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 …



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。

自然英文新聞文本關係代名詞種類、句子及出現頻率表

|關係代名詞(relative |自然新聞英文文本 |

|pronouns) |(Original English Journalistic Texts) |

|which (262) |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. |

| |Meanwhile, the Japanese tobacco company JTI, which makes Winston and Camel brands at a $400 million|

| |state-of-the-art factory it built in St. Petersburg, is embroiled in a furious court battle with |

| |authorities over a more than $80 million tax demand from2000 that has prompted complaints from the |

| |Japanese government. |

| |Eldorado, which was founded a decade ago by two brothers, Igor and Oleg Yakovlev, has been growing |

| |at a phenomenal rate. |

| |“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are |

| |God's,” said Jesus, thus making clear his belief that church and state should stick to their core |

| |competences. |

| |When Tatarstan, the core of the old Idel-Ural, tried to reintroduce the Latin alphabet in which the|

| |local Turkic language is most logically written, this was banned by the Kremlin. |

| |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. |

| |One way was through information operations (IO), which means, at the crudest level, generating good|

| |public relations for the army. |

| |Every brigade in Iraq and Afghanistan now has a secure intranet page, which soldiers are encouraged|

| |to fill with observations and queries. |

| |This change, incidentally, makes the CTCs extremely similar to the British army's Operational |

| |Training Advisory Group, which has used role-playing for two decades. |

| |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. |

| |The attacks took place just before an election in which the opposition argued that the Iraq war had|

| |imperilled its citizens. |

| |The Senate has been struggling for weeks to avoid a showdown over filibusters—a parliamentary |

| |procedure for delaying votes which the Democrats have used to block Mr Bush's judges. |

| |Illinois has instituted a self-exclusion program in which gamblers can put their names on a |

| |voluntary blacklist, allowing casinos to eject them from the premises, require them to donate their|

| |winnings to a gambling-treatment program and, in some cases, charge them with trespassing. |

| |The latter group, which sees itself as a sort of evangelizing Marine Corps for the pope, says the |

| |number of its priests and seminarians worldwide has tripled since 1980 to 3,000. |

| |The centrifugal forces are so, so powerful that it becomes, I expect, ever more important for the |

| |Catholic Church to remain catholic, which is universal," says Neuhaus. |

| |No club is in danger of being demoted from the major leagues except through a kind of |

| |administrative fatwa, which is not exercised very often. |

| |As in football, winning games means more money for a team—but so does losing, thanks to a system in|

| |which the richest baseball clubs pay millions of dollars to the poorest. |

| |It will repay the central bank partly by issuing new debt, which is likely to pay a coupon rate of |

| |around 9%. |

| |The first is a fratricidal war on the political right, which has intensified since the riots in the|

| |banlieues. |

| |He is creating a new two-year job contract for companies with fewer than 20 employees, with |

| |much-needed easy-dismissal rules, which will come into effect as soon as September. |

| |That contrasts with the last official numbers, in 2002-03, which showed an annual figure of |

| |￡61,000. |

| |General practice was therefore the least prestigious bit of the profession, which made it hard to |

| |recruit and retain doctors, especially in poorer parts of the country. |

| |Partly in order to increase the supply of GPs, the government introduced new contracts for them |

| |last year, which give big incentives to the shrewdest. |

| |The company announced last week that it has hired dancer Cho Myung Ae as a model to help sell its |

| |Anycall mobile phones, which the Samsung ads claim can be used anywhere in the world--with the |

| |possible exception of North Korea, where citizens need government permission to even talk to |

| |foreigners. |

| |That would surely be better done by national governments, which are likely to have greater |

| |knowledge of which regions and which projects merit support. |

| |Parliament is debating a new internet law which may impose further restrictions. |

| |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. |

| |During the initial airlift, several charities flew in unsolicited, unwanted donations of winter |

| |clothing, which added to congestion at airports. |

| |In Thailand, the richer and relatively unscathed province of Phuket has received more aid than |

| |Phangnga, the province which includes Khao Lak. |

| |GAM, which was already on the defensive, seems to have lost weapons and fighters in the tsunami. |

| |All this, coupled with some flexibility from Indonesia's new government, contributed to its |

| |decision to sign a peace agreement in August, which has proved remarkably durable so far. |

| |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. |

| |But some of these tests, which are run by the state government, may have been faulty, and perhaps |

| |even compromised by politics. |

| |William Morgan, who directs the exercise-psychology lab at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, |

| |has studied mysterious scuba accidents in which divers drowned with plenty of air in their tanks. |

| |They respond to that overwhelming sensation by relying on their instinct, which is to rip out |

| |whatever is in their mouths. |

| |Lindell sees the same tendency, which disaster researchers call normalcy bias, when entire |

| |populations are asked to evacuate. |

| |Even in the World Trade Center, which had complicated escape routes and had been attacked once |

| |before, preparation levels were abysmal, we now know. |

| |They are alienated from their parents' rural South Asian culture, which they see as backward. |

| |Reared in an often racist milieu, they feel excluded from mainstream British society, which has so |

| |far not yielded to hyphenated immigrant identities as America has. |

| |Instead, they eventually brought over wives or young families, forming insular communities in which|

| |English fluency was dispensable. |

| |The first wave's attitude was, and largely still is, one of gratitude toward Britain, which offered|

| |a livelihood and left them alone to practice their religion. |

| |Both groups say South Asians have actually prospered more than whites, which has generated some |

| |resentment. |

| |They turned, instead, to the more rigid, orthodox Deobandi school of Islam, which also had a mosque|

| |in town. |

| |In Beeston and across Britain, that is exactly what they are doing, which may make Prime Minister |

| |Tony Blair's call for mosques to preach against extremism an exercise in futility. |

| |Labour has mostly ignored those figures and has plumped for the British Crime Survey, which |

| |measures people's experiences but fails to capture some offences—notably, crimes against children. |

| |The police are showing more interest in crimes that were previously under-recorded, which makes no |

| |difference to the British Crime Survey but pushes up the police figures (recorded rapes of men |

| |increased from 150 in 1995 to 893 in 2003-04, for example). |

| |The older members ponder, with varying degrees of anxiety, the low tax rates and the even lower |

| |wages which most of the new countries have brought with them into the single market. |

| |After overthrowing communism, they had to beat back the neo-authoritarian government of Vladimir |

| |Meciar, which ran the country in the mid-1990s. |

| |No country is enjoying this process, least of all France, which holds its ratification referendum |

| |on May 29th, and has emerged as the unforeseen doubter. |

| |The Union would become a much less friendly place for the new members, which tend to share |

| |Britain's taste for market liberalisation, tax competition, subsidiarity and Atlanticism, and look |

| |to it as a guarantor of those things. |

| |France fears not merely that it is losing its historic leadership of the Union, but also that |

| |enlargement is bringing in more low-wage, low-tax countries which will further undermine, through |

| |competition, the French model of big government and high taxes. |

| |Its new president, Traian Basescu, elected in December, has said that his priority is to work |

| |closely with Washington and London, a formula which pointedly omits Paris and Brussels. |

| |“Romania is a country which has respect for itself,” he said, “we do not like these kinds of |

| |declarations.” |

| |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. |

| |They do not want to anger Russia, which sees these former Soviet lands as its sphere of influence. |

| |The emphasis throughout the West on national security since September 11th 2001 means that it is no|

| |longer clear even when the countries which joined the EU last year will be admitted to the Schengen|

| |zone of passport-free travel, if ever. |

| |One answer might be a two-tier Europe in which new countries would be invited to join the Union, |

| |but only on the basis that they would be denied Schengen membership, free movement of labour, farm |

| |subsidies, and the right to vote on constitutional issues for a long transitional period or even |

| |permanently. |

| |It would anger the countries waiting to join, just as the piecemeal postponement of some rights and|

| |privileges has angered the countries which joined last year. |

| |It would also end all hope of using market signals to drive up standards, which is presumably part |

| |of the attraction for some. |

| |Mr Bush touted a programme called “Basic Pilot”, which allows firms to check with a federal |

| |database to see whether a prospective worker is legal. |

| |And he boasted that swoops on worksites under “Operation Rollback”, which was “completed” this |

| |year, resulted in the arrest of hundreds of illegal aliens and convictions against a dozen |

| |employers. |

| |In June, Venezuela set up Petrocaribe, under which it is offering 12 Caribbean countries cheap |

| |credit for oil imports. |

| |Buying Ameritrade, which is roughly the same size, should mean more customers for its array of |

| |products, as well as savings from combining services and platforms. |

| |"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." |

| |But as mayor of L.A., which is 47% Latino, he is destined to become an icon of the nationally |

| |emerging Latino political class. |

| |In the end it will be his ability to deliver that future, and not his ethnicity, for which he will |

| |be remembered. |

| |The memorandums Mr. Roberts wrote are in Justice Blackmun's papers at the Library of Congress, |

| |which were made public in 2004. |

| |The price of gasoline, which Americans still expect to cost just a buck a gallon, now touches $3 in|

| |some places. |

| |This bill is similar to last year's failed energy bill, which itself was based on the |

| |recommendations of the Cheney energy task force of 2001. |

| |In fact, all these arguments are part of the same battleground, which pits an increasingly |

| |self-confident evangelical America against a secular education establishment. |

| |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. |

| |Long feared by the elite, Mr Morales has won over part of the middle class, which is disgusted with|

| |corruption and hopeful that he will be less disruptive in office than he has been on the street. |

| |Mr Quiroga would have more support from Congress and the governors, but would face the rage of the |

| |social movements, which have toppled two presidents since 2003. |

| |Those from the east will push for broad autonomy, which could come only after a referendum and |

| |constitutional reform. |

| |A board of external trustees would set the university's overall budget; under them would be a |

| |single management body in which the heads of colleges would be in a minority. |

| |The colleges, which do most of the teaching, assess their dons one way. |

| |Buffett knew about the deals, which totaled about $500 million and were legal. |

| |Regulation of the industry rests mainly with the states, which are short on resources--a condition |

| |that may have allowed abuses to incubate. |

| |The SEC, which has only limited jurisdiction--and only over insurers that raise capital in the |

| |public markets--has begun jockeying for a larger role. |

| |Classmate Betsy Starr Swan remembers the science fair in which her team's water-purification |

| |exhibit lost out to a Roberts-designed automatic table fork. |

| |An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll last week showed public approval of Congress at 33%, which is the |

| |lowest since 1994, the year voters got angry enough to topple the Democratic majority of the Senate|

| |and the House. |

| |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. |

| |Her new party will hurt the SDP's two small partners: the Left Party, which has struggled since she|

| |quit, and the Greens. |

| |But the SDP, which has ruled Sweden for all but nine of the past 73 years, could lose votes too. |

| |He has defied his critics to survive crises before—most notably in the various court cases over his|

| |past business dealings, which included allegations of involvement in bribing judges. |

| |But the scale of his defeat has plunged his coalition into a crisis from which it will be hard to |

| |recover. |

| |However, the defeats in the regional elections may make it much harder to hold together his |

| |governing block, which is a disparate group of regional and national parties with conflicting aims.|

| |It is American policy to comply with its treaty obligations, including those under the UN |

| |Convention Against Torture, of which it is a signatory. |

| |He is scathing when it comes to CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which at last |

| |squeaked through the House of Representatives this week. |

| |From different places, there came different religious trends; among immigrants from Pakistan, most |

| |adhered to the Barelvi tradition, which reveres local saints and shrines and stresses the eternal |

| |presence of the Prophet Mohammed. |

| |Many Indian Muslims preferred the Deobandi school which puts less emphasis on the prophet, or on |

| |any other human figure, and more on the worship of God. |

| |Among the Arabs of London, some of the most devout have been attracted by the Muslim Brotherhood |

| |teachings which combine purist theology with a longing for Islamic forms of governance and law, at |

| |least in Muslim countries. |

| |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." |

| |The Munich-based company, which builds and services civil and military aircraft engines, used to be|

| |a part of Daimler. |

| |As part of its restructuring, MTU, which employs 7,400 people worldwide, has cut about 1,000 jobs. |

| |The German firm, which makes ATMs for banks, was singled out by the SPD's Muntefering in his |

| |"locust" critique because of the profits that its investors, KKR and Goldman Sachs, made when they |

| |sold out. |

| |Blackstone made such a big return--more than $3 billion--from its investment in German chemical |

| |fiber company Celanese, which it acquired and quickly took public again in the U.S., that it has |

| |drawn the ire of a New York City--based hedge fund, Paulson & Co., which alleges that the initial |

| |deal wasn't fairly valued. |

| |Yes, iced-coffee season is upon us, which means that scam artists are gearing up to charge you more|

| |for less. |

| |Dennis Mehiel, CEO of Sweetheart Cups, which supplies coffee shops all over the country, told me |

| |that a standard clear plastic cup (let's say the CD20 model) will cost a retailer $100 per thousand|

| |while a standard paper cup (oh, let's shoot the moon and buy the P520 model) will cost $83 per |

| |thousand. |

| |That leaves them talking about immigration, which is perhaps the only area where they have a clear |

| |message that resonates with public opinion. |

| |John Paul's successor should, in theory, have the advantage of taking over a relatively coherent |

| |and unitary organisation, after a quarter-century in which Vatican authority over the world's |

| |400,000 or so Catholic priests, and their combined flock of about one billion people, has steadily |

| |been reasserted. |

| |A papacy which began by invoking “people power” against tyranny often seemed to be imposing, from a|

| |great height, a rigid set of principles on believers whose everyday experience it barely |

| |understood. |

| |One obvious way to seek to reverse the Catholic church's decline in the developing world would be |

| |for the conclave of cardinals which appoints a successor to choose one of their Latino or African |

| |brethren as the next pope. |

| |But in a world which expects to discover truth through open-ended discussion, the treatment of |

| |these turbulent priests made them into popular heroes. |

| |Think of the incident which marred the pope's visit to Syria in 2001, where the pope broke new |

| |ground by entering a mosque to pray at the tomb of John the Baptist. |

| |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. |

| |They were expecting him to implement the changes in Catholic thinking and practice decreed by the |

| |second Vatican Council, which assembled in 1962. |

| |There was, perhaps, a fundamental contradiction in the mandate which he received in 1978. |

| |And forget about parish meetings in which people bat about random ideas on how to keep the church |

| |going. |

| |Joel Osteen, the chief pastor of Lakewood, has a television-ministry, which reaches 7m people |

| |around the world, and a best-selling book, “Your Best Life Now”. |

| |Pentecostalism, which was invented in a Kansas bible college in 1901, currently has well over 100m |

| |adherents around the world. |

| |The exception is the King's Cross fire of 1987, which killed 31 people and led to revelations about|

| |the dangers of the Tube that were as shocking as those exposed in the past few weeks. |

| |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. |

| |So too did the name of a new body, “Greenpeace”, fashioned from the boat's alias, which Mr Hunter |

| |proposed as they limped back to port. |

| |In another case, B.C. native Terry Antoine was sentenced in 2001 to two years for smuggling, |

| |selling and possessing eagle parts in the U.S. A federal jury in Seattle heard that Antoine, who |

| |was linked to the deaths of 173 eagles, had paid other B.C. residents $20 to $50 apiece to shoot |

| |the birds, which he then butchered and smuggled the parts across the border. |

| |For example, whereas Hwang's assistants gently squeeze the nuclei from eggs donated by female |

| |volunteers, researchers at other labs use a microaspirator to suck out the contents, which Hwang |

| |believes may damage the eggs unnecessarily. |

| |He doesn't want anyone to confuse his work with reproductive cloning, which he deems "unsafe and |

| |unethical." |

| |The Big Mac index, which we have compiled since 1986, is based on the notion that a currency's |

| |price should reflect its purchasing power. |

| |More important, the $5.05 charged for a Swiss Big Mac helps to pay for the retail space in which it|

| |is served, and for the labour that serves it. |

| |It has gaps in the Czech Republic and Hungary, which Bank Austria can fill. |

| |HVB has €24 billion of non-performing loans, against which it has made provisions of 57%. |

| |Technology, which made it possible to shift such work abroad in the first place, is now helping to |

| |bring it back. |

| |Their job is to uphold a venerable text, which empowers them to overrule any other branch of |

| |government. |

| |Another imperative should have been to allay anxieties about a Yushchenko presidency in southern |

| |and eastern Ukraine, which overwhelmingly backed his rival, Viktor Yanukovich. |

| |The pod is designed with an inflatable tube around its edges, which should cause it to bounce off |

| |the walls of a building. |

| |Now all that is needed is some way of getting through the sealed windows with which most tall |

| |building are glazed. |

| |Their paper, which will be published in Physical Review Letters, reports what they believe is the |

| |gravitational effect of the CNB on the CMB. |

| |The universe's primordial photons, which had previously been scattering chaotically off the |

| |electrically charged protons, electrons and alpha particles now imprisoned in the newly formed |

| |atoms, were thereby set free. |

| |They found, as they had hoped, that the model universes which most resembled the real one were |

| |those in which the CNB most resembled what cosmologists predict that it should look like. |

| |At the heart of the scheme is a national identity register, which will record basic personal |

| |details: name, sex, date and place of birth, address, nationality, immigration status and the |

| |numbers of documents such as driver's licences and passports. |

| |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). |

| |Petter Osmundsen, a petroleum economist who teaches at Stavanger University in Norway, suggests |

| |another: excessive focus on short-term measures of financial performance, which discouraged firms |

| |from making long-term bets on growth and encouraged them to dish out their profits to shareholders |

| |instead in the form of increased dividends and share buybacks. |

| |Mr Soludo wants to see more banks offering the right services to ordinary depositors, which in turn|

| |will help stabilise the lending environment in one of the continent's biggest economies. |

| |According to Bismarck Rewane, an analyst at Lagos-based Financial Derivatives, many of the banks |

| |have managed to meet the capitalisation benchmark by raising capital through share offerings and |

| |entering into special treaties which sometimes involve the exchange of loans for deposits. |

| |It suspended the recall of 74.5 billion naira of public-sector deposits from banks last year, which|

| |had been intended to lessen banks' dependence on cyclical government funds. |

| |He accepts that America will have nothing to do with the aid-as-a-percentage-of-GDP targets to |

| |which the Europeans have now signed up. |

| |Nor will it contribute to Gordon Brown's International Finance Facility (IFF), the chancellor's |

| |much vaunted “Marshall Plan for Africa”, which is designed to speed up capital flows to recipients |

| |of aid. |

| |He promised the strict evangelical group, which has 16m members, that he would work hard to ban gay|

| |marriage and abortion, and that their “family values” were his values, too. |

| |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). |

| |But the Bush administration, which is highly sensitive to public opinion, never quite gives the |

| |religious right what it wants. |

| |The religious right has won some victories, from getting PBS not to show a spin-off from “Arthur” |

| |in which his friend Buster visited a lesbian couple in Vermont, to the president dashing back |

| |across the country to sign the Schiavo bill. |

| |The administration wants to prosecute only the most outrageous material; Focus would rather it |

| |began prosecuting mainstream porn, which would automatically rein in the hard stuff. |

| |The Catholic Church, which is still recovering from its paedophile scandal, is much less trenchant |

| |on gay marriage than it is about abortion. |

| |Nebraska's law, which won the backing of 70% of voters there, recently fell foul of one federal |

| |judge. |

| |Both abortion and gay marriage point to the centrality of the judiciary, which Mr Bush is indeed |

| |conservatising. |

| |The bad news is that this achievement is 600,000 patients short of the mid-2005 target set by the |

| |WHO, which means that “3 by 5” looks like turning into “3 by 6” instead. |

| |As treatment becomes available, more people are also turning up for counselling and testing, which |

| |in turn helps with AIDS prevention. |

| |A third is that they regulate susceptibility to anxiety, which gets in the way of an orgasm. |

| |The Islamic students faced discrimination as well, to which they responded with a different but |

| |just as American idea: forming gangs. |

| |Built a decade before the school, the mosque was started by moderates but then saw a power struggle|

| |in which hard-liners came out on top. |

| |To senior Ali Fadhli, the Fox TV show 24, which had a plot this season about a Muslim terrorist |

| |cell, is "obnoxious," he says. |

| |National Wildlife Refuge, which was dropped in the legislative endgame. But the bill also omitted |

| |something else of consequence: $50 million to support peace monitors in the devastated Sudanese |

| |territory of Darfur. |

| |The flow of petrodollars to Chad's government has remained transparent, which is more than can be |

| |said in many African oil states. |

| |But Mr. Wolfowitz needs high-level help from other outsiders, notably the American and French |

| |governments and Exxon Mobil Corp., which leads the consortium that developed local oil |

| |In 2002, a Bush administration threat to withhold several hundred million dollars in aid got Mr. |

| |Ibrahim's case in front of the Egyptian Supreme Court, which promptly annulled his conviction. Mr. |

| |Mubarak's vindictive persecution of Mr. Nour, whom he perceives as a political rival to his son |

| |Gamal, has outraged much of Egypt's political establishment, which would quietly welcome U.S. |

| |intervention. |

| |Belarus's democratic opposition, which had been preparing for a presidential election in July, was |

| |left with one week to register its candidate and just a few more to campaign, without the benefit |

| |of mass media, money or the right to free assembly. |

| |From the general fund, which the mayor pledged not to touch? |

| |President Bush, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Gen. Michael V. Hayden all strove to |

| |justify the program, under which the NSA has conducted electronic surveillance of hundreds of |

| |people domestically since Sept. 11 without warrants from the secret court that is supposed to |

| |oversee such snooping. |

| |The huge U.S. trade deficit, which threatened a collapse in the dollar and a destabilizing spike in|

| |U.S. interest rates, actually delivered neither. |

| |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. |

| |Instead, the U.S. economy kept growing at a rate close to the impressive 4.2 percent notched up in |

| |2004, which many had assumed was unsustainable. |

| |These increases, which outpaced inflation, help explain disappointing wages. If it costs more to |

| |provide medical insurance to workers, employers will pay themselves back by holding wages down. |

| |On Wednesday he announced the results of a preliminary study of convictions that predated modern |

| |DNA testing but in which biological samples had been retained. |

| |So, the Post poll, which was in the field Dec. 15-18, and the CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey (Dec. |

| |16-18) both overlapped with the wiretaps. |

| |He doesn't appear to be driven by the normal news cycles, which would prohibit any major news |

| |coming out this week or next. |

| |The Post's Stephen Barr is the author of The Federal Diary , which runs Sunday through Friday in |

| |the Metro section. |

| |Yes, Tom Edsall is president of the club, which we call "Jumping the Snark." |

| |When we are reporting on an event or development about which no one will talk on the record, we do |

| |make use of anonymous sources. |

| |But as deadly and horrible as the roadside bombs and suicide bombers are, I wonder if most |

| |historians would say it amounts to a "civil war," which generally involves a rebel army of some |

| |type with a discernable leadership and a strategy for assuming control of the country being fought |

| |over. |

| |In your article today about the budget negotiations over the weekend, you reference the defense |

| |bill, which will now include John McCain's language repudiating torture of prisoners. |

| |The pay raise, however, appears on track, and we are awaiting the president's executive order, |

| |which will trigger publication of new pay tables. |

| |A federal annuity is made up of two parts--the money you put in yourself, which has already been |

| |taxed; and the government share, which has not been taxed. |

| |The way to figure this out is to consult IRS publication 721, which has lots of information about |

| |how these shares are determined. |

| |Yes, federal pensions are eligible for COLAs, but there are restrictions under FERS, which make |

| |then generally not payable until age 62. |

| |" But if what we do to terrorists is no worse than basic training, or SERE training, which we do to|

| |our own troops, then aren't you really arguing that we shouldn't train our military to be |

| |battle-hardened? |

| |I also thought that the House may have thought that too which would explain why they held the |

| |symbolic vote of support for the McCain amendment yesterday. |

| | 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. |

| |They are annoying, yes, and you can configure your e-mail program to filter out (or delete) all |

| |files with attachments like .exe, .zip, or .rar, which account for the majority of e-mail borne |

| |viruses and worms. |

| |Then select "Find now" from the option on the right of the next box, which should list all of the |

| |hidden and non-hidden accounts on the system. |

| |…are having trouble running certain already-installed programs under your limited user account, |

| |check out this advice from Microsoft - which has a long list of offending programs and some advice |

| |on what to do about them. |

| |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). |

| |I've gotten the TrojanVundo on my system which Symantic detects but cannot quarantine or delete so |

| |it is perpetually warning me. |

| |Here is a program that was disclosed to Congress (including opposition leaders), vetted by lawyers |

| |and arguably 100% legal, which the Government asked the NYT not to disclose. |

| |For those who don't catch the reference here, this year on the new Challenge Index I introduced the|

| |College Board's new equity and excellence statistic, which is the percentage of all students in a |

| |school's senior class that had at least a 3 on at least one AP test sometime in high school. |

