The Morning News

Steven McDevitt’s written statements, placed on the public record at a congressional hearing, asserted that a study by White House technical staff in October 2005 turned up an estimated 1,000 days on which e-mail was missing.

Two federal laws require electronic messages to be preserved.

Hussein is Obama’s middle name, but talk show host Bill Cunningham used it three times as he addressed the crowd before the likely Republican nominee’s appearance.

“Now we have a hack, Chicago-style Daley politician who is picturing himself as change. When he gets done with you, all you’re going to have in your pocket is change,” Cunningham said as the audience laughed.

Gen. George Casey said the Army hopes to move from 15-month to 12-month deployments once the U.S. military completes a planned drawdown to 15 combat brigades in Iraq in July.

Casey said shorter tours should be possible even if Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, recommends a pause in drawdowns, as is widely expected, after the current series of planned withdrawals is complete.

Osama bin Laden’s group, which has been rebuilding in safe havens in Pakistan for over a year, has taken a prominent role in a new effort by Taliban and other radical organizations to coordinate their operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“We are seeing an increase in cooperation between the (Afghan) insurgents as well as the terrorists led by al Qaeda. They are increasing in their coordination,” U.S. Army Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, top commander of NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan, said on Tuesday.

The Turkish army said it killed a number of rebels and lost two soldiers on the fifth full day of its military operation in northern Iraq, but added that its advance was being “partially” hampered by heavy snowfall in the mountainous region.

In its strongest reaction to date, the Baghdad government condemned the operation as a violation of its sovereignty.

Qari Saifullah Akhtar — a top extremist leader accused by Bhutto of plotting against her in a book published after her assassination in December — was seized on Monday, interior minister Hamid Nawaz told AFP.

“Most probably he is involved in the attack in Karsaz on Benazir Bhutto’s rally. He is a big character,” Nawaz said, referring to the October attack on Bhutto’s homecoming parade in Karachi’s Karsaz district that killed 139 people.

The research, which analysed 47 clinical trials, breaks new ground by incorporating data not previously released by drug companies which researchers obtained under US freedom of information laws.

Its findings prompted some academics and mental health campaigners to question whether people with mild and moderate depression should be prescribed drugs like Prozac, which has been taken by 40 million people worldwide.

“Given the way the talks are going and the way mediators are relating to each other I believe it is important that I suspend the negotiations,” Annan told reporters.

The former UN secretary general, who has spent more than a month in Kenya, said he would “take the matter up with President (Mwai) Kibaki and (opposition leader) honourable Raila Odinga.”

But their calculations went drastically wrong: Although the Army took back control of Swat’s capital in November, Mr. Fazlullah and his commanders are still at large and still on the attack.

In the latest violence, 13 members of a wedding party were killed in a roadside bombing on Friday, while in a separate incident the next day, at least one government security official was gunned down by militants loyal to Fazlullah.

The intermittent offensive against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) reached a crescendo Thursday when ground troops crossed into Iraq in a campaign involving nearly 8,000 soldiers. Officials here say it is Turkey’s most significant strike against the rebels in more than 10 years.

Frustration over the Turkish incursion cuts across the spectrum. Many average Iraqi Kurds sympathize with the PKK rebels’ aim to form an independent Kurdistan and officials say Turkey’s real goal is to destabilize its semiautonomous government, the leaders of which have long been American allies.

In a move likely to stoke up fresh controversy over the divisive war, the information commissioner Richard Thomas said the papers should be released because of the “gravity and controversial nature” of the discussions.

“The commissioner considers that a decision on whether to take military action against another country is so important that accountability for such decision-making is paramount,” he said.

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas ruled the government should release the minutes of two meetings held in the days leading up to the March 2003 invasion.

The minutes document Blair’s discussions with ministers on advice about the war’s legality from the attorney general at that time, Lord Goldsmith, the government’s chief legal adviser.

Core producer prices, which strip out volatile energy and food costs, climbed a greater-than-forecast 0.4 percent, the sharpest increase since February, the Labor Department said.

Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting prices paid at the farm and factory gate to rise 0.4 percent overall and 0.2 percent when food and energy were excluded.

Economists at the government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, known as CMS, forecast that health-care spending will account for 19.5 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product by 2017, up from 16.3 percent in 2007.

