It argues that this should have been spent on more important defensive measures such as disease surveillance and response plans.
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07:51 AM
ST. LOUIS - Two new investigational smallpox vaccines will be studied as part of a clinical trial starting soon at Saint Louis University's Center for Vaccine Development. Saint Louis University is the only location in the United States participating in the trial. "Although there has not been a case of smallpox in the United States since 1949, the U.S. government has determined that it is necessary to keep smallpox vaccine available, in case the disease is reintroduced through bioterrorism," said Sharon Frey, M.D., principal investigator for the study and associate professor of internal medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. "A study starting this fall at Saint Louis University is being done to determine the effectiveness of two new investigational smallpox vaccines in healthy adults."
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07:02 AM
CHARLESTON, West Virginia -- Detectives investigating three shooting deaths in West Virginia believe they are closing in on the killer and a composite picture of their prime suspect is being compiled. Police are also looking to see if illegal drugs may provide a connection between the three apparently random killings, authorities said Wednesday.
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06:16 AM
August 20, 2003
CRAWFORD, Texas -- US President George W. Bush has authorized the resumption of a controversial joint program with Colombia to interdict aircraft suspected of carrying illegal drugs, the White House said Tuesday. The move ends a two-year freeze stemming from an April 2001 incident that saw a Peruvian fighter, accompanied by a US surveillance plane, shoot down a single-engine aircraft, killing US missionary Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter.
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09:00 AM
The Justice Department's approval of Oct. 7 as the date for California's recall election resolves just one of many outstanding legal hurdles that ultimately could delay the vote. The federal government officially signed off on the date Tuesday in response to a pair of civil rights lawsuits filed in San Jose federal court. But a host of legal issues remain in those suits, as well as in another case expected to be decided as early as Wednesday by a Los Angeles federal judge.
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08:29 AM
WASHINGTON -- A civilian doctor who took care of an Illinois soldier before she died in April says the Pentagon should have treated her death as possibly due to vaccine side effects, but may be hesitating because of the impact on the military's controversial smallpox and anthrax vaccine programs. The death of Rachael Lacy, 22, of Lynwood, Ill., has taken on added significance because she died without ever being deployed, but had pneumonia. The Army is investigating pneumonia cases in Iraq and Southwest Asia that have sickened more than 100 solders and killed two - but has excluded Lacy's case in its search for a cause because she died before arriving there.
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07:28 AM
TRENTON -- The state has dropped plans to vaccinate fire, police, and other emergency personnel against smallpox, citing health concerns and questions about whether the voluntary program is still needed. A federal advisory panel recently recommended against continued public vaccinations, citing unexpected side-effects in a few cases, such as heart attacks. Federal health officials said that for every million people who receive the vaccine, between 14 and 52 experience potentially life-threatening reactions, and one or two die.
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07:26 AM
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy politician, Amen! This may well be the new prayer in the freshly finished church in Pades, south-west Romania, where a local councillor has been immortalised in a wall-painting. On the right wall, as you enter the church, is a painting of the regional bishop, Teofan Savu. Never before has an individual in lay clothes been painted inside a Romanian Orthodox church - but as Father Vladoiu says: "What do you expect, if he paid for it?"
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07:25 AM
CRAWFORD, Texas -- US President George W. Bush has authorized the resumption of a controversial joint program with Colombia to interdict aircraft suspected of carrying illegal drugs, the White House said Tuesday. The move ends a two-year freeze stemming from an April 2001 incident that saw a Peruvian fighter, accompanied by a US surveillance plane, shoot down a single-engine aircraft, killing US missionary Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter.
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07:24 AM
A homicide bomber disguised as an Orthodox Jew blew himself up on a bus packed with parents and young kids coming home from prayers in Jerusalem last night, killing at least 20 and injuring scores. Two New Yorkers - a 43-year-old Rockland County woman and her 5-month-old son - were among the dead. At least four other children also died - including babies still wearing diapers as their corpses were bundled into body bags.
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07:21 AM
Tourism Minister Benny Elon is scheduled to hold a press conference at noon today at the UN Plaza - Millennium Hotel, at which he will announce the Tourism Ministry's new initiative entitled "Project Go Israel." Tourism Minister Benny Elon is scheduled to hold a press conference at noon today at the UN Plaza - Millennium Hotel, at which he will announce the Tourism Ministry's new initiative entitled "Project Go Israel." The goal of the project is to bring one million tourists to Israel in the coming year. Elon recently completed a Bible Belt tour of the United States, including visits to Memphis, Tn. and Atlanta, Ga.
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07:20 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - United Nations workers were told to stay at home Wednesday after a cement truck packed with explosives blew up outside the offices of the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, killing him and 19 other people. The FBI was leading the search through the rubble for clues. At least 100 people were injured in the unprecedented attack against the world body.
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07:18 AM
MOSCOW -- Russia supports a draft U.N. Security Council resolution put forward by Britain to lift sanctions imposed on Libya after the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, the Russian news agency Interfax said on Tuesday.
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07:16 AM
August 19, 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A suicide attacker set off a truck bomb Tuesday outside the hotel housing the U.N. headquarters, U.S. officials said. At least 20 U.N. workers and Iraqis were killed, including the chief U.N. official in Iraq, and 100 were wounded. Sergio Vieira de Mello, a 55-year-old veteran Brazilian diplomat who was only days away from the end of his four-month mission, was in his office when the explosion ripped through the building about 4:30 p.m. and was trapped in the rubble. U.N. officials said 15 U.N. workers were killed and 100 wounded. A survey of Baghdad hospitals by The Associated Press found five other people killed.
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09:33 AM
TIKRIT, Iraq - Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former Iraqi vice president known as "Saddam's knuckles" for his ruthlessness, was turned over to U.S. forces in Mosul on Tuesday. Ramadan was captured Tuesday by Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq and an Arab satellite television station said he was disguised in peasant clothing. The 65-year-old former vice president was once considered Iraq's second-most powerful man. He was No. 20 on the U.S. most-wanted list of former regime figures.
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09:21 AM
KABUL, Afghanistan - On Monday, 12 suspected Taliban insurgents ambushed and killed nine policemen near Kharwar in Logar province, about 56 miles south of Kabul, regional commander Hatiqulluh Luddin said. Afghanistan has been hit by a new wave of violence blamed on insurgents, who are believed to be a mix of guerrillas from the ousted Taliban regime, al-Qaida fighters and supporters of renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. On Tuesday, attackers unsuccessfully fired three rockets at a coalition base in Asadabad, capital of eastern Kunar province, the U.S. military said.
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09:16 AM
TIKRIT, Iraq -- A rocket-propelled grenade and gun attack on a U.S. convoy north of Baghdad wounded two American soldiers on Tuesday, the U.S. military said. Lieutenant Colonel William MacDonald of the 4th Infantry Division said the convoy was attacked near Balad, a town in the "Sunni Triangle" north and west of Baghdad where support for fugitive dictator Saddam Hussein remains strong.
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09:05 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - An American soldier was killed by an explosive device in Baghdad Monday as the top U.S. civilian administrator said that attacks by saboteurs on Iraq's decrepit infrastructure and oil industry have cost the economy billions of dollars. U.S. officials said the soldier, from the Army's 1st Armored Division, was fatally wounded when the device detonated. He was rushed to a combat hospital where he was pronounced dead.
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09:01 AM
The proffered evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the British intelligence confusion, and the fuzzy and now non-existent connections to both al-Qaeda and the 9-11 acts of terrorism, are increasingly straining the Bush administration’s tortured arguments justifying the desperate need for a regime change in Iraq. The pressure on the administration is mainly in the form of partisan attacks from Democrats suggesting that the reasons for the unprovoked invasion have been narrowed down to only removing an evil dictator from power.
