12/ 1/04 Wednesday
The United States is expanding its military force in Iraq to the
highest level of the war - even higher than during the initial
invasion in March 2003 - in order to bolster security in advance of
next month's national elections. The 12,000-troop increase is to
last only until March, but it says much about the strength and
resiliency of an insurgency that U.S. military planners did not
foresee when Baghdad was toppled in April 2003.
Moving to bolster security ahead of the vote, the United States
said it was expanding its military force in Iraq by 12,000 to about
150,000 by year's end - the higest level of the war. The previous
high was 148,000 on May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that
major combat operations were over.
President Bush asked Canadians to move beyond their deep opposition
to the Iraq war and get behind his vision of democracies blooming
from Baghdad to the West Bank. "Sometimes even the closest of
friends disagree, and two years ago we disagreed about the course
of action in Iraq," Bush said, standing at the side of Canadian
Prime Minister Paul Martin.
The CBS-TV shows "Joan of Arcadia" and "Everybody Loves Raymond"
took top family-friendly TV honors during tonight's presentations
at the 6th Annual Family Television Awards. NBC-TV's coverage of
the Olympic Games won for best TV special, ABC-TV's "Extreme
Makeover: Home Edition" won for top reality show, ABC-TV's "Lost"
was voted best new series and Bernie Mac of Fox's "The Bernie Mac
Show" was best actor.
12/ 2/04 Thursday
President Bush has chosen former New York police commissioner
Bernard Kerik, who helped direct the emergency response to the
Sept. 11 terrorist strikes against the Twin Towers, to lead the
Homeland Security Department, charged with safeguarding Americans
from future attack, administration officials said. Bush also
announced his choice of Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns to be
agriculture secretary, selecting a dairy farmer's son who has
traveled widely to promote American farm sales abroad.
President Bush rejected calls for a delay in next month's Iraqi
elections, insisting that the vote was too important to put off
even though violence and chaos still grip much of the country.
"It's time for the Iraqi citizens to go to the polls," Bush said.
A powerful typhoon sliced through the Philippines, forcing nearly
170,000 people to flee homes to higher ground even as Filipinos
struggled to recover from an earlier storm that killed more than
420 and left possibly hundreds more missing. Mudslides and flash
floods earlier in the week have turned parts of Quezon province and
other areas facing the Pacific Ocean into a sea of mud littered
with bodies, uprooted trees, collapsed homes and bridges.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., stung by a lackluster start to the holiday
shopping season, said it is launching a new advertising campaign to
remind its customers of its low prices. The world's largest
retailer is starting the price-focused ad blitz Friday in
newspapers, television and radio, said spokeswoman Mona Williams,
and feature two dozen key items, mainly toys and electronics, on
which the company is cutting prices. "That's what people are
buying," she said.
12/ 3/04 Friday
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld - scarred by postwar violence
and prison scandal in Iraq - accepted President Bush's request that
he remain for the second-term Cabinet. Health and Human Services
Secretary Tommy Thompson resigned, warning as he left of a possible
terror attack on the nation's food supply. "For the life of me, I
cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food
supply because it is so easy to do," Thompson said as announced his
departure. "We are importing a lot of food from the Middle East,
and it would be easy to tamper with that."
In Ukraine, the Supreme Court ordered a rerun of the head-to-head
presidential contest between Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko and
the Kremlin-backed candidate on Dec. 26, setting off rejoicing by
opposition supporters who waved orange flags and ignited fireworks
as they chanted "Yushchenko! Yushchenko!" The court found that
government bodies had "illegally meddled in the election process"
and distorted the results of the Nov. 21 runoff. The bold ruling
was a rebuke to outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
In the deadliest insurgent violence in weeks, militants stormed two
police stations and a mosque in Baghdad, killing 30 people. In the
northern city of Mosul, 11 militants died in street battles with
American and Iraqi forces. Roadside bombs in Baghdad and Kirkuk
killed two American soldiers and wounded five others, the military
said. The surge in violence indicates militants still can stage
attacks at will despite a U.S.-led military campaign to quell the
insurgency before Jan. 30 elections.
12/ 4/04 Saturday
Suicide car bombs struck Iraqi police and Kurdish militiamen in
Baghdad and northern Iraq, killing at least 16 people and wounding
dozens, while four U.S. soldiers died in separate attacks, again
demonstrating the lethal reach of Iraq's insurgency just weeks
ahead of crucial elections. The U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. John
Abizaid, acknowledged that the country's homegrown forces aren't
yet up to the task of ensuring secure elections, requiring the
planned increase in U.S. troops. More than 42 Iraqis have been
killed in the last two days alone.
President Bush played down a stark warning from his resigning
health chief that the nation's food supply is largely unprotected
from terror attack. Bush said that the government is doing what it
can to safeguard the public from threats, but much work remains.
Young people are now the savviest of the tech-savvy, as likely to
demand a speedy broadband connection as to download music onto an
iPod, or upload digital photos to their Web logs. The Internet has
shaped the way they work, relax and even date. It's created a
different notion of community for them and new avenues for
expression that are, at best, liberating and fun - but that also
can become a forum for pettiness and, occasionally, criminal
exploitation.
