自然英文新聞文本連接詞種類、句子及出現頻率表



附註：因同一例句中可能出現2次以上的銜接詞或關係代名詞，故表格中所統計的詞數會與實際貼上之例句總數稍有出入。

自然英文新聞文本連接詞種類、句子及出現頻率表

|連接詞(Conjunctions) |自然英文新聞文本 |

| |(Original English Journalistic Texts) |

|although, if, as long |Conjunctions and Frequency |

|as, though, even though,| |

|unless, what if, even | |

|if, only if (條件關係) | |

| |although (54) + if (266) + even if (23) + only if (6) + as long as (5) + though (28) + even though |

| |(25) + unless (5) = 412 |

| |Sentences |

| |Although the Finns and Estonians are close (their languages are as similar as Italian and Spanish),|

| |ties with Hungary are mainly sentimental. Common linguistic roots are extremely distant. |

| |Although the Pentagon is spending a fortune on bureaucratic processes, some think it remains weak |

| |on analysis and incapable of self-criticism. |

| |They still don't, although television means more money moves around these days. |

| |Although the law passed without a murmur in February, the Socialists have belatedly cried foul, |

| |denouncing this attempt to impose the state's preferred version of history. |

| |Although the new museum does reflect some of this, many Canadians would like it to do more. |

| |Most of the time it is packed away in a Geneva warehouse, although Mr Pigozzi hopes one day to |

| |build a museum in its honour. |

| |And, although one of the original bargains underlying the European project was that France would |

| |open its market to German exports in return for German taxpayers subsidising French farmers, the |

| |CAP today offers almost nothing towards the goal of ever closer union. |

| |Mr. Hussain, who helped organize two peace marches in the bombings' wake, rejects the notion that |

| |an outsider from Al Qaeda recruited the men, although others disagree. |

| |Most were poor, with rural backgrounds and often uneducated, although Mr. Hussain, the thoughtful, |

| |genteel son of a policeman, had more education than most. |

| |The form is called Salafism, taking its name from the term for the Prophet Muhammad's companions, |

| |although its adherents often reject any label. |

| |Although Mr Blagojevich has shown signs of regaining his footing, he has a long way to climb with |

| |many voters. |

| |For instance, he likes to stress that, although he is a Democrat, neither income taxes nor sales |

| |taxes have gone up on his watch. |

| |And although the alliance with Cuba has brought new social programmes, their cost and long-term |

| |benefits are hard to determine. |

| |Although margins are healthy—last year, Ameritrade's was 50% before tax—price wars threaten to eat |

| |them away. |

| |Although the public is disappointed with the lack of progress, Labour is still more trusted on the |

| |NHS than any other party. |

| |What's more, although they dwell on small differences, the opposition parties agree with the basic |

| |direction that Labour has set for the NHS. |

| |Although some revenues were devolved in the mid-1990s, the central government still hires teachers,|

| |doctors and policemen; even local bus routes are laid out in La Paz. |

| |That is part of the new law, although it has not been enforced. |

| |Although some teaching and research is awesomely good, quite a lot isn't. |

| |Although the material could be made less fragile by adding fibers to the foam, he noted, "that adds|

| |weight" to the shuttle, and any changes can take years. |

| |Politics is the one area in which Fonda has been a philosophical rock, but although she was briefly|

| |drawn into the 2004 election when a doctored photo of her with John Kerry at a supposed Vietnam War|

| |protest circulated on the Internet, she knows she's still too politically hot to support any |

| |candidate publicly. |

| |Locusts haven't been sighted elsewhere in Europe so far, although there are concerns beyond |

| |Germany. |

| |This time, although Michael Howard's helicopter has flown the equivalent of five times from Land's |

| |End to John O'Groats in the past couple of weeks alone, his party has stayed grounded. |

| |Although Mr Blair's shock on hearing the news was real, it was a moment he had long prepared for. |

| |The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry believes the failed attack, which has been widely |

| |reported outside Britain, will displace more tourists and shoppers, although the shoppers will |

| |probably go only as far as the suburbs. |

| |Although Bank Austria, the subsidiary through which HVB operates in central Europe, is a jewel, |

| |HVB's German business—a big mortgage, corporate and retail bank—has very little sparkle. |

| |Moreover, although India is undoubtedly the biggest recipient of offshoring jobs, developed |

| |countries too rank high on the lists. |

| |Although strict constructionism is not the same as conservatism, the two philosophies often |

| |coincide. |

| |Although government IT projects have an unhappy record in Britain, serious trouble has usually come|

| |not from technology, but from extra burdens and bureaucratic reforms brought in at the same time. |

| |Although there is still plenty of room for things to go wrong, Mr Blair is growing confident that |

| |enough will be agreed at Gleneagles for him to be able to claim success. |

| |Although he claims never to think about getting anything in return from Mr Bush for going to war |

| |with him in Iraq, he would argue that it is all of a piece. |

| |Although Marwan has never met the terrorist mastermind, he reveres him as a great Islamic hero. |

| |Mr. Hussain, who helped organize two peace marches in the bombings' wake, rejects the notion that |

| |an outsider from Al Qaeda recruited the men, although others disagree. |

| |Most were poor, with rural backgrounds and often uneducated, although Mr. Hussain, the thoughtful, |

| |genteel son of a policeman, had more education than most. |

| |The form is called Salafism, taking its name from the term for the Prophet Muhammad's companions, |

| |although its adherents often reject any label. |

| |Although the material could be made less fragile by adding fibers to the foam, he noted, "that adds|

| |weight" to the shuttle, and any changes can take years. |

| |Although Mr Blair's shock on hearing the news was real, it was a moment he had long prepared for. |

| |And although the alliance with Cuba has brought new social programmes, their cost and long-term |

| |benefits are hard to determine. |

| |Locusts haven't been sighted elsewhere in Europe so far, although there are concerns beyond |

| |Germany. |

| |The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry believes the failed attack, which has been widely |

| |reported outside Britain, will displace more tourists and shoppers, although the shoppers will |

| |probably go only as far as the suburbs. |

| |IF YOU want to embarrass a Finn, and infuriate a Russian, raise your vodka glass to “Suuri |

| |Suomi—Uraliin asti!”. |

| |If the army's rules of engagement were stricter, there were still too many strikes on innocent |

| |targets, too much use of firepower and too little effort to understand the culture. |

| |Apparently, he had not considered how he might fight if he had no armour, no radio, an ancient |

| |rifle and the sure knowledge that if he fought like a man, he would be obliterated in minutes. |

| |And a law has been passed to impose a 1.5% tax on the advertising budgets of food companies if they|

| |do not encourage healthy eating. |

| |However, even if this happens soon, the power-sharing government is unlikely to be restored for |

| |some time. |

| |If this happens, it would be the fourth attempt to toughen anti-terror laws since 2000. |

| |If they do so, Mr Frist will “go nuclear”. |

| |If the Democrats lose their power to filibuster Supreme Court nominees, they lose control over the |

| |last branch of government where liberal America is reasonably powerful. |

| |If they win, Republicans risk being depicted as extremists. |

| |If the filibuster is repulsed, Mr Bush's chances of ramming through Social Security reform will be |

| |weaker. |

| |But if there are enough signs that your behavior is starting to slip out of your control (see the |

| |self-test), chances are that you have a problem. |

| |Tighman-Havens, who at 31 is a lifelong Catholic, regrets this, because although she calls herself |

| |progressive, she thinks the church teachings have merit: "People should have respect for one |

| |another if they're going to have sexual relations—but students' ears are not open because they see |

| |it as so distant from their reality." |

| |If the team keeps winning it will rise to the top of the domestic leagues, at which point it can |

| |compete against foreign clubs. |

| |If he fails, Argentina risks a return to the stagflation of its past. |

| |But if the museum does not glorify war, does it sufficiently project Canada's self-proclaimed role |

| |as international peacemaker? |

| |If there is a deal on the budget this week, it will be an agreement reached for its own sake, |

| |because EU leaders cannot bear to be blamed for yet another summit failure. |

| |And if there is no deal, it will similarly be a disagreement for its own sake—because France rather|

| |likes the idea of putting Britain, which holds the rotating EU presidency, in the dock for one more|

| |financial fiasco. |

| |Yet if there was ever a good moment to think hard about how the budget might be better designed to |

| |advance the Union's stated aims, it ought to be now. |

| |Most Europeans would be better off if there were no farm support at all. |

| |But if there is to be some, it should surely be doled out nationally, because only national |

| |governments have the expertise (and the political authority) to run what has increasingly turned |

| |into a personal income-support system for one particular interest group. |

| |If foreign-financed organisations, or the media, are involved, the penalty can be up to five years |

| |in jail. |

| |Land disputes are legion, since the tsunami destroyed many boundary markers and deeds, if they |

| |existed in the first place. |

| |Businessmen and other wealthy folk, even foreigners, are welcome as owners—but only if they plan to|

| |put money into a team, not take it out. |

| |If United supporters believed that Mr Glazer would follow Mr Abramovich's generous lead, there |

| |would be few protests. |

| |If some fans then boycott United games, as they say they will, there are lots more where they came |

| |from—or will be so long as United remains successful. |

| |Likewise, it will be no surprise if the naming rights to United's Old Trafford home are sold to a |

| |sponsor; Arsenal recently took $100m over 15 years for naming its new stadium after Emirates, an |

| |airline. |

| |If there aren't any familiar behaviors available for the given situation, the mind seizes upon the |

| |first fix in its library of habits--if you can't breathe, remove the object in your mouth. |

| |But it looked as if many of the Pan Am passengers had survived and would have lived if they had got|

| |up and walked off the fiery plane. |

| |Passengers are supposed to be able to get out within 90 sec., even if only half the exits are |

| |available and bags are strewn in the aisles. |

| |He is convinced that if passengers had a mental plan for getting out of a plane, they would move |

| |much more quickly in a crisis. |

| |If we know that training--or even mental rehearsal--vastly improves people's responses to |

| |disasters, it is surprising how little of it we do. |

| |But as the value of the dollar has fallen, complaints from U.S. manufacturers have grown louder |

| |that if the yuan were allowed to rise to its true value, Chinese imports wouldn't be so cheap, |

| |compared with U.S.- made products. |

| |They want their rights, even if they have to fight for them. |

| |If they were going to practice, they wanted to do it in what they considered the right way. |

| |If they wanted to go to heaven, they felt, they had to find the purest form. |

| |If the mosque makes subjects like that taboo, if their doors are closed, he said, young people are |

| |going to go somewhere else. |

| |“How can it be incitement if it's facts?" he asked. |

| |An assault is now an assault if the victim says it is, regardless of what coppers think. |

| |If France votes no, its instinct might be to try forming a new small group of the EU's six original|

| |members, weakening and perhaps undermining the wider Union. |

| |If, on the other hand, France votes yes and then Britain votes no (as Britain probably will), that |

| |would be just as worrying, if it pushes Britain to the margins of the EU or out of it entirely. |

| |If relations deteriorate much further, the French parliament might decide that Romania is still |

| |unfit to join, and refuse the treaty. Germany's Christian Democrats are also talking about blocking|

| |Romania, and their support is needed for a constitutional majority in the Bundestag. |

| |Ukraine is not recognised as a candidate for Union membership, but if its new pro-western |

| |government forges on with bold political and economic reforms, breaking with Russian and |

| |post-Soviet models, accession talks will be hard to resist. |

| |Ukraine may be able to hold the course of reform only if it has a clear prospect of EU entry |

| |already in front of it, as was the case in Slovakia. |

| |Of course, if truth were told, there was precious little popular support for last year's |

| |enlargement either. |

| |They can join Schengen only with the unanimous approval of existing members, and that will not come|

| |if some interior ministers get their way, says one top EU official. |

| |Romania and Bulgaria should count themselves lucky if they get in under the wire, Croatia too. |

| |If the Union hangs together in its present form—by no means a certainty if France votes no next |

| |month—it may have to look for other ways to spread stability and prosperity to the mostly rackety |

| |countries round about. |

| |Ms Topinka, if she wins the Republican primary, will poke holes in some of Mr Blagojevich's other |

| |“successes”. |

| |However the bills are blended together, a guest-worker programme will work only if it meets two |

| |criteria. |

| |“But if you break publicly with Chavez you're playing Bush's game”. |

| |But if Mr Bush turns up empty-handed (CAFTA apart), Latin Americans will continue to pay court to |

| |that generous neighbour in Caracas. |

| |If online brokers are struggling under flat volumes and pressure to diversify after shaking up |

| |their industry with new technology, they are in good company. |

| |If the brokers link up too, traders will be hoping that savings at all stages of the chain are |

| |passed along to them. |

| |The Conservatives will have to raise their game if they want to turf Mr Martin out. |

| |If they are too weak, they'll end up paying hospitals too much. Responding to this concern, Labour |

| |is now seeking to involve GPs more directly. |

| |If a mistake has been made (which is probable since this book was prepared by humans) and at any |

| |point God's Word is not put first, the author apologises.” |

| |The ACSI, which represents almost 4,000 Christian high schools in America, including some 800 in |

| |California, worries that if the Christians' challenge fails, UC's intolerance might spread to other|

| |institutions and other states. |

| |And it says that if the courses had used these textbooks “as supplementary, rather than primary, |

| |texts, it is likely they would have been approved.” |

| |It would be odd if conservative Christians did not leave similar footprints on the syllabus. |

| |IF EVO MORALES—coca grower, political street fighter and champion of indigenous rights—wins |

| |Bolivia's presidential election on December 18th it will be because of voters like Bernardino |

| |Montesinos. |

| |If Mr Morales becomes president, he will “nationalise everything” and supply technology. |

| |If the polls are right, Mr Morales will win the most votes but not an absolute majority. |

| |Mr Quiroga's negative campaign might just bring victory if anti-Evo voters defect from centrist |

| |candidates. |

| |Few people think Congress would dare deny Mr Morales the presidency if he leads on the popular |

| |vote. |

| |Even if Mr Morales loses, the election will bring change. |

| |MAS backs autonomy in principle, but will balk if it means surrendering control of land or natural |

| |resources. |

| |Ironically, if Mr Morales really wants to break Bolivia's dependence on commodity exports, his best|

| |bet may be the United States. |

| |If the United States “decertifies” Bolivia on drugs, markets and chequebooks could slam shut. |

| |The Democrats (and abortion rights) might be better off if Roe v Wade were overturned. |

| |That argument makes sense if you want to defend “choice” right into the ninth month, as some |

| |zealots do. |

| |But for most Democrats who merely want to keep abortion legal under most circumstances, that right |

| |would be more secure if it carried democratic legitimacy. |

| |IF YOU were starting to build a world-class university from scratch, you probably would not choose |

| |Oxford as your model. |

| |Tight budgets and clear objectives are all very well if you are trying to make money, they say, but|

| |thinking great thoughts and sharing them with the young is a different business. |

| |But if AIG intentionally created a false picture of its books and Buffett knew it, he could have |

| |legal problems. |

| |Even if Buffett emerges clean, as many believe he will, the concept of a revered, trust-me CEO is |

| |RIP. |

| |For decades, Wall Street prized corporate leaders who could dip into their financial black box and |

| |deliver steady, no-surprise earnings, even if investors had no idea precisely how those magic |

| |numbers were reached. |

| |He was way clever, she recalls, so much so that if he didn't get a concept she knew she had to |

| |teach it again, but "he never flaunted his intelligence over the other kids." |

| |And it would match the history and mystery of the court if it turned out that Roberts ultimately |

| |alienates conservatives and not those who fear any Republican appointee. |

| |If Republicans can manage to end the filibuster of judicial nominees, Democrats warn, it is only a |

| |matter of time before they end the filibuster on other issues as well. |

| |The younger Senators contend that if anybody is trashing the traditions of the institution, it is |

| |the Democrats, who are abusing a weapon that earlier generations reserved for only the gravest |

| |matters. |

| |Even if the Republicans prevail, it remains to be seen whether there is any prize to be had. |

| |If voters don't like what they are seeing now, they aren't going to be any happier with what |

| |happens next if the nuclear option passes. |

| |The 0.9-pound piece of foam that fell from the PAL ramp on liftoff, which could have led to another|

| |catastrophe if it had ripped away a minute sooner, forced the immediate suspension of future |

| |shuttle flights until the problem could be resolved. |

| |NASA solved the problem by venting the foam with tiny holes, but it was a reminder, if any was |

| |needed, that seemingly small changes could have profound effects. |

| |A new feminist party is to contest next year's elections; if the polls are right, it could win |

| |several seats. |

| |Given the divergence of opinions within his block, however, it is unclear if he would do any better|

| |than the current prime minister at curing Italy’s economic malaise. |

| |But if the secretary of state is right, why on earth is the vice-president fighting to keep the CIA|

| |out of the McCain ban? |

| |In 2001 he managed to unionise many of New Jersey's caretakers by persuading their firms that the |

| |union demands would take effect only if 55% of firms agreed (ie, they would not be undercut by |

| |competitors). |

| |If Andy Stern and other dissenters have a formula for dramatically increasing union membership, |

| |that could help the party, says Mr Reich. |

| |If a distinctively British variety of Islam is fully to emerge, it will be out of the encounter |

| |between these traditions. |

| |But they are also less controversial because no potential human lives are lost if the cells are |

| |destroyed. |

| |If you believe this, I've got a bridge in Nome to sell you. |

| |If a pound of coffee costs a cafe $5 (and I can get it for you wholesale!), a 20-ounce cup of |

| |regular coffee costs its maker 34 cents, while iced-coffee coffee costs 41 cents. |

| |But if they are persuaded that the Conservatives might win, the likelihood of their getting off the|

| |sofa and going to a polling station increases. |

| |If Labour won by three or four points, as YouGov's polls currently suggest, the party would lose |

| |about 30 of them. |

| |While many senior figures in the party might have found a campaign with an unpleasant undertone |

| |acceptable if it brought success, one that is both nasty and ineffective is a different |

| |proposition. |

| |If John Paul had ever hired an American political consultant, he might have been told that the |

| |final years of his papacy were a period of lost or fumbled opportunities. |

| |If, for example, the Catholic church's teaching on sexual behaviour had plainly been the outcome of|

| |a deep reflection from its grass roots (female as well as male, in poor countries as well as rich) |

| |it would have carried great moral power, even among those who disagreed. |

| |On the other hand, Pope John Paul would not have been true to his own deepest beliefs if he had |

| |been concerned, first and foremost, with how things seemed in the eyes of the world. |

| |You cannot just muddle through if you have an annual income of $55m (like Lakewood in 2004) or |

| |employ 450 full- and part-time staff (like Willow Creek). |

| |If Blair does something that everyone else thinks is good, it doesn't help us if we try to deny it.|

| |If spreading fear was the terrorists' objective, they have succeeded. |

| |If it is difficult to imagine something ever returning to normal, it is likely to do so quickly. |

| |Rafi Melnick, who follows the Tel Aviv stock market at the Interdisciplinary Centre in Herzliya, |

| |says that bombings affect equity values only if a campaign is prolonged and deadly. |

| |He would tell people that ecology was “the biggest revolution in human history” and believed that, |

| |if men continued to commit “crimes against the earth” nature would take its revenge, and wipe man |

| |out. |

| |It'll be hard for me, and I can put this behind us if you can. |

| |If anything this week could have been nice, that was it. |

| |If Congress manages to pass a bill it is considering that would lift some of the restrictions on |

| |stem-cell research in the U.S., the President promised to veto it. |

| |If researchers can figure out how to fix the original defect, they may someday be able to generate |

| |replacement tissue that is custom designed to treat the patient's condition. |

| |At that point, other researchers have used animal-based growth factors and feeder cells to sustain |

| |the growing egg, but that creates problems if the cells are going to be used to treat humans. |

| |If he could keep the burgers fresh, an ingenious arbitrageur could buy Big Macs for the equivalent |

| |of $1.27 in China, whose yuan is the most undervalued currency in our table, and sell them for |

| |$5.05 in Switzerland, whose franc is the most overvalued currency. |

| |If the euro buys less burger than it should, perhaps inflexible wages, not a strong currency, are |

| |to blame. |

| |Mr Profumo himself is at a crossroads: some surmise that, if this merger is shelved, a career in |

| |politics will be his next step. |

| |As for HVB, even if it plugs its property hole it still lacks a coherent strategy and brand: new |

| |leadership could bring new vitality. |

| |According to a recent study by Mercer Oliver Wyman, a consulting group, and Morgan Stanley, an |

| |investment bank, cross-border mergers can work if the buyer brings more sophisticated |

| |information-technology and risk management to the target. |

| |Then again, says the McKinsey Global Institute, if current demand continues, the supply of suitable|

| |labour in the popular cities of Prague and Hyderabad will run short by 2006 and 2008 respectively. |

| |LogicaCMG says that, if British firms increase their outsourcing by half by the end of the decade, |

| |an extra ￡10 billion ($18 billion) will be added to their stockmarket value. |

| |If anybody does go, a long, hot battle will begin. |

| |If he joins it, he can rule as he pleases. |

| |If some of the disappointments of Mr Yushchenko's short tenure can be put down to inflated |

| |expectations after last year's drama, others stem from the exigencies of the revolution. |

| |But Mr Yushchenko must be steelier if he is to overcome the corrupt, fractious pathologies of |

| |Ukrainian politics. |

| |There is, at the moment, no convenient way to leave a tall building if the emergency staircases are|

| |on fire and the fire brigade has not arrived or its ladders will not reach. |

| |Even if they do, they can get snagged on the way down. |

| |And on top of that, if a building is burning they are liable to catch fire. |

| |If it all sounds unlikely, it is worth remembering that it is now possible to lob a spacecraft all |

| |the way to Mars and have it land safely using an inflatable shell similar to Lavochkin's. |

| |They reasoned that if they could find similar behaviour in another species of primate (none of |

| |which has yet invented a cash economy) this would suggest that loss-aversion evolved in a common |

| |ancestor. |

| |If the universe was expanding more quickly than a particular type of particle was able to interact |

| |with the other types, that particular type of particle would lose touch with the rest. |

| |If neutrinos interacted with this dark energy a few seconds after the Big Bang, it might have |

| |produced a detectable effect on the ripples in the neutrino background. |

| |If the government's plans stay on track, Britons will, within three years, begin to receive cards |

| |containing personal details, together with a digital photograph, fingerprints and an iris scan. |

| |As Mark Hudson, Kable's managing director, explains, it is unclear if everybody is counting the |

| |same costs, since the Home Office has not released detailed accounts. |

| |If there really is a new paradigm out there, the Chinese are ahead of the pack in realising it. |

| |Using data from 1973 for developed countries, and a shorter series for developing ones, Mr Jacobsen|

| |and his colleagues found that oil-price changes and stockmarket returns are linked but lagged: if |

| |oil prices rise, shares do fall, but not right away. |

| |The trouble is that if China makes a habit of snapping up vulnerable American companies, it might |

| |decide to buy fewer Treasuries—and that could cause trouble. |

| |Half or more in every non-American country surveyed said they wanted Europe to be more independent |

| |of the United States, and huge majorities—between 70% and 80%—said they thought the world would be |

| |better off if America faced a rival military power. |

| |Tony Blair's hopes for a successful summit are high, but he has only himself to blame if he gets no|

| |thanks. |

| |If he does achieve this much through Britain's G8 presidency, Mr Blair will feel vindicated. |

| |He has stuck firmly to the belief that if you want to do good on a large scale, there is no |

| |substitute for having America engaged and willing to do its (big) bit. |

| |But even if Mr Blair does bring Mr Bush round, how much good will it do him? |

| |If Chief Justice Rehnquist goes, the right is confident that Mr Bush will replace him with another |

| |conservative, and probably appoint Antonin Scalia to the chief justice slot. |

| |It could happen if the religious right over-reaches itself dramatically—by getting Roe v Wade |

| |struck down or, more likely, by pushing the Republicans too far to the right in the next set of |

| |presidential primaries. |

| |Yet if the polling numbers on matters of faith carry some warnings for the Christian right, they |

| |carry many more for the Democrats. |

| |If the last election proved anything, it was that middle America found an overtly religious party |

| |much less weird than an overtly secular one. |

| |If the Republicans are the party of the over-pious, an aggressive secularism pervades many of their|

| |rivals' policies. |

| |And there are serious obstacles to obtaining treatment if you are an intravenous drug user, a |

| |homosexual or a prostitute. |

| |If identical twins (who have all their genes in common) show a greater similarity in their |

| |expression of a particular trait than do non-identical twins (who have only half their genes in |

| |common), that suggests the trait is, at least in part, the result of genetic influences. |

| |Stingy owners can still circumvent the new law, if they want to, by making their toilets unisex. |

| |"I won't be surprised if there are Iraqis out there who are following the example of foreigners," |

| |says Colonel Adnan al-Juboori, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. |

| |If he could choose, Marwan would like his operation to be a car bombing targeting U.S. soldiers or |

| |Iraqi security forces far from any civilians. |

| |But if he is ordered to strap on explosives and walk to his target on a downtown street, he will do|

| |so. |

| |They want their rights, even if they have to fight for them. |

| |"Maybe if we had paid attention then this wouldn't have happened." |

| |If they were going to practice, they wanted to do it in what they considered the right way. |

| |If they wanted to go to heaven, they felt, they had to find the purest form. |

| |If the mosque makes subjects like that taboo, if their doors are closed, he said, young people are |

| |going to go somewhere else. |

| |"How can it be incitement if it's facts?" he asked. |

| |If Blair does something that everyone else thinks is good, it doesn't help us if we try to deny |

| |it.” |

| |“But if you break publicly with Chavez you're playing Bush's game”. |

| |But if Mr Bush turns up empty-handed (CAFTA apart), Latin Americans will continue to pay court to |