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08:40 AM
NEW YORK - Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. home mortgage funding company, said on Monday it plans to sell $8.0 billion of three-month benchmark bills due Nov. 19, 2003, and $3.5 billion of six-month bills due Feb. 18, 2004, on Wednesday in a Dutch auction. In a Dutch auction, or uniform price auction, successful bidders pay only the price of the
lowest accepted bid rather than the actual price as in a conventional multiple-price auction.
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08:40 AM
NEW YORK — An estimate of the potential losses Fannie Mae faces from interest-rate swings is "misleading," according to an e-mailed statement sent to financial analysts by Jayne Shontell, a director of investor relations at the company. The New York Times reported yesterday that Fannie Mae, the biggest source of mortgage funding in the U.S., risks higher losses from fluctuations in interest rates than it has disclosed. The newspaper cited internal company documents that it said it got from a former Fannie Mae employee on the condition that he not be identified.
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08:40 AM
SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Gray Davis announced he will sign legislation giving domestic partners most of the same legal rights that married couples have, saying the bill would help ensure "fairness for all Californians." "This bill not only provides additional rights for domestic partners, it also imposes significant new obligations such as shared responsibility for debts and financial support for children," Davis said Saturday. "As governor I will continue to do everything within my power to honor the dignity, humanity and privacy of every Californian regardless of their ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender or sexual orientation."
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08:40 AM
SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. Justice Department on Monday cleared the Oct. 7 election to recall Gov. Gray Davis. The decision, expected to be forwarded to California officials as early as Tuesday, comes three days after a federal judge threatened to halt the election if the government didn't approve it.
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08:39 AM
Florida elections might once have been the stuff of late-night comedy monologues, but for sheer entertainment value the Sunshine State can't hold a dimpled chad to what's going in California these days. Floridians, like the rest of America, are watching with bemusement -- and perhaps even a tinge of empathy -- as the California governor's race seems to get more, um, unconventional with each passing newscast.
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08:39 AM
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Investigators who worked on last year's Washington sniper shootings have joined the probe into three fatal shootings in the Charleston area, authorities said yesterday. "We have the agents that worked that particular case," Kanawha County Sheriff Dave Tucker said at a briefing yesterday afternoon. "They're on board with us and giving us some good advice, which we're following." Tucker said the investigators have "supplied us with vital information. They have been on the front line with that case."
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08:36 AM
Police in West Virginia are busy investigating what appears to be another string of sniper styled shootings. So far, at least three people have been gunned down at convenience store gas bars. Police say the three killings could be the work of a single shooter. There are reports that the bullets from all three attacks were fired from the same caliber and type of weapon. And all were shot from more than 30 metres away. But so far, officials haven't been able to link the bullets to the same gun.
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06:51 AM
Authorities investigating the sniper-style shootings in West Virginia have 100 leads, including some that are "very solid," a sheriff involved with the probe said Monday. "Every lead is being covered," said Sheriff Dave Tucker of Kanawha County, W.Va.
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06:50 AM
August 18, 2003
CAMPBELLS CREEK, W.Va. - Police stepped up their patrols and conducted door-to-door interviews in this mountain valley, hoping to calm residents fearful that a potential serial killer lurks in their midst. Two residents from Campbells Creek were killed Thursday — one in the town itself — and police said their deaths, along with an earlier killing, could be the work of a single shooter. As night fell Sunday, five patrol cars patrolled the area — usually a job undertaken by two units. Several officers began interviewing residents at their homes, searching for clues and hoping to reassure nervous homeowners.
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08:38 AM
LOS ANGELES -- Two Hispanic legal groups on Sunday called on President Bush to stop California's Oct. 7 recall election, while one of the top contenders to possibly succeed Gov. Gray Davis said Davis' supporters should stop trying to undermine his candidacy. The call by the Mexican American Bar Association and La Raza Lawyers of California came two days after a federal judge in northern California said he may put the election on hold if four counties cannot bring themselves into compliance with voting rules enacted in the civil-rights era.
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08:36 AM
KARACHI - Hundreds of angry Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims went on a rampage in Karachi on Sunday, destroying property and setting fire to an American fast food restaurant after the funeral of a doctor killed by gunmen. Crowds of youths attacked a Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) outlet and smashed up a number of cars and motorcycles after the funeral of Abne Hasan, a Shi'ite doctor killed on Saturday, police and witnesses said. "The mourners hurled stones and smashed glasses in KFC. Later they set it ablaze," Deputy Police Chief Tariq Jamil told Reuters from Karachi's central district, where the restaurant was attacked. The fire was quickly put out, witnesses said.
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08:35 AM
ISLAMABAD -- Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz said that 53 million dollars US grant will be spent in Finance, Education and Agriculture sectors. United States and Pakistan on Tuesday have signed an agreement of 53 million dollars for five years to support the economic development in Pakistan. United States and Pakistan on Tuesday have signed an agreement of 53 million dollars for five years to support the economic development in Pakistan. The agreement was signed by the US Assistant Secretary of Commerce William H.lash and Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz in Islamabad on Tuesday.
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08:35 AM
NEW YORK -- International media rights bodies called on the United States on Monday to launch a full inquiry into the killing of award-winning Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, who was shot dead by U.S. troops in Iraq. Soldiers on an American tank shot at Dana on Sunday while he filmed outside Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad which had earlier come under a mortar attack, witnesses said. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders, RSF) in Paris urged the U.S. authorities to conduct a full inquiry.
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08:26 AM
Repairs to Iraq's sabotaged key oil export pipeline to Turkey may take up to a month, the US army said, amid persistent violence against US forces and the slaying of a Reuters cameraman. Fire continued to rage on Iraq's key oil export pipeline to Turkey Sunday, costing an estimated 250,000 barrels per day and threatening to delay for up to another month efforts to get the country's vital oil industry up and running. Coalition commanders have warned that bloody attacks on their personnel are continuing and becoming more sophisticated, with Iraqi fighters apparently adding a new tactic to their arsenal.
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08:10 AM
ANNISTON, Ala. — Fear and distrust run deep here in "the pink zone." These are the neighborhoods closest to the Anniston Army Depot, where the Army began burning obsolete but deadly chemical weapons this month. Toxins such as sarin and VX nerve gas — the very weapons of mass destruction that have been so much in the news lately — will be destroyed at the depot over the next seven years. If an accident occurred that sent a toxic cloud into the air, the pink zone would be Ground Zero.
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08:06 AM
TIKRIT, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein has his head tossed back, his blonde locks flowing and a filter-tipped cigarette dangling coquettishly between his delicate fingers. Meet "Zsa Zsa Saddam", the U.S. army's latest ploy in the four-month hunt for the fugitive dictator. In a campaign set to start on Monday, U.S. forces plan to put up posters around Saddam's hometown of Tikrit showing his face superimposed on Hollywood heroines and other stars in an attempt to enrage his followers and draw them out. As well as Saddam dolled up as a slinky Zsa Zsa Gabor, there is a busty Rita Hayworth Saddam, a grooving Elvis Saddam and even Saddam in the guise of British-born rocker Billy Idol.
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08:03 AM
There is a dangerous development within this countries political landscape concerning the convergence of interests between many in the Christian right and the Bush government, specifically with Bush’s cabal of Israel first fanatics described as neocons or main stream conservatives. This unholy alliance between Christian evangelical dispensationalists, charismatics and the liberals in drag of the Republican Party can be best described as an apostasy for the church and the whoring of its fundamental principles. This vile degenerative union can find in history a familiar parallel of what will be the inevitable maturation and outcome when God’s Kingdom which at present is spiritual and not of this world is converged with human government. We need not look further then Germany in the 1920’s and early 1930’s to find a similar dimensional parallel.
