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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Four Iraqi National Guardsman died and six were wounded Tuesday when a suicide car bomb rocked a checkpoint near the eastern city of Baquba, police said.The suicide bomber was driving a 1979 Corona, and an Iraqi man believed to be involved in the attack was arrested, police said. Paperwork in the car indicated that the owner was Sudanese.The bomber was seen following vehicles of U.S.-led multinational forces, and the car bomb was detonated as they passed the checkpoint in the city north of Baghdad.The wounded guardsmen were evacuated to a multinational forces facility.Last week, 70 people...

<p>A Georgia man's experience only goes to prove what most people take as common sense: Don't try to mix dangerous chemicals in your pants.</p> <p>According to newspaper reports, three Walker County social workers were visiting Daniel Gabriel Doyle, 39, of LaFayette, last Tuesday. As he sat in their car filling out paperwork, his pants exploded.</p>

"It functions more like a frequent flyer program for habitual voters," .St. Louis filed a lawsuit Monday seeking early statewide voting for the Nov. 2 election. If successful, the lawsuit would create a two-week window before Election Day in which any Missouri voter could cast a ballot. This would differ from absentee balloting, which requires a voter to provide a reason for casting an early ballot. The lawsuit was filed against Secretary of State Matt Blunt - the chief election official in Missouri. It involves the interpretation of a law signed in 2002 by Gov. Bob Holden, which Blunt says...

<p>IMAGES of the Vietnam War seem to be flooding into our lives lately. Footage of a young naval Lt. John Kerry, in fatigues, carrying an M-16, patrolling the Mekong Delta. President Bush, in an eerie echo of a previous president from Texas, vowing never to retreat in the face of aggression. Yet sitting recently in the Cafe Au Lac on a tree-lined street in Hanoi's old quarter, opposite the elegantly restored French- era Hotel Metropole, it was hard to remember why we fought that war.</p>

PARIS -- Since at least the 19th century, the French have heard much talk about their decline. Of course, the French have never believed it. "Pas du tout! (Not at all!)" they might exclaim with a trademark shrug of the shoulders. But these days, judging by several best-selling books in France and the tone of a self-effacing discourse on national radio and television and in newspapers, the country has begun to again broach the subject of its own decline. The discussion touches on the loss of influence in the spheres of politics, economics, art, film, diplomacy, and even language. Even...

<p>Does the Democrat really have a shot at the military vote?</p> <p>Give John Kerry his due for taking aim at a key Republican constituency: the military and military families. If a prime time salute, a convention hall full of flag wavers and his own "Band of Brothers" were enough, Mr. Kerry might have sliced a core voting bloc away from President Bush.</p>

As usual, the polls don't all agree, but the consensus seems to be shaping up that John Kerry either had no bounce at all from his convention or a very slight upward tick of only one to four points. It was one of the least successful conventions in recent history. What happened? Going in to the convention, Kerry had a critical policy choice to make: Use the four nights of his conclave to stress the domestic issues on which he has significant leads in the polls (health care, drug prices, wages, Social Security, Medicare, environment, the deficit and education), or...

<p>Over the past two weeks, decent people who consider themselves pro-choice became intimately acquainted with those heading the movement. To be sure, they didn't know this was whom they were meeting as they read what was to become the most talked-about New York Times Magazine article in years. Neither did the Times, claim editors, who last week admitted to the New York Sun that the protagonist of the recent "Lives" column was a New York Planned Parenthood advocate and consultant to Gloria Steinem--and not the Everyman for whom the space is normally reserved.</p>

... Mr. Kerry is a product of the '60s and fully committed to the side of the culture wars he views as progressive. But he needs votes from across the divide and will sing for them. Fair enough. He'd be a hopeless politician if he could not make his ideas fit the times. Politicians who try to get voters to change in order to fit their ideas end up like Ralph Nader. Received wisdom is that Mr. Kerry is seen as weak on security hence his praetorian guard of the guys from his days in 'Nam. Now he finds himself...