| |that generous neighbour in Caracas. |

| |If a distinctively British variety of Islam is fully to emerge, it will be out of the encounter |

| |between these traditions. |

| |Yes, if moderation means the willingness to dispense with cultural taboos, and to participate in |

| |democratic politics. |

| |If this happens, it would be the fourth attempt to toughen anti-terror laws since 2000. |

| |But if there are enough signs that your behavior is starting to slip out of your control (see the |

| |self-test), chances are that you have a problem. |

| |If Andy Stern and other dissenters have a formula for dramatically increasing union membership, |

| |that could help the party, says Mr Reich. Rivalry among the two factions could also end up boosting|

| |membership (so long as they do not raid one another's unions). |

| |However, even if this happens soon, the power-sharing government is unlikely to be restored for |

| |some time. |

| |Yet attitudes to Muslims are bad—particularly if they are Pakistani Muslims, the group from which |

| |the men who carried out last week's atrocities were drawn. |

| |Rafi Melnick, who follows the Tel Aviv stock market at the Interdisciplinary Centre in Herzliya, |

| |says that bombings affect equity values only if a campaign is prolonged and deadly. |

| |He was way clever, she recalls, so much so that if he didn't get a concept she knew she had to |

| |teach it again, but "he never flaunted his intelligence over the other kids." |

| |And it would match the history and mystery of the court if it turned out that Roberts ultimately |

| |alienates conservatives and not those who fear any Republican appointee. |

| |This worked brilliantly as long as the Republicans were willing to march in lock-step behind him. |

| |As long as they satisfy the A-G requirements, students who are headed into the UC system can |

| |believe whatever they choose to and take whatever additional courses—including religious ones—they |

| |like. |

| |“As long as we put the crew and valuable cargo above the tank, we don't care what they shed," he |

| |said. |

| |His economic team shows no sign of tightening monetary policy even though double-digit inflation |

| |has provoked a wave of strikes. |

| |Even though numbers have been rising in recent years, the amount of doctoring they do has not gone |

| |up by quite as much because, as the proportion of women in the profession rises, so does the number|

| |of GPs who work part-time: only half of them work full-time, compared with nine-tenths of their |

| |male colleagues. |

| |And though the number of tawny carnivores in places like Illinois, Iowa and Missouri is still |

| |small--since 2003, only two dozen sightings have been confirmed in the Midwest--Clay Nielsen, a |

| |wildlife ecologist at Southern Illinois University and head researcher at the nonprofit Cougar |

| |Network, is gearing up for the possibility that more are on the way. |

| |Even though they had time for little beyond Friday Prayer, if that, they were Muslims still, for |

| |whom true assimilation into Western ways, like drinking, would inevitably be irreligious. |

| |Most of the newcomers affect a ho-hum indifference to membership now that they have it—even though |

| |they worked furiously to get it. |

| |A few minutes later, however, the patrolman who called for help manages to catch his prey |

| |unassisted, though the driver assaults him, so Mr Hawkins goes looking for the suspicious pick-up |

| |truck. |

| |Though dissident dons can easily outvote the university bosses in a meeting of Congregation, in a |

| |postal vote among all its members the likely outcome is the other way round, especially if Mr Hood |

| |tweaks his changes to make them seem a choice between stagnation and revival. |

| |Of course, they know Roberts as well, though it may be his knowledge of them that proves a little |

| |unsettling. |

| |Even though William Hague, the then Conservative leader, was sure to lose, his campaign had some |

| |momentum. |

| |Though the Tories have made some gains among working-class voters, according to John Curtice of |

| |Strathclyde University, this has not made for a net increase in their support. |

| |Though the Brazilian Catholic church still asserts its mission to tend to the poor, it is |

| |fast-growing evangelical groups like the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God that have been the |

| |bravest in dodging the drug gangs' bullets and spreading the Word to the wretched inhabitants of |

| |the lawless favelas. |

| |Campaigning for the papacy is strictly forbidden, though there is bound to be much whispering in |

| |the cloisters about the strengths, weaknesses and policies of the various candidates. |

| |Even though he could no longer perform on stage, Mr Pryor's work lived on in a new generation of |

| |comics like Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle who learned their craft listening to his |

| |records. |

| |Memories have faded, though emotions have not. |

| |Under a reform agreed last December, some powers are due to shift from president to parliament and |

| |prime minister, though this change may yet be repudiated. |

| |Once the price had been established, though, it was changed. |

| |What the responses to the second and third regimes seem to have in common is a preference for |

| |avoiding apparent loss, even though that loss does not, in strictly economic terms, exist. |

| |The White House promptly said it was a priority, though it did not appear on a list of ten |

| |legislative priorities put forward by Republicans in the Senate. |

| |Keeping a mobile phone close to the testes, they found, had a significant negative impact on sperm |

| |numbers and motility, though they do not speculate why that might be. |

| |Even though one of his brothers fights for another insurgent group and other siblings help the |

| |rebels with money and shelter, he says they all believe he has gone too far. |

| |Though the school and the parents want their kids to be successful in America, the ambivalence of |

| |many Islamic parents sends mixed signals. |

| |Even though they had time for little beyond Friday Prayer, if that, they were Muslims still, for |

| |whom true assimilation into Western ways, like drinking, would inevitably be irreligious. |

| |Though Mr Stern vows that his members will not be “lapdogs for any political parties”, he is also |

| |unlikely to start backing Republicans willy-nilly. |

| |However, though the IRA statement was uncharacteristically clear, all other parties will take some |

| |convincing that its fine words will be matched in deeds—especially the DUP, which noted that recent|

| |Northern Irish history was littered with IRA statements that had been described as historic but had|

| |not been delivered on. |

| |Talks may re-start in a few months, though Mr Paisley may take rather longer to end his refusal to |

| |sit around the same table as Mr Adams and company. |

| |This week they signed accession treaties which will bring them in at the start of 2007, unless the |

| |EU sees signs of late disarray, in which case it can set back entry for another year. |

| |Oxford is still the fifth-best university in the world, according to one recent study, and the |

| |eighth according to another, but Mr Hood believes that unless the way it is managed changes, it |

| |will slide down the rankings. |

| |In any case, tax cuts would not have much effect unless they were accompanied by an ambitious set |

| |of liberalising reforms, to free up Italy’s sclerotic economy. |

| |In addition, it's against the law for Americans to possess bald-eagle parts unless they are |

| |registered tribal members with special government permits. |

| |Still, unless the central bank is prepared to stand behind the banks for ever, some will have to |

| |fall by the wayside as both foreign and bigger Nigerian banks sweep up the vast potential market |

| |for deposits and mortgages. |

| |Although the bill had to pass for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to receive their wages, angry|

| |senators of both parties refused to let the measure through. |

| |Although the negotiators claimed U.S. emissions had fallen by 0.8 percent between 2000 and 2003, |

| |that drop actually reflected the recession of 2000-2001 |

| |Springfield, Va.: Although Bush's poll numbers are low, numbers for the Democrats on most national |

| |security and terrorism issues are just as bad or worse. |

| |Although he lived in the Washington area for half a century, I think Jack was still very much the |

| |Mormon from Utah, his crusading journalism fueled in part by his beliefs. |

| |Although administration officials would have to have some terror-related justification beyond the |

| |fact that they don't like us. |

| |At 120-channel Sirius, where Stern debuts Jan. 9, entertainment president Scott Greenstein says the|

| |number of subscribers has already jumped from 700,000 to 2.5 million since the deal was announced |

| |14 months ago, although Sirius still has about half the dues-paying members of rival XM Radio. |

| |Although he had made a brief and whimsical run for New York governor in 1994, Stern was dead |

| |serious this time, urging his roughly 10 million listeners to oppose the president and strike a |

| |blow against the FCC's indecency campaign. |

| |Although he still spills his guts on the air, there is greater restraint on matters close to home. |

| |"Friends said the mother of 5-year-old twins wanted to spend more time with her family, and that |

| |although she agreed to be photographed last year with her husband for an article about the case in |

| |Vanity Fair magazine, she had no plans to speak out." |

| |The fines rank among the largest penalties ever imposed on a bank, according to Molly Millerwise, a|

| |spokeswoman for the U.S. Treasury, although some of the other major fines have involved different |

| |types of violations. |

| |Slightly more than half of the country (52 percent) continues to believe the war was not worth |

| |fighting, according to the new poll, although the proportion who said it was rose seven points, to |

| |46 percent. |

| |Although Rove raised concerns about giving critics too much ground, the younger-generation aides |

| |prevailed. |

| |Some are concerned that although Bush has changed his approach, he has not changed himself. |

| |Seymour said members of Rogers's staff put his company in touch with TSA officials, although |

| |"nothing ever came of it. |

| |It extended to the president's assertion that he could designate any American an enemy combatant |

| |and lock him up for as long as he chose, without access to counsel or the courts. It includes his |

| |claimed right to kidnap people… |

| |I think most people would happily suspend the Bill of Rights and much of the Constitution as long |

| |as there is a threat of thousands of people dying from a terrorist attack. |

| |Things might have moved faster if the central government in Jakarta had hired large private |

| |contractors and paid them to pour concrete |

| |Likewise, there may be money to help people affected by the tsunami, but reconstruction won't |

| |succeed if it excludes people affected by conflict in Aceh or Sri Lanka and so engenders |

| |resentment. |

| |If Mr. Bush's reaction is limited to the tepid rhetoric of "serious concerns," Mr. Mubarak will |

| |have demonstrated that democracy is no more important to U.S. policy now that it was before |

| |What would have been lost by asking Congress to expand the president's powers to order |

| |surveillance, if existing law was too restrictive? |

| |If it costs more to provide medical insurance to workers, employers will pay themselves back by |

| |holding wages down. |

| |Chris Cillizza: It would have been somewhat surprising if Bush hadn't gotten some sort of lift from|

| |the Iraqi elections last week. |

| |I recommend you read the whole thing if you haven't already. |

| |But do you see the possibility that if the press dedicates too much time to the president's |

| |popularity, it could deprive the public of coverage of real issues - coverage that the public would|

| |need to form opinions of the president in the first place? |

| |If you're looking for an "Abramoff effect" keep an eye on Montana Sen. Conrad Burns' (R) |

| |re-election race and Ohio Rep. Bob Ney (R). |

| |If this story stays at the top of the news (and I suspect it will), polls conducted in early |

| |January could serve as a barometer for how the issue is playing in voters' minds. |

| |That will need to change if Democrats hope to make gains next November since Iraq is regularly |

| |polls as the most important issue on voters' minds. |

| |At the moment, Democrats' best chance at a pickup in the seat appears to be if Ney decided to seek |

| |re-election. If he bows out, the district has a strong Republican tilt and would likely elect a GOP|

| |replacement. |

| |I am going to boycott if they refuse to take that nasty toe nail fungus ad off |

| |the homepage. |

| |Breaking the law is the real issue and its the media job to make that point even if they get |

| |accused of bias. |

| |Tom Edsall: If Sirota is right, and this finding emerges during the Judiciary Committee hearings, |

| |Bush's problems will escalate sharply. |

| |Skaneateles, N.Y.: Maybe this is too obvious but, if the President has decided that he can |

| |eavesdrop on anyone at anytime for any reason, why do we need a Patriot Act? |

| |My civil rights won't do me a bit of good if I'm dead. |

| |To quote Ben Franklin (or Alexander Hamilton or Thomas Jefferson) if a person is willing to give up|

| |a little freedom for a little security winds up with neither freedom or security. |

| |If someone truly wants to blow something up they will find a way and no amount of wiretaps or |

| |elimination of civil liberties will change that. |

| |But it is also a good idea to consult with a professional tax adviser if you get as confused by IRS|

| |publications as I do. |

| |Don't forget that you'll also get a Social Security COLA if you are in FERS. |

| |If we do not make that assumption, it may be that the secret addendum simply provides detailed |

| |instructions or examples to help users of the manual comply with its guidelines. |

| |If what you mean by 'human rights' is an international regime of elitist policy-makers without |

| |state-backing or a recognized court-system to enforce its norms that seeks to intrude on our |

| |sovereignty, then 'human rights' and 'rule of -American law' are incompatible. |

| |I think there is a dangerous perception problem if more than one set of rules are even in |

| |existence. |

| |If one does not know the answer the point is to get one and not to care about looks. |

| |Ok, if you're the kind of person that avoids getting shoppers' discount cards at the supermarket |

| |and at CVS because you absolutely can't stand the thought of marketers knowing what kind of |

| |toothpaste and personal hygiene products you buy, then maybe you should worry about cookie. |

| |But the short answer is that if your anti-spyware programs are turning up nothing but cookies, then|

| |you're doing a lot of things right security-wise. |

| |If you didn't click on the infected attachment, these messages should not pose a threat. |

| |If I do uninstall it I'm wanting to ensure that there is something that I can click on to ensure |

| |that I'm reinstalling it |

| |The good news is that if you have the patience and care to follow those instructions, you can often|

| |fix the problem yourself. |

| |That said, if you still can't figure it out, resetting the router is a good idea. |

| |If rootkits are good at hiding viruses and other malware, then how can a rootkit itself be |

| |detected? |

| |White House officials won't be candid (or talk to you at all) if you insist on on-the-record |

| |interviews. |

| |There is NO WAY Bush could have pulled out a victory if this was known by the general public. |

| |I don't care which party is in office, if you guys ever pull something like this, I'm gone. |

| |If people disagree with a government official's handling of national security issues, they can vote|

| |him out of office. |

| |Virginia: With all the news on black-white achievement, how can a school be top if there are too |

| |much focus for minorities kids whom parents are not involved in PTA/PTO? |

| |If everyone in my college would have had that kind of exposure to school-then all would have |

| |graduated with me last may. |

| |But in the end, if someone is pig-headed it may be impossible to convince them of anything. |

| |For example, if one parent has bipolar disorder, there is a one in four chance that a child will |

| |have a mood disorder. |

| |If you find yourself becoming increasingly anxious, get help. |

| |If I were Congressional Republicans, I would use this as a time to demonstrate my ability to check |

| |the executive. |

| |If the stories in the media over the past week are accurate, the president has exercised authority |

| |that I do not believe is granted to him in the Constitution, and that I know is not granted to him |

| |in the law that I helped negotiate with his counsel and that Congress approved in the days after |

| |Sept. 11. |

| |In the meantime, if the president believes the current legal architecture of our country is |

| |insufficient for the fight against terrorism, he should propose changes to our laws in the light of|

| |day. |

| |"But if we could find ways of at least talking about the other 30 percent, the country would be 100|

| |percent better off than it is now." |

| |And deficits, if they did come, need not worry us very much. |

| |What's clear is that if Republicans and conservatives keep trying to sell their long-playing |

| |supply-side records in the age of the iPod, they'll confine their audience to antiquarians and |

| |ideological hobbyists. It's the way the world works. |

| |If the president wanted to tap some phones, let him tap. Better that than another terrorist attack.|

| |It seems reasonable to me to listen in on phone calls from overseas to people here -- Americans or |

| |not -- if there is any link at all to suspected terrorists. |

| |If we did not adhere to it ourselves, there was no chance they would. |

| |But if they do nothing else, Democrats have to stop being defensive in the face of Republican |

| |attacks. To suggest that the United States might be stronger. |

| |. At the briefing, Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution, a scholar of Congress, asked the right |

| |question when he wondered whether the Democrats would actually adhere to such requirements if they |

| |became the House majority in a future election. Price said the requirements would be endorsed by |

| |the Democratic caucus and become part of the permanent rules. |

| |It's clear that Clinton is going to have to modify her image if she's really serious about running |

| |for president. (She is, by the way.) |

| |If that cannot be done -- if you cannot tell soldiers why they might die -- then you cannot send |

| |them. |

| |If the president were taking the advice offered by some politicians and pundits in recent days, he |

| |would order the attorney general to go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. |

| |The newly elected coalition in Poland may implement a flat tax, and the opposition party in the |

| |Czech Republic has promised a 15 percent flat-tax regime if it wins the next election. |

| |And if the rumors are true about China's implementing a flat tax sometime next year, the tax-reform|

| |steamroller may become a juggernaut. |

| |America and the West may have won the Cold War, but if we continue to be burdened by the internal |

| |revenue code, the former communist nations may get the last laugh. |

| |If I wrote a column critical of the war in Iraq or raising questions about the Bush |

| |administration's handling of the war, I'd get mounds of e-mails from vast-left wing conspiracy |

| |theorists ranting about the Post's liberal bias. |

| |If the stations "don't kowtow and bow on these fines, they slow down the approval process on them |

| |buying radio stations." |

| |Instead, he talks about how Chris Rock is hilarious on HBO specials but would lose his punch if the|

| |same programs had to be edited to meet NBC standards. |

| |Sirius's Greenstein says he'll be overjoyed if 10 percent of the Stern audience follows him to the |

| |pay service, but the technology is still unfamiliar to most Americans. |

| |If I do something wrong and you want to investigate it, you go after it.' Boy, am I sorry I said |

| |that. |

| |"Raise your hand if you think the nets would have covered the trial's conclusion if the jury had |

| |returned with a guilty verdict in what the government had hyped as a centerpiece to its War on |

| |Terror. |

| |If you believe the president must do everything in his power to prevail in the war on terror, then |

| |newspaper stories outing secret programs seem to damage that effort. |

| |Um, if it's such a non-big-deal, why have five senators, including two Republicans, demanded |

| |hearings? |

| |If he was so "intimidated," why did he publish the story at all? |

| |If the picture continues to brighten, the press should provide ample coverage (even if newspaper |

| |layoffs and buyouts are dampening reporters' spirits). |

| |"Perhaps this comes as no surprise -- it doesn't surprise me -- but the national media has long |

| |since decided it needs to downplay Dean if the Democrats are to survive 2006." |

| |If she does, she's a witch and a shrew. |

| |If they fear Hillary and don't want her nominated, they'd better lay off the anger meme. |

| |'It is a much better story if he is playing a central role in this, and it is a much less |

| |interesting story if it turns out that there is no evidence to suggest, as was initially argued, |

| |that this was a White House plot to disclose the identity of a covert agent in order to punish a |

| |critic.' " |

| |Military commanders have described possible situations that range from the best case - drawing |

| |American troops down to about 100,000 before the American elections in November - to keeping them |

| |at far higher numbers if the new Parliament turns to chaos, civil war threatens, or political |

| |leaders are assassinated. |

| |Some people have suggested that if we leave the terrorists alone, terrorists will leave the United |

| |States alone. |

| |McCLELLAN: Well, I think there are people that have suggested that the terrorists would just be |

| |idle if we weren't engaging them in Iraq, and that being in Iraq has led to their attacks. |

| |The president said '9/11 changed my look on foreign policy' and he learned 'that if we see a threat|

| |we've got to deal with it.' |

| |Stephen J. Hadley, who has been negotiating narrower language that would give some legal protection|

| |to covert operatives if they were caught going beyond the murky boundaries of acceptable |

| |interrogation techniques." |

| |"It's the kind of capability if we'd had before 9/11 might have led us to be able to prevent 9/11."|

| |If Bush is allowed to decide unilaterally who the potential terrorists are, in essence he becomes |

| |the court, Graham said on CBS's "Face the Nation." |

| |If Bush and his team are giving critics some due on Iraq, they remain undaunted on the domestic |

| |spying program. |

| |Walter Mann Sr., 69, was released Dec. 16 after a year and three months -- more than twice the time|

| |he would have served if he had been convicted in his contempt-of-court case. |

| |Defense attorney Fethiye Cetin said Monday that Dink now faced charges of attempting to influence |

| |the judiciary for saying that he would leave the country if the case against him was not dropped. |

| |He said that if companies had been operating under the new accounting rule when they awarded |

| |options, they might never have handed them out. |

| |They have also instituted a leadership system to discourage dissent by threatening members with the|

| |loss of committee seats if they work too closely with the GOP. |

| |"This is the ultimate mommy party issue, if you believe that Democrats are the mommy party and |

| |Republicans are the daddy party," Todd said. |

| |He can deny them appropriations if they refuse to follow his direction. |

| |"He always thought our work at the TSA was too labor-intensive and that the number of workers could|

| |be reduced if we developed this technology," Ridge said. |

| |With all of the hype surrounding yesterday's game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat, it|

| |would be understandable if the Lakers came into tonight's game against the Wizards at MCI Center |

| |with tired legs and a lack of motivation. |

| |"If we would have lost any game in there, we're done and if we lose this game, we're done," Gibbs |

| |said. |

| |If every MVC team enters league play with a winning record and a respectable RPI, the theory goes, |

| |teams hoping to land an NCAA berth won't be as heavily punished in the RPI for playing weaker |

| |conference foes. |

| |We might not have been ready for it before, but if we could convince our coach, and he in turn |

| |convinced the staff, that gave us confidence." |

| |If you believe you can do it, you can. |

| |If a player tells you something, chances are, it means something. |

| |If there's no sense of ownership inside this locker room, there's no way we can go out and play for|

| |one another. |

| |If that happens, it undermines NTP's entire case, he said. |

| |If there is a tech professional in the family, that is the person who gets the job of configuring |

| |that new wireless network connection or figuring out why a computer is acting "funny." |

| |"It used to be if you said you were a team lead, a girl's family was impressed," he said. |

| |Major League Baseball officials, who threatened to take the lease deal to binding arbitration if it|

| |is not finalized by Dec. 31. |

| |If the lease is not approved by the end of the month, "the City will be in default on its |

| |contractual commitments and we will then have no choice but to prepare for arbitration," Major |

| |League Baseball President Robert A. DuPuy said in a letter to Cropp. |

| |If the case goes to arbitration, Mayor League Baseball and the District probably would go to the |

| |American Arbitration Association for a list of arbitrators, baseball officials said yesterday. |

| |Even if the underlying patents are upheld, he said, the company has a "software workaround" that |

| |would keep the service running for BlackBerry's 3.65 million U.S. customers. |

| |Often, Breaux would tell coaches not as familiar with Gibbs to be persistent with their |

| |suggestions, even if it appeared that Gibbs did not appear receptive. |

| |They still attempt to schedule opponents that are likely to have winning records, even if they hail|

| |from lesser leagues. |

| |So prices can go up, even if the losses eventually turn out to be smaller. |

| |Many street artists say they can intuitively grasp this strategy, even if it makes them cringe. |

| |They are still betting the American people are willing to give him virtual carte blanche to do what|

| |he thinks is necessary to prevent another Sept. 11, even if it means sacrificing some civil |

| |liberties. |

| |Even if the United States wins the ground war, Iraq cannot be a success without winning the PR war |

| |as well |

| |If the picture continues to brighten, the press should provide ample coverage (even if newspaper |

| |layoffs and buyouts are dampening reporters' spirits). |

| |: 'Do you think the United States should keep its military forces in Iraq until civil order is |

| |restored there, even if that means continued U.S. military casualties; or do you think the United |

| |States should withdraw its military forces from Iraq in order to avoid further U.S. military |

| |casualties, even if that means civil order is not restored there?' |

| |'Should the United States troops stay in Iraq as long as it takes to make sure Iraq is a stable |

| |democracy, even if it takes a long time, or should U.S. troops leave Iraq as soon as possible, even|

| |if Iraq is not completely stable?' |

| |All this testifies to the flexibility of the economy and the wisdom of the Federal Reserve -- |

| |though it shouldn't be assumed that the trade deficit, even bigger now than it was a year ago, will|

| |remain forever free of consequences. |

| |From my perception, limited though it is, the reviews are mixed. |

| |Though it is the Friday before Christmas, we have a surprising number of people dropping questions |

| |in the hopper, so I'll try to get to as many as I can. |

| |They are making the best decision for themselves - and for you all - though I sympathize with |

| |losing those non-refundable tickets |

| |It sounds like going back on your medicine is just what the doctor should order - though I am not |

| |your doctor and you had best check with your own. |

| |After all, some Republicans are criticizing the surveillance and demanding hearings, though none |

| |has gone anywhere near as far as Howard Dean in comparing Bush to Nixon. |

| |Since the Sept. 11 attacks, though, some experts say the U.S. government has tried a new tactic -- |

| |redefining the meaning of torture." |

| |Though retailers are not expected to release December sales figures until next week, many industry |

| |experts predicted that industry-wide growth this year would be moderate to strong. |

| |He said, though, that insurers paid more than they estimated on claims starting in 1998, because |

| |the cost of defending claims and paying damages has jumped. |

| |A Pentagon official said none of Shumate's team members questions detainees as part of helping |

| |produce threat reports, though they may relay questions to the interrogators. |

| |Bush has yet to highlight a new agenda, though White House aides say he will do that in the new |

| |year. |

| |As such, starting left cornerback Carlos Rogers is officially questionable for today's game, though|

| |he did not practice on Wednesday or Thursday. |

| |They have to say, 'It's our team,' even though Mr. Snyder owns this organization. |

| |Datatrac and its corporate partners in 2003 received a 10-year contract renewal worth up to $200 |

| |million for border-crossing cards used by Mexicans, even though government investigators had |

| |concluded that the cards were not being used properly and were vulnerable to fraud. |

| |In the unwieldy Senate, meanwhile, party discipline remains difficult even though Republicans hold |

| |55 of the 100 seats -- as was proved this week when the leadership had to yield on an Alaska |

| |oil-drilling proposal |

| |Mr. Bush has cut taxes on capital, even though capital has increased its share of the proceeds from|

| |the economy; the cuts may ultimately force a compensating increase in taxes on workers, whose |

| |incomes haven't done as well. |

| |. Same thing happened to me, even though I brought copies of my papers with me to the new personnel|

| |office |

| |I'll edit congressional stories, even though usually that's done by congressional editor Eric |

| |Pianin. |

| |But when every day you are required to work "unscheduled" OT because they are shorthanded even |

