6/ 1/04 Tuesday
Iraqi officials prevailed in their choice for president over the
candidate favored by the United States, allowing a U.N. envoy to
appoint an interim government reflecting Iraq's religious and
cultural diversity to rule after the return of sovereignty June
30. Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, a Sunni Muslim critic of the
occupation, was named to the largely ceremonial post. Al-Yawer was
the choice of the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council.
U.N. peacekeepers have established their command post in Haiti,
preparing to take over from an American-led force later this month
despite uncertainty over troop numbers, funding and how to help
thousands of flood victims. In a ceremony, Brazil's Army Gen.
Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira took control of the 8,000-strong
U.N. force at Haiti's police academy. Although only a fraction
of troops have arrived, most are expected to come by the end of
June.
In S.D., Stephanie Herseth, a lawyer who left the East Coast for
a career in politics in her home state, narrowly defeated a
Republican former lawmaker in a special congressional election that
was closely watched by national parties looking for momentum
heading into November. Herseth will immediately fill the seat of
Bill Janklow, who went to jail over a deadly auto accident.
An Army general who visited Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last fall
complained that the military was violating international war
standards by incarcerating common criminals along with insurgents
captured in attacks against U.S.-led forces. It was one among
dozens of observations in a still-classified report, portraying an
overcrowded, dysfunctional prison system lacking basic sanitation
and medical supplies.
A revised U.N. Security Council resolution gives Iraq's interim
leaders control of the army and police, but council diplomats said
the document still doesn't properly spell out the new government's
sovereignty. The United States and Britain circulated a revised
blueprint that would end their occupation and hand over sovereignty
to an interim Iraqi government on June 30. It places command of
the Iraqi army and police under the new government, and would end
the mandate for a multinational force by January 2006 - two major
changes.
6/ 2/04 Wednesday
Encouraging signals from OPEC that it would raise production had
the immediate and desired effect of lowering record-high oil
prices. The question now is, how long will it last? Oil prices
plunged 6 percent, after the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait
pledged during a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries to join Saudi Arabia in adding fresh barrels to global
supplies.
President Bush has lined up an outside lawyer for legal advice if
needed in the grand jury investigation of who leaked the name of a
covert CIA operative last year. The move suggests the president
anticipates being questioned by prosecutors about whether he could
shine any light on the case. But there is no indication that Bush
is a target of the investigation.
Thousands of soldiers who had expected to retire or otherwise leave
the military will be required to stay if their units are ordered to
Iraq or Afghanistan. The announcement, an expansion of a program
called "stop-loss," affects units that are 90 days or less from
deploying, said Lt. Gen. Frank L. "Buster" Hagenbeck, the Army's
deputy chief of staff for personnel. Commanders can make
exceptions for soldiers with special circumstances.
The FBI is examining whether Pentagon officials who had frequent
contacts with Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi may have leaked sensitive
information that American intelligence had broken Iran's secret
communications codes, a law enforcement official said. Chalabi, a
longtime favorite of some in the Pentagon, is at the center of a
controversy over whether he then shared with Iranian officials the
closely guarded information about methods used by the United States
to spy on the Iranians.
6/ 3/04 Thursday
With CIA Director George Tenet on the way out, the Bush
administration faces crucial questions over how to improve
America's intelligence gathering during a time of high terror
threats and continued finger-pointing over past failures.
Surprising many in Washington, Tenet announced his resignation in
an emotional address to CIA staff, ending seven years as the
agency's head during two presidencies. President Bush named
Tenet's deputy, John McLaughlin, to temporarily lead the agency.
Forty percent of public schoolchildren in Arkansas are overweight,
and nearly one in four is obese, a sign that obesity among children
nationwide is probably far worse than health officials had
thought. The findings are the broadest and most recent
comprehensive look at children's weights, the result of a state law
in Arkansas, where state officials have made obesity a top issue.
President Bush's 36-hour tour of Italy and Vatican City brings him
face-to-face with both extremes of European public opinion toward
the Iraq war, from Pope John Paul II's fervent opposition to the
staunch support of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The
official agenda of Bush's brief European trip is to honor the
sacrifices and triumphs of World War II in Italy and France 60
years ago. But the Iraq war looms large in Italy, where most
people think the United States should pull troops out, and Bush was
making his case anew.
OPEC's decision to raise its output ceiling by up to 11 percent
over two months may help soothe a nervous market, but it doesn't
oblige the group to pump a single barrel of additional oil. The
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to hike its
production ceiling by 2 million barrels a day next month and an
additional 500,000 barrels a day in August, if necessary, in a bid
to rein in uncomfortably high prices for crude.
6/ 4/04 Friday
In Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed one U.S. soldier and injured
three others in an explosion near the Ministry of the Interior, the
U.S. military said. U.S. soldiers blocked off the site of the
explosion, which had targeted a passing convoy, witnesses said.
Helicopters circled overhead, and one took the wounded to a combat
hospital. Several Humvees and Bradley armored vehicles, as well as
a fire truck, were at the blast site.
The toll of dead and missing from floods that ravaged parts of
Haiti and the Dominican Republic was set at more than 3,300 as aid
workers reached the most remote areas. In Haiti, the official
death toll was at 1,191 and the number of missing at 1,484. The
figures on the Dominican side of the border were 395 dead and 274
missing. That brought the overall toll to at least 3,344 from
flooding caused by days of rains that unleased torrents of water
and mud.
President Bush is dispatching former Missouri Sen. John Danforth
as his U.N. ambassador with a mandate to rally international
support for the effort to move Iraq from U.S. occupation to
sovereignty. Danforth's nomination to the U.N. post, announced
by Bush during a visit to Rome, is expected win Senate confirmation
with little difficulty. Danforth would replace John Negroponte,
who will become U.S. ambassador to Iraq.