12/ 5/04 Sunday
Gunmen ambushed a bus carrying unarmed Iraqis to work at a U.S.
ammo dump near Tikrit, killing 17 and raising the death toll from
three days of intensified insurgent attacks to at least 70 Iraqis
and eight U.S. troops. The attacks, focused in Baghdad and several
cities to the north, appeared to be aimed at scaring off those who
cooperate with the American military - whether police, national
guardsmen, Kurdish militias, or ordinary people just looking for a
paycheck.
Crude prices had fallen Friday for a fourth straight day to sit
below $43 per barrel for the first time in 3 months - capping a 14
percent fall for last week.
If House GOP leaders would allow a vote on post-Sept. 11
legislation overhauling the nation's intelligence community, it
would easily pass, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle predicted
today. A top Republican scolded opponents who worry the Pentagon
would lose some of its authority, saying national security is far
more important than turf battles. "There was a global intelligence
failure. We can't have a status quo. We've got to change that,"
said Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee.
12/ 6/04 Monday
Two powerful congressional chairmen, one who had opposed
legislation to revamp the nation's intelligence agencies, endorsed
a compromise and moved a bill endorsed by President Bush closer to
approval. House Armed Services chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.,
and Senate Armed Services chairman John Warner, R-Va., announced
that they would vote for the bill to implement the Sept. 11
commission's terror-fighting recommendations.
Lobbing grenades, militants invaded Jiddah's heavily guarded U.S.
Consulate today, attacking staffers and others in the compound
until Saudi security forces stormed in. Nine people, none
American, were killed in the attack, which was claimed by al-Qaida
and showed how vulnerable Saudi Arabia remains to Islamic extremist
violence. The bold assault, the worst in the kingdom since May,
suggested that a fierce crackdown waged by Saudi security forces
has not completely put down al-Qaida in the native land of terror
leader Osama bin Laden.
In Iraq, five more American troops were killed in the volatile
Anbar province. A dawn attack on a domestic oil pipeline supplying
fuel from northern Iraq to Baghdad and clashes that killed three
militants in the country's turbulent west underlined the security
difficulties ahead of Jan. 30 national elections.
12/ 7/04 Tuesday
The House voted to overhaul a national intelligence network that
failed to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, combining under one
official control of 15 spy agencies, intensifying aviation and
border security and allowing more wiretaps of suspected
terrorists. "We have come a long way toward taking steps that will
ensure that we do not see another September 11th," said House Rules
chairman David Dreier, R-Calif. Now "we have in place a structure
that will ensure that we have the intelligence capability to deal
with conflicts on the ground wherever they exist."
A top Iraqi official accused the country's neighbors of doing too
little to stop foreigners from joining the brutal insurgency, while
the U.S. combat death toll neared 1,000 with the killing of an
American soldier in Baghdad. Russian President Vladimir Putin said
he "cannot imagine" how Iraq's elections can go forward next month
amid the violence.
Pakistan test-fired a short-range nuclear-capable missile, the
second in just over a week despite a thaw in relations with
neighboring India, a senior defense official said. The test was of
a Shaheen missile, with a range of 435 miles, the official said,
speaking on condition of anonymity.
International Business Machines Corp. is selling a majority stake
in its pioneering personal computer business to China's biggest
computer maker, Lenovo Group Ltd., for $1.75 billion in cash and
stock. The widely expected deal, one of the biggest Chinese
overseas acquisitions ever, would make Lenovo the third-largest PC
company in the world. IBM currently holds that spot.
12/ 8/04 Wednesday
Congress ordered the biggest overhaul of U.S. intelligence in a
half-century, replacing a network geared to the Cold War fight
against communism with a post-Sept. 11 structure requiring military
and civilian spy agencies to work together against terrorists
intent on holy war. The Senate overwhelmingly passed the
legislation 89-2, one day after the House easily pushed through the
compromise strongly endorsed by President Bush.
Guerrillas carried out a series of raids in the city of Samarra,
stealing weapons from a police station, blowing it up, and
exchanging fire with police and U.S. troops. At least five Iraqis
were killed, and the city police chief resigned. Underscoring
security concerns, the Interior Ministry backed interim Prime
Ministry Ayad Allawi's reported proposal to spread elections
planned for Jan. 30 over up to three weeks in hopes of allowing
people to vote safely. The decision ultimately belongs to Iraq's
electoral commission; a top official there said Allawi had not
mentioned the idea.
12/ 9/04 Thursday
Military officials said they were working hard to upgrade the armor
on Army vehicles in Iraq, a day after a soldier had pressed Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on the subject. President Bush said,
"The concerns expressed are being addressed." Close to three-
quarters of the Humvees in the Iraq war theater now have upgraded
armor protection, but many larger trucks and tractor-trailer rigs
do not, according to congressional figures.
Three years after his Social Security commission issued
recommendations on how to repair the system, Bush remained
noncommittal on how he would pay for the estimated $2 trillion cost
of revamping Social Security. But vast new borrowing seemed
increasingly likely.
At a club in Columbus, Ohio, it looked like something out of a
macabre heavy-metal video: the lights dimmed in the smoke-filled
nightclub, the rock band Damageplan launched into its first
thunderous riffs, and then a man in a hooded sweatshirt ran the
length of the stage and opened fire, shooting the lead guitarist at
least five times in the head. In just minutes, the gunman had
killed three others with his silver pistol before being shot to
death by a police officer.
