2/ 1/04 Sunday
President Bush will sign an executive order to open an
investigation into U.S. intelligence failures in Iraq, his way of
quieting mounting election-year criticism from Republican and
Democrats alike. A stampede killed 244 people and injured hundreds
as pressure built up among tens of thousands of Muslims performing
the annual pilgrimage. The toll was the highest in seven years for
the disaster-prone hajj. The crowd got out of control as people
moved along a wide ramp leading to the "stoning of the devil"
ritual. The founder of Pakistan's nuclear program has acknowledged
in a written statement that he sent sensitive technology to Iran,
Libya and North Korea to aid their atomic programs, a Pakistani
government official said.
2/ 2/04 Monday
The British government will hold an inquiry into the intelligence
used in deciding to go to war with Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Blair
said. The Senate majority leader's office apparently has suffered
its second bioterror attack in three years, with another suspicious
white powder delivered through the mail system - this time laced
with poisonous ricin. "This is a criminal action," said Sen. Bill
Frist, R-Tenn., whose staff discovered the white powder in their
Dirksen Senate Office Building mailroom. NASA's twin rovers
reached out to scoop and analyze the martian surface some 6,600
miles apart, both machines using their robotic arms as intended
following a software glitch. "We have two operational rovers on
Mars," mission manager Jennifer Trosper told a news conference at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
2/ 3/04 Tuesday
Forty-five U.S. soldiers died in Iraq in January and three more in
the first three days of February. The January toll was five more
than in December, despite hopes that Saddam's Dec. 13 capture would
weaken the Iraqi insurgency and slow the killings from roadside
bombs and other attacks. Federal investigators sought to identify
a letter or package that may have carried ricin into a leading
senator's mailroom as new links emerged between letters containing
the deadly poison found in South Carolina and a White House mail
facility. Sen. Joe Lieberman, unable to inspire Democratic voters
who embraced his 2000 vice presidential campaign, ended his
presidential bid after a string of disappointing defeats.
Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry rolled up big
victories and a pile of delegates in five states, while rivals John
Edwards and Wesley Clark kept their candidacies alive with singular
triumphs in a dramatic cross-country contest. Rep. Billy Tauzin
resigned as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee,
one of the most powerful positions in Congress. He announced he
will not seek re-election in the fall.
2/ 4/04 Wednesday
The United States said it is sticking to its timetable for Iraq
self-rule by July 1 even though U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
said the deadline might have to be reconsidered to forge an
agreement on a provisional government. The investigation into the
appearance of the deadly poison ricin on Capitol Hill this week and
earlier in two ominous letters is focusing on a mysterious "Fallen
Angel" who threatens to use ricin as a weapon unless new trucking
regulations are rolled back. Defense lawyers in the Martha Stewart
trial began their attack on the government's star witness,
emphasizing his history of lying and coaxing an admission that he
has repeatedly used illegal drugs.
2/ 5/04 Thursday
President Bush's public support dropped sharply over the past
month, especially among older voters, political independents and
people in the Midwest, an Associated Press poll found. Bush's
approval rating stood at 47 percent in the AP-Ipsos poll taken in
early February, down from 56 percent approval just a month ago.
Already flush with endorsements from establishment Democrats,
presidential front-runner John Kerry is poised to secure the
backing of former rival Dick Gephardt and his once-loyal labor
unions, further clearing the Massachusetts senator's path toward
the nomination. Unable to find a piece of mail connected to the
Senate ricin scare, investigators say they are expanding their
probe to include the possibility that someone placed the poison in
an office mailroom or that it arrived in an older envelope or
package.
2/ 6/04 Friday
A bomb blew apart a subway car packed with rush hour commuters in
the morning, killing 39 people and wounding more than 130 in the
deadliest terrorist attack in Moscow since Russia launched its
second war in Chechnya in 1999. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld has ordered an investigation into the treatment of
servicewomen in the Gulf war zone who report sexual assaults by
their male comrades-in-arms. As he canvasses the South, John Kerry
is staying out of the bickering between rivals Wesley Clark and
John Edwards, hoping that his front-runner momentum will be enough
to contest them in the Democratic presidential race. All three
were to attend an annual gathering of Democrats on Saturday in
Virginia and were campaigning in Tennessee through the weekend.