In Singapore, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld urged Asian
nations to join the United States in taking the offensive against
international terrorists, and he offered assurances that planned
reductions in U.S. troop levels in Asia are not a sign of waning
U.S. interest. In a speech to an Asian security conference,
dubbed the Shangri-La Dialogue, Rumsfeld described the global war
on terrorism as a battle against ideological extremism, and he said
it had just begun.
One of the prewar forecasts was that by invading Iraq, the world
would profit from stable exports of Iraq's oil. And that would
translate into cheap gas for American drivers. Now, with U.S.
gasoline averaging $2.05 per gallon - about 50 cents more than the
pre-invasion price - that logic has been flipped on its head.
Instead, Iraqis seem to be the only people getting cheap gas as a
result of the invasion. They pay just five cents for a gallon -
thanks to hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer
subsidies.
6/ 5/04 Saturday
Ronald Reagan's enemies and friends agreed he changed the world.
The popular, infectiously optimistic president reshaped the
Republican Party in his conservative image and devoted most of his
energies to the destruction of Soviet communism abroad. Reagan,
93, died following a 10-year battle with Alzheimer's disease.
Nancy Reagan and children Ron and Patti Davis were at the couple's
Los Angeles home when Reagan died at 1 p.m. of pneumonia, as a
complication of a 10-year battle with Alzheimer's disease.
From all corners of the planet, the eulogies streamed in - a
torrent of words for the president known as the Great Communicator,
the man who aimed his message at regular people and whose enemies
and friends agreed changed the world. "Ronald Reagan needs no one
to sing his praises," Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said.
But they did anyway. The 40th president's death evoked a world of
remembrances from friends, Republican political soulmates and
opponents who squared off against him.
Smarty Jones lost his Triple Crown bid and his perfect record when
Birdstone ran him down near the finish of the thrilling Belmont
Stakes, toppling his chance to end a record 26-year drought without
a winner of thoroughbred racing's most coveted prize. The little
red chestnut was poised to become the 12th Triple Crown champion
when he turned for home, but Birdstone came flying down the stretch
and took the lead inside the 16th pole to win by a length.
6/ 6/04 Sunday
With pride and tears for fallen comrades, Allied veterans joined
world leaders in remembering the sacrifices of soldiers 60 years
ago and the trans-Atlantic unity that overcame Adolf Hitler's
tyranny in World War II. Atop rocky cliffs over the town of
Arromanches, President Bush and President Jacques Chirac of France
used the glitzy commemoration of the Allied invasion on D-Day -
June 6, 1944 - to reinvigorate relations damaged by differences
over the Iraq war.
The United States wants to withdraw a third of its 37,000 troops
stationed in South Korea by the end of next year, a Foreign
Ministry official said as the two countries discussed U.S. plans
for repositioning soldiers along the Cold War's last frontier. The
withdrawal would be the first major troop cut on the Korean
Peninsula since 1992.
Ronald Reagan was remembered with jelly beans, flowers and American
flags at memorials in his hometown and outside the mortuary where
the former president's body lay. Reagan will be memorialized at
the first presidential state funeral in more than three decades, a
ritual rich in traditions from the country's earliest days. His
remains will be flown to Washington on Wednesday to lie in state in
the Capitol Rotunda.
6/ 7/04 Monday
It's been 550 days since members of the 94th Military Police
Company left their homes. Children have been born, marriages
delayed, jobs put on hold. And family members demanded to know why
their loved ones are still escorting convoys into Baghdad, while
other units have done their service and come home. Any response
will be in the wake of the prisoner abuse scandal and amid growing
concerns about the extended service being required for the Iraq
war.
Three car bombs shook the northern Iraqi cities of Baqouba and
Mosul, killing at least 14 Iraqis and one U..S.. soldier. At least
126 people were wounded, including 10 U.S. soldiers. The first
blast occurred outside forward operating base War Horse, a U.S.
outpost at the former al-Faris air force base 30 miles north of
Baghdad. "At rush hour, a suicide bomber blew up his Mitsubishi,"
said Iraqi police Second Lt. Ali Hussein.
Nancy Reagan touched her cheek to the flag-covered casket, then
made way for Americans by the thousands to pay respects to Ronald
Reagan before a cross-country journey to a state funeral in
Washington. A steady, near-silent stream of people - some
saluting, some praying - circled through the rotunda of the Ronald
Reagan Presidential Library, where the body of the nation's 40th
president will lie in repose through Tuesday before traveling to
Washington.
The United States called for a vote on a U.N. resolution
endorsing the restoration of Iraq's sovereignty after a last-minute
compromise. France said it would vote for the measure, and German
support also seemed likely. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said
he was "very optimistic" about the outcome of the vote scheduled
for late Tuesday afternoon. But Chile and other Security Council
members were still hoping for more changes in the resolution, and
China urged the United States to "show flexibility," the official
Xinhua News Agency said.
6/ 8/04 Tuesday
Waiting good-naturedly for as much as half a day in traffic jams
and a parking lot, tens of thousands of people filed past Ronald
Reagan's flag-draped casket in an outpouring that forced organizers
to extend the viewing period Tuesday by four hours. More than
106,000 mourners had passed by the coffin after viewing began at
noon Monday, Regan library officials said. The nation's 40th
president died Saturday at age 93.
In Iraq, six European soldiers died while transporting munitions.
Family members brought home the remains of two Japanese journalists
killed while covering the occupation. There was celebration - for
the rescue of a Pole and three Italian security guards by U.S.
Special Forces. More than 40 people have been kidnapped in Iraq,
and the four were the first non-Americans freed by the military.
The U.N. Security Council gave resounding approval to a
resolution endorsing the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq's new
government by the end of June. President Bush said the measure
will set the stage for democracy in Iraq and be a "catalyst for
change" in the Middle East. The unanimous 15-0 vote came after a
last-minute compromise allowed France and Germany to drop their
objections to the U.S.-British resolution, which underwent four
revisions over two weeks of discusion.