President Bush announced he was keeping the heads of the
Transportation, Interior, Housing and Labor departments, ending the
major shake-up that will put new faces on three-fifths of his
Cabinet in his second term. Bush also said that Jim Nicholson,
former chairman of the Republican National Committee and current
U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, was his choice to lead the Veterans
Affairs Department. Nicholson, a decorated Vietnam veteran, would
succeed Secretary Anthony Principi.
12/10/04 Friday
In a surprise move, former New York Police Commissioner Bernard
Kerik abruptly withdrew his nomination as President Bush's choice
to be homeland security secretary tonight, saying questions have
arisen about the immigration status of a housekeeper and nanny he
employed. The decision caught the White House off guard and sent
Bush in search of a new candidate to run the sprawling bureaucracy
of more than 180,000 employees melded together from 22 disparate
federal agencies in 2003 to guard the nation against terrorist
attacks.
The Army entered negotiations with an armor manufacturer in an
effort to accelerate production of armored versions of the Humvee
to get them to the troops more quickly, Army and company officials
said. Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey spoke with officials at
Armor Holdings, Inc., based in Jacksonville, Fla., who told him
they could increase production by up to 100 vehicles a month.
President Bush picked a new energy secretary and dubbed him "a
problem solver" - a talent Samuel W. Bodman will need as he deals
with high oil prices, nuclear waste and a Congress unwilling to
pass the president's long-term energy plan. The announcement
filled one of the last two vacancies in Bush's second-term Cabinet,
leaving only the secretary of health and human services. Bush is
replacing nine of his 15 Cabinet members.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, suffering from thyroid cancer
and absent from the bench for seven weeks, still plans to preside
at President Bush's inauguration on Jan. 20, a Supreme Court
spokeswoman said. The chief justice normally swears in the
president, but it had been unclear if Rehnquist would be well
enough. Little information about his condition has been released,
though it's known he is undergoing the kind of treatment often used
for the most serious type of thyroid cancer.
12/11/04 Saturday
Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned
with dioxin, doctors said, adding that the highly toxic chemical
could have been put in the opposition leader's soup, producing the
severe disfigurement and partial paralysis of his face. Yushchenko
was in satisfactory condition and was expected to be released from
Vienna's private Rudolfinerhaus clinic Sunday or Monday to return
to the campaign trail in Ukraine, said hospital director Dr.
Michael Zimpfer.
The White House renewed its search for a homeland security chief as
the candidate President Bush thought ideal apologized for an
immigration problem involving a family housekeeper that forced him
to withdraw. "I owe the president ... a great apology that this
may have caused him and his administration a big distraction,"
Bernard Kerik said in a telephone interview.
Insurgents pressed their attack on U.S. troops and Iraq's security
forces, killing five Iraqi police officers and wounding 14 American
soldiers in a relentless effort to derail next month's elections.
A U.S. Marine also was killed in the province containing the former
insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. However, Iraqi officials
maintain that vote preparations are on schedule.
With 24-foot seas and 50-knot winds continuing to pound the
Aleutian island where a soybean freighter cracked in half,
officials could take only a few small steps toward cleaning up the
massive oil spill left behind. Three days after the 738-foot
Selendang Ayu wrecked on the west side of Unalaska Island, Coast
Guard officials still didn't know how much of the more than 400,000
gallons of thick oil had spilled because they hadn't been able to
board either half of the wreck.
12/12/04 Sunday
Eight U.S. Marines were killed in two separate incidents in Iraq's
restive Anbar province, the military said, a day after American
warplanes pounded Fallujah with missiles as insurgents battled
coalition forces in the city. The deaths equaled the highest
number of Marines killed in a single day since a car bomb killed
eight outside Fallujah on Oct. 30, which was the deadliest attack
against the U.S. military in nearly six months.
Ukrainian prosecutors reopened their investigation into allegations
Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned after doctors treating the
opposition leader confirmed he had been slipped the toxic chemical
dioxin. Yushchenko returned home to campaign for this month's
presidential runoff vote. He said he did not want the poisoning
issue to overshadow the Dec. 26 election, but the director of
Vienna's elite Rudolfiner clinic said a potential criminal case
could be involved.
Democrat John Kerry is asking county elections officials to allow
his witnesses to inspect the 92,000 ballots cast in Ohio in which
no vote for president was recorded, a Kerry lawyer said tonight.
The request is one of 11 the Kerry campaign made in a letter sent
over the weekend to Ohio's 88 county boards of election, which will
begin recounting presidential ballots this week.
12/13/04 Monday
Repelled by Scott Peterson's seeming lack of sorrow and remorse, a
jury decided that he deserves the death penalty for murdering his
pregnant wife, Laci, almost exactly two years ago. A cheer went up
outside the courthouse as the jury announced its decision after 11
1/2 hours of deliberations over three days. Inside court, Peterson
reacted with the same tight-jawed look that some jurors said turned
them off after seeing little emotion out of Peterson since his
wife's disappearance.
An al-Qaida-linked suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near cars
waiting to enter the Green Zone, home to the U.S. Embassy and
Iraq's interim government, killing 13 Iraqis on the anniversary of
Saddam Hussein's capture. A second car bomb exploded near a
checkpoint leading to the Green Zone, injuring least 12 people,
including five Iraqi National Guardsmen, said Razzaq Hussein, an
official at Yarmouk hospital. U.S. officials said no Americans were
wounded in the blast.
Oracle Corp. finally scooped up bitter rival PeopleSoft Inc. after
18 months of legal and verbal strife, ending a nasty feud with a
$10.3 billion deal that promises to shake up the business software
industry. Oracle sealed the agreement, which was announced today,
by upping its all-cash offer by 10 percent to $26.50 per share.
