The Morning News: RIP Pavarotti

His manager, Terri Robson, told the AP in an e-mailed statement that Pavarotti died at his home in Modena, Italy, at 5 a.m. local time. Pavarotti had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year and underwent further treatment in August.

“The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer which eventually took his life. In fitting with the approach that characterised his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness,” the statement said.

It was a far cry from the previous debates, when the Republicans saved most of their fire for Democrats. Mitt Romney directly criticized Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has consistently led in national polls, for the first time at a debate. And most candidates got in digs at Fred D. Thompson, the former senator and actor who skipped the debate to announce his candidacy on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

The toughest sparring was over illegal immigration, an issue that has roiled Republican voters this year. Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, accused Mr. Giuliani of attracting illegal immigrants when he was the mayor of New York.

Johnson’s return was the feel-good story of the summer: Feuding political factions unite to celebrate earnest lawmaker’s against-the-odds triumph over illness. “My speech is not 100 percent,” the senator said with a still-slurred voice, “but my thoughts are clear, and my mind is sharp.” Standing in front of the motorized wheelchair that carried him into the chamber, he brought tears to the eyes of Democrats, Republicans and even reporters in the gallery when he said: “Today, I come home to the United States Senate.”

Craig’s tale, by contrast, played out like a horror film: Villain’s bloodied corpse improbably comes back to life, and weary protagonists must kill him — again. Craig, only four days after announcing his resignation after his arrest in a sex sting in an airport men’s room, called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to revise and extend his resignation remarks.

“I heard from Senator Craig this morning,” McConnell announced in a tone that indicated he did not enjoy the conversation. While Craig now wants “to try to finish his term,” McConnell added coolly: “I thought he made the correct decision — the difficult but correct decision — to resign.”

In a speech before a business group and at a news conference, Ms. Spellings said that a series of proposals in draft legislation circulated by Democrats and Republicans on the House education committee, taken together, would allow states to remove children from testing regimes and tutoring services, and would make it too difficult for parents to know whether students and schools are making progress.

“It’s just too darn confusing,” Ms. Spellings said of the draft bill. “To make it more complex, less transparent, more obfuscated I think would be a huge mistake, particularly when we’re on the run, we’re on the move.”

FRANKFURT, Sept. 5 – German authorities said Wednesday that they had stopped a major terrorist attack against American and German targets in this country, arresting three Islamic militants and seizing a large amount of potentially explosive chemicals and military-grade detonators.

Those arrested – two German citizens who had converted to Islam and a Turkish resident of Germany – were in the advanced stages of plotting bomb attacks that could have been deadlier than those that killed dozens in London and Madrid, the police and security officials said. At least five lesser figures are still being pursued, they said.

“They were planning massive attacks,” the German federal prosecutor, Monika Harms, said at a news conference, outlining an intensive six-month investigation. She said the suspects had amassed hydrogen peroxide, the main chemical in the explosives used in the London suicide bombings of July 2005.

When fishermen scooped the body out of the river Oder, it was stripped to shirt and underpants and the limbs had been distended and bore marks of torture. The police had no leads and after six months the search for a culprit was abandoned.

But the murderer could not resist gloating over his cleverness. During the investigation, anonymous emails were sent from South Korea and Indonesia to Polish television’s equivalent of Crimewatch, describing the killing as “the perfect crime”.

Two soldiers working to capture militants in an eastern neighborhood of Baghdad were killed Wednesday, U.S. military officials said. Two others were killed the same day by an explosion while on patrol in Salahuddin province.

A total of 3,752 U.S. troops have died in the Iraq theater since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to the website icasualties.org.

The question is at the heart of the case against Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, 27, the U.S. Marine accused of leading a November 19, 2005, massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha.

Witnesses who were on patrol with Wuterich in Iraq have testified that he told them to “shoot first and ask questions later” as they followed up the killing of a popular Marine in their unit.

The security forces came to the monastery to apologise for the violence Wednesday in the central town of Pakokku, about 500 kilometres (310 miles) north of the country’s commercial capital Yangon, residents said by telephone.

At least three monks were injured after security forces fired shots into the air and used bamboo sticks to disperse a crowd of 300 monks who were protesting against a massive hike in fuel prices, they said.

The department has spent $42 million since 2003 developing the software tool known as ADVISE, the Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement program, at the Lawrence Livermore and Pacific Northwest national laboratories. It was intended for wide use by DHS components, including immigration, customs, border protection, biological defense and its intelligence office.

Pilot tests of the program were quietly suspended in March after Congress’ Government Accountability Office warned that “the ADVISE tool could misidentify or erroneously associate an individual with undesirable activity such as fraud, crime or terrorism.”

The suit by the National Security Archive, a private group, is the latest effort to find out whether the Bush administration lost millions of electronic messages.

White House e-mail problems first came to light during a special prosecutor’s investigation into the leaking of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity and again during congressional inquiries into the role of presidential aides in firings of U.S. attorneys.

