Overnight News Digest

The letter, signed by six Republicans and five Democrats, many of them political moderates, contained no specific timeline for withdrawing U.S. forces and took no position on earlier calls to limit future funds for the war.

Instead, it urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, to “work together to put an end to the political infighting” that has marked congressional debate on the conflict thus far.

Body parts, blood and shredded clothes were spread around the sites of the blasts. Both exploded in market areas in the morning rush hour next to the national military headquarters in Rawalpindi, adjoining the capital Islamabad.

The bomb that caused most of the casualties went off on a bus carrying defence employees to work; the second was on a motorcycle and killed at least one colonel according to eyewitnesses.

This is not in itself a surprise, as the army has for some time been the main target of the Islamic militants. The families of the 100 victims of the siege of the Red Mosque have publicly threatened to carry out suicide bombings against the military in revenge for their deaths.

What is more alarming is that this time the militants have struck not at army patrols in the tribal regions of northern Pakistan but in the highest security area, inside the heart of the army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi.

The two leaders exchanged pleasantries before talks at the Commonwealth Parliament Offices within sight of Sydney Harbor. “You told me it was beautiful,” the president observed.

Bush was spending much of Wednesday with Howard ahead of a 21-nation Asia-Pacific summit later in the week. Bush was also to meet with Australian troops.

Yesterday, the first passenger train to take the new £5.8bn, 68-mile high-speed British track from the tunnel into the revamped St Pancras International was all set to smash the two-hour mark between Paris and London until track maintenance at Calais forced it to slow down.

Despite a hold-up that, for once, was France’s fault, the train reached speeds of up to 205mph and set a record for the fastest rail journey between the capitals of two hours, three minutes and 39 seconds. Things going faster and getting better is a curiously old-fashioned idea, but this was a genuine taste of the near future: the magnificently restored St Pancras station opens for international passengers on November 14. Eurostar has promised scheduled journey times of 2hr 15 minutes on the 306-mile route to Gare du Nord – 20 minutes quicker than the fastest services currently running from London Waterloo – with basic fares frozen at £59 return.

Brown, who has refused to set a timetable for any significant drawdown of Britain’s 5,500 soldiers, faced reporters at his Downing Street office for the first time since Parliament’s summer break.

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But a latest survey, published in the Times of London on Tuesday, shows Brown’s lead slipping – putting his Labour party only one percentage point ahead of the Conservatives – 37 percent to 36 percent.

Mr Rafsanjani, a conservative pragmatist and former president, was elected head of the experts’ assembly after overcoming a determined rightwing effort to block him. He received 41 votes, while his opponent, hardliner Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who ran as the “stop Rafsanjani” candidate in an election triggered by the death in July of the assembly’s previous chairman, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Meshkini, received 34.

Mr Rafsanjani’s election sets him on course for a possible power struggle with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The assembly can dismiss the supreme leader – although this has never happened – and choose a new one.

The 16 representatives of Sunni and Shia factions who for four days, sat together in uneasy proximity, know that Mr McGuinness, now Northern Ireland’s number two public figure, was an IRA commander.

So when he told them that violence should cease and that inclusive dialogue was the way ahead, they listened. In addition, they agreed a set of principles as a basis for further talks.

The recommendations from the military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker come despite independent government findings Tuesday that Baghdad has not met most of the political, military and economic markers set by Congress.

Bush appears set on maintaining the central elements of the policy he announced in January, one senior administration official said after discussions with participants in Bush’s briefings during his surprise visit to an air base in Iraq on Monday.

For the first time in human history, more people are laboring in service trades than in food production, according to data gathered by the International Labor Organization (ILO), an agency affiliated with the United Nations.

As recently as 1996, agriculture accounted for 42 percent of world employment, with another 21 percent of workers in goods-producing industries and 37 percent in services. By last year, the ILO says in a report released over the weekend, 42 percent were in services, 37 percent in agriculture, and 22 percent in industry.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the CIA did not have to give up the documents under the Freedom of Information Act aimed at opening up government activity to the public.

Larry Berman, a California political science professor, had sought two documents, one from 1965 and another from 1968, known as the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), in which the CIA briefed then President Lyndon Johnson.

Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno said last week had seen the lowest number of violent incidents against civilians and security forces across Iraq in the past 15 months.

U.S. President George W. Bush, on a surprise visit to Iraq, raised the prospect of troop cuts after meeting top commanders at a desert air base in western Anbar province on Monday.

“We’re still preparing as if Senator Craig will resign Sept. 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we’re able to stay in the fight – and stay in the Senate.”

Craig, a Republican who has represented Idaho in Congress for 27 years, announced Saturday that he intends to resign from the Senate on Sept. 30. But since then, he’s hired a prominent lawyer to investigate the possibility of reversing his plea, his spokesman said.

Whoopi Goldberg used her first day on the daytime chat show Tuesday to defend football star Michael Vick in his dogfighting case.