12/14/04 Tuesday
Iraq will bring top figures of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime to
court next week for the first time since they appeared before a
judge five months ago, and formal indictments could be issued next
month. Many have been in custody for more than a year and have not
met with lawyers, prompting Saddam's attorneys to cry foul. The
regime figures face charges for crimes allegedly committed during
the 35-year Baath Party dictatorship, including war crimes, mass
killings and the suppression of the 1991 Shiite rebellion. Saddam,
who was arrested a year ago Monday, will not be among those to
appear in court next week.
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the fifth time since
June and signaled it was likely to keep pushing them higher at a
"measured" pace in the new year. The latest quarter-point increase
raised the federal funds rate, the interest that banks charge each
other, to 2.25 percent, more than double the 46-year low of 1
percent in effect when the Fed kicked off its credit-tightening
campaign six months ago.
An advocate for two red-tailed hawks evicted last week from their
nest on a luxury Manhattan apartment building was arrested today
and charged with harassing CNN anchor Paula Zahn, who lives in the
building, and her family, law enforcement sources said.
Many companies are dropping their promise of health benefits for
future retirees, who now might have to stay on the job longer and
rely on government health care in their old age. Eight percent of
employers with at least 1,000 workers said they had eliminated
subsidized retiree health benefits for some workers this year, and
11 percent more said they probably would do so next year, according
to a study released today by the benefits consulting firm Hewitt
Associates and the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.
12/15/04 Wednesday
A bomb targeting a prominent Shiite cleric killed seven people
outside one of southern Iraq's holiest shrines as campaigning began
for Iraq's first post-Saddam elections - a vote that is going ahead
despite suicide attacks and assassinations by Sunni insurgents.
The attack in the heartland of Iraqi's majority Shiite population
wounded the cleric, Sheik Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalayee, and was a
stark reminder of the risks for the six-week campaign leading to a
Jan. 30 vote for a 275-member National Assembly.
Iraqi insurgents are growing more effective and it will take time
to get U.S. troops the $4 billion in armor they need for
protection, defense officials said. "This is not Wal-Mart," one
general said. Officials rejected growing criticism that armor
shortages in Iraq reflect poor war planning, and they said they've
been working as fast as possible to give troops what they need.
New tests reveal Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor
Yushchenko's blood contains the second-highest level of dioxin
poisoning ever recorded in a human - more than 6,000 times the
normal concentration, according to the expert analyzing the
samples. Abraham Brouwer, professor of environmental toxicology at
the Free University in Amsterdam, where the blood samples were sent
for analysis, said they contained about 100,000 units of dioxin per
gram of blood fat.
An experimental interceptor missile failed to get off the ground in
a test of the U.S. national missile defense system early today,
raising new doubts about prospects for the imminent activation of
the system. In the test, a target missile, a simulated ICBM with a
mock warhead, was launched without problem from Kodiak, Alaska, at
12:45 a.m. EST, a statement from the Defense Department's Missile
Defense Agency said.
12/16/04 Thursday
A man identified as Osama bin Laden, speaking on an audiotape
posted on an Islamic Web site, praised the men who attacked a U.S.
consulate in Saudi Arabia earlier this month and called on
militants to stop the flow of oil to the West. The voice sounded
like the al-Qaida terror chief's, and the tape, which was more than
an hour, was posted on a site known as a clearinghouse for militant
Islamic comment. The identity of the voice, however, could not be
independently confirmed.
President Bush said the Social Security investment accounts he is
proposing would have rules to prevent workers from gambling away
their retirement money. He appealed for congressional action to
shore up the system and said lawmakers supporting him wouldn't be
risking their seats. "This is an issue on which I campaigned and
I'm still standing," Bush said at an economic conference promoting
his domestic proposals, including Social Security, his leading
legislative issue for next year.
Two months after the government recommended that scarce flu shots
be reserved for people most at risk, health officials are now
worried that tens of thousands of doses could go to waste, and they
are considering easing the restrictions. The demand for flu shots
has turned out to be lower than expected because the flu season has
been mild so far. Also, it turns out that more than half of all
elderly or chronically ill adults have not even tried to get
vaccinated because they figured no shots would be available, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said today.
Saddam Hussein met with a defense lawyer today for the first time
since his capture a year ago, days before several of his top aides
are due to appear in court for hearings on alleged war crimes. The
unidentified attorney spent four hours with the 67-year-old former
dictator at Saddam's undisclosed detention site, said his chief
lawyer, Ziad al-Khasawneh.
12/17/04 Friday
Pfizer Inc. said it found an increased risk of heart attacks and
strokes for patients taking high dosages of its top-selling
arthritis painkiller Celebrex, the same problem that led to the
withdrawal of its one-time competitor Vioxx. The company said it
has no plans to remove Celebrex from the market, but the disclosure
today sent Pfizer's shares tumbling because of fears that it could
cripple sales of what had been the most-prescribed drug for
treating arthritis.
Insurgents killed at least three foreigners in Mosul, a northern
city that became a stronghold after Fallujah fell to U.S. and Iraqi
forces. Militants also set ablaze a pipeline near the capital - a
rare attack on oil infrastructure in a populated area. The U.S.