| |Unlike the challenge index, which just counts the number of tests taken, the E and E rating does |

| |measure how well kids do on the test. |

| |I do record the passing rates, and the E and E rating I referred to above, which are on the new |

| |list today, also give you a rough idea of which school has the most kids passing the tests. |

| |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? |

| |Look at today's extra section in the Post (except for DC, which will run these lists and story on |

| |Dec. 29). |

| |Once again this year, they look just as poor in the Challenge Index as the DC schools, which is |

| |pretty shocking considering that many of the PG County high schools, relatively speaking, are not |

| |poverty stricken. |

| |Annandale, Va.: We live on a street which divides two High School districts |

| |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. |

| |…we figured out a "cocktail" that involves an SSRI (zoloft), an antiepileptic (topamax); and |

| |Welbutrin, which seems to be hitting all the right neurotransmitters. |

| |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. |

| |, The Emotional Revolution, which outlines many ways of treating PTSD |

| |But I am wondering if there is anything else for which I should be on the look-out. |

| |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. |

| |.The medicine also helped increase my sex drive, which was not only low because of the depression, |

| |but because I am on birth control. |

| |You might also try the Ross Center for Anxiety Disorders in DC (Tel: 202-363-1010) which has many |

| |excellent therapists of different disciplines. |

| |The tilt allows you to get closer to the light source without being bothered by the glare, which |

| |may explain the superior efficacy of the tilted fixture. |

| |And be sure to tackle phobic and avoidant symptoms which enhance the disability associated with |

| |anxiety disorders |

| |If not, I don't see how they can claim anything other than that we're winning in the Green Zone, |

| |which doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment. |

| |An example is the July 15 article by Mike Allen with reporting by Carole Leonnig, which stated this|

| |about Matt. |

| |Yet there has never been any rectification of the record, or explanation of who gave the reporters |

| |this misinformation and why, which seems like a journalistic responsibility. |

| |I wonder if most historians would say it amounts to a "civil war," which generally involves a rebel|

| |army of some type with a discernable leadership and a strategy for assuming control of the country |

| |being fought over. |

| |In your article today about the budget negotiations over the weekend, you reference the defense |

| |bill, which will now include John McCain's language repudiating torture of prisoners. |

| |As I recall, it is based on the G Fund annualized rate of return, which, in turn, is based on the |

| |market basket of Treasury securities that the TSP uses to create the G Fund. |

| |NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams showed the president the latest Newsweek cover , which |

| |depicts Bush trapped inside a big soap bubble, and asked if it's true that he's out of touch. |

| |For four years, Bush simply set aside the provisions of this law, which grew out of the abuses of |

| |the Vietnam-Watergate era. |

| |He cited Article II of the Constitution, which of course doesn't mention telephones or the |

| |Internet. |

| |It would halt the spread of "earmarks," the spending targeted toward individual projects in |

| |members' districts, which are used to punish dissenters or reward reluctant supporters. |

| |Mainstream theologians have long since come to terms with evolution, which seems to be as |

| |unconditionally true as any scientific theory could ever be. |

| |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. |

| |Murtha: "You've given them a mission which they cannot carry out." |

| |The last few years has seen an explosion of the blogosphere, which has increasingly asserted its |

| |influence. |

| |In some ways, I remained a traditionalist, which is why I look forward to returning to the |

| |newspaper. |

| |"Those who rely on traditional news sources other than The Wall Street Journal, which published an |

| |op-ed by the Connecticut senator, may not even have known that Lieberman recently returned from |

| |Iraq. |

| |Was there a political motive in Bush suddenly detailing a terror plot against an L.A. skyscraper, |

| |which had been disclosed four months ago? |

| |Salon's Gary Kamiya looks at a provocative new book, which says the World War II generation |

| |"returned home and made a whole bunch of babies, pampered kids who got stoned in the '60s and '70s.|

| |It was an enthusiastic crowd; the troops cheered even the landing of the vice president's plane, |

| |which was shown on large monitors as the music of the rock band AC/DC blared over the |

| |loudspeakers." |

| |"Bush, Republican governors and Republican members of Congress appointed most of this year's 1,200 |

| |delegates, which makes the resistance to [the drug plan] particularly striking." |

| |Binstock said during a session on improving the Medicare program, which provides health care for 43|

| |million older and disabled Americans. |

| |Mr. McCain, the nation's most famous former prisoner of war, has been pressing for the |

| |restrictions, which the Senate has approved, to be adopted in intense three-way negotiations with |

| |the House and the Bush administration as Congress prepares to wrap up its work for the year. |

| |Here's the report , which for instance calls attention to problems with the Privacy and Civil |

| |Liberties Oversight Board, established by statute last December. |

| |Here's the White House response , which insists: "President Bush's Top Priority Is The Safety And |

| |Security Of The American People." |

| |"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. |

| |He cited Article II of the Constitution, which of course doesn't mention telephones or the |

| |Internet. |

| |It would halt the spread of "earmarks," the spending targeted toward individual projects in |

| |members' districts, which are used to punish dissenters or reward reluctant supporters, thereby |

| |enforcing party discipline on bigger bills. |

| |Mainstream theologians have long since come to terms with evolution, which seems to be as |

| |unconditionally true as any scientific theory could ever be. |

| |The last few years has seen an explosion of the blogosphere, which has increasingly asserted its |

| |influence. |

| |"Those who rely on traditional news sources other than The Wall Street Journal, which published an |

| |op-ed by the Connecticut senator, may not even have known that Lieberman recently returned from |

| |Iraq. |

| |The prosecution took nearly five months to present its case, which included testimony from nearly |

| |80 witnesses . . . |

| |October's estimate of 3.8% third-quarter GDP growth was revised upward yesterday to 4.3%, which |

| |means the expansion was moving fast enough in late summer to blow right past Hurricane Katrina. |

| |"The sentiments, which are starting to bubble up from the party's back benches, make it less likely|

| |that Representative Tom DeLay, whose indictment on money-laundering charges will almost certainly |

| |last into the new year, will return as majority leader." |

| |They pointed to a 1978 federal law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which provides for |

| |domestic surveillance under extreme situations. |

| |The legislation, which passed the lower house last week, has been criticized by some international |

| |and domestic nongovernmental organizations as an attempt to limit or squash human rights work and |

| |political activity. |

| |Authorities have not identified the body, which was found by a boater. |

| |Maryland and Virginia, to stop selling some of its dog and cat food that may be contaminated with |

| |fungus that produces poisonous aflatoxin, which causes lethargy, loss of appetite, yellowish eyes |

| |and gums, and severe or bloody diarrhea. |

| |…but the contract would require new employees to pay 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health |

| |care, which previously was provided without charge. |

| |particularly about a potential real estate bubble and an excess of manufacturing capacity, which |

| |has produced more goods than even China can sell, depressing prices and profits. |

| |That's partly because guaranteed delivery on the free shipping offers that many used as incentives |

| |has ended, said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore Networks, which tracks Internet shopping. |

| |Most of the transactions in question took place between 1997 and 2004, said the documents, which |

| |were issued by the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and other regulators, including |

| |the Federal Reserve. |

| |…said Bert Oser, owner of the mall store Bertram's Inkwell, which specializes in high-end pens. |

| |Advertising Age critic Bob Garfield said that an increase in such edgy advertising campaigns, which|

| |attempt to create "buzz about buzz," are a sign that traditional advertising methods are failing. |

| |Some analysts wonder if the packages -- which have been rolled out by both Time Warner Cable and |

| |Comcast Corp. -- will be so pared down that they attract few subscribers. |

| |Proponents of tort reform often present spiking medical malpractice premiums, which can be in the |

| |six figures for some specialties, as Exhibit A in arguments for capping damages, an argument that |

| |has resonated. |

| |What is certainly up in the air: the outcome of the current malpractice crisis, which has triggered|

| |new calls for tort reform and protests by doctors. |

| |For example, Chantilly-based GTSI Corp., which sells technology services and products to the |

| |federal government. |

| |CIFA's new authority will give the agency the ability to propose missions to Army, Navy and Air |

| |Force units, which combined have about 4,000 trained active, reserve and civilian investigators in |

| |the United States and abroad. |

| |"What you have seen is a Congress, which has been AWOL through intimidation or lack of unity, get |

| |off the sidelines and jump in with both feet," especially on the national security front, said Sen.|

| |Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). |

| |As for the non-security matters, which got much less attention this year, Congress is also showing |

| |more vigor in driving the agenda. |

| |"Right now, I think it's more the Bush administration view which is winning," Brinkley said. |

| |The Iraq push culminated the rockiest political year of this presidency, which included the demise |

| |of signature domestic priorities. |

| |The White team, which consisted of Division I seniors whose teams either didn't qualify for or |

| |already played in bowl games, needed a late defensive stop to defeat their Red counterparts from |

| |Division I-AA. |

| |…look toward the Missouri Valley Conference, which several CAA coaches and administrators mentioned|

| |as a potential model. |

| |Under the legislation, which was passed by the House yesterday and is expected to be approved by |

| |the Senate this week, consumers will be able to get up to two $40 coupons per household to help |

| |defray the cost of the set-top boxes. |

| |…with the most contentious issues being the cutoff date -- which could put politicians in the |

| |uncomfortable position of turning off voters' TV sets -- and the amount of the set-top box subsidy.|

| |The Washington-based organization, which has been conducting surveys on different aspects of |

| |technology and Internet usage for several years, highlighted the disparity among younger people, |

| |noting that it could set the stage for usage in years to come. |

| |The stadium lease is crucial to the project, which would build a stadium along the Anacostia River |

| |in Southeast Washington. |

| |The legislation, which passed the lower house last week, has been criticized by some international |

| |and domestic nongovernmental organizations as an attempt to limit or squash human rights work and |

| |political activity. |

|that(647) |The most battered victim to date is Yukos, the former Russian oil giant that is currently in its |

| |death throes after being hit with multibillion-dollar back-tax claims that its erstwhile owners say|

| |were part of a Kremlin campaign against them. |

| |"It's a very good business that would be hard to compete against," he says. |

| |The story is the same at Orkla, a $5 billion Norwegian consumer goods and chemicals conglomerate |

| |that last December bought a Russian confectionery company called SladCo for an undisclosed amount. |

| |But Weafer cautions about the middle layer: energy and other areas that could be construed by the |

| |Kremlin as being of strategic value. |

| |“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are |

| |God's,” said Jesus, thus making clear his belief that church and state should stick to their core |

| |competences. |

| |Those that could not read it went north and became Finns. |

| |Those that could went to central Europe and became Hungarians. (Finns tell the story the other way |

| |round.) |

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

| |The president of Mari-El, a bombastic Kremlin loyalist, Leonid Markelov, was confronted, seemingly |

| |for the first time, with the fact that some outsiders—including ambassadors and politicians from |

| |the Finno-Ugric countries, plus a bunch of academics—found his rural subjects' odd customs and |

| |strange speech rather interesting. |

| |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. |

| |That should teach them not to leave open the approach to their perimeter, a mistake that cost many |

| |American lives in the early stages of Iraq's insurgency. |

| |Take, for instance, the way the army is involving all its soldiers in setting TTPs—the tactics, |

| |techniques and procedures that define how it acts on the battlefield. |

| |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. |

| |“It's the first time that a plump girl has won Star Ac,” she told Le Parisien, a newspaper. |

| |Under the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 that launched the process, a power-sharing local government|

| |had been created, with complex rules to ensure that Northern Ireland’s Protestant majority (which |

| |is “unionist”, wanting the province to stay British) did not exclude from power the Catholic |

| |minority (which is “nationalist”, seeking a united Ireland). |

| |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. |

| |But a second successful attack would strike a nation that is in an anxious state of mind. |

| |Hence one reaction to the news on Tuesday that police had identified four British men who had |

| |carried the bombs and blown themselves up: if they are dead, then they cannot kill again. |

| |But it also raised a disturbing thought: that Britain now has homegrown suicide-bombers who think |

| |the Dar al-Harb, the Abode of War, can be reached by boarding a Thameslink commuter train. |

| |The terrorists gave no warning and the security services had not picked up any hint that an attack |

| |might take place (in fact the threat level had recently been downgraded from “severe general” to |

| |“substantial”). |

| |Forensics experts could study the damage from a blast that had not been magnified by being confined|

| |to a tunnel. |

| |At the epicentre of the blasts, police found personal documents, including credit cards and driving|

| |licences, that identified three young British Muslims from Pakistani families. |

| |Explosives were also found in a car that had been left in the station car park in Luton. |

| |They have threatened to invoke “the nuclear option” to change the rules that permit filibusters; to|

| |do this, they need just 50 votes (see article). |

| |A bipartisan group of senators, led by John McCain and Ben Nelson, desperately tried to broker a |

| |deal that would block any formal change in Senate rules while agreeing to have filibusters only in |

| |extraordinary circumstances. |

| |The fight over Mr Bush's judges is the latest episode in the culture wars that have been tearing |

| |the country apart for decades. |

| |The issues that provoke the most passion are no longer who gets what but how people ought to live |

| |their lives. |

| |Liberal activists are united behind a strategy that might be dubbed “no more Clarence Thomases”. |

| |They are determined to prevent Mr Bush from appointing a female or minority conservative to one of |

| |the lower courts that traditionally serve as feeders to the Supreme Court. |

| |The Terri Schiavo affair, where Congress intervened to try to save the life of a brain-damaged |

| |woman in Florida, was a public-relations disaster: it raised worries that ideological Republicans |

| |are willing to trample over constitutional checks and balances (such as states' rights). |

| |The battle goes deeper than the Senate; it could shape public opinion in the electoral cycle that |

| |ends in 2008. |

| |For months, the spooks at Langley and the G-men at the FBI have been arguing over secret draft |

| |re-writes of 20-year old rules that divide this crucial humint work, and now both agencies are |

| |hoping Negroponte will come down in their favor. |

| |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. |

| |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. |

| |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. |

| |The dopamine cycle may not be the only thing that drives gamblers. |

| |The just released results showed that compulsive gamblers, drinkers and drug users have high |

| |underlying levels of negative emotionality, a syndrome that includes nervousness, anger and a |

| |tendency to worry and feel victimized. |

| |Psychologists like G. Alan Marlatt of the University of Washington are interested in the potential |

| |of so-called opioid antagonists, drugs that might partially disrupt the neurochemistry that |

| |produces feelings of well-being, thus denying gamblers the kick they seek. |

| |Marlatt is worried that abstinence may be less effective with young gamblers and is exploring |

| |cognitive techniques that instead teach kids to recognize the triggers that get them to gamble too |

| |much. |

| |Like Marlatt's moderation strategy, however, the Illinois program takes a measure of |

| |self-discipline that may be the very thing compulsive gamblers lack. |

| |Since Paul VI established in his 1968 encyclical "Humanae Vitae" that contraception is |

| |"intrinsically evil," the church has not —budged. |

| |Two years ago more than 160 Milwaukee-area priests sent a letter to the nation's bishops asking |

| |that they consider an initiative that would open the priesthood to married men. |

| |A squad that keeps losing will move just as rapidly in the opposite direction, shedding supporters |

| |and revenue as it goes. |

| |America's favourite summer sport is played by a 30-team cartel that is specifically exempt from |

| |antitrust laws. |

| |Most outrageous is the fact that local taxpayers often end up subsidising the construction of new |

| |stadiums. |

| |Gentlemen insisted on being allowed to compete with salaried “players”—something that would have |

| |been impossible in a closed league. |

| |That might restore balance and restraint to an industry that often seems more interested in success|

| |than in profit. |

| |Foreign investors will understand that Brazil has strong policies,” said Joaquim Levy, a senior |

| |finance official. |

| |Ironically, this gesture of self-confidence comes at a time of fierce debate over the policies that|

| |made it possible. |

| |On the first count, the commotion is in some ways yet another row that pits Mr Sarkozy, who heads |

| |the UMP, against those from whom he wrested control of that party: Mr Chirac and his protege, Mr de|

| |Villepin. |

| |There are some signs that France is reaching for a compromise. |

| |Social scientists sense a first chance to study a subject that has hitherto been taboo. |

| |His proposal to Mr Blair that European countries should share intelligence on jihadis who have |

| |attended training camps in Afghanistan and elsewhere was one he had long advocated. |

| |Mr Sarkozy may be happy to mock a model that produces mass unemployment, but Mr de Villepin |

| |believes that tinkering is enough. |

| |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. |

| |That is only one of several elements in the new contracts that whack up pay. |

| |Song's ordeal is part of a rash of brutal incidents that have pushed school violence and gang |

| |activities to the top of the national agenda in South Korea. |

| |Two Malien photographers, Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe, have become stars of African photography |

| |for their candid portraits that capture the essence of their subjects. |

| |The visionary drawings of Frederic Bruly Bouabre, from Cote d'Ivoire, lay out the history of the |

| |world in a pan-African language of pictograms that show the continent to have been far less |

| |isolated than history usually recounts. |

| |Despite their differences, all these artists—the famous as well as the less well-known—share an |

| |ability to transform humble materials and artisanal traditions into work that expresses an original|

| |sensibility. |

| |Modelling and firing clay in her front yard, she surrounds herself with visceral, expressive |

| |sculptures that tell stories that come to her in dreams in what she calls her “theatre without a |

| |stage”. |

| |Pigozzi wanted a collection that was unique in the world. |

| |Love him or loathe him, he has assembled an extraordinary visual resource that would have been |

| |impossible to see otherwise. |

| |The answer would presumably start by considering some of the things that might advance the cause of|

| |“ever closer union” (the preamble to the Treaty of Rome) as well as others that might promote |

| |growth and stability (once again, these are formal EU aims). |

| |A case could be made for some regional aid, on the ground that it advances ever closer union by |

| |helping to narrow the differences in income and infrastructure around Europe. |

| |The EU may, for this reason, be right to try to smooth out differences between countries—although |

| |there have also been several studies that query how effective its regional funds have actually been|

| |in practice. But the case for its intervening within countries is much weaker. |

| |It might include the European Commission itself, as policeman of the single market; a few |

| |pan-European transport projects; common border controls; research that tends often to underfunded |

| |nationally (many Europeans consider that America's generous federal spending on research helps to |

| |give its economy a competitive edge); and, perhaps, some foreign aid (a single EU aid budget could |

| |avoid much of the duplication that confronts recipients of European aid, although the EU aid |

| |programme has often been criticised for being ineffectively delivered). |

| |The only channel of information that the government does not control is the internet—and even that |

| |may change. |

| |SOPON DECHKLA survived the tsunami that struck several countries around the Indian Ocean on 26th |

| |December 2004, by clinging to a palm tree at the Sofitel Khao Lak resort, where he worked as a |

| |driver. |

| |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. |

| |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. |

| |Long swathes of coastline in Aceh rose or subsided during the earthquake that prompted the tsunami,|

| |leaving farmland submerged and coral reefs above water. |

| |Thailand has built 39 of a planned 62 towers along the Indian Ocean, to house sirens and |

| |loudspeakers that will broadcast evacuation instructions in multiple languages. |

| |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. |

| |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. |

| |The spectre of terrorism is only one source of mistrust; another is the belief that Asian Muslims |

| |make little effort to fit into British society. |

| |He has opposed additional DNA tests that could clear Mr Washington—and could restore public |

| |confidence in a laboratory that may become a national embarrassment. |

| |A BITTER atmosphere threatens to spoil Saturday's English FA Cup Final—a showpiece that remains to |

| |many fans soccer's equivalent of American football's Super Bowl and the baseball World Series. |

| |Their scepticism can be attributed in large part to the fact that they view Mr Glazer and sons as |

| |typical profit-driven American capitalists, prone to do ghastly capitalistic things such as raise |

| |ticket prices—as they have done in Tampa at the Bucs. |

| |To boost revenues, Mr Glazer is expected to try to end joint negotiation of television rights by |

| |the top English teams that play in the Premiership, instead negotiating separately the right to |

| |screen United games. |

| |In fact, American team owners tend to profit by suppressing, to some extent, their individualism, |

| |points out Stefan Szymanski, co-author of “National Pastime”, a superb new book that compares the |

| |economics of the sport business in different countries. |

| |On March 27, 1977, a Pan Am 747 awaiting takeoff at the Tenerife airport in the Canary Islands off |

| |Spain was sliced open without warning by a Dutch KLM jet that had come hurtling out of the fog at |

| |160 m.p.h. |

| |An animal that goes into involuntary paralysis may have a better chance of surviving a predatory |

| |attack. |

| |Many predators will not eat prey that is not struggling; that way, they are less likely to eat |

| |something sick or rotten that would end up killing them. |

| |He starts all his presentations with a slide that reads IT'S THE PEOPLE. |

| |"The airlines and the flight attendants underestimate the fact that passengers can be good |

| |survivors. |

| |Of course, it isn't just China's undervalued currency that makes its TVs and T shirts so |

| |irresistibly cheap to American shoppers. |

| |The three men and Germaine Lindsay, 19, detonated four bombs that killed 56 people, including |

| |themselves. |

| |Why Mr. Khan, Mr. Tanweer and Mr. Hussain in particular crossed a line that no one had before, how |

| |they and Mr. Lindsay linked up, or whether their plot was homegrown or steered from outside, remain|

| |mysteries, at least to the public. |

| |They have come of age in an era marked by conflicts between Muslims and better armed powers - |

| |India, Serbia, Russia, Israel, America and Britain - and the rise of an ideology that sanctifies |

| |terrorist attacks against the West in response. |

| |Over time its education came to include provocative material that some contend was meant to inspire|

| |jihad. |

| |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. |

| |He did not realize that he and so many others were part of an epic, and permanent, migration that |

| |would reshape Britain in so many ways, the events of July 7 being just one. |

| |Men began driving taxis, or opened shops or other family-run businesses that require |

| |round-the-clock tending by an extended family. |

| |In April, a 15-year-old boy was stabbed to death by a member of an Asian mob that pursued him. |

| |Mr. Hussain sees a continuum of self-destruction between the recent bombings and race riots that |

| |occurred just 10 miles away in 2001 - seemingly disconnected rage. |

| |And the young zealots felt only frustration and contempt for the mosques' imams, who were often |

| |brought from the subcontinent, spoke minimal English, knew nothing of the moral maze young British |

| |Muslims face, and abided by an injunction by mosque elders that politics or current events |

| |involving Muslims should stay outside the mosque. |

| |They take to heart the injunction that the ummah - the global community of Muslims -is "like one |

| |body": if one part is suffering, the rest will be in pain as well. |

| |Their effort to create an Islamic identity in British Muslims has been fueled by the belief that |

| |the West is waging a war - a "crusade," the word President Bush used in 2001 - against Islam, a |

| |notion strengthened by the invasion of Iraq. |

| |The police are showing more interest in crimes that were previously under-recorded, which makes no |

| |difference to the British Crime Survey but pushes up the police figures (recorded rapes of men |

| |increased from 150 in 1995 to 893 in 2003-04, for example). |

| |In fact, last year's enlargement has gone remarkably well, both for the newcomers and for the |

| |Union, and all the more so when measured against the fears that preceded it. |

| |The economies of the new members have gone on growing at a healthy clip, roughly two to four times |

| |as fast as the euro-zone average, despite worries that their industry would be choked by |

| |regulations and their agriculture ruined by the opening of markets. |

| |There is a faint possibility, too, that one of the new members, perhaps the Czech Republic or |

| |Poland, might fail to ratify the referendum, putting its own future in doubt. |

| |The idea that Turkey might one day join the Union weighs heavily on public opinion in France, as it|

| |does in Germany and Austria. |

| |One answer might be a two-tier Europe in which new countries would be invited to join the Union, |

| |but only on the basis that they would be denied Schengen membership, free movement of labour, farm |

| |subsidies, and the right to vote on constitutional issues for a long transitional period or even |

| |permanently. |

| |In the meantime, they will have to listen to hair-raising tales of children turned down by every |

| |school they applied to, and of schools with 20 applications for every place that are so popular |

| |they only accept those who live within a five-minute walk. |

| |One of their main worries is that giving schools more freedom over admissions will reintroduce |

| |academic selection on the sly—a fear that was cleverly heightened by the new Tory leader, David |

| |Cameron, who last week said the prime minister could rely on Tory support to force his bill |

| |through. |

| |There were signs this week that the government is beginning to backtrack. |

| |THERE is a state of emergency on the border between Arizona and Mexico, with all the confusion that|

| |entails. |

| |“America has always been a compassionate nation that values the newcomer and takes great pride in |

| |our immigrant heritage,” the president told patrolmen at an air base in Tucson, Arizona. |

| |According to the Pew Hispanic Centre, nearly 500,000 unskilled migrants arrive every year to do the|

| |kind of strenuous, low-paid jobs that Americans shun. |

| |Or, as many employers would put it, the fact that America does not issue enough visas to unskilled |