A key factor in the next decade will be the entry in 2011 of the leading edge of the post-World War baby boom generation into Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people 65 and up, CMS economist Sean Keehan said.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Casey said the incident would have occurred in 2003 and 2004 following the Iraq invasion. He said he remembers it as a “difficult time” trying to rush armor and other equipment to the troops.

“I have no reason to doubt what it is the captain said,” Casey said. “This was 2003 and 2004, almost four and a half years ago. We acknowledge and all worked together to correct the deficiencies that we saw in that period, not only in Afghanistan but in Iraq. It was a period that we worked our way through.”

Consumer confidence weakened significantly as Americans worry about less-favorable business conditions and job prospects. The New York-based Conference Board says in a report released on Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index plunged in February to 75.0 from a revised 87.3 in January.

The reading – the lowest since the index registered 64.8 in February 2003 – is far below the 83.0 analysts expected.

Duch, also known as Kaing Guek Eav, accompanied 80 judges, lawyers and other officials of a U.N.-backed tribunal to the 129 graves, uncovered after a Vietnamese invasion sent the Khmer Rouge back to the jungles in 1979.

“I saw Duch kneel in front of the trees where Khmer Rouge soldiers smashed children to death,” a policeman told reporters after the four-hour tour.

The area’s mayor, Hans-Peter Haustein, and a man who believes he found the coordinates for the buried booty in a notebook among his deceased father’s belongings, maintain that a scan of the spot has revealed that a large quantity of metal is about 20 meters below the surface.

They believe it to be either gold or silver, based on the scan with a sophisticated metal detector.

Students, teachers and relatives wept as they spoke of Zoran Vujovic while surrounding his flower-laden white casket in Novi Sad, about 50 miles north of Belgrade.

Shocked relatives said he wanted only to protest U.S. support for Kosovo’s secession.

Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian Prime Minister Hashim Thaci was responding to a Serbian government pledge to rule Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo following its secession from Serbia 10 days ago.

Hundreds of protesters tried to attack the United States consulate in the Bosnian Serb Republic capital, Banja Luka, after a largely peaceful march by some 10,000 people. They stoned the building before being pushed back by riot police.

Political directors from the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council — Russia, China, the United States, Britain and France — as well as Germany, met in Washington on Monday to discuss how to tweak their Iran strategy.

They agreed to move ahead on a third round of U.N. Security Council sanctions, which Washington hopes will be voted on this week. But diplomats said they also planned to reemphasize incentives they offered Iran in 2006 to give up its sensitive nuclear work.

The Awami National Party says army offensives in the tribal region abutting the province have killed, maimed and displaced untold numbers of civilians, driven recruits into the arms of the radicals and helped fuel a surge in suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks across the country.

“The war against terror has failed. So there should be no war,” said Haji Mohammad Adeel, one of the party’s most senior leaders. “The only solution is peace. We will do it with negotiations, not with bombs, not with guns, not with airstrikes.”

Many fire departments around the country don’t have the foam, don’t have enough of it, or are not well-trained in how to apply it, firefighting experts say. It is also more expensive than conventional foam.

“It is not unusual to find a fire department that is still just prepared to deal with traditional flammable liquids,” said Ed Plaugher, director of national programs for the International Association of Fire Chiefs.

The quarterly drop in prices of existing single-family homes quickened to 5.4 percent in the final three months of last year from a 1.8 percent drop in the third quarter, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, Standard & Poor’s said in a statement.

The 8.9 percent year-over-year decline was the largest in the 20-year history of the index, as housing was pressured lower by a huge supply of homes for sale, rising foreclosures and tighter lending conditions.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) said members had overwhelmingly ratified the new pay deal, two week afters voting to end the strike, the US entertainment industry’s most damaging dispute in 20 years.

The WGA said 93.6 percent of 4,060 votes cast in Los Angeles and New York were in favor of the three-year deal, which runs from 2008 to 2011.

“I think at the end of the day we consider this concert to be a concert, and it’s not a diplomatic coup,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

North Korea must fully declare its nuclear programs and provide an accounting of proliferation activities, she said.

If the bill “were presented to the president, his senior advisors would recommend he veto the bill,” said a statement from the Bush administration.

With a housing market slump threatening to tip the economy into recession, the Senate was expected to debate a bill this week that would let bankruptcy judges erase some mortgage debt and provide more money for fixing abandoned properties.