Embassy confirmed the name of an American contractor taken hostage
six weeks ago in Baghdad - a man who has not been seen or heard
from since - identifying him as Roy Hallums, a 56-year-old worker
for a Saudi company that does catering for the Iraqi army.
President Bush signed the largest overhaul of U.S. intelligence
gathering in a half century, aiming to transform a system designed
for Cold War threats so it can deal effectively with the post-Sept.
11 scourge of terrorism. "Instead of massed armies, we face
stateless networks. We face killers who hide in our own cities,"
Bush said in a somber ceremony in an ornate Commerce Department
auditorium where the treaty creating NATO was signed. "To inflict
great harm on our country, America's enemies need to be only right
once. Our intelligence and law enforcement professionals in our
government must be right every single time."
Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should
restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a
nationwide poll. The survey conducted by Cornell University also
found that Republicans and people who described themselves as
highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims' civil
liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.
12/18/04 Saturday
The incoming deputy leader of Senate Democrats demanded answers
from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as to why U.S. soldiers in
Iraq and Afghanistan lack protective equipment for themselves and
their vehicles. "We can, and we should, armor every Humvee and
every truck our troops use in Iraq and Afghanistan," Sen. Dick
Durbin, D-Ill., said in his party's weekly radio address. "No more
excuses, no more delays. We can save hundreds of lives and prevent
thousands of serious injuries."
The United States sprayed more than 19 million gallons of defoliant
over the jungles of Vietnam, a tactic designed to kill the forests
and deny cover to the enemy. The chemical worked. Miles of
vegetation withered and died. It also exposed an estimated 3
million U.S. troops and millions more Vietnamese to dioxin, the
same toxic chemical reportedly used to poison Viktor Yushchenko, a
candidate in the disputed presidential election in the Ukraine.
Experts say it is unlikely that many, if any, Americans absorbed
the dose Yushchenko ingested. Tests confirmed by three labs in the
Netherlands and Germany showed that Yushchenko had 100,000 units of
the poison per gram of blood fat, the second-highest concentration
on record.
A sinkhole opened beneath a road in central Florida today,
swallowing four lanes of pavement and forcing the evacuation of 20
homes. Volusia County officials had been watching the hole since
Monday, when collapsed asphalt was noticed on Howland Boulevard
near Deltona High School. Workers were pumping a cement mixture
under the damaged road when the hole formed.
12/19/04 Sunday
Car bombs tore through a Najaf funeral procession and Karbala's
main bus station, killing at least 60 people and wounding more than
120 in the two Shiite holy cities. In Baghdad, gunmen launched a
bold ambush, executing three election officials, in their campaign
to disrupt next month's parliamentary ballot. The deadly strikes
highlighted the apparent ability of the insurgents to launch
attacks almost at will, despite confident assessments by U.S.
military commanders that they had regained the initiative after
last month's campaign against militants in Fallujah.
Acknowledging mistakes in Iraq by the Bush administration, leading
Republicans expressed reluctance that the White House replace
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has lost the confidence
of some GOP lawmakers over the conduct of the war. The chairman of
the Senate Armed Services Committee said a change at the top of the
Pentagon would be too disruptive, given the elections scheduled in
Iraq for Jan. 30. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., also said the
administration was dealing with the missteps that have occurred in
the aftermath of the U.S.-led ouster of Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein.
About a year ago, Dave Champlin and his two roommates lived in what
their friends at the University of Missouri called the House of
Fat. At a combined weight of 890 pounds, the three decided to try
the Atkins diet. By sticking to the low-carb, high-protein diet,
Champlin lost about 45 pounds and his roommates each lost between
50 and 60 pounds. Despite being pleased with the results, all
three were off the diet by this past summer and have gained back
some of the weight. Champlin, 23, and his friends exemplify why
many diet and food industry experts are declaring the low-carb diet
craze over.
The nation's retailers remained on edge, as the much-hoped for
sales bonanza appeared not to materialize on the last weekend
before Christmas, despite an abundance of deals on toys and
apparel. Merchants needed a hefty sales surge this past weekend to
recoup lost business after seeing a slow start to a holiday selling
season that never gathered steam. Now, they'll have to rely even
more heavily on the final days before and after Christmas to meet
their holiday sales forecast.
12/20/04 Monday
In a sobering assessment of the Iraq war, President Bush
acknowledged today that Americans' resolve has been shaken by
grisly scenes of death and destruction and he pointedly criticized
the performance of U.S.-trained Iraqi troops. "No question about
it," he said. "The bombers are having an effect." At a year-end
news conference, the president also refused to say whether his
strategy for overhauling Social Security would entail cutting
benefits, raising the retirement age or limiting benefits for
wealthier workers. "Don't bother to ask me," Bush said, adding
that he would not tip his hand until he starts negotiating with
Congress next year.
Accused of being insensitive to U.S. soldiers in Iraq and their
families, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld received a fresh
endorsement from President Bush, who called him "a caring fellow."
"I have heard the anguish in his voice and seen his eyes when we
talk about the danger in Iraq and the fact that youngsters are over
there in harm's way," Bush said at a White House news conference.
A study testing whether Celebrex or naproxen would reduce the risk
of Alzheimer's disease was halted after researchers noted an
increase in heart attack and stroke among participants who were
taking naproxen, an over-the-counter pain reliever on the market
for nearly 30 years. Officials at the National Institutes of
Health said the study was stopped after three years when it was
noticed that patients taking naproxen, sold under the brand name
Aleve, had a 50 percent greater incidence of cardiovascular events
- heart attack or stroke - than patients taking placebo.