Democratic senators say Justice Department memos contending that a
wartime president is not bound by anti-torture principles could
have laid the legal groundwork for the prisoner abuses that took
place in Iraq and elsewhere. "They appear to be an effort to
redefine torture and narrow the prohibitions against it," Sen.
Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said during a Senate Judiciary
Committee hearing. Attorney General John Ashcroft was the witness
at the hearing.
6/ 9/04 Wednesday
Shiite militiamen and Iraqi police fought for control of the police
headquarters in the holy city of Najaf, Iraq in the first
skirmishes since an agreement last week to end weeks of bloody
clashes. Two Iraqis were killed and 13 were injured, hospital
officials said. Gunmen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr
attacked the station near the city's Revolution of 1920 Square.
American troops were not involved.
Pakistani forces traded sporadic gunfire with militants overnight
in a tribal region near the Afghan border known as an al-Qaida
hideout, a day after heavy fighting killed at least 20 gunmen,
officials said. The clashes follow weeks of failed efforts to get
militants in South Waziristan to surrender peacefully since an army
counterterrorism offensive in March that left 120 people dead.
The federal government wants 387,000 more acres available for oil
and gas drilling in Alaska, a proposal criticized by
environmentalists. The move announced is part of a proposed Bureau
of Land Management amendment to a 1998 development plan for the
northeastern region of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
Environmentalists said the plan would endanger lands rich in
sensitive wetlands and wildlife habitats.
Katsuhiko Kawasoe, the former president of scandal-plagued
Mitsubishi Motors Corp., was arrested on charges related to a
cover-up of auto defects suspected in a fatal accident, the
Japanese automaker said. Mitsubishi Motors President Yoichiro
Okazaki apologized for the death in a statement and said he was
taking the news of the arrest seriously.
The body of Ronald Reagan, the 40th president, was flown from
California to Washington, D.C. There, it was put to lie in in
state in the Capital Rotundra, where Americans once said goodbye to
Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Official Washington hailed
Reagan to be "a graceful and gallant man," in Vice President Dick
Cheney's words.
6/10/04 Thursday
U.S. troops held off intervening when Shiite gunmen loyal to a
radical cleric ransacked an Iraqi police station in the holy city
of Najaf, saying the fighting was too close to Shiite shrines and
the situation was unclear. The attack - and the American caution -
came as Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, who took command of the new
Multinational Corps Iraq headquarters last month, said the U.S.
military in Iraq is changing its focus from fighting guerrillas to
training Iraqi troops and protecting the fragile interim
government. Also that the military will also consult Iraq's
interim leaders before engaging in future offensives. "Combat
becomes a lower priority than it has been ..."
The State Department acknowledged it was wrong in reporting
terrorism declined worldwide last year, a finding used to boost one
of President Bush's chief foreign policy claims - success in
countering terror. Instead, both the number of incidents and the
toll in victims increased sharply, the department said. Statements
by senior administration officials claiming success were based "on
the facts as we had them at the time. The facts that we had were
wrong."
Ostensibly, President Bush got what he wanted: a photogenic
gathering of world leaders on his turf that, by making him look the
statesman, could help his tough battle for re-election this
November. But the harmony on display at the Group of Eight summit
only covered so many cracks. On the future of Iraq and other vital
issues, Bush and European leaders are still far apart. With Bush
facing charges from John Kerry, his Democratic presidential
challenger, that he has alienated traditional American allies, the
White House worked hard to project an image of success, bolstered
by the recent U.N. Security Council vote on Iraq.
6/11/04 Friday
Gunmen killed a deputy foreign minister as he went to work, the
latest attack on Iraqi leaders in recent weeks. A radical cleric
whose uprising killed hundreds pledged to support the new
government if it works to end the U.S. military presence. Bassam
Salih Kubba, Iraq's most senior career diplomat, was mortally
wounded in Baghdad's Azimiyah district, Foreign Ministry spokesman
Thamir al-Adhami said. The attack took place in a Sunni Muslim
neighborhood.
In a final, majestic hail to the chief, the nation bade a lingering
goodbye to Ronald Reagan at a stately service in Washington under
somber skies and at a hilltop burial ceremony in his beloved
California beneath a setting sun. In poignant eulogies at the
Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the nation's 40th president was
remembered by his surviving children as a father, grandfather and
husband who finally escaped the grip of Alzheimer's disease.
At a sunset hilltop ceremony, a week of public mourning for Ronald
Reagan came to a close with his three surviving children poignantly
remembering their father - the 40th president of the United States
- as loving and dedicated. Michael Reagan, Patti Davis and Ron
Reagan Jr. shared their memories with former first lady Nancy
Reagan and a host of foreign dignitaries, politicians and movie
stars who came to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library for the
last goodbye. Reagan's daughter Maureen, from his first marriage,
died from cancer in 2001.
Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols was again spared
the death penalty when jurors who convicted him of 161 murder
counts deadlocked over his sentence, denying state prosecutors the
execution that was the main reason for bringing the case. Just as
a federal jury deadlocked six years earlier, state jurors could not
agree on Nichols' punishment for helping executed bomber Timothy
McVeigh blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168
people.
Power pylons toppled; fuel pipelines blown apart; foreign engineers
gunned down and yanked out. Insurgents are stepping up attacks on
Iraq's fragile infrastructure even as the U.S. pumps in billions of
dollars to rebuild it. But with electricity in Baghdad flowing at
less than half prewar levels and a scorching summer ahead, many
Iraqis see the struggle to ensure adequate power as a metaphor for
a U.S.-led reconstruction mission gone bad.
6/12/04 Saturday
Suspected militants killed an American in the Saudi capital on,
shooting him in the back as he parked in his home garage, and the
U.S. Embassy said it was searching for an American who was
missing.. A purported al-Qaida statement posted on an Islamic Web
site claimed the terror group had killed one American and kidnapped
another in Riyadh. It threatened to treat the captive as U.S.
troops treated Iraqi prisoners.