| |workers forces them to break the law. |

| |His men have all manner of gizmos, from “stop sticks” that slowly deflate the tyres of fleeing cars|

| |to “pepperball launching systems”—glorified paintball guns that immobilise rowdy smugglers. |

| |To “match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will |

| |not do”, he proposes letting illegal aliens currently in America register for legal status. |

| |That is the kind of number that enrages Chris Simcox, the head of the Minutemen, a group that |

| |patrols the border and organises protests much further inside the country (such as outside a day |

| |centre for illegal aliens in Virginia, where they can hook up with employers). |

| |He fumes at the “hypocrisy” of “a federal government that will not enforce the rule of law”. |

| |Most encouragingly for Mr Bush, when asked if they would favour a comprehensive bill that included |

| |both tougher enforcement (at the border, and in workplaces) and a way for illegals to get temporary|

| |work permits that might, with good behaviour, lead to citizenship, 72% of these Republicans said |

| |yes. |

| |Fears that Venezuela would profit from its rejection was one reason why the Bush administration |

| |lobbied so hard for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), narrowly passed by the House|

| |of Representatives on July 27th (see article). |

| |Fidelity, a giant fund manager that also runs a brokerage service, recently slashed its commission |

| |for frequent online traders by 25%, to $10.95 a time. |

| |FOR the past fortnight, the only question that seemed to matter in Canada's federal politics was |

| |whether the voters should be asked to cast judgment on the ailing Liberal minority government in |

| |January or a few weeks later. |

| |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. |

| |In 1996 he caused a ruckus with a speech in which he called for a separate African-American |

| |theater, castigated black playwrights and directors for participating in an "art that is conceived |

| |and designed to entertain white society" and decried the increasingly fashionable practice of |

| |"color-blind casting"--i.e., blacks playing traditionally white roles. |

| |He inherits an education system that graduates only 45% of its students from high school, festering|

| |gang violence and the worst traffic in the nation. |

| |But as far as Supreme Court terms go, Mr. Roberts served during a relatively routine one that |

| |included important cases on the First Amendment, federalism and sex discrimination, and ended with |

| |a notable affirmation of executive power. |

| |Judge Roberts cited the decision last year in an opinion accepting the Bush administration's |

| |position that it could block claims against Iraq from American soldiers who had been tortured there|

| |during the Persian Gulf war. |

| |They do, however, bear the dry wit that so many have cited in describing Mr. Roberts's writings and|

| |personality. |

| |"Frankly, the people that did were the liberal clerks, who were more out there, more aggressive, |

| |more, frankly, intolerant," Mr. Knauss 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." |

| |Much of the clerks' work consisted of summarizing the thousands of requests that the court receives|

| |each year to hear particular cases, known as petitions for writs of certiorari, or cert. petitions.|

| | |

| |All through the fall of 1980, Mr. Roberts plowed through a huge range of cases, from an Osage |

| |Indian income tax dispute, to a complex cattle transaction, to a claim that a faulty search warrant|

| |had led to a cocaine conviction, to the validity of a lien for payment of repair of an aircraft |

| |propeller for a bankrupt airline, to the question of whether a hunting and fishing lodge owned by a|

| |foundry and used for entertaining customers was tax deductible. |

| |Some of the memorandums contain faint flashes of the sarcastic humor that Mr. Roberts would employ |

| |in internal communications in later years as a government lawyer. |

| |"He played an aggressive style of basketball that left other co-clerks with the bruises to show for|

| |it," Mr. Knauss said of Mr. Roberts. |

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

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

| |For one thing, it is a foundation trust—a reform that led to a bitter row within Labour's ranks in |

| |the last parliament. |

| |The hospital trust used to get its money through a block grant that was only loosely linked to how |

| |much work it did. |

| |The internal market that the Tories introduced in the 1990s gave general practitioners (GPs) |

| |budgets to purchase care for their patients. |

| |It is investing in a perinatal centre that will provide facilities for premature babies and their |

| |mothers. |

| |Already, the planned extension of payment-by-results this April to other acute-care hospitals has |

| |been restricted because of worries that it was going to cost too much money. |

| |In a thinly veiled reference to Saudi Arabia, he explains that he worries about “the corrupting |

| |influence of oil receipts that end up in terrorist hands”. |

| |Meanwhile, it does nothing to close a loophole that allows sports-utility vehicles and Hummers to |

| |escape fuel-economy standards. |

| |But the House managed to add so much more pork—including a $2 billion giveaway to oil companies for|

| |deep-water research—to the bill that even the White House now criticises it as excessively costly. |

| |To the best of the author's knowledge, the conclusions drawn from observable facts that are |

| |presented in this book agree with the Scriptures. |

| |The case has arisen because of the way that UC, unlike other systems, intrudes into high-school |

| |education. |

| |Christian universities such as Wheaton, in Illinois, are proof that decent scholarship can co-exist|

| |with evangelical faith; and, given the rise of born-again Christianity across the nation, more |

| |evangelical scholars are now found in secular faculties. |

| |To the extent that educational establishments reflect cultural reality, it may be inevitable. |

| |It all sounds like a return to the policies that brought bankruptcy and hyperinflation to Bolivia |

| |in the 1980s. |

| |Everywhere, it casts doubt on the rules that business must follow. |

| |These expire at the end of 2006—a prospect that prompted a rare pro-American march last week. |

| |Because abortion was legalised democratically, pro-lifers accepted the fact that they had lost and |

| |abortion became a settled right. |

| |Roe left a large chunk of the country feeling disenfranchised by the court; it also established a |

| |cycle of attack and counter-attack that has debased everything that it has touched, especially the |

| |judiciary. |

| |Samuel Alito, Mr Bush's new candidate, claims that the fact that he once advised the Reagan |

| |administration on how to overturn Roe will have no bearing on his behaviour on the court. |

| |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. |

| |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.” |

| |It was these penumbras and emanations that were stretched still further in 1973 when the court |

| |ruled on Roe. |

| |Some Democrats say that they regard “a woman's right to choose” as analogous to a black person's |

| |right to vote—a basic human right that cannot be gainsaid by the electorate. |

| |And abortion isn't a clear-cut moral issue in the way that the franchise is. |

| |Embracing the democratic process would send a powerful signal that the Party of the People has |

| |rediscovered its faith in the people. |

| |Roe has given Republicans a free ride: they can claim to oppose abortion in the comfortable |

| |knowledge that it will never be banned. |

| |How many Republicans would vote for a ban on abortion that only one in five Americans support? |

| |It is the first time that the ICC Act has been used to bring charges against British troops. |

| |Regulation of the industry rests mainly with the states, which are short on resources--a condition |

| |that may have allowed abuses to incubate. |

| |Republican Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire has explored proposals that would give power to the|

| |Treasury Department to oversee critical aspects of the industry, including accounting. |

| |In his prime-time introduction of his nominee to take the place of retiring Justice Sandra Day |

| |O'Connor, President George W. Bush drove right past the fact that Roberts is a reliably |

| |conservative fellow who would not "legislate from the bench" and lingered instead on the career and|

| |character that would make him so valuable on the court, and so invulnerable to attack. |

| |But it was in class that he excelled, in a way that forced other boys and even teachers to raise |

| |their game. |

| |"There was an older faction that we jokingly called the refugees from the '60s. |

| |"There were a few people on the Law Review that were social conservatives, very strong views about |

| |abortion, separation of church and state. |

| |"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. |

| |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 the n described it as settled law |

| |when he was speaking as a nominee to become an appellate judge. |

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

| |unsettling. |

| |At stake is the essence of the Senate: Should the institution maintain the unique culture that the |

| |framers of the Constitution envisioned for it, a place where a minority can have its say and even |

| |have a shot at winning a battle here and there? |

| |They have little patience for arcane traditions that can allow the objections of even a single |

| |Senator to bring the place to a halt. |

| |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. |

| |They have also threatened to require full Senate votes for even the most mundane business, a move |

| |that could put the brakes on the G.O.P. agenda. |

| |At a closed-door meeting that afternoon, senior shuttle managers had ruled that the chances that |

| |debris from the giant external fuel tank would strike the Discovery at liftoff - in the kind of |

| |accident that doomed the Columbia and its seven astronauts in February 2003 - had been reduced to |

| |"acceptable levels." |

| |The possibility that a large chunk of insulating foam might break away from a section of the tank |

| |called the protuberance air load ramp - PAL for short - never came up. |

| |Last Tuesday morning, NASA's contention that it had produced the safest fuel tank in shuttle |

| |history was shattered two minutes into the Discovery's mission to the International Space Station. |

| |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. |

| |In the end, the old engineering maxim "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" trumped vague misgivings |

| |about a part that had not shed any foam, as far as anyone knew, since 1983. |

| |At the dawn of the shuttle program, NASA rules said no foam at all should be allowed to hit the |

| |shuttle and possibly damage the fragile heat-resistant tiles that cover its aluminum skin. |

| |Despite years of assurance that such a strike could do no serious damage - a mind-set the Columbia |

| |Accident Investigation Board would call the "normalization of deviance" - the foam had cracked open|

| |a hole that admitted superheated gases when the shuttle re-entered the atmosphere, burning it up |

| |like a torch from within. |

| |"If you don't break a wing, you just have assumptions about what might make it break," said Aldo J.|

| |Bordano, a retired NASA aerosciences chief who was on a panel that studied the agency's analysis of|

| |the external tank and foam. |

| |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." |

| |They should have looked at more options," perhaps including different formulations of foam that |

| |might be more flexible. |

| |"Foam really is complicated," said Douglas D. Osheroff, a professor of physics at Stanford and a |

| |member of the board that investigated the Columbia accident. |

| |And NASA gained confidence during the time between flights that it was making progress. |

| |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. |

| |That group, called the Stafford-Covey task force after the two former astronauts who led it, |

| |accepted NASA's argument that the PAL ramp did not urgently require alteration. |

| |The group took issue with the way NASA determined that the foam chunks that might still fall off |

| |the tank were too small to cause critical damage. |

| |Ultimately, however, the group accepted NASA's contention that it had raised the level of safety in|

| |general. |

| |A NASA engineer who works on tank safety issues said other areas of foam shedding from the |

| |Discovery's tank were even more troubling than the PAL ramp loss, especially a divot that popped |

| |from the vicinity of the left-hand bipod strut, the spot that shed the foam that brought down the |

| |Columbia. |

| |Some of the options under consideration have come up before, including the elimination of the ramp,|

| |a "miniramp" that shrinks the size of the strip by two-thirds, and a small "fence" on the opposite |

| |side of the tray that would smooth airflow further. |

| |Dr. Griffin, the NASA administrator, predicted Friday that the foam problem would be quickly |

| |repaired and said engineers would consider options that had not been tried before. |

| |There is now a strong chance that Mr Berlusconi’s lot will lose a parliamentary election due next |

| |year—assuming it does not fall apart in the meantime. |

| |DEFYING expectations that Italian Catholics would stay away from the polling booths as they mourned|

| |the death of Pope John Paul, voters turned out in strength in elections held in 13 of Italy’s 20 |

| |regions on Sunday April 3rd and Monday April 4th, to deliver a crushing blow to Silvio Berlusconi. |

| |Mr Berlusconi had hoped that voters would reward him for two recent rounds of cuts in income tax, |

| |and perhaps also for his announcement last month that he would bring Italian troops back from Iraq.|

| | |

| |But, as with his income-tax cuts, the prime minister seems to have gained nothing from his |

| |announcement shortly before the elections that he would start bringing the troops home. |

| |Last month, the Senate approved a constitutional reform that would enhance the powers of the prime |

| |minister, weaken those of the president and undermine the independence of the constitutional |

| |court—though the reform will need to be endorsed by a referendum. |

| |As in Spain last year—where voters kicked out Jose Maria Aznar and replaced him with Jose Luis |

| |Rodriguez Zapatero—an Atlanticist conservative would be replaced with a Europhile left-winger more |

| |likely to share the views of France’s President Jacques Chirac, that the European Union ought to be|

| |a counterweight to America, not its staunchest ally. |

| |THE European left has long treasured the myth that CIA agents snatch people off the streets and |

| |whisk them off to covert prisons around the world for harsh interrogation. |

| |One reason is young Poles' interest in researching family trees—a process that often reveals |

| |previously hidden Jewish origins. Karolina Kowalczyk, one of the 400 members of the Polish Union of|

| |Jewish Students, says she is an example. |

| |In one of Warsaw's historically Jewish neighbourhoods, a school that started barely a decade ago |

| |with just 18 pupils now has 240 of all ages. |

| |The Yiddish-speaking world of the shtetl and ghetto that once flourished in central Europe was |

| |mainly self-contained; but today's Polish Jews are closer to the social mainstream. |

| |Many Polish gentiles are eager to learn more about a culture that marked their country so deeply. |

| |Periodic outbreaks of anti-Semitic graffiti fuel suspicion among Jews outside Poland that the |

| |ghosts of the past still haunt the country's darker corners. |

| |And the vogue for investigation into the country's Jewish past has brought some jarring |

| |discoveries, such as the revelation in 2000 that the 1,600 Jews of the town of Jedwabne were burned|

| |alive by their Polish neighbours. |

| |Mr Levine of Berkeley points out that the union movement “started declining at almost exactly the |

| |moment that the AFL and the CIO unified”. |

| |Viewed in the rosiest of lights, this could be a sign that British-born Muslims are “coming of |

| |age”—rising above the linguistic and sectarian differences that constricted earlier generations. |

| |But this month's attacks on London laid bare a community that lives in limbo between Yorkshire and |

| |Pakistan, and revealed the limits to that process. |

| |THREE weeks ago, a potential voter in South Dorset, then the most marginal Labour seat in England, |

| |received a letter that was similar to many others being sent out to battleground regions. |

| |That presents a question to the Conservative Party as it tries to pick a path that will lead to |

| |electoral success in 2009 or 2010: did a campaign that focused so strongly on immigration do the |

| |party any good? |

| |As Peter Kellner, a pollster, explains, “The constituency that wants to be tough on immigration is |

| |much tougher than the Tories.” |

| |A few paces in, the room narrows to a bright seam of a doorway that resembles the more unabashed |

| |works of Georgia O'Keeffe. |

| |What has united the various phases of her life--from daughter of a Hollywood legend to Parisian sex|

| |kitten, from Oscar-winning actress to Hanoi Jane, from first lady of fitness to Sun Belt |

| |Christian--is a zealous belief that each transformation has brought her closer to enlightenment, |

| |and an urgent need to share. |

| |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.). |

| |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. |

| |What Fonda resents, though, is any inference that she's insincere or a dilettante. |

| |The critique, just before a key state election that the SPD lost badly, sparked a furor and a |

| |nationwide debate about capitalism that continues to reverberate. |

| |In their drive to reduce working capital and improve cash flow to pay off the debts incurred during|

| |the buyout, managers can't afford to be sentimental about businesses that don't do well. |

| |Germany's metalworkers' union, the nation's biggest and most influential, holds up MTU as an |

| |example of several firms that it views as victims of unscrupulous American financiers. |

| |The German firm, which makes ATMs for banks, was singled out by the SPD's Muntefering in his |

| |"locust" critique because of the profits that its investors, KKR and Goldman Sachs, made when they |

| |sold out. |

| |He is chief executive of Legrand, a $3 billion electrical equipment company that was acquired late |

| |in 2002 by KKR and French group Wendel in France's biggest buyout. |

| |It's not just labor that is complaining. |

| |The target in this case was Krabbe's disease, a devastating enzyme disorder that prevents the nerve|

| |fibers in babies' brains from developing the myelin insulation they need, leading to blindness, |

| |deafness, cognitive deterioration and death before age 2. |

| |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. |

| |Clearly, it's not the cups that are causing the huge price discrepancy between hot and iced coffee.|

| |A standard Manitowoc Q133W, a dandy little baby that you'll find in stores all over the country, |

| |makes 5-1/2 pounds of ice per hour. |

| |That means that the coffee in a 20-ounce container of iced coffee actually costs 1 to 11 cents less|

| |to make than the hot coffee, depending on how much cheap ice is occupying space that should rightly|

| |be filled with rich, expensive coffee. |

| |As a result, the iced coffee that Rinaldi serves at Caffe Capri in Williamsburg is no scam. |

| |This is unusual—it is the incumbent that normally suffers in the course of a British election |

| |campaign. |

| |That leaves them talking about immigration, which is perhaps the only area where they have a clear |

| |message that resonates with public opinion. |

| |On a return visit to his homeland, the new pope was bathed in an outpouring of popular devotion |

| |that amazed almost everybody, from Warsaw's dissidents to an appalled Soviet Politburo. |

| |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. |

| |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. |

| |It is both a small sovereign state with an impressive diplomatic service, and a transnational |

| |non-government organisation that makes every other NGO seem puny. |

| |These scandals probably accelerated one of the most important social changes that occurred, |

| |paradoxically enough, during John Paul's high-profile papacy. |

| |Defenders of John Paul's papacy would argue that he responded in the right way to this inexorable |

| |trend: instead of watering down the faith, he upheld the fundamentals of Christian teaching, in the|

| |belief that a significant minority, at least, would be drawn to the light if it burned brightly. |

| |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. |

| |President Bashar Assad used the papal visit to make comments that were not merely anti-Israel but |

| |anti-Semitic. |

| |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. |

| |John Paul made clear from the start his opposition to “liberation theology” as proclaimed, for |

| |example, by the political left in Nicaragua—a reading of the Christian message that placed more |

| |emphasis on social justice and redistribution, and less on spirituality in the traditional sense. |

| |He regarded himself as accountable to God; and how he fared by that measure is not something that |

| |any human being, whether believer or atheist, may presume to judge. |

| |Mr Pryor's live act reflected the pain of his own life, his multiple marriages, his rough |

| |background, his drug use and drinking that almost killed him. |

| |Willow Creek is just one of a growing number of evangelical churches that borrow techniques from |

| |the corporate world. Forget those local worthies who help with the vicar's coffee mornings and |

| |arrange flowers. |

| |And it means having lots of “hooks” that help to attach seekers to the church. |

| |Rick Warren is a fifth-generation Southern Baptist who was raised in a faith that is both austere |

| |and emotional. |

| |Westlink Christian Church put on an outdoor display of extreme sports that includes skate-boarders |

| |jumping over a fire to illustrate salvation. |

| |And many mega-preachers worry that they are producing a flock who regard religion as nothing more |

| |than spectacle. |

| |So they have begun to adopt techniques that allow churches to be both big and small at once. |

| |Willow Creek has a consulting arm, the Willow Creek Association, that has more than 11,500 member |

| |churches. |

| |Rick Warren likens his “purpose-driven formula” to an Intel operating chip that can be inserted |

| |into the motherboard of any church—and points out that there are more than 30,000 “purpose-driven” |

| |churches. |

| |Moreover, it is a wash that is extraordinary good for the pastorpreneurs themselves, who prosper by|

| |preaching the gospel of prosperity. |

| |There is no shortage of churches that offer more traditional fare—from Greek Orthodox to |

| |conservative Catholic. |

| |The other common criticisms of the mega-churches—and the marriage of religion and business that |

| |they embody—are practical. |

| |Even Mormonism, that most idiosyncratically American of religious faiths, has 6.7m followers |

| |outside the United States. |

| |His decision to reinvent himself as the man to save Europe from itself was a calculated risk that |

| |now looks like a masterstroke, not only drawing the poison from the European debate at home, but |

| |winning praise from such unexpected quarters as the editorial pages of Le Monde and the governor of|

| |the European Central Bank. |

| |For all the efforts of Lord Coe's team, few (and certainly not the aggrieved mayor of Paris) doubt |

| |it was the concerted application of prime ministerial charisma that extracted the crucial votes on |

| |the International Olympic Committee. |

| |Mr Blair took the chance that he could exploit the weight of expectation he had helped build up to |

| |press his fellow heads of government into going further than they otherwise would have gone. |

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

| | |

| |Margaret Thatcher might have taken perverse satisfaction from the disasters that overtook her party|

| |after she had gone. |

| |Andrew Evans, of the transport research unit at Imperial College, says people often declare they |

| |will never return to a network that has suffered a calamity. |

| |The exception is the King's Cross fire of 1987, which killed 31 people and led to revelations about|

| |the dangers of the Tube that were as shocking as those exposed in the past few weeks. |

| |Of all the shocks caused by the bombings, none will endure as long as the measures that are put |

| |into place to stop them. |

| |Such a flurry of opportunistic demands, when presented to a government that is keen to “do |

| |something” about terrorism, can result in colossal distortions to spending. |

| |In America, the Department of Homeland Security burns through almost $40 billion a year, routinely |

| |doling out grants to places that are unlikely to be on any terrorist's target list. |

| |THERE seemed nothing especially odd about the red pick-up truck that stopped outside Bob Hunter's |

| |farmhouse in the summer of 1969. |

| |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. |

| |But with feathers and talons a major feature in traditional aboriginal dance regalia—which is |

| |popular on a competitive circuit that offers rich prizes for the best outfits—there's a hot black |

| |market for eagle parts in the U.S. |

| |Band officials vehemently reject suggestions that aboriginals are involved in the slaughter. |

| |The room is warm and still and nearly dark, bathed only in the light that leaks through its glass |

| |door. |

| |He thinks cloning fully grown humans may be biologically impossible, given the many miscarriages |

| |and genetic anomalies that have bedeviled attempts to clone animals, and he doesn't like giving |

| |people the impression that therapies or treatment will be available anytime soon. |

| |"Rather than having to study the patient or freshly dissected tissues from that patient, we can |

| |have a cell line of stem cells that can grow virtually forever," says Hans Keirstead, a |

| |neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine. |

| |The Big Mac index, which we have compiled since 1986, is based on the notion that a currency's |

| |price should reflect its purchasing power. |

| |More important, the $5.05 charged for a Swiss Big Mac helps to pay for the retail space in which it|

| |is served, and for the labour that serves it. |

| |They find that the parts of the burger that are traded internationally converge towards |

| |purchasing-power parity quite quickly. |

| |Albrecht Schmidt, Mr Rampl's predecessor, now head of HVB's supervisory board, is believed to |

| |oppose a takeover that puts the Italians in charge. |

| |His bank's “New Europe” division, which continues to expand, contributes just under 20% to the |

| |group's net profit (see chart), a share that may rise with the recent joint acquisition, with Koc, |

| |a Turkish industrial group, of Yapi Kredi, Turkey's fourth-biggest bank. Mr Profumo himself is at a|

| |crossroads: some surmise that, if this merger is shelved, a career in politics will be his next |

| |step. |

| |There is no doubt that firms today use outside suppliers (some of them overseas) to do many of the |

| |things they once did themselves. |

| |India's popularity with British and American firms, the biggest outsourcers by far, has been helped|

| |by the fact that English is widely spoken there. |

| |THE crowd that gathered outside the United States Supreme Court on June 27th was nowhere near as |

| |large as the vigil outside the Vatican earlier this year. |

| |Just one more conservative justice, liberals tremble, might blur the separation of church and |

| |state, roll back affirmative action and gay rights and perhaps even overturn Roe v Wade, the |

| |landmark 1973 case that legalised abortion across the country. |

| |Earlier this month, the Supreme Court had to decide whether federal anti-drug laws took precedence |

| |over a Californian law that decriminalised marijuana for medicinal purposes. |

| |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. |

| |One example is the vast expansion of federal power to regulate the economy that the justices |

| |approved during the New Deal era. |

| |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. |

| |To reach its result, the court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth |

| |Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. |

| |One reason why the debate about abortion and other moral issues has been more bitter in America |

| |than elsewhere is that many Americans believe that the Supreme Court has usurped powers that |

| |properly belong to Congress, the states or the people: that unelected judges are “legislating from |

| |the bench”. |

| |CHINA has become the stuff of nightmares for many Italian businessmen, an oriental beast that grows|

| |even more threatening in the light of day. |

| |Then, in 1985, Mr Boglione left MCT to set up a mail-order business that sold the jerseys of |

| |leading soccer clubs to fans willing to pay a hefty price to wear the colours of their favourite |

| |teams. |

| |But at least he can feel some relief from an increase in sales in 2004 and the fact that BasicNet |

| |reported profits for that year rather than losses. |

| |Many Ukrainians say that, since the huge street protests last November and December that culminated|

| |in Viktor Yushchenko's victory in the presidential election on December 26th, they are much freer. |

| |Mr Kolesnikov is an ally of Mr Yanukovich, and of Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest man, who |

| |jointly controls a big steel mill that is a candidate for re-privatisation. |

| |The need to preserve civility may explain why the poisoning that debilitated Mr Yushchenko during |

| |the election campaign, and scars him still, has not yet been publicly solved: some sort of Russian |

| |connection is widely assumed in Kiev. |

| |Various bits of the alliance that propelled Mr Yushchenko to the presidency had to be paid back |