12/21/04 Tuesday
In Iraq, a 122 mm rocket slammed into a mess tent today at a
military base near the northern city of Mosul, ripping through the
ceiling and spraying shrapnel as U.S. soldiers sat down to lunch.
Officials said 22 people were killed in the deadliest single attack
against Americans in Iraq since the start of the war. The dead
included 20 Americans - 15 service members and five civilian
contractors - and two Iraqi soldiers. Sixty-six people were
wounded, including 42 U.S. troops, Capt. Brian Lucas, a military
spokesman in Baghdad, said.
Hundreds of mourners gathered in the small northwestern Missouri
farming community of Maryville for the funeral of a young pregnant
woman who was strangled and whose baby girl was cut from her womb.
The crowd filled the flower-filled Price Funeral Home and
overflowed into the entrance for the service for Bobbie Jo
Stinnett, 23. Cars lined the streets on a bitter cold day.
President Bush dangled his support for legalizing prescription drug
imports before voters during this year's campaign, but his
administration declared it's too costly to do safely. Regulating
the purchase of prescription medicines from abroad would wipe away
most savings and diminish investment in new drugs, said a report
from an administration task force studying the feasibility
12/22/04 Wednesday
The U.S. military said today that a suicide bomber likely carried
out the explosion at a U.S. base near Mosul, spraying a crowded
mess tent with small pellets and killing 22 people - nearly all of
them were Americans. The announcement raised questions about how
the attacker infiltrated the base, which is surrounded by blast
walls and barbed wire and guarded by U.S. troops. However, as in
many other U.S. military facilities, Iraqis do a variety of jobs at
the base, including cleaning, cooking, construction and office
duties. Most are in agreement with this new explanation of the
cause of the exposion.
A winter storm battered states from the Plains through the Midwest,
sending travelers slipping and sliding over icy roads, dumping a
foot of snow over some areas and pushing temperatures to bitter
cold levels. What may guarantee a white Christmas for some was a
pre-Christmas nightmare for others.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, stung by criticism that he's
insensitive to the needs of the troops and their families, offered
his most impassioned defense. The normally stoic Rumsfeld said
when he meets wounded soldiers or relatives of those killed in
battle, "their grief is something I feel to my core."
12/23/04 Thursday
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, on a surprise Christmas
Eve visit with the troops three days after the devastating attack
on a U. S. military dining hall here, told soldiers he remained
confident of defeating the insurgency and stabilizing Iraq, while
noting that to some "it looks bleak." "There's no doubt in my
mind, this is achievable," Rumsfeld, who flew here under tight
security, told a couple of hundred 1st Brigade soldiers of the 25th
Infantry Division at their commander's headquarters. He promised
them that later in life they will look back and feel pride at
having contributed to a mission of historic importance.
A sloppy storm dumped more than a year's worth of snow on parts of
the Midwest and made a mess of holiday travel and last-minute
Christmas shopping. More than a dozen traffic deaths were blamed
on the storm. The heavy snowfall and icy roads stranded motorists,
delayed flights ahead of a holiday weekend in which a record 62
million were expected to travel and threw gift package deliveries
into disarray for the nation's three largest package shippers.
U.S. Marine infantrymen fought with insurgents in Fallujah as
warplanes and tanks bombarded guerrilla positions in the heaviest
fighting here in weeks. The clashes raged as nearly 1,000
residents returned to the devastated city for the first time since
U.S. troops drove out most of the militants last month. At least
three Marines were killed in combat that underlined how far the
city and surrounding area are from being tamed as the United States
and its Iraqi allies try to bring quiet before national elections
Jan. 30.
The Food and Drug Administration ordered a review of all prevention
studies involving drugs such as Celebrex and Bextra, which have
been associated with increased risk of heart problems. The agency
also urged the public to limit use of over-the-counter pain
medications. "Consumers are advised that all over-the-counter pain
medications ... should be used in strict accordance with the label
directions," said Dr. John K. Jenkins, FDA director of new drugs.
12/24/04 Friday
The international Cassini spacecraft launched a probe today on a
three-week free-fall toward Saturn's mysterious moon Titan, where
it will plunge into the hazy atmosphere and descend by parachute
while its science instruments and cameras make observations. The
European Space Agency's Huygens probe is equipped with instruments
to sample the chemistry of the planet-size moon's thick atmosphere,
and may reveal whether it actually has lakes or seas of liquid
methane.
A gas tanker truck wired with explosives blew up in a west Baghdad
neighborhood, killing one person, wounding 19 and lighting up the
night sky with a fireball, just hours after Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld left the capital. There were no members of the
multinational forces among the casualties, said Capt. Brian Lucas,
a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. The butane truck was parked
near the Libyan Embassy in the Mansour district, an upscale
district.
Pope John Paul II ushered in Christmas, celebrating midnight Mass
at St. Peter's Basilica, where worshipers prayed for world leaders
to strive for peace and for Jews, Muslims and Christians to live
harmoniously in the Holy Land. All through the day, pilgrims
descended on St. Peter's Square to admire a 105-foot-tall Christmas
tree brought down from the Italian Alps and a life-size Nativity
scene unveiled alongside the 100-year-old fir.