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05:07 AM
August 16, 2003
Judge Roy Moore, Chief Justice of the Alabama State Supreme Court, has gained the full and public support of the Constitution Party, the nation’s third largest political party. Constitution Party National Chairman, Jim Clymer commended, "Justice Moore’s heroic stand for the principles our nation was founded upon" and communicated the unanimous support of the Party’s Executive Committee in a recent statement. "Unfortunately, it is all too rare to find a high level judge that is willing to take a stand for the supreme laws of our land. Despite the desperate and illogical ramblings that have proceeded from the federal level that would have us believe that recognizing God and his authority in our system of justice is somehow unconstitutional, the Constitution has no such prohibition in it. Justice Moore knows this and so does anyone else who can read and has read the Constitution of the United States."
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05:32 PM
LAHORE, Pakistan -- A High Court in eastern Pakistan has upheld a decision sentencing two Christian men to life in prison for allegedly burning the Quran, Islam's holy book, a human rights activist said Friday. The defendants, convicted of blasphemy in the city of Lahore, have argued that they were innocent. They said police set them up after they refused to pay a bribe, said Shahbaz Bhatti, president of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance.
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05:30 PM
ISLAMABAD -- Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz said that 53 million dollars US grant will be spent in Finance, Education and Agriculture sectors. United States and Pakistan on Tuesday have signed an agreement of 53 million dollars for five years to support the economic development in Pakistan. The agreement was signed by the US Assistant Secretary of Commerce William H.lash and Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz in Islamabad on Tuesday.
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05:29 PM
WALNUT CREEK, Calif. -- A judge on Friday threatened to delay the Oct. 7 recall unless California quickly obtains federal assurances that the election will not discriminate against minorities. U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel's action marks the first time a court has put a roadblock in the election timetable. The case stems from a federal Voting Rights Act lawsuit filed in San Jose. The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights alleges that state and Monterey County elections officials cannot proceed until federal officials approve the recall election process.
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05:27 PM
TIKRIT, Iraq -- The U.S. Army began training an Iraqi militia force on Friday to take on civil defense duties and pave the way for U.S. forces to leave Iraq. Fifty young men hand-picked by tribal leaders started three weeks of intensive training at one of Saddam Hussein's main palaces in the northern town of Tikrit, which is now headquarters for the 4th Infantry Division.
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05:26 PM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Shiite Muslims announced during their main prayer sermon on Friday that they would proceed with a controversial proposal to form their own militia to safeguard holy sites from any transgressions by U.S. troops. More than 3,000 of the faithful flooded one of the dusty main thoroughfares in Sadr City, a predominately Shiite slum in Baghdad, to hear the prayer leader, Sheik Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, denounce the U.S. forces for defiling sacred places after an incident on Wednesday in which a U.S. Blackhawk helicopter forced down a flag near a Sadr City mosque.
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05:24 PM
A military watchdog believes in light of the recent Supreme Court decision that threw out the Texas sodomy law, the Bush Administration will have a tough time defending the military's so-called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Former U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Loomis has filed a $1.1 million lawsuit seeking to recoup money he claims he lost when he was discharged in accordance with the U.S. Armed Services regulations excluding homosexuals from service. The military's policy on homosexuals has commonly come to be known as the Don't Ask, Don't Tell, or DADT policy. Loomis hopes the Supreme Court's recent ruling that the Texas sodomy law is unconstitutional will help bring down "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
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05:22 PM
August 15, 2003
Thousands of magicians, fortunetellers and faith healers make up a huge world of Iraqi spirituality that thrives despite being considered by many Muslims to be sinful. But this man is different. He was Saddam's own sorcerer, and therefore, for Iraqis, his visions of the dictator's demise carry special weight. The sorcerer asks that he not be identified, and he won't even pronounce the name of the man he once served. "That man is still alive, so I'm afraid," he says. According to the magician and several others interviewed in Baghdad, Saddam was a firm believer in magic, and even applied himself, with modest success, to "studying the sands" and summoning genies. He consulted frequently with two magicians from Iraq, one from Turkey, one from India, a French Arab and a beautiful Jewish witch from Morocco, the wizard says.
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10:22 AM
LOS ANGELES -- Larry Flynt, the pornographer who is among the best known of the candidates in California's gubernatorial recall election, expects to be included in candidate debates -- but he isn't yet committed to spending a substantial amount of money on his campaign. In an election that is drawing both praise as an exercise in democracy and ridicule as a cross between "Survivor" and "The Gong Show," it is difficult to say whether the publisher of "Hustler" is an entirely serious candidate. He is one of the few who has offered a specific plan to balance California's budget, but his image as a leading player in the pornography industry is sufficient -- for many voters -- to render him unfit for any public office, let alone governor.
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10:21 AM
WASHINGTON - The Federal Election Commission has asked an appeals court to reconsider a ruling barring the release of documents from an investigation into political coordination between the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO. The appeals court is expected to rule on the FEC's request by early next month. If the court denies it, the commission could ask the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling prohibiting the document release. At issue is the disclosure of thousands of pages from the commission's probe of 1996 election activity by the Democratic National Committee and the labor union.
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10:20 AM
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill aimed at reducing medical malpractice insurance costs Thursday as trial lawyers vowed to challenge a provision that caps some lawsuit damages. The bill signing ended a monthslong dispute among Florida Republicans over what Bush called his top priority -- lowering malpractice insurance costs to keep doctors from limiting or closing their practices.
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09:18 AM
WASHINGTON — Robert Hanssen, whom the FBI calls the most damaging spy in its history, was a "mediocre" agent who escaped detection because he was loosely supervised by a bureau that fooled itself into believing it had no spies in its ranks, the Justice Department's inspector general said Thursday. In a 31-page, unclassified version of a 674-page "top secret" report on the FBI's handling of the Hanssen scandal, Inspector General Glenn Fine said the FBI has not taken the aggressive steps necessary to detect moles like Hanssen and prevent them betraying secrets.
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06:35 AM
CRAWFORD, Texas -- In an effort to head off mounting violence in Afghanistan, the Bush administration plans to replace its top aid administrator, put U.S. advisers in key ministries and may redirect $1 billion from its Iraq war budget to fund Afghan reconstruction, American officials said. Administration officials and congressional aides who have been briefed on the plan said on Thursday it had yet to be finalized but an announcement was expected within weeks.
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06:23 AM
For all of its advances, medicine is still trapped in an ignorant age, says Dr. Richard Satava, manager of the Pentagon's effort to electronically recreate a person's anatomy. Automakers run crash tests on the desktop before they slam SUVs into the wall; oil companies do mock drilling electronically before dig in the ground. Medicine, on the other hand, still experiments on the living. One of the goals of Satava's Virtual Soldier program is to change that by creating an army of digital test subjects that can be subjected to new drugs, new medical procedures -- even new weapons. "You could test reactions to a new vaccine on a million soldiers over a 20-year time in one week," Satava said.
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05:48 AM
TORONTO - Canadian officials blamed a massive blackout Thursday across the Northeast and parts of Canada on a lightning strike at the Niagara power plant, but officials there denied it. "We have been informed that lightning struck a power plant in the Niagara region on the U.S. side," said Jim Munson, a spokesman for Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien. Brian Warner of the New York Power Authority said he wasn't sure where the power failure originated.
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05:23 AM
On November 9, 1965, the largest blackout in history occurred. The northeast power system broke up 4 seconds after the initial disturbance, and 30 million people were without electricity for as long as 13 hours. Later that day, President Lyndon Johnson wrote to the chairman of the Federal Power Commission: "Today's failure is a dramatic reminder of the importance of the uninterrupted flow of power to the health, safety, and well being of our citizens and the defense of our country."
