11/ 1/05 Tuesday
In a day of political drama, Democrats forced the Republican-
controlled Senate into an unusual closed session today, questioning
intelligence that President Bush used in the run-up to the war in
Iraq and accusing Republicans of ignoring the issue. "They have
repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican administration rather
than get to the bottom of what happened and why," Democratic leader
Harry Reid said.
In a courtroom victory for Rep. Tom DeLay, the judge in the
campaign- finance case against the former House Republican leader
was removed today because of his donations to Democratic candidates
and causes. A semiretired judge who was called in to hear the
dispute, C.W. "Bud" Duncan, ruled in DeLay's favor without
comment. Duncan ordered the appointment of a new judge to preside
over the case.
President Bush outlined a $7.1 billion strategy today to prepare
for a possible worldwide super-flu outbreak, aiming to overhaul the
vaccine industry so eventually every American could be inoculated
within six months of a pandemic's beginning. Such a huge change
would take years to implement - Bush's goal is 2010 - and his plan
drew immediate fire from critics who said it wouldn't provide
enough protection in the meantime. States, too, got an unpleasant
surprise, ordered to purchase millions of doses of an anti-flu drug
with their own money.
The engineers who designed the floodwalls that collapsed during
Hurricane Katrina did not fully consider the porousness of the
Louisiana soil or make other calculations that would have pointed
to the need for stronger levees with deeper pilings and wider
bases, researchers say. At least one key scenario was ignored in
the design, say the researchers, who are scheduled to report their
findings at a congressional hearing Wednesday: the possibility that
canal water might seep into the dirt on the dry side of the levees,
thereby weakening the embankment holding up the floodwalls.
11/ 2/05 Wednesday
A suicide bomber detonated a minibus today in an outdoor market
packed with shoppers ahead of a Muslim festival, killing about 20
people and wounding more than 60 in a Shiite town south of
Baghdad. Six U.S. troops were killed, two in a helicopter crash
west of the capital. Also today, the U.S. command confirmed moves
to step up training on how to combat roadside bombs - now the
biggest killers of American troops in Iraq. At least 2,035 U.S.
military service members have died since the Iraq conflict began in
March 2003, according to an AP count.
A flu pandemic that hits the United States would force cities to
ration scarce drugs and vaccine and house the sick in hotels or
schools when hospitals overflow, unprecedented federal plans say.
The Bush administration's long-awaited report today on battling a
worldwide super-flu outbreak makes clear that old-fashioned
infection-control will be key.
President Bush's directive banning the torture of terror suspects
applies to all prisoners - even if held in a secret prison
reportedly set up by the CIA for its most important al-Qaida
captives, a senior administration official said today. National
Security Adviser Stephen Hadley would not confirm or deny the
existence of a secret, Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe that
was described in a Washington Post account. The story said the
facility was part of a covert prison system set up nearly four
years ago that at various times has included sites in eight
countries.
11/ 3/05 Thursday
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff pleaded not
guilty to a five-count felony indictment today in the CIA leak
case, signaling a protracted court battle that is sure to prolong
debate about the White House's prewar use of intelligence on Iraq.
I. Lewis Libby appeared at his arraignment with trial lawyers Ted
Wells and William Jeffress, known for their ability to win jury
acquittals for high-profile clients in white-collar criminal cases.
The European Union and the continent's top human rights group said
today they will investigate allegations the CIA set up secret jails
in eastern Europe and elsewhere to interrogate terror suspects, and
the Red Cross demanded access to any prisoners. Human Rights Watch
said it has evidence, based on flight logs, that indicate the CIA
transported suspects captured in Afghanistan to Poland and
Romania. But the two countries - and others in the former Soviet
bloc - denied the allegations. U.S. officials have refused to
confirm or deny the claims.
Merck & Co.'s victory in the nation's second Vioxx trial may
lighten the company's litigation load as plaintiff lawyers shun
weaker cases, but the legal saga over the withdrawn painkiller is
far from over. Still, the win is a crucial boost for Merck, which
demonstrated a refinement of its defense strategy after a
humiliating defeat in a Texas trial over the summer and convinced a
jury it acted responsibly in promoting Vioxx, experts said.
A week of riots in poor neighborhoods outside Paris gained
dangerous new momentum today, with youths shooting at police and
firefighters and attacking trains and symbols of the French state.
Facing mounting criticism, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin
vowed to restore order as the violence that erupted Oct. 27 spread
to at least 20 towns, highlighting the frustration simmering in
housing projects that are home to many North African immigrants.