12/25/04 Saturday
The nation's merchants will cut prices even deeper on Sunday, the
day after Christmas, in hopes of squeezing more sales out of what's
winding up to be an unimpressive holiday season. After struggling
with disappointing holiday sales, retailers were cheered by
stronger sales at the nation's malls this past week, but are
relying even more on shoppers to do more buying - and less
returning - in the week after Christmas to meet their sales goals.
Days of bad weather, a computer malfunction and sick airline
employees put tens of thousands of travelers in holiday limbo
today, with Comair canceling all its flights and US Airways trying
to reconnect thousands of pieces of luggage with their owners.
Throngs of waiting passengers milled about at Comair's hub at
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. At
Philadelphia International Airport, several hundred people stood in
long lines at sparsely staffed US Airways counters.
Mother Nature delivered a bone-chilling Christmas to much of the
nation, but holiday travelers made it out in droves despite record
snow that shut down highways two days earlier in the central
states. South Texas awoke to a rare blanket of snow, when up to 13
inches shattered records for the region. The deep freeze brought
Victoria, Texas, its first white Christmas in 86 years and snarled
holiday plans for thousands of travelers.
An unmanned cargo ship on a vital mission docked at the
international space station, carrying badly needed food for a
U.S.-Russian crew that has been forced to ration dwindling
supplies. The Progress M-51 - also carrying Christmas presents
from families and friends - moored at the orbiting station at 2:58
a.m. (6:58 p.m. EST today), officials at Russian mission control
outside of Moscow said.
12/26/04 Sunday
An extremely powerful earthquake rocked northern Indonesia,
reportedly killing at least 13 people and sending massive tidal
waves crashing into several countries. The U.S. Geological Survey
said a magnitude-8.5 quake, capable of massive damage, struck at 8
a.m. about 100 miles off the west coast of the island of Sumatra.
Witnesses told Jakarta's el-Shinta radio station that nine people
were killed in the northernmost province of Aceh.
Legions of rescuers spread across Asia after an earthquake of epic
power struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean, unleashing 20-foot
tidal waves that ravaged coasts across thousands of miles and
killed more than 13,340 people and left millions homeless in the
fourth-largest temblor in a century. The death toll along the
southern coast of Asia - and as far west as Somalia, on the African
coast, where nine people were reported lost - steadily increased.
US Airways started delivering luggage to passengers after suffering
what its chief executive called an "operational meltdown," while
Comair put some of its passenger planes back in the air a day after
canceling all of its 1,100 flights. US Airways ran two baggage
only flights from Philadelphia to its hub in Charlotte, N.C., as it
continued to pare down its mountain of backed-up luggage.
A video posted by an Iraqi insurgent group purported to show last
week's suicide attack at a U.S. base in Mosul, with a fireball
rising from a white tent. The group claimed that the bomber
slipped into the base through a hole in the fence during a guard
change. The footage showed a black-garbed gunman wearing an
explosives belt around his body - apparently the suicide bomber,
identified in the tape as Abu Omar al-Mosuli - bidding farewell to
his comrades.
Merchants are slashing post-holiday prices even deeper, hoping to
squeeze the last bit of sales from a shopping season that many
retailers are finding unimpressive. The nation's malls and stores
offered discounts on coats, cashmere sweaters and other items as
Americans en masse returned unwanted and ill-fitting presents and
redeemed gift cards. Retailers had struggled with disappointing
sales throughout the holiday season.
Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko declared victory in Ukraine's
fiercely contested presidential election, telling thousands of
supporters they had taken their country to a new political era
after a bitterly fought campaign that required an unprecedented
three ballots and Supreme Court intervention against fraud. "There
is news: It's over. Now, today, the Ukrainian people have won. I
congratulate you," he told the festive crowd in Kiev's central
Independence Square.
12/27/04 Monday
Bodies washed up on tropical beaches and piled up in hospitals
today, raising fears of disea se across a 10-nation arc of
destruction left by a monster earthquake and walls of water that
killed more than 22,500 people. Thousands were missing and
millions homeless. Humanitarian agencies began what the United
Nations said would become the biggest relief effort the world has
ever seen. The disaster could be the costliest in history as well.
In an audiotape br oadcast today by Al-Jazeera satellite
television, a man purported to be Osama bin Laden endorsed
Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi as his deputy in Iraq and called for a boycott
of next month's elections there. The new tape, together with one
that appeared online earlier this month, continues a new political
slant adopted by the al-Qaida leader, whose past proclamations have
been more a call to arms than a promotion of a cause.
The cancellation of 1,100 Christmas Day flights by Comair because
of computer troubles is prompting ca lls for more investments in
backup systems and other technologies to prevent further groundings
and damage to an already struggling industry. The foul-up was
hardly the first: a computer glitch grounded 40 Delta flights in
May. A power failure created a computer problem that forced
Northwest to cancel more than 120 flights in July.
12/28/04 Tuesday
The government approved a drug that offers a new way of fighting
severe pain - an option for patients who no longer benefit from
morphine and other traditional pain medications. It's the first in
a new class of drugs that selectively blocks the nerve channels
responsible for transmitting pain signals. It will be marketed as
Prialt and should be available by the end of January.
With car bombs, assassinations and raids on police stations,
insurgents killed at least 25 people, including Iraqi policemen and
a deputy governor, across the volatile Sunni Triangle today, and a
militant group claimed it executed eight Iraqi employees of an
American security company. The string of attacks - including one
in which 12 policemen's throats were slit in their station - were
the latest by the insurgency targeting Iraqis working with the
American military.