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05:15 AM
August 14, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The families of two soldiers in Iraq who died after apparently suffering pneumonia-like illnesses are seeking independent analyses of the deaths. The letter to Rumsfeld signed by "The Neusche Family" asks for access to Joshua Neusche's medical records, pre-deployment serum, blood and tissue samples and vaccine injury reports, among other things. "We will consult with medical experts who will help us in obtaining a second opinion on Josh's death," the letter says. "It is our right to receive truthful, honest and unfiltered answers just as the military required truth, honesty and commitment from our son," the letter says.
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10:39 AM
WASHINGTON - A panel of scientists is recommending against smallpox vaccinations for the public because of concerns about side effects - both for those receiving the shots and for people in contact with them. "We need to begin to shift the focus away from vaccination toward preparedness in general," said Brian Strom, a University of Pennsylvania professor and chairman of the Institute of Medicine committee.
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10:38 AM
Ryan Clancy arrived in Iraq in February in a double-decker bus filled with opponents of the war, after a rocky journey in it all the way from Milan. He had used frequent flier miles to get to Italy from Wisconsin. The government is not happy with Clancy and several others like him. Not long after they returned home this spring, they received letters from the Treasury Department seeking information about their activities in Iraq and noting that spending money there was a crime that could lead to 12 years in prison and civil penalties of up to $275,000. The department is seeking fines substantially less in the cases.
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09:01 AM
Congress is set to impose new restrictions on the use of Special Operations Forces that for the first time will require a presidential order before deploying commandos in routine but hidden activities. The restrictions are contained in the classified Senate report accompanying the current version of the intelligence authorization bill for fiscal 2004. The new rules, if contained in the final version of the bill, would add a stop-gap measure to the military's deployment of Special Operations Forces by requiring the Pentagon to first obtain a presidential "finding," or directive, similar to those required for covert-action intelligence operations.
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08:25 AM
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - The Legislature on Wednesday sent Gov. Jeb Bush a bill it hopes will lower malpractice insurance rates and keep doctors from limiting their practices or moving out of state. The House passed the bill 87-26 after the Senate earlier voted 32-4 for the measure. The bill addresses a wide range of issues, including highly debated limits on some awards malpractice victims can receive by suing doctors.
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08:22 AM
August 13, 2003
TIKRIT, Iraq -- Guerrillas killed a U.S. soldier and wounded another in a bomb attack on a convoy near Saddam Hussein's hometown Wednesday after U.S. troops said they had caught one of the deposed Iraqi dictator's bodyguards. U.S. officers based in one of Saddam's former palaces in Tikrit said two 4th Infantry Division soldiers had been evacuated to hospital after the attack southeast of the town, but one had later died of his wounds. The soldier was the 58th killed in attacks since Washington declared major combat over on May 1.
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10:39 AM
ISLAMABAD -- Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz said that 53 million dollars US grant will be spent in Finance, Education and Agriculture sectors. United States and Pakistan on Tuesday have signed an agreement of 53 million dollars for five years to support the economic development in Pakistan. The agreement was signed by the US Assistant Secretary of Commerce William H.lash and Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz in Islamabad on Tuesday.
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10:38 AM
A BRITISH arms dealer was arrested in America yesterday over a suspected plot to assassinate President Bush. He was held after smuggling a Russian surface to air missile into the US. He was caught on an undercover FBI agent’s tape saying he wanted it to shoot down a large passenger plane.
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10:31 AM
WASHINGTON -- Government-financed health insurance covering every American is the cure for the current system's high costs and limits on patient care, a group of nearly 8,000 doctors said yesterday. The proposal by Physicians for a National Health Program is being published in today's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. A Clinton administration plan for national health insurance died in Congress in 1993.
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10:30 AM
Civil rights groups stepped up their legal efforts Tuesday to block California's Oct. 7 recall election, asking a federal judge to rule Monday that the vote must be postponed until March, when the last punch-card ballots in the state will be eliminated. Invoking the specter of Florida-style hanging chads on a voluminous ballot, lawyers for minority and voting rights organizations said allowing the vote to take place as scheduled would "disenfranchise not less than tens of thousands of California voters in six counties" that still use punch cards.
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10:29 AM
Two votes in the House of Representatives on July 15th reflected the growing disgust and anger Americans feel toward the United Nations. During consideration of H.R. 1950, an authorization bill for various foreign giveaway programs, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) offered an amendment stipulating that no funds "may be obligated or expended to pay any United States contribution to the United Nations or any affiliated agency of the United Nations." Although the measure failed, 73 House members joined Rep. Paul, for a final tally of 74 for and 350 against the amendment. That is an increase of 12 yea votes over a similar vote last year.
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10:28 AM
The walkout by 11 state Senate Democrats may soon hit them in the wallet -- with the threat of thousands of dollars in daily fines looming if they continue to stymie GOP redistricting plans by staying out of the state. The mostly Democrat-less Senate approved a resolution Tuesday to fine each missing lawmaker $1,000 a day, with the fine doubling for each missed session, but not to exceed $5,000 a day. Fines would begin Thursday.
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09:02 AM
August 12, 2003
LOS ANGELES — Arnold Schwarzenegger's brief campaign for governor has so far relied on his star power, famous one-liners and appearances on entertainment television. The action star has avoided having to detail his views on social issues or give a plan to "fix" California. Some analysts say he might be best off sticking with generalities and avoiding specifics that opponents and the media could pick apart.
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11:57 AM
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The first step California took to prepare for its recall election was literally to reshuffle the alphabet, and already the system is creating confusion — for voters and the dozens of candidates hoping to unseat Gov. Gray Davis. On Monday, state elections officials randomly drew letters to determine the order of the Oct. 7 recall ballot, which could be choked with nearly 250 candidates. Under the lottery-style system, the 26-letter alphabet was reordered, and the first letter pulled out of the tumbler was R. The letters W, Q, O, J, M, V, A followed, eventually ending with L.
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11:56 AM
TIKRIT, Iraq -- U.S. forces ended a search of an isolated corner of Iraq Tuesday after troops backed by helicopters and tanks seized large stockpiles of weapons but found no trace of fugitive dictator Saddam Hussein. Washington says some foreign fighters, along with die-hard Saddam loyalists, are behind a guerrilla campaign that has killed 56 U.S. soldiers since the start of May.
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11:50 AM
AIN LALIN, Iraq -- Guerrillas wounded three American soldiers in northern Iraq, and a U.S. raid on a remote village near the Iranian border failed to capture a top fugitive suspected of plotting attacks on coalition forces. In Basra, British troops restored badly needed electricity to parts of the southern city and supervised distribution of gasoline after two days of protests over fuel and power shortages.
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11:50 AM
TAJI, Iraq - Flames shot 200 feet into the air from a burst oil pipeline north of Baghdad on Tuesday, and U.S. forces fired warning shots to keep people from approaching the scene. It erupted in a grove of date palms less than 100 yards from a highway, sending a huge black cloud drifting south over the capital for several hours Tuesday afternoon.
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11:45 AM
US air forces mistakenly attacked Pakistani security forces on the border with Afghanistan, killing two border guards and wounding a third, the US military confirmed. The US Central Command said the incident occurred after coalition forces patrolling near Orgun in the Afghan border province of Paktika were fired on and called in air support against the assailants, who fled toward the Pakistani border.
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11:43 AM
SEOUL, South Korea - A U.S. military transport plane on a maintenance test flight crashed Tuesday south of Seoul, killing the two Americans on board, the U.S. military said. The C-12 Huron, a 10-seat turboprop plane, went down at 2:43 p.m. seven miles southwest of Camp Humphreys, a U.S. base, the military said. Their names were withheld pending notification of their families.