2/ 7/04 Saturday
Sen. John Kerry won crushing caucus victories in Michigan and
Washington, trouncing his Democratic presidential rivals and
saying: "George Bush's days are numbered." President Bush said
that CIA Director George Tenet's job is not in jeopardy despite
election-year questions about the accuracy of prewar intelligence
on Iraq. "I strongly believe the CIA is ably led by George Tenet,"
Bush said in an Oval Office interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Howard Dean lost the support of the 1.5 million-member American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, yet another
blow for a candidacy depleted by defeat. Israel has decided to
shorten the route of its West Bank security barrier in hopes of
easing hardships on the Palestinians and receiving U.S. support for
the structure, a senior aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said.
2/ 8/04 Sunday
John Kerry coasted to victory in the Maine caucuses, wrapping up a
three-state weekend sweep that pushed the Democratic front-runner
closer to the party nomination than any of his vanquished rivals.
U.N. experts met with Iraqi leaders for the first time to discuss
the chances of holding early elections as Prince Charles made a
surprise visit and Japan expanded its first military deployment to
a combat zone since World War II. In fresh violence, insurgents
attacked separate U.S. Army convoys with explosives, killing one
soldier and wounding three others. The soldier was killed when a
roadside bomb exploded near Mahmudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad.
President Bush denied he marched America into war under false
pretenses and said the U.S.-led invasion was necessary because
Saddam Hussein could have developed a nuclear weapon. "I don't
think America can stand by and hope for the best," the president
said. Bush suggested Saddam may have destroyed or spirited out of
the country the banned weapons the Bush administration cited as a
main rationale for the war.
2/ 9/04 Monday
In the strongest challenge yet to embattled Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, rebels in nearly a dozen towns went on a
rampage that has left at least 42 killed and prompted fears of a
coup d'etat. A letter seized from an al-Qaida courier shows Osama
bin Laden has made little headway in recruiting Iraqis for a holy
war against America, raising questions about the Bush
administration's contention that Iraq is the central front in the
war on terror. His voice rising to a shout, President Bush lashed
out at Democratic rivals who want to roll back his tax cuts as he
defended his economic priorities in Missouri where his record has
been harshly criticized. "There are some in Washington that are
going to say, 'Let's not make the tax cuts permanent.' That means
he's going to raise your taxes," Bush said at a factory. "When you
hear people say, 'We're not going to make this permanent,' that
means tax increase."
2/10/04 Tuesday
A suicide driver blew up his explosive-rigged car outside an army
recruiting center in central Baghdad where hundreds of Iraqis were
lined up to volunteer for the military, killing at least 36 people.
Officials took swift action after the second case of bird flu was
found in Sussex County in Delaware, ordering the slaughter of
72,000 more chickens and the quarantine of 80 farms as they tried
to avert more foreign bans on a billion-dollar export industry.
Wesley Clark, battered by losses in his Southern base, abandoned
his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination and headed home
to Arkansas to exit the race. His front-runner status bolstered by
dual Southern victories in Virginia and Tennessee, John Kerry is
looking to Wisconsin to dispatch the dwindling field of Democratic
presidential rivals still clinging to hope.
2/11/04 Wednesday
The White House released more documents to support President Bush's
service in the Alabama Air National Guard, while several members of
the Guard unit said in interviews they don't remember ever seeing
Bush at their Montgomery base. Bush, who piloted jets as a Guard
1st lieutenant in Texas, was assigned temporarily to the unit in
Alabama in 1972, where he worked on a political campaign for a
family friend. Democrats have charged there is no proof that Bush
actually showed up for duty. A much-disrupted British Airways
flight from London to Washington, D.C. has been canceled again over
security fears. A U.N. team tried to work out the differences over
the transfer of power in Iraq with the country's top Shiite cleric,
a handover threatened by insurgents who killed 100 Iraqis in two
suicide bombings this week. Hours after the latest suicide attack,
two American soldiers were killed and another wounded by a roadside
bomb in Baghdad.
2/12/04 Thursday
Highlighting their campaign against Vice President Dick Cheney's
former company, Democratic lawmakers say two former Halliburton
employees have evidence the company routinely wasted U.S.
taxpayers' money. The top U.S. commander in the Middle East came
under a bold attack by gunmen in the turbulent Iraqi city of
Fallujah[ no Americans were hurt. Former U.S. weapons inspector
David Kay is advising President Bush to acknowledge he was wrong
about hidden storehouses of weapons in Iraq and move ahead with
overhauling the intelligence process. A weary Massachusetts
Legislature suspended debate on a proposed gay marriage ban after
two days of tense negotiations, the slim defeat of three amendments
and an angry walkout by lawmakers chanting "We want a vote." A
consensus is building among Iraqi leaders to scrap a U.S. formula
for choosing a new government and instead to hold elections later
this year, several Iraqi officials and Governing Council members
said after meeting a U.N. envoy.