| |with government offices. |

| |According to Yuri Boulanov, one of Lavochkin's representatives at the air show, the idea is to |

| |create a cheap, inflatable structure that can be compressed into a backpack, like a parachute. |

| |When buying things in a straight exchange of money for goods, people often respond to changes in |

| |price in exactly the way that theoretical economics predicts. |

| |Preliminary experiments established the amount of apple that was valued as much as either a grape |

| |or a cube of jelly, and set the price accordingly, at one disc per food item. |

| |The result was that apple consumption went up in exactly the way that price theory (as applied to |

| |humans) would predict. |

| |One possibility is that in nature, with a food supply that is often barely adequate, losses that |

| |lead to the pangs of hunger are felt more keenly than gains that lead to the comfort of satiety. |

| |The CMB is made up of photons that began their journey 300,000 years after the Big Bang that marks |

| |the beginning of the universe. |

| |And it now seems as if they are tantalisingly close to getting a glimpse of this, by following the |

| |goings-on of a second sort of particle that permeates otherwise empty space—the neutrino. |

| |Cosmologists therefore have good reason to believe that relic neutrinos permeate today's universe, |

| |forming a cosmic neutrino background (CNB) that parallels the CMB. |

| |It is the weakness of the weak nuclear force that makes neutrinos so hard to detect individually, |

| |even today. |

| |They might also be visible in the way that galaxies are distributed, since that distribution, too, |

| |reflects conditions early on. |

| |For instance, they have recently come to believe that the universe is dominated by a mysterious |

| |phenomenon that they have dubbed “dark energy”. |

| |A nation that has not possessed identity cards since 1952 will, in a step, acquire the world's most|

| |complex system. |

| |Prophets of technological doom will probably be disappointed by a system that ought to suffer no |

| |more than the usual teething troubles. |

| |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. |

| |But Kable, a consultancy that has advised the government on other IT projects, believes ￡162 per |

| |person is closer to the mark. |

| |Much of the cost of collecting biometric and personal data has already been shifted to the passport|

| |service, on the grounds that passports must meet tougher international standards. |

| |IT FEELS disturbingly like one of those computer games that Buttonwood is fighting a losing battle |

| |against in her teen-aged house. |

| |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. |

| |Around 60 formerly independent banks have formed 18 new groups that are in various stages of |

| |agreements on mergers. |

| |Meanwhile, the central bank has been forced into propping up the banks, for fear that its reforms |

| |may provoke a systemic collapse. |

| |On June 24th, Guidant announced a technical fault in five models of “implantable cardiac |

| |defibrillators” or ICDs—tiny electrical devices that jolt dicky hearts back into rhythm—and |

| |recommended that physicians stop implanting them. |

| |This is a rare risk that many patients are willing to take to avoid dying from cardiac catastrophe;|

| |moreover, surgery to remove a device is a risky business in its own right. |

| |For that period, the Pew polls provide strong evidence that anti-Americanism is more than a blip |

| |associated with Mr Bush or Iraq. |

| |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. |

| |He is the toxic Texan, interested only in helping those poor countries that are useful allies in |

| |his war on terror. |

| |Confronted by the modest progress that is the best that any such gathering can aspire to and the |

| |spin that will try (and fail) to bridge the gap between reality and expectation, Sir Bob's |

| |foot-soldiers are bound to be disillusioned and angry. |

| |When it announced modest reforms that would take years to make an impact, it talked of |

| |“transformation” as if it was imminent. |

| |For all Mr Blair's sincerity and commitment, for all the difference his efforts may eventually make|

| |to the lives of some poor people, both he and Mr Brown will get stick for raising hopes that cannot|

| |be fulfilled. |

| |The religious right played a leading role in Congress's last-minute intervention to “save” the life|

| |of Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman, as in the attempt to axe the filibuster tactic |

| |that Democratic senators have used to delay Mr Bush's judicial appointments. |

| |The fact that the courts were running so far ahead of public opinion in a generally religious |

| |country bolstered the religious right in two ways. |

| |Take Focus on the Family, a sprawling empire that employs 1,400 people in Colorado Springs and |

| |claims a global audience of 220m people for its TV and radio shows, books, mass e-mails and |

| |counselling. |

| |But it still leaves a movement that represents a minority point of view on many issues and is just |

| |as capable of over-reaching as liberal judges are. |

| |ROUGHLY 30m people are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. |

| |Of these, an estimated 6.5m are in urgent need of anti-retroviral medicines—the cocktails of drugs |

| |that have, in rich countries, transformed AIDS from an acute lethal condition to a chronic |

| |complaint. |

| |And despite initial fears that women might have problems gaining access to treatment, there are as |

| |yet no signs of them losing out. |

| |They and their exhausted partners may, however, take comfort from the fact that a group of |

| |scientists has just found that technique is not everything. |

| |A variety of theories have been proposed—from cementing pair bonds between men and women to sucking|

| |into the uterus only the sperm of those males that have given a woman the most pleasure (and thus, |

| |at the same time, provided incontrovertible evidence of their physical fitness). |

| |Another facet of this study was that the researchers used a survey to tease out other factors that |

| |might be influencing semen quality. |

| |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. |

| |The fortunate 14% of women who always have an orgasm seem to do so for reasons that have more to do|

| |with luck than skill. |

| |Flushing away complaints that the bill pandered to female voters, the mayor argued that it will not|

| |only speed women through toilets in sports arenas, bars, concert halls, convention halls and |

| |theatres (schools, restaurants, hospitals and municipal buildings are exempt), but also “reduce |

| |waiting-around time for their male companions.” |

| |A jihadist group passed word that it would send one of its recruits to meet with us. |

| |Short, scrawny, his chin covered with wispy facial hair that makes him look younger than his age, |

| |Marwan doesn't stand out in the streets of Iraq. |

| |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. |

| |Marwan says he became expert with machine guns, a skill that brought him to the attention of |

| |al-Zarqawi's group, then called Attawhid wal Jihad. Marwan's piety apparently impressed the |

| |foreign-led jihadis as well: in April 2004 he was approached by Attawhid's spiritual guide, |

| |Palestinian-born Abu Anas al-Shami. |

| |It is an acknowledgment that their modern, gray concrete building with 36 classrooms and a |

| |basketball court is both protection and containment. |

| |Universal takes pride in the fact that it is a model Islamic school. |

| |What's being taught to children inside the Universal School, however, is based on a moderate |

| |philosophy that puts an emphasis on assimilation "to prepare them for their future roles in society|

| |as responsible citizens," says the handbook. |

| |The students next door sometimes give voice to the commonplace resentment that can be found among |

| |Muslims the world over. |

| |The three men and Germaine Lindsay, 19, detonated four bombs that killed 56 people, including |

| |themselves. |

| |Why Mr. Khan, Mr. Tanweer and Mr. Hussain in particular crossed a line that no one had before, how |

| |they and Mr. Lindsay linked up, or whether their plot was homegrown or steered from outside, remain|

| |mysteries, at least to the public. |

| |They have come of age in an era marked by conflicts between Muslims and better armed powers - |

| |India, Serbia, Russia, Israel, America and Britain - and the rise of an ideology that sanctifies |

| |terrorist attacks against the West in response. |

| |Over time its education came to include provocative material that some contend was meant to inspire|

| |jihad. |

| |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. |

| |He did not realize that he and so many others were part of an epic, and permanent, migration that |

| |would reshape Britain in so many ways, the events of July 7 being just one. |

| |Men began driving taxis, or opened shops or other family-run businesses that require |

| |round-the-clock tending by an extended family. |

| |In April, a 15-year-old boy was stabbed to death by a member of an Asian mob that pursued him. |

| |Mr. Hussain sees a continuum of self-destruction between the recent bombings and race riots that |

| |occurred just 10 miles away in 2001 - seemingly disconnected rage. |

| |They take to heart the injunction that the ummah - the global community of Muslims -is "like one |

| |body": if one part is suffering, the rest will be in pain as well. |

| |They held study circles, debated and produced literature and videos, all with an agenda that was |

| |political as much as religious. |

| |Their effort to create an Islamic identity in British Muslims has been fueled by the belief that |

| |the West is waging a war - a "crusade," the word President Bush used in 2001 - against Islam, a |

| |notion strengthened by the invasion of Iraq. |

| |At a closed-door meeting that afternoon, senior shuttle managers had ruled that the chances that |

| |debris from the giant external fuel tank would strike the Discovery at liftoff - in the kind of |

| |accident that doomed the Columbia and its seven astronauts in February 2003 - had been reduced to |

| |"acceptable levels." |

| |The possibility that a large chunk of insulating foam might break away from a section of the tank |

| |called the protuberance air load ramp - PAL for short - never came up. |

| |Last Tuesday morning, NASA's contention that it had produced the safest fuel tank in shuttle |

| |history was shattered two minutes into the Discovery's mission to the International Space Station. |

| |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. |

| |At the dawn of the shuttle program, NASA rules said no foam at all should be allowed to hit the |

| |shuttle and possibly damage the fragile heat-resistant tiles that cover its aluminum skin. |

| |Despite years of assurance that such a strike could do no serious damage - a mind-set the Columbia |

| |Accident Investigation Board would call the "normalization of deviance" - the foam had cracked open|

| |a hole that admitted superheated gases when the shuttle re-entered the atmosphere, burning it up |

| |like a torch from within. |

| |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." |

| |"They should have looked at more options," perhaps including different formulations of foam that |

| |might be more flexible. |

| |"Foam really is complicated," said Douglas D. Osheroff, a professor of physics at Stanford and a |

| |member of the board that investigated the Columbia accident. |

| |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. |

| |That group, called the Stafford-Covey task force after the two former astronauts who led it, |

| |accepted NASA's argument that the PAL ramp did not urgently require alteration. |

| |The group took issue with the way NASA determined that the foam chunks that might still fall off |

| |the tank were too small to cause critical damage. |

| |Ultimately, however, the group accepted NASA's contention that it had raised the level of safety in|

| |general. |

| |A NASA engineer who works on tank safety issues said other areas of foam shedding from the |

| |Discovery's tank were even more troubling than the PAL ramp loss, especially a divot that popped |

| |from the vicinity of the left-hand bipod strut, the spot that shed the foam that brought down the |

| |Columbia. |

| |Some of the options under consideration have come up before, including the elimination of the ramp,|

| |a "miniramp" that shrinks the size of the strip by two-thirds, and a small "fence" on the opposite |

| |side of the tray that would smooth airflow further. |

| |Dr. Griffin, the NASA administrator, predicted Friday that the foam problem would be quickly |

| |repaired and said engineers would consider options that had not been tried before. |

| |His decision to reinvent himself as the man to save Europe from itself was a calculated risk that |

| |now looks like a masterstroke, not only drawing the poison from the European debate at home, but |

| |winning praise from such unexpected quarters as the editorial pages of Le Monde and the governor of|

| |the European Central Bank. |

| |For all the efforts of Lord Coe's team, few (and certainly not the aggrieved mayor of Paris) doubt |

| |it was the concerted application of prime ministerial charisma that extracted the crucial votes on |

| |the International Olympic Committee. |

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

| |Margaret Thatcher might have taken perverse satisfaction from the disasters that overtook her party|

| |after she had gone. |

| |Mr Sarkozy may be happy to mock a model that produces mass unemployment, but Mr de Villepin |

| |believes that tinkering is enough. |

| |Fears that Venezuela would profit from its rejection was one reason why the Bush administration |

| |lobbied so hard for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), narrowly passed by the House|

| |of Representatives on July 27th (see article). |

| |Viewed in the rosiest of lights, this could be a sign that British-born Muslims are “coming of |

| |age”—rising above the linguistic and sectarian differences that constricted earlier generations. |

| |But this month's attacks on London laid bare a community that lives in limbo between Yorkshire and |

| |Pakistan, and revealed the limits to that process. |

| |But a second successful attack would strike a nation that is in an anxious state of mind. |

| |The terrorists gave no warning and the security services had not picked up any hint that an attack |

| |might take place (in fact the threat level had recently been downgraded from “severe general” to |

| |“substantial”). |

| |Explosives were also found in a car that had been left in the station car park in Luton. |

| |But this spring, a top German politician named Franz Muntefering likened Blackstone and other |

| |private-equity groups to "swarms of locusts" that fall on companies and devour all they can before |

| |moving on. |

| |The critique, just before a key state election that the SPD lost badly, sparked a furor and a |

| |nationwide debate about capitalism that continues to reverberate. |

| |In their drive to reduce working capital and improve cash flow to pay off the debts incurred during|

| |the buyout, managers can't afford to be sentimental about businesses that don't do well. |

| |Germany's metalworkers' union, the nation's biggest and most influential, holds up MTU as an |

| |example of several firms that it views as victims of unscrupulous American financiers. |

| |The German firm, which makes ATMs for banks, was singled out by the SPD's Muntefering in his |

| |"locust" critique because of the profits that its investors, KKR and Goldman Sachs, made when they |

| |sold out. |

| |He is chief executive of Legrand, a $3 billion electrical equipment company that was acquired late |

| |in 2002 by KKR and French group Wendel in France's biggest buyout. |

| |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. |

| |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. |

| |The dopamine cycle may not be the only thing that drives gamblers. |

| |The just released results showed that compulsive gamblers, drinkers and drug users have high |

| |underlying levels of negative emotionality, a syndrome that includes nervousness, anger and a |

| |tendency to worry and feel victimized. |

| |Psychologists like G. Alan Marlatt of the University of Washington are interested in the potential |

| |of so-called opioid antagonists, drugs that might partially disrupt the neurochemistry that |

| |produces feelings of well-being, thus denying gamblers the kick they seek. |

| |Marlatt is worried that abstinence may be less effective with young gamblers and is exploring |

| |cognitive techniques that instead teach kids to recognize the triggers that get them to gamble too |

| |much. |

| |Like Marlatt's moderation strategy, however, the Illinois program takes a measure of |

| |self-discipline that may be the very thing compulsive gamblers lack. |

| |On the last day of the term in 1981, for instance, Justice Rehnquist wrote for a unanimous court to|

| |say that Presidents Carter and Reagan had the legal authority to nullify court orders and suspend |

| |private lawsuits as part of the agreement with Iran that ended the hostage crisis there. |

| |Judge Roberts cited the decision last year in an opinion accepting the Bush administration's |

| |position that it could block claims against Iraq from American soldiers who had been tortured there|

| |during the Persian Gulf war. |

| |They do, however, bear the dry wit that so many have cited in describing Mr. Roberts's writings and|

| |personality. |

| |"Frankly, the people that did were the liberal clerks, who were more out there, more aggressive, |

| |more, frankly, intolerant," Mr. Knauss said. |

| |Much of the clerks' work consisted of summarizing the thousands of requests that the court receives|

| |each year to hear particular cases, known as petitions for writs of certiorari, or cert. petitions.|

| | |

| |All through the fall of 1980, Mr. Roberts plowed through a huge range of cases, from an Osage |

| |Indian income tax dispute, to a complex cattle transaction, to a claim that a faulty search warrant|

| |had led to a cocaine conviction, to the validity of a lien for payment of repair of an aircraft |

| |propeller for a bankrupt airline, to the question of whether a hunting and fishing lodge owned by a|

| |foundry and used for entertaining customers was tax deductible. |

| |Some of the memorandums contain faint flashes of the sarcastic humor that Mr. Roberts would employ |

| |in internal communications in later years as a government lawyer. |

| |Twenty-five years after the clerkships ended, the memories that remain most distinct for many of |

| |Mr. Roberts's co-clerks involve basketball. |

| |"He played an aggressive style of basketball that left other co-clerks with the bruises to show for|

| |it," Mr. Knauss said of Mr. Roberts. |

| |Mr Levine of Berkeley points out that the union movement “started declining at almost exactly the |

| |moment that the AFL and the CIO unified”. |

| |Under the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 that launched the process, a power-sharing local government|

| |had been created, with complex rules to ensure that Northern Ireland’s Protestant majority (which |

| |is “unionist”, wanting the province to stay British) did not exclude from power the Catholic |

| |minority (which is “nationalist”, seeking a united Ireland). |

| |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. |

| |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. Whereas |

| |protests in the 1980s and 1990s against Salman Rushdie's book “The Satanic Verses” and the first |

| |Gulf war were led by Muslim clerics, opponents of the war in Iraq deliberately joined a broader |

| |coalition of peaceniks, even going so far as to march alongside Trotskyists. |

| |The spectre of terrorism is only one source of mistrust; another is the belief that Asian Muslims |

| |make little effort to fit into British society. |

| |Andrew Evans, of the transport research unit at Imperial College, says people often declare they |

| |will never return to a network that has suffered a calamity. |

| |The exception is the King's Cross fire of 1987, which killed 31 people and led to revelations about|

| |the dangers of the Tube that were as shocking as those exposed in the past few weeks. |

| |Of all the shocks caused by the bombings, none will endure as long as the measures that are put |

| |into place to stop them. |

| |In America, the Department of Homeland Security burns through almost $40 billion a year, routinely |

| |doling out grants to places that are unlikely to be on any terrorist's target list. |

| |Black anger stemmed from the seemingly prejudiced use of street searches—a tactic that, ominously, |

| |was increasingly directed against Asians even before the London bombings. Between 2000-01 and |

| |2003-04, the number of Asians stopped and searched rose by 60%, compared with an 8% rise among the |

| |population of England and Wales. |

| |In his prime-time introduction of his nominee to take the place of retiring Justice Sandra Day |

| |O'Connor, President George W. Bush drove right past the fact that Roberts is a reliably |

| |conservative fellow who would not "legislate from the bench" and lingered instead on the career and|

| |character that would make him so valuable on the court, and so invulnerable to attack. |

| |He hewed to the GOP's anti-tax rhetoric and disdained the no-nonsense, nonpartisan, pragmatic |

| |governance that has made the incumbent Democrat, Gov. Mark R. Warner, so successful. |

| |There have been reports of poorly built homes that people do not want to move into and of relief |

| |agencies failing to offer a transparent accounting of how benefactors' money has been spent. |

| |Yet critics of the baseball deal on the D.C. Council also are right in many of the points that they|

| |make. |

| |Thanks to the stadium that the District will build and the value of this market, team owners will |

| |realize a whopping profit when they sell what used to be the Montreal Expos. |

| |The Bush program defeats that purpose by removing the independent court that is supposed to review |

| |the proposed surveillance and replacing it with unchecked executive discretion. |

| |If the authorization of force implied a repeal of a decades-old law that comprehensively regulates |

| |domestic surveillance, what other laws does the administration think were repealed? |

| |If Mr. Bush then identifies problems with FISA that impede intelligence collection, Congress should|

| |examine the claim seriously with due attention to civil liberties. |

| |In the past two weeks the president has delivered a series of speeches that have laid out a complex|

| |strategy for Iraq; |

| |FISA exists to make sure that the agencies are not targeting people for improper reasons but have |

| |sufficient evidence that Americans are actually operating as foreign agents. |

| |As with its infamous torture memorandum, the administration appears to have taken the position that|

| |the president is entitled to ignore a clearly worded criminal law when it proves inconvenient in |

| |the war on terrorism. |

| |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. |

| |Mr. Miller and his coaches gave these preteenagers an opportunity to come together and achieve, as |

| |teammates, the kind of grand and lasting victory that is well beyond the reach of any single |

| |individual. |

| |On Wednesday he announced the results of a preliminary study of convictions that predated modern |

| |DNA testing but in which biological samples had been retained. |

| |The Post did a story that noted Bush had gained eight points in his job approval rating from a |

| |similar November survey and I did an item on "Parsing the Polls" today that looked at Bush's slight|

| |but real gains in four recent national surveys. |

| |Bush hadn't gotten some sort of lift from the Iraqi elections last week and the -- mostly |

| |--positive media coverage that surrounded that voting. |

| |In a recent Diageo/Hotline poll 72 percent had never heard of Jack Abramoff; of those that |

| |recognized his name six percent felt favorably to him while nine percent felt unfavorably. |

| |But, Abramoff himself only donated to Republicans and all of the allegations of potential |

| |wrongdoing that have been made public so far center on GOP members. |

| |The news that Bush had authorized the monitoring of phone calls and emails of U.S. citizens and |

| |foreign nationals without first obtaining a warrant broke Thursday night. |

| |The Post did a story that noted Bush had gained eight points in his job approval rating from a |

| |similar November survey |

| |Washington, D.C.: Speaking of polls, is there a poll going in the field anytime soon that will test|

| |the administration assertion that Americans believe these wiretaps are in the best interest of the |

| |country? |

| |The news that Bush had authorized the monitoring of phone calls and emails of U.S. citizens and |

| |foreign nationals without first obtaining a warrant broke Thursday night (Dec. 15). |

| |I tried for the better to get people to find it, but in the end the only thing that could be |

| |discovered was the personnel file that was started when I started at the new agency. |

| |Stephen Barr: Darn mess, I'd say. Still, I think the FSA Web site carries a warning that this |

| |situation can happen. |

| |Note to self: if you ever need a raise, just have the ombudsman plant a story that the higher |

| |uppers aren't happy with your stuff. |

| |Do you see it as an issue that can fracture the GOP's control of Congress? |

| |The Post publishing reports about the testimony of reporters in the case that turn out to be false |

| |in ways that echo the claims of the White House officials under investigation. |

| |Fairfax, Va.: What is your reaction to David Sirota's suggestion that the reason Bush didn't get |

| |warrants for spying on American citizens is that, despite the tremendously favorable predisposition|

| |of the secret court that would most likely approve Bush's requests. |

| |Bush didn't get warrants for spying on American citizens is that, despite the tremendously |

| |favorable predisposition of the secret court that would most likely approve Bush's requests. |

| |So today's Political Chat will give preference to questions that include a Dylan lyric or song |

| |title. |

| |Springfield, Va.: Blogs that have been linked by various Post writers sometimes point to bias at |

| |The Post evidenced by two recent example |

| |Charles Babington: There have been some good interviews with insurgents that suggest it's "all of |

| |the above." |

| |Where did you get the information that formed the basis of your comments? |

| |Shailagh Murray: The Senate will consider the defense spending bill this week that includes the oil|

| |drilling provision. |

| |As many Democrats would privately agree -- it's not like Ted Stevens invented the tactic of putting|

| |items in bills that don't belong there. |

| |Arlington, Va.: You ask, 'I wonder how many of you folks out there agree with Arlington's assertion|

| |that "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. |

| |Washington, D.C.: Just wondering, are the Pombo provisions that messed with the D.C. land swap |

| |still in the budget reconciliation conference report? |

| |I really don't have a question but I am a retired U.S. Park Policeman that has had his retirement |

| |changed back in 2000 from a bill H.R. 4880 was enacted as the Law Enforcement Pay Equity Act of |

| |2000. |

| |We're waiting for an executive order that will trigger publication of pay charts, probably at the |

| |end of this year or the start of next year. |

| |This is one of the things that Rep. Jon Porter is trying to sort out as part of an overhaul of LEO |

| |benefits. |

| |Stephen Barr: Well, Secretary Rumsfeld wants to create a more flexible civil service cadre at |

| |Defense that can take on new jobs and responsibilities and get higher pay. |

| |But the problem goes beyond the PSB - there are way too many agencies and commissions that are |

| |running close to losing quorum. |

| |Hansen is concerned about reports that the Army is attempting to include in the new version of the |

| |Field Manual a 10-page classified addendum listing examples of interrogation techniques. |

| |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. |

| |The Army Field Manual guidelines should list interrogation techniques that would be acceptable to |

| |how we would want our troops treated, respecting human rights and the rule of law. |

| |Victor Hansen: I would hope that the addendum would impose the regularity and consistency that you |

| |suggest will occur. |

| |It is not only the classification that can cause problems it is the fact that there are two sets of|

| |rules. |

| |Culver City, Calif.: You say that "Every official investigation that looked into the causes for |

| |detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison noted that there was confusion at all levels". |

| |Do you think the timing of these "secret' rules was related to the fact that McCain was not budging|

| |on the McCain amendment language? |

| |Essentially, a cookie is just a placeholder that allows a Web site to know that you've been there |

| |before. |

| |Symantec's extensive online support pages, as they have quite a few documents that detail what to |

| |do when faced with certain error messages. |

| |Just a note that one possible way to deal with the malware issue is VMware Technology Network |

| |Some of the detectors work by trying to find files that use various tricks to hide or load in |

| |system memory. |

| |I would like to know if he ever tried to use his column to badger elected officials into supporting|

| |his pet causes, the way that Drew Pearson used to do? |

| |Howard Kurtz: I know there's a conservative critique that the Times story was timed for the day of |

| |the Senate filibuster on the Patriot Act, but I see no evidence that this was deliberate. |

| |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. |

| |Washington, D.C.: I for one have grown really tired of suggestions that leaks about secret CIA |