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11:37 AM
Palestinian group Hamas claimed responsibility in a phone call to AFP for the homicide bombing that murdered one Israeli and wounded two outside the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ariel. The caller, who wished to remain anonymous, named the bomber who murdered himself as 21-year-old Islam Yusef Ekfeshi, from the northern West Bank city of Nablus. The
attack, less than an hour after another homicide bombing in northern Israel, came four days after an Israeli raid on Nablus left four Palestinians, including two Hamas members, dead. An Israeli soldier was also killed.
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11:34 AM
The Virginia State Board of Elections had a seemingly simple task before it: Certify an upgrade to the state's electronic voting machines. But with a recent report by Johns Hopkins University computer scientists warning that the system's software could easily be hacked into and election results tampered with, the once-perfunctory vote now seemed to carry the weight of democracy and the people's trust along with it.
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08:49 AM
SACRAMENTO – Unabomber Ted Kaczynski has asked the government to return his personal papers and other materials, including a bomb seized by the FBI. Kaczynski asked a federal judge to make the government ship the materials to a University of Michigan archive that already contains more than 15,000 of his papers.
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07:30 AM
August 11, 2003
TUCSON - A man was shot and killed by deputies early Monday on the highway leading to Mount Lemmon, the fire-devastated area President Bush was scheduled to visit later in the day. A man ran a highway barricade in his vehicle and appeared to be intoxicated and suicidal, so the police officers accommodated him. The man's identity wasn't immediately released.
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09:09 PM
KABUL -- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization began its first operation outside Europe in its 54-year history Monday when it took command of peacekeepers in the Afghan capital. At a ceremony in Kabul, German Defense Minister Peter Struck said NATO's job was to ensure Afghanistan did not become a safe haven for terrorism again.
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12:54 PM
A US soldier from the 4th Infantry Division was killed and two others wounded in an attack near the police station in Baquba, 66 kilometres (41 miles) northeast of Baghdad, a US military spokesperson revealed. "It was (sunday) at 9:45 pm (1745 GMT). One 4th Infantry Division soldier died and two were wounded," Lieutenant Kate Noble said Monday about the improvised explosive attack. At least 57 US soldiers have been killed in guerrilla-style attacks, while another 60 have now died in non-combat incidents since the White House declared major combat operations in Iraq over on May 1.
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12:53 PM
Baghdad - Renewed attacks on United States troops on Saturday wounded four soldiers and a team of FBI investigators probing the car bombing of the Jordanian embassy. Soldiers on patrol in the northern city of Kirkuk were fired on with a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms early on Saturday, said Lieutenant-Colonel Bill McDonald, speaking for the 4th Infantry Division operating in the area. Two soldiers wounded in the explosion were in a stable condition, McDonald said, adding that the troops returned fire.
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12:53 PM
MONROVIA, Liberia - President Charles Taylor, blamed for 14 years of bloodshed in Liberia and indicted for war crimes in Sierra Leone, resigned Monday and surrendered power to his vice president. It remained unclear, however, when — or if — Taylor would go into exile in Nigeria as promised, and rebels besieging the capital threatened more violence if the former warlord does not leave the country immediately.
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12:52 PM
A new website launched Friday will track donations to President George Bush's reelection campaign that the creators of the site claim violate the "spirit" of campaign finance laws. Campaign finance law experts call the group's complaints "much ado about nothing." Public Citizen, a liberal advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader, created
WhiteHouseForSale.org to chronicle what Frank Clemente, director of the organization's Congress Watch division, called "the most sophisticated political fundraising machine that has ever existed in a U.S. presidential election." "We're trying to see who's getting what for their money," Clemente said.
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10:44 AM
MOSCOW -- Russia said on Sunday it would hold talks with North and South Korea in Moscow this week to prepare for six-way negotiations in Beijing aimed at defusing a standoff over the North’s nuclear ambitions. “The consultations will begin literally the day after tomorrow,” Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov told Itar-Tass news agency as he arrived in Beijing amid a flurry of weekend meetings between regional players.
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06:00 AM
August 09, 2003
FORT DRUM - A soldier court-martialed for refusing to take the anthrax vaccine while breast-feeding her baby should be discharged from the Army for disobeying orders, an Army attorney said Friday. "This is not about her personal beliefs about the vaccine. It's not about the safety of the vaccine. And it's not about if she was a good duty-performer . . . This is all about Private Hazley's ability to follow the lawful orders of senior officers," Rowley said.
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02:47 PM
DUBAI -- A hitherto unknown group of Iraqi Islamists called for guerrilla attacks against occupying forces in Iraq, saying in a videotape broadcast on Saturday it was the only way to free the country. "We want to tell other organizations that guerrilla warfare is the only way to free the country and we want to say that foreign troops who were sent here must be attacked to prove to the world that we are against occupation," said one of the men.
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02:43 PM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. troops came under renewed attacks Saturday that wounded at least four soldiers, and a team of FBI investigators prepared to take control of the probe into the car bombing of the Jordanian. Soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade on patrol in the northern city of Kirkuk were fired on with a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms early Saturday, said Lt. Col. Bill McDonald, spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division operating in the area.
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02:42 PM
CRAWFORD, Texas -- President Bush on Saturday vowed a "long-term undertaking" to bring democracy and economic prosperity to Iraq and across the Middle East. Despite almost daily attacks on U.S. troops in which 55 have been killed, Bush said Iraq was more secure with 6,000 Iraqi police patrolling Baghdad and about 20,000 more on duty in other towns.
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02:40 PM
WASHINGTON -- An ad hoc office under US Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith appears to have acted as the key base for an informal network of mostly neo-conservative political appointees that circumvented normal inter-agency channels to lead the push for war against Iraq. The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which worked alongside the Near East and South Asia (NESA) bureau in Feith's domain, was originally created by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to review raw information collected by the official US intelligence agencies for connections between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
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02:39 PM
ANNISTON, Ala. - The Army on Saturday fired up its first chemical weapons incinerator near a residential area and destroyed a Cold War-era rocket loaded with enough sarin to wipe out a city. Workers wearing protective gear loaded an M-55 rocket onto a conveyor belt and sent it into a sealed room where it was drained of nerve agent and chopped into eight pieces. Those pieces were then fed into an 1,100-degree furnace for destruction. The slag will be trucked to a hazardous waste landfill in the western Alabama town of Emelle.
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02:38 PM
WASHINGTON -- Citing decades of federal oversight and intervention, the Bush administration told the Supreme Court this week that Congress had the authority to pass sweeping legislation to curb potential abuses in campaign fund-raising. The 2002 law, known to many as the McCain-Feingold law, took effect the day after the November 2002 elections. Among its many provisions are ones that would ban "soft money," the unlimited and unregulated contributions to national political parties; as well as advocacy ads 60 days before an election. Supporters of the law, including the Bush administration, say it is designed to prevent corruption in politics. Opponents say it would criminalize free speech and association.
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02:36 PM
WASHINGTON - President Bush and congressional Republicans continue to increase budget deficits while jobs disappear, Rep. Charlie Stenholm, D-Texas, said Saturday. "When you find yourself in a hole, the first rule is to quit digging. Yet the Republican leadership in Washington continues to advocate policies that would put us further in the red." The administration recently projected deficits of more than $450 billion this year and $475 billion next year — numbers that don't even factor in money borrowed from Social Security and other trust funds, Stenholm said.