| |though they know well in advance what the needs are it becomes tiresome. |

| |Re: your above statement to a previous questioner, are federal law enforcement retirees, 1811 |

| |series, immediately eligible for COLAs under FERS even though they may retire at age 50? |

| |. That is what happened at Abu Ghraib even though the command struggled mightily to keep proper |

| |command and control over the situation. |

| |I tried running the removal tool from Symantec but even though it says the removal was successful |

| |it still detects the virus every time I turn on the computer. |

| |But that would have meant Banneker in DC, which selects kids by grades and scores, really ought not|

| |to be on the list, even though its average SAT score is about 1076, far below many of the regular |

| |enrollment schools on the list, and WAY below TJ's 1468. |

| |The new box does not seem to work as well for me even though I use it for about the same amount of |

| |time. |

| |I pretty much agree with the frame you laid out, even though neither party would put it that way. |

| |Michael Fletcher: I think so, even though anyone who cherishes the Constitution should worry about |

| |the government spying on Americans named Habib, too. |

| |The Times had to think long and hard before breaking this story, because even though I think that |

| |breaking this story is the highest form of patriotism, it was and is and will remain obvious that |

| |the administration will see breaking the story, and being a leaker for the story, to be an act of |

| |treason. |

| |"Even though he no longer wields the chairman's gavel, Dingell's longevity and the respect of his |

| |colleagues still give him considerable clout. |

|and (對等關係) |Conjunctions and Frequency |

| |and (157) = 314 |

| |Sentences |

| |Few executives would describe Russia as "no risk," and the mixture of apprehension and opportunism |

| |with which Dixons is entering the market perfectly captures Western investors' feelings about the |

| |country's business climate. |

| |But since then Coca-Cola's Russian operations have grown back to profitability, Winterton says, and|

| |it currently has half of Russia's $1.9 billion carbonated soft-drink market. |

| |Christopher Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank in Moscow, talks about Russia as a "triple- |

| |layer" economy: on the top is the nation's fiscal strength, on the bottom the roiling consumer |

| |sector (mobile-phone subscriptions notched up another record in March, and Ford sold one-third more|

| |cars in the first quarter of this year than it did a year ago). |

| |But for now, Western companies seem eager to keep on buying, and it's not hard to see why. |

| |Only in Mari-El did the authorities make an effort to create bilingualism in the early post-Soviet |

| |years, and now even that has gone into reverse. |

| |They adapted too well, and those that went back had problems with Russian life,” says Mr Heinapuu. |

| |Their white walls are chipboard, the bomb is a “reduced-blast” special effect, and although |

| |fictionally in the Afghan region of “Talatha”, they are at Fort Polk in southern Louisiana, 200,000|

| |acres of pine forest which the army uses for training. |

| |The challenge is immense, and the army's recent past suggests reasons for cynicism. |

| |The 1976 edition of “Operations”, the standard manual of best practice in warfare, did not mention |

| |counter-insurgency, and the army's dedicated counter-insurgency doctrine manual was last rewritten |

| |in 1965. |

| |But the section of the current edition of “Operations” dealing with counter-insurgency is now being|

| |revised, and a new version of the counter-insurgency manual, written with British help, was |

| |distributed as an interim draft on October 1st. |

| |As America withdraws its troops from Iraq—whenever that will be—non-mission-specific training will |

| |resume, and the training budget will be cut. |

| |The 2005 OECD health study says that obesity rates in Britain, at 23%, and America, at 31%, are |

| |higher. |

| |This is theology, and he's having to address it days after confirmation. |

| |All that money is coming from someone's pockets, and it's not the winners'. |

| |In the United States, the 2002 sexual-abuse scandals gave the clergy and the faithful an |

| |opportunity to do some soul searching, and progressive activists renewed their call for the |

| |ordination of women and married men. |

| |His greatest weakness, bishops say privately, was that he left the day-to-day operations of the |

| |church to the Curia, and the Curia sometimes handled matters indelicately at best. |

| |At the heart of this bureaucratic debate is a much larger and long-running tension—between reform |

| |on the one hand and orthodoxy on the other, and this is the biggest challenge the next pope will |

| |face. |

| |But some bishops are crying out for more autonomy, and they want a more robust conversation. |

| |The center has to hold, and the center is Rome. |

| |In three weeks of violence across the country, some 10,000 vehicles were burned, 255 schools, 233 |

| |public buildings and 51 post offices were attacked, 140 public-transport vehicles were stoned, and |

| |4,770 people were arrested, according to figures obtained by Le Monde. |

| |Probably because war is more exciting than peace, and perhaps because the proper subject of a war |

| |museum, even in Canada, is war. |

| |Of the $2 billion or so in promised aid that the government of Sri Lanka is tracking, only $1 |

| |billion has actually been handed over, and only $141m of that has been spent. |

| |Statistics usually used to prove discrimination tend to record colour, not creed; Muslims are a |

| |diverse and sometimes fractious group and their gripes are as much foreign as domestic. |

| |First she reached for her purse, and then she started walking in circles. |

| |We tend to assume that plane crashes--and most other catastrophes--are binary: you live or you die,|

| |and you have very little choice in the matter. |

| |Unlike tall buildings, planes are meant to be emptied fast. Passengers are supposed to be able to |

| |get out within 90 sec., even if only half the exits are available and bags are strewn in the |

| |aisles. |

| |He looked for the closest exit, and he pointed it out to his wife. |

| |Inside, it looked just like a normal plane, and the flight attendants made jokes, pretending to be |

| |passengers. |

| |Some people may even descend to the bottom, and they will never forget how long it takes. |

| |Within the past 10 days, the U.S. has twice imposed limits on apparel imports from China, and |

| |Congress is considering a 27.5% tariff on all Chinese imports. |

| |U.S. policymakers acknowledge that the wage differential won't be erased by a small rise in the |

| |yuan's value (say 5%), and they recognize that the Chinese are unlikely to go along with a more |

| |consequential one (say 25%). |

| |The houses somehow seem shrunken in scale, and the dreams of many youth seem to have been sized to |

| |match. |

| |Instead, they were expected to become British, and many have tried. |

| |To him, the shop - the fruit of his father's life of work - violates his faith, and he has |

| |unsuccessfully tried to persuade the family to give it up. |

| |Mr. Hussain changed worlds by coming to Britain, and now the world he made here has been |

| |irrevocably changed by its youth. |

| |Not so, say the Tories: crime has risen 16% since 1998-99, and violent crime is up by more than |

| |80%. |

| |Meetings in Brussels would be longer and wordier, relations with Russia would acquire a new |

| |salience, Britain would have a few more allies in its fight against tax harmonisation, and that |

| |would be pretty well all. |

| |His country has yet to join the EU, and France could still block its entry. |

| |Germany's Christian Democrats are also talking about blocking Romania, and their support is needed |

| |for a constitutional majority in the Bundestag. |

| |But that promise, given in 2003, has no timetable attached to it, and most of the countries are |

| |still a mess. |

| |A Eurobarometer opinion poll taken in 2002, just as EU governments were concluding terms for the |

| |2004 enlargement, found that 41% of EU citizens did not want to know any more about the candidate |

| |countries, 76% did not wish to live or work in them, and 91% felt “no tie of any kind” with them. |

| |In fact, the central European countries compete more often for projects against distant low-wage |

| |rivals such as China and Brazil, and all Europe benefits from central Europe's success. |

| |It is not a good omen: when choice starts to work, and the losers start to squeal, the government |

| |backs down. |

| |Conservatives call her “Topinkojevich”: they dislike her moderate views on abortion and gay rights,|

| |and they claim she is part of the same political establishment as the governor. |

| |Yet we're also a nation built on the rule of law, and those who enter the country illegally violate|

| |the law. |

| |Without Mexicans, vegetables would go unpicked and nursing homes would be filthy. |

| |A recent poll of likely Republican voters by the Manhattan Institute found that only a third |

| |favoured mass deportations, and only 13% thought it was possible to deport all 11m illegals. |

| |She named the product that went with the ad slogan "When it rains, it pours" (Morton salt), and the|

| |prize was a new Speed Queen washing machine. |

| |Years later, Paramount was trying to make a movie out of Wilson's play Fences, and Barry Levinson |

| |was interested in directing. |

| |Fences never did get made into a movie (though Wilson has written a new script, and producer Scott |

| |Rudin is trying to bring it to the screen). |

| |There are purposeful echoes of earlier plays: descendants of two characters from Gem of the Ocean |

| |(set in 1904) are on hand, as is a character from Wilson's 1960s play Two Trains Running; and Aunt |

| |Ester's home is the last one marked for demolition. |

| |He has finished 80 pages of a novel, and he wants to write a comedy, about a strike of coffin |

| |makers, featuring cameo appearances by Queen Victoria, Benny Goodman and the Platters. |

| |The fire alarm has gone off in councilman Antonio Villaraigosa's office in city hall, and the |

| |emergency strobe light is flashing, but he isn't budging. |

| |It is 6 p.m., and he has been up since 3 a.m. |

| |When the call is over and the fire alarm silenced, this former child of the poor, gang-ridden |

| |Latino neighborhood of East L.A. stretches out his arms and says, "Me, mayor of this great city? |

| |They are not exactly father and son, but they share a singular bond in an elite business: 25 years |

| |ago this summer, almost exactly half his lifetime ago, John G. Roberts went to work for William H. |

| |Rehnquist, and now he stands poised to become the first Supreme Court clerk in American history to |

| |sit on the bench alongside the justice he served. |

| |One was Mr. Carter, and the other was Mr. Roberts. |

| |The three clerks shared a small room with three desks, and the close quarters added to the |

| |intensity of the experience, Mr. Colson said. |

| |"He would point to one of us," Mr. Knauss said, "and say, 'I'd like to talk about such and such a |

| |case,' and we would go walking in the neighborhood and walk and talk about the case that would be |

| |argued in the next few days." |

| |They generally concern mundane topics, and he almost always concluded that the cases were unworthy |

| |of the court's attention. |

| |They are subject to scrutiny by locally elected governing bodies; and a new regulator called |

| |Monitor oversees them with a particular focus on their finances. |

| |Every president since Franklin Roosevelt has stuck by this deal, and the Saudis have mostly done so|

| |as well. |

| |Mr Bush cooed about the special relationship, and the two issued a communique pledging “to continue|

| |their co-operation, so that the oil supply from Saudi Arabia will be available and secure.” |

| |Roe has proved a lightning-rod for conservatives; and many moderates dislike the |

| |Democrats'Roe-driven defence of partial-birth abortions. |

| |Yet it was not called a “war crime” until 1995, and the ICC Act extended that general label to a |

| |range of already existing offences. |

| |It is now being reworked, and a new version will be discussed again in November. |

| |A broad range of AIG transactions are now being probed by regulators, and AIG's shares have plunged|

| |30%. |

| |He was famously able to absorb information: "Somebody'd jokingly ask about some small detail, and |

| |John would say, 'That's the second stone of a ring the Pharaoh wears on his third finger,'" recalls|

| |his roommate Bob MacLaverty. |

| |"John's approach, as I recall it, was very lawyerly, in the sense that he was very much focused on |

| |case law and the precedent that courts had set before." |

| |"As frequently happens when you go through the adoption process, some of the efforts weren't |

| |successful, and it continued for a time," says Jane's law partner and friend Jack McKay. |

| |Only Clarence Thomas, 57, would be close, while all the rest are over 65, and John Paul Stevens is |

| |85. |

| |But it does not rank in the concerns of most people, and it comes at a time when Americans are |

| |already holding Congress in low regard. |

| |There may have been many more incidents, but dozens of shuttle missions have been launched in |

| |darkness, with no visual record of foam, and the tanks themselves cannot be retrieved from the |

| |ocean for analysis. |

| |There was no evidence that the ramp had shed foam since the early 1980's, he said, adding, "We had |

| |had very few problems with the PAL ramp and we decided it was safe to fly as is." |

| |"Once you go supersonic, the top surface melts, the bottom surface is brittle as all hell because |

| |it's very cold, and you've got everything in between." |

| |Although the material could be made less fragile by adding fibers to the foam, he noted, "that adds|

| |weight" to the shuttle, and any changes can take years. |

| |But the tank that flew with the Discovery last week was made before the new procedures went into |

| |effect, and NASA stopped short of requiring that the ramps be redone, said a spokesman, Martin J. |

| |Jensen. |

| |"You learn," he said, "and then you go fix and then you fly again." |

| |MOST people think of Sweden as a bastion of equality, where women glide to the top and men readily |

| |push the pram. |

| |“A taboo has been removed, and the debate between Jews and other Poles is now of much higher |

| |quality than ever before.” |

| |Luck, partly: the service sector is a fast-growing part of the economy, and it is hard to outsource|

| |the jobs of caretakers and bus drivers. |

| |Their backing, though circumscribed by the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reforms, gives |

| |Democrats a big boost in national races—the AFL-CIO poured $44m into John Kerry's presidential |

| |campaign last year, and unions can also sometimes have a big impact locally, as in the New York and|

| |Los Angeles mayors' races. |

| |"The entryway is a womb, and the door is a vagina," says Fonda in her startling vibrato. |

| |But Fonda doesn't acknowledge skeptics, and she didn't write her memoir--which reveals, among other|

| |things, that she suffered from bulimia for 30 years, how she never felt the closeness she yearned |

| |for with her father Henry and that she only recently found personal happiness, in part through a |

| |conversion to Christianity--simply to tell all. |

| |Fonda has often been out in front of social change, but in this case she admits she's catching up |

| |with what many people already know, and her passion could reasonably be mistaken for penitence. |

| |"One day I was all by myself, and I said out loud, 'If God wants me to suffer like this, there must|

| |be a reason.' I almost did a double take. God?" |

| |Fonda has never let a lack of certitude translate into a lack of enthusiasm, and she understands |

| |that the exuberance with which she broadcasts her new self--writing a book, teaching lessons about |

| |feminism she admits she has just learned, accepting Christianity after years of spiritual |

| |apathy--will undoubtedly raise eyebrows. |

| |No one will mistake Monster-in-Law, out May 13, in which she co-stars with Jennifer Lopez, for her |

| |award-winning films Klute and Coming Home, but Fonda says the script seemed funny, and she was |

| |interested in seeing whether acting was any less agonizing for her now that she's no longer a |

| |"limited, bifurcated person. |

| |I liked being a supporting actress, and I liked Jennifer. |

| |She and Turner remain close, and she credits him as "the catalyst" for her awakening--"although |

| |he'd probably just laugh at that." |

| |In four years, Blackstone's investments in Europe have jumped from about 10% to 30% to 40% of its |

| |total business, and the firm has opened offices in London, Hamburg and Paris. |

| |Today's biggest deals are three times as large, and several private-equity groups are poring over |

| |at least one transaction involving a telecommunications firm in Spain that is worth more than $12 |

| |billion. |

| |Following the IPO, KKR has returned $590 million to its investors, and it continues to hold a 29% |

| |stake, valued at $390 million. KKR tripled its money in 19 months. |

| |Stark calls the locust debate his firm is caught up in "irksome and damaging," and he is worried |

| |that private-equity investors are being built up as "the straw men for all of Germany's problems, |

| |from high unemployment to the financial problems of the national pension system. |

| |At a time when unemployment in France is close to 10% and the government is introducing one program|

| |after another in an effort to deal with it, private-equity firms provide a rare glimmer of hope. |

| |"We are important actors, and we are creating value, we are creating jobs, and we are developing |

| |firms. Little by little, that message is getting through," he says. |

| |The days are longer, temperatures are higher and people willingly pay more for watered-down coffee.|

| | |

| |They are being ripped off and they don't even know it. |

| |The tactic worked, and John Howard won a surprise victory. |

| |But by the end of his reign, the world had in many ways become an even more terrifying place, and |

| |fewer people thought the Catholic church had all the answers. |

| |However, John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope in 455 years and there is at least an even |

| |chance that the church will revert to tradition and select one of Italy's cardinals to succeed the |

| |Polish pontiff. |

| |As the title suggests, this document is a rejection of the notion that truth is merely in the eye |

| |of the (human) beholder: the greatest truths are eternal ones, and they are discovered by a |

| |combination of God's own revelation and the human mind's honest and free but, above all, prayerful |

| |inquiry. |

| |VISIT Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, an upscale exurb of Chicago, and|

| |you are confronted with a puzzle. |

| |But look for steeples and stained glass, let alone crosses and altars, and you look in vain. |

| |Computers project the words of the hymns onto huge screens, and the temperature is perfectly |

| |controlled. |

| |Obviously, this is one of those strange times when normal politics are suspended and everyone is |

| |desperate to sound constructive and consensual. |

| |He's having such a good time, he's jumping around, and he's in charge. |

| |The nonmusician board members stuck to their guns, and Alsop's appointment was officially |

| |confirmed. |

| |It'll be hard for me, and I can put this behind us if you can. |

| |The laboratory is a whirlwind of purposeful activity, and nobody is busier or more focused than |

| |Hwang, its director. |

| |His father died when he was 5, and his mother raised six children by helping wealthier neighbors |

| |take care of their cows. |

| |William Rehnquist, the ailing 80-year-old chief justice, is revered, but not as fervently as the |

| |late pontiff; and the conservative justice still seems to be in considerably better health than the|

| |pope was. |

| |First, anyone he nominates must be approved by the Senate, and the Democrats will probably try to |

| |filibuster any nominee they hate. |

| |“If such ‘economic development’ takings are for a ‘public use’, any taking is, and the court has |

| |erased the public use clause from our constitution,” wrote Mr Thomas in dissent. |

| |“When we started in 1994 our strategy was to look at emerging economies for sourcing and China was |

| |a clear option,” he says. |

| |BasicNet began selling to China two years ago and it now accounts for 4% of the company's sales. |

| |By the time they are, problems ought to be ironed out and the cost of enforcement can be shifted |

| |onto general taxation, where it will drain money, but not votes. |

| |World economic growth ripped along last year at around 5%, its highest level in three decades, and |

| |this year, though slower, may see 4%. |

| |Production has kept pace with demand, but only just, and many worry that there may not be much more|

| |in the tank. |

| |Bond yields are low, the yuan is more likely to rise against the dollar than fall, and China is |

| |engaged in a dash for economic growth. |

| |Marwan claims he knows of 15 Iraqis who have blown themselves up this year, and he believes there |

| |are "hundreds of others" like him who are waiting for the opportunity. |

| |"My dad will hear the word love when I play my music, and he'll say that's against our religion," |

| |says freshman Ryan Ahmad. |

| |But then one of my friends will start singing some lyric, and I start up again." |

| |Assigned by his English teacher to write an essay about his own American Dream, a 15-year-old wrote|

| |that the occupied territories should be returned to the Palestinians and "the Jews should be left |

| |to suffer." |

| |Instead, they were expected to become British, and many have tried. |

| |To him, the shop - the fruit of his father's life of work - violates his faith, and he has |

| |unsuccessfully tried to persuade the family to give it up. |

| |There may have been many more incidents, but dozens of shuttle missions have been launched in |

| |darkness, with no visual record of foam, and the tanks themselves cannot be retrieved from the |

| |ocean for analysis. |

| |There was no evidence that the ramp had shed foam since the early 1980's, he said, adding, "We had |

| |had very few problems with the PAL ramp and we decided it was safe to fly as is." |

| |"Once you go supersonic, the top surface melts, the bottom surface is brittle as all hell because |

| |it's very cold, and you've got everything in between." |

| |Although the material could be made less fragile by adding fibers to the foam, he noted, "that adds|

| |weight" to the shuttle, and any changes can take years. |

| |But the tank that flew with the Discovery last week was made before the new procedures went into |

| |effect, and NASA stopped short of requiring that the ramps be redone, said a spokesman, Martin J. |

| |Jensen. |

| |Obviously, this is one of those strange times when normal politics are suspended and everyone is |

| |desperate to sound constructive and consensual. |

| |In four years, Blackstone's investments in Europe have jumped from about 10% to 30% to 40% of its |

| |total business, and the firm has opened offices in London, Hamburg and Paris. |

| |Following the IPO, KKR has returned $590 million to its investors, and it continues to hold a 29% |

| |stake, valued at $390 million. |

| |Stark calls the locust debate his firm is caught up in "irksome and damaging," and he is worried |

| |that private-equity investors are being built up as "the straw men for all of Germany's problems, |

| |from high unemployment to the financial problems of the national pension system. |

| |We are important actors, and we are creating value, we are creating jobs, and we are developing |

| |firms. |

| |All that money is coming from someone's pockets, and it's not the winners'. |

| |They are not exactly father and son, but they share a singular bond in an elite business: 25 years |

| |ago this summer, almost exactly half his lifetime ago, John G. Roberts went to work for William H. |

| |Rehnquist, and now he stands poised to become the first Supreme Court clerk in American history to |

| |sit on the bench alongside the justice he served. |

| |One was Mr. Carter, and the other was Mr. Roberts. |

| |"He would point to one of us," Mr. Knauss said, "and say, 'I'd like to talk about such and such a |

| |case,' and we would go walking in the neighborhood and walk and talk about the case that would be |

| |argued in the next few days." |

| |They generally concern mundane topics, and he almost always concluded that the cases were unworthy |

| |of the court's attention. |

| |Luck, partly: the service sector is a fast-growing part of the economy, and it is hard to outsource|

| |the jobs of caretakers and bus drivers. |

| |Their backing, though circumscribed by the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reforms, gives |

| |Democrats a big boost in national races—the AFL-CIO poured $44m into John Kerry's presidential |

| |campaign last year, and unions can also sometimes have a big impact locally, as in the New York and|

| |Los Angeles mayors' races. |

| |A CRUMB of good news can be gleaned from the aftermath of four bombings in London on July 7th, and |

| |the shocking discovery that British-born Muslims from Leeds were responsible. |

| |Most fingers pointed at Muslim extremists rather than Muslims as a whole; the police received |

| |useful tips from the attackers' co-religionists; and the only reports of rioting came from North |

| |Belfast, where Protestants and Catholics continued an ancient feud. |

| |Statistics usually used to prove discrimination tend to record colour, not creed; Muslims are a |

| |diverse and sometimes fractious group and their gripes are as much foreign as domestic. |

| |Somebody'd jokingly ask about some small detail, and John would say, 'That's the second stone of a |

| |ring the Pharaoh wears on his third finger,'" recalls his roommate Bob MacLaverty. |

| |Cambridge in the mid-'70s was a less fractious place than it had been during the height of the war |

| |protests, and while Roberts was known for being personally conservative right down to his unvarying|

| |choice of chocolate-chip ice cream, he was never rigid or doctrinaire; a placid debater, he stood |

| |his ground but never paraded his intellect. |

| |It'll be hard for me, and I can put this behind us if you can. |

| |"I am going to go home, and I am going to think about it and I am going to try to figure out what |

| |to do next year." |

| |In fact, as we noted, emissions had begun rising again in 2002 and 2003, and they looked set to |

| |rise again in 2004 -- to levels higher than they reached in 2000. |

| |But just one lost his bid for reelection, and his defeat was mostly unrelated to backing Mr. |

| |Warner. |

| |As a condition of its lending, the bank insisted that oil revenue be used for poverty reduction, |

| |and at first it mostly was. |

| |The bank required Chad's dictator to set up an independent agency to monitor the spending of the |

| |oil revenue, and the agency was assisted by Western advisers and overseen by a board that included |

| |Chadian opposition groups. |

| |Otherwise it will be targeted by critics in rich countries and may face sabotage and violence in |

| |the poor countries where it operates. |

| |U.S. pressure obtained Mr. Nour's release on bail in March, and he proceeded to stage a quixotic |

| |Vigilance against corruption and poor construction must be maintained, and donors must be prepared |

| |to allow their money to be used flexibly: |

| |The projected costs have risen dramatically since the mayor first announced the deal, from $435 |

| |million to $631 million, and they could well rise again. |

| |Mr. Bush and Gen. Hayden both insist that it has yielded critical information, and the |

| |administration claims congressional leaders responded that fixing the FISA process would have been |

| |difficult. |

| |But I guess one of the things I'm concerned about is that as we get farther and farther away from |

| |9/11, and there have been no further attacks against the U.S., there seems to be less and less |

| |concern about doing what's necessary in order to defend the country." |

| |The American people do want Mr. Bush to keep them safe, as he said yesterday, and they may be slow |

| |to wake to infringements on their liberty. |

| |Mr. Miller was a disciplinarian on the field, and he also supplied hot tea and graham crackers |

| |after a cold evening's practice. |

| |The President and his standing in the eyes of voters is a major story and whenever the Post (or any|

| |other major news organization) conducts a poll, it should get real play both in the paper and on |

| |the web. |

| |Ellicott City, Md.: How big do you see the Abramoff story getting, and any wild speculation as to |

| |how many pols (on both sides of the aisle) will be taken down? |

| |People on both sides say that they are acting the way the American public expects them to act, |

| |either in defending the nation or in protecting civil liberties, and I am curious who really has |

| |the public on their side. |

| |I'm WAY behind in my Christmas shopping and there are many Fix posts to write before I sleep. |

| |The new agency says the problem is that the old agency hasn't sent my personnel records and the old|

| |agency says it's just the way the process works. |

| |The Bush administration recognizes that too many personnel folders are paper-based, and they are |

| |trying to create an electronic personnel folder and moving to consolidate payroll systems. |

| |They need "verification" from the old personnel office, and it seems that once they are rid of you,|

| |the old agency doesn't give a darn. |

| |Can you point to any large government agency where the transition has worked and most employees are|

| |as satisfied as they were under the old system? |

| |Some research suggests that employees find they are working harder and longer under these systems, |

| |and it appears that poor performers do not fare well and have left demonstration projects rather |

| |than stay and compete. |

| |Our current performance evals are being closed out and new ones opened under the new plan. |