“All is not calm in Iraq, as the (Bush) administration would have you believe,” Sen. Russ Feingold said as he kicked off debate on the bill, which is likely to come to a vote this week.

The Wisconsin Democrat, who offered similar legislation late last year that was overwhelmingly defeated, added, “The (military) surge has not brought Iraq any closer to legitimate political reconciliation on the national level.”

In a new twist to the long-simmering congressional fight over the war, the Senate voted 70 to 24 to take up the measure, which imposes severe funding restrictions on any Iraq operations after 120 days.

The debate was the first skirmish in what is likely to be another heated battle between the White House and Congress over war policy, before Iraq commander General David Petraeus reports back to Congress in April.

His arrival coincided with news that India successfully tested its first nuclear capable missile from a submerged platform, completing its goal of developing air, land and sea-based ballistic missiles.

Asked if helping to arm an emerging nuclear power carried risks, Gates said, “We have to deal with the world as we find it.”

“We’re not in a recession, I don’t think we will go in a recession. We’re in a slowdown, and there’s a difference,” Bush said in an interview with American Urban Radio Networks. “No question there is softening now.”

The US president boasted of job growth since he took office in January 2001 but acknowledged that “economies go through cycles, and the question is how do you deal with the down-cycle.”

Economists call the disease “stagflation,” and they’re worried it might be coming back.

Already, paychecks aren’t stretching as far, and jobs are harder to find, threatening to set off a vicious cycle that could make things even worse.

Across much of the nation, home values are dropping – even those backed by solid mortgages – and banks are repossessing more every day. Most experts say the dive won’t hit bottom for another year and only after excess inventory is sharply reduced and credit markets improve.

More government intervention may be needed, too, if the free market system doesn’t work quick enough.

“The housing value crisis is spreading and deepening,” said David Abromowitz, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “It has gone way beyond subprime borrowers stretched too far with bad loans and now has clearly extended into the housing markets more broadly.”

The Conference Board said its Consumer Confidence Index fell to 75 this month from a revised 87.3 in January.

The reading was the lowest since the index registered 64.8 in February 2003, just before the U.S. invaded Iraq, researchers said, and was far below the 83 expected by analysts surveyed by Thomson/IFR.

Compounding the dollar’s woes was news that German corporate sentiment unexpectedly rose in February, suggesting that the European Central Bank was unlikely to ease monetary policy in the near-term.

That left investors focusing on interest rate differentials between the United States and the euro zone. The Fed has lowered its benchmark overnight lending rate by 2.25 percentage points to 3 percent since mid-September, while the ECB’s main refinancing rate has been held steady at 4 percent.

“I do not expect the recent elevated inflation rates to persist,” Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn told business school students at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

“In my view, the adverse dynamics of the financial markets and the economy have presented the greater threat to economic welfare in the United States,” he said.

The European currency reached 1.5047 dollars at 2230 GMT late Tuesday before falling back to 1.5017 dollars.

Analysts say the euro was given a sudden boost from a better-than-expected German business indicator, which stood out amid a series of lackluster macroeconomic indicators in the United States.

The US Internal Revenue Service said it was investigating more than 100 American taxpayers over bank accounts held in Liechtenstein, while Australian tax authorities said they were looking into 20 cases.

“Combating off-shore tax avoidance and evasion are high priorities,” the IRS said in a statement.

“If all the necessary documents are not signed, then because of non-payment for gas, supplies to Ukrainian consumers will be cut from March 3 at 10:00 am (0700 GMT) by 25 percent,” Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said on state television.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko ordered his prime minister to resolve the latest crisis, the product of a dispute that has prompted expressions of concern from the European Union.

Now prices in Riga and Tallinn are sliding and Vilnius’s property market is topping out, leaving late investors with burnt fingers and raising fears that the housing slump could trigger a wider economic “hard landing”.

The property markets of the Baltic states, like their economies, have boomed so spectacularly because they are tiny and there was so much pent up demand to move out of grim communist-era tower blocks. Easy credit from banks fighting for market share, as well as rapidly rising wages – up by more than 30 per cent last year in Latvia – merely lit the touch paper.

Carbon dating of material from the site revealed it was built between 3500 B.C. and 3000 B.C., Peter Fuchs, a German archaeologist who headed the excavation team, told The Associated Press by telephone Monday.