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02:36 PM
August 08, 2003
WASHINGTON -- Approval ratings for President Bush, seeking re-election just over a year from now, have slipped to pre-Iraq war levels amid growing concern about the sluggish economy, according to a poll released on Thursday. Bush's overall rating dropped from 58 percent last month to 53 percent while 37 percent of respondents said they disapproved of the way he was handling his job, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 2,528 Americans. The disapproval percentage is the highest negative rating the president has received since taking office nearly three years ago, the poll organizers said.
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10:12 AM
WASHINGTON -- The father of a soldier who died of pneumonia this spring said Thursday the Army has excluded her death from its investigation of deadly pneumonia because it wants to cover up vaccine side effects. "The government is covering this up and it is a dog-gone shame," said Moses Lacy, whose daughter, Army Spc. Rachael Lacy, died April 4 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., after getting pneumonia. Lacy said his daughter "was a healthy young woman" but got ill within days of getting anthrax and smallpox vaccinations on March 2 in preparation for deployment to the Persian Gulf. She was too ill to ever be deployed. The Army said 100 soldiers have gotten pneumonia in Iraq and southwestern Asia, two of those have died and another 13 have had to be put on respirators.
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10:11 AM
BAGHDAD -- A U.S. soldier died after suffering a gunshot wound while on guard duty in Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Friday, but it declined to say whether he was killed in a hostile attack. Before Thursday's death, 55 American servicemen had been killed by hostile fire since May 1 when Washington declared major combat over in Iraq. More than 60 have also been killed in non-combat incidents since then.
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10:10 AM
WASHINGTON - Fewer than 100 pilots have been trained to carry guns in the cockpit in the eight months since Congress approved the idea, and hundreds more are waiting, but pilots and members of Congress say the program is not moving fast enough. Pilots say it's more important than ever to get weapons in the cockpit because the Transportation Security Administration froze hiring in the air marshal program in May and the government is warning al-Qaida may try more suicide hijackings.
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10:09 AM
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- They have missed important family birthdays, time with new babies and the hospitalization of parents, but Democratic state senators who fled to New Mexico to boycott congressional redistricting say they are resolved in their protest. Away from home, her children and husband, Sen. Leticia Van de Putte missed an announcement by her 21-year-old son that he plans to join the lay ministry, the first step in becoming a priest.
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10:05 AM
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. -- A Marine sentenced to 20 years in military prison for cutting parachute suspension lines before a training jump will have to testify against another Marine charged in the case. Lance Cpl. Antoine D. Boykins was sentenced Thursday, a day after he pleaded guilty to nine counts of reckless endangerment, four counts of aggravated assault and one count of destruction of government property.
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07:24 AM
August 07, 2003
After keeping voters on edge for weeks, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger surprised pundits by announcing Wednesday he's running for governor in California's increasingly chaotic election to recall Gov. Gray Davis. Schwarzenegger's moderate views - he has been reported to favor abortion rights, gay rights and gun control - automatically makes him a frontrunner among the Republican candidates trying to unseat Davis in California. His name recognition, meanwhile, is almost unparalleled among the hundreds of potential candidates who say they're interested in Davis' job.
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09:46 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A massive car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least seven people and wounding 52, hospital and rescue workers said. Two U.S. soldiers died in a gun battle in another part of the Iraqi capital. The two soldiers of the 1st Armored Division were killed in the Al Rashid district of Baghdad Wednesday night, U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla. reported. A translator with them was wounded. Their deaths ended a four-day stretch in which the military said there had been no combat fatalities.
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09:30 AM
BAGHDAD -- Iraqi guerrillas fired a rocket- propelled grenade that set ablaze a U.S. military vehicle in central Baghdad on Thursday, inflicting U.S. casualties, witnesses said. They said the Humvee was driving near the Palm Hotel when guerrillas fired the grenade. Four soldiers were inside the vehicle when it was hit, the witnesses said. A U.S. force engaged the attackers, exchanging intense small arms fire.
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09:29 AM
KABUL -- Six Afghan soldiers and a driver for the U.S.-based aid agency Mercy Corps were killed on Thursday in a raid by suspected guerrillas of the former Taliban regime in the troubled southern province of Helmand, police said.
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09:28 AM
NEW YORK -- WorldCom Inc. on Wednesday won a bankruptcy judge's approval to settle the largest civil financial fraud case in U.S. history with a payment of $750 million in cash and stock.
Judge Arthur Gonzalez of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York approved the company's deal settling Securities and Exchange Commission charges, clearing a major hurdle for the beleaguered telecommunications carrier to emerge from bankruptcy protection.
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07:35 AM
A company that provided security at the World Trade Center, Washington D.C.'s Dulles International Airport and United Airlines between 1995 and 2001 was backed by a private Kuwaiti-American investment firm whose records were not open to full public disclosure, with ties to the Bush family. Marvin P. Bush, a younger brother of George W. Bush, was a principal in the company from 1993 to 2000, when most of the work on the big projects was done. But White House responses to 9/11 have not publicly disclosed the company's part in providing security to any of the named facilities.
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07:08 AM
August 06, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Army should look at whether the anthrax vaccine is behind the unexplained cluster of pneumonia cases among soldiers in Iraq, according to the co-author of a government-sponsored study that last year found the vaccine was the "possible or probable" cause of pneumonia in two soldiers. Dr. John L. Sever of George Washington University Medical School told United Press International Tuesday that he expects the military to consider the anthrax vaccine, among other possibilities, as it investigates pneumonia among soldiers in and around Iraq, where troops have been widely vaccinated against anthrax.
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10:32 AM
WASHINGTON -- The United States is sending a "handful" of Marines into Liberia from ships offshore to provide logistical support for West African military peacekeepers in the civil war-torn African nation, U.S. defense officials said on Wednesday. The troops are being sent in from a task force of about 2,300 American Marines aboard ships off the Liberian coast.
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10:32 AM
CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush has approved a small contingent of U.S. troops to coordinate logistical support for West African peacekeeping forces in Liberia. A senior administration official speaking Tuesday on condition of anonymity said Bush approved the contingent of six-10 U.S. troops Tuesday morning and that they could enter Liberia as early as Wednesday.
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10:27 AM
The Bush administration’s rush to war against Iraq was justified largely by the danger that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction supposedly posed to the United States and to U.S. allies. Bush warned, In one year, or five years, the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free nations would be multiplied many times over. But there was no evidence that the Iraq “threat” has increased in recent years and no reason to expect it to “multiply many times over” in the following 12 months — especially since UN weapons inspectors were busily ferreting in Iraq at that moment. At a time when the allegations of Iraqi WMDs are unraveling, it is important to recognize the extent of the frauds that preceded the war. The Bush team waved nuke after alleged Iraqi nuke over Americans’ heads in the run-up to the war. On August 26, 2002, Vice President Cheney, speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, warned that Saddam could have nuclear weapons “fairly soon.”
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10:25 AM
LOS ANGELES - Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to announce today whether he will join the list of candidates hoping to replace him Gray Davis as governor of California. After the announcement, Schwarzenegger will appear on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" to discuss it.
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10:20 AM
A British Times Literary Supplement reviewer recently took a shot at tracing the "providential themes" present in George Bush's political rhetoric. Indeed, the interminable war on "tyrants and terrorists" is laced with evangelical zeal. The American president, however, is not alone "in the redemption business." Tony Blair fancies himself every bit the redeemer of mankind. Etched all over Blair's address to Congress was the crazed devotion to the "mystic [and, might I add, malevolent] idea of national destiny."
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07:41 AM
Peter Hitchens is a columnist in London for the Mail on Sunday. He has written a book, A Brief History of Crime: The Decline of Order, Justice and Liberty in England. In it he warns his countrymen (and us) of the dangers of gun control. He also shows how the government, as a result of their failure to stem crime by disarming the good guys, infringes other liberties in a fruitless effort to put a lid on crime.