Ronald Reagan's body was sealed inside a tomb at his hilltop
presidential library following a week of mourning and remembrance
by world leaders and regular Americans. Workers closed the
underground crypt shortly before 3 a.m. while a handful of Secret
Service agents, library personnel and mortuary representatives
watched, said Duke Blackwood, executive director of the Ronald
Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.
Sen. John Edwards, the smooth-talking populist who emerged from the
nominating campaign as John Kerry's chief rival, is favored among
registered voters to be the Democratic vice presidential candidate,
according to an AP poll. But his name on the ticket does not
automatically boost Democratic prospects. A Kerry-Edwards pairing
ties with the GOP tandem of President Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney, which is no better than Kerry's current showing in
head-to-head matchups against Bush, according to the poll conducted
by Ipsos-Public Affairs.
Gunmen killed the Education Ministry's cultural affairs officer,
the second attack on an Iraqi official in as many days, authorities
said. Kamal al-Jarah, 63, was ambushed outside his home. The
attack happened in a predominantly Sunni Muslim neighborhood of
northwest Baghdad where support for Saddam Hussein's regime had
been strong. U.S. convoys have often come under attack in the
neighborhood of Ghazaliya.
6/13/04 Sunday
Elections for the European Union's parliament were marked by
widespread apathy and protest votes as citizens of the 25 EU
nations punished their governments for everything from high
unemployment to involvement in Iraq. Across the continent, voters
voiced discontent by casting ballots for opposition and fringe
parties. But most of the 350 million EU citizens eligible to vote
didn't bother to: turnout was a record low of 44.2 percent. Voters
punished leaders in Britain, Italy and the Netherlands for getting
involved in Iraq and turned their ire on the war's chief opponents
in Germany and France over economic and social issues, projections
showed. The 25-nation vote, spread out over four days, also
revealed anxieties about the newly expanded European Union itself
with a surprisingly dismal turnout. Among the few that did well
were Spain's Socialists, who recently withdrew troops from Iraq.
Police raided the home of the former president of Mitsubishi Motors
Corp., who was arrested last week on suspicion of hiding auto
defects. Investigators searched Katsuhiko Kawasoe's home in
Nagoya, 170 miles west of Tokyo, apparently looking for evidence to
back up charges related to a cover-up of defects suspected in a
2002 fatal accident. Kawasoe resigned in disgrace four years ago
when the Tokyo-based automaker acknowledged having hidden auto
defects for decades.
Former President George H.W. Bush celebrated his 80th birthday with
a 13,000-foot parachute jump over his presidential library, and
said he felt the same thrill of prior jumps even though his hopes
of skydiving solo were dashed. He made a tandem jump - harnessed
to a member of an Army's Golden Knights parachute team - after
officials decided the wind conditions and low clouds made it too
dangerous for the 41st president to jump alone.
6/14/04 Monday
The American Medical Association voiced its support for
over-the-counter sales of morning-after birth control, saying the
Food and Drug Administration was wrong to reject such sales and
urging doctors to write advance prescriptions. The AMA approved a
resolution during its annual meeting opposing the FDA's position.
The resolution passed without debate and had drawn applause and
wide support at a committee meeting the day before.
Democrat John Kerry, trying to blunt recent good news about job
creation, says President Bush has not done enough to help the
middle class. Kerry says families still are earning less and
paying more for necessities like health insurance, child care,
college tuition and gasoline. "I'm running for president because I
want an economy that strengthens and expands the middle class, not
one that squeezes it," Kerry said in a statement.
The new Iraqi government wants custody of Saddam Hussein and all
other prisoners by the time sovereignty is handed over at the end
of this month, the interim prime minister said. U.S. forces have
said they will continue to hold up to 5,000 prisoners believed to
be a threat to the coalition even after the June 30 restoration of
sovereignty. They say as many as 1,400 detainees will either be
released or transferred to Iraqi authorities.
The Supreme Court allowed millions of schoolchildren to keep
affirming loyalty to one nation "under God" but dodged the
underlying question of whether the Pledge of Allegiance is an
unconstitutional blending of church and state. The ruling
overturned a lower court decision that the religious reference made
the pledge unconstitutional in public schools. But the decision
did so on technical grounds, ruling the man who brought the case on
behalf of his 10-year-old daughter could not legally represent her.
6/15/04 Tuesday
Nearly three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Lorie Van Auken is
still waiting to learn why her husband had to die - and counting on
a commission's last hearing into the hijacking plot to finally
provide some answers. "Nineteen men defeated us with not a lot of
money and killed 3,000 people. That's not a success story," said
Van Auken, of East Brunswick, N.J., who believes the Sept. 11
commission has been too soft on government witnesses in its 11
previous hearings. Her husband, Kenneth, died in the World Trade
Center collapse.
President Bush is fond of telling Americans they have liberated
Iraq and that the country's future generations will be thankful.
The current generation, however, overwhelmingly views U.S. forces
as occupiers and wishes they would just leave, according to a poll
commissioned by the administration. The poll, requested by the
Coalition Provisional Authority last month but not released to the
American public, found more than half of Iraqis surveyed believed
both that they'd be safer without U.S. forces and that all
Americans behave like the military prison guards pictured in the
Abu Ghraib abuse photos.
In Iraq, saboteurs attacked two key southern oil pipelines for a
second day, cutting off all crude oil exports from the Gulf,
officials said. In the north, gunmen ambushed and killed a top
security official for the state-run Northern Oil company. The
attacks were just the latest directed at the struggling country's
oil sector. Reviving petroleum exports is considered critical to
restoring Iraq's economy after decades of war. Iraq's economy
after decades of war, international sanctions and Saddam Hussein's
tyranny. Repeated attacks have slowed the process of returning
Iraq to the forefront of global energy markets.
The captors of a New Jersey man abducted in Saudi Arabia
distributed a videotape of him and threatened to kill him unless
Saudi authorities release al-Qaida prisoners within three days.
Paul Johnson, 49, of Stafford Township, N.J., was kidnapped
Saturday by a group calling itself al-Qaida in the Arabian
Peninsula. The organization is believed to be headed by al-Qaida's
chief in the Saudi kingdom, Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin.