| |prisons, random wiretapping, etc. |

| |Arlington, Va.: Once again, the media covers itself in embarrassment by failing to reveal |

| |information that could help people decide an election. I am, of course, referring to the New York |

| |Times sitting on the wiretap story for a year. |

| |I think this person is seeing some equivalency between the destruction of a career and risking |

| |national security, all for short-term political gain, with the recent news that the administration |

| |has decided that mere laws don't apply to it. |

| |Howard Kurtz: Bill Keller says it was the realization of growing doubts about the program within |

| |the government, and the belief that the story could be reported, with some technical details |

| |withheld, without damaging national security. |

| |Here is a program that was disclosed to Congress (including opposition leaders), vetted by lawyers |

| |and arguably 100% legal, which the Government asked the NYT not to disclose. |

| |Isn't it basically the case that the press will disregard classified status, and the laws |

| |protecting such information, whenever it thinks the needs of a good story require it? Reporters |

| |like to say that this is done in the public interest, but what if the public doesn't agree? |

| |Howard Kurtz: Well, the very fact that the Times delayed publication for a year -- the subject of |

| |much criticism among our chat participants today. |

| |Delmar, New York: In the President's discussion with Jim Lehrer on Friday, when Mr. Lehrer tried to|

| |get Mr. Bush to comment on the domestic wiretapping matter that was divulged by the New York Times |

| |earlier that day, Mr. Lehrer stated ". |

| |The idea is, the index is designed to show which schools do the best job challenging average |

| |students, and a school with an average SAT score that would get you into Harvard clearly has no |

| |average students. |

| |As for yr question two, that kind of stress may be a problem in the five percent of schools that |

| |give a lot of AP tests, and have kids worrying about getting into selection colleges. |

| |You are welcome to choose a life that doesn't require college. |

| |I was amazed at the poor quality of the buildings that housed some of our best schools, even in |

| |affluent neighborhoods. |

| |In my opinion, the main reason that Fairfax county is ranked so highly is the fact that we have a |

| |disproportionate number of highly educated and highly involved parents. |

| |McLean, Va.: I have a mood disorder that doesn't cycle high/low, but more like sort-of-okay/very |

| |low about every 2-3 weeks. |

| |One of the reason that I have written my own self-help books is to bring assistance to those who |

| |cannot gain access to top quality help. |

| |The thing that continually amazes me about this health condition is how common it is-1% of the |

| |population. (Another 1 percent suffers from schizophrenia.) |

| |One way to think of it is that episodes of mood instability may reflect seizure type activities in |

| |those parts of the brain that regulate mood. |

| |Arlington, Va.: I have noticed with the women on my mother's side of the family that there is an |

| |obvious anxiety problem that worsens with age to the point where my grandmother no longer leaves |

| |the house, and my aunt cannot get behind the wheel of a car. |

| |The first thing that jumped to my mind when I heard the extension was now six months instead of |

| |three months was... politics. |

| |Michael Fletcher: That's one of the things that would have to change. |

| |Stephen Barr: Experts tell me that it generally takes about five years for people to settle |

| |comfortably into pay band systems that try to stress job performance. |

| |John F. Harris affectionately dubs "the crankosphere" are evidently of the impression that the |

| |Washington Post political staff is distracted by internal battles with . |

| |Note to self: if you ever need a raise, just have the ombudsman plant a story that the higher |

| |uppers aren't happy with your stuff. then watch the fireworks fly! |

| |Dudley, Tex.: Reading The Post one gets the impression that being against the Iraq war and thinking|

| |Bush lied to get us in there is an outside the mainstream point of view. |

| |Do you see it as an issue that can fracture the GOP's control of Congress? |

| |So today's Political Chat will give preference to questions that include a Dylan lyric or song |

| |title. |

| |At the time, we had the sense that the media was much more balanced--yes there was right-leaning |

| |and left-leaning--but we no longer had national media conglomerates driving an agenda. |

| |It's long before we get to that point that we would have failed to be who we are. |

| |How does OPM and DoD get away with denying information that every taxpayer should be able to |

| |know--what federal employees make and where they work. |

| |Stephen Barr: What's it all about is interpretation of the law that governs who is deemed to be a |

| |law enforcement officer for purposes of the special retirement benefits provided those officers. |

| |There is a real perception problem when we use secret rules that are not open to public scrutiny. |

| |You should take care of the router administration from the computer that is physically connected to|

| |the router. |

| |Jay Mathews: True, but I think flunk is a useful term to use for general readers, rather than the |

| |bureaucratese that the College Board likes. If you get less than a 3, you are unlikely to get |

| |credit from any college. That is close enough to flunk for me. |

| |A couple of self-described "gym rats" have taken the lead in an effort that could genuinely change |

| |and improve the tone of the place. |

| |Israel, 47, is a former congressional staffer and local elected official with a diverse |

| |working-class constituency that is 25 percent minority. |

| |It takes a degree of political incompetence usually associated with Democrats for the side that |

| |wants to preserve the true spirit of Christmas to invite so many coal-in-the-stocking metaphors at |

| |this time of year. |

| |The five recent Iraq speeches were intended to start a long-awaited pivot by Bush toward a new |

| |domestic agenda that could be unveiled in January's State of the Union address. First he had to |

| |stop the erosion of support on Iraq. |

| |Not even conservatives will rush to endorse the expansive powers that Bush claims to find in the |

| |Constitution to enable the National Security Agency to evade existing law and systematically |

| |conduct wiretaps against terrorism suspects on U.S. soil without warrants. |

| |The fact that the defendant had robbed does not necessarily mean that he has robbed again. |

| |To kidnap suspects and hold them in secret CIA-run prisons, with no acknowledgment that the suspect|

| |is even in U.S. custody. |

| |I checked, and the Constitution that the president loves to cite -- but only when it's convenient |

| |-- says clearly that he works for all of us. |

| |After this week's elections in Iraq, will our national debate be about what the United States |

| |should do to salvage the best outcome it can from a war policy that has been riddled with errors |

| |and miscalculations? |

| |After all, it's the administration's wildly optimistic assumptions that led us to fight a war with |

| |too few troops, |

| |2005 was already the year of the demagogue, having been dominated for months by the endlessly |

| |echoed falsehood that the president "lied us into war." |

| |It cracks down on some of the favorite devices that Republicans have used to stifle genuine debate |

| |and deliberation in the House. |

| |Jones wrote in a painstaking, 139-page opinion that probably will set the parameters for future |

| |battles over intelligent design around the country. |

| |ID disclaimer, one of the Dover school board members made the argument that "2,000 years ago, |

| |someone died on a cross. |

| |Jones traces the way that intelligent design grew directly out of an explicitly religious "creation|

| |science" movement. |

| |Jones traces the way that intelligent design grew directly out of an explicitly religious "creation|

| |science" movement and finds that "ID fails to meet the essential ground rules that limit science to|

| |testable, natural explanations." |

| |Sen. Robert Bennett, a Utah Republican, she has introduced a bill that would make flag burning |

| |illegal. |

| |I can tell you from firsthand experience that you will never know what's going on. |

| |A U.S. president has just received word that American counterterrorist operatives have captured a |

| |senior al Qaeda operative in Pakistan. |

| |Among his possessions are a couple of cell phones -- phones that contain several American phone |

| |numbers. |

| |Later, at the White House briefing, CBS's John Roberts asked White House spokesman Scott McClellan |

| |about Bush's statement that "I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq." |

| |The long-haired host has also cut a deal with iN Demand Networks to make television shows from the |

| |radio broadcasts that will cost $13.99 a month and initially include access to 40 hours of past |

| |shows. |

| |"The phenomenon that is Howard Stern is not just about naked women," says Robert Jacobson, iN |

| |Demand's chief executive. |

| |But he rejects the notion that he is jumping to satellite just to be filthier. |

| |"If anything, they're going to abandon the medium that refused to stick up for the self-proclaimed |

| |King of All Media. |

| |Since Rep. John Murtha made his supposedly stunning announcement that he wanted an immediate |

| |withdrawal of all troops from Iraq, the Democrats have embraced surrender. |

| |Bush is also keeping up the argument that we're turning the corner: |

| |And it's possible to have a healthy respect for the press and believe this is a story that the |

| |Times should have held back (though the real anger here is on the left. |

| |What's clear to me is that Keller made a judgment that Tomasky disagrees with. If he was so |

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

| |The news media are beginning to act like a herd of animals that eat their own. |

| |The sole exception to this goosestep that comes to mind was the Harriet Miers debacle. |

| |"The president spoke to reporters at the White House after Democratic National Committee Chairman |

| |Howard Dean said on a San Antonio, Texas, radio station that 'the idea that we're going to win the |

| |war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong.' " |

| |House Republicans are increasingly looking to usher in 2006 with a new majority leader to give the |

| |party a fresh start with voters that could help avert potentially devastating midterm elections |

| |next year. |

| |"The Bush administration," says the Philadelphia Inquirer , "is mounting an aggressive effort to |

| |counter an article that ran in Sunday's Inquirer that described Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. |

| |"The point is that the question of whether Hillary is too angry to be President pushes the idea |

| |that she is angry in the first place. |

| |" They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic |

| |practices of southern Dixiecrats (Yeah) and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern |

| |Republicans ." |

| |'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. |

| |Today, Cristina DC Pastor and Rita Gerona-Adkins either get it all wrong -- or just jump the gun --|

| |in , with a report that Ralston has left the White House. |

| |Today's appearance was the first time that Fitzgerald has gone back to a grand jury since the Oct. |

| |28 indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby." |

| |1 percent in three years; only 34 percent agreed with the Bush position that there should be no |

| |firm deadlines. |

| |Later, he called the question of how the United States monitors the treatment of prisoners an |

| |'intelligence matter' that he could not discuss." |

| |Why does the Vice President continue to give the impression that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was |

| |connected with the September the 11th attacks. |

| |"Delegates also vehemently rejected any proposal that would divert Social Security payroll taxes |

| |into private investment accounts. Such a proposal had be |

| |It didn't help matters that Bush made time Tuesday to visit a retirement community in a Washington |

| |suburb. |

| |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. |

| |Ken Herman writes for Cox News Service: "President Bush said Wednesday the invasion of Iraq was the|

| |right thing to do even if was for a reason that turned out to be wrong. . . . |

| |But we discussed, in light of some recent correspondence that Ruth had received from our son, we |

| |actually received it after his death. |

| |'For example, it does not impose penalties for agencies that miss deadlines. |

| |"The estimate marked the first time Bush has personally provided an assessment of the Iraqi death |

| |toll, a highly sensitive subject that his administration largely avoids discussing at any level, |

| |much less from the presidential lectern. |

| |Bush's number roughly matches an estimate by Iraq Body Count , a research group that uses media |

| |accounts to measure civilian deaths. |

| |These are people that still want to hurt us, Brian. |

| |White House objectives in the talks that started with Vice President Dick Cheney's demand that |

| |intelligence agents be exempted from Mr. McCain's measure. |

| |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." |

| |"Commenting on an issue that has roiled Washington and affected the U.S. image abroad. |

| |"A new Cook Political Report/RT Strategies national poll 'confirms that President Bush's job |

| |approval plunge that began earlier this year has bottomed out and he has regained at least some |

| |lost ground.' |

| |And we're honored to have him come and speak to our members and this is the format that they have |

| |selected." |

| |President Bush on Monday renewed his demand that Congress extend tax cuts on investment dividends |

| |and capital gains. |

| |But a tax-cutting call that was once readily heeded on Capitol Hill is now facing stiff resistance |

| |from lawmakers of both parties. |

| |Cheney spoke in an aviation hangar on this base in northern New York, addressing an audience that |

| |base officials put at around 3,000." |

| |The president has, I think, made up a law that we never passed," said Sen. |

| |We continue to see violence and suffering, caused by an enemy that is determined and brutal, |

| |unconstrained by conscience or the rules of war." |

| |"I disagree with the notion that hopes have been dashed. |

| |NEW ORLEANS -- A federal judge urged state and federal officials to quickly set a date for |

| |postponed Feb. 4 elections that would decide the next mayor for this hurricane-battered city. |

| |Israel announced plans to build 228 new homes in West Bank settlements that Israeli officials say |

| |they intend to keep under any future peace agreement with the Palestinians. |

| |The severity of the fines is emblematic of the emphasis that the federal government has placed |

| |since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on investigating financial institutions' transactions with |

| |countries and firms suspected of having links to terrorists. |

| |Enron Corp.'s former chief accountant agreed to plead guilty today to criminal conduct that |

| |preceded the company's collapse into bankruptcy. |

| |But Yun said she had not received any gifts that she needed to return. |

| |What looks like artful vandalism, though, is really part of a guerrilla marketing campaign for |

| |Sony's PlayStation Portable, a device that can play games, music and movies. |

| |International Business Machines Corp. are among the growing list of companies that have dabbled in |

| |street art to get their marketing messages out. |

| |$1 million-a-day fine against the union local for violating a state law that bars public employees |

| |from striking. |

| |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 bec |

| |Dropped requirements that local phone companies must lease their high-speed DSL lines to Internet |

| |service providers at reduced rates. |

| |"Hinging a regulatory policy on the idea that there's going to be numerous competitors in a |

| |marketplace with their own facilities . |

| |Jeff Pulver, who helped found the company that later became Internet phone provider |

| |Many of the companies that have pushed forward options vesting dates to beat the Dec. 31 deadline |

| |come from the high-technology and health care sectors, industries that have been heavy users of |

| |stock options in recent years. |

| |"Ciena's board of directors considered the expense savings that will occur under new accounting |

| |regulation and the lack of employee |

| |Democratic and moderate Republican opponents of the measure will be unwilling to hold up |

| |legislation that funds U.S. troops. |

| |It has grown from an agency that coordinated policy and oversaw the counterintelligence activities |

| |of units within the military services |

| |CIFA manages the Pentagon database that includes Talon reports, consisting of raw, unverified |

| |information picked up by the military services on suspicious activities. |

| |Talon database contained reports on peaceful civilian protests and demonstrations that should have |

| |been purged long ago under Defense Department regulations. |

| |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. Shea, then an economist at the |

| |Department of Energy, had managed on her own for years. |

| |The documents, disclosed as part of a lawsuit that challenges FBI treatment of groups that planned |

| |demonstrations at last year's political conventions,. |

| |PETA general counsel Jeff Kerr called the FBI's conduct an abuse of power that punishes activists |

| |for speaking out. |

| |"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 |

| |Other documents contain suspicions that PETA funds, supports or otherwise acts as a front for |

| |"eco-terrorist" groups that use arson, bombs or vandalism, such as the Animal Liberation Front or |

| |Earth Liberation Front. |

| |In 2001, Rogers became chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on transportation, a post |

| |that would give him an important role in directing aviation-security projects after the terrorist |

| |attacks. |

| |The TSA eventually hired Boeing Co. to deploy an explosives-detection system that relied on |

| |technology similar to that used in a medical CAT scan. |

| |Under a contract that ballooned to more than $1.2 billion, Boeing deployed minivan-size machines |

| |that were widely criticized as too expensive to install and too large for airport lobbies. |

| |"The fact that these people were coming to my fundraisers, I was pleased about it, but it did not |

| |influence me." |

| |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, |

| |Above all else, the Redskins have prided themselves on being dominant against the run, a mentality |

| |that resulted in the team leading the NFL in fewest yards allowed per carry last season (3.1) |

| |To find a league that has landed in "not quite zero" territory, look toward the Missouri Valley |

| |Conference, which several CAA coaches and administrators mentioned as a potential model. |

| |There, coaches held the first of three key gatherings in a 20-day span that helped transform the |

| |Washington Redskins from a team seemingly destined for another disappointing season to one that can|

| |make the playoffs by winning its last two games. |

| |How could a season that began with such hard work and preparation be on the brink of disaster? |

| |The result is an offense that is more spare, but one that has rediscovered its toughness and drive.|

| |That's the last day the over-the-air analog signals that have brought television programs into |

| |Americans' homes for decades will be broadcast, leaving only digital signals, under an agreement |

| |reached by House and Senate negotiators over the weekend. |

| |That means that millions of people will either have to buy new digital TV sets or get their hands |

| |on a set-top converter box that allows the digital channels to be viewed over an old analog |

| |television. In addition, the negotiators agreed to spend up to $1.5 billion in federal funds to |

| |subsidize the set-top boxes for consumers. |

| |That technology was popularized by TiVo, a device that records programs to a hard drive and allows |

| |viewers to skip commercials during playback. Cable companies ar |

| |Microsoft responded that the decision was unjustified, and that it had sent further changes to the |

| |commission that had not been examined or considered. |

| |"This certainly highlights the fact that intrusions can happen to anybody and that nobody should be|

| |complacent about security," Colbert said. |

| |Others, however, argue that it would be expensive to adjust satellites, telescopes and other |

| |astronomical systems that are hard-wired for the leap second |

| |"Astronomers wanted a time scale that represented the Earth's movement, and the clock community |

| |wanted a smooth scale," said physicist Judah Levine |

| |Furthermore, Seidelmann added, astronomers and satellite operators deploy sensitive equipment on |

| |the ground and in space on the assumption that the Coordinated Universal Time signal will match up |

| |within a second of astronomical time, |

| |"The idea that it's going to be midnight in the middle of the afternoon is just nonsense," Levine |

| |said. |

|who (472) |An appeal from the Foundation for the Salvation of the Erzya Language described the position of its|

| |people, who mainly live in the central Russian republic of Mordovia, as “critical and even |

| |hopeless” because of the Russocentrism of the education system and public broadcasting. |

| |“They've been pumped full of steroids,” says Lieutenant-General David Petraeus, Fort Leavenworth's |

| |commander, who has recently returned from Iraq. |

| |In Mosul, your correspondent strolled through a souk with a dynamic and thoughtful American captain|

| |who chatted and waved to the shoppers, trying to win trust. |

| |The police have been worrying that the terrorists would carry out another attack, as the bombers |

| |who killed commuters on trains in Madrid in March last year were apparently planning to do. |

| |Hence one reaction to the news on Tuesday that police had identified four British men who had |

| |carried the bombs and blown themselves up: if they are dead, then they cannot kill again. |

| |But it also raised a disturbing thought: that Britain now has homegrown suicide-bombers who think |

| |the Dar al-Harb, the Abode of War, can be reached by boarding a Thameslink commuter train. |

| |To override a filibuster, the Republicans, who have 55 votes in the Senate, need 60 votes. |

| |Two sitting justices, including Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is suffering from cancer, are |

| |in their 80s; two more are in their 70s. |

| |They fear that such a latter-day version of Clarence Thomas, the black justice who was appointed by|

| |Mr Bush's father, will split the Democratic coalition by appealing to conservative women or |

| |minorities. |

| |Following closely behind is Janice Rogers Brown, a sharecropper's daughter and the first black |

| |woman on the California Supreme Court, who won re-election by a colossal margin. |

| |And those who did gave vaguely contradictory answers. |

| |Senators, who sit for six years rather than the two years of the populist House, have long prided |

| |themselves on their independence. |

| |Now it is conservatives who are upset about their frustrated hopes. |

| |Bert Calland, a Navy SEAL who supervised special operations forces in Afghanistan after 9/11, as |

| |the CIA's acting deputy director — has signaled that he intends to insure that the CIA retains |

| |primacy over all spy operations outside the U.S. |

| |But the Commission didn't settle the matter about which agency is best equipped to run spies and |

| |instead kicked it upstairs for Negroponte — who has named a CIA officer David Shedd, formerly a |

| |National Security Council detailee, as his chief of staff — to decide. |

| |For a man who hasn't bet a nickel since 1989, Bruce Roberts spends a lot of time in casinos. |

| |Last year his service took 3,400 calls from gamblers who had lost an average of $32,000 each. |

| |A 1999 study ordered by the U.S. Congress found that people who live within 50 miles of a casino |

| |have two times as much risk of developing a gambling problem as those living farther away. |

| |In Western Europe, bishops hope John Paul's successor will focus on re-evangelizing Catholics who |

| |have fallen away. |

| |The church recommends abstinence as protection against disease, but Jyoti Kumar, a 29-year-old |

| |Catholic woman who works as a housekeeper in New Delhi, hopes that the new pope will come from the |

| |developing world and will modify the church's strict ban on condom use and birth control. |

| |The Eastern-rite churches allow their clergy to be married, of course; in the United States, the |

| |Catholic Church has even allowed a tiny handful of married priests—mostly Anglicans who converted |

| |to Catholicism—into its ranks. |

| |Relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches remain strained, a |

| |painful reality for adherents who share so much culture and history. |

| |And he's going to have to find the people who can make a difference in what are often complex |

| |communities with no very clear or credible leadership. |

| |Anyone who can assemble a squad of good players can start competing. |

| |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. |

| |This has cast Mr Sarkozy, who cancelled a trip to the French West Indies last week after protests |

| |against the new law, as its chief defender. |

| |On the first count, the commotion is in some ways yet another row that pits Mr Sarkozy, who heads |

| |the UMP, against those from whom he wrested control of that party: Mr Chirac and his protege, Mr de|

| |Villepin. Electorally, the right may gain from the riots, since security fears play to its |

| |strengths. |

| |Aime Cesaire, a 92-year-old writer from Martinique who has long advocated “negritude” as a response|

| |to colonial humiliation, was one of those who refused to see Mr Sarkozy. |

| |With his visit to London this week to meet Britain's Tony Blair, Mr de Villepin has also begun to |

| |reappropriate France's counter-terrorism policy from his ambitious interior minister, who is none |

| |other than Mr Sarkozy. |

| |Mr de Villepin, who worked for seven years as Mr Chirac's chief of staff, shares his faith in the |

| |faltering French social model. |

| |But it was the other who went on to win. |

| |Its chief architect, Raymond Moriyama, is a Japanese-Canadian who was interned in Canada during the|

| |war. |

| |And among its 13,000 works of art are some strikingly frank portrayals of the underside of war: a |

| |portrait of a disgraced Canadian peacekeeping soldier who tortured a Somali boy; another of a |

| |despondent General Romeo Dallaire, head of UN troops in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. |

| |According to a survey by Mike Gilbert, who works for a medical accountants' association, their |

| |average annual income is now ￡90,000 ($170,000), nearly 90% of it from the state. |

| |In the past, salaries of general practitioners (GPs) have been considerably lower than those of |

| |hospital doctors, who can supplement their income from the National Health Service with cash from |

| |lucrative private patients. |

| |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. |

| |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. |

| |"I believed them," says Song, a pretty, doe-eyed girl who suffered severe bruises and a dislocated |

| |jaw. |

| |Iljin gangs are typically part extortion ring and part social club, according to Jong, who |

| |interviewed more than 200 teens over five years to prepare his independent study of the phenomenon.|

| | |

| |Jong, who teaches at Jeon Nong high school in Seoul, says gang members use the Internet to organize|

| |regional and even national networks. |

| |Iljin deal harshly with anybody who betrays the gang or tries to quit, Jong says. |

| |Cho's commercials are expected to begin airing by early July and will be the first to feature a |

| |North Korean who is not a defector. |

| |The next room displays machines inspired by science fiction and made from recycled industrial |

| |materials by a young Kinshasa artist, Rigobert Nimi, who turned to making these art “toys” when he |

| |failed to find work as an engineer. |

| |Immediately afterwards, he commissioned Mr Magnin, who had curated the African section of that |

| |show, to begin putting together a collection of work by black, self-taught artists who live in |

| |Africa. |

| |Immediately afterwards, he commissioned Mr Magnin, who had curated the African section of that |

| |show, to begin putting together a collection of work by black, self-taught artists who live in |

| |Africa. |

| |“I want to show people that Africa, with all its problems of AIDS, corruption, wars, famine, has |

| |artists who still manage to produce incredibly innovative art of the same quality as that being |

| |made in London or New York.” |

| |The country's autocrat, Alexander Lukashenka, has put tight controls on the media, rigged |

| |elections, torn up the constitution and sent opposition activists to jail, exile, or—as many fear |

| |of four of them who have disappeared—the grave. |

| |His wife, a cleaner at a neighbouring hotel, was one of perhaps 230,000 people who drowned in the |

| |deluge. |

| |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. |

| |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. |

| |Oddly, given a history of resentment at Afro-Caribbeans who are often accused of taking public |

| |housing and precious jobs, Asians are reviled for their apparent aloofness. |

| |“It's a big challenge for the old-style race warrior,” admits Trevor Phillips, who chairs the |

| |Commission for Racial Equality. |

| |A good start has, however, been made by Muslim clerics and spokesmen, who not only moved quickly to|

| |condemn the bombings but showed remarkable acumen and discipline in the following days. |

| |Now Virginia's governor, a pro-death-penalty Democrat who may run for president in 2008, wants to |

| |get the bottom of it. |

| |Mr Glazer's main offence seems to be that he is a businessman who intends to run United as a |