| |Trust is a big deal here, and it is fairly nonexistent. |

| |That should be a positive development, because young people are interested in their work and want |

| |it to be meaningful, and they won't volunteer for public service if they feel they are about to be |

| |mired in bureaucracy. |

| |I saw the transcript of the White House press briefing yesterday, and it was painful reading |

| |Scott's responses as to tried to explain why the President could comment about Tom DeLay, but not |

| |Scooter Libby. |

| |The President and his standing in the eyes of voters is a major story and whenever the Post (or any|

| |other major news organization) conducts a poll, it should get real play both in the paper and on |

| |the web. |

| |It's been boiling on blogs in recent days, and some comments I made there have been a big part of |

| |the conversation. |

| |I've addressed it in other forums, and the whole matter has been diverting me from other work. |

| |He later quite graciously made clear this was not at all what he intended, and I felt bad about |

| |responding hotly. |

| |These do seem like cliches, and I'll try to remember to take them out of reporters copy when I'm |

| |editing it. |

| |Fox News recently ran a comparison of other second term President's approval ratings at around this|

| |time, and Bush's were comparatively HIGH. |

| |My own view is that the Republican Party has been expert in the past in managing adversity, and it |

| |is facing another test of those skills right now. |

| |Some people say we need more troops there to provide security, while others say our troop presence |

| |is fueling the insurgency, and thus things will get better as we withdraw. |

| |It's an art, not a science, and people can plausibly argue that we should have picked story A over |

| |story B. |

| |We were having a discussion about this in my Ethics in Journalism class and I was wondering your |

| |opinion. |

| |It's an important issue, and I hope the media continues to track it. |

| |Congress must deal with the Patriot Act one way or another -- either renewing it somehow or letting|

| |it expire Dec. 31 -- and the president's use of the NSA will undoubtedly play a role in that |

| |debate. |

| |Shailagh Murray: I think the quote is generally attributed to Franklin, and he applied it to |

| |societies, not individuals, unless I'm mistaken. |

| |This country was founded on the principles of freedom and that is VERY important to me. |

| |Europeans like their journalism highly opinionated, and as you point out, that was the norm here |

| |too for years. |

| |Colorado Springs, Colo.: Since 9/11, I've heard the argument many times that the Constitution only |

| |works part of the time or it doesn't work when foreign agencies are involved and that is the reason|

| |for withdrawing civil rights. |

| |It's an ambitious effort, and Deputy Secretary England thinks it can be managed, step by step, |

| |Federal employees are paid with taxpayer dollars, and those dollars are a part of the public |

| |record, as I understand the law. |

| |Yes, it looks dead for this year, and I've not a clue about what will happen next. |

| |Victor Hansen: Agree completely. This gets to the heart of this issue and it seems to me that is |

| |the point that so many are ignoring or talking past. |

| |Victor Hansen: I do not know and because they are secret, we are expected to trust that everything |

| |is appropriate. |

| |I think there are important distinctions between training soldiers who volunteered, and who can |

| |call it quits any time they want and have control over the situation is different than torture. |

| |Some people a long time ago made a lot of noise about the privacy dangers of cookies, and somehow |

| |that myth has lived on to today. |

| | and run a large share of the Web's banner ads, and it's pretty hard|

| |not to visit a site that runs one of their ads, which try to place the cookies on your machine. |

| |Some months back I renewed my Norton Antivirus 2004 subscription and lately I've been getting |

| |pop-up messages that my system isn't protected and opened up a line that says a system error |

| |occurred and to uninstall and reinstall Norton. |

| |I have tested this (free) program and it works as advertised. |

| |Yes, I was trying to be diplomatic, and I realize now it probably sounded like a government-ese |

| |response. |

| |Howard Kurtz: I agree that the story could have had an impact on the election, and obviously the |

| |Times COULD have run it last year, but decided, at the administration's urging, to hold the story. |

| |I know it's difficult to get WH officials to speak for the record, and anonymity is understandable |

| |when it comes to confidential deliberations or criticism of the boss. |

| |Anderson's philosophy seems in conflict with this responsibility, and I was hoping you might |

| |comment. |

| |Jack was a tough reporter and when he had the evidence, his columns could really skewer the person |

| |under fire. |

| |Bush was clearly in an untenable position trying to no-comment such a huge story, and the White |

| |House must have realized this, for by the next morning the president was confirming the very facts |

| |in his radio address that he had refused to discuss with Lehrer. |

| |So far this is the best numerical measure of high schools I have yet to see, and I always ask |

| |people to tell me a better one. |

| |As I said, they are an integral part of the college experience, and it is very hard to motivate as |

| |many students as a good teacher would like unless taking the test is a given. |

| |This being the United States, many of them realize years later that their assessment of their |

| |academic skills was wrong, and they come back to college and do great. |

| |But that takes strong leadership, and they have had great trouble developing such leaders. |

| |My mood is pretty stable, but I still have a mood - as opposed to Prozac which just made me dull - |

| |and my sexual appetite is back. |

| |Using drugs during pregnancy is always tricky - and no drug is 100% safe, by which I mean that you |

| |can guarantee that the fetus will not be affected. |

| |Sometimes this defense mechanism breaks down and a person is willing to admit some role in her own |

| |unhappiness, but often it doesn't. |

| |Most mental illnesses are diagnosed by history - and there is no substitute for a thorough |

| |consultation with a competent mental health professional to establish such a diagnosis. |

| |How can I convince her that my concentration fails and I get really depressed and that it's |

| |seasonal? |

| |Now, I'm using Lamictal and Celexa in tandem with talk therapy, and my moods, which still have |

| |peaks and valleys, are within my acceptable range of emotion. |

| |There are good people out there and the best ones are not always the most expensive. |

| |She was in therapy and her medications kept increasing but to no avail. |

| |And if the enemy is truly Islamic radicalism and the solution is to plant true democracy throughout|

| |the Middle East, they're probably right. |

| |But this issue is not going away and fuller explanations will emerge, sooner or later. |

| |The President's supporters on domestic spying are in the clear minority of opinion, and it all |

| |seems to tie together so well with the government run amok storyline. |

| |Time Magazine says you're out there talking to people, and Newsweek says you're in here not talking|

| |to people. |

| |On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president "was granted authority by the Congress to use |

| |all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that's what we've done." |

| |We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Center and the |

| |Pentagon were not yet accounted for. |

| |But there are right and wrong ways to defeat terrorists, and that is a distinction this |

| |administration has never seemed to accept. |

| |For that reason, the president should explain the specific legal justification for his |

| |authorization of these actions, Congress should fully investigate these actions and the president's|

| |justification for them, and the administration should cooperate fully with that investigation. |

| |Subsequent caucuses have featured political scientists and historians of Congress, and next year, |

| |Johnson said, the caucus will begin trying to identify issues where the members can see |

| |possibilities of agreement -- or at least of clarifying debate. |

| |It would apply them as it saw fit -- and it did not see fit when it came to terrorists. |

| |Investigations would be convened, he warned, and the leakers could be outed. |

| |There is no magic solution to this problem, and Republicans will continue to exploit it. |

| |The place needs a good scrubbing, and that is what it would get if the leadership were somehow to |

| |embrace a set of rules changes put forward this week by several longtime members. |

| |Yet that is what the whole "intelligent design" movement is really about, and it seems to me that |

| |people of faith should rejoice at the federal court decision Tuesday forbidding the schools of |

| |Dover, Pa., to read a statement touting intelligent design in science classes. |

| |Clinton voted to authorize it, and she has yet to call for a pullout of U.S. troops. |

| |The Mountain Division is Bob Dole's own, and those of us who followed him as he campaigned for the |

| |presidency in 1996 will never forget the day in New Hampshire when some of the division's World War|

| |II veterans gathered to hear from their old comrade in arms |

| |The arguments advanced for staying make sense to me, and Cheney mentioned some of them in his |

| |speech. |

| |They were awesomely incompetent, and, in the case of Bush, they were monumentally ignorant and |

| |incurious, but they did not give a damn for oil or empire. |

| |This is presumably one reason why President Bush decided that national security required that he |

| |not simply follow the strictures of the 1978 foreign intelligence act, and, indeed, it reveals why |

| |the issue of executive power and the law in our constitutional order is more complicated… |

| |The right was disappointed that its proposals were so timid, and the left was critical because the |

| |report highlighted the damaging impact of high tax rates on work… |

| |Nine nations from the old Soviet bloc have adopted the flat tax -- which taxes income at one rate |

| |-- and others are poised to. |

| |Our economy, under a flat tax, probably wouldn't grow quite as fast as Estonia's, and it's unlikely|

| |that we'd get the same revenue windfall as Russia. |

| |Before long, the BlackBerrys came out and many of Bush's listeners were fidgeting. |

| |World demand for oil is soaring, and supplies are expected to start drying up in the coming |

| |decades. |

| |"There are very few things proven in any medium, and you've got to pay for those things." |

| |If I do something wrong and you want to investigate it, you go after it.' Boy, am I sorry I said |

| |that. |

| |Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), thought that high gasoline prices and bigger GOP majorities in the House |

| |and Senate would make this the year they would achieve their long-sought goal. |

| |The housing boom has peaked, and stocks haven't done much this year. |

| |Over the last few years G.D.P. growth has been reasonably good, and corporate profits have soared. |

| |'Two generations stared at the same shortcomings, inequities and hypocrisies of American life, but |

| |it was the Baby Boom generation that chose to tackle them, to hold this country to its grand |

| |ideals, to agitate for justice when it would have been easier to remain docile and silent, and we |

| |are a better nation because of that. |

| |Our unemployment is declining, we're creating a lot of jobs, and you're doing a great job, Miss |

| |Beazley." |

| |' Why does the Vice President continue to give the impression that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was |

| |connected with the September the 11th attacks, when the President has conceded that they were not, |

| |and the 9/11 Commission conceded they were not? |

| |So instead, Bush held a photo-op with a hand-picked group of seniors at a swanky retirement home --|

| |and it was well covered by the usual suspects. |

| |And that's why our relationship is so close and his advice is so valued." |

| |I believe, that the decision he made to go in and remove Saddam Hussein was his decision and it was|

| |the right decision. |

| |'Of course torture should not be widespread and of course there should be extraordinarily stringent|

| |top-down requirements in this respect. |

| |"For example, review the questions asked since Labor Day as posted by the Polling Report and you |

| |will find some highly consistent results: |

| |"However, look at the range of questions about prospective policy and the results are all over map.|

| |Wolfowitz, hoarse with a case of laryngitis, said he had received some lavish introductions before,|

| |and "this isn't that kind of introduction." |

| |Democratic leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) also called for an investigation, and House Democratic |

| |leaders asked Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to create a bipartisan panel to do the same. |

| |"We are at war, and I applaud the president for being aggressive," said Graham, who also called for|

| |a congressional review. |

| |Several dogs have become ill, and some have died. |

| |It landed safely at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and none of the 140 passengers was hurt. |

| |The U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map" requires Israel to freeze settlement |

| |construction, and Palestinian officials called on the Bush administration to pressure Israel to |

| |cancel its plans. |

| |TORONTO -- A girl was killed and at least five people were wounded when gunshots rang out on a busy|

| |downtown street filled with Boxing Day shoppers in Toronto, according to police. |

| |One of her grandmothers didn't like the Tommy Hilfiger purse she had picked out for her, and her |

| |other grandmother said she had no use for the black evening bag that Yun gave her. |

| |In major cities such as San Francisco, Miami and New York, Sony has paid building owners to use |

| |wall space for the campaign, and the images have become a familiar sight. |

| |Nerves were frayed, night had fallen and commuters used to traveling underground faced a long trip |

| |home by what might be an unfamiliar surface route. |

| |"I'm from a right-to-work state, and they'd probably fire them." |

| |"I gathered the family and I said Christmas is on hold this year," he said. |

| |The last transit strike was in April 1980, and it paralyzed the city for 11 days. |

| |Martin was disciplined when talking about his policy initiatives, and he demurred when asked if he |

| |had ambitions for elective office. |

| |"I worry about some of the personnel moves that Chairman Martin has made in so far as they suggest |

| |a concern with loyalty and they don't sufficiently appreciate the role of a dedicated public |

| |servant," said Philip J. Weiser. |

| |Insurers don't pay every claim or loss they report, since some turn out to have no merit and others|

| |are more or less expensive than first believed. |

| |On the other side, consumer groups and trial lawyers argue that the insurance industry manipulates |

| |prices and the medical profession doesn't do enough to control medical injuries and that those |

| |industries need closer supervision. |

| |Annual rates are kept by individual state insurance departments, and all sides rely on an industry |

| |newsletter, Medical Liability Monitor, based in Chicago, to collect data. |

| |In addition, the shares could have been sold to the public and the money added to the firm's |

| |capital, instead of being awarded to executives. |

| |"When I was picking the card, we were in the process of selecting a chief justice to the Supreme |

| |Court and there was another vacancy, so I said, 'Why not?' |

| |" 'She will give birth to a son, and you are to name Him Jesus, because He will save His people |

| |from their sins.' |

| |In recent years, the group's cards featured views of the Capitol, and he said he was looking for a |

| |change. |

| |Blocking Arctic drilling is a priority for environmental groups, and Democrats said they would |

| |attempt to strike it using procedural tactics. |

| |His name was Beau, and he bridged the gap between senator and dog. |

| |These documents show a disturbing erosion of freedom of association and freedom of speech that |

| |we've taken for granted and that set us apart from oppressive countries like the former Iraq," Kerr|

| |said, adding that the documents show no illegal activity by PETA. |

| |Sixty percent said the United States is making significant progress in restoring civil order in |

| |Iraq, a 26-point increase since November, and 65 percent said the United States is making |

| |significant progress in establishing a democratic government there. |

| |The case had been in the courts for years, and it fell to Alito to prepare a memo on whether the |

| |government should ask the Supreme Court to review an adverse lower court decision. |

| |That city was supplanted by Houston, and Brinkley believes Republicans consider it less costly to |

| |remake New Orleans as a smaller city based on tourism and its port. |

| |I think this [Katrina] is going to be an overriding domestic issue, and I think it's only going to |

| |increase in its significance." |

| |"We have young men and women coming back from Iraq who are having PTSD and getting the message that|

| |this is a disorder they can't be treated for, and they will have to be on disability for the rest |

| |of their lives," said Frueh. |

| |You were injured. Either your body or your mind was injured, and that prevents you from doing |

| |certain duties and you are compensated for that." |

| |He has been reluctant to look outside his inner circle for advice, and even some closest to Bush |

| |call that a mistake because aides have given up trying to get him to do things they know he would |

| |reject. |

| |You are made aware that they have these fundraisers, and they generally ask companies who have |

| |received any kind of assistance for any help they see fit. |

| |Rogers said he did not recollect the event, and his staff declined to provide details. |

| |The congressman said the company offered the potential of increasing security while decreasing |

| |costs, and he wanted to know how the certification process was going. |

| |He is a Katrina evacuee, and that's all she needed to know. |

| |Evacuees face imminent deadlines to get into permanent housing wherever they landed, and many will |

| |have to relocate without furniture or with only the barest of necessities. |

| |"Those in hotels won't be able to have maid service every day, and they won't be eligible to go to |

| |a shelter to get three free meals a day." |

| |No jobs have come Marnez's way, and he has been suffering from anxiety attacks as time goes on. |

| |Players are flying to the football and pressuring the passer, and the aggression is paying off with|

| |repeated big plays to help keep the Redskins in the playoff hunt. |

| |"There're some concepts we weren't really good at as far as understanding the techniques that we |

| |played on certain calls, and Sunday was a phenomenal job of guys homing in on knowing their roles."|

| |"It's a matter of life and death each week, and they seem to have responded really well to that. |

| |They were outscored 30-7 in the fourth quarter and overtime of those games, and players on both |

| |sides of the ball bemoaned the lack of a killer instinct. |

| |"And when you get a situation where everybody believes in the same thing, and you get the momentum |

| |going in one direction, I've said it all along. |

| |Defensively, they have allowed only one fourth-quarter touchdown in the past four games, and that |

| |came with the Redskins leading Dallas 35-0. |

| |"We knew we were a good team, and pretty much competed with everybody we played against, but we're |

| |starting to just get that real confidence that we can beat these good teams, and we're starting to |

| |do it. |

| |I think with each win we're just getting more confident, and it's a real good thing for us." |

| |"This year, we caught it in time, and we needed to make a change and we did. |

|because, so/so that, as,|Conjunctions and Frequency |

|since (因果關係) | |

| |because (158) + so (56) + so that (5) + as (31) + since (24) = 274 |

| |Sentences |

| |Winterton says Coca-Cola thought about introducing its own juices in Russia, but decided to acquire|

| |Multon because the Russian firm was already well established, with strong local brands. |

| |Ironically, the timing of the announcement was reportedly delayed because the IRA did not want news|

| |of its statement to be overshadowed by the new, more violent terror campaign being waged by young |

| |Muslim jihadis on the British mainland. |

| |Issues such as abortion and gay marriage make for ugly politics because there is little room for |

| |compromise. |

| |The fight over the Supreme Court is at boiling point because one or more seats on the court could |

| |open up any time now. |

| |It's a problem of special interest to researchers because it reveals a lot about addiction as a |

| |whole. |

| |"It's hard to tease the connection out because you don't know how muchis the drug and how much is |

| |the behavior," says Whyte. |

| |Tighman-Havens, who at 31 is a lifelong Catholic, regrets this, because although she calls herself |

| |progressive, she thinks the church teachings have merit: "People should have respect for one |

| |another if they're going to have sexual relations—but students' ears are not open because they see |

| |it as so distant from their reality." |

| |As Stefan Szymanski and Andrew Zimbalist, two economists of sport, explain, that is because most |

| |football teams are organised into hierarchical national leagues linked by promotion and relegation.|

| | |

| |France quarrels with America not because the pair are so different but because they are so alike. |

| |“France is a great country, because it has a great history.” |

| |If there is a deal on the budget this week, it will be an agreement reached for its own sake, |

| |because EU leaders cannot bear to be blamed for yet another summit failure. |

| |But if there is to be some, it should surely be doled out nationally, because only national |

| |governments have the expertise (and the political authority) to run what has increasingly turned |

| |into a personal income-support system for one particular interest group. |

| |That made sense, since the mammoth task would have overwhelmed existing government agencies, |

| |especially because the waves had swept away many of their staff and offices. |

| |Suitable land will have to be found for some 30,000 families in Aceh who will have to relocate |

| |permanently, because their former property is no longer habitable. |

| |To learn of the bombers' identity was all the more painful because Britain's 1.6m Muslims have of |

| |late striven to avoid acting in a way that might place them outside the mainstream. |

| |Because they have to comply with so many regulations, they run thousands of people through |

| |experiments and interview scores of crash survivors. |

| |Only the Slovaks still seem truly excited, perhaps because they came nearest to failing the course.|

| | |

| |Instead, because European governments overestimated both the difficulties of enlargement and the |

| |strength of popular support for the EU, they committed themselves last year to the politically |

| |exhausting business of ratifying a new constitution. |

| |That is partly because his youngest daughter was born shortly after he took office. |

| |Last year's flu-shot deal with Europe led nowhere, because the federal Food and Drug Administration|

| |stalled approval of the vaccines. |

| |The pick-up's driver is using a Border Patrol radio because he is, in fact, a Border Patrol agent, |

| |who had impounded the vehicle after finding two dozen illegal aliens squeezed in the back. |

| |The market likes the sound of a merger because retail customers' appetite for trading seems to have|

| |faded. |

| |The longer-term prognosis will depend on the markets, because trading volumes rise in good and |

| |markedly bad times. |

| |A polite, doughy-faced man, he likes the outdoors because it allows him to puff on his Marlboro |

| |Lights, but on this unusually hot spring afternoon, he looks a bit formal and out of place in coat,|

| |tie and newsboy cap. |

| |This would probably have happened under the previous regime, says Ms Clarke, but it is happening a |

| |lot faster because the hospital is a foundation trust. |

| |This is because the symbiotic relationship between the world's largest oil consumer and its largest|

| |producer is under attack from a surprising corner. |

| |He joined the greens because “we share a common interest in weaning ourselves off foreign oil.” |

| |Because abortion was legalised democratically, pro-lifers accepted the fact that they had lost and |

| |abortion became a settled right. |

| |Ruling that the state government could not stop married couples from purchasing contraception, |

| |Douglas wrote that the right to privacy exists because the “specific guarantees in the Bill of |

| |Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and |

| |substance.” |

| |The main reason, alas, why Democrats will stick by Roe is simply because it is a totem in the |

| |culture wars. |

| |Jo Quinn, a young classicist who helped organise this week's revolt, moved from Berkeley in |

| |California, a famously socialist place, because she liked Oxford's “amazing democratic system”. |

| |And some, like O'Connor, have evolved over their tenure and been powerful precisely because they |

| |could be unpredictable. |

| |"When you're playing squash with someone, you need to know whether they're right-handed or |

| |left-handed because it dramatically affects your strategy," says his friend Lazarus. |

| |The very best players--and Roberts is unquestionably one--can argue all sides of any issue, because|

| |that is what they get paid to do. |

| |"Frankly, they'll help keep him nimble because you get exposed to new concepts and new ideas, like |

| |the Internet," says Carter Phillips, another veteran of the Supreme Court bar. |

| |That's not because they are the same. |

| |It's because mainstream conservatives are a little more conservative today than they were then. |

| |"Once you go supersonic, the top surface melts, the bottom surface is brittle as all hell because |

| |it's very cold, and you've got everything in between." |

| |"We worked the hell out of that," said the engineer, who was given anonymity because he said |

| |disclosure of his name would jeopardize his career. |

| |Mr Prodi’s opposition alliance, the Union, is desperate to oust Mr Berlusconi, not least because it|

| |fears that he is systematically neutralising rival sources of power and could become, in effect, |

| |impossible to remove. |

| |Dick Cheney has fought hard against Mr McCain's amendment, it seems, precisely because it would |

| |remove any doubt, banning the use of cruel and inhuman techniques everywhere and by everyone. |

| |Because specific Muslim groups settled in specific British cities, there was little pressure at |

| |first to leave the ghetto. |

| |At the time of that discovery, Fonda and Turner were in a six-year marriage that worked largely |

| |because she had given up acting, moved to Atlanta and adopted as her hobbies hunting, fishing and |

| |ranch hopping (Turner is the largest private landowner in the U.S.). |

| |"People are suspicious because I change," Fonda says breezily. |

| |Perhaps, though, they might also be suspicious because she often transforms her personal experience|

| |into a societal call to arms and is doing so again. |

| |"But because this is so obviously personal for her, she's been able to disarm the stereotypes." |

| |But these days, Ostmeier is speaking out in public, trying to convince his fellow Germans that |

| |private-equity investors are not villains but heroes who are good for the nation because they |

| |increase business efficiency. |

| |The shares were more than seven times oversubscribed, not least because MTU's sales are rising |

| |briskly and its cash flow more than doubled in the first quarter as the aircraft industry picked up|

| |again. |

| |Because these cells are taken not from embryos but from cord or placenta blood, they are both more |

| |developed and less versatile than embryonic stem cells. |

| |But they are also less controversial because no potential human lives are lost if the cells are |

| |destroyed. |

| |And the only reason it hasn't caught on with his fellow coffee shop owners is because they know a |

| |good scam when they see one. |

| |And while the B.C. eagle population is thriving, large-scale poaching in the province threatens |

| |American bird populations, because eagles from throughout the western U.S. migrate to B.C. each |

| |winter. |

| |"Professor Hwang jokes that we're good at manipulating the egg this way because we can use |

| |chopsticks," says Okjae Koo, one of the graduate students in the lab. |

| |Much of the evidence has been on paper, because witnesses are dead. |

| |Eager Europhiles may have to wait a while for a deal, because negotiations could drag on and may |

| |yet lead nowhere. |

| |For HVB, central and eastern Europe has been vital because it has been virtually the only source of|

| |good news: it made a profit of €417m in 2004, when HVB in Germany only just broke even and the |

| |group as a whole made a loss. |

| |One cannot necessarily discern what a judge in a lower court believes simply by looking at his |

| |rulings, because he is obliged to defer to precedents established by the Supreme Court. |

| |The court said that they did, because Congress regulates inter-state commerce. |

| |This is because since the 1930s the Supreme Court has generally stretched the constitution for |

| |progressive ends. |

| |In America, by contrast, conservatives whinge that abortion is legal because a majority of judges, |

| |after peering into the constitution's “penumbra”, discovered a right to abortion that had lain |

| |hidden for centuries. |

| |Identity cards will be phased in gradually, as people renew their passports, and, because the |

| |database does not replace something that already exists, there will be no “big bang” when older |

| |systems are switched off. |

| |That is a danger because public support for the cards, which appears immune to concerns about civil|

| |liberties or efficacy (a YouGov poll in 2003 found that 74% predicted “a lot of disruption and |

| |inconvenience”), depends on their price (see chart). |

| |However, in March four banks were asked to return the equivalent of around $380m because they had |

| |funded IPOs through shareholder deposits and illicit foreign money. |

| |But because the fiddling by many of the banks has ensured that they will survive Mr Soludo's |

| |planned consolidation, there will probably have to be another round of mergers before the central |

| |bank's target is met. |

| |Still, Bob Hopkins, an analyst at Lehman Brothers, reckons J&J’s acquisition will go through at the|

| |agreed price, both because of Guidant’s strong technology—despite recent troubles—and because |

| |walking away would send unwelcome signals to the market. |

| |But the gap has narrowed, partly because the positive image of Americans has declined considerably |

| |since 2002. |

| |But the Unocal deal is something new, not only because it is much bigger and more politically |