2/13/04 Friday
Insurgents attacked a police station and a government building,
sparking a gunbattle in Fallujah that killed at least 18 people and
wounded 30. A U.N. official sided with the United States in its
dispute with Iraq's powerful Shiite Muslim clergy over elections,
saying it would be hard to organize a vote before the June 30
deadline to hand power to the Iraqis. But a leading, Pentagon
backed politician, Ahmad Chalabi, insisted that elections are
possible within that timeframe. Under strong political pressure to
reject over-the-counter sales of a morning-after birth control
pill, the government is postponing its decision until May. The
Democrats plunged into the final weekend before the Wisconsin
primary with both Howard Dean and John Edwards hungry for a win to
revive their campaigns. Polls offered them little hope.
2/14/04 Saturday
U.S. soldiers killed one Iraqi and wounded six others when the
Americans opened fire after a roadside bomb went off near a U.S.
patrol in Baghdad. Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry
scored victories east and west, swamping his rivals in Nevada and
the District of Columbia caucuses to build his advantage in
delegates needed for the nomination. At least five people died on
icy roads in an unusual winter storm that also caused power outages
and flight cancellations. The accidents occurred Friday and
Saturday in West Texas, where officials were forced to close
several icy and slush-covered highways. Shelters were set up at
churches and civic centers to accommodate stranded travelers.
2/15/04 Sunday
In San Francisco, hundreds of same-sex marriages kept City Hall
offices open and buzzing through the weekend, with gay and lesbian
couples waiting hours to exchange vows and conservative activists
promising a relentless legal challenge. A special Iraqi police
unit arrested a senior Baath Party leader on the U.S. military's
most-wanted list during a raid on his home in a Baghdad suburb. A
rebel force trying to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide grew in
size in Haiti as former exiled paramilitary troops joined the
insurrection. John Kerry says he will "do the work" necessary to
win Wisconsin's Democratic presidential primary Tuesday, even
though he has a hefty lead in the polls and emerged largely
unscathed from debate with rivals willing to make a chancy last
stand. A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier in central Baghdad
and gunmen ambushed a car carrying American civilians south of the
capital, killing one and wounding three others.
2/16/04 Monday
Roadside bombs have claimed more American lives, killing three U.S.
soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad and Sunni Muslim areas to
the north of the capital. After trying to quell stories about his
Vietnam-era military record, President Bush is seeking to move
beyond it by meeting with National Guard members in Louisiana.
Former soldiers took Haiti's rebellion to the key central city of
Hinche, burning the police station and freeing prisoners as
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide appealed for international help to
end an 11-day-old uprising. Rebels now control most roads leading
to the Artibonite, the country's breadbasket and home to almost 1
million people, and have cut off northern Haiti by chasing police
from a dozen towns.
2/17/04 Tuesday
The United States and France express reluctance to send troops to
put down the two-week-old rebellion in Haiti. The Wisconsin
primary set the stage for March 2nd, "Super Tuesday" contests.
Kerry emerged again as the victor, Edwards is still in the race
after a surprisingly close second place finish and Howard Dean's
candidacy appeared doomed after he came in a distant third.
Runaway train cars carrying fuel and industrial chemicals derailed
in northeastern Iran, setting off explosions that killed more than
200 people, injured hundreds and destroyed five villages. After
two judges declined to immediately end San Francisco's same-sex
wedding spree, the mayor said the city would keep issuing marriage
licenses to gay couples as conservative groups vowed to take their
case to higher courts.
2/18/04 Wednesday
The White House found itself in the awkward position of backing
away from its earlier prediction that the economy would add 2.6
million new jobs this year. Faster than you can say dot.com bust,
Howard Dean's quest for the presidency ended as the Democrat,
winless in 17 contests, bowed to political reality and abandoned
his bid. President Bush said he was troubled by gay weddings in
San Francisco and by legal decisions in Massachusetts that could
clear the way for same-sex marriage. A National Guardsman is
accused of trying to pass intelligence to U.S. military personnel
who were posing as al-Qaida operatives, allegedly telling the phony
terrorists that "I share your cause." Colorado football coach Gary
Barnett's "inappropriate and insensitive" comments sparked the
latest controversy to hit an already-reeling program. Barnett was
placed on paid administrative leave over comments he made after a
former player alleged she was raped by a teammate four years ago.