Hundreds of Americans remain missing two days after devastating
tsunamis struck Asia, but the State Department says a large number
have been located and are safe. Responding to the disaster, the
U.S. Agency for International Development added $20 million to the
already promised $15 million. The State Department said that 12
Americans had died, seven in Sri Lanka and five in Thailand. Bush
administration officials sought to allay concerns about the
missing.
Thousands of bodies lay rotting and unidentified on lawns and
streets of battered Sumatra island and authorities called out
bulldozers to dig mass graves, as the number killed in a mammoth
earthquake and tsunami soared above 55,000 with tens of thousands
still missing. The U.N. health agency warned that disease could
double the toll yet again. Across a dozen countries, millions of
people whose homes were swept away or wrecked by raging walls of
water Sunday.
12/29/04 Wednesday
President Bush assembled a four-nation coalition to organize
humanitarian relief for Asia and made clear the United States will
help bankroll long-term rebuilding in the region leveled by a
massive earthquake and tsunamis. U.S. officials braced for the
death toll to exceed 100,000. "It's just beyond our comprehension
to think about how many lives have been lost," Bush said after
emerging from a holiday vacation at his Texas ranch to make his
first comments on the Indian Ocean disaster.
As the world scrambled to the rescue, survivors fought over packs
of noodles in quake-stricken Indonesian streets today while relief
supplies piled up at the airport for lack of cars, gas or passable
roads to move them. The official death toll across 11 countries
soared past 77,000 and the Red Cross predicted it could exceed
100,000. Bodies were piled into mass graves in the belief that
burial would ward off disease.
A powerful storm battered the West for a third straight day,
forcing dozens of people from their homes, sending recreational
vehicles floating down a flooded creek in Arizona and turning
Southern California freeways into a virtual demolition derby. The
storm spawned a tornado in Southern California and left 140,000
customers without power in the area while making for treacherous
driving conditions. The California Highway Patrol logged 220 car
crashes.
U.S. forces launched a new offensive in Iraq against insurgents in
an area south of the capital dubbed the "triangle of death," while
militants ambushed an elite Iraqi police unit in a Baghdad
neighborhood known for its loyalty to ousted dictator Saddam
Hussein, killing 29 people, most of them civilians. The militants
set off a huge explosion in the staunchly Baathist neighborhood of
Ghaziliya as a contingent of special police and national guards
were about to raid a house.
12/30/04 Thursday
Pilots dropped food to Indonesian villagers stranded among bloating
corpses today, while police in a devastated provincial capital
stripped looters of their clothing and forced them to sit on the
street as a warning to others. The death toll topped 119,000, and
officials warned that 5 million people lack clean water, shelter,
food, sanitation and medicine. American planes delivered medical
staff to Sri Lanka and body bags to Thailand.
The FBI, concerned that terrorists could use lasers as weapons, is
investigating why laser beams were directed into the cockpits of
seven airplanes in flight since Christmas. Laser beams can
temporarily blind or disorient pilots and possibly cause a plane to
crash. The FBI is looking into two incidents in Colorado Springs,
Colo., and one each in Cleveland, Washington, Houston, Teterboro,
N.J., and Medford, Ore., according to federal and local law
enforcement and transportation officials.
President Bush announced that a delegation of experts led by
Secretary of State Colin Powell will travel to Asia on Sunday to
assess the need for further U.S. assistance. The Bush
administration also lent its support to a European hosted
international conference designed to accelerate pledges of
assistance to victims of the Asian and African tsunamis and added
the United Nations to a four-nation coalition organizing
humanitarian relief.
12/31/04 Friday
Viktor Yanukovych announced his resignation as prime minister
today, handing Ukraine's pro-Western opposition a symbolic victory,
but he vowed to continue his court battle for the presidency of
this ex-Soviet republic. Meanwhile, Viktor Yushchenko, the winner
of last week's repeat presidential election, and Georgian President
Mikhail Saakashvili welcomed the New Year side by side on Kiev's
Independence Square, the epicenter of mass protests that overturned
the political scene.
The United States upped its tsunami relief aid tenfold today as the
world's ships and planes converged on devastated shores.
Bottlenecks of supplies built up, fears of epidemics grew, and in
an echo of 9/11's aftermath, people at a Thai resort scoured a
bulletin board of 4,000 photos in search of the dead and missing.
Six days after the earthquake and tsunamis that ravaged 3,000 miles
of African and Asian coastline, the confirmed death toll passed
121,000.
A century after the first New Year's Eve celebration in Times
Square, hundreds of thousands of revelers crowded streets and
sidewalks of New York City to welcome 2005, while taking a moment
to mourn the devastation of the South Asian tsunami. Outgoing
Secretary of State Colin Powell, a native New Yorker, was invited
to press the button at 11:59 p.m. that sent a 1,000-pound Waterford
crystal-covered ball on its final 60-second descent into the new
year.
Sudanese government officials and southern rebels signed a
permanent cease-fire agreement and endorsed a detailed plan to end
a 21-year civil war blamed for 2 million deaths. Diplomats said
they hoped the agreement also would help resolve the nearly
2-year-old conflict in Sudan's western region of Darfur. A Darfur
rebel, however, said that was unlikely. These agreements cleared
the way for warring sides to sign a comprehensive peace deal next
month at the Kenyan conference.
|