| |business. |

| |But they have not been reassured by one of 76-year-old Mr Glazer's five sons, Joel, who will |

| |oversee day-to-day affairs at United. |

| |He has said that his family are “avid Manchester United fans” who want the club to “achieve even |

| |greater success”. |

| |Most of the people who died on 9/11 had no choice. |

| |But investigators are only now beginning to understand the actions and psychology of the thousands |

| |who had a chance to escape. |

| |The people who made it out of the World Trade Center, for example, waited an average of 6 min. |

| |before heading downstairs, according to a new National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)|

| |study drawn from interviews with nearly 900 survivors. |

| |In the case of the Twin Towers, at least 135 people who theoretically had access to open |

| |stairwells--and enough time to use them--never made it out, the report found.Since the early days |

| |of the atom bomb, scientists have been trying to understand how to move masses of people out of |

| |danger. |

| |The estimated 15,410 who got out, the NIST findings show, took about a minute to make it down each |

| |floor--twice as long as the standard engineering codes predicted. |

| |William Morgan, who directs the exercise-psychology lab at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, |

| |has studied mysterious scuba accidents in which divers drowned with plenty of air in their tanks. |

| |But, like others who study disaster behavior, he is perpetually frustrated that not more is done to|

| |encourage self-reliance. |

| |"I found the lack of preparedness shocking," says lead investigator Robyn Gershon, an associate |

| |professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University who shared the findings with TIME. |

| |It's the low wages paid to the people who produce them. |

| |The discipline of Mr. Khan, 30, was shared, and not just with his friends Shehzad Tanweer, 22, and |

| |Hasib Mir Hussain, 18, who joined him on a murderous assignation in London on July 7. |

| |Mr. Khan, Mr. Tanweer and Mr. Hussain were part of a larger clique of young British-raised South |

| |Asian men in Beeston, a neighborhood of Leeds, who turned their backs on what they came to see as a|

| |decadent, demoralizing Western culture. |

| |In many ways, the transformation has had positive elements: the men live healthier and more |

| |constructive lives than many of their peers here, Asian or white, who have fallen prey to drugs, |

| |alcohol or petty crime. |

| |"They don't know whether they're Muslim or British or both," said Martin McDaid, a former |

| |antiterrorist operative who converted to Islam, taking the name Abdullah, and worked in the |

| |neighborhood. |

| |In one corner shop sits Ejaz Hussain, 54, who came from a Pakistani village in his teens, and has |

| |reared eight children in Britain. |

| |Walk down Stratford Street, past another mosque of the elders the bombers and their cohort |

| |rejected, to the store of Mohammad Jaheer, a burly Bangladesh-born shopkeeper who went "religious,"|

| |as young men here say, 10 years ago at 16. |

| |Mr. McDaid, who worked at the bookshop, said it was intended only to raise awareness and passions -|

| |among Muslims and the British establishment alike - about the oppression of Muslims around the |

| |world. |

| |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. |

| |"They are getting lazy, getting spoiled from the government," said Abu Hanifa, 60, another |

| |shopkeeper who works around the clock. |

| |They grew up in rough and often blighted neighborhoods where "hardness" - the ability to fight |

| |anyone, at any time - was essential, said Mr. Hussain's son Nadeem Ejaz, 30, who runs the family's |

| |green grocery. |

| |"Why this damage to their own streets, their own cities, their own communities?" he asked of the |

| |Asian youth who took part in the riots, echoing those who now ask how the bombers could turn on |

| |their own society. |

| |As Mr. Jaheer and his friends see it, the critical battle here has been between those who have |

| |succumbed to their milieu, dragging their community down, and those who have sought to rescue and |

| |uplift it. |

| |To those who say Islam turned the bombers against Britain, they answer that Islam also saved |

| |youngsters from Britain. |

| |One by one, young men who regularly slept through namaz, or prayers, awakened. |

| |The pioneers coached those who followed them in how to live as Muslims in the West, bringing a new |

| |social conservatism to bear. |

| |All of the young men quickly rejected the Islam of their parents, who practice a Sufi-influenced |

| |strain of the subcontinent called Barelvi. |

| |And the young zealots felt only frustration and contempt for the mosques' imams, who were often |

| |brought from the subcontinent, spoke minimal English, knew nothing of the moral maze young British |

| |Muslims face, and abided by an injunction by mosque elders that politics or current events |

| |involving Muslims should stay outside the mosque. |

| |Educated second-generation Muslims are finding their way to an extreme form of Islam spreading not |

| |through mosques but through Islamic bookshops, the Internet and university societies, said Roger |

| |Ballard, an anthropologist in Manchester who specializes in Pakistani Muslims in Britain. |

| |For educated young European Muslims who learned nothing of their own history in school, Salafism is|

| |a natural fit, Mr. Ballard said. |

| |The Europeans mainly want Croatia to surrender, or to inform on, Ante Gotovina, a fugitive Croat |

| |army chief who has been charged with ethnic cleansing during Croatia's war with the Serbs. |

| |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. |

| |In the meantime, they will have to listen to hair-raising tales of children turned down by every |

| |school they applied to, and of schools with 20 applications for every place that are so popular |

| |they only accept those who live within a five-minute walk. |

| |One of their main worries is that giving schools more freedom over admissions will reintroduce |

| |academic selection on the sly—a fear that was cleverly heightened by the new Tory leader, David |

| |Cameron, who last week said the prime minister could rely on Tory support to force his bill |

| |through. |

| |The state party already has plenty of those: from Richard Daley, the mayor who has helped to |

| |restore Chicago's lustre, and Rahm Emanuel, who heads the national party's congressional campaign |

| |committee, to Senator Barack Obama. |

| |He then fell into a disastrous row with his father-in-law, Dick Mell, a powerful Chicago alderman |

| |who had helped to get him elected. |

| |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. |

| |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. |

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

| |the law. |

| |Coyote gangs do not hesitate to beat, rob or kill migrants who enter “their” territory without |

| |paying. |

| |They wash dishes more cheaply than locals would, benefiting anybody who ever goes to a restaurant. |

| |“Keep them fools out,” says Alvin Pablo, an unemployed landscaper in Tucson, who says that Mexicans|

| |took his job. |

| |But this will hardly comfort Mr Pablo, who favours erecting a huge fence along the border. |

| |His plan is two-pronged: he wants to tighten controls at the border, while simultaneously relieving|

| |pressure on it by “creating a legal channel for those who enter America to do an honest day's |

| |labour,” through a new temporary worker programme. |

| |As well as catching more illegals, Mr Bush wants to deal more rationally with those who are caught.|

| | |

| |Second, employers who hire illegals must be punished, as they rarely have been in the past. |

| |For a start, the Republicans are keen to woo Latino voters, who are quick to punish politicians who|

| |bash their immigrant cousins. |

| |In a setback for Mr Chavez, on July 27th the Inter-American Development Bank, the region's largest |

| |official lender, chose as its new president Luis Alberto Moreno, Colombia's ambassador to |

| |Washington who was discreetly backed by Mr Bush. |

| |The death of Mr Castro, who is 78 and frail, would be a body blow to Mr Chavez. |

| |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. |

| |He was kicked out of one school, dropped out of another, and probably would never have graduated if|

| |not for Herman Katz, a teacher at Roosevelt High, who plucked him from a remedial English class and|

| |propelled him on to graduate from UCLA. |

| |Siliciano, a law professor at Cornell who clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall at the same time. |

| |"John certainly was in sync with his justice," said Paul M. Smith, who clerked for Justice Lewis F.|

| |Powell Jr. and is now a lawyer in Washington who frequently appears before the Supreme Court. |

| |The book relied heavily on indiscreet accounts by law clerks who had served in earlier years, which|

| |made the justices more cautious, several former clerks said. |

| |Judge Roberts cited the decision last year in an opinion accepting the Bush administration's |

| |position that it could block claims against Iraq from American soldiers who had been tortured there|

| |during the Persian Gulf war. |

| |Most justices hired clerks who shared their views. |

| |But the Rehnquist clerks did not wear their politics on their sleeves, said Robert B. Knauss, a Los|

| |Angeles lawyer who also clerked for the justice that year. |

| |"Frankly, the people that did were the liberal clerks, who were more out there, more aggressive, |

| |more, frankly, intolerant," Mr. Knauss said. |

| |Almost all of the clerks who served with Mr. Roberts came from elite law schools - seven from Yale,|

| |five, including Mr. Roberts, from Harvard - and from prestigious lower-court clerkships. |

| |Only four former Supreme Court clerks have returned as justices: Byron R. White, who clerked for |

| |Fred M. Vinson; John Paul Stevens, who clerked for Wiley B. Rutledge; Stephen G. Breyer, who |

| |clerked for Arthur J. Goldberg; and Justice Rehnquist himself, who clerked for Robert H. Jackson. |

| |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. |

| |"I had the impression," said Robert Weisberg, a Stanford law professor who clerked for Justice |

| |Potter Stewart, "that they, with the permission and even encouragement of their boss, were prone to|

| |take a somewhat sardonic view of Chief Justice Burger's operation, which was pretty absurdly |

| |regal." |

| |A clerk who did not vote carefully, Mr. Colson said, "could get stuck with a lot of tax cases." |

| |The Rehnquist clerks were a force to be reckoned with "on that horrific cement court above the |

| |library," recalled James J. Brudney, a law professor at Ohio State who clerked for Justice |

| |Blackmun. |

| |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. |

| |One of the “geo-greens” (to use the moniker given them by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times) is|

| |Boyden Gray, an influential conservative who served as the White House counsel for Mr Bush's |

| |father. |

| |Robert McFarlane, who was Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, also signed the letter. |

| |The people who have prepared this book have tried consistently to put the Word of God first and |

| |science second. |

| |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. |

| |Not only is the nation's president a born-again Christian, but so (according to the Pew Research |

| |Centre) are 54% of America's Protestants, who are 30% of the population. |

| |“The people want change,” says the former silver miner, who now sells lotions and shampoo out of a |

| |box in the centre of La Paz, Bolivia's capital. Foreigners have looted Bolivia's natural resources |

| |and traditional political parties “do nothing” for the people, explains Mr Montesinos. |

| |Unlike Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Uruguay's Tabare Vazquez, Mr Morales is not a leftist|

| |who has made peace with democracy and capitalism, offering change without upheaval. |

| |Mr Morales leads a union of coca growers, who produce the raw material for cocaine, and flaunts his|

| |friendship with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's rabidly anti-American president. |

| |But when it comes to abortion, it is the Democrats who are the American exceptionalists. |

| |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. |

| |History is full of great generals who won their wars by staging strategic retreats. |

| |Picturesque relics of English history are more fun to observe than to run, as John Hood, who took |

| |over in October as Oxford's vice-chancellor, has discovered. |

| |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”. |

| |But "it raises questions any time your name appears next to indiscreet participants," says Thomas |

| |Russo, a money manager who owns Berkshire shares for himself and clients at Gardner Russo & Gardner|

| |in Lancaster, Pa. |

| |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. |

| |Greenberg was, until recently, one of the valued CEOs who dutifully hit his numbers. |

| |Investors who didn't ask how he did it may wish they had. |

| |Reportedly on Buffett's short list of CEO candidates is Ajit Jain, who runs National Indemnity Co. |

| |and is the only Berkshire unit manager that Buffett speaks to frequently. |

| |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. |

| |Justice James Clark McReynolds, who served until 1941, was, in the words of historian David Garrow,|

| |a "drooling anti-Semite" who refused to speak with fellow Justices Louis Brandeis and Benjamin |

| |Cardozo or have his picture taken with them. |

| |To listen to people who have known him longest, what sets Roberts apart is not so much his |

| |individual virtues but how they marry: a great talker who listens well, a natural talent who works |

| |unnaturally hard, a regular guy who moonlights as a legal star. |

| |In his prime-time introduction of his nominee to take the place of retiring Justice Sandra Day |

| |O'Connor, President George W. Bush drove right past the fact that Roberts is a reliably |

| |conservative fellow who would not "legislate from the bench" and lingered instead on the career and|

| |character that would make him so valuable on the court, and so invulnerable to attack. |

| |Some Justices, like conservatives Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, have consistently played to |

| |type; some, like John Paul Stevens and David Souter, ignored the beliefs of the Republican |

| |Presidents who picked them. |

| |He rose to become the managing editor of the Law Review, sometimes sleeping overnight in the |

| |office, the one who made sure all the flights of genius came in safely for a landing without ever |

| |committing his own philosophy to paper. |

| |Jane Roberts is a lawyer who specialized in satellite-technology law and now oversees attorney |

| |training at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, an international firm. |

| |O'Connor was accurately described as mainstream conservative in 1981," says a lawyer who has known |

| |Roberts for 20 years. |

| |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. |

| |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. |

| |Roberts may agree in spirit with those who see the past 50 years of jurisprudence as too expansive |

| |and too intrusive but respect too much the way the law is shaped to ride in and blowtorch it. |

| |Warner, who has the aquiline look and formal bearing that sometimes seem right out of Henry Clay's |

| |era, has made no secret of his discomfort over the fact that he would even have to cast a vote on |

| |the filibuster. |

| |Democratic leader Harry Reid said he had heard private misgivings about the wisdom of changing |

| |Senate tradition even from Republicans who publicly pledged to support Frist on the vote. |

| |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. |

| |"If you don't break a wing, you just have assumptions about what might make it break," said Aldo J.|

| |Bordano, a retired NASA aerosciences chief who was on a panel that studied the agency's analysis of|

| |the external tank and foam. |

| |That group, called the Stafford-Covey task force after the two former astronauts who led it, |

| |accepted NASA's argument that the PAL ramp did not urgently require alteration. |

| |On Friday, Mr. Covey, who was pilot of the first shuttle mission after the 1986 Challenger |

| |accident, said that in light of the PAL ramp incident, his group, too, had erred - but added, "We |

| |certainly weren't any smarter, at that point, than the folks who were working it on the NASA side."|

| |A NASA engineer who works on tank safety issues said other areas of foam shedding from the |

| |Discovery's tank were even more troubling than the PAL ramp loss, especially a divot that popped |

| |from the vicinity of the left-hand bipod strut, the spot that shed the foam that brought down the |

| |Columbia. |

| |"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 "at some point you've got to say, 'Wow, maybe the critics who say this is a really flawed |

| |design are right.' " |

| |That worries the ruling Social Democrats (SDP), who lag behind the opposition. |

| |The driving force behind the party is Gudrun Schyman, former leader of the Left Party, who once |

| |accused Swedish men of being no better than the Taliban. |

| |Mr Berlusconi, a billionaire media mogul who owns several of Italy’s main private television |

| |stations, was putting a brave face on it all. |

| |Assuming it does not collapse in the meantime, Mr Berlusconi’s government is looking increasingly |

| |likely to lose next year’s parliamentary elections to the centre-left opposition alliance, led by |

| |Romano Prodi—a former prime minister who was until recently president of the European Commission. |

| |Khaled al-Masri, who is now suing the CIA for wrongful imprisonment, claims to have been abducted |

| |by American agents while on holiday in Macedonia with his family in 2003. |

| |The Europeans are not the only ones who need convincing. |

| |Without naming the United States, she criticised “governments in a number of countries” who were |

| |claiming that the world had changed and that the old rules no longer applied. |

| |The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Teamsters, who cover freight-shippers and |

| |associated trades, think they have a better way to rebuild the union movement, which has seen |

| |membership fall to 12.5% of the total workforce in 2004 from over 30% in the 1950s (see chart |

| |below). |

| |Even so, the split is “not good news” for Democrats, says Robert Reich, who served as secretary of |

| |labour under Bill Clinton. |

| |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. |

| |At 67, she is a grandma who lives alone in Atlanta, walks with a limp (she recently had |

| |arthroscopic knee surgery and will have a hip replaced this summer due to osteoarthritis, a largely|

| |genetic condition Fonda says is unrelated to her famous workout regimen) and finds her former |

| |sex-symbol status faintly ridiculous. |

| |There are plenty of people who long ago dismissed Fonda as a professional changeling and |

| |controversialist. |

| |“She told me with a great deal of certainty that a man was going to come into my life who would be |

| |my soul mate and be with me till the end," says Fonda. |

| |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. |

| |At least two big buyout deals, involving retailer W.H. Smith and food producer Uniq, have fallen |

| |apart in the past few months because of objections raised by the trustees of the firms' pension |

| |funds, who were worried that former employees could suffer. |

| |Ostmeier, for example, who is based in Hamburg, is German, a former management consultant with |

| |Boston Consulting Group in Dusseldorf. |

| |Jean-Pierre Millet, who runs Carlyle's E uropean operations out of Paris, is the first non-American|

| |to work for the company, which is based in Washington. |

| |KKR and Wendel helped the firm bring in consultants, who recommended sweeping changes to more than |

| |3,000 processes. |

| |In the Duke study, 25 babies who tested positive for Krabbe's--some of them already displaying |

| |symptoms, others not--were dosed with umbilical-cord stem cells. |

| |More than half the kids who were already showing Krabbe's symptoms died from infections or other |

| |transplant complications. |

| |But my friend's experience was hardly unique; all around the city, people who were buying iced |

| |coffee were being treated like detainees at Gitmo. |

| |There are some people who actually care. |

| |A few years back, I met a cafe owner named Joe Rinaldi in my native Brooklyn who is as angry about |

| |the Iced Coffee Scandal as I am. |

| |WHATEVER future generations may say about Pope John Paul II, who died on Saturday April 2nd, aged |

| |84, they will look back with amazement on the moment when, for the first time in 500 years, a |

| |Christian bishop was in the vanguard of world history. |

| |Front-runners include Angelo Sodano, who is already the “deputy pope”, or Vatican secretary of |

| |state; and Dionigi Tettamanzi, currently the Archbishop of Milan. |

| |But both to victims of abuse and to people who observe church affairs from outside, the spate of |

| |disclosures has mocked the Vatican's claim to be a fount of moral authority and have made it harder|

| |to see why the church insists on restricting the priesthood to celibate males. |

| |These days, people who go to mass do so as a conscious choice in a world that offers a bewildering |

| |variety of religious and philosophical options. |

| |In such a cosmopolitan world, those who still adhere to the Roman Catholic faith have come to it |

| |from a bewildering variety of routes. |

| |Oddly enough, Cardinal Wojtyla was not seen as a conservative by the cardinals who elected him. |

| |Richard Pryor, who died last week, was none of those. |

| |The Richard Pryor who reappeared in the 1970s was no sage Negro. |

| |He was an angry black man who broke the “N-word” taboo, turning the term of hate for blacks back |

| |upon the world. |

| |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. |

| |Forget those local worthies who help with the vicar's coffee mornings and arrange flowers. |

| |Rick Warren is a fifth-generation Southern Baptist who was raised in a faith that is both austere |

| |and emotional. |

| |John Vaughan, a consultant who specialises in mega-churches, argues that 2005 has been a landmark |

| |year. |

| |And many mega-preachers worry that they are producing a flock who regard religion as nothing more |

| |than spectacle. |

| |Willow Creek estimates that over half of the people who come to its Sunday services would otherwise|

| |be “unchurched”. |

| |Mr Osteen and his equivalents preach reassuring sermons to “victors not victims”, who can learn to |

| |be “rich, healthy and trouble free”. |

| |Moreover, it is a wash that is extraordinary good for the pastorpreneurs themselves, who prosper by|

| |preaching the gospel of prosperity. |

| |Joyce Meyer, who promises that God rewards people with his blessings, counts among her own |

| |blessings a $2m home and a $10m jet. |

| |Their target audience consists of baby-boomers who left the church in adolescence, who do not feel |

| |comfortable with overt displays of religiosity, who dread turning into their parents, and who apply|

| |the same consumerist mentality to spiritual life as they do to everything else. |

| |IN THIS week of all weeks, the celebrated observation of Harold Macmillan, a former British prime |

| |minister, that the thing he feared most was events should be engraved on the consciousness of |

| |anyone who indulges in the perilous activity of political forecasting. |

| |Even before the suicide bombers struck, who on May 6th would have predicted the change in Tony |

| |Blair's standing? |

| |Unlike the four men who blew themselves up on July 7th, killing 52 others, the plotters who struck |

| |a fortnight later failed to take lives. |

| |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. |

| |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. World markets |

| |reverted to trend (a downward one, as it happened) within two months of the September 11th attacks,|

| |which struck the financial sector directly. |

| |Fairly typical, too, was the man who stepped out of the truck. |

| |They were the Rainbow Warriors of Indian legend, who would come to heal the world when it was sick.|

| | |

| |He was a mere 1/32 Kwakiutl, but intensely proud of it; proud enough to lead the Indians who |

| |sailed, in 1992, from Canada to the Caribbean to confront the recreated Columbus fleet and demand |

| |an apology from the Spanish government. |

| |A federal jury in Seattle heard that Antoine, who was linked to the deaths of 173 eagles, had paid |

| |other B.C. residents $20 to $50 apiece to shoot the birds, which he then butchered and smuggled the|

| |parts across the border. |

| |This is the sixth-floor lab in Building No. 85 at Seoul National University, the center of |

| |operations for Woo Suk Hwang, the South Korean scientist who made headlines last week when he |

| |announced that his team, using Dolly-the-sheep techniques, had created 11 human stem-cell lines |

| |perfectly matched to the DNA of human patients--a giant leap beyond anything any other lab has |

| |achieved. |

| |By contrast, researchers in the U.S. who want to study human embryonic stem cells are restricted to|

| |a handful of federally approved stem-cell lines--most of which, they say, are of such poor quality |

| |they cannot be used. |

| |Edgar Ray Killen, who was convicted of manslaughter on June 21st, was the first to be charged with |

| |their murder. |

| |To the townsfolk they were interferers, who had come to investigate the burning of a black church |

| |and to get blacks to register to vote. |

| |Mr Killen himself, who is 80, in a wheelchair and on oxygen, inevitably has the look of a scapegoat|

| |about him. |

| |Eight other Klansmen survive of the group who carried out the killings and buried the victims, 15 |

| |feet deep. |

| |On June 23rd the Sun, a British tabloid, said that it had bought the bank-account details of 1,000 |

| |Britons from an intermediary in Delhi who worked for an Indian outsourcing firm. |

| |Many people thought that Mr Rehnquist, who suffers from thyroid cancer, would announce his |

| |retirement at the end of the court's current session on June 27th; he is still expected to announce|

| |his retirement sometime this summer. |

| |Many social conservatives, of course, are praying that George Bush will pick justices who will do |

| |precisely that. |

| |But Mr Bush has to steer between the Charybdis of choosing somebody whom his base dislikes and the |

| |Scylla of choosing somebody who is so conservative that moderates will oppose him too. |

| |Mr Thomas, who is usually pigeonholed as the court's most conservative member, was one of three |

| |dissenters. |

| |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. |

| |Such ups-and-downs in the clothing industry are old hat for Mr Boglione, who joined MCT in 1976 at |

| |the age of 20. |

| |Mr Kolesnikov is an ally of Mr Yanukovich, and of Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest man, who |

| |jointly controls a big steel mill that is a candidate for re-privatisation. |

| |In 1995 Wayne Hu, a physicist who now works at the University of Chicago, speculated that |

| |gravitational effects caused by fluctuations in the neutrino background might be visible in the |

| |much more easily detectable fluctuations in the microwave background. |

| |Those who fear the lengthening arm of the state should note that all of this information (and a |

| |good deal more) is already in government hands. |

| |True, some of that gain is accounted for by oil companies and their suppliers, who are suddenly |

| |being touted as a buy all over town. |

| |Petter Osmundsen, a petroleum economist who teaches at Stavanger University in Norway, suggests |

| |another: excessive focus on short-term measures of financial performance, which discouraged firms |

| |from making long-term bets on growth and encouraged them to dish out their profits to shareholders |

| |instead in the form of increased dividends and share buybacks. |

| |Analysts and minority investors, who own 30% of the stock, are concerned. |

| |Late last year, when he announced that he was putting the plight of Africa and global warming at |

| |the top of his G8 agenda, he must have thought it would win him some credit with the people who |

| |most disliked his Iraq adventure. |

| |White evangelicals, who see the Bible as the literal truth (or darned close to it), now make up 26%|

| |of the population. |

| |Take, for instance, Mr Bush's friend Richard Land, who heads the Southern Baptists' public policy |

| |arm. |

| |There are some 25m black evangelicals, who seem to be moving slightly more to the right; and new |

| |immigrants, too, provide plenty of recruits. |

| |Protestants and Catholics, who used to be at loggerheads, have now found common ground, especially |

| |on abortion. |

| |“You eat an apple one bite at a time,” argues Mr Land, who points out that with both gay marriage |

| |and abortion the religious right's current position is to leave decisions to state legislatures, as|

| |they are left in Europe. |

| |But junior figures like his son Pat, who was defeated in a primary in Ohio shortly thereafter, are |