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07:37 AM
Bleeding-heart liberalism for thee, but not for me. That is the expedient philosophy of the wealthy Rockefeller family. Last week, the Rockefeller rule was on full display at a little-noticed hearing in Arlington County, Va. There, Mrs. Sharon Percy Rockefeller vehemently objected to one of the left's trendiest pet government projects: publicly subsidized day-labor centers for illegal aliens. Among the most vocal advocates and funders of these illegal alien shelters? None other than the New York City-based Rockefeller Foundation.
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07:33 AM
August 05, 2003
JAKARTA, Indonesia - A powerful car bomb exploded in an apparent suicide attack outside the Marriott hotel in downtown Jakarta on Tuesday, killing 13 people and wounding 149 — including two Americans. Shattered glass and puddles of blood covered the ground for two blocks around the hotel after the bombing, which came amid fears that Islamic militants still pose a threat to security here after last year's Bali bombings
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10:17 AM
TIKRIT, Iraq - An American civilian contractor was killed Tuesday when a remote-control bomb exploded under the truck he was driving north of Tikrit, the U.S. military said. The contractor was employed by Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, a Houston-based oilfield-services and construction company. Halliburton, the former company of Vice President Dick Cheney, has major contracts for reconstruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Maj. Brian Luke, of the 4th Infantry Division, said the five- vehicle convoy was traveling from Baghdad when it was attacked. Insurgents have increasingly been using roadside bombs detonated by remote control to attack American forces.
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10:16 AM
FALLUJA, Iraq -- A rocket-propelled grenade attack on a police station west of Baghdad on Tuesday wounded at least two U.S. soldiers, the latest victims of a guerrilla war that has killed 53 American troops in the last three months. The grenade slammed into a police station in the restive town of Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of the capital. Two U.S. soldiers were taken away in an ambulance as a crowd gathered, chanting their support for deposed president Saddam Hussein.
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10:13 AM
Officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center are referring some outpatients to nearby hotels because casualties from operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have overloaded the hospital's convalescence facility. Walter Reed spokesman could not specify how many soldiers are in hotels, but said Walter Reed is referring about 20 patients or their relatives to hotels each day. A hospital spokeswoman said: "We haven't turned away any injured soldiers. We are treating all of them." The Army hospital and its convalescence facility, Mologne House, are at maximum occupancy capacity, with 96 percent of their outpatient beds filled with war wounded.
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07:11 AM
Green Party members aren't the only people who wish George W. Bush would go away. As a former member of the Republican Party and an authentic sixties-era conservative, I join in that leftist party's call for impeachment of the President. At the same time the U.S. Congress should vote to get out of Iraq, get out of the United Nations (which has been behind every war the U.S.A. has been engaged in since 1945) and should bring back all our servicemen and women serving overseas and return them to their constitutional role of protecting the United States.
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06:55 AM
Continuing his public fight with the state's labor unions, Governor Mitt Romney wants to prevent state employees from steering 50 cents a week from their paychecks into union political action committees, because, Romney says, the system unfairly favors unions that tend to support Democrats.
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06:53 AM
Publicly, politicians and lobbyists deny that campaign donations buy favors. The Westar e-mails discussed on the front page of this section tell the truth. Donations at least buy "a seat at the table." Usually, they buy more. As that report shows, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, is one of the most aggressive, devious and vengeful harvesters of special-interest money. Even as campaign-finance reform heads for major court tests, Rep. DeLay's attitude is in the ascendancy across party lines. Discarding the feigned contrition for past mistakes -- such as de-fanging energy regulation to please Enron donors -- the 2004 election figures to set records in the circular race of politicians chasing money-chasing politicians.
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06:51 AM
In the summer of 1991, the London brokerage arm of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was one of six firms selected to underwrite a £795-million (worth $1.53-billion at the time) financing for Teesside Power Ltd., the largest independent power project to date in Britain. The deal followed former prime minister Margaret Thatcher's transformation of Britain.
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06:24 AM
August 04, 2003
"I don't know what they are talking about. I serve at the pleasure of the President. The President and I have not discussed anything other than my continuing to do my job for him, and this is just one of those stories that emerge in Washington that reflects nothing more than gossip, and the gossip leads to a rash of speculation about who might fill a vacancy that does not exist."
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05:58 PM
WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, have signaled to the White House that they intend to step down even if President Bush is re-elected, setting the stage for a substantial reshaping of the administration's national security team that has remained unchanged through the September 2001 terrorist attacks, two wars and numerous other crises. Armitage recently told national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that he and Powell will leave on Jan. 21, 2005, the day after the next presidential inauguration, sources familiar with the conversation said. Powell has indicated to associates that a commitment made to his wife, rather than any dismay at the administration's foreign policy, is a key factor in his desire to limit his tenure to one presidential term. Rice and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz are the leading candidates to replace Powell, according to sources inside and outside the administration.
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10:10 AM
Hispanics view the Democrat Party as better able than the Republican Party to manage the economy, create jobs and improve education, a poll shows. The New York Times/CBS News poll, published Sunday, showed Hispanics admire President George W. Bush but his job approval with them has dropped 13 points to 54 percent. In 2000, Bush won 35 percent of the Hispanic votes. In this poll, 21 percent of registered Hispanics said they would vote for the president.
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10:10 AM
Arguing that October's recall election would result in chaos, Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and his supporters say they will ask the California Supreme Court today to delay the vote until the March 2004 primary and also place Davis' name on the ballot. In a petition expected to be filed with the California Supreme Court, Davis will argue that there is no way that the state -- and its cash-strapped counties -- can set up a fair election by Oct. 7. He says the tight schedule between now and then will disenfranchise millions of voters, in violation of election laws.
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10:09 AM
Two Iraqis were wounded, along with a US soldier, in a bomb blast north of Baghdad as the struggle between the coalition and supporters of Saddam Hussein proves deadly for civilians. As fighting flared, the army's 4th Infantry Division (4ID) in Tikrit, the town north of Baghdad which hails Saddam as its native son, grabbed another guerrilla-style fighter, as it boasted its intelligence was tightening the noose on its enemies. A US soldier and two Iraqi civilians were wounded Sunday near Baquba, 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of Baghdad, Lieutenant Colonel Bill MacDonald of the 4th ID said Monday.
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10:08 AM
Iran on Monday urged U.S. troops to leave the Gulf region and rejected Washington's accusations that it is running a clandestine nuclear weapons program. "Neither Iran nor the countries in the region ... feel comfortable with foreign troops in the region," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters on a visit to the Philippines. "We hope the situation comes that the foreign troops, including the Americans, will leave ... because the security and stability of the region would be safeguarded by the countries in the region." He said "the best remedy for the regional instability" is cooperation among the Gulf states.
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10:05 AM
TEHRAN -- Iran said on Monday it would not hand over any detained members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network to Washington and denied trying to strike a prisoner exchange deal with the United States. Iran publicly acknowledged for the first time last month that it was holding some senior al Qaeda figures and said it planned to extradite some of them to "friendly countries."
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10:05 AM
The Supreme Court is looking beyond America's borders for guidance in handling cases on issues like the death penalty and gay rights, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Saturday. The justices referred to the findings of foreign courts this summer in their own ruling that states may not punish gay couples for having sex. The justices referred to the findings of foreign courts this summer in their own ruling that states may not punish gay couples for having sex.
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10:02 AM
While policymakers debate whether money should be spent helping the ill around nuclear weapons sites, millions of taxpayer dollars have already gone to fight their health claims in court. The government has paid private attorneys more than $54 million since 1991, for instance, to fight thousands of people who believe toxic releases from the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state have already made them ill or will in the future. The ill believe that money could be better spent.