11/ 4/05 Friday
More than 1,000 demonstrators angry about President Bush's policies
clashed with police, shattered storefronts and torched businesses
today, marring the inauguration of the Summit of the Americas as
leaders began debating creation of one of the world's largest free
trade zones. The chaos reflected the often violent, worldwide
debate on free trade as the United States and Mexico pushed to
relaunch talks on a zone stretching from Canada to Chile. Past
summits on the issue - including last year's gathering of Asian-
Pacific leaders in Chile - have drawn bitter opposition and
similarly angry protests.
Marauding youths set fire to cars, warehouses and a nursery school
and pelted rescuers with rocks early Saturday, as the worst rioting
in a decade spread from Paris to other French cities. The U.S.
warned Americans against taking trains to the airport via strife-
torn areas. A savage assault on a bus passenger highlighted the
dangers of travel in Paris' impoverished outlying neighborhoods,
where the violence has entered its second week.
President Bush batted away questions about the CIA leak
investigation today, unable at an Americas summit thousands of
miles from Washington to escape the controversy that has ensnared a
top White House official and weakened his own popularity. Taking
questions for the first time since the indictment of I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of
staff, Bush declined to answer calls from Democrats and some
Republicans that he apologize for any administration official's
involvement in the case.
11/ 5/05 Saturday
nursery schools and other targets from the Mediterranean to the
German border reached Paris overnight, with police saying early
Sunday that 13 cars were burned in the French capital. By 1 a.m.,
at least 607 vehicles - including those in Paris - were burned
during the 10th night of violence, said Patrick Hamon, spokesman
for the national police. The overall figures were expected to
climb by daybreak, he added.
About 3,500 U.S. and Iraqi troops backed by jets launched a major
attack today against an insurgent-held town near the Syrian border,
seeking to dislodge al-Qaida and its allies and seal off a main
route for foreign fighters entering the country. U.S. officials
describe the town of Husaybah as the key to controlling the
volatile Euphrates River valley of western Iraq and dislodging al-
Qaida in Iraq, led by Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-
Zarqawi.
Leaders from across the Americas ended their tumultuous two-day
summit today without agreeing to restart talks on a U.S.-favored
free trade zone stretching from Alaska to Chile. Argentine Foreign
Minister Rafael Bielsa said the 34-nation summit's declaration
would state two opposing views: one by 29 nations favoring the
proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, and another by the
remaining five saying discussions should wait until after World
Trade Organization talks in December.
11/ 6/05 Sunday
President Jacques Chirac promised today to restore public order
across France as unrest spread from suburban Paris to cities south
and north, with rioters injuring ten police officers, throwing
Molotov cocktails and ramming a car into a housing project during
an 11th night of mayhem. Ten riot police were injured by buckshot
in a clash in the southern Paris suburb of Grigny, national police
spokesman Patrick Hamon said. It was unclear whether the officers
were shot with hunting rifles or a less lethal weapon, he said.
Two officers were hospitalized; their lives were not in danger.
A tornado with winds exceeding 158 mph ripped a path of destruction
through western Kentucky and Indiana as residents slept early
today, reducing homes to splinters and leaving entire blocks of
buildings in rubble. At least 22 people were killed and 200 others
injured. Rescuers who reached the hard-hit Eastbrook Mobile Home
Park shortly after 2 a.m. found children wandering in the broken
glass and debris, looking for their parents, as parents called out
for missing children.
In Brasilia, Brazil, in a clear jab at Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez, President Bush called on Latin Americans today to boldly
defend strong democratic institutions and reject any drift back to
the days of authoritarian rule. Bush's remarks came after Chavez,
the leftist leader and friend of Cuba's Fidel Castro, spent the
past two days hurling criticism at the United States at the Summit
of the Americas in Argentina.
Retail gas prices plunged an average of 23 cents nationwide in the
past two weeks, marking a return to pre-Hurricane Katrina levels,
according to a survey. The weighted average price for all three
grades declined to $2.45 a gallon on Friday, said Trilby Lundberg,
who publishes the semimonthly Lundberg Survey of 7,000 gas stations
around the country.
11/ 7/05 Monday
France will impose curfews under a state-of-emergency law and call
up police reservists to stop rioting that has spread out of Paris'
suburbs and into nearly 300 cities and towns across the country,
the prime minister said today, calling a return to order "our No. 1
responsibility." The tough new measures came as France's worst
civil unrest in decades entered a 12th night, with rioters in the
southern city of Toulouse setting fire to a bus after sundown after
ordering passengers off, and elsewhere pelting police with gasoline
bombs and rocks and torching a nursery school.