The discovery is further evidence that civilization thrived in Peru at the same time as it did in what is now the Middle East and South Asia, said Ruth Shady, a prominent Peruvian archaeologist who led the team that discovered the ancient city of Caral in 2001. Shady serves as a senior adviser to Peru’s National Culture Institute and was not involved in the project.

The encyclopedia, which eventually will have more than 1 million pages devoted to different species of life on Earth, quickly crashed on its first day of a public unveiling, organizers said.

Scientists at the Encyclopedia of Life sought help from experts at Wikipedia for keeping their fledgling Web site going despite massive – and anticipated – interest. The site went back up Tuesday afternoon, but with expectations of more problems, although only temporary ones.

Iran’s launch of a rocket in early February provoked unease in an international community already suspicious over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program since the technology involved can also be used to deliver warheads.

“Iranian space engineers built the research rocket in nine months,” said Ahmadinejad, according to the IRNA, the state news agency. “The rocket was not a reproduction of a foreign one.”

They said their sequence, to be released at a meeting in Washington on Thursday, would help plant scientists improve varieties of corn and other cereal crops, including rice, wheat and barley.

“Scientists now will be able to accurately and efficiently probe the corn genome to find ways to improve breeding and subsequently increase crop yields and resistance to drought and disease,” Richard Wilson of Washington University in St. Louis, whose team led the effort, said in a statement.

This discovery helps answer the evolutionary question of why we view babies as special and could help doctors better identify people suffering from postnatal depression, the researchers at the University of Oxford said in the journal PLoS One.

“It is important because there has to be a reason why we look after our kids in general to make sure our species survives,” said Morten Kringelbach, a neuroscientist, who co-led the study. “This is an idea that goes back to Darwin.”

“Operation Arc of Fire” was started Tuesday in the Amazon town of Tailandia, 250 kilometers (150 miles) from the city of Belem, the head of the state environmental agency Ibama, Flavio Montiel, told AFP by telephone.

He said the police, rangers and environmental ministry agents were inspecting forest exploitations for signs of illegal tree-felling, which is rife in the region. The operation would last up to three weeks, he said.

All companies, not just those seeking to list on the stock market, will be required to make the disclosures, Xinhua news agency reported, citing a regulation released by the State Environmental Protection Administration.

The government will enforce the regulations and make sure that inspections are carried out before already-listed firms are allowed to refinance, the report said.

A new calculation predicts that Earth will be swallowed up by the sun in 7.6 billion years, capping off a longstanding debate over whether the sun’s gravitational pull will have weakened enough for Earth to escape final destruction or not.

Other theorists have predicted that our planet will fry as the sun expands in its old age. But the time estimates have varied by a couple billion years.

Surface features of the Red Planet, however, hint at a watery past where torrents of groundwater carved out deep canyons, formed sweeping fans of sediment and cemented together huge fault lines.

“Groundwater probably played a major role in shaping many of the things we see on the Martian surface,” said George Postma, a sedimentologist at UtrechtUniversity in the Netherlands.

These are fictional field guides to strange and fantastic creatures lurking at the edges of everyday life.

A book very much like this is at the center of the new film “The Spiderwick Chronicles.” In the film, a man named Arthur Spiderwick (he had his name changed because Arthur Smith wasn’t evocative enough) wrote just such a book. In “Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You,” the author describes elves, fairies, goblins, dragons, ogres, leprechauns, sea serpents, and other such fantastical creatures. Spiderwick disappeared, but his great nephew found the book and unwittingly unleashed a pack of goblins who threaten the world.

Now it turns out any number of different factions among the Maya – nobles, priests and maybe even commoners – may have built temples, scientists now suggest.

The fact that different groups had the will and the power to build temples suggests “the Maya could choose which temples to worship in and support; they had a voice in who succeeded politically,” said researcher Lisa Lucero, an archaeologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Scientists have discovered that ancient animals preserved in the famous Burgess Shale fossil deposit were killed by a mud slurry that buried them so deep their whole bodies were petrified.

The finding solves a mystery that puzzled paleontologists since the revealing fossil trove was discovered in 1909 – how were the animals’ bodies so well preserved?

“The Burgess Shale is really a fossil bonanza,” said Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist at the U.K.’s University of Leicester, who made the new burial discovery with Sarah Gabbott, a paleontologist at the University of Leicester. “What was remarkable about it was that it had a whole array of standard hard-bodied fossils, which we commonly find, but also a variety of soft-bodied fossils.”