Goldberg said that “from where he comes from” in the South, dogfighting isn’t that unusual.

One rare breed is becoming extinct every month because farmers – particularly in Asia and Africa – are importing high-yield animals such as Holstein-Friesian cows and White Leghorn chickens, the agency’s Assistant Director-General Alexander Mueller told an intergovernmental livestock conference.

As a result, unique genetic material that could protect farm animals from future threats posed by disease and climate change might disappear, he said. “In this situation, the world cannot simply take a business-as-usual, wait-and-see attitude.”

The latest recall involves three Fisher-Price toy models and eight Barbie brand playsets. No Barbie dolls were included.

Mattel in the last five weeks already had announced two recalls of millions of Chinese toys due to excessive amounts of lead paint and other dangers.

Sporadic clashes have erupted around the densely forested region bordering Uganda and Rwanda since Thursday, when fighting resume between Congo’s army and former Gen. Laurent Nkunda’s troops.

Nkunda’s men seized three gorilla monitoring posts in the Virunga National Park on Monday and park officials said rangers vacated another post Tuesday, abandoning the part of the park where the gorillas live.

The 19 who arrived Sunday at Incheon International Airport face a barrage of criticism amid a national outpouring of relief that their harrowing saga is over.

Despite repeated official denials, most Koreans assume the government paid a sizable ransom to win the release of the 17 women and two men, most of them young nurses, after two men in the original party of 23 people were killed by their captors. Two other hostages, both women, were released Aug. 13, ostensibly over health concerns, just as Korean officials were opening talks before the Taliban made good on threats to kill more of them.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the latest charges “reflect a Cold War mentality.”

Britain’s Financial Times reported in its U.S. edition Tuesday that Chinese hackers had broken into a Pentagon computer network in June, leading to a shutdown of a system that serves the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Ahmadinejad said on Sunday that Iran had 3,000 working centrifuges. With 3,000 centrifuges running smoothly in unison at supersonic speed for long periods, Iran could refine enough uranium for an atom bomb in about a year, nuclear experts say.

“There’s no evidence,” a diplomat said, when asked whether Iran had mastered the technology to get 3,000 centrifuges running effectively together.

Monday, during his surprise visit to the al Asad air base in Iraq’s Anbar province, Bush got a different kind of briefing from Capt. Lee Hemming, a Marine helicopter pilot in Anbar.

In a cement building sheltering them from the 110-degree heat outside, Hemming stood in a flight suit in front of Bush and a roomful of Marines. The captain was nervous, careful and spoke very much as if he had spent a lot of time memorizing what he was going to say. Holding a long metal pointer up to a wall map, he told Bush what his unit’s mission is and what they’ve seen in their area of operations. Bush followed along, nodding, and for a while it looked as if the event would turn out to be the usual dog-and-pony show the Defense Department puts on for VIPs.

New York’s notorious cross-town traffic may get even slower for 48 hours on Wednesday and Thursday, unless the city revokes an order to install GPS transponders and other electronics at a cost of 1,200 dollars per car.

Cabbies will protest New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission mandate to install Global Positioning System locators to keep track of them, as well as touch-screen monitors allowing passengers to pay by credit card.

Around 11,000 residents were still suffering from power outages across Los Angeles while a further 29,000 households were without electricity in the areas surrounding the metropolis, utility companies said.

Los Angeles and parts of southern California have been in the grip of a ferocious heatwave in recent days, with temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) in several districts.

“I must say as to what I have seen of Texas it is the garden spot of the world,” the famed frontiersman and former congressman from Tennessee wrote. “The best land and the best prospect for health. …”

The Texas Historical Commission announced Tuesday it bought the letter, which is believed to be the last that Crockett penned before he and about 200 other Alamo defenders were killed by Mexican forces led by Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.

By then he will have taped an appearance on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno, which will air about an hour after the debate ends in many U.S. households. Come midnight, he’ll post a 15-minute video announcement on his official Web site.

The face time with Leno and the debate ad on Fox News Channel are the coquettish moves of a candidate who has already proven his aptitude using the media, from television to the Internet. While his main rivals – Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain – parry debate questions, Thompson will pretty much control his own message.

Visiting Mississippi, portions of which were devastated in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, Giuliani pledged to prepare every community for such a disaster. And for those caused by man, as well.

“When you’re preparing for a natural disaster, you’re preparing for a terrorist attack,” Giuliani said as he stood before a backdrop of firefighters’ helmets and coats.

The Massachusetts Democrat, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said the panel’s investigative report details improper ties among lenders, universities and alumni groups focused on winning preferential treatment for lenders.

“The findings of the report underscore the urgent need for reform of the student loan system,” he said in a statement.

“There are limits to what our military can provide, so, my recommendations have to be informed by — not driven by — but they have to be informed by the strain we have put on our military services,” Petraeus said in the interview with ABC television in Baghdad.

Asked if troops could be drawn down in March 2008, the general said: “your calculations are about right.”