6/16/04 Wednesday
Friends of an American held hostage in Saudi Arabia by a group
linked to al-Qaida awaited word of his fate as a deadline imposed
by his captors was ticking down. A candlelight vigil for Paul M.
Johnson Jr. was planned for Thursday night behind a firehouse in
this rural community about 20 miles north of Atlantic City. "We
all hope Paul comes back," Dan Pomponio, a neighbor of Johnson's
sister in Little Egg Harbor, said.
Insurgents struck at the heart of Iraq's economic livelihood
Wednesday, blasting a major pipeline to halt vital oil exports and
killing the top security chief for the northern oilfields. A
rocket slammed into a U.S. logistics base near Balad, 50 miles
north of Baghdad, killing three U.S. soldiers and wounding 25 other
people, including two civilian workers.
Rebuffing Bush administration claims, the independent commission
investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said no evidence exists that
al-Qaida had strong ties to Saddam Hussein. In hair-raising
detail, the commission said the terror network had envisioned a
much larger attack and is working hard to strike again. Although
Osama bin Laden asked for help from Iraq in the mid-1990s, Saddam's
government never responded, according to a report by the commission
staff.
A Somali man charged with plotting to blow up a shopping mall has
been ordered to undergo psychiatric testing after a court hearing
in which he displayed such bizarre behavior that a friend said he
is "just the shell of a man." In the courtroom, Nuradin Abdi
pressed his face onto a glass-covered tabletop, jerked his head
randomly and muttered as his attorney successfully sought the
evaluation before trial begins.
6/17/04 Thursday
The many missed chances to disrupt the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
spanned years: The hijackers methodically devised and implemented
their plot beginning in 1996. One of the hijacked jetliners flew
undetected for 36 minutes because of a radar glitch. Yet nearly
three years later, the United States remains vulnerable to a
sophisticated al-Qaida organization ready to exploit security gaps,
the commission investigating the attacks said in its final hearing.
One in four credit reports has errors that are serious enough to
disqualify consumers from buying a home, opening a bank account or
getting a job - and an overwhelming majority contain mistakes of
some kind, according to a survey released by a consumer group.
Serious errors found in the credit profiles maintained on some 90
percent of American adults include consumer accounts incorrectly
listed as delinquent or in collection or that actually belong to
another person.
Defying the Bush administration, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to
add 20,000 troops to an Army stretched thin by the war in Iraq and
other commitments around the world. The 93-4 vote in the
Republican-led Senate - following a similar action by the House -
reflected the anxieties lawmakers have been hearing from families
of service personnel whose tours in Iraq keep getting extended and
whose return to civilian life is repeatedly postponed.
United Airlines lost its bid for $1.6 billion in federal loan
guarantees, a blow to the nation's second-largest airline as it
tries to emerge from bankruptcy. It was the second time that the
federal Air Transportation Stabilization Board has turned down the
cash-strapped company. Two members of the board - Treasury
Department's undersecretary for domestic finance, Brian Roseboro,
and Federal Reserve member Edward Gramlich, voted to deny the
company's request.
6/18/04 Friday
Saying he will fight for the chance "to fulfill his dreams and
participate in the 2004 Olympics," 100-meter world record holder
Tim Montgomery told the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that he has done
nothing wrong and ridiculed alleged USADA evidence against him.
Montgomery, one of four U.S. athletes formally notified on June 7
that the USADA is pursuing possible drug charges against them,
issued the response to the anti-doping agency.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry proposed raising the
federal minimum wage to $7 an hour by 2007, arguing that such an
increase could boost the wages of more than 15 million Americans.
Focusing on an issue that resonates with core Democratic voters,
Kerry stressed the need to increase the minimum wage and dismissed
Republican concerns that a hike would hamper small businesses.
An al-Qaida cell fulfilled its threat to kill an American hostage,
beheading him and showing the grisly photos on the Internet. Hours
later, Saudi officials claimed they gunned down the militant who
allegedly masterminded Paul M. Johnson's kidnapping. But a Web
posting denied Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, the reputed leader of al-Qaida
in Saudi Arabia, was killed. Officials had said he was slain in a
firefight.
The Saudi government's intense public relations campaign to
discourage people from supporting extremists isn't swaying some of
its citizens, who still consider the militants heroes despite
appeals from Muslim religious leaders. In the hours before
American engineer Paul M. Johnson Jr. was beheaded by an al-Qaida
cell, some Saudis in the fundamentalist neighborhoods of the
capital suggested the kidnappers enjoyed popular support. They
noted many Muslims share the extremists' anger over U.S. policy in
Iraq and Washington's support for Israel.
6/19/04 Saturday
Fresh off a Western campaign swing, President Bush told Americans
that the economy is growing stronger and more jobs are being
created despite Democrats' claim that he presided over a downturn
for the country. "Time and again, our economy has defied the
gloomy predictions of pessimists," Bush said in his weekly radio
address. "Because of the hard work of so many Americans, and
because of the good policies in Washington, D.C., our economy is
strong, and it is ..."
Saudi security agents searched homes in the capital and surrounding
deserts for the body of slain American hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr.,
while Saudi officials hailed as a victory their slaying of his
executioner, the top al-Qaida figure in the kingdom. But the U.S.
ambassador said he doubted the death of Abdulaziz al-Moqrin during
a Friday night shootout would stop the ongoing violence against
Westerners in Saudi Arabia.
Nearing the end of its work, the Sept. 11 commission is inviting
Vice President Dick Cheney to provide any evidence he has that
would show links between al-Qaida and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, a
panel member said. He said the panel also wants to follow up its
questioning of President Bush's national security adviser,
Condoleezza Rice, and CIA Director George Tenet. The Cheney
request culminates a week in which the commission said it found no
evidence of collaboration between Iraq and al-Qaida terrorists.