Far to the northwest, Hurricane Henriette plowed into Mexico for the second time in two days, making landfall shortly before 9 p.m. EDT near the port city of Guaymas with top sustained winds of 75 mph. Seven deaths were reported from the Pacific storm, which hit Baja California on Tuesday.

Felix came ashore Tuesday in Nicaragua as a Category 5 tempest packing 160 mph winds and heavy rains that caused mudslides, destroyed homes, uprooted trees and devastated villages.

If the Iraqis can keep rival Shiite militias at bay in the country’s second-largest city, that would significantly boost the confidence of the Bush administration in Iraqi capability.

But failure would raise serious questions about Iraq’s army and police as President Bush and leading Democrats prepare for a showdown over the future of the U.S. mission during congressional hearings next week.

The Saudi state news agency SPA said Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz “expressed his relief and appreciation for the cooperation shown by the authorities in the United States, hoping this leads to the return of the remaining Saudis.”

Saudi public anger over the treatment of Saudi detainees in Guantanamo Bay has been high in the Muslim kingdom, a key U.S. ally. Two Saudis were among three prisoners who hanged themselves at the naval base in June.

Defence and interior ministry officials said US helicopters fired on houses in the Al-Washash neighbourhood of Mansour district in west Baghdad between 2.00 am and 3.00 am while in pursuit of insurgents.

“The attacks on the houses took place while people were sleeping. There were no clashes. The area had been quiet,” said an interior ministry official who did not want to be named.

But Beijing won’t see it that way….

Kennedy died at his home in Fort Lauderdale, said Kristin Cole, a spokeswoman for Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. The cause of death has not been determined, but Kennedy had not been seen publicly he suffered cardiac arrest Dec. 28. His retirement was announced last month.

Kennedy’s voice and face were known to millions through radio and television broadcasts, urging Christians to evangelize in their daily lives, while condemning homosexuality and abortion as assaults on the traditional family. His also preached on the major policy issues of the day, rejecting evolution and global warming.

Blending into U.S. society, including marriage to non-Jews and a tendency to look on Judaism more in religious terms than ethnic ones, is part of what’s happening, the study found.

“For our parent’s generation, the question that mattered was, how do we regard Israel? For Generation Y (born after 1976) the question is indeed, why should we regard Israel?” said Roger Bennett, a vice president of The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, which sponsored the study.

“I just pray that some day you will find forgiveness in our heart. Know that your loved one is in a good place,” said Tony Roach, addressing his last words to the family of the woman he murdered and raped nine years ago, Ronnie Hewitt.

“I am sorry for what I have done,” Roach said, according to a transcript of his last statement released by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Much of what happens in Iraq is bewildering and contradictory. A surge in U.S. troops has helped secure the capital – but seems to have pushed the violence elsewhere. Casualties among U.S. troops were down slightly in July and August but are surpassing last year’s levels. An avalanche of new progress reports is interpreted by both proponents and opponents of U.S. policy as validation of their positions. Even the President’s comments about troop levels can be confounding: Bush made the trip in part to pressure a reluctant Congress to permit his 30,000-troop surge, announced in January, to continue a while longer. And yet it was Bush who, during his brief visit to Anbar, hinted openly that troop withdrawals might begin soon. He told reporters that General David Petraeus informed him that “if the security situation continues to improve the way it has, we may be able to achieve the same objectives with fewer troops.”

Americans sense intuitively that Iraq has a way of reducing what was once solid and certain into sand. Lawmakers from both parties expected September to be a month of reckoning for the President’s Iraq policy – a stop-or-go moment when the U.S. would decide whether to continue the surge or begin an inevitable pullback. But even before Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker utter a word to Congress, that debate looks almost moot. Bush appears ready to continue the surge for another six months or so, and the Democrats lack the votes to check him. So what will unfold instead in Washington this month is not a debate about the surge but the beginning of a debate about what comes after: How long will the U.S. be in Iraq? (Probably a decade, possibly more.) How many troops will be needed? (Probably 130,000 to start, hopefully less.) What will the mission be after the surge? (Get in line – it’s anyone’s guess.) Will the Iraqis get their act together? (Not soon, as things stand now.)

That Thompson would choose a Hollywood venue to declare his candidacy makes sense. After all, to the extent that voters recognize Thompson, 65, it’s as Arthur Branch, the gruff-but-charming District Attorney in the long-running NBC series Law & Order. Or as Joshua Painter, the gruff-but-charming rear admiral in The Hunt for Red October. (Dramatic range is not his calling card.)

Political junkies know that Thompson was a twice-elected Senator from Tennessee; that he served as G.O.P. counsel during the Watergate hearings in 1973; and that he had a successful career as a lawyer-lobbyist in Washington for years in between. But rather than present himself as just another politician running for President, Thompson will try to turn his fame into a bankable asset. Hence the decision not just to skip the New Hampshire debate in favor of The Tonight Show, but to take the audacious step of airing a campaign ad on Fox News during the debate he will have so conspicuously skipped. “There is no question that Senator Thompson’s celebrity affords us some communications opportunities that aren’t necessarily available to every candidate,” says Todd Harris, the nascent Thompson campaign’s communications director. “We intend to exploit those.”