2/19/04 Thursday
Police reported that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold
centrifuge parts to Iran for its nuclear program in the mid-1990s
for $3 million in cash. American officials say U.S. forces will be
needed in Iraq long after a sovereign government is restored this
summer, but they have yet to work out the terms of a continued
presence. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said he's ready to die
to defend Haiti, showing determination to keep power despite a
bloody rebellion as the United States and other countries prepared
a political plan to resolve the crisis. NASA's senior spaceflight
officials decided to push back the next space shuttle launch to
March 2005 because of lingering work and engineering concerns, and
picked Discovery to be first up.
2/20/04 Friday
U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer says it could take more than 15
months to hold elections in Iraq - a much longer timeframe than the
country's Shiite Muslim clergy and some political leaders seem
prepared to accept. Bremer told a Dubai-based Al-Arabiya
television station that it could take "a year or 15 months and may
take longer" to arrange an election. Taking advantage of the
Presidents' Day Congressional holidays, after three years of
watching Senate Democrats block his judicial nominees, President
Bush trumped them for the second time this year by installing
Alabama Attorney General William Pryor on the federal appeals
court. The move infuriated Democrats, who now may be even less
likely to cooperate with the White House on getting judicial
nominees through the closely divided Senate in an election year.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether U.S. citizens
arrested in America as "enemy combatants" may be held indefinitely
without access to lawyers or courts, setting the stage for a major
ruling on presidential powers versus civil liberties. The justices
had already agreed to consider the government's detentions of
terror suspects - American and foreign - caught overseas and held
incommunicado.
2/21/04 Saturday
A suicide bomber blewhimself up on a crowded Jerusalem bus, killing
seven people and wounding more than 60 in an attack Israeli
officials said proved the need for its disputed security barrier.
Gunmen attacked Iraqi police in two northern Iraqi cities, sparking
battles that killed two attackers; jailed former Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein wrote a letter to his family for the international
Red Cross to deliver. A helicopter carrying workers from a U.S.
construction company crashed in southern Afghanistan after coming
under small arms fire, killing at least one person and seriously
injuring another. A diplomatic delegation left Haiti after failing
to persuade opponents of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to end a
bloody uprising and accept a U.S.-backed peace plan that would
require the two sides to share power in the Caribbean nation.
Governors beginning an annual meeting in the capital hope to find
common ground on education, health care, roads and other policy
issues caught up in the contentious politics of a presidential
campaign.
2/22/04 Sunday
A suicide bomber detonated an explosive-packed vehicle outside an
Iraqi police station in a Kurdish neighborhood of the ethnically
divided northern city of Kirkuk in Iraq, killing at least 10 people
and wounding 45 others. Now that consumer advocate Ralph Nader has
formally declared his presidential candidacy as an independent,
many Democrats fear a repeat of the 2000 race, when Nader was
blamed by some for taking just enough votes away from Al Gore to
secure a razor-thin victory for George W. Bush. Rebels overran
Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city in their biggest victory
of a bloody uprising and said soon they will attack the capital in
their campaign to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign chairman Marc Racicot denied Kerry's
accusation that the president is using surrogates to attack the
Massachusetts senator's military service in Vietnam and his
subsequent opposition to the war.
2/23/04 Monday
Iraqi leaders said they want to start immediately on planning
elections, after the United Nations estimated that it would take
eight months to organize a nationwide ballot. A prominent Shiite
Muslim party said that U.N. officials must offer a new method for
choosing the provisional government due to take power from the
U.S.-led coalition on June 30. Facing increased pressure to
intervene in San Francisco's same-sex marriage debate, California
Attorney General Bill Lockyer said he'll go straight to the state
Supreme Court to try to resolve the deeply divisive issue.
President Bush, casting aside his desire to appear above the
political fray, struck back at his Democratic critics, portraying
presidential front-runner John Kerry as a waffler and warning that
Democrats would raise taxes, expand government and fail to lead
decisively on national security. Almost a third of Americans say
paying for prescription drugs is a problem in their families, and
many are cutting dosages to deal with the crunch, according to an
AP poll.