President Bush today defended U.S. interrogation practices and
called the treatment of terrorism suspects lawful. "We do not
torture," Bush declared in response to reports of secret CIA
prisons overseas. Bush supported an effort spearheaded by Vice
President Dick Cheney to block or modify a proposed Senate-passed
ban on torture.
A suicide bomber blew up his vehicle at a checkpoint south of
Baghdad and killed four American soldiers today, the military
said. The U.S. command also announced five soldiers from an elite
unit were charged with kicking and punching Iraqi detainees. The
suicide attack came as U.S. and Iraqi troops battled al-Qaida-led
militants for a third day in Husaybah, a town on the Syrian border
that the military describes as a major entry point for foreign
fighters. One Marine has died there, the U.S. command said today.
11/ 8/05 Tuesday
Races in Va., N.J. Democrats swept both governors' races today,
with Sen. Jon Corzine easily winning New Jersey and Lt. Gov. Tim
Kaine taking Virginia despite a last-minute campaign push for his
opponent from President Bush. Elsewhere, Texas voters
overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on gay marriage, GOP
Mayor Michael Bloomberg easily clinched a second term in heavily
Democratic New York, and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was
trailing in his re-election bid.
France declared a state of emergency today to quell the country's
worst unrest since the student uprisings of 1968 that toppled a
government, and the prime minister said the nation faced a "moment
of truth" over its failure to integrate Arab and African immigrants
and their children. Rioters ignored the extraordinary security
measures, which began Wednesday, as they looted and burned two
superstores, set fire to a newspaper office and paralyzed France's
second largest city's subway system with a gasoline bomb.
Three masked gunmen in a speeding Opel assassinated a second lawyer
in the Saddam Hussein trial today, casting doubt on Iraq's ability
to try the case and leading a prominent war crimes prosecutor to
urge moving the proceedings to another Arab country. Adel al-
Zubeidi, lawyer for former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, died
when bullets were sprayed his car in a largely Sunni Arab
neighborhood of western Baghdad. The shots also wounded Thamir al-
Khuzaie, attorney for another co-defendant, Saddam's half brother
Barazan Ibrahim.
11/ 9/05 Wednesday
Suicide bombers carried out nearly simultaneous attacks on three
U.S.-based hotels in the Jordanian capital tonight, killing at
least 57 people and wounding 115 in what appeared to be an al-Qaida
assault on an Arab kingdom with close ties to the United States.
The explosions hit the Grand Hyatt, Radisson SAS and Days Inn
hotels just before 9 p.m. One of the blasts took place inside a
wedding hall where 300 guests were celebrating - joined by a man
strapped with explosives who had infiltrated the crowd. Black
smoke rose into the night, and wounded victims stumbled from the
hotels.
Oil executives sought to justify their huge profits under tough
questioning today, but they found little sympathy from senators who
said their constituents are suffering from high energy prices.
"Your sacrifice appears to be nothing," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-
Calif., told the executives, citing multimillion- dollar bonuses
the officials are receiving amid soaring prices at gasoline pumps
and predictions of more of the same for winter heating bills.
Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who was first lionized,
then vilified by her own newspaper for her role in the CIA leak
case, retired from the Times today, declaring that she had to leave
because she had "become the news." Miller, 57, had been
negotiating a severance deal with the paper for several weeks.
11/10/05 Thursday
Thousands of Jordanians rallied in the capital and other cities
shouting "Burn in hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi!" a day after three
deadly hotel bombings that killed at least 59 people. Officials
suspected Iraqi involvement in the attacks, which were claimed by
al-Qaida's Iraq branch. As protesters in Jordan and elsewhere in
the Arab world denounced the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaida in
Iraq, security forces snared a group of Iraqis for questioning and
officials said one of the bombers spoke Iraqi- accented Arabic
before he exploded his suicide belt in the Grand Hyatt Hotel.
Bombers killed 42 people today at a Baghdad restaurant favored by
police and an army recruiting center to the north, while Iraqi
troops along the Iranian border found 27 decomposing bodies,
unidentified victims of the grisly violence plaguing the country.
In the deadliest bombing in Baghdad since Sept. 19, a suicide
bomber blew himself up in a restaurant about 9:45 a.m., when
officers usually stop in for breakfast. Police Maj. Falah al-
Mohammedawi said 35 officers and civilians died and 25 were
wounded.