| |sensitive, but also because CNOOC has, until now, behaved like a commercial, western firm in the |

| |bidding process, rather than as an arm of the Chinese government. |

| |One reason why Congress's and Mr Bush's approval ratings have dropped is because the American |

| |public thinks they do not share its worries. |

| |He was arrested by U.S. patrols twice and detained for short spells, but because he speaks no |

| |English, he was unable to communicate with his captors. |

| |"Once you go supersonic, the top surface melts, the bottom surface is brittle as all hell because |

| |it's very cold, and you've got everything in between." |

| |“We worked the hell out of that," said the engineer, who was given anonymity because he said |

| |disclosure of his name would jeopardize his career. |

| |But these days, Ostmeier is speaking out in public, trying to convince his fellow Germans that |

| |private-equity investors are not villains but heroes who are good for the nation because they |

| |increase business efficiency. |

| |It's a problem of special interest to researchers because it reveals a lot about addiction as a |

| |whole. |

| |Over one-third of the budget goes on such regional aid, so this bit at least passes one test. |

| |But neither Sri Lanka nor Indonesia produces enough locally, so it has to be imported from |

| |Australia and New Zealand. |

| |Under regulations being debated, building managers will probably have to run full or partial |

| |evacuation drills every two years so most people in those buildings will have entered their |

| |stairwells at least once. |

| |A few minutes later, however, the patrolman who called for help manages to catch his prey |

| |unassisted, though the driver assaults him, so Mr Hawkins goes looking for the suspicious pick-up |

| |truck. |

| |So they come illegally, as the stampede of sandy footprints at popular crossing-points attests. |

| |So South American governments have ignored American pleas to shun Mr Chavez. |

| |So they may wait until November 24th to table the confidence motion. |

| |But by its second term, it realised that reform was needed as well as money, so it reinstated and |

| |extended reforms. |

| |Mr Bush cooed about the special relationship, and the two issued a communique pledging “to continue|

| |their co-operation, so that the oil supply from Saudi Arabia will be available and secure.” |

| |So what did he know? |

| |He talked of Roberts' emerging from Harvard with honors and summers working in a steel mill, |

| |introduced his family, talked of his heart, which is Bush code for "he's my kind of guy, so I don't|

| |need to get into specifics." |

| |So all the selective readings of his case file obscured the point that he argued for and against |

| |affirmative action, for and against environmental regulations, argued that Roe v. Wade should be |

| |overturned when he was representing a Republican President and then described it as settled law |

| |when he was speaking as a nominee to become an appellate judge. |

| |So the only tests of how the ramp material might hold up under the rigor of launching were the |

| |launchings themselves, with astronauts aboard. |

| |So the space agency is back to the drawing board. |

| |"I had it designed so that you're sort of delivered into the loft. Don't you love it?" |

| |I knew that he was the one I wanted to have it with, so I committed to doing whatever it took for |

| |things to work. |

| |In fact, she says, she moved into her loft so she could be nearer to the downtown offices of the |

| |Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (G-CAPP), an organization she founded after |

| |learning that Georgia had one of the highest teen-pregnancy rates in the U.S. G-CAPP teaches girls |

| |and women that they have authority over their bodies and that gender equality is essential to |

| |strong relationships. |

| |Electricity generally costs 16 cents per kilowatt-hour, so it costs roughly 39-hundredths of a cent|

| |to make the four ounces of ice found in the typical cup of iced coffee. |

| |So the Tories are now trying something new. |

| |So, in theory at least, the pope's penchant for mixing the mystical with the cerebral should have |

| |brought him closer to the eastern Orthodox world, which sees that synthesis as one of its greatest |

| |gifts. |

| |So he packaged himself as a relaxed Californian: bearded and open-shirted, he served up a diet of |

| |contemporary music and self-help tips. |

| |So they have begun to adopt techniques that allow churches to be both big and small at once. |

| |Willow Creek has set up several satellite churches in the Chicago area so that nobody has to travel|

| |more than 50 miles. Life Church has franchised five campuses in Oklahoma, two in Arizona and one in|

| |Texas. |

| |So Hwang has concocted a growth medium made of human-based nutrients, starting with human skin |

| |cells from one of the donor subjects. |

| |So any purchase would have to be big, and the right piece of the jigsaw, says an investment banker.|

| | |

| |Possible British buyers, such as HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland, are cagey, so they will probably |

| |wait until the spoils become more certain. |

| |They are the final arbiters of the limits within which Americans must live, so it is hardly |

| |surprising that when a vacancy occurs, the question of who will fill it arouses a fair bit of |

| |excitement. |

| |The case concerned a city council that wanted to expropriate a stretch of waterfront, against the |

| |wishes of some of the people who owned houses there, so that developers could bulldoze them and |

| |build a hotel. |

| |So Keith Chen, of the Yale School of Management, and his colleagues decided to investigate its |

| |evolutionary past. |

| |So, once again, the outcomes were identical. |

| |So it is all the more sobering to find considerable levels of hostility when people compare America|

| |with other countries, or express their views about Americans in general, not Mr Bush in particular.|

| | |

| |They want to know how to run for Congress so they can change America's Israeli policy. |

| |So some young men have solved the "don't know" riddle by discovering a new assertive and |

| |transnational identity as Muslims. |

| |So the only tests of how the ramp material might hold up under the rigor of launching were the |

| |launchings themselves, with astronauts aboard. |

| |So the space agency is back to the drawing board. |

| |So South American governments have ignored American pleas to shun Mr Chavez. |

| |As a battle raged in Iraq's northern capital of Mosul last year, shortly after its police force had|

| |collapsed, an American lieutenant-colonel showed this correspondent his control room. |

| |As America withdraws its troops from Iraq—whenever that will be—non-mission-specific training will |

| |resume, and the training budget will be cut. |

| |But as the value of the dollar has fallen, complaints from U.S. manufacturers have grown louder |

| |that if the yuan were allowed to rise to its true value, Chinese imports wouldn't be so cheap, |

| |compared with U.S.- made products. |

| |As petrol prices have gone up, Mr Bush's popularity ratings have declined. |

| |As the American money pours in, the deals are larger, more frequent and more highly leveraged. |

| |As the tally of cities struck by Islamist terror lengthens, every financial centre begins to look |

| |like a potential target—which means none seems especially risky. |

| |As the universe expanded and cooled, however, it became more and more difficult to maintain this |

| |equilibrium. |

| |As treatment becomes available, more people are also turning up for counselling and testing, which |

| |in turn helps with AIDS prevention. |

| |Since the supply of teams is deliberately held below the level of demand, owners can hold cities to|

| |ransom, threatening to move if the public coffers are not opened. |

| |Since the IMF was reluctant to contemplate a default by such a prominent debtor, the president |

| |might have got his way. |

| |“I work with recovered materials since they are burdened with time and transformed by usage, |

| |conferring vitality on my sculptures,” he says. |

| |That made sense, since the mammoth task would have overwhelmed existing government agencies, |

| |especially because the waves had swept away many of their staff and offices. |

| |Since it did not control any territory of its own, it could not exploit the reconstruction effort |

| |for political or financial advantage. |

| |And some workers from central Europe are indeed entering western labour markets, often illicitly, |

| |since most EU governments have bowed to public opinion by closing their job markets to the |

| |newcomers. |

| |Since the white paper rules out overt selection by ability, the simplest way for a school to |

| |improve its results is to admit more children from well-off families. |

| |Since the penalty for capture is repatriation, the only deterrent to trying again is the $1,500 a |

| |head the “coyotes” or smugglers charge. |

| |At first sight, that seems odd, since health is almost always at the top of the public's list of |

| |concerns. |

| |It's good thing that John Roberts has been universally described as decent, funny, civil and fair, |

| |since he may be joining a court with a long history of pugilists, ideologues and misanthropes who |

| |have somehow made it past the U.S. Senate. |

| |The Democrats have been winning by filibuster--which requires 60 votes to overcome--what they |

| |cannot accomplish on a simple up-or-down vote, since Republicans have 55 Senate seats to their 44. |

| |As Mark Hudson, Kable's managing director, explains, it is unclear if everybody is counting the |

| |same costs, since the Home Office has not released detailed accounts. |

| |This is a meaningless gesture, since costs can easily be shunted to places where they will cause |

| |less offence. |

| |But in a world of high oil prices, petrodollars are a more important lever on Chad's rulers than |

| |aid flows, so Exxon Mobil needs to use its influence. |

| |The administration must be forced to explain itself comprehensively, so Congress can decide how to |

| |respond. |

| |It's a rule of political life that losers complain louder than winners celebrate, so the sense of a|

| |joyless economic recovery is compounded. |

| |But she would have to have something to put on your insurance form - so there must be a diagnosis, |

| |at least nominally. |

| |I don't have health insurance or any regular doctor or anything, so I was hoping you could tell me |

| |how to find the right person to talk to? |

| |He is highly educated, very logical and intelligent, so it’s quite obvious when he becomes |

| |irrational. |

| |I stopped taking my meds rather abruptly because of a change in job and insurance so I know that |

| |probably wasn't a wise thing. |

| |The problem is the vast majority of schools that do not offer AP or IB, or dont let most of their |

| |students into those courses, so they have no choice at all. |

| |In this case, you have one official manual, with some parts not publicly available, so terrorists |

| |can't see it. |

| |It would make sense to keep the detailed instructions and examples secret so enemies cannot prepare|

| |their personnel to deal with our interrogators' techniques and avoid providing useful information. |

| |But I had jointly decided with colleagues that I had responded enough to the blogosphere, so I took|

| |a pass. |

| |She had said the ANWR oil would keep California fueled for 16 years and New Hampshire fueled for |

| |300-something years, so I thought it natural to ask how long it would keep the whole country going.|

| |I transferred to another agency about 2.5 months ago and noticed that I hadn't been paying my FSA, |

| |so they took over $400 out this last paycheck! |

| |The only options are "victory" and "defeat," he warned -- without really defining either -- so |

| |everyone should just stop asking when the troops will come home. |

| |Bear in mind I was talking to a Democrat, so we are not talking Phyllis Schlafly here, but still, |

| |Hillary Clinton is hardly anyone's stereotype of a liberal. |

| |Hillary is angry to get people like me to react, to get her nominated so they can crush her in |

| |2008. |

| |Deb Riechmann writes for the Associated Press: "President Bush said Monday that American companies |

| |must honor promises to their retired workers, and he urged Congress to pass tough legislation so |

| |retirees don't see their pension checks slashed." |

| |We relied on the intelligence community for those judgments, so the question is, in a way, how do |

| |they account for it?" |

| |Damage to their house made it unlivable, so they stayed with the friend in her two-bedroom house |

| |until they wore out their welcome. |

| |"We didn't play well that game and I didn't play well that game so I really want to find a way to |

| |avenge that loss," Jamison said. |

| |And instead they bounced back with their backs to the wall and had a great response, so I think the|

| |credit goes to them." |

| |Cable companies are expected to win permission from Congress to convert digital signals so they can|

| |be viewed over an analog set. |

| |The video conversion products will not rip your copy of a Hollywood movie into your computer so |

| |that you can convert it for playback on a portable device. |

| |One of his sisters does nails in a beauty parlor, so Courtney's wife and daughters get their nails |

| |done free as he tries to figure out how to remove the latest pieces of spyware or viruses on those |

| |hard drives. |

| |We need to do them a service so they're not stuck." |

| |As U.S. lassitude continues, Mr. Putin's price keeps going up. |

| |The risk of increasing costs falls entirely on the city as the deal is currently structured and not|

| |at all on Major League Baseball or a future team owner. |

| |The Shiite coalition itself could splinter, as some of its members don't favor a Shiite region. |

| |That argument is not as outlandish in the case of FISA as it is with respect to the torture laws, |

| |since administrations of both parties have always insisted on the executive's inherent power to |

| |conduct national security surveillance. |

| |One might expect wage gains to improve as the recovery matures and the economy reaches full |

| |employment. |

| |We could well be in the gray zone, as independent sources have offered contradictory assessments. |

| |At any rate, it's important not to get too hung up on rootkits, as they are mainly a tool used to |

| |increase/prolong the damage once an attacker or malware has already taken up residence on your |

| |machine. |

| |Brian Krebs: Make sure you don't have MAC filtering enabled, as that can cause your WIFI card to |

| |get an Internet address from the router but not be able to access the Web. |

| |My hunch is that federal employment is going to become increasingly challenging in the next decade,|

| |as technology and the world of work undergoes huge transformations. |

| |If you haven't already done so, you should check out Symantec's extensive online support pages, as |

| |they have quite a few documents that detail what to do when faced with certain error messages. |

| |For better or for worse, those user-driven message boards are often the source of instructions on |

| |how to deal with a lot of malware out there today, as they really are on the front lines of this |

| |problem |

| |Revenue poured into government coffers as tax evasion and avoidance became much less profitable. |

| |On the eve of today's elections in Iraq, there was, evidently, nothing left to be said about the |

| |matter, as supporters and opponents of the war went into rerun season. |

| |"Shouts of protest Monday briefly disrupted the carefully scripted White House Conference on Aging |

| |as a handful of delegates demanded the right to introduce and modify resolutions from the floor. |

| |"President Bush said yesterday he is confident that former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.)|

| |is innocent of money-laundering charges, as he offered strong support for several top Republicans |

| |who have been battered by investigations or by rumors of fading clout inside the White House. |

| |That began to change this week, however, as many retailers began offering blockbuster promotions |

| |once more. |

| |But several factors are working against him as he heads into the final three years of his |

| |presidency without obvious momentum. |

| |"At the same time, as more people reach out for help, it squeezes the budget further." |

| |Plans to rebuild public confidence on Iraq were shelved as the president was consumed by the |

| |hurricane and the fiasco over Harriet Miers's Supreme Court nomination. |

| |Bush agreed to try the approach so long as he did not come off sounding too negative. |

| |Rove's fate is uncertain, as he appears likely to remain under investigation in the CIA leak case, |

| |people close to the inquiry said. |

| |As computers have found a place in nearly everyone's home, the annual computer checkup has become |

| |almost as much of a tradition as dad putting together the new bicycle or sister-in-law getting |

| |dragged into the kitchen to make gravy or eggnog. |

| |Because that money was not appropriated, the Bush administration will have to scramble to switch |

| |cash from other priorities to sustain the 7,000-strong African Union peace force in Darfur. |

| |The company ought to be glad to do this, because it has a stake in showing that oil can boost |

| |development. |

| |And he declared unlawful the search of a car whose driver had been stopped because police were |

| |looking for two black men driving a black sports car following an armed robbery; |

| |These 31 cases were not, after all, selected because anyone was particularly suspicious of the |

| |conviction |

| |The full study is critical not just because identifying any innocents is a moral imperative. It |

| |will also provide the best window yet on how frequently America's justice system fails and under |

| |what circumstances and provide a road map for future reform. |

| |You're right when you say that the President's poll numbers are an important story because they |

| |reflect how the president is seen in the eyes of the public. |

| |We don't want to generalize too much about all this, because people bring different attitudes and |

| |perspectives to their jobs. |

| |That should be a positive development, because young people are interested in their work and want |

| |it to be meaningful, and they won't volunteer for public service if they feel they are about to be |

| |mired in bureaucracy. |

| |I do recall that the Democratic-leaning (but pretty hawkish) editorial page made no endorsement at |

| |all in 1988, because they did not think Michael Dukakis was sufficiently strong on foreign policy |

| |and national security issues. |

| |New York, N.Y.: You implied Bush won't be impeached because his popularity is rising. |

| |We generally enjoy doing the every-other-week chats, because they give us a sense of the talk |

| |that's out there, and sometimes prompt us to think about (or look into) matters that had not been |

| |on our radar screens. |

| |The money you put into the TSP as your regular contributions effectively cost you less because they|

| |are pre-tax salary dollars. |

| |Ok, if you're the kind of person that avoids getting shoppers' discount cards at the supermarket |

| |and at CVS because you absolutely can't stand the thought of marketers knowing what kind of |

| |toothpaste and personal hygiene products you buy, then maybe you should worry about cookies. |

| |I debated quite a bit whether to give this advice to readers, because as you mention -- it goes a |

| |bit beyond the "use a firewall, anti-virus, and patch" standard advice that everyone gives. |

| |Vienna, Va.: If you don't include Thomas Jefferson in the list because its students aren't |

| |"average," why include HB Woodlawn in Arlington, which clearly isn't an average school? |

| |I'm not sure how much taking the AP tests helped prepare me for college, because I'm going to a |

| |very untraditional college where there are no tests. |

| |Washington, D.C.: Is DC and Prince George's schools ranked so low because they're heavily blacks? |

| |Annandale, Va.: So you truly believe that kids drop out of college because they don't take AP or |

| |IB?? |

| |Jay Mathews: I truly believe that kids drop out of college, and there is plenty of research to back|

| |that up, because they find they are unprepared for the academic demands of college |

| |But often one drug doesn't work, perhaps because it influences only one neurotransmitter system |

| |predominantly - e.g. zoloft and serotonin. |

| |In that case another drug, e.g. wellbutrin, which influences dopamine and norepinephrine may be a |

| |useful addition because it recruits these additional neurotransmitter systems. |

| |I am having a difficult time with military doctors because it seems that they don't have the |

| |answers nor the time to really sit with me. |

| |And people are often reluctant to acknowledge mania - or hypomania (its less severe variant) |

| |because they often feel good - superenergized and upbeat - during those periods. |

| |It's taking all the fun out of major events and driving us insane, because we are constantly |

| |putting out fires and bailing them out of horrendous situations. |

| |The medicine also helped increase my sex drive, which was not only low because of the depression, |

| |but because I am on birth control. |

| |Eventually we stopped speaking because I wasn't supportive enough in her eyes, in my eyes I was |

| |emotionally drained from worrying about her so much. |

| |My doctor is reluctant to tell me my diagnosis because she says it doesn't matter. |

| |Changing the culture of the House will be more difficult, because it implies changing the |

| |gerrymandered districts that virtually guarantee victory for one party. |

| |Let's accept -- for the sake of argument, but also because the critique contained some truth -- |

| |that at some point during the 1970s. |

| |The White House cannot explain why it did not ask Congress for this authority because, it is now |

| |clear, it does not want to ask Congress for anything. |

| |The president conveniently forgot to mention that Congress originally set a "sunset" date for the |

| |act to expire precisely because members were so deeply concerned about the extent to which it |

| |compromised our liberties. |

| |Attacks of this sort on Democrats are effective because Democrats help make them so. |

| |One reason was that Congress's cumbersomeness, which is a function of its fractiousness, is a |

| |virtue because it makes the government slow and difficult to move. |

| |"Syriana" is different because it's first and foremost a political statement, a cinematic manifesto|

| |of the tired and empty cynicism of too many on the left. |

| |Consider the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the French Moroccan who came to the FBI's attention before|

| |Sept. 11 because he had asked a Minnesota flight school for lessons on how to steer an airliner, |

| |but not on how to take off or land. |

| |It is not easy because the Founders intended the executive to have -- believed the executive needed|

| |to have -- some powers in the national security area. |

| |The right was disappointed that its proposals were so timid, and the left was critical because the |

| |report highlighted the damaging impact of high tax rates on work, saving and investment. |

| |This growth is generating plenty of tax revenue, in part because tax evasion has been dramatically |

| |reduced |

| |"When I said we can't win a military victory, it's because the Iraqis have turned against us," he |

| |said. |

| |With the Patriot Act up for renewal, the current headlines finally provided a political context |

| |that would make the story a blockbuster--not because it describes illegal activity, but because it |

| |plays into fears about the rise of Orwellian Big Brother government from the Bush administration. |

| |"The New York Times has broken an incredibly important story -- a story that was obviously going to|

| |provoke another leak investigation, only this time a really serious leak investigation because the |

| |leaking of NSA secrets is far more serious than a two-bit hissy fight like Plamegate. |

| |"Finally, a fourth person asked it, and he answered: '[W]e do not ask about impeachment because it |

| |is not a serious option or a topic of considered discussion -- witness the fact that no member of |

| |congressional Democratic leadership or any of the serious Democratic presidential candidates in '08|

| |are calling for Bush's impeachment. |

| |"Americans don't feel good about the economy because it hasn't been good for them. |

| |Democrats lost the last presidential election in part because our side was so mad at Bush we |

| |couldn't see straight. |

| |In the 1990s, Bill Clinton consistently outfoxed Republicans because they hated him so much. |

| |Ralston has been in the news lately as a witness in the Valerie Plame leak investigation, and also |

| |because she was controversial Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's personal assistant before |

| |becoming Rove's. |

| |"Religious conservatives are miffed because they have been pressuring stores to advertise Christmas|

| |sales rather than 'holiday specials' and urging schools to let students out for Christmas vacation |

| |rather than for 'winter break.' |

| |" 'I'm not going to get into talking about these issues because it could compromise things in an |

| |ongoing war on terrorism,' Mr. McClellan said. |

| |That's an absurd allegation, because the terrorists are determined to spread their fear and chaos |

| |and violence throughout the civilized world. |

| |Because of that format we had, it was tough to get a train of thought going and then follow up |

| |because you're waiting to get in the next motorcade. |

| |She heard Wells say he hopes Karl Rove will not be indicted because he fears the press coverage |

| |would complicate Libby's defense. |

| |'We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of a brutal dictator. |

| |"And so the first decision I made, as you know, was to -- was to deal with the Taliban in |

| |Afghanistan because they were harboring terrorists. |

| |Maybe it's because of the Newsweek cover , or maybe it's because Brian Williams is following Bush |

| |around today and they wanted to score some p.r. points, or maybe the Bush gang decided to just take|

| |a chance |

| |"Asked in an interview with NBC News whether the response would have been the same had the |

| |destruction occurred on Nantucket or in Chicago or Houston, Mr. Bush said he was aware of criticism|

| |that the government acted slowly because he was a racist, and he said such criticism was absolutely|

| |wrong." |

| |"And it's not just because I don't work for the U.S. government anymore," he said. |

| |Putin can veto the bill, but it is considered highly likely that he will sign it because some of |

| |his concerns were addressed through a series of amendments. |

| |Time magazine Associate Publisher and marketing director Taylor Gray said the stunt was a success |

| |because it "cut through the clutter" of marketing messages to which New Yorkers are exposed every |

| |day. |

| |In part, Martin's ability to win Democratic votes at the FCC has been a virtue born of necessity |

| |because he has led a commission split between two Republicans and two Democrats, with one empty |

| |seat. |

| |Traditional insurance accounts for only about a third of the market, according to some estimates, |

| |because many large providers rely on self-insurance and other arrangements. |

| |Smarr, of the physician-owned insurers' group, said actuarial estimates were off in the late 1980s |

| |and early 1990s because insurers didn't anticipate a drop-off in the frequency of claims that began|

| |after 1984. |

| |Senyek said moves such as Ciena's make it harder to compare companies because some have accelerated|

| |options vesting while others have not. |

| |Many said they accelerated options because their competitors had already done so. |

| |I had hoped that there would be no need to offer this resolution, but I am forced to because |

| |discrimination still persists here." |

| |Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.), for instance, told constituents he would not want the president |

| |campaigning for him because he feels Bush's immigration policy is too soft on border enforcement. |

| |Experts say the sharp increase does not begin to factor in the potential impact of the wars in Iraq|

| |and Afghanistan, because the increase is largely the result of Vietnam War vets seeking treatment |

| |decades after their combat experiences. |

| |It has become a pro-war-versus-antiwar issue," said one VA official who spoke on the condition of |

| |anonymity because politics is not supposed to enter the debate. |

| |The clinician added that some patients who really need help never get it because they are unwilling|

| |to undergo the lengthy process of qualifying for disability benefits. |

| |SAIC spokesman Jared Adams said in a recent interview that the company moved there because it is |

| |inexpensive and close to Rogers. |

| |Reveal's president said his company made the contributions because Rogers supports the use of |

| |emerging technologies for aviation security. |

| |"I didn't feel pressure from the chairman because I believe we needed to accelerate new |

| |technologies into the field," Stone said. |

| |"I'll take it any way it comes, because right now we've got to get the monkey off our back," Yeager|

| |said. |

| |He recalled the room being quiet for the halftime gathering and he only spoke because he believed |

| |the usual leaders -- Thomas, Jansen and Brown. |

| |That was the one that really hit home because we were on the verge of letting this whole thing slip|

| |away," Brown said. |

| |The team did not practice yesterday and did not offer any injury updates, partly because the league|

| |does not mandate status updates of injured players without a full practice. |

| |Fallows agreed but also said that the disparity between the sexes among younger people was |

| |especially interesting because it could shape the way the general population uses technology and |

| |the Web in the future. |

| |I imagine things will even out over time, because there is so much for everyone online." |

| |King got stuck with the job of being his family's fix-it guy because he is an engineer who works on|

| |mainframe supercomputers. |

| |"It is good money at the end of the day," said Pundir, who abandoned her MBA studies because she |

| |saw a better career path in call centers. |

| |Williams (D) said he asked the council to withdraw the lease from consideration because city |

| |officials were making changes to the document, which baseball and the city agreed upon after three |

| |months of negotiations. |

| |Odunsi added that she sends her 5-year-old son to a charter school because she is unhappy with the |

| |neighborhood public school. |

| |That argument is not as outlandish in the case of FISA as it is with respect to the torture laws, |

| |since administrations of both parties have always insisted on the executive's inherent power to |

| |conduct national security surveillance. |

| |It would be wrong to suppress variations in wage gains across the economy, since these help shift |

| |workers to the industries that need them most. |

| |No polling of any merit is likely to take place between now and Jan. 1 since people are wrapped up |

| |in the holidays. |

| |That will need to change if Democrats hope to make gains next November since Iraq is regularly |

| |polls as the most important issue on voters' minds. |

| |Unfortunately, we've fallen out, since she apparently loves Osama and Saddam more than America. |