2/24/04 Tuesday
Jumping into a volatile election-year debate on same-sex weddings,
President Bush backed a constitutional amendment banning gay
marriage - a move he said was needed to stop judges from changing
the definition of the "most enduring human institution." CIA
Director George Tenet said that the al-Qaida terror group is
seriously damaged but has spread its radical anti-American agenda
to other Islamic extremist groups that now pose the greatest threat
to the United States. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide appealed
for the world to come to Haiti's aid, warning that thousands of
deaths and a wave of boat people could result from political chaos.
Fresh from three more easy victories in the Democratic presidential
race, John Kerry looked to a fight with President Bush over jobs
lost to foreign countries. Kerry defeated Sen. John Edwards by
large margins in Utah and Idaho, and also won in Hawaii, where
Edwards ran third. That gave Kerry 18 wins in 20 contests.
2/25/04 Wednesday
The opening of "The Passion of the Christ" movie drew everyone from
conservative churchgoers to confrontational New Yorkers more than
willing to roll out their soapboxes as screenings got under way.
But the gore - and in some cases, church rules - kept even some of
the the most devout Christians away. The U.S. military said that a
"renewed sense of urgency" is firing the search for Osama bin
Laden, even as it dismissed reports that the fugitive al-Qaida
leader had been located near the Afghan-Pakistan border. On the
eve of a House hearing on broadcast indecency, the nation's largest
radio station chain suspended shock jock Howard Stern's show,
saying it did not meet the company's newly revised programming
standards. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress
on that soaring budget deficits from out-of-control entitlement
programs could lead to a "very debilitating" rise in interest rates
and threaten the economy in coming years.
2/26/04 Thursday
In debate, Democratic presidential rivals John Kerry and John
Edwards sparred over trade, the death penalty and who has the best
chance of defeating President Bush in November. Haiti's rebel
leader said his fighters were advancing on the capital, awaiting an
order to attack unless President Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigns.
Law officers were warned about the Columbine High killers at least
15 times in the two years before their murderous rampage in 1999,
the state attorney general said in a report that outraged the
families of the victims. Seven states joined the Justice
Department in a lawsuit that contends a combination between Oracle
and PeopleSoft would stifle competition in the $20 billion market
for business applications software - the computer coding that
automates a wide range of administrative tasks.
2/27/04 Friday
In yet another setback to conservatives opposed to same-sex
marriage, the California Supreme Court declined a request to
immediately stop San Francisco from marrying gay couples and to
nullify the weddings already performed. Two church-sanctioned
studies documenting clerical sex abuse over the last half-century
gave victims a bit of what they've been seeking for so long -
recognition of their suffering from America's Roman Catholic
bishops. Rebels pushed to within 25 miles of the capital as chaos
spread with government loyalists hijacking cars, looting and
attacking the city's sole operating hospital. President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide said he wouldn't step down, even as United
States urged him to cede power. Iran's state radio, quoting an
unnamed source, said that Osama bin Laden was captured in Pakistan
"a long time ago." A Pakistan army spokesman denied he was
captured. The report said that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld's visit to the region this week was in connection with the
arrest.
2/28/04 Saturday
Pro-government mobs who robbed motorists while shooting up the
Haitian capital disappeared from the streets, acting on an appeal
from President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. And a rebel leader said he
would honor a U.S. appeal not to attack the capital. The United
States is rounding up and questioning the relatives of fugitive
al-Qaida leaders to generate information on the possible
whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his top deputies, a tactic that
helped lead to Saddam Hussein's capture.
2/29/04 Sunday
Iraqi politicians agreed on the draft of an interim constitution,
reaching a compromise on the role of Islam and putting off the
details of Kurdish autonomy. Southern California grocery workers
voted overwhelmingly to approve a new contract with supermarket
operators, ending a strike that inconvenienced millions of
customers and cost three major grocery chains hundreds of millions
of dollars in lost sales. A contingent of fewer than 100 Marines
arrived in the Haitian capital of Port-Au-Prince as the vanguard of
an international security force, and the Pentagon said more would
arrive this week. The Marines' mission included facilitating
international humanitarian assistance and protecting Americans; the
Pentagon said the troops were deployed at the request of the new
president of Haiti; they were the vanguard of a multinational force
that the U.N. Security Council approved; France said it would send
troops on Monday. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned and
flew into exile, pressured by the bloody rebellion and the United
States. Gunfire crackled as the capital fell into chaos.
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