| |vulnerable. |

| |So are young evangelicals, who dislike any appearance of intolerance. |

| |The prospect of courts overturning popular rules will force senators like Bill Nelson, a Florida |

| |Democrat who faces a tough re-election next year, to back the federal amendment. |

| |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. |

| |The researchers in question—Kate Dunn, who works at Keele University, near Stoke, in England, and |

| |Tim Spector and Lynn Cherkas of St Thomas' Hospital in London—came to their conclusion by exploring|

| |orgasmic ability in twins. |

| |The fortunate 14% of women who always have an orgasm seem to do so for reasons that have more to do|

| |with luck than skill. |

| |He was one of 50 council members who voted unanimously for a “potty parity” scheme, requiring many |

| |of the new and renovated buildings in New York City to have twice as many toilets for women as for |

| |men. |

| |Among the embittered population of Iraq, it's not hard to find young men who talk the terrorist |

| |talk, boasting of their willingness to serve as human bombs. |

| |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. |

| |Over the next year, Marwan says, he participated in dozens of assaults on U.S. troops who were |

| |struggling to subdue the city. |

| |Like other Iraqis who have joined extremist religious groups during the insurgency, Marwan severed |

| |connections with his family when he joined up. |

| |"Those who go on these missions know that they are about to see their Creator," he says. |

| |Unlike many other insurgents, who reject the terrorist label and call themselves freedom fighters |

| |or holy warriors, Marwan embraces it. |

| |The bigotry is from fellow American citizens who the students believe are watching them with |

| |suspicion. |

| |Many were Palestinian immigrants who had fled the violence and lack of economic opportunity in |

| |their homeland. |

| |"They are obsessed with foreign politics," says Steve Landek, who has been mayor of Bridgeview |

| |since 1999. |

| |Martini's parents are Syrian, her father a doctor who finished his medical degree in the U.S. |

| |Mr. Khan, Mr. Tanweer and Mr. Hussain were part of a larger clique of young British-raised South |

| |Asian men in Beeston, a neighborhood of Leeds, who turned their backs on what they came to see as a|

| |decadent, demoralizing Western culture. |

| |It's hard to beat the rhetoric of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who declared Wednesday to be "the |

| |saddest day of my life . . . a day I don't want to remember." |

| |After the vote, he told senators who opposed him that he would "go to every one of your states, and|

| |. . . tell them what you've done." |

| |Mr. Warner pushed through his $1.5 billion tax package last year, anti-tax activists vowed revenge |

| |against the 17 Republicans in the House of Delegates who defected to the governor's side |

| |Party leaders who fail to grasp that will face further electoral setbacks. |

| |Abdel Salam Gomaa, a sycophantic follower of Mr. Mubarak who in 2002 sentenced another famous |

| |pro-democracy activist, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, to seven years in prison. |

| |Mr. Bush, and Congress, must prove that wrong, both to the Egyptian government and to the Arabs |

| |across the Middle East who will be closely watching Washington's reaction in this case. |

| |SUPREME COURT nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s most important civil rights decisions collectively show|

| |an inclination to protect businesses from marginal civil rights claims and to make it more |

| |difficult for those who say they were discriminated against to win redress in the courts. |

| |He wrote a strong opinion in the case of an Orthodox Jewish woman who alleged she had been pushed |

| |out of a college teaching job because of her religious practice. |

| |He also ruled for Muslim police officers in Newark who challenged their department's ban on beards.|

| |…he wrote, "could not justify arrest [of] any African-American man who happened to drive by in any |

| |type of black sports car." |

| |March could be a landmark in his counterrevolution: first the reelection of Mr. Lukashenko, who can|

| |be counted on to use fraud and violence against his opponents; |

| |Mr. Nour is a secular moderate who advocates the same transformation. |

| |Any effort to reform the U.S.-Egyptian relationship will be opposed by those in Washington who have|

| |never supported Mr. Bush's democracy agenda. |

| |Nobody objects to monitoring people in the United States who are linked to al Qaeda; facilitating |

| |such surveillance is one of FISA's purposes. |

| |The other purpose, however, is to provide a check on the executive branch's ability to decide who |

| |should be subject to such spying |

| |And the judgment of who should be deemed linked to al Qaeda is made by the NSA's "operational |

| |workforce," he said. |

| |Kudos also go to the Hawks' coaches, who led the players on the long road from summer drills and |

| |weekend games to playoffs and the finals, where they conquered California's Oak Grove Eagles, |

| |32-10, for the championship. |

| |The Hawks' victory is shared by the parents who organized fish fries and the businesses and |

| |organizations, such as the National Football League and the Washington Redskins Charitable |

| |Foundation, that together chipped in more than $25,000 to fund the team's travels, including the |

| |trip to Orlando. |

| |Mr. Miller, who supervises the warehouse at an auto-glass company from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m., dipped |

| |into his own pocket to buy what was needed. His wife, Andrea, pitched in with the mothers of some |

| |players to organize fundraising. |

| |Among these, they found two additional men who had served long prison sentences for sexual assaults|

| |they did not commit. |

| |Virginia will be the first state systematically to look through its files for cases where physical |

| |evidence remains to test, rather than waiting for convicts who claim to be innocent to seek testing|

| |You might be the only person left in Washington who has not agreed to testify against him. |

| |I'm a Democrat who thinks Bush is playing fast and loose with law. |

| |I can't believe I'm the only person who has had this problem. |

| |For those who are actually interested in the details, Jay Rosen's site "pressthink" did a full and |

| |responsible airing of this relatively minor issue, and I said everything I need to say (and a |

| |little more)on that. |

| |I can only tell you from my vantage point, as the person who edits the White House coverage, that |

| |coziness between the Bush White House and the Post reporters who cover that place aggressively and |

| |fairly has not been a problem. |

| |My favorite new word is "truthstigious" invented by respected journalist Stephen Colbert, who says |

| |his show is the most trustworthy and prestigious on television. |

| |An old friend, quite liberal, who has been around politics all his life said to me, "I love that |

| |column your White House reporter writes." |

| |Tom Edsall: An inquiry following yours to some degree provides an answer, although I agree with a |

| |number of people on line this morning who say the responsibility of the news media is to put a full|

| |court press on to determine the legality of the NSA spying. |

| |Those who know about this research know that the claim that torture protects us from terrorism is |

| |inaccurate. |

| |For those who think that this is all "spilt milk" his past behavior must be weighed as evidence |

| |when considering support for his present actions. |

| |I think Ben Franklin said it best, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary |

| |security, deserve neither liberty or security." |

| |Actually a lot of politicians are robots who repeat the same lines over and over again. |

| |Have you done a story on all the agencies who are in danger of losing quorum? |

| |Victor Hansen , an associate professor at New England School of Law who recently retired after 20 |

| |years in the Army as a JAG (military lawyer), was online Thursday, Dec. 15, at 1 p.m. |

| |That is what many of us who have worn the uniform our entire adult life are asking frequently. |

| |I have the hope and faith that there are may great and courageous soldiers at all ranks who will |

| |keep our Army from loosing its way. |

| |As the saying goes, those who don't study history are destined to repeat it. |

| |…to send mixed messages to our soldiers in the field (who bravely defend our country amidst great |

| |danger) or to our allies and partners in Europe (who already question our credibility and methods).|

| |Because the people who will be following them (i.e., the interrogators) will have access to the |

| |rules. |

| |…it seems unnecessary for people who will not be conducting interrogations to need to see them. |

| |At the end of the day it will be those in uniform who will be left holding the bad when things go |

| |bad. |

| |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. |

| |It is always the case that an employee will inevitably misinterpret a rule or misapply a standard |

| |and be corrected by a manager who is using a standard of review that the employee could not |

| |foresee. |

| |For example, in cases where children have access to the machine, running a limited account is a |

| |must for someone who doesn't want to spend their entire life trying to regain control over their |

| |machine. |

| |But even that piece of malware is created and maintained by a guy who offers a subscription service|

| |for people who want their rootkits and malware to receive anit-anti-virus updates. |

| |Thanks to everyone for your questions and for all those who simply tuned in to read the chat. |

| |Am I the only one who is beginning to think that the Times is losing credibility faster than a |

| |tissue in sneeze season? |

| |Baton Rouge, La.: Will The Post, NYT, and others who demanded an investigation into the leaks |

| |surrounding Valerie Plame be demanding an investigation into the leaks surrounding the latest NSA |

| |surveillance story? |

| |The reporters did, to their credit, attribute the quote to an official who was speaking with White |

| |House approval. |

| |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. |

| |Re: Jack Anderson: I always believed that Anderson did not write for the people in the know in |

| |politics, the folks who live in New York and Washington. |

| |I thought there were some pretty softball questions for a President who rarely gives press |

| |conferences. |

| |Also, I'm sure no one who watched failed to notice that Bush ducked CBS's John Roberts when he |

| |asked an updated version of "what was your biggest mistake?" |

| |Anonymous: Robert Novak, who just flipped from CNN to Fox News, hasn't been questioned by Special |

| |Prosecutor Fitzgerald. |

| |To Baton Rouge --: To the person who asked "Will The Post, NYT, and others who demanded an |

| |investigation into the leaks surrounding Valerie Plame be demanding an investigation into the leaks|

| |surrounding the latest NSA surveillance story?" |

| |What was surprising to me was that the president, who regularly refuses to comment on ongoing |

| |criminal investigations (such as Plamegate), broke his own rule in this case by declaring his |

| |belief in DeLay's innocence. |

| |I only count kids who graduate in June, and not the ones who have to take a summer course and don't|

| |graduate until August. |

| |Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D.: I would start by talking to your doctor, who can refer you to a suitable|

| |local therapist or psychiatrist. |

| |I say possible because the countless doctors who have examined him have a hard time definitively |

| |diagnosing him. |

| |I was referred to someone else, who referred me to someone else, etc...I ended up with nothing but |

| |frustration -- zero help. |

| |Rockville, Md.: I have a friend who believes that actors are conspiring to take over the world with|

| |help from the British Royal family and assorted other groups. |

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

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

| |I can only tell you from my vantage point, as the person who edits the White House coverage, that |

| |coziness between the Bush White House and the Post reporters who cover that place aggressively and |

| |fairly has not been a problem. |

| |My favorite new word is "truthstigious" invented by respected journalist Stephen Colbert, who says |

| |his show is the most trustworthy and prestigious on television. |

| |An old friend, quite liberal, who has been around politics all his life said to me, "I love that |

| |column your White House reporter writes." |

| |And speaking of seniors, why doesn't anyone discuss the fact that the true beneficiaries of the new|

| |Medicare drug "benefit" are major corporations, who can now drop prescription drug coverage for its|

| |older workers and retirees? |

| |And, would that help an AMT roll-back, that feds, who everyone says are underpaid, will be soon |

| |getting hit by the AMT under current rules? |

| |It just seems like the PSB is a minor one compared to others who may lose quorum in the next year. |

| |That is what many of us who have worn the uniform our entire adult life are asking frequently. |

| |Victor Hansen: As the saying goes, those who don't study history are destined to repeat it. |

| |Because the people who will be following them (i.e., the interrogators) will have access to the |

| |rules, it seems unnecessary for people who will not be conducting interrogations to need to see |

| |them. |

| |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. |

| |For example, in cases where children have access to the machine, running a limited account is a |

| |must for someone who doesn't want to spend their entire life trying to regain control over their |

| |machine. |

| |But even that piece of malware is created and maintained by a guy who offers a subscription service|

| |for people who want their rootkits and malware to receive anit-anti-virus updates. |

| |Baton Rouge, La.: Will The Post, NYT, and others who demanded an investigation into the leaks |

| |surrounding Valerie Plame be demanding an investigation into the leaks surrounding the latest NSA |

| |surveillance story? |

| |New York, N.Y.: Who's the guy from The Post who asked the question about unchecked powers? |

| |Seriously, I thought there were some pretty softball questions for a President who rarely gives |

| |press conferences. |

| |Anonymous: Robert Novak, who just flipped from CNN to Fox News, hasn't been questioned by Special |

| |Prosecutor Fitzgerald. |

| |To Baton Rouge --: To the person who asked "Will The Post, NYT, and others who demanded an |

| |investigation into the leaks surrounding Valerie Plame be demanding an investigation into the leaks|

| |surrounding the latest NSA surveillance story?" |

| |What was surprising to me was that the president, who regularly refuses to comment on ongoing |

| |criminal investigations (such as Plamegate), broke his own rule in this case by declaring his |

| |belief in DeLay's innocence. |

| |Second, you want a child who appreciates, maybe even loves, the power of reading, and who has |

| |tackled difficult math, foreign languages, history and science, and does something athletic that |

| |gets the heart started. |

| |I only count kids who graduate in June, and not the ones who have to take a summer course and don't|

| |graduate until August. |

| |I met hundreds of teachers who flew from all over the country to attend, yet did not see a single |

| |teacher or administrator from Fairfax. |

| |Rosenthal, M.D.: I recommend that you see a mental health professional, who might be a social |

| |worker, psychologist, licensed counselor or psychiatrist. |

| |Finding the right mix of medications can be tricky and it is worth finding the right professional, |

| |who has the patience and expertise to work with you until you get things right. |

| |Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D.: It is very difficult to deal with someone who has problems but |

| |externalizes them, i.e. always sees them as someone else's fault. |

| |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. |

| |Virginia: There is a woman at my work who said to everyone she has DID. |

| |Fairfax, Va.: What should be done to help an adult family member who has sudden, often unexplained |

| |mood swings from sweet and thoughtful to angry. |

| |It can be awfully hard for someone who is suffering like that to sit through a Christmas dinner, |

| |making pleasant conversation. |

| |Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D.: I would start by talking to your doctor, who can refer you to a suitable|

| |local therapist or psychiatrist. |

| |My brother is 22 and suffers from possible bipolar disorder, ADD and OCD. I say possible because |

| |the countless doctors who have examined him have a hard time definitively diagnosing him.. |

| |I was referred to someone else, who referred me to someone else, etc...I ended up with nothing but |

| |frustration -- zero help. |

| |Rockville, Md.: I have a friend who believes that actors are conspiring to take over the world with|

| |help from the British Royal family and assorted other groups |

| |I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al |

| |Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance. |

| |We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Center and the |

| |Pentagon were not yet accounted for. |

| |At their first meeting, their effort was endorsed by two former leaders who embody the traits of |

| |mutual respect the Center Aislers want to encourage: former House speaker Tom Foley. |

| |After all, the very same people who assure us that they are merely being prudent -- trust us -- are|

| |the same guys who held out until the last minute to retain torture as an option in questioning |

| |terrorist suspects and others. |

| |The real patriots are not those who fall into line behind everything Bush says. |

| |It would also require former members who exercise their prerogative of visiting the floor of the |

| |House while it is in session to guarantee that the House is not debating a subject in which they |

| |have a financial interest and that the alumni will not advocate for or against any matter during |

| |the visit. |

| |One of the best definitions of Christian faith is attributed to St. Paul, who called it "the |

| |substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." At every Mass, Roman Catholics |

| |around the world "proclaim the mystery of faith." |

| |It suggested that she was "pandering" to the 70 percent of Americans who think outlawing flag |

| |burning is a dandy idea. |

| |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. |

| |It is the reminders who need reminding that they owe the troops the highest level of respect. |

| |But such criticism is hard to take seriously coming from leaders who preside over economies saddled|

| |with high unemployment and anemic growth. |

| |McLean, Va.: Is there some reliable independent source who can opine as to whether the Bush spying |

| |tactic is illegal or are we stuck in a grey zone that both sides can claim legal and illegal and be|

| |justified? |

| |Yesterday, only six reporters showed up to see Murtha, who arrived early and stood, silently, at |

| |the lectern. |

| |No less an authority than the guy who signs my paychecks -- Washington Post Co. Chairman Donald |

| |Graham -- has said so. |

| |"I'm a huge believer that he's the comedic icon of our time," says Greenstein, who signed Stern to |

| |an unprecedented $500 million, five-year contract. |

| |Clear Channel Communications dumped Stern from six of its stations early last year, citing an |

| |interview in which Stern asked the man who appeared with Paris Hilton in a porn video whether he |

| |engaged in anal sex and referred to the size of his penis. |

| |…a session with a phone-sex practitioner called "Tissue Time"; and a show with Bubba the Love |

| |Sponge, who was also fired by Clear Channel. |

| |Well, there's many people who are outraged and don't like him. |

| |"There's a personal line you can't cross," says Stern, who once joked on the air about his wife's |

| |miscarriage. |

| |Stern, who first talked to XM five years ago, insists he would have quit radio had the satellite |

| |option not emerged. |

| |God, there isn't a more neurotic guy on the radio than me, a guy who wakes up in the morning and |

| |wants to vomit. |

| |The arrogance comes from a tremendous insecurity. I'm the guy who can't bear to have anyone not |

| |come with us to satellite. |

| |"Courtroom defeats for prosecutors don't come much more embarrassing than the one suffered Tuesday |

| |in the Florida terror trial of Sami Al-Arian, who was acquitted on key charges of abetting |

| |terrorists. |

| |Bill O'Reilly looked glum talking to fellow Al-Arian-hater Steve Emerson, who has spent more than |

| |ten years telling anyone who would listen that Al-Arian is a criminal mastermind." |

| |Lavely wrote that the topless photos were taken by paparazzo Peter Brandt, who allegedly used a |

| |'powerful telephoto lens' from a perch more than a mile away from Aniston's home. |

| |Said Bush: "Oh, there's pessimists, you know, and politicians who try to score points. |

| |The job should go to someone who has a firm grip on reality, not someone who will keep pretending |

| |we are turning corner after corner in Iraq. |

| |"It wasn't until some local reporters began looking into the questionable real estate transaction |

| |back in San Diego -- in which the same defense contractor who owned the yacht Cunningham was living|

| |on overpaid for the Congressman's house then turned around and resold it at a $700,000 loss -- that|

| |the wheels started to come off the Duke-ster's gravy train." |

| |. . Republicans think that men who already have nagging, bitter women in their lives will not want |

| |for president the sort of woman who gave W. a dyspeptic smile or eye-rolling appraisal during State|

| |of the Union addresses. . . . |

| |"As his legal bills mount, Libby must be stunned to watch the lionization of the leakers who |

| |exposed the secret National Security Agency eavesdropping program and secret U.S. prisons in |

| |Europe. |

| |"For more than two weeks, prosecutors have been trying to show a pattern of cash spending by the |

| |former mayor, who is accused of shaking down contractors." |

| |The video also features guest appearances by Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., Treasury Secretary |

| |John Snow and several journalists, including George Stephanopoulous, who appears from the set of |

| |ABC News's "This Week." |

| |Danny Hakim writes in the New York Times: "Mr. Cheney, who in speeches last month forcefully |

| |challenged critics of the war, was not as blunt on Tuesday. He did say 'a sudden withdrawal' would |

| |be 'unwise in the extreme.' . . . |

| |"Also in attendance, according to a White House aide, was Tom A. Bernstein, Yale friend of the |

| |president's who is also a GOP Pioneer and president and co-founder of Chelsea Piers in New York." |

| |"The White House team handpicked the seniors who met with President Bush at the closed meeting." |

| |Of course, the last person who Bush so publicly said was doing a "heck of a job" was then-FEMA |

| |director Michael Brown. |

| |Bush yesterday spoke of a young Marine lieutenant who was killed in Iraq last month, calling him a |

| |symbol of "the greatest force for freedom in human history." |

| |I hope to be remembered, from a personal perspective, as a fellow who had lived life to the fullest|

| |and gave it his all. |

| |White House turned to Mr. Bush's national security adviser, 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." |

| |* "Differently worded questions about whether the decision to go to war was right or wrong (asked |

| |by Gallup, CBS and the Pew Research Center), found 42% to 45% who say the US made the right |

| |decision in going to war, between 50% and 54% who say we made the wrong decision or should have |

| |stayed out. |

| |"The report card is a public relations nightmare for President Bush, who was reelected largely on |

| |the perception that he could keep Americans safer than the opposition. |

| |But a tax-cutting call that was once readily heeded on Capitol Hill is now facing stiff resistance |

| |from lawmakers of both parties, who maintain that efforts to rein in the deficit cannot rely solely|

| |on cuts to programs for the poor." |

| |"The remark drew strong criticism from Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, who |

| |said in a statement that the president was chastising ' "Washington" for creating record deficits. |

| |. |

| |"Hartsell said that his superiors told him last week that 'an important VIP' might be coming to the|

| |plant and that 'they were looking for a family with two or three kids who had benefited from the |

| |tax relief.' . . |

| |"We are at war, and I applaud the president for being aggressive," said Graham, who also called for|

| |a congressional review. |

| |Yet as he signaled deference to their sincerity, he made clear he saw their approach as disastrous |

| |to the nation and he further drew a distinction "between honest critics who recognize what is wrong|

| |and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right." |

| |GRANADA, Colombia -- Leftist rebels ambushed a group of soldiers who were protecting civilians in |

| |southern Colombia, killing 28 in the deadliest rebel attack in a year marked by hundreds of |

| |military deaths. |

| |Richard A. Causey, 45, who is facing more than two dozen criminal charges, is scheduled to appear |

| |in a Houston courtroom at 3 p.m. |

| |Former Enron executives said Causey, a likable family man who remained humble despite his corporate|

| |rank and salary, will present a far more difficult target for Skilling and Lay's defense lawyers in|

| |cross examination. |

| |U.S. District Judge Simeon T. Lake III, who is known as a taskmaster when it comes to scheduling |

| |issues, will be presented with a defense request to delay the trial as early as today. |

| |They say Causey is devoted to his three children, the youngest of whom is in eighth grade, and is a|

| |devout Catholic who helped raise funds for a new church in the Woodlands. |

| |Stern was in talks with Sirius from Mahoney Cohen's chief executive, who was also Stern's personal |

| |accountant, several weeks before the public did, according to the SEC complaint. |

| |Herwitz, 50, who left Mahoney last summer, also agreed to pay $34,000 in civil penalties to settle |

| |the SEC charges, the agency said yesterday. |

| |Among artists who risk arrest to put up paintings and posters they hope will surprise, provoke or |

| |delight passersby, the co-opting of street art by corporate America is touchy issue. |

| |Other street artists who do corporate work are critical of the stealthy aspects of Sony's campaign.|

| |De Feo, a high school art teacher who spends his evenings decorating cities with cartoonish |

| |paintings and stencils of flowers and sharks, |

| |"It makes you confused," said Sera Hargrevas, an interior designer who figured she would walk 150 |

| |blocks before the day was done. |

| |Mark Walter, a graphic designer who lives in New Jersey and works in Brooklyn, took a regional |

| |commuter train unaffected by the strike to Lower Manhattan. |

| |"I hope they get everything they ask for," said Larry Sullivan, a Macy's employee who said the |

| |strikers' plight was that of all working people in the city |

| |At a conference of VOIP executives in September, Jeff Pulver, who helped found the company that |

| |later became Internet phone provider Vonage Holdings Corp., suggested that the FCC was being run |

| |like the KGB, according to a Pulver aide. Martin made light of the comment at an industry dinner |

| |earlier this month. |

| |Also contributing was Jay Angoff, a former Missouri insurance director and industry critic who |

| |wrote a study negative on the industry last summer that itself has drawn heavy criticism from, |

| |among others, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. |

| |We didn't think it was right for the people who were making this decision to benefit from it," |

| |The documents show the FBI cultivated sources such as a "well insulated" PETA insider, who attended|

| |the 2000 meeting to gain credibility "within the animal rights/Ruckus movements." |

| |Democrats and moderate Republicans, who often disagree with Bush, but also from mainstream |

| |conservatives. |

| |…we find that we have a nominee who believes that officials who order warrantless wiretaps of |

| |Americans should be immune from legal accountability," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). |

| |The 1984 wiretapping memo involved a lawsuit filed against Nixon administration attorney general |

| |John N. Mitchell, who in 1970 had ordered wiretaps of antiwar activists. |

| |Having blown the crisis, Bush can only rebound, said Todd, who faulted him for not returning to New|

| |Orleans. |

| |Among the issues being discussed, he said, was whether veterans who show signs of recovery should |

| |continue to receive disability compensation: |

| |"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. |

| |Psychiatrist Sally Satel, who is affiliated with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, |

| |said an underground network advises veterans where to go for the best chance of being declared |

| |disabled. |

| |A far bigger problem is the many veterans who seek help but do not get it or who never seek help, a|

| |number of experts said. |

| |Larry Scott, who runs the clearinghouse , said conservative groups are |

| |trying to cut VA disability programs by unfairly comparing them to welfare. |

| |Bush, who had plenty to be morose about through the fall, responded with vigor as well. |

| |Richard Seymour, who runs NucSafe, a radiation-detection company in Oak Ridge, Tenn. |

| |"We contribute to those who we believe have a clear vision," Ellenbogen said in an interview. |