| |From the Post perspective, since our paper version is a local newspaper and not nationally |

| |distributed, it's great knowing we are reaching readers all over the country and the world. |

| |Since much of the public does not have "access" to the President, or other leaders, many of us look|

| |to reporters to be our proxies. |

| |Since we are surrounded by this and many people with other mental illnesses, I would like to know |

| |how to relate. |

| |Since government programs were flawed, private investment was always more productive than |

| |government spending. |

| |Using such information for criminal investigations is different, since a citizen's life and liberty|

| |are potentially at stake. |

| |Insurers don't pay every claim or loss they report, since some turn out to have no merit and others|

| |are more or less expensive than first believed. |

|when, after, before, |Conjunctions and Frequency |

|since, while, as | |

|(時間關係) | |

| |as (30) + since (16) + when (174) + after (54) + before (57) + while (4) = 335 |

| |Sentences |

| |AS THE French sit down to their traditional Christmas eve feast of foie gras, oysters and dinde |

| |farcie aux marrons, they can do so with a clear conscience. |

| |But as The Economist went to press, it looked as if any chances of a peaceful resolution were |

| |evaporating. |

| |In a 2001 study conducted at Harvard Medical School and elsewhere, researchers monitored subjects |

| |as they engaged in a wheel-of-fortune game. |

| |As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger preached his homily, reciting the story of Karol Wojtyla's life and |

| |spiritual journey, he looked out not only at the crowd, but at the window where John Paul II had so|

| |often greeted the faithful. |

| |As the cardinals deliberate in Rome, the voices of the fractious faithful are growing louder. |

| |Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is burdened with a corruption scandal and a |

| |below-par economy as he prepares for a tough fight to win a second term in an election next |

| |October. |

| |As we stood to evacuate, there was a loud thump. |

| |As we emerged into the light, the mood brightened. |

| |As he left, he noticed that some of his colleagues were collecting things to take with them. |

| |As she waited to be “voluntarily repatriated”, Ms Vasquez said she would like to come back soon. |

| |The shares were more than seven times oversubscribed, not least because MTU's sales are rising |

| |briskly and its cash flow more than doubled in the first quarter as the aircraft industry picked up|

| |again. |

| |As the ice melts, you just get more iced coffee instead of more watery bilge. |

| |“Will it play in Peoria?”, wondered John Erlichman, as he discussed one of Richard Nixon's schemes.|

| | |

| |In an emergency, someone wishing to leave in a hurry would strap on the backpack and jump, pulling |

| |a ring as he did so. |

| |Vice chairman Zarzour has become more hopeful as time has passed since 9/11, believing that "it |

| |will be harder and take longer, but integration is possible. |

| |Yet as the American moneymen continue their advance through Europe, the grumbling seems sure to |

| |continue. |

| |Since President Vladimir Putin came to power, the Russian economy has staged a dramatic comeback |

| |after its near collapse in 1998. |

| |Since three simultaneous bombs went off on three Underground trains at 8:50am last Thursday, |

| |followed just under an hour later by a bomb on a bus, the discomfort has taken on a macabre |

| |quality. |

| |The present negotiation is also the first since French and Dutch voters rejected the EU |

| |constitution in the summer, creating another good opportunity to ask whether the club is still |

| |spending its money on the right things. |

| |That has happened to some extent at Abbey since it was bought by SCH. |

| |The company's fortunes took a severe knock in 1998, when Russia was hit by a debt crisis and |

| |massive devaluation of its currency. |

| |When it was crushed by the Bolsheviks in late 1918, its refugee foreign minister, Sadri Maqsudi |

| |Arsal, got a warm welcome first in Finland and then Estonia. |

| |This is not always possible: when a Shia insurgency flared in southern Iraq last year, the British |

| |hunkered down behind armour and killed wave upon wave of fanatics. |

| |But when the violence ebbed, they had the flexibility to revert to friendlier tactics. |

| |Late last year, just when hopes were rising of a fresh start, the IRA was implicated in a huge bank|

| |robbery in Northern Ireland—which its political representatives must surely have known about, even |

| |as they were at the negotiating table. |

| |Passenger numbers on the Tube are only slightly down when the reduced service is taken into |

| |account. |

| |Further restrictions on civil liberties may now prove easier to secure when MPs return to |

| |Parliament in the autumn. |

| |That could backfire—as Newt Gingrich's Republicans discovered when they shut down the government in|

| |1995. |

| |For Negroponte's part, the matter is so sensitive his aides won't even confirm when the question is|

| |to reach his desk. |

| |When Roberts visits a casino these days, it's as executive director of the California Council on |

| |Problem Gambling, an organization that helps gaming halls run responsible gambling programs. |

| |Sure enough, the same areas lighted up when test subjects gambled, becoming active not only when |

| |they won but also when they merely expected to win--precisely the pattern of anticipation and |

| |reward that drug and alcohol users show. |

| |Only when the dopamine was discontinued did the patients return to normal. |

| |That's a bad combination, particularly when you throw drugs, drink or gambling into the mix. |

| |In one study, researchers at Brown University found that while gamblers take an average of 312 |

| |years to develop a problem when they're playing traditional games like cards, slot-machine players |

| |fast-forward their addiction, getting hooked in just over a year. |

| |When he stood near the pontiff's body lying in state, "I had the opportunity to say a prayer or two|

| |for him—although my prayers are mostly for us," Egan told reporters afterward. |

| |When Babe Ruth, a Yankees star, was told the salary of Dixie Dean, one of football's brightest |

| |lights, he commented: “What a racket that is! What's the chances of me buying into one of those |

| |football or cricket clubs?” |

| |WHEN Dominique de Villepin was appointed France's prime minister on May 31st, the choice was widely|

| |considered eccentric, to say the least. |

| |When he himself was interior minister, Mr de Villepin began the policy of expelling foreign imams |

| |suspected of preaching violence, and launched plans to train the rest in French language and |

| |history. |

| |He was the first to jump to the defence of Danone, a French food group, when rumours started of a |

| |takeover by the American giant, PepsiCo. |

| |Kids copy bad behavior out of curiosity, particularly when they can hide behind a group identity, |

| |says police juvenile-crime expert Kang Dae II. |

| |This energy enthralled Mr Pigozzi when he saw an exhibition called “Magiciens de la Terre” in Paris|

| |in 1989. |

| |The same applies even more strongly to the Indonesian province of Aceh and the eastern coast of Sri|

| |Lanka, which were poor and war-torn before the tsunami struck, and suffered greater devastation |

| |when it did. |

| |When the plane hit Elia Zedeno's building on 9/11, the effect was not subtle. |

| |When she finally left, her progress remained slow. |

| |It turns out that certain people experience an intense feeling of suffocation when their mouths are|

| |covered. |

| |Lindell sees the same tendency, which disaster researchers call normalcy bias, when entire |

| |populations are asked to evacuate. |

| |When people are told to leave in anticipation of a hurricane or flood, most of them check with four|

| |or more sources--family, newscasters and officials, among others--before deciding what to do, |

| |according to a 2001 study by sociologist Thomas Drabek. |

| |But when nothing is normal, the rules of everyday life do not apply. |

| |When the planes collided, Heck's brain had the data it needed. |

| |"Humans behave much more appropriately when they know what to expect--as do rats," says Cynthia |

| |Corbett, a human-factors specialist with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). |

| |When I asked him why he had moved so swiftly, he had several theories. |

| |Ejaz Hussain was 16 when he left his 40-household village in Pakistan and came to Britain in 1967. |

| |Only Croatia is anywhere near ready to start entry negotiations, but its hopes of doing so last |

| |month faltered when the EU decided that it was not co-operating with the Hague war-crimes tribunal,|

| |a precondition for talks. |

| |Now they face an anxious wait until the spring, when they will hear whether their children are |

| |among the lucky ones who are offered places at their chosen schools. |

| |It concludes that the greatest social sorting occurs when parents are free to choose but supply is |

| |rigid; next comes strict neighbourhood schooling; and the least takes place when parents choose and|

| |schools respond quickly to market signals—that is, when it is easy to set up new schools and expand|

| |popular ones, and unpopular schools quickly close. |

| |The governor's troubles began right after he took office, when he tried to boost his own image at |

| |the expense of party leaders in the state legislature. |

| |When the country was running short of flu vaccines last year, the governor scored points by |

| |arranging to buy vaccines for the inhabitants of his state from Europe. |

| |When he won the 2002 election, “he was outstanding on the stump,” says Mr Green. |

| |Meanwhile, many other foreigners enter America legally but then either stay on after their visas |

| |have expired or work when they are not supposed to. |

| |Carmen Vasquez, interviewed in a holding pen in Nogales, says she was tip-toeing through the |

| |mountains with her family after dark when she was suddenly surrounded by Border Patrol agents on |

| |roaring quad bikes. |

| |When the station found out she was black, Wilson recounts, his mother was offered instead a |

| |certificate for a used washing machine from the Salvation Army. |

| |When the call is over and the fire alarm silenced, this former child of the poor, gang-ridden |

| |Latino neighborhood of East L.A. stretches out his arms and says, "Me, mayor of this great city? I |

| |can't believe I am standing here.” |

| |When Mr. Roberts left a year later, the court was anticipating the arrival of Sandra Day O'Connor, |

| |the first female justice and the one Judge Roberts may now replace. |

| |His influence grew when he became chief justice six years later. |

| |When one of Mr. Roberts's shots went awry one afternoon, Professor Brudney said, "Dean Colson |

| |screamed 'way off!' to tell people where to position themselves." |

| |That explains why the mood was not so cheerful when Mr Bush met Crown Prince Abdullah, who in |

| |effect rules Saudi Arabia, in Texas this week. |

| |For instance, when home-schooled children or students from private Christian schools apply to a |

| |public university, they are typically judged by their examination scores—and, typically, they are |

| |required to perform much better than their counterparts from the public schools. |

| |When he runs into resistance he will face a choice. |

| |No less disingenuously, liberal senators pretend they are trying to gauge Mr Alito's legal |

| |philosophy when they are trying to catch him out on Roe. |

| |The idea that the constitution protects “the right to privacy” was already something of a stretch |

| |when Justice William Douglas discovered it in the Griswold v Connecticut case in 1965. |

| |The ICC is intended only as a court of last resort when countries are “unwilling or unable” to |

| |prosecute their own nationals. |

| |The era of the trust-me CEO took another bullet last week, when American International Group (AIG) |

| |fessed up to improper bookkeeping in a deal with a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. |

| |Born in Buffalo, N.Y., but raised in Long Beach, Ind., a small town sprung from the sand dunes on |

| |the southeastern edge of Lake Michigan, Roberts was in second grade when he won his first case. |

| |It was an all boys' school when Roberts entered in 1969--"Most of our dating life came from |

| |observing the school dog, Daisy," says schoolmate Tommy Kerrigan--and free time was consumed by |

| |three mandatory sports (Roberts ran track, wrestled and was co-captain of his football team), the |

| |newspaper (he was co-editor) and drama (he once played Peppermint Patty in You're a Good Man, |

| |Charlie Brown). |

| |So all the selective readings of his case file obscured the point that he argued for and against |

| |affirmative action, for and against environmental regulations, argued that Roe v. Wade should be |

| |overturned when he was representing a Republican President and then described it as settled law |

| |when he was speaking as a nominee to become an appellate judge. |

| |Roberts seemed on a fast track to judicial glory in 1992, when George H.W. Bush tapped him for the |

| |District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals at the age of 36. |

| |But he encountered his first setback when the bid died in the Senate with Bill Clinton's victory. |

| |"But when the opportunity came along to have not just one but two children, they took both babies |

| |without blinking." |

| |When Roberts spoke last week of the lump in his throat whenever he climbed the marble stairs, it |

| |rang true to anyone who had ever watched him in action. |

| |Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson recalled that when he was elected to the Senate last year, his |

| |House colleagues joked that he would have to get a lobotomy to fit in. |

| |Republicans note that Democrats had a different view of delaying tactics when they were running the|

| |Senate. |

| |And it criticized the agency's tendency to depend on computer simulations when physical experiments|

| |might yield more valuable data. |

| |Union leaders report harassment, threats and even firings when they exercise their rights to |

| |organise. |

| |Mr Stern worked as the organising director for Mr Sweeney until the mid-1990s, when Mr Sweeney |

| |headed the SEIU. |

| |One small part of the cause, he suggests, might be that when they were separate organisations, they|

| |competed against each other. |

| |But when the channel's director, whose native tongue is Arabic, walks in, the language switches |

| |seamlessly to English, interlaced with Muslim greetings. |

| |As for those who are really worked up about it, they may have listened rather too closely to |

| |Michael Howard, the Tory leader, when he argued that immigration is not an unqualified menace and |

| |should be controlled rather than abolished outright. |

| |These days, Fonda has moments when she appears almost calm. |

| |When Fonda decided to stay in Atlanta after the breakup, it was widely presumed she did so to stay |

| |close to Turner. |

| |Politics is the one area in which Fonda has been a philosophical rock, but although she was briefly|

| |drawn into the 2004 election when a doctored photo of her with John Kerry at a supposed Vietnam War|

| |protest circulated on the Internet, she knows she's still too politically hot to support any |

| |candidate publicly. |

| |But when they landed in the sickened brain tissue, they appeared to know to go to work, restoring |

| |the enzyme that the babies lacked and causing affected nerve cells to regrow myelin insulation and |

| |healthy ones to keep what they had. |

| |You're not going to let them charge you $3 for an iced coffee when they charge $2 for the same |

| |sized regular coffee, are you? |

| |It's certainly true that stronger coffee costs more to make, but again, when you add it up, you |

| |discover that it's utter hogwash (not unlike the iced coffee, I might add) that this additional |

| |"cost" is behind the iced-coffee tax. |

| |When the ice melted, he added more ice. |

| |And the only reason it hasn't caught on with his fellow coffee shop owners is because they know a |

| |good scam when they see one. |

| |In 2001, when the Conservative Party was hardly held in affection by the nation's canape eaters, |

| |39% of professionals and managers supported the Tories. |

| |This strategy was boosted when a leaked copy of the advice the attorney-general gave the government|

| |on the war suggested that he had voiced doubts about its legality. |

| |In America, the political right approved his opposition to abortion and homosexuality, but squirmed|

| |or pretended not to notice when he condemned the death penalty or the bombing of Belgrade and |

| |Baghdad. |

| |Among the America-bashers of western Europe, the pope ought to have won a sympathetic hearing when |

| |he called for a tempering of market forces—by stressing the dignity of labour, the legitimacy of |

| |trade unions and the idea that property ownership implies duties as well as rights. |

| |When he escaped assassination in 1981, he went to offer thanks at Fatima, the place in Portugal |

| |where Mary is said to have appeared in 1917 to a group of children and made a series of enigmatic |

| |prophecies. |

| |The pope got a chilly reception when he invited himself to Greece, despite enjoying warm personal |

| |relations with the Orthodox world's most senior prelate, Patriarch Bartholomew. |

| |But its views commanded less authority when they seemed to originate from a small number of |

| |powerful (and unmarried) men. |

| |But when he moved to Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Southern California, he realised that |

| |Baptist staples like altar calls—in which worshippers come to the front of the church and accept |

| |Jesus—would not go down well with his prosperous and laid-back congregation. |

| |Another problem is subtler: how do you speak directly to individual parishioners when you have a |

| |church the size of a stadium? |

| |Of course, he had his stroke of luck when the French and the Dutch saved him from holding a |

| |referendum on the European constitution next year that would almost certainly have finished him. |

| |However, since then Mr Blair has been playing at the very top of his game. |

| |Inevitably, when Mr Blair failed to win everything he had hoped for, the aid charities and green |

| |pressure groups cried foul. |

| |Neither was he on July 11th in his statement to the House of Commons about the bombings: he |

| |referred to the “heroism” of Londoners, when grim resignation was nearer the truth. |

| |Attempting to detach Mr Blair from his party by flattery, some Tories reckon, may be the best way |

| |to beat Labour when he has gone. |

| |In the week after the July 7th atrocities, when every bag seemed to contain a bomb, there were an |

| |average of ten closures a day. |

| |They were the Rainbow Warriors of Indian legend, who would come to heal the world when it was sick.|

| | |

| |When Marin Alsop's parents took her to see Leonard Bernstein, she went nuts. |

| |"But when I saw Bernstein conduct, I was like, Aha! He's having such a good time, he's jumping |

| |around, and he's in charge. I think that's what I'll do." |

| |When she couldn't get a regular conducting position, she founded her own ensemble, the Concordia |

| |Orchestra. |

| |His father died when he was 5, and his mother raised six children by helping wealthier neighbors |

| |take care of their cows. |

| |He decided then that he wanted to study the animals when he grew up. |

| |When the stem cells inside start growing out onto the underlying feeder cells, the researchers |

| |don't try to hurry the process. |

| |HVB's workers may try to secure a deal similar to that agreed when their own bank bought Bank |

| |Austria in 2000: this is now listed separately in Vienna, with 22.5% of its shares floating. |

| |They are the final arbiters of the limits within which Americans must live, so it is hardly |

| |surprising that when a vacancy occurs, the question of who will fill it arouses a fair bit of |

| |excitement. |

| |The CMB was formed at the point, 300,000 years after the beginning, when the universe was cool |

| |enough for atoms of hydrogen and helium to form. |

| |Identity cards will be phased in gradually, as people renew their passports, and, because the |

| |database does not replace something that already exists, there will be no “big bang” when older |

| |systems are switched off. |

| |When oil first touched $60 it knocked share prices back a bit for three days, but they resumed |

| |their climb thereafter. |

| |Alan Greenspan is likely to have this point in mind along with the likely impact of higher oil |

| |prices on a slowing economy when the Federal Reserve meets later this week to decide whether to |

| |keep raising interest rates. |

| |Last year, Charles Soludo, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and a leading member of the |

| |country's economic-reform team, stunned bank bosses when he ordered banks to raise their minimum |

| |capital base twelvefold, to 25 billion naira ($190m), within 18 months or face being banned from |

| |holding public-sector deposits and participating in the foreign-exchange markets. |

| |WHEN the heart beats irregularly, a few sharp shocks are often enough to set it right. |

| |So it is all the more sobering to find considerable levels of hostility when people compare America|

| |with other countries, or express their views about Americans in general, not Mr Bush in particular.|

| | |

| |When it didn't have much money to spend on improving services, it pretended that old money was new |

| |money. |

| |When it announced modest reforms that would take years to make an impact, it talked of |

| |“transformation” as if it was imminent. |

| |Above all, the Schiavo and filibuster battles were mere skirmishes before the all-out war, which |

| |will erupt when Mr Bush nominates a new Supreme Court justice (or two). |

| |There are now laws in 34 states requiring parents to be notified when a minor applies for an |

| |abortion. |

| |The pro-life Mr Casey in Pennsylvania is a far less typical Democrat than Mr Dean, who casually |

| |located the Book of Job in the New Testament when he ran for president. |

| |A twin study assumes that the individuals in pairs of identical and non-identical twins had shared |

| |family environments when they were young, allowing the genetic basis of behavioural traits to be |

| |teased out. |

| |It has been known for years that in a range of animals from insects to birds the males increase the|

| |quality and quantity of the sperm they ejaculate when those sperm are likely to find themselves in |

| |competition with sperm from another male. |

| |Like other Iraqis who have joined extremist religious groups during the insurgency, Marwan severed |

| |connections with his family when he joined up. |

| |When Marwan gets the call-up, he expects the final stage of his training to be far more rigorous. |

| |Marwan says he thought he was going on his operation when his commander sent him to meet TIME. |

| |Marwan says he doesn't think about his legacy or how others might regard him when he is gone. |

| |When teacher Fuzia Jarad's English class read Romeo and Juliet, the girls wanted to know, "Is it |

| |love at first sight?" |

| |After Mr Putin said recently that foreign-financed groups should be subject to strict scrutiny by |

| |the Russian security agencies, a website with close ties to officialdom, news12.ru, said that |

| |pro-Mari pressure groups would now be investigated further (the site also accused “Estonian |

| |nationalists” of stoking riots in Paris). |

| |The second, after we bombers have scrambled for safety, is much bigger—a hollow boom and an |

| |explosion of orange fire that soars 100 feet into the night sky, lighting up skinny pines all |

| |around. |

| |As a battle raged in Iraq's northern capital of Mosul last year, shortly after its police force had|

| |collapsed, an American lieutenant-colonel showed this correspondent his control room. On a cluster |

| |of computer screens, he could see, in real-time, where each of his Stryker armoured vehicles was |

| |and what it was seeing. |

| |On Saturday night around 20,000 people were evacuated from the centre of Birmingham, after a |

| |suspect package was found on a bus. |

| |After the Commission finished its work last month, Bush met with Cabinet members and firmly told |

| |them to follow Negroponte's lead. |

| |The famed beauty already has an online fan club in South Korea with more than 16,000 members; |

| |admirers set up the site after she performed in Seoul at an inter-Korean reconciliation event in |

| |2002. |

| |Already, 15 Texas prisoners have been freed after DNA tests were found faulty. |

| |After the KLM jet sheared off the top of their plane, Heck could not speak or move. |

| |After they left the mosques they gravitated to the Iqra Learning Center. |

| |The governor's troubles began right after he took office, when he tried to boost his own image at |

| |the expense of party leaders in the state legislature. |

| |That is partly because his youngest daughter was born shortly after he took office. |

| |Schwab has been criticised for losing its focus after it revolutionised the discount-broking |

| |business. |

| |After Justice Rehnquist read the briefs in a case, he would poke his head into the clerks' office, |

| |Mr. Knauss recalled. |

| |He dragooned the Latin teacher in 12th grade into helping him translate Virgil after he had |

| |finished all the course work. |

| |After they made a minor change in the foam application process in the late 1990's to comply with |

| |environmental rules, small divots of foam rained off of the tank during ascent. |

| |After the Columbia accident board issued its scathing report on the causes of the Columbia |

| |disintegration - especially a "broken safety culture" at NASA that had grown complacent about all |

| |sorts of risks - another independent group was set up to monitor the agency's progress in |

| |fulfilling the accident board's safety recommendations. |

| |After his allies suffered heavy defeats in last June’s elections to the European parliament, Mr |

| |Berlusconi had hoped his two rounds of income-tax cuts would help him regain popularity. |

| |In Afghanistan, he says, he was held for five months and tortured, before being released without |

| |charge after it was discovered that he had been confused with an al-Qaeda suspect of the same name.|

| |Brought up as a Christian, she embraced Judaism two years ago after her mother told her of the |

| |family's roots. |

| |But after that company merged most of its aircraft operations with a French rival in 2000, MTU was |

| |left behind, an orphan inside the huge automaker. |

| |Legrand had been in the process of merging with a French competitor, Schneider Electric, and |

| |suddenly found itself in limbo after the European Union vetoed the deal on antitrust grounds. |

| |Margaret Thatcher might have taken perverse satisfaction from the disasters that overtook her party|

| |after she had gone. |

| |After he left Greenpeace, in 1981, he continued keenly campaigning for it. |

| |After DNA from a human patient is inserted into a hollowed-out egg, the fused cell is stimulated |

| |electrically and chemically to get it to start dividing. |

| |Economists lost some faith in PPP as a guide to exchange rates in the 1970s, after the world's |

| |currencies abandoned their anchors to the dollar. |

| |After a frightened parent called the school, a classroom TV was wheeled into vice chairman |

| |Zarzour's office, where he watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center. |

| |The same applies even more strongly to the Indonesian province of Aceh and the eastern coast of Sri|

| |Lanka, which were poor and war-torn before the tsunami struck, and suffered greater devastation |

| |when it did. |

| |Just before they jumped out of a hole in theleft side of the craft, she looked back at her friend |

| |Lorraine Larson, who was just sitting there, looking straight ahead, her mouth slightly open, hands|

| |folded in her lap. |

| |As it turns out, the people on the Pan Am 747 had at least 60 sec. to flee before fire engulfed the|

| |plane. |

| |The newcomers must meet further tests before they can join the single currency. |

| |Most painfully, after the ravages of communism and the post-communist transition, it will take the |

| |central Europeans decades before they can raise their average wages to western European levels. |

| |Michael W. McConnell, a clerk for Justice William J. Brennan Jr., was a noted law professor before |

| |he was appointed to the federal appeals court in Denver in 2002. |

| |Uncharacteristically, before he met the prince, Mr Bush publicly pointed a finger of blame at the |

| |Saudis for the high prices. |

| |But the tank that flew with the Discovery last week was made before the new procedures went into |

| |effect, and NASA stopped short of requiring that the ramps be redone, said a spokesman, Martin J. |

| |Jensen. |

| |Udo Stark, MTU's chief executive since the beginning of this year, points out that the |

| |restructuring plans, including layoffs, were put in place even before KKR bought the company. |

| |He spent seven years working for a London-based European private-equity group before he joined |

| |Blackstone in 2003. |

| |Schnepp says Legrand quickly put in place a reorganization program, even before the private |

| |investors bought into the company. |

| |But when it was leaked that Alsop was a front runner, the seven instrumentalists on the search |

| |committee issued a statement reading, in part, "Approximately 90 percent of the orchestra musicians|

| |believe that ending the search process now, before we are sure the best candidate has been found, |

| |would be a disservice to the patrons of the BSO." |

| |Back then it had to use 242 eggs before it was able to create a single, viable set of stem cells |

| |from a healthy woman. |

| |This week's preliminary vote in the House of Commons on a bill to establish a national identity |

| |card means it is only a matter of time before Britons find out who is right. |

| |Now oil companies, both private and state-owned, are investing hand over fist, but it will be years|

| |before anyone sees the benefit. |

| |But because the fiddling by many of the banks has ensured that they will survive Mr Soludo's |