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10:00 AM
Arguing that October's recall election would result in chaos, Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and his supporters say they will ask the California Supreme Court today to delay the vote until the March 2004 primary and also place Davis' name on the ballot. In a petition expected to be filed with the California Supreme Court, Davis will argue that there is no way that the state -- and its cash-strapped counties -- can set up a fair election by Oct. 7. He says the tight schedule between now and then will disenfranchise millions of voters, in violation of election laws.
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06:31 AM
August 02, 2003
The U.S. Supreme Court’s affirmative action rulings were still being hotly debated when the Court surpassed itself, later in the week, by striking down a Texas sodomy law as unconstitutional. This of course will have the practical effect of invalidating all sodomy laws in the United States. The decision outraged and alarmed conservatives, who quickly called for a constitutional amendment defining marriage to prevent homosexual unions from achieving legal status. It makes you wonder if conservatives ever learn. Since when has the Constitution stopped liberal courts from doing as they please? Why blame bad constitutional law on the Constitution? The problem is the courts, not the failure of the Framers to envisage every possible abuse of their handiwork. Must we amend the Constitution every time a Kennedy twists it to mean something it manifestly doesn’t mean? Besides, the sodomy ruling wouldn’t be reversed by putting a definition of marriage into the Constitution; on the contrary, such an amendment would presuppose its legitimacy. There has to be a better response.
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12:23 PM
A US soldier was killed and three others injured in a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack north of Baghdad, the US military said. "One 4th Division Infantry soldier was killed and three injured at approximately 10:30 pm (1830 GMT) on August 1 when their convoy came under an RPG attack south of Shumayat," a town between Balad and Tikrit around 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Baghdad, a spokesman said. Since US President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq on May 1, the US-led coalition says 53 US soldiers have been killed in guerrilla attacks, while at least 56 have died in non-combat incidents.
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12:22 PM
Saboteurs blew up a key oil pipeline in northern Iraq. The pipeline fire in the northern refinery hub of Baiji, still raging late Friday, was certain to throw off US plans to further resuscitate Iraq's massive but crippled energy sector. Only a day earlier, US officials hailed the expected reopening early this month of the country's main oil pipeline from the petroleum centre of Kirkuk to the Turkish Mediterranean terminal of Ceyhan, wrecked in a previous sabotage attack. Oil exports are supposed to go toward paying the massive bill for Iraqi reconstruction, expected to run to tens of billions of dollars per year.
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12:19 PM
A person who is morally sensitive to the seriousness of starting a war on the basis of misleading information would take appropriate steps. He would ensure that the American public knew how the error occurred, and that whoever was responsible for it suffered the usual consequences that befall senior officials who make what was -- to put the best possible interpretation on it -- a grave error of judgment. But Bush did nothing of the sort. When the issue became public, Bush's response was to condemn his critics as "revisionist historians" and to evade questions about the credibility of the information he had provided by asserting that the removal of Hussein was a good outcome.
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12:16 PM
WASHINGTON — James A. Traficant, a former Ohio congressman in prison for bribery and racketeering charges, has given his approval to supporters to form a presidential exploratory committee.
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12:06 PM
Salyersville, Kentucky native Larry Flynt is eyeing the California governor recall election. The publisher of Hustler magazine has paid the $3,500 fee required to make the run. He says he'll think about spending more if his candidacy is taken seriously.
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12:05 PM
Los Angeles - A campaign consultant to Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that the actor would announce on Wednesday whether he'll be a candidate to replace Gov. Gray Davis in October. Sean Walsh said Schwarzenegger, 56, would announce his decision Aug. 6, then go on NBC's "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" to elaborate on it.
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12:04 PM
After eight years of Bill Clinton, many military officers breathed a sigh of relief when George W. Bush was named president. I was in that plurality. At one time, I would have believed the administration's accusations of anti-Americanism against anyone who questioned the integrity and good faith of President Bush, Vice President Cheney or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. However, while working from May 2002 through February 2003 in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Near East South Asia and Special Plans (USDP/NESA and SP) in the Pentagon, I observed the environment in which decisions about post-war Iraq were made. Those observations changed everything.
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09:41 AM
August 01, 2003
LOS ANGELES - Californians may have to stay up late watching TV on Wednesday night to discover if Arnold Schwarzenegger intends to convert his Hollywood glamour into a political run to replace Gov. Gray Davis. Meanwhile, another famous name emerged as a potential candidate: Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt. Flynt is one of the 200 people statewide who have filed paperwork with county registrars — the first step in the process to run on the recall ballot.
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09:55 AM
WASHINGTON -- John Poindexter, the Iran-Contra scandal figure who headed two criticized Pentagon projects, including one that would have enabled investors to profit by predicting terrorist attacks, will quit his post within weeks, U.S. defense officials said on Thursday. The official indicated that Poindexter had become a lightning rod for criticism, but did not answer directly when asked whether Rumsfeld forced his resignation.
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09:55 AM
BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- U.S. helicopter gunships killed four guerrillas in southern Afghanistan and coalition troops forced another group to flee into Pakistan after attacking a U.S. base, a U.S. spokesman said on Friday. Coalition and Afghan army units operating against Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in the southeast also discovered a cave complex packed with huge quantities of munitions. Initial reports said one tunnel contained 30,000 pounds of ordnance, Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Lefforge told reporters at the U.S. headquarters at Bagram, north of Kabul.
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09:51 AM
JERUSALEM -- Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Friday Israel's security barrier in the West Bank could undermine a peace "road map," as Israeli troops fired rubber bullets at protesters trying to cut part of the fence. Underscoring Palestinian anger stirred by the issue, several hundred protesters trying to breach the fence near the West Bank town of Tulkarm clashed with Israeli soldiers, witnesses said. Palestinians say construction of the barrier, and Israel's plans to build more homes at a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip in defiance of the peace plan, have dealt a blow to efforts to rebuild trust after 34 months of bloodshed.
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09:45 AM
UNITED NATIONS - Rebels used looting, killing, violence against women and cannibalism as "premeditated tools of war" in northeastern Congo, according to a new U.N. report. U.N. investigators took testimony from over 500 people during their mission to look into acts of cannibalism and other human rights abuses that took place between October and December in the area between the northeastern towns of Mambasa and Beni.
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09:45 AM
Join with thousands of other Americans working to Get US out! of the United Nations. Take the action steps outlined on this website to carry out a proven strategy to increase your effectiveness and influence. Every individual can make a difference in the battle to preserve freedom.
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09:40 AM
WASHINGTON - Senate approval of a far-reaching energy bill isn't the last word on developing a new national energy agenda. The shape of the final bill will depend on negotiations with the House, where some Republicans are determined to craft a bill more to their liking. The Senate overwhelmingly approved an energy policy outline Thursday night identical to a bill that was approved by a Democratic-controlled Senate a year ago, including popular provisions to expand corn-based ethanol use and $16 billion in tax breaks and subsidies for energy development and conservation.
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09:38 AM
WASHINGTON - The nation's unemployment rate declined to 6.2 percent in July as nearly half a million discouraged Americans stopped looking for a job. Payrolls were cut for the sixth month in a row, suggesting businesses remain cautious and want to keep work forces lean despite budding signs of an economic revival. The Labor Department's report Friday painted a picture of a job market that remains stubbornly sluggish and continues to frustrate people looking for work.
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09:33 AM
When Vice President Dick Cheney comes out of seclusion to brand critics "irresponsible," you know the administration is running scared. The last time Cheney was enlisted to do so was in the spring of 2002, amid reports that intelligence warnings given to President Bush prior to Sept. 11, 2001 should have prompted preventive action. Cheney branded such reporting "irresponsible," and critics in the press and elsewhere were successfully intimidated.
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09:27 AM