| |"We are supporting those who believe there is a place for new technology." Other Reveal executives |

| |and board members did not return phone calls seeking comment on their donations. |

| |In its letter, Reveal cited two other lawmakers who had voiced support for its machines, Mica and |

| |McCain. |

| |The current chief of the TSA, Edmund S. "Kip" Hawley, who was in charge of the agency during the |

| |contracting process, declined repeated requests for an interview. |

| |The number for a nice lady named Linda, who, when he asked her for 50 cents for bus fare to |

| |apartment hunt, simply chauffeured him one afternoon to help him search. |

| |…said Katrina evacuee Linda Jeffers, who is working with the Metropolitan Organization in Houston, |

| |a professional organizing group affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation. |

| |Houston took in an estimated 250,000 of the 2.5 million Gulf Coast residents who evacuated -- a |

| |migration not seen in this country since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. |

| |He had been rejected five times by landlords who said they didn't want to participate in the |

| |voucher program for various reasons. |

| |Marnez is a welder who worked freelance jobs at chemical plants in southwestern Louisiana and |

| |southeast Texas. |

| |Tonight's game will feature the return of former Wizard Kwame Brown, who was booed at MCI Center |

| |late last season and will likely receive similar treatment tonight. |

| |SOCCER: Alfredo di Stefano , the Real Madrid soccer great who was voted European player of the year|

| |in 1957 and 1959, had a heart attack but was conscious and in stable condition. |

| |However, Phoenix answered with a three-pointer by guard James Jones and then a pretty runner in the|

| |lane by the explosive Shawn Marion, who finished with 28 points on 12-of-16 shooting. |

| |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. |

| |The Wizards made only 3 of 15 three-point attempts and Arenas, who made six three-pointers during |

| |Friday's win at Phoenix, missed all six of his attempts from long range and was unable to make an |

| |open jumper that would have given the Wizards a 101-99 lead with just more than a minute remaining.|

| |Suns Coach Mike D'Antoni said of Arenas, who scored 41 points in Friday's game. |

| |The Wizards did get strong efforts from Atkins, who scored all 11 of his points in the fourth |

| |quarter. |

| |Having Griffin, a former Giant who is Washington's premier defensive lineman. |

| |"It's just from guys wanting to get into the playoffs," said tailback Clinton Portis, who has |

| |topped 100 yards in each game during this winning streak. |

| |"That kind of shocks me," said Villanova Coach Jay Wright, who led current CAA member Hofstra when |

| |it was still in the America East. |

| |They were the ones who got physical. They took the lead." |

| |"All of these things are heading toward what I call Internet TV," said Phillip Swann, an Arlington |

| |consultant who operates the Web site . |

| |…said Deborah Fallows, who wrote the report based on findings from surveys conducted over the past |

| |five years. |

| |Another security professional who got the notification letter said he was surprised that Guidance |

| |did not detect the intrusion for nearly two weeks. |

| |…said Maschal, who works for a local Web company, though in a non-techie capacity. |

| |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." |

| |King got stuck with the job of being his family's fix-it guy because he is an engineer who works on|

| |mainframe supercomputers, machines that cost upward of $50 million. |

| |Even those designated fix-it guys and gals who visit their out-of-state family several times a year|

| |say the holidays tend to be the main time when they get hit up for help. |

| |Courtney, who is scheduled to be in Detroit fixing his sisters' computers right about now, runs a |

| |server data center for a bank in Ashburn as his day job. |

| |She said he knows one guy who took his parents' Windows system when they were out. |

| |…said physicist Judah Levine of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the |

| |University of Colorado, who favors eliminating leap seconds. |

| |The reputation of call-center agents has plummeted in India over the past year, said Vishal |

| |Manchanda, who heads the India office of Arlington-based Cvent. |

| |Kapil Khaneja, a senior client servicing manager who has been promoted three times in his four |

| |years at Convergys. |

| |"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. |

| |Council members, who approved a stadium budget of $589 million in public funds, have become |

| |increasingly worried about the rising price of the project, whose costs were estimated by city |

| |financial officials at $667 million last week. |

| |Franklin L. Haney Sr. -- visited council members in recent days to say they would cover stadium |

| |cost overruns, according to several members who met with the groups. |

|whose (51) |Free trade, he said, “forces choices on vulnerable countries, whose effects may be in the short to |

| |medium term very costly indeed to a whole generation of workers, to the environment, to political |

| |stability.” |

| |It is an historic day in a conflict whose origins go back more than five centuries. |

| |For what such a budget would certainly not include is the largest single item of current spending, |

| |agriculture, whose share of the total will actually rise, under the British presidency's compromise|

| |plans, from around 40% now to almost 45%. |

| |Better, though, if he or she is a lifelong fan whose dearest wish is to spend money to help the |

| |team they love. |

| |Instead, the group embraced an Islam whose practice was often far more fundamentalist than their |

| |fathers', and always more political, focused passionately on Muslim suffering at Western hands. |

| |Faces have been ravaged by drugs, whose use peaked a few years ago when legions of zombielike |

| |heroin addicts wandered the streets. |

| |In his shop, Mr. Hussain, whose Islam his children rejected as too liberal, opens the newspaper to |

| |an article about 25,000 civilian dead in Iraq in the past two years. |

| |He could not be more different from the man he trounced (59% to 41%), incumbent James Hahn, 54, |

| |whose low-key, uncharismatic approach to the mayor's office proved a fatal flaw in an election |

| |between two Democrats that turned more on matters of style and leadership than policy. |

| |The Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), the Calvary Chapel Schools and six |

| |Calvary Chapel students are suing the university, whose campuses include that traditional bastion |

| |of liberal thought, Berkeley, as well as the huge UCLA campus, for what they call “viewpoint |

| |discrimination”. |

| |Mr Morales's Movement to Socialism (MAS) is a confederation of unions and social movements, whose |

| |nucleus is his coca growers' union. |

| |He was the kind of boy whose eighth-grade math teacher kept his birthday in her birthday book all |

| |these years, alone among her generations of students. |

| |But the regional-election victories mean that Mr Prodi, whose previous government collapsed in 1998|

| |after the communists withdrew their support, looks in a strong position to make a comeback. |

| |Poles had long attributed this crime to the German occupiers, whose concentration camps murdered |

| |millions. |

| |But when the channel's director, whose native tongue is Arabic, walks in, the language switches |

| |seamlessly to English, interlaced with Muslim greetings. |

| |For a new generation of British Muslims, such behaviour represents the stirrings of a new identity |

| |whose common denominator is not ethnic origin, but religion. |

| |A papacy which began by invoking “people power” against tyranny often seemed to be imposing, from a|

| |great height, a rigid set of principles on believers whose everyday experience it barely |

| |understood. |

| |Such respect for the natural order of things might seem unusual in a scientist whose work seems |

| |anything but natural. |

| |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 THERE was ever a bill I was afraid to be on the wrong side of, it would be this bill,” said |

| |Erik Martin-Dilan, a Brooklyn councilman whose district is 60% female. |

| |Principal Siddiqui, 35, a mother of three whose parents came from India, contends that the strain |

| |of Islam taught at Universal is one that is free of provincial baggage. |

| |Guided by political handlers whose instinct was to throw red meat at the state's most partisan |

| |voters, |

| |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; |

| |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. |

| |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. |

| |Bolling AFB: I can relate to the person whose records didn't follow him to his new job. Same thing |

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

| |The ones at the top are pretty interesting, like St. Anselm's Abbey in Northeast DC whose Challenge|

| |index rating was somewhere around |

| |I think Americans will have a problem spying on people whose name isn't "Habib" |

| |Bolling AFB: I can relate to the person whose records didn't follow him to his new job. |

| |The ones at the top are pretty interesting, like St. Anselm's Abbey in Northeast DC whose Challenge|

| |index rating |

| |I think Americans will have a problem spying on people whose name isn't "Habib" |

| |…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. |

| |None of this is really unexpected from a president whose apparent goal from the beginning has been |

| |to reinflate the presidency and unshackle it from those inconvenient restraints that Congress or |

| |the courts might seek to impose. |

| |The intellectual vigor of conservatism was quickened by reaction against the Great Society and the |

| |aggrandizement of the modern presidency by Lyndon Johnson, whose aspiration was to complete the |

| |project begun by Franklin Roosevelt. |

| |The Post has created the "Continuous News Desk" staffed by about a half-dozen people whose primary |

| |responsibility is to cover breaking news for . |

| |To his detractors, he is a foul-mouthed, sexually obsessed menace whose departure from the free |

| |airwaves is long overdue. |

| |. I remember the Clintonites, during the first term, complaining that their man wasn't getting |

| |credit for an economic rebound whose existence was doubted by many people. |

| |The sentiments, which are starting to bubble up from the party's back benches, make it less likely |

| |that Representative Tom DeLay, whose indictment on money-laundering charges will almost certainly |

| |last into the new year, will return as majority leader." |

| |Arianna says the guilty plea of Duke Cunningham highlights "the corrupting role that money |

| |continues to play in our politics, and the overly cozy relationship between those in power and |

| |those in the media whose job it is to cover them. |

| |"My friends at the Democratic National Committee, whose job is to go after Republicans, put out two|

| |pages of talking points entitled, 'Temper, Temper! |

| |When Emperor Butch (Ken Perlstein, whose eyebrows do most of his acting), a cowboy warmonger based |

| |on the president, bent down and allowed his wife, Mommy (Susan Patrick)… |

| |...an august group of scholars, policymakers and journalists whose Web site is an Internet hotspot |

| |for intellectual foment about foreign policy in general and Iraq in particular. |

| |Duke University political science professor Christopher Gelpi , whose research partner Peter Feaver|

| |is now a key member of Bush's national security staff, then responded that "the public's |

| |willingness to bear the human cost of war has varied substantially during different phases of the |

| |wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. |

| |"The federal government received failing and mediocre grades yesterday from the former Sept. 11 |

| |commission, whose members said in a final report that the Bush administration and Congress have |

| |balked at enacting numerous reforms that could save American lives and prevent another terrorist |

| |attack on U.S. soil. |

| |Richard B. Schmitt writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Valerie Plame, the diplomat's wife whose |

| |secret resume was exposed in a newspaper column that eventually led to the indictment of Vice |

| |President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, is leaving the CIA on Friday, people familiar with her |

| |plans said. |

| |The men, whose names were not released, face federal charges, including possession of stolen |

| |explosives. |

| |Stern, whose contract with Infinity Broadcasting Corp. -- now called CBS Radio -- expires at the |

| |end of the year, will make his Sirius debut Jan. 9. |

| |Stern, whose radio show boasted as many as 10 million listeners a week, had Wall Street analysts |

| |predicting that at least 1 million of Stern's fans would migrate with him to the new medium. |

| |She said technical officials at the agency acknowledged that Reveal was the only company whose |

| |machine met the size specifications contained in the request for bids on the contract. |

| |"It ain't like I ain't trying," said Gray, 56, whose home for almost four months has been a room at|

| |a Days Inn in far north Houston. |

| |The White team, which consisted of Division I seniors whose teams either didn't qualify for or |

| |already played in bowl games. |

| |Breaux, whose responsibility is to track how the Redskins perform on third down, entered the |

| |situation room for a meeting with Gibbs and Bugel carrying folders brimming with statistics. |

|where (108) |The move has caused dismay at BP in London and prompted Chief Executive John Browne to schedule a |

| |trip to Moscow last week, where he met personally with Putin. |

| |Mari-El and Udmurtia are probably the only places in Europe where shamanism (nature-worship) is |

| |still an authentic, organised religion, with weddings celebrated in sacred groves. |

| |That leaves the one area where the Finno-Ugric movement can claim some success: propaganda |

| |initiatives by politicians and activists. |

| |There is no sign of that in Russia, where the authorities approach minority languages with neglect |

| |and suspicion. |

| |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. |

| |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. |

| |Priests in Latin America, where Catholics are fast losing ground to evangelical churches, say they |

| |want a new pope to address the problem of vocations. |

| |In Rome, where 80 percent of the population calls itself Catholic, 70 percent of the population |

| |approves of premarital sex, according to one study, and in Ireland, where Catholicism is part of |

| |the national identity, nearly 80,000 couples live together outside of marriage. |

| |He opposed the Iraq war and traveled widely in the Islamic world, where he showed special concern |

| |for Catholic minorities. |

| |He went to Nigeria, where there are bitter and violent divisions, and to Sudan, where there was |

| |full-blown civil war. |

| |The Vatican is keen to avoid a generalized confrontation between Islam and the Christian West; |

| |nevertheless, the next pope is going to have to address the challenge of Islam not only in what has|

| |been considered Muslim territory, but in the heart of Europe, where Muslim immigrants and their |

| |descendants now make up a new social and religious force that the church has never had to confront |

| |before. |

| |The company announced last week that it has hired dancer Cho Myung Ae as a model to help sell its |

| |Anycall mobile phones, which the Samsung ads claim can be used anywhere in the world--with the |

| |possible exception of North Korea, where citizens need government permission to even talk to |

| |foreigners. |

| |SOPON DECHKLA survived the tsunami that struck several countries around the Indian Ocean on 26th |

| |December 2004, by clinging to a palm tree at the Sofitel Khao Lak resort, where he worked as a |

| |driver. |

| |The Sofitel, where 220 died, lies in ruins to this day, its roof tiles torn off and its windows |

| |shattered by the force of the waves. |

| |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. |

| |Virginia is not the only state where DNA testing is under scrutiny. |

| |In a neighborhood where many young South Asian men had lost their way, or foundered into drug |

| |dealing, Mr. Khan's peers admired his focus on family, work, working out, and Islam. |

| |Beeston Hill, where Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer were raised, and nearby Holbeck, |

| |where Hasib Mir Hussain grew up, have a dreary, dissolute air. |

| |They grew up in rough and often blighted neighborhoods where "hardness" - the ability to fight |

| |anyone, at any time - was essential, said Mr. Hussain's son Nadeem Ejaz, 30, who runs the family's |

| |green grocery. |

| |Some of the worriers are nostalgic for a straightforward system of neighbourhood schooling, where |

| |children simply attend their local schools. |

| |But in downstate Illinois's hard-hit regions, where many voters resent Chicago, it has not gone |

| |over well. |

| |He also touted the success of a pilot scheme in west Arizona where illegal Mexicans, instead of |

| |being repatriated to border towns, were flown and then bused back to their hometowns. |

| |It is set in an inner-city redevelopment office, where two black businessmen (one of them running |

| |for mayor) are seeking to clear space for a new commercial development. |

| |According to Carlos Toranzo, a political scientist in La Paz, the newly elected governors will call|

| |the shots in Congress, especially in the Senate, where the eastern regions are over-represented. |

| |In the east, where farms are large, this raises the spectre of expropriation. |

| |Departments, where most of the research happens, have another. |

| |On the squash courts of Washington, where the knees and egos of all species of striver take a |

| |beating, Roberts is an especially dangerous opponent. |

| |In the meantime, Roberts spent most of the '90s biding his time, getting rich as a corporate lawyer|

| |at Hogan & Hartson, one of Washington's largest firms, where he quickly emerged as the supreme |

| |commander of Supreme Court battles. |

| |Traditionalists like Warner have increasingly been supplanted by a younger generation of Republican|

| |Senators, most of whom have arrived there by way of the more autocratic House, where on most |

| |questions it doesn't make any difference to the outcome whether the Democrats even show up to vote.|

| |The Senate last week got a taste of how harsh nuclear winter might be when Democrats invoked an |

| |obscure procedural rule to cancel all committee meetings, where the bulk of Senate business gets |

| |done. |

| |For decades, the United States—and other countries—have used “renditions” to transport terrorist |

| |suspects from the country where they were captured to third countries “where they can be |

| |questioned, held or brought to justice”, Condoleezza Rice declared this week. |

| |Ms Rice said, for example, that America does not use other countries' airspace or airports to |

| |transport detainees to a third country where they “will be tortured”. |

| |. But the Convention Against Torture makes it unlawful to transport anyone to a country where there|

| |are “substantial grounds” for believing they might be tortured. |

| |This is correct, provided that the detainee has not been illegally abducted, and that he is not |

| |being sent to a country where he may be maltreated. |

| |IN NORTH ILFORD, an affluent Tory-voting part of eastern London, there is a mosque where people |

| |from Pakistan used to run the show. |

| |But, as young British Muslims gain in sophistication, they still tend to see world politics through|

| |an Islamic prism, identifying with their co-religionists in any place where conflict is raging. |

| |"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. |

| |"When I see people with those iced coffees with the big cubes, I just feel so sad for them," said |

| |Rinaldi, a native of Salerno, Italy, where iced coffee is a summer tradition, not a summer scam. |

| |That leaves them talking about immigration, which is perhaps the only area where they have a clear |

| |message that resonates with public opinion. |

| |Senior church figures are deeply worried about the welfare of Christians in parts of the world |

| |where they coexist uneasily, and at times violently, with Muslims: Nigeria, Sudan, Indonesia, even |

| |Iraq. |

| |In a world where freedom of choice, and therefore moral relativism, are very much in fashion, the |

| |Vatican's efforts to impose unity in its own ranks have seemed heavy-handed. |

| |In a shrinking planet, where religious faiths cannot remain hermetically sealed from one another, |

| |John Paul certainly took bold steps to heal the historic wounds between the Christian world and |

| |Islam and Judaism; but dark skies over the Middle East limited his role as a peacemaker. |

| |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. |

| |That was so even in New York, where the attacks of September 11th were far more deadly and visible |

| |than the London bombings. |

| |Only in Poland, where both UniCredit and HVB have strong and successful banks, is there likely to |

| |be a clash of sty les: HVB's BPH has grown rapidly through cheap retail mortgage lending in foreign|

| |currency, mostly Swiss francs, a business that UniCredit's Bank Pekao considers too risky. |

| |Mr Boglione turned part of the second floor, where almost 200 weaving machines still lie abandoned,|

| |into an apartment, installing a metal shed as his bedroom and a plastic greenhouse as a bathroom. |

| |This is a meaningless gesture, since costs can easily be shunted to places where they will cause |

| |less offence. |

| |America came bottom of everyone's list everywhere except in India, where it was top, Poland, where |

| |it was in the middle and China, where it came above Japan. |

| |In the 1960s and 1970s, judges changed America from a country where every school day began with a |

| |prayer, and abortion and pornography were frowned on, to a country where school prayer was banned |

| |and both abortion and pornography were protected by the constitution. |

| |Even his distinctive Fallujah accent is not uncommon amid the din of the Iraqi capital, where |

| |suicide bombings are most frequent. |

| |He has also embraced the jihadist worldview of one global Islamic state where there is, in Marwan's|

| |words, "no alcohol, no music and no Western influences." |

| |The suburb, 16 miles southwest of Chicago's downtown Loop, lies in the heart of one of the U.S.'s |

| |largest Arab communities, where an estimated 25,000 Islamic residents pursue an uneasy assimilation|

| |into secular, suburban life. |

| |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. |

| |Otherwise it will be targeted by critics in rich countries and may face sabotage and violence in |

| |the poor countries where it operates. |

| |This is an area where senators should question him closely. |

| |In contrast to January's election of an interim National Assembly, a large turnout is expected |

| |today in the Sunni-populated areas of Iraq where the armed insurgency is based. |

| |Once the voting is over, sectarian leaders will return to a critical struggle over the distribution|

| |of power and resources in their country, one that will be waged partly in the new parliament, |

| |partly in high-stakes negotiations over amendments to the constitution and partly on the |

| |battlefield, where U.S. and Iraqi government troops will continue to combat some of the same Sunni |

| |forces that this week are mobilizing voters |

| |That is where Mr. Bush will be tested. |

| |Kudos also go to the Hawks' coaches, who led the players on the long road from summer drills and |

| |weekend games to playoffs and the finals, where they conquered California's Oak Grove Eagles, |

| |32-10, for the championship. |

| |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? |

| |There are situations where the redeposit can be paid back as a deduction from your annuity. |

| |And today, I write from the Senate press gallery, where Froomkins are attempting to… |

| |The assault on those values has been our reflexive search security post 9/11 where it seems |

| |Americans will tolerate any curtailment of civil liberties as long as it does not affect them |

| |personally. |

| |The grades and steps listed on the sample pay chart are there to identify where the salary ranges |

| |are derived from the Title 5 pay tables. |

| |I mean isn't this torture issue like the old days where convicts were beaten until they confessed, |

| |even when they hadn't actually committed the crime? |

| |For example, in cases where children have access to the machine, running a limited account is a |

| |must for someone who doesn't want to spend their entire life trying to regain control over their |

| |machine. |

| |It almost reached the point where I felt like a few more domestic questions might have been in |

| |order -- like, why did you promise to do whatever it takes to rebuild New Orleans and yet the |

| |federal response remains woefully inadequate? |

| |I think that's where kids get on the academic path to success or failure. |

| |…to whether you should receive credit for that material where you enroll in college. |

| |I attended an excellent reading conference in Washington DC last summer where the latest in reading|

| |research was presented. |

| |Similar to AA, where there's someone to call if one is having a depressive episode. |

| |Arlington, Va.: I have noticed with the women on my mother's side of the family that there is an |

| |obvious anxiety problem that worsens with age to the point where my grandmother no longer leaves |

| |the house, and my aunt cannot get behind the wheel of a car. |

| |Michael Fletcher: I'm not on the Hill enough to really know. But I do see where Trent Lott misses |

| |few opportunities to second guess him. |

| |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? |

| |There are situations where the redeposit can be paid back as a deduction from your annuity. |

| |Charles Babington: A lot of lawmakers, staffers and others are holding their breath, wondering |

| |where the Abramoff investigation will go. |

| |That ground has been plowed and re-plowed quite a bit, and I'm guessing the reporters are seeking |

| |to break new ground where possible, not rework old questions. |

| |The grades and steps listed on the sample pay chart are there to identify where the salary ranges |

| |are derived from the Title 5 pay tables. |

| |I mean isn't this torture issue like the old days where convicts were beaten until they confessed, |

| |even when they hadn't actually committed the crime? |

| |For example, in cases where children have access to the machine, running a limited account is a |

| |must for someone who doesn't want to spend their entire life trying to regain control over their |

| |machine. |

| |It is a game of constant one-upmanship, where as soon as the security companies/researchers figure |

| |out a method to detect one rootkit, the author will modify the technique slightly to get around |

| |those detection techniques. |

| |It almost reached the point where I felt like a few more domestic questions might have been in |

| |order -- like, why did you promise to do whatever it takes to rebuild New Orleans and yet the |

| |federal response remains woefully inadequate? |

| |Similar to AA, where there's someone to call if one is having a depressive episode. |

| |But I do see where Trent Lott misses few opportunities to second guess him. |

| |Johnson, 59, is a veteran of the Illinois legislature who represents a largely rural district where|

| |President Bush won almost 6 out of 10 votes in 2004. |

| |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. |

| |But both find that the constituents who hear about what they're doing are supportive of their |

| |effort to make the House once again a place where people can talk to each other. |

| |The First Amendment is where you simply do not go. |

| |"We've arrived at a strange time in this country where the worst about America and our military |

| |seems to so quickly be taken as truth by the press. |

| |In a country where 22 percent of adults never attended school, according to the International |

| |Monetary Fund, this is a momentous change. |

| |"This, at a time and under circumstances where the media should be sticking together, against the |

| |most lawless administration in my memory (far worse than Nixon). |

| |That plays particularly well in the South, where it would be hard for an uppity Hillary to capture |

| |many more Bubbas than the one she already has." |

| |Williams said that while tagging along with the president he could hear protesters outside the |

| |Philadelphia hotel where Bush was speaking yelling "Shame! Shame!" |

| |But Janet Kornblum points out that she had a story about the conference in USA Today on Monday, |

| |where she noted that Bush was not planning to attend. |

| |"We have plenty of other opportunities with other administration officials where council members |

| |can discuss issues openly and freely." |

| |Public frustration over the violence is increasingly directed at the United States, where the guns |

| |are said to originate. |

| |"We live in a country of laws where there can be severe consequences for those who break them. |

| |Part of the job of the solicitor general's office, where Alito was an assistant, is to defend the |

| |interests of the executive branch, and the argument that the president and his top aides were |

| |entitled to absolute immunity was not a new one. |

| |Instead, he and his family weathered the storm at a friend's home in Sulphur, where they were |

| |marooned for five days once the storm passed. |

| |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: |

| |But it also faces litigation in South Korea, where government antitrust enforcers have ordered that|

| |it unbundle its instant-messaging program from Windows. |

| |"I think the real interesting story is the young women, because that is the one age cohort where |

| |there are many more women online," said Deborah Fallows, |

| |After dinner, Pundir headed to Elevate, a popular mall nightclub and BPO hangout, where she was |

| |joined by Khaneja and his cousin. |

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