| |planned consolidation, there will probably have to be another round of mergers before the central |

| |bank's target is met. |

| |The religious right has a long way to go before it starts to feel tired. |

| |But the tank that flew with the Discovery last week was made before the new procedures went into |

| |effect, and NASA stopped short of requiring that the ramps be redone, said a spokesman, Martin J. |

| |Jensen. |

| |It was nearly 8:30am, about 20 minutes before the Tube attacks. |

| |To see if that's true, scientists turn to such advanced diagnostic tools as functional magnetic |

| |resonance imaging (fMRI) machines to peer into the brains of gamblers while they play. |

| |Last spring, 14-year-old Song was dragged from the front gate of her Seoul high school to a vacant |

| |parking lot by 10 female classmates, who for the next four hours took turns slapping, punching and |

| |spitting on her while two boys recorded the assault on cell-phone video cameras. |

| |Fonda insists that what the public saw--in this case, the most widely reported middle-aged divorce |

| |since Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's--was not the confused end of yet another phase but the |

| |assertive debut of her complete feminist self, a project that had been quietly flourishing while |

| |the marriage deteriorated. |

| |While he waits, he spends much of his time rehearsing that last prayer. |

| |Indeed the bank had poured nearly $1 billion into Chad since the country gained its independence in|

| |1960, and it has seen little in return. |

| |The projected costs have risen dramatically since the mayor first announced the deal, from $435 |

| |million to $631 million, and they could well rise again. |

| |IT HAS BEEN 24 days since the Egyptian democracy activist Ayman Nour was unjustly imprisoned by the|

| |government of Hosni Mubarak; 18 days since he began a hunger strike to protest his treatment; and |

| |five days since he was actually convicted and sentenced by a state security court judge to a term |

| |of five years on a blatantly bogus charge of forgery. |

| |Wages for blue-collar manufacturing workers and non-managers in services have remained stagnant |

| |since the economic recovery began in November 2001. |

| |Since I worked for Anderson three decades ago, I really wanted to write an appreciation, but I |

| |would then be in the air for five hours and land well after deadline. |

| |Inflation-adjusted personal income tax revenue has more than doubled since the flat tax was |

| |implemented. |

| |Since I took over in July 2002 from Charles Babington, the first reporter to hold |

| |'s "chief political correspondent" title, this site has continued to add original|

| |voices and content and improve in quality. |

| |Since I came on in 2002, The Post has created the "Continuous News Desk" staffed by about a |

| |half-dozen people whose primary responsibility is to cover breaking news for . |

| |At 120-channel Sirius, where Stern debuts Jan. 9, entertainment president Scott Greenstein says the|

| |number of subscribers has already jumped from 700,000 to 2.5 million since the deal was announced |

| |14 months ago, although Sirius still has about half the dues-paying members of rival XM Radio. |

| |And Winston-Salem Journal columnist Scott Sexton notes that much has changed since the last |

| |president visited the tiny town. |

| |The domestic political climate has changed so dramatically since Bush first sent troops to Iraq -- |

| |approval ratings that once topped 70 percent now hover around 40 percent. |

| |Observers say the sudden debate over call centers stems from longer-term changes in Indian society |

| |since the nation's economy opened up in 1991. |

| |When the EPA figures are released, they are expected to show the same trend, despite the EPA's |

| |different methods of calculation. |

| |But when Congress reconvenes, the administration should use this setback to force a serious |

| |discussion about the African Union deployment. The upshot should be a supplemental spending request|

| |that does more than finance the existing 7,000-member contingent |

| |When people are displaced, they can no longer grow food to support themselves. |

| |Judge Alito would have set a troublingly high burden for a plaintiff passed over for a promotion |

| |when the employer claimed to have been seeking the "best" candidate for the position |

| |Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled a visit to Egypt; when he was released on bail, she |

| |met with him in Cairo. |

| |When the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were fresh in the nation's mind, according to this view, most |

| |people condoned whatever was necessary to keep the country safe. |

| |Bayonne, N.J.: You're right when you say that the President's poll numbers are an important story |

| |because they reflect how the president is seen in the eyes of the public. |

| |Anonymous: When I transferred agencies several years ago, I too had the same problems. |

| |Upon taking a mid-career retirement seminar, I learned that this could cause some problems when I |

| |prepare to retire. |

| |I'm well over a decade into federal service under FERS, but also have some years of prior service |

| |under CSRS for which I took my retirement money out when I left (in the early 80s). |

| |My federal neighbors are at home when I go to work and are at home when I return and they still get|

| |over 5 weeks off in flextime. |

| |They get paid time off for all holidays, vacation, sick leave, when it rains, or snows, a national |

| |crisis or even a funeral. |

| |Dana Milbank: No. In fact, she seemed quite indignant when the questioner (me) posed the question. |

| |When she refused to answer and suggested that my question had certain hostile assumptions, I knew |

| |the number must be very low. |

| |As journalists, we should (and pretty often do) keep pressing even when we know the answer is |

| |likely to be no comment. |

| |Whately, Mass.: As a reader when I read any news reporting I am investing a great amount of trust |

| |in the person doing the reporting that they are fulfilling their part of the deal by reporting the |

| |as much as the information they have about the subject that they are writing about. |

| |What are your feelings when you notice a reporter bring bias into their work? |

| |When I was in high school Civics class, we learned about the "history" of Yellow Journalism. |

| |I can understand that management may need officers to work overtime occassionaly when unexpected |

| |situations arise. |

| |Time may resolve some of the hard feelings; one union official told me that he expects "one face at|

| |the border" to finally start working in 30 years, when the current generation of employees is long |

| |gone. |

| |But when it's a question of responding to a charge by a senator, I would say, either give me |

| |something for the record or I'll just say the White House had no comment. |

| |Howard Kurtz: Well, it was a huge story when it happened, but the fact that we don't know who won |

| |or who the next prime minister is means some of the natural follow ups will be delayed. |

| |But I know that when you're interviewing a president and have limited time, you sometimes want to |

| |move on to other topics on which you hope he'll make news. |

| |She is 24 and her first episode with bulimia was when she was about 12. |

| |The first thing that jumped to my mind when I heard the extension was now six months instead of |

| |three months was... politics. |

| |.The president flailed, stumbled or simply disappeared when the going got tough at home. |

| |But the reasonable guy that Bush and his speechwriters brought forth on Sunday night vanished when |

| |the president strode into a White House news conference on Monday. |

| |But the generally positive response to Sunday's speech suggests that when Bush shows he is |

| |listening to them, others can hear him much better. |

| |It would apply them as it saw fit -- and it did not see fit when it came to terrorists. |

| |The nation's highest office was cut down to constitutional size three decades ago, when Richard |

| |Nixon helicoptered out of town, but listening to George W. Bush in his latest come-out-swinging |

| |media blitz has been like an audience with an impatient monarch whose ungrateful subjects won't |

| |just shut up and do as he says. |

| |At the briefing, Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution, a scholar of Congress, asked the right |

| |question when he wondered whether the Democrats would actually adhere to such requirements if they |

| |became the House majority in a future election. |

| |It protects our most cherished rights -- religion, speech, press and assembly -- and while I |

| |sometimes turn viscerally angry when I see the flag despoiled, my emotions are akin to what I feel |

| |when neo-Nazis march. |

| |The utter tastelessness of this approach was on display Tuesday when Vice President Cheney spoke to|

| |the 10th Mountain Division and the National Guard's 42nd Infantry Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. |

| |The idea seems to be that we go out to report but when it comes time to write we turn our brains |

| |off and repeat the spin from both sides. |

| |She was showing some fire and some passion, especially when she was talking about civil liberties, |

| |When the EPA figures are released, they are expected to show the same trend, despite the EPA's |

| |different methods of calculation. |

| |When I called the communications director to ask about the culture of the office and the |

| |backgrounds of its senior employees, she read me a staff directory. |

| |Bush's advance team conspicuously refused to allow questions when he spoke to the Council on |

| |Foreign Relations last week. |

| |Danguillecourt, the great-great-grandson of Bacardi's founder, was headed for Bimini with his wife |

| |when the Chalk's Ocean Airways seaplane crashed Monday afternoon |

| |Shoppers screamed and dropped to the sidewalk when several shots were fired on Yonge Street, a busy|

| |retail area, about 5:30 p.m. |

| |In Washington's Adams Morgan neighborhood, cell phone maker Nokia Corp. used sidewalk chalk |

| |drawings to promote its N-Gage, a cell phone aimed at gamers, when it launched the product in 2003.|

| |Insurance industry representatives dismiss the study's methodology, saying it selectively uses |

| |years when the industry overestimated its losses and ignores more recent years. |

| |When profits are high -- for example, when bond and stock markets are thriving and insurers are |

| |making money on investments -- premiums tend to fall as new competitors rush in and compete for |

| |premiums to have money to invest. |

| |Beau became a minor celebrity for a couple of days in 1997 when the Senate barred the visually |

| |impaired Shea. |

| |Beau was 18 months old when Shea got him in 1994 as a concession to Usher syndrome, a genetic |

| |disorder that causes progressive blindness and hearing loss. |

| |The Washington Post first took note of Beau in October 1996, when he and Shea were turned away from|

| |the National Symphony Orchestra Decorators' Show House in Potomac. |

| |An additional 105,000 evacuees housed in Houston apartments under a city-sponsored voucher program |

| |that guaranteed rent and utilities for a year might face eviction on March 1, when FEMA stops |

| |reimbursing the city for the program. |

| |But they must prove that their homes were destroyed, that they were paying rent or a mortgage when |

| |the storm hit and that they were uninsured. |

| |When the Wizards kicked off a five-game road trip at Los Angeles on Dec. 16, the Lakers overcame a |

| |late Wizards push to pull out a 97-91 victory. |

| |The Wizards, who came into the game averaging 13.8 turnovers, appeared in control when guard Chucky|

| |Atkins gave them a 95-88 lead with a three-pointer with 3 minutes 35 seconds remaining. |

| |When the Wizards set up their next possession, Butler -- who made a game-deciding three-pointer in |

| |Monday's 94-91 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers -- got a good look from the wing. |

| |When he was at a funeral in Pittsburgh recently, a family member tried to get him to commit to |

| |giving computer aid over the holidays. |

| |But council Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D), who complied with the mayor's request, said she does not |

| |expect to schedule a vote until after Jan. 3, when the council reconvenes from its winter break. |

| |Cropp held a rare closed-door meeting with some of her colleagues late yesterday to explain the |

| |delay. |

| |Mr. Nour was released on bail in March after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled a visit |

| |to Egypt. |

| |High oil prices, which peaked dramatically after hurricanes devastated the Gulf Coast, created |

| |neither gas lines nor the wider economic fallout that many had anticipated. |

| |MOSCOW -- Legislation that will bring grass-roots activism in Russia under stricter government |

| |supervision will now go to President Vladimir Putin for his signature after Russia's upper house of|

| |parliament overwhelmingly approved the measure Tuesday. |

| |Officials said gasoline prices at some Illinois stations rose as high as $3.63 a gallon after |

| |Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. |

| |A defense policy bill was also cleared for consideration, after Republican leaders decided to strip|

| |out a controversial, unrelated campaign finance measure that had garnered bipartisan Senate |

| |condemnation. |

| |Aides had noticed that anger at Bush after Hurricane Katrina subsided somewhat after he took |

| |responsibility for the response. |

| |After Hurricane Katrina struck in late August, followed a month later by Rita, Houston took in an |

| |estimated 250,000 of the 2.5 million Gulf Coast residents who evacuated. |

| |But the government rightly sought input from the people whose region had been devastated, |

| |consulting them on building design and location and attempting to clarify disputes over land title |

| |before construction went ahead. |

| |But they also understand that due process can be infringed only so much before the injury becomes |

| |irreparable. |

| |They need to get everyone used to the fact that they are having these courses and tests, and get |

| |the teachers in the lower grades to buy into the concept, before they can get their passing rates |

| |up. |

| |He has not even appeared at all "likeable" or "above partisan politics" during his tenure, which |

| |were his big country-doctor bona-fides before anyone got to know him at the national level. |

| |Those decisions should have been made before we even sent troops over there. |

| |It will take some months before you could expect to see some drop." |

| |Retailers were pulling out all the stops yesterday to boost holiday sales before the year ends as |

| |shoppers streamed back into the malls to search for deep discounts and try out gift cards loaded |

| |with cash. |

| |He resisted the idea that policies on his watch have led to greater industry consolidation, saying |

| |some of the mergers that went through this year were proposed before he became chairman on March |

| |18. |

| |So I scribbled the story on a pad as my wife drove to LAX and then dictated it by cell phone from |

| |the Hertz rental car place. |

| |It is his record of nonstop belligerence toward anything that would limit his powers that works |

| |against him as he tries to make a case for what in shorthand is called domestic spying. |

| |The Mountain Division is Bob Dole's own, and those of us who followed him as he campaigned for the |

| |presidency in 1996 will never forget the day in New Hampshire when some of the division's World War|

| |II veterans gathered to hear from their old comrade in arms. |

| |Even as federal courts have sought to balance Fourth Amendment rights with security imperatives, |

| |they have upheld a president's "inherent authority" under the Constitution to acquire necessary |

| |intelligence for national security purposes. |

| |The president and the first lady will hold two such events next Thursday as they welcome the press |

| |corps into their home. |

| |A huge 'Boooo!' echoed in the road beneath Independence Hall as he drove by. |

| |As you get closer to trial, you start to weigh the options and weigh the odds and the resources the|

| |federal government has. |

| |Retailers were pulling out all the stops yesterday to boost holiday sales before the year ends as |

| |shoppers streamed back into the malls to search for deep discounts and try out gift cards loaded |

| |with cash. |

| |"I spent the last two hours walking and the first 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get |

| |there," Profumo said Tuesday afternoon as he reached the halfway point. |

| |The lessons drawn by a variety of Bush advisers inside and outside the White House as they map a |

| |road to recovery in 2006 include these. |

| |As the year ends, only some litigation limits have passed, and Social Security, tax and immigration|

| |plans are dead or comatose. |

| |As Bush focused on Social Security the first half of the year, the cascading suicide bombings in |

| |Iraq played out on American television screens. |

| |As he prepared to go over the details of his team's 104-99 loss to the Phoenix Suns last night at |

| |MCI Center, Washington Wizards Coach Eddie Jordan might have focused on the fact that his star |

| |guard, Gilbert Arenas, failed to a make a three-pointer for the first time in 53 regular season |

| |games. |

| |One of his sisters does nails in a beauty parlor, so Courtney's wife and daughters get their nails |

| |done free as he tries to figure out how to remove the latest pieces of spyware or viruses on those |

| |hard drives. |

|but, yet, while (對照關 |Conjunctions and Frequency |

|係) | |

| |while (59) + but (201) + yet (7) = 267 |

| |Sentences |

| |The difference, says Mr Nagl, is that the small British army was able to learn from its mistakes |

| |and change, while the bigger American army was not. |

| |One of these industries is based in America, while the other was founded in northern Britain in the|

| |late 19th century. |

| |While it is not easy to find a peace motif among all the traditional artefacts of war, a message of|

| |regeneration does emerge. |

| |But some 67,500 tsunami victims in Indonesia are still living in tents a year into the relief |

| |effort, while another 50,000 have crowded into temporary barracks. |

| |Figures released on April 21st added to the confusion: recorded violent crime rose 9% in the past |

| |year, while the British Crime Survey showed a fall of 10% in violent crime. |

| |The Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, is the only EU head of state to oppose the constitution, while |

| |the Poles fume that the constitution will reduce their country's voting power within the Union. |

| |Conservatives celebrate the right of every God-fearing American to carry a semi-automatic in his |

| |Kyoto-busting SUV while liberals protest that Europe is greener and safer. |

| |While Berkshire's accounting record remains spotless, Buffett, 74, has asked shareholders to trust |

| |him on the issue of succession. |

| |He said that while it was premature to conclude whether mistakes were made, many panel members were|

| |frustrated with the lack of physical testing of the foam under liftoff conditions. |

| |While some of the major U.S. investors have Americans on staff in Europe, their public face is |

| |usually local. |

| |While it is true that clear plastic cups—which are made from a costly raw material called |

| |"K-resin"—are more expensive than standard cups, the cost differential is minimal. |

| |That means each iced-coffee cup costs 10 cents, while a hot-coffee cup costs 8.3 cents. |

| |A coffee bar owner told me it takes seven ounces of ground coffee to make a gallon of regular |

| |coffee, while it takes 8.4 ounces to make a gallon of stronger iced-coffee coffee. |

| |If a pound of coffee costs a cafe $5 (and I can get it for you wholesale!), a 20-ounce cup of |

| |regular coffee costs its maker 34 cents, while iced-coffee coffee costs 41 cents. |

| |While many senior figures in the party might have found a campaign with an unpleasant undertone |

| |acceptable if it brought success, one that is both nasty and ineffective is a different |

| |proposition. |

| |Fully 59% reckon that travelling in the capital has become more dangerous, while only 1% believe |

| |the opposite. |

| |While some people who were close to the bombings or have experience of traumatic events will find |

| |it harder to recover, the great majority will not require counselling or therapy. |

| |While many U.S. populations have recovered, the majority of the world's 100,000 bald eagles still |

| |live in Alaska and B.C., says Canadian biologist Richard Cannings. |

| |And while the B.C. eagle population is thriving, large-scale poaching in the province threatens |

| |American bird populations, because eagles from throughout the western U.S. migrate to B.C. each |

| |winter. |

| |But while he acknowledges that eagles have a historic place in aboriginal societies, Chang adds, |

| |"There are native Americans willing to trade in these parts." |

| |In the first regime one salesman offered one piece of apple for a disc, while the other offered |

| |two. |

| |In the third regime, the second salesman always took the second piece of apple away before handing |

| |over the goods, while the first never gave freebies. |

| |While the shortfall is disappointing, there are some encouraging signs. |

| |The first depicted two men and a woman, while the second showed a picture of three women. |

| |And, while some men may take heart from the news that the sexual dissatisfaction of their lovers is|

| |not necessarily their fault, there is a flip side to the findings. |

| |While some suicide bombers in Iraq have left behind videotaped testimony, Marwan is the first to |

| |tell his story before carrying out such a mission. |

| |Bangladeshis flocked to east London, while North Africans and other Arabs went to parts of west |

| |London. |

| |I can take a horse to water but I can't make him drink. |

| |The evidence is indeed mixed, but there are many signs of progress, even in Iraq. |

| |A few marginal voices have argued that the attack was payback for Iraq, but this is unlikely to |

| |wash. |

| |More legislation may make Britons feel safer, but it will not tell them what they most want to |

| |know: who supplied the bombers with equipment and trained them to use it? |

| |"I'm a helluva poker player, but I have one serious flaw: I can't get my ass off the chair." |

| |Exact figures aren't easy to come by, but various studies place the rate of problem gambling among |

| |underage players somewhere between two and three times the rate for adults. |

| |The church is highly unlikely to tackle condoms and AIDS head-on, but it may, in the near future, |

| |look at the problem within the larger context of modern medicine and bioethics, says Thomas Noble, |

| |a professor of history at Notre Dame. |

| |Vocations are growing in the developing world, but in the West, the priest shortage has reached |

| |epic proportions. |

| |Ordination of women has many supporters, but it is probably a nonstarter. |

| |John Paul II was the first to reach out, but the next pope may have to go further. |

| |John Paul II has often been praised for his embrace of Judaism, but he also reached out to Muslims.|

| | |

| |John Paul II made interfaith dialogue a priority, but his successor needs to expand and intensify |

| |those exchanges, says Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at Harvard. |

| |No team ever goes bust, thanks to civic pride and the desire of rich men to own something |

| |prestigious, but they can come perilously close. |

| |French intellectuals and editorialists may still philosophise in smoke-filled cafes, but their |

| |countrymen flock to Hollywood films and devour American brands. |

| |They sound like the incantations of a long-forgotten emperor, but in fact they are declarations by |

| |those who govern France today: the first by President Jacques Chirac, the second by Nicolas |

| |Sarkozy, his interior minister. |

| |The prime minister may be proving more pragmatic and focused than expected, but many an obstacle |

| |lies in the way. |

| |Mr Sarkozy may be happy to mock a model that produces mass unemployment, but Mr de Villepin |

| |believes that tinkering is enough. |

| |Thus he is ready to inject limited flexibility into the labour market, but he is not pushing for a |

| |more wide-reaching overhaul. |

| |As Mr Reynie says, “the French think they embody democracy, but they have a secret fascination for |

| |monarchy: de Villepin represents a character that enjoys more approval than the French like to |

| |admit.” |

| |Final figures on GPs' pay are not in yet, but there are signs that the new system may prove more |

| |costly than planned for the primary-care trusts that pay for general practice. |

| |Education Ministry says Jong's findings are exaggerated, but officials established a task force |

| |this month to combat violence in schools. |

| |One of Europe's richest countries, Ireland, comes out above all but two of the new member countries|

| |from central and eastern Europe in net receipts per head. |

| |More recently, aid agencies have bombarded fishermen with offers of new boats, but no one has paid |

| |to rebuild the factories that used to supply the ice to preserve their catch. |

| |The British Raj officially ended on Aug. 15, 1947, but its relationship to its subjects did not. |

| |Plenty of British Muslims face staggering poverty and unemployment, but the bombers and their |

| |immediate circle were not among them. |

| |In one DVD are images of what Mr. McDaid called "mujahedeen," Muslims fighting in an array of |

| |conflicts, but he insisted those images were not on the copies given away. |

| |This document need not change much in the way the EU operates, save in some formal respects, but it|

| |does require each country to re-examine and re-confirm some fairly open-ended membership |

| |commitments in minute detail. |

| |Turkey has been accepted as a candidate, but few EU countries can easily conceive of it as a |

| |member, even ten years from now. |

| |Only Croatia is anywhere near ready to start entry negotiations, but its hopes of doing so last |

| |month faltered when the EU decided that it was not co-operating with the Hague war-crimes tribunal,|

| |a precondition for talks. |

| |Ukraine is not recognised as a candidate for Union membership, but if its new pro-western |

| |government forges on with bold political and economic reforms, breaking with Russian and |

| |post-Soviet models, accession talks will be hard to resist. |

| |Such migration usually helps local economies, but it still upsets local interests. |

| |It concludes that the greatest social sorting occurs when parents are free to choose but supply is |

| |rigid; next comes strict neighbourhood schooling; and the least takes place when parents choose and|

| |schools respond quickly to market signals—that is, when it is easy to set up new schools and expand|

| |popular ones, and unpopular schools quickly close. |

| |Many are caught, but most aren't. |

| |The middle classes may love illegal gardeners, but many unskilled Americans fear being displaced by|

| |them, or forced to accept lower wages. |

| |Argentine officials have welcomed imports of fuel from Venezuela, and its help in making contacts |

| |with China, but they are cooling towards Mr Chavez. |

| |"We have Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, but it does not mean anything to black America, which |

| |is still under assault from the social practices of this society." |

| |The fire alarm has gone off in councilman Antonio Villaraigosa's office in city hall, and the |

| |emergency strobe light is flashing, but he isn't budging. |

| |They are not exactly father and son, but they share a singular bond in an elite business: 25 years |

| |ago this summer, almost exactly half his lifetime ago, John G. Roberts went to work for William H. |

| |Rehnquist, and now he stands poised to become the first Supreme Court clerk in American history to |

| |sit on the bench alongside the justice he served. |

| |The atmosphere in Justice Rehnquist's chambers was cozy and informal, but it was clear who ran the |

| |show, said Dean C. Colson, a Florida lawyer who was the third Rehnquist clerk in Mr. Roberts's |

| |year. |

| |This would probably have happened under the previous regime, says Ms Clarke, but it is happening a |

| |lot faster because the hospital is a foundation trust. |

| |The original intention had been that the payments system would cover most activity, but it will now|

| |apply only to elective care. |

| |Gas will be nationalised but the sanctity of contracts will be preserved. |

| |A MAS government will maintain stability, but the central bank should promote jobs as well as low |

| |inflation. |

| |It can continue to set policy on land and natural resources, but the provinces should execute it. |

| |MAS wants to go further, but it is not clear where. |

| |Oxford is still the fifth-best university in the world, according to one recent study, and the |

| |eighth according to another, but Mr Hood believes that unless the way it is managed changes, it |

| |will slide down the rankings. |

| |Outside Oxford, these changes might seem mild and sensible, but things look different from inside |

| |the university. |

| |The collegiate system may look messy, but it guarantees diversity and experiment. |

| |He was way clever, she recalls, so much so that if he didn't get a concept she knew she had to |

| |teach it again, but "he never flaunted his intelligence over the other kids." |

| |By historic standards, the Rehnquist years have been collegial, but the public arguments have grown|

| |ever fiercer in recent years. |

| |There may have been many more incidents, but dozens of shuttle missions have been launched in |

| |darkness, with no visual record of foam, and the tanks themselves cannot be retrieved from the |

| |ocean for analysis. |

| |Engineers recognized that they could not eliminate all risk from debris, but they could do a much |

| |better job of reducing it. |

| |"The conclusion we came to was the wrong one, but the conclusion we came to after considerable |

| |study was that it was better to fly as is." |

| |The phenomenon, called popcorning, was caused by trapped bubbles; NASA solved the problem by |

| |venting the foam with tiny holes, but it was a reminder, if any was needed, that seemingly small |

| |changes could have profound effects. |

| |The Bush administration has let the Red Cross into Guantanamo and prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, |

| |but it has refused to reply to repeated requests for notification of, and access to, undisclosed |

| |detention camps. |

| |“The AFL-CIO shows up publicly in newspapers, but it actually doesn't do very much to affect |