6/20/04 Sunday
The al-Qaida group responsible for abducting and killing an
American engineer says it was aided by sympathizers in the Saudi
security forces, a claim that was denied by Saudi authorities.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula made the claim in an account of
the operation posted on an Islamic extremist Web site. It said
Saudi security forces provided uniforms and police cars to
militants who then set up a fake checkpoint to kidnap Paul M.
Johnson Jr.
As many as 10 foreigners are being held captive with a South Korean
recently abducted by militants in Iraq, a South Korean news report
said. The group included a European journalist and "third country"
employees for the U.S.-based contractor Kellogg Brown & Root, South
Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing the employer of the
South Korean victim. Kim Chun-ho, head of South Korea's Gana
General Trading, Co., told a Yonhap reporter in Baghdad by phone.
The Arab satellite TV network Al-Jazeera aired a videotape
purportedly from al-Qaida-linked militants showing a South Korean
hostage begging for his life and pleading with his government to
withdraw troops from Iraq. The kidnappers, who identified
themselves as belonging to a group led by Jordanian-born militant
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, gave South Korea 24 hours to meet its demand
that Korean forces stay out of Iraq or "we will send you the head
of this Korean."
For Bill Clinton, his greatest failures as president have nothing
to do with the scandal over his affair with a White House intern..
"I'm sorry on the home front that we didn't get health care and
that we didn't reform Social Security," the former president told
CBS' "60 Minutes" in an interview aired. In international affairs,
Clinton said he regrets he wasn't able to persuade the Israelis and
Palestinians to make peace and that he "didn't succeed in getting
Osama bin Laden."
6/21/04 Monday
A mortar attack in Baghdad and two assaults on U.S. forces
northeast of the capital killed one soldier and wounded nine
others, as militants showed no sign of letting up in attacks
against Americans ahead of the June 30 transfer of sovereignty.
South Korea, meanwhile, said it will evacuate all of its citizens
working for businesses in Iraq by early July as the country awaited
word on a South Korean man held by militants there.
Once a GOP rising star, Gov. John G. Rowland is stepping down amid
swirling corruption allegations, giving both Republicans and
Democrats hope that they can somehow emerge stronger from the
long-brewing scandal. In a short speech that barely touched on his
legal difficulties, Rowland said he would leave office next week.
He becomes the first U.S. governor in seven years to resign under
pressure.
Eight British Navy sailors serving in Iraq will be prosecuted on
charges of entering Iran's territorial waters, Iran's state-run
television said. The eight were detained in the Shatt-al-Arab
waterway as they were delivering a patrol boat for the new Iraqi
Riverine Patrol Service. The waterway runs along the border
between Iran and Iraq. "They will be prosecuted for illegally
entering Iranian territorial waters," the Arabic language Al-Alam
television said.
The chubby-looking, stubby-winged aircraft that cracked the
commercial space flight barrier this week may have made a great
leap forward in aviation history, but the man who designed it
believes we are still a long way from regular space tourism.
SpaceShipOne, designed by aviation pioneer Burt Rutan, soared to
328,491 feet above Earth, just a little more than 400 feet above
the distance scientists widely consider to be the boundary of
space. The flight lasted 90 minutes.
6/22/04 Tuesday
U.S. forces launched an airstrike targeting militant Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi after his group beheaded a South Korean who had pleaded
"I don't want to die" in a heart-wrenching videotape. Another
audio recording purportedly made by al-Zarqawi and found online
threatened to kill Iraq's interim prime minister next.
The Bush administration laid out its legal reasoning for denying
terror war suspects the protections of international humanitarian
law but immediately repudiated a key memo arguing that torture
might be justified in the fight against al-Qaida. The release of
hundreds of pages of internal memos by the White House was meant to
blunt criticism that President Bush had laid the groundwork for the
abuses of Iraqi prisoners by condoning torture.
Significant acts of terror worldwide reached a 21-year high in
2003, the State Department announced as it corrected a mistaken
report that had been cited to boost President Bush's war on
terror. Incidents of terrorism increased slightly during the year,
and the number of people wounded rose dramatically, the department
said. J. Cofer Black, who heads the department's counterterrorism
office, said the report, even as revised, showed "we have made
significant progress".
Iran will release eight British sailors whose military patrol boats
entered Iranian waters, after an investigation revealed the
incursion was a mistake, Iran's foreign minister said. The
decision to free the eight, who have been held since Sunday,
defused a brewing diplomatic crisis between London and Tehran.
Iran had earlier threatened to prosecute the men, while Britain
insisted they had simply strayed off course while working as part
of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.
6/23/04 Wednesday
The suspected mastermind of beheadings and bombings threatened to
assassinate Iraq's prime minister a week before the new government
takes power. Insurgents launched simultaneous attacks on police
stations in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, killing 21 people and
wounding 13, officials said. The attacks across the so-called
Sunni triangle, came a day after U.S. officials said that an
airstrike killed 20 followers of an al-Qaida-linked militant.
An America Online software engineer stole a list of 92 million
customer screen names that was eventually used to send massive
amounts of e-mail spam, federal prosecutors said. Jason Smathers,
24, was arrested at his home in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., and was
charged with conspiracy. Smathers, working at AOL offices in
Dulles, Va., stole the list and sold it to a Las Vegas man, Sean
Dunaway, who used it to promote an Internet gambling operation and
sold it to spammers.
The Justice Department is rewriting its legal advice on how far
U.S. interrogators can go to pry information from detainees,
working under much different circumstances from the writers of
earlier memos that appeared to justify torture. The first memos
were written not long after the Sept. 11 attacks, while the new
advice is being crafted against the backdrop of prisoner abuse in
Iraq.
Cheered by supporters, Michael Moore previewed his Bush-bashing
documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," before a mostly Democratic audience
in the nation's capital. Democratic National Committee chairman
Terry McAuliffe said he thought the film would play an important
role in this election year.