<p>"The embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world," declared Ted Kennedy, in a moment of Revolutionary War nostalgia. Or he would have done, if he had managed to stick to his text. But, in a strikingly erratic performance even by his standards, what actually emerged from the senator's lips was: they "fired the shirt round the world."</p>

<p>BOSTON--Amid the star-studded parties being held here during the Democratic Convention was one that's about as far off the A-list as it's possible to get: a dinner hosted Monday by a fledgling nonprofit advocacy group called Democrats for Life. Need one say it was an intimate affair? Even Republicans were better represented in Boston last week than Democrats who oppose abortion.</p>

<p>August 1, 2004 -- WATCHING last week's Democratic infomercial in Boston, one could be forgiven for thinking that John Kerry went straight from the Mekong Delta to the podium at the Fleet Center, with barely a stop in between.</p> <p>That he had almost nothing to say about his 20 years in the U.S. Senate was surprising. But that almost nary a word was heard about the events that rocketed John Kerry to nationwide fame is shameful.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON - (KRT) - When former President Bill Clinton sought to frame differences between Democrats and Republicans, he made a point of citing the soon-to-expire federal ban on semiautomatic assault weapons.</p> <p>"Our policy was to put more police on the street and to take assault weapons off the street, and it gave you eight years of declining crime and eight years of declining violence," Clinton said in his prime-time speech at the Democratic National Convention last week. "Their policy is the reverse."</p>

<p>Angelo was a 45-year-old, never-married contractor from Massachusetts. As the years went by, his standards were going down.</p> <p>“I’m not looking for Victoria’s Secret, like I used to be,” he said. “Just a fairly attractive woman who is similar to me, who will laugh and be happy.”</p>

<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President George W. Bush may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the September 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.</p> <p>Talking about death can raise people's need for psychological security, the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.</p>

Make no mistake: The Rev. John B. Ardis, the Catholic priest whom Senator John F. Kerry has chosen to give the benediction at tonight's closing session of the convention, opposes abortion. But he also opposes capital punishment, the war in Iraq, and public policies he views as unjust toward the poor or hungry. Although several Catholic cardinals have declined to speak at Democratic conventions because of the party's support for abortion rights, Ardis, the director of the Paulist Center of Boston, will speak tonight without reservation, noting that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are fully in step with Catholic...

U.S. Embassy Bombings Suspect Arrested Thursday, July 29, 2004 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan has arrested a Tanzanian Al Qaeda (search) suspect wanted by the United States in the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the interior minister said Friday. He said the suspect was cooperating and had given authorities "very valuable" information. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (search) — who is on the FBI's list of 22 most wanted terrorists, with a reward of up to $25 million on his head — was arrested Sunday in the eastern city of Gujrat along with at least 15 other people, Interior...

<p>A Northern California man wrongfully deported to Guatemala after seeking asylum in the United States is suing the government for damages, saying the mistake endangered his life.</p> <p>Victoriano Lorenso Jeronimo of Oakland filed suit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco late Tuesday, seeking millions of dollars and assurances that federal immigration officials will work to prevent similar incidents.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON -- When John Kerry decided to skip a scheduled speech to the National Education Association convention here earlier this month, he telephoned NEA president Reg Weaver, who took the call at the podium. Mr. Weaver wasn't in a conciliatory mood: He held up the phone to the convention's 9,000 delegates and urged them to "tell [him] who you are."</p>

<p>If one were forced to choose low point of Jimmy Carter's presidency, it might be his July 15, 1979, "national malaise" speech. The country was suffering under inflation, recession, and an "energy crisis" — and we were about to undergo the national humiliation of the Iran hostage crisis. But what was Carter's diagnosis of America's problem?</p>

<p>A Beverly Hills doctor who is a former chairman of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS has surrendered his license to practice medicine in California, effective this week.</p> <p>Dr. R. Scott Hitt, 45, returned his license to the Medical Board of California, which had suspended it for 60 days in February because of allegations that Hitt sexually molested two patients at his medical office. The board also had placed him on seven years' probation.</p>

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The Egyptian government paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure the release of an Egyptian diplomat who had been kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents last week, sources in Baghdad told CNN Tuesday.</p> <p>Egyptian officials deny paying any ransom for Momdoh Kotb, the country's third-ranking diplomat in Iraq.</p>

<p>"Is our country more united today?" Al Gore asked. "Or more divided? Has the promise of compassionate conservatism been fulfilled? Or do those words now ring hollow? For that matter, are the economic policies really conservative at all? Did you expect, for example, the largest deficits in history? One after another? And the loss of more than a million jobs?"</p>