| |members' lives.” |

| |Immigration is widely believed to be out of control, but it is only one indicator of whether the |

| |government is on top of things. |

| |Fonda has often been out in front of social change, but in this case she admits she's catching up |

| |with what many people already know, and her passion could reasonably be mistaken for penitence. |

| |Politics is the one area in which Fonda has been a philosophical rock, but although she was briefly|

| |drawn into the 2004 election when a doctored photo of her with John Kerry at a supposed Vietnam War|

| |protest circulated on the Internet, she knows she's still too politically hot to support any |

| |candidate publicly. |

| |No one will mistake Monster-in-Law, out May 13, in which she co-stars with Jennifer Lopez, for her |

| |award-winning films Klute and Coming Home, but Fonda says the script seemed funny, and she was |

| |interested in seeing whether acting was any less agonizing for her now that she's no longer a |

| |"limited, bifurcated person." |

| |Things were awkward at first, but now the newcomers have been fully accepted; ties of faith have |

| |prevailed over difference of culture. |

| |I didn't get to know her real well, but it was fine. |

| |KKR and Goldman haven't disclosed details, but people familiar with the finances say the investors |

| |at least tripled their initial investment. |

| |"The cells go everywhere, but they seem to be more attracted to areas where there's injury," says |

| |neurodevelopmental pediatrician Maria Escolar, the study's lead author. |

| |They'll give you what you want, but it's going to cost you. |

| |But the difference between Joe and me is that all I can do is scream, but he can actually do |

| |something about it. |

| |Religious practice has fallen in traditionally Catholic places, but there are countervailing |

| |trends. |

| |London's churches are no longer peopled by Irish immigrants, but they seem tolerably full of pious |

| |merchant bankers, hotel workers from Croatia, and Filipina nurses. |

| |Mr Pryor claimed that on a trip to Africa he realised the ugliness of the word “nigger” and |

| |renounced it, but the Pandora's box he opened with the N-word is still open. |

| |They may be soft on the surface, but they are hard on the inside. |

| |Politics will indeed soon resume normal service, but Mr Blair, for the remainder of his |

| |premiership, will increasingly be seen as a figure above and beyond party. |

| |He immediately got involved in big-time banner-making against the American tests in the Aleutians, |

| |but it was his presence on the Phyllis Cormack, alias the Greenpeace, that turned the tide. |

| |There are formal academic programs, but you can really learn to conduct only by doing it, and to do|

| |it you need an orchestra. |

| |A symphony orchestra is many things, but a democracy is not one of them. |

| |The process is called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), but most people know it colloquially as|

| |therapeutic cloning. |

| |At that point, other researchers have used animal-based growth factors and feeder cells to sustain |

| |the growing egg, but that creates problems if the cells are going to be used to treat humans. |

| |No one has to retire, but one or more justices are thought likely to step down soon. |

| |Family-values enthusiasts are confident that Mr Bush wants to push the court their way, but that is|

| |no simple matter. |

| |Seven of the nine incumbents were appointed by Republican presidents, but some, notably David |

| |Souter, have proven less conservative than expected. |

| |Justice Breyer reckoned that the one in a Kentucky courthouse was no good, but the one outside the |

| |Texas capitol was fine, because it was less prominent and surrounded by secular artefacts. |

| |Mr Rehnquist believes it, too, but he is more reluctant to scrap long-standing precedents. |

| |Nobody thinks Mr Kolesnikov is a saint; but his detention is seen as a show of power against the |

| |eastern oligarchs. |

| |Revolutions may change governments, but they cannot instantly transform a country. |

| |In this case, the average outcome was identical, but the monkeys quickly reversed their behaviour |

| |from the first regime and came to prefer trading with the first salesman. |

| |Agriculture has changed that calculus, but people still have the attitudes of the hunter-gatherer |

| |wired into them. Economists take note. |

| |When oil first touched $60 it knocked share prices back a bit for three days, but they resumed |

| |their climb thereafter. |

| |Shares of obviously energy-related firms adjust at once, but broad stockmarket returns fall only |

| |during the following month or even two months—a pattern that is clearest with biggish oil increases|

| |and in countries that are most dependent on energy. |

| |Now oil companies, both private and state-owned, are investing hand over fist, but it will be years|

| |before anyone sees the benefit. |

| |Their 20,000 outstanding contracts (at last count) are nothing like a record, but they do indicate |

| |which way the wind is blowing. |

| |Last year J&J agreed to buy Guidant for a whopping $24.5 billion, but since then their target has |

| |suffered several nasty setbacks. |

| |Not only does MPH support notions of “fair trade” that are far removed from anything advocated by |

| |either Mr Blair or Mr Brown, but the hopes now being vested in Gleneagles are simply insupportable.|

| | |

| |He has stern views on moral issues; but this Princeton and Oxford-educated preacher can happily |

| |discuss the Indian economy and the flat tax. Mr Land claims that one in three of the baby-boomers |

| |now identify themselves as evangelical. |

| |A Zogby poll last November put the national figure for “religious traditionalists” at 29%, but they|

| |accounted for 58% of Republicans. |

| |Its founder, Jim Dobson, a former child-psychology professor, points out that the focus of his |

| |ministry's considerable energy remains family life, but its public-policy arm is growing. |

| |Messrs Land and Dobson both personally oppose gay civil unions; but their planned federal marriage |

| |amendment does not ban them because, in Mr Land's words, “it could then become a civil-rights issue|

| |rather than a marriage issue.” |

| |The Arlington Group, a coalition of some 60 pro-family groups, began with an informal meeting of 23|

| |leaders in Arlington, Virginia, in May 2003, but it was given a spur by a Massachusetts court's |

| |decision to uphold gay marriage in November. |

| |There is probably something in this, but it is hard to see the Democrats seizing it. |

| |Homegrown bombers remain rare, but U.S. and Iraqi military officials are backing away from previous|

| |claims that suicide operations are the exclusive preserve of foreign jihadis. |

| |He was arrested by U.S. patrols twice and detained for short spells, but because he speaks no |

| |English, he was unable to communicate with his captors. |

| |Through Grade 5, the girls wear plaid jumpers and leggings, but the head scarf called a hijab is |

| |optional; the boys wear navy dress pants and light blue shirts. |

| |The students seem to make an effort, but cultural isolation is impossible. |

| |Vice chairman Zarzour has become more hopeful as time has passed since 9/11, believing that "it |

| |will be harder and take longer, but integration is possible. |

| |Plenty of British Muslims face staggering poverty and unemployment, but the bombers and their |

| |immediate circle were not among them. |

| |In one DVD are images of what Mr. McDaid called "mujahedeen," Muslims fighting in an array of |

| |conflicts, but he insisted those images were not on the copies given away. |

| |There may have been many more incidents, but dozens of shuttle missions have been launched in |

| |darkness, with no visual record of foam, and the tanks themselves cannot be retrieved from the |

| |ocean for analysis. |

| |Engineers recognized that they could not eliminate all risk from debris, but they could do a much |

| |better job of reducing it. |

| |"The conclusion we came to was the wrong one, but the conclusion we came to after considerable |

| |study was that it was better to fly as is." |

| |The phenomenon, called popcorning, was caused by trapped bubbles; NASA solved the problem by |

| |venting the foam with tiny holes, but it was a reminder, if any was needed, that seemingly small |

| |changes could have profound effects. |

| |The church calls contraception 'evil,' yet disease is killing the innocent. |

| |The overarching subject of his epic is the legacy of slavery, yet the plays teem with vibrant, |

| |idiosyncratic, fully imagined characters who are never reduced to political placards. |

| |What's more, the National Health Service (NHS) has swallowed up the biggest chunk of the extra |

| |money the government has spent on public services since 2000, yet most people are still |

| |dissatisfied with it (see chart). |

| |The stock gets a special lift from Buffett's marquee leadership, yet investors must live with a |

| |lack of transparency in this area, having only the prognostications of outsiders to rely on. |

| |Six of the eight current Justices plus O'Connor were appointed by Republican Presidents, yet that |

| |court has restricted use of the death penalty and affirmed-- while narrowing--abortion rights, |

| |church-state separation and affirmative action. |

| |While none of these is likely to defeat the Shiite parties, they could force compromises in the |

| |Supreme Council's dangerous agenda. |

| |While he can't determine the election results, Mr. Bush can use the full weight of U.S. leverage to|

| |press the major Iraqi parties, beginning with the Supreme Council, to choose compromise and a |

| |unified Iraq over sectarianism and civil war |

| |So, while I wouldn't expect anything out of the special prosecutor for the remainder of 2005, it's |

| |impossible to rule it out. |

| |While I know I can get full FERS credit for my years under CSRS if I make what they call a |

| |redeposit of the funds I took out, with the hefty interest they charge, the $5K I withdrew in 1983 |

| |has grown into several multiples of that amount! |

| |While the president has put himself in position of being the sole arbiter of victory, he has |

| |managed to make all his opponents appear to be advocating the opposite, which is defeat. |

| |While I realize it is unfair to make you personally answerable for your entire profession, what |

| |assurance can you give us readers that we should continue to place that trust in you reporters? |

| |The town hall briefing slides seem geared to bringing in hew hires, while the conversion document |

| |seems more specific to current employees. |

| |Hansen argues such a move would create more confusion for soldiers while the secrecy of the list |

| |would undermine the U.S. message of respecting human rights and the rule of law. |

| |While we may not want to publish all techniques, there is also a risk that having two sets of |

| |techniques crates confusion and if the incidents at Abu Ghraib are any teacher, that confusion can |

| |cause serious problems. |

| |Many people were mad at the paper about that, while others were mad that the story was published at|

| |all, viewing it as harming the administration's anti-terror efforts. |

| |While I am not a medical professional, I truly believe that she needs inpatient care. |

| |oots. In the most recent New York Times/CBS News Poll, 76 percent of Democrats favored reducing our|

| |commitment to Iraq -- 40 percent were for pulling all the troops out, 36 percent for decreasing |

| |their numbers -- while 13 percent favored keeping current troop levels and 6 percent preferred |

| |increasing their ranks. |

| |Among Republicans, 16 percent favored increasing our troop levels, while 37 percent would keep them|

| |constant. |

| |Only 27% would 'definitely' vote for the former First Lady, while 43% have no intention of ever |

| |casting a vote for her." |

| |While Bush's Iraq rhetoric has shifted, Mr. Cheney's hasn't. |

| |Here, Bernstein was much more openly critical of Bush, while Woodward said his books, which he |

| |described as 'neutral,' offered a sufficiently detailed glimpse into the White House without being |

| |overly didactic. |

| |While the president's advisers worry deeply about public discontent over the war, they are still |

| |betting the American people are willing to give him virtual carte blanche to do what he thinks is |

| |necessary to prevent another Sept. 11. |

| |LAHORE, Pakistan -- India freed eight Pakistani prisoners as part of peace efforts between the |

| |South Asian rivals, while the two governments scheduled new talks to resolve their long-standing |

| |dispute over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir. |

| |Subway conductor Juan Velasquez held a strike sign at the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge on |

| |Tuesday while his wife, a city bus driver, was a picket on Staten Island. |

| |Senyek said moves such as Ciena's make it harder to compare companies because some have accelerated|

| |options vesting while others have not. |

| |That's because while a company may recognize little or no option expense in 2006, it could still |

| |issue new options that would drive up expenses by an unknown amount in future years. |

| |After four years in which Congress repeatedly lay down while President Bush dictated his |

| |priorities, 2005 will go down as the year legislators stood up. |

| |His approval rating on Iraq jumped 10 percentage points since early November, to 46 percent, while |

| |his rating on the economy rose 11 points, to 47 percent. |

| |Democratic and independent voters generally agreed on addressing Katrina's problems, while |

| |self-identified Republicans chose Iraq, 46 percent to 37 percent. |

| |Rogers pressed homeland security officials to deploy the Reveal machines and take other measures |

| |that he said would make the country safer while his PAC received donations from homeland security |

| |contractors, some of which he encouraged to create jobs. |

| |Bryant scored 41 points in the game at Los Angeles while Jamison and Gilbert Arenas combined to |

| |make 11 of 39 shots for 41 points. |

| |Highly recruited Pennsylvania high schooler Jeremy Ricker has given the Terps an oral commitment, |

| |while former Florida backup Josh Portis will transfer to Maryland and be eligible in 2007. |

| |Instead, Jordan focused on the fact that over the course of the final 17 minutes, his team turned |

| |over the ball 11 times while the Suns coughed it up only once. |

| |While its rebuilding teams might take a less ambitious approach, they still attempt to schedule |

| |opponents that are likely to have winning records. |

| |Men tend to use the Web for information and entertainment -- getting sports scores and stock quotes|

| |and downloading music -- while women tend to be heavier users of mapping and direction services, |

| |and communication services such as e-mail. |

| |While young people's social life used to revolve around family, now it increasingly focuses on |

| |friends and work. |

| |While their parents might have dated or consumed alcohol, younger Indians say they can do so |

| |overtly now. |

| |Virginia is a predominantly Republican state, but its voters' brand of Republicanism is moderate |

| |and pragmatic. |

| |Judge Alito, in short, has sometimes taken a narrower view than we believe healthy of statutory |

| |civil rights protections, but his record does not support the frequent descriptions of him as a |

| |knee-jerk reactionary. |

| |So far about 25,000 houses have been built in Aceh, but at least 60,000 people are still living in |

| |tents and perhaps five times that many are living with relatives. |

| |Poland's foreign minister, Stefan Meller, spoke with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about |

| |Ukraine's gas price problems during a visit to Washington this week, but they did not reach |

| |agreement on a concrete response. |

| |The snooping appears to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), but the attorney |

| |general says it doesn't. |

| |And the judgment of who should be deemed linked to al Qaeda is made by the NSA's "operational |

| |workforce," he said. In other words, not only is there no judge involved, but the standard for |

| |surveillance appears to be low. |

| |He continues to insist he did nothing wrong but Democrats are optimistic they can beat him in 2006,|

| |using the Abramoff allegations as a cudgel. |

| |Dana Milbank: As a matter of fact, I have known Scooter's first name for more than a year, but the |

| |administration asked me not to publish it on national security grounds. |

| |His pen name is John F. Harris, but he is known to all by his middle name, Furby. |

| |John F. Harris: These things really vary depending on the news. Today, there's many more coming |

| |from what I'm supposing is probably the left, but that's because of the matter I mentioned in my |

| |first question. |

| |There are divisions in both parties, but I think they are especially consequential on the |

| |Republican side. |

| |John F. Harris: I said I was not going to return much to the Froomkin matter today, but I'm going |

| |to take this one because it bothers me. |

| |I did know that some people raising questions about Froomkin are Republicans, but there was a |

| |particular instance two months back that made me wonder whether we ought to be paying more |

| |attention. |

| |I'm delighted that you enjoy the column, but you know, right, he's not our White House reporter, |

| |and he does not report to me?" |

| |Tom Edsall: As the answer to the previous question suggests, the administration is playing the hand|

| |you describe, but it does not look yet like it is a losing hand. |

| |Montgomery County, Md.: The President's poll numbers are up, but I can't help but ask how even |

| |Republican loyalists can't begin questioning and fearing what is becoming to our democratic |

| |institutions. |

| |They may (or may not) have political beliefs, but it's easier than people seem to think to ignore |

| |such beliefs when reporting the news. |

| |e today. Only a few spending bills are left to be finished in Congress, but some of the disputes |

| |involve tough issues (torture abroad, for example) and it's possible that the Defense Department's |

| |appropriations and authorization bills could slip into 2006. |

| |Yes, federal pensions are eligible for COLAs, but there are restrictions under FERS, which make |

| |then generally not payable until age 62. |

| |The administration appears to be arguing national security concerns, but I assume any fight, if it |

| |develops, will be decided in the courts. |

| |Victim is tortured, victim names a location, team is sent to see if it is correct, but torture |

| |continues as the presumption would be that the initial response is a lie. |

| |Now, if the person using the computer spends a lot of time at porn sites, then there will |

| |undoubtedly be plenty of cookies in there from places like and the like, but that's |

| |another story. |

| |She had renewed it on time and still had several months left in her subscription, but the dang |

| |thing kept giving errors and complaining that it needed to be reinstalled. |

| |A few months back I blogged about a firmware upgrade that fixed a slew of security problems (none |

| |of which were being exploited at the time, but you never know). Check out |

| |I saw on some message boards a long manual sequence of instructions to remove it but I'm afraid to |

| |do something that is not an 'official' solution. |

| |My wi-fi card in the laptop seems to connect to the router, but I cannot then connect to the |

| |Internet. |

| |I would agree it doesn't make sense that Jefferson be compared to other public schools, but I think|

| |most people would be surprised at all its similarities to Fairfax County's other high schools. |

| |I ran out of space this year, but I will do it again next year. |

| |I'd think there would be some stark differences revealed, especially where one or two schools in a |

| |district have high Challenge Index scores, but the rest of that district's schools continue the |

| |illogical practice of barring AP/IB to non-Honors students. |

| |ind. I think having a choice of something like TJ is fine, but the district would have to be |

| |careful to make sure that kids who chose not to go to TJ, or could not get i |

| |I know some of those games can be stressful, but I don't think that is the kind of stress we want |

| |to worry about. |

| |Jay Mathews: In a perfect world, they might not be, but American colleges are ruled by tests, big |

| |long scary final exams. |

| |Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D.: Borderline personality disorder and Seasonal Affective Disorder are two |

| |very different conditions - but it is quite possible to have both of them |

| |I do have SADS, as does my sister, but I find that plenty of indoor light -- grow bulbs especially |

| |help, plus the plants like really them -- and some outdoor exercise really alleviate the low-level |

| |depression. But I am wondering if there is anything else for which I should be on the look-out |

| |Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D.: I like the book by Papoulos and Papoulos, but there are other good books|

| |out there too. |

| |In these trials, new drugs are being tested, but they are often tested against conventional drugs. |

| |Not only is Williams blogging about his day -- which will actually include three different meetings|

| |with the president -- but he's already posted a two-minute video excerpt from the first interview, |

| |in which he and Bush are standing in the Oval Office. |

| |George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr (one critic calls him the man who "literally |

| |wrote the book on government seizure of electronic evidence") finds "pretty decent arguments" on |

| |both sides, but his own conclusion is that Bush's actions were "probably constitutional." |

| |The event, held in Time Warner's New York headquarters, was supposedly off the record, but so much |

| |of it has already been reported that it will not hurt to add Scalia's views on flag burning |

| |Consistency is not always to be admired in a politician, but when a supposed liberal is one of only|

| |two senators to sponsor a bill to restrict freedom of speech, then we are talking about something |

| |basic. |

| |Perhaps the brief argues, as its author, John Yoo -- now a professor of law at Berkeley but then a |

| |deputy assistant attorney general -- argued 14 days after Sept. 11, 2001. |

| |His words were slippery, but his meaning was clear. |

| |I don't know if anyone does time capsules anymore, but if they do I suggest that a DVD of the |

| |George Clooney movie "Syriana" be included. |

| |I'm not sure it tells you much about today's America -- not as much as an iPod, for instance, or a |

| |clip from "Entertainment Tonight" -- but it sure tells you something about Hollywood and how it |

| |never made… |

| |Call me naive -- or paranoid, or liberal, or whatever the favored epithet is this week -- but I'm |

| |inclined to give Mr. Gaghan the benefit of the doubt." |

| |The agency not only sets up one of its own, Clooney, but it assassinates a perfectly nice Middle |

| |Eastern potentate to ensure that his oil remains in friendly hands. |

| |They were awesomely incompetent, and, in the case of Bush, they were monumentally ignorant and |

| |incurious, but they did not give a damn for oil or empire. |

| |Neoconservatism crashed and burned in Iraq, but liberalism never even showed up. |

| |Slovakia's system is not yet two years old, but it's already successful. |

| |America and the West may have won the Cold War, but if we continue to be burdened by the internal |

| |revenue code, the former communist nations may get the last laugh. |

| |Feulner tried to start a round of applause, but nobody joined in, and Leavitt sat down quickly. |

| |Sirius's Greenstein says he'll be overjoyed if 10 percent of the Stern audience follows him to the |

| |pay service, but the technology is still unfamiliar to most Americans. |

| |Journalists don't usually draft presidential candidates, but the New Republic's Ryan Lizza is doing|

| |just that: |

| |We'll encourage readers to post their thoughts, but we'll screen them first to make sure the |

| |conversation is civil. |

| |The economy continues to move ahead, thanks in part to the Bush tax cuts, but that doesn't seem to |

| |be doing much for the president's standing with the voters. |

| |This suggests that people are benefiting from the strong economy, but they believe the media when |

| |news reports tell them over. |

| |"Perhaps this comes as no surprise -- it doesn't surprise me -- but the national media has long |

| |since decided it needs to downplay Dean if the Democrats are to survive 2006." |

| |The idea seems to be that we go out to report but when it comes time to write we turn our brains |

| |off and repeat the spin from both sides. |

| |"Brooks didn't tear up, but she also didn't look happy to be back in Atlanta on Wednesday taking |

| |the witness stand against her former lover. |

| |"Torture has always been rife around the world but governments have generally condemned it, denied |

| |it, or both. |

| |" 'They've convened the best and the brightest people on aging in the field but they don't want |

| |input from us,' said Helene Stone, a retired social worker who works for the Lorain County Council |

| |on Aging." |

| |They're frankly smaller than they used to be, but that doesn't mean there's not intensity out |

| |there. |

| |"Mr. Bush's speech to the Deere-Hitachi workers received friendly applause, but some in the |

| |audience said afterward that the president had chosen to present his message of economic cheer at |

| |one of North Carolina's big success stories, and not at one of the state's hard-hit textile mills |

| |or furniture manufacturers. |

| |"Every president claims credit when the economy is prosperous, but independent experts long have |

| |agreed that presidents have little influence over short-term economic conditions. |

| |Wolfowitz was 0-for-3 on those, but since taking the World Bank job six months ago he has found a |

| |second act. |

| |Putin can veto the bill, but it is considered highly likely that he will sign it because some of |

| |his concerns were addressed through a series of amendments. |

| |The MTA scrapped a proposal to raise the retirement age for new hires from 55 or require new |

| |employees to contribute more to their pensions, but the contract would require new employees to pay|

| |1.5 percent of their salaries toward health care. |

| |"They're saying this is for everyone, but people can't get to their jobs or buy Christmas |

| |presents," said Walter. |

| |The two sides continued talking through the weekend and the union set a new deadline for Tuesday, |

| |but negotiations broke down Monday night. |

| |"We don't always agree, but we know how to find common ground and get things done." |

| |"Hinging a regulatory policy on the idea that there's going to be numerous competitors in a |

| |marketplace with their own facilities . . . it's a great vision to have but I think the emperor's |

| |wearing no clothes in this case," said Earl Comstock, |

| |"It may be legitimate lying, but it is nevertheless lying to shareholders about the cost of |

| |options." |

| |The Air Force OSI special agents work on felony crimes and drug use, but threat detection has |

| |increasingly become a focus. |

| |The Bush presidency has a lot of big ideas, which is generally a good thing, but there just is not |

| |a lot of legislative follow-through." |

| |Bush is a strong leader and whether he is honest and trustworthy than they did earlier in the fall,|

| |but Americans remain sharply divided on those presidential traits. |

| |That doesn't necessarily solve the division and the difference, but it drains the disagreement of |

| |some of its animosity if you feel you've been heard." |

| |The Reveal machine "is slower but it solves particular problems," Ellenbogen, the company's |

| |president. |

| |"The fact that these people were coming to my fundraisers, I was pleased about it, but it did not |

| |influence me." |

| |"For all those people who still do qualify for individual assistance, the rent will be paid for a |

| |year, but they won't get free utilities," said FEMA spokesman Don Jacks. |

| |Arenas came up with the loose ball, but Diaw blocked his shot. |

| |The ball had good rotation as it left Butler's hand but hit the front of the rim and bounced to |

| |Marion. |

| |We knew we were a good team, and pretty much competed with everybody we played against, but we're |

| |starting to just get that real confidence that we can beat these good teams. |

| |Yeager used to think all CAA teams should play comparable schedules, but he now advocates a varied |

| |approach, and tells coaches with postseason aspirations to establish their credentials with |

| |difficult nonconference games. |

| |He really prefers to be balanced but he wants to be known as a team that when you look at us, other|

| |people in the league will respect you for being a tough, physical team. |

| |We might not have been ready for it before, but if we could convince our coach, and he in turn |

| |convinced the staff, that gave us confidence." |

| |The Redskins went on to win, albeit by only 17-13, but a new image had been cast. |

| |Traditionally, women have lagged behind men in adoption of Internet technologies, but a study |

| |released yesterday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that women under age 65 now |

| |outpace men in Internet usage. |

| |John Colbert, the company's chief executive, said Secret Service and FBI customers were among those|

| |whose information was included in the hacked database, but he declined to say whether credit card |

| |information belonging to those agencies was compromised. |

| |The IBM X900 probably does not have a lot in common with the typical $500 Dell laptop, but his |

| |family members seem to think his day job should make removing pesky computer viruses and spyware a |

| |snap. |

| |"I would love to run and hide, but it's very hard when you're a captive audience," he said. |

| |Nobody knows how disruptive the leap second really is, but researchers hope to find out soon. |

| |Call centers have brought new wealth to India, but they are also fostering a cultural backlash, as |

| |the country's young, hip BPO workers run up against the traditions. |

| |I was initially treated for depression, yet it was my family doctor who listened to me describe |

| |manic cycles of not sleeping, doing crafts all night, and rages against family who sent me to a |

| |psychologist/psychiatrist team. |

| |There are plenty of troublesome images within the vast country, yet the big picture seems positive:|

| |the continuation of growth and no immediate crises on the horizon. |

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