6/24/04 Thursday
An apparent oxygen leak ended an unusually risky spacewalk just 14
minutes after it began, and sent the international space station's
two astronauts rushing back inside to safety. Flight controllers
said the spacewalk - to repair a fried circuit breaker - would not
be attempted again until Tuesday at the earliest. Astronaut Mike
Fincke had just floated outside early in the evening, with
cosmonaut Gennady Padalka close on his heels, when the chilling
discovery cropped up.
The probe into who leaked the name of a CIA operative to a
journalist moved to the highest level of government as federal
investigators spent more than an hour with President Bush. "The
leaking of classified information is a very serious matter," said
White House press secretary Scott McClellan, adding that Bush
repeatedly has said he wants his administration to cooperate with
the investigation. Bush was interviewed for 70 minutes by a U.S.
attorney.
Insurgents set off car bombs and seized police stations in a
six-city offensive aimed at creating chaos ahead of next week's
handover of power to a new Iraqi government. U.S. and Iraqi forces
took back control in heavy fighting that killed more than 100
people and wounded about 320. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror
network claimed responsibility for the offensive. Most of the
casualties were Iraqi civilians. Three American soldiers were
killed and at least 12 were wounded.
Criticized for his go-it-alone approach in Iraq, President Bush is
trying to build a new consensus among allies wary of a U.S. leader
whose policies are widely unpopular in Europe. The next five days
are all about summitry - the U.S.-European Union summit this
weekend in Ireland and the NATO summit in Turkey next week. Allied
leaders are expressing a new willingness to help in Iraq, although
not at the levels once anticipated.
6/25/04 Friday
Preachers in Iraq's mosques have heaped scorn on the American-run
occupation every Friday for weeks, venting their anger and
frustration from pulpits across the country. On their final
sermons under foreign rule, many delivered messages that remained
anti-American but also looked to the future, condemning Thursday's
bloodshed and calling for unity as Iraq prepares for sovereignty
next week. "We hope that after June 30 Iraqis will be united,
loyal to their nation and not ..."
U.S. jets targeted terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, pounding
one of his suspected hideouts in Fallujah in a strike U.S.
officials said killed up to 25 people. Iraqi leaders warned of
more insurgent attacks after a wave of bloodshed blamed on
al-Zarqawi, and said they were considering drastic measures to
combat the violence - including declaring martial law or a state of
emergency in some areas. "It's the people who want us to take
stronger measures."
Five days before the transfer of power in Baghdad, President Bush
opened a European trip with growing confidence that NATO would take
a bigger role in Iraq despite reservations from France and
Germany. The administration expects NATO, at a summit in Turkey,
will pledge military training and equipment, answering an urgent
plea from Iyad Allawi, prime minister of Iraq's interim government,
for NATO assistance "to defeat the terrorist threat and reduce
reliance on foreign forces."
A computer virus designed to steal valuable information like
passwords spread through a new technique that converted popular Web
sites into virus transmitters. Though the impact of the "Scob"
outbreak was mild compared with recent infections like "Sasser" and
"Blaster," security experts worried about its method of delivery.
With Scob, virus writers have discovered yet another way - beyond
e-mail and network techniques - of distributing their malicious
code.
6/26/04 Saturday
With European Union support in hand, President Bush looked to seal
an agreement for NATO to help stabilize Iraq as its fledgling
government takes over this week. He shrugged off lingering
European resentment of the war, saying "We'll just let the chips
fall where they may." NATO announced an initial agreement to help
train Iraq's armed forces hours after Bush won support from the
25-nation European Union. Nineteen of NATO's 26 members overlap in
the EU.
In Iraq, explosions that rocked the center of the predominantly
Shiite Muslim city of Hillah killed 40 people and injured 22. The
blasts, which occurred at about 8:45 p.m. near the former Saddam
Hussein mosque, may have been caused by a pair of car bombs, a
military official said on condition of anonymity. "Our estimates
now are that 40 people were killed in last night's blasts and 22
were injured," the official said.
Pakistan's prime minister stepped down and ordered his Cabinet
dissolved, following months of speculation over his worsening
relationship with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the nation's
ultimate power broker. Zafarullah Khan Jamali announced his
decision at a meeting of his PML-Q party. Party chief Chaudhry
Shujaat Hussain, a military loyalist from one of the country's most
influential families, was nominated to replace him.
The CIA has suspended use of some White House-approved aggressive
interrogation tactics employed to extract information from
reluctant al-Qaida prisoners, The Washington Post said. Citing
unnamed intelligence officials, the newspaper reported in Sunday's
editions that what the CIA calls "enhanced interrogation
techniques" were put on hold pending a review by Justice Department
and other lawyers. The techniques include such things as feigned
drowning.
The Green Party nominated Texas attorney David Cobb as its
candidate for president, rejecting Ralph Nader's efforts to secure
the party's formal endorsement and likely access to the ballot in
key states like Wisconsin and California. Nader, the party's
candidate in 1996 and 2000, had told Green officials months ago he
would not accept the party's nomination for president, preferring
to build a coalition of third-party groups and independents rather
than running under one banner.
6/27/04 Sunday
NATO leaders are close to agreement on a limited expansion of the
alliance's role in Iraq and Afghanistan, presenting a united front
in their first summit since the war to topple Saddam Hussein opened
up deep divisions among the allies. At the summit in Turkey's
capital, Istanbul, security forces sealed off a large section of
the city amid fears of terrorist attacks and violent protests as
more than 40,000 Turks demonstrated peacefully against the NATO
meeting and President Bush.
Arab television broadcast videotape of two men taken hostage by
militants, one described as a U.S. Marine lured from his base and
the other a Pakistani driver for an American contractor.
Insurgents threatened to behead them both. Also, militants hit a
coalition transport plane with small arms fire after takeoff from
Baghdad's airport, killing an American passenger and forcing the
aircraft to return.
Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" took in a whopping $21.8 million
in its first three days, becoming the first documentary ever to
debut as Hollywood's top weekend film. If Sunday's estimates hold
when final numbers are released Monday, "Fahrenheit 9/11" would set
a record in a single weekend as the top-grossing documentary ever
outside of concert films and movies made for huge-screen IMAX
theaters.
Two decades and $3.3 billion in the making, an international
exploration of Saturn begins this week when a spacecraft slips
through a gap in the planet's shimmering rings and arcs into
orbit. After a seven-year, 2.2 billion-mile journey, the Cassini
spacecraft will fire its engine Wednesday night to slow down,
allowing itself to be captured by Saturn's gravity. The maneuver
will inaugurate a four-year, 76-orbit tour of the giant planet and
some of its 31 known moons.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry canceled an appearance
at the U.S. Conference of Mayors rather than cross a promised
police union picket line at the event. "I don't cross picket
lines. I never have," Kerry said as he left Mass Sunday night at
Our Lady of Good Voyage chapel in South Boston.
6/28/04 Monday
The Bush administration must regroup legally and politically after
the Supreme Court dealt a major setback to the government's
anti-terrorism tactics since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The high
court refused to endorse the White House claim of authority to
seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny access to
courts or lawyers while interrogating them.
Militants shot an American hostage in the back of the head saying
they killed the soldier because of U.S. policy in Iraq, Al-Jazeera
television said, hours after Washington transferred sovereignty in
Iraq to an interim government. The Arab-language station reported
that the slain soldier was Spc. Keith M. Maupin, but the U.S.
military said it could not immediately confirm whether a man shown
being shot in a murky videotape was indeed Maupin.
United Airlines lost its third and final try for a government loan
guarantee when a federal board rejected its latest bid and insisted
the bankrupt carrier can survive without one. The announcement by
the Air Transportation Stabilization Board, unanimously affirming
its June 17 decision despite the reduced request United submitted
last week, forces the airline to seek new financing and throws the
outcome of its 1 1/2-year-old bankruptcy makeover into doubt.
The "health-related issue" Mary-Kate Olsen is seeking treatment for
is something she has struggled with for some time, her twin sister,
Ashley, told People magazine. Both People and Us Weekly have
reported that Mary-Kate has an eating disorder. Mary-Kate's
publicist, Michael Pagnotta, has said only that she entered a
treatment facility recently "to seek professional help for a
health-related issue." "She's hanging in there," Ashley Olsen said
of her sister.
A roadside bomb rocked a military convoy in southeast Baghdad and
killed three U.S. troops, an Iraqi national guardsman said, in the
first major attack on American forces since they transferred
sovereignty in Iraq to an interim government. Also, Iraq's Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi said that Saddam Hussein and up to 11 top
detainees would be transferred Wednesday to Iraqi legal custody.
After Iraq's new interim government claimed power, President Bush
said that "freedom is the future of the Middle East" and that
Islamic countries need not fear the spread of democracy. Bush
cited Turkey as an example of an Islamic country with a secular
government that has found a place in the community of democracies.
The interim government went into being a few days early, due to
worries of interference from insurgents.
6/29/04 Tuesday
Insurgents fired at least 10 mortar rounds at a U.S. base on the
outskirts of Baghdad International Airport, wounding 11 soldiers,
two of them seriously, and starting a fire that burned for well
over an hour. That attack, along with a car bomb that exploded
outside a police headquarters in Samawah, 150 miles south of the
capital, Baghdad, were yet more evidence that insurgents have no
plans of letting up their attacks even after the U.S. coalition
authorities handed over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government
on Monday.
The Supreme Court blocked a law meant to shield Web-surfing
children from dirty pictures and online come-ons, ruling that the
law also would cramp the free speech rights of adults to see and
buy what they want on the Internet. Technology such as filtering
software may better protect children from unsavory material than
such laws, the court said in a 5-4 ruling.
For the first time in more than a decade, the Army is forcing
thousands of former soldiers back into uniform, a reflection of the
strain on the service of long campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Army officials said that about 5,600 former soldiers - mostly
people who recently left the service and have up-to-date skills in
military policing, engineering, logistics, medicine or
transportation - will be assigned to National Guard and Reserve
units starting in July.
Now that the economic recovery is on solid ground and the jobs
climate is improving, Federal Reserve policy-makers are ready to
boost interest rates for the first time in four years. Ultra-low
rates are no longer needed to support the economy and inflation is
coming out of hibernation, reasons enough for the Fed to embark on
a credit-tightening campaign that is expected to stretch well into
2005.
6/30/04 Wednesday
A judge will read charges against Saddam Hussein and 11 of his top
lieutenants when they appear in court Thursday and ask if they want
lawyers for their expected war crimes trial, the head of the Iraqi
tribunal said. Salem Chalabi, the director of the Iraqi Special
Tribunal, said Saddam will face a single judge in Thursday's
session, which is expected to take place in or around Baghdad
International Airport. An exact time was not known.
U.S. jets pounded a suspected safe house of terrorist Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi in Fallujah on Thursday, the latest in a series of
strikes against the man suspected of masterminding deadly attacks
and beheadings in Iraq. The missile strike, which a doctor in the
insurgent-controlled city said killed four people, came shortly
before former-dictator Saddam Hussein was to appear in an Iraqi
court.
Federal Reserve policy-makers took the first step in what they
signaled should be a slow rise in interest rates. Even with the
Fed's first rate increase in four years, costs to borrow money
still remain a pretty good deal for Americans. The modest
one-quarter percentage point increase ordered Wednesday nudged up a
key short-term interest rate controlled by the Fed to 1.25 percent,
from a 46-year low of 1 percent.
After seven years of hurtling through space to the outer solar
system, the U.S.-European Cassini spacecraft squeezed through a gap
in Saturn's shimmering rings, fired its brakes and settled into a
near-perfect orbit around the giant planet. Mission scientists and
engineers watched tensely at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory late
Wednesday as a signal indicated first that Cassini had safely
passed through the ring plane and then performed a crucial engine
firing.
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