Most Americans say they aren't impressed by the ethics and honesty
of the Bush administration, already under scrutiny for its
justifications for an unpopular war in Iraq and its role in the
leak of a covert CIA officer's identity. Almost six in 10 - 57
percent - said they do not think the Bush administration has high
ethical standards and the same portion says President Bush is not
honest, an AP-Ipsos poll found. Just over four in 10 say the
administration has high ethical standards and that Bush is honest.
Whites, Southerners and evangelicals were most likely to believe
Bush is honest.
Consumer confidence emerged from a funk. With gasoline prices
moderating, people are feeling better - but not ebullient - about
the economy's prospects and their own. The RBC CASH index, based
on polling by Ipsos, showed that consumer confidence rebounded in
November to a reading of 81. That marked an improvement from
October's 66.8 and September's showing of 61.5, the lowest since
early March 2003, when the nation was on the brink of war.
11/11/05 Friday
President Bush strongly rebuked congressional critics of his Iraq
war policy today, accusing them of being "deeply irresponsible" and
sending the wrong signal both to America's enemy and to U.S.
troops. "The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and
the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw
out false charges," Bush said in his most combative defense yet of
his rationale for invading Iraq in March 2003.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed for unity among Iraq's
religious factions as she made an unannounced and heavily guarded
visit today to the country, including one of its most ethnically
divided regions. Rice made a personal appeal to Sunni Arabs to
participate in new elections in December, but she sounded cool to
an outside Arab attempt to foster political reconciliation. She
also chided Iraq's Arab neighbors for being slow to send
ambassadors to post-Saddam Iraq.
Two crucial pillars of President Bush's public support -
perceptions of his honesty and faith in his ability to fight
terrorism - have slipped to their lowest point in the AP-Ipsos
poll. While the CIA leak investigation, the mishandling of
Hurricane Katrina and high energy costs have all taken their toll,
the polling found the Iraq war at the core of Americans'
displeasure with the president.
11/12/05 Saturday
Tornadoes swept across central Iowa today, ripping up farms,
destroying homes in several towns and sending college football fans
running from a stadium for shelter. At least one person was killed
in the storm, two others were hospitalized, and a gas leak forced
authorities to evacuate part of Stratford, a town of about 746
residents 50 miles northwest of Des Moines.
A year's work hangs in the balance for the Republican-controlled
Congress, its conservative agenda sketched confidently last winter:
cut taxes, open wildlife refuge in Alaska to oil drilling, and hold
down the cost of health, education and nutrition programs that
serve millions. The agenda is the same. But the confidence is
shaken by President Bush's sagging poll numbers, an unstable
leadership lineup in the House and growing concern about
congressional elections less than a year away.
A U.S.-backed summit meant to promote political freedom and
economic change in the Middle East ended today without agreement, a
blow to President Bush's goals for the troubled region. A draft
declaration on democratic and economic principle was shelved after
Egypt insisted on language that would have given Arab governments
greater control over which democracy groups receive money from a
new fund.
11/13/05 Sunday
An Iraqi woman confessed on Jordanian state television today that
she tried to blow herself up along with her husband during a hotel
wedding reception last week, saying that the explosives concealed
under her denim dress failed to detonate. Sajida Mubarak Atrous
al-Rishawi, 35, made her statement hours after being arrested by
authorities tipped off by an al-Qaida in Iraq claim that a husband-
and-wife team participated in Wednesday's bombings at three U.S.-
based hotels. The attackers killed 57 other people at the Radisson
SAS, Grand Hyatt and Days Inn hotels.
While admitting "we were wrong" about Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction, President Bush's national security adviser today
rejected assertions that the president manipulated intelligence and
misled the American people. Bush relied on the collective judgment
of the intelligence community when he determined that Iraq's Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, national security adviser
Stephen Hadley said.
The Longue Vue estate, with its English furnishings, Turkish rugs,
blown-glass chandeliers and oil paintings, is on life support.
Hundreds of yards of air-duct hoses run through doors and into
cellars, trying to save the mansion from Hurricane Katrina's long-
lasting remnant: mold. The storm flooded the flower-studded
grounds, swamped the wine cellar and buried the gardener's quarters
in muck. Two months after Kartina, workers are at war with
creeping moisture, trying to repel stench and rot from the Greek
Revival mansion and museum in Old Metairie, a National Historic
Landmark.
11/14/05 Monday
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