<p>BOSTON — John Kerry's "band of brothers" said Monday that getting the Massachusetts senator elected president is their final mission — one they would go to hell and back for if necessary.</p> <p>"If John Kerry (search) came up to us and said we had one more swift boat mission and we were going to hell, he would have a full crew," said David Alston, a crewmate of Kerry, who commanded a Navy river swift boat in the Vietnam War and earned the Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for his service in 1968-1969.</p>

<p>OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- A recent Sunday found Tina Kolm changing her morning routine. Instead of attending a Unitarian Universalist service, she was at the Lenexa Christian Center, paying close attention to a conservative minister's sermon about the importance of amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex "marriage."</p>

<p>MIAMI (AP) - Ricky Williams has told the Miami Dolphins that he's retiring after just five years in the NFL, The Miami Herald reported on its Web site Sunday.</p> <p>Williams said he was overjoyed by his decision.</p> <p>"You can't understand how free I feel," Williams told the Herald in a cell phone interview Saturday before boarding a plane in Hawaii and heading to Asia to begin several months of travel.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- With 140,000 American troops now deployed and thousands more awaiting orders, the war in Iraq is a major theme in this year's presidential campaign.</p> <p>But the poll shows some differences when it comes to America's defense. Kerry is seen as better on the economy and health care; Bush is seen as better able to handle terrorism and Iraq. However, more than six in 10 respondents said they would have confidence in either Kerry or Bush to protect the nation from terrorism; a third said Kerry has a clear plan for Iraq.</p>

<p>The closet poet with ambitions beyond the military died serving his country. His family and friends are left to deal with anger, sorrow and uncertainty.</p> <p>MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Paulette Crawford-Webb felt giddy when her daughter called her at work to say two military men were at the door. Her son, Army Staff Sgt. Morgan Kennon, was due home soon from Iraq for her 47th birthday. The "military men" had to be Morgan; her son and daughter were pulling a prank.</p>

<p>Michael O'Connor Clarke, a British subject who lives in Canada, will be voting for John Kerry in the presidential election in November. So will Sarah Redman, an Australian citizen and half of a lesbian couple looking to move to the United States but unable to under current immigration laws. And so will Scott Steahl, a sophomore at the University of California at San Diego. Steahl became eligible to vote two years ago, and by the grace of vote-exchanging, he'll do so twice in the fall.</p>

<p>Hey all you girlie men, it's time to rally around the free speech rights of the governor of California.</p> <p>Doesn't this one just make you laugh so hard it hurts?</p> <p>Arnold Schwarzenegger (search) was caricatured on "Saturday Night Live" some 20 years ago by "Hans" and "Franz," whose slogan was "We want to pump you up."</p>

<p>FOURTEEN months on from the fall of Baghdad allows for some per spective on the invasion. John Kee gan's "The Iraq War" and Evan Wright's "Generation Kill" make interesting bookends for seeing the assault in different lights — from the lofty heights of trenchant political-military analysis down to the raw emotion of force recon Marines in battle.</p>

<p>Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party, but that doesn't necessarily include all good women. You could ask Hillary Clinton.</p> <p>Better yet, you could ask the mister. Whether you should necessarily believe him is a topic for another day. He's not under oath, after all.</p>

<p>Los Angeles Times July 14, 2004 Prospect Of A New Military Draft Drawing More Attention, Concern By Elizabeth Mehren, Times Staff Writer BOSTON — No law has been signed to revive the draft, and the president, the Pentagon and the presumed Democratic presidential nominee all oppose forced military service. Yet as fatalities in Iraq increase and as troops see their tours extended, there is a growing concern across the country that a draft may be in the offing. At summer barbecues, kids' baseball tournaments and worksites, conversations focus on whether a new generation will be called to mandatory military duty. Parents, grandparents and others are wondering how long America can rely on volunteers and reservists to supply a strong defense. "I have thought about this a great deal," said Barbara Nicosia, who works in a bookstore south of Boston and is the mother of a 14-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter. "I have a strong memory of the draft during Vietnam, and I don't like where they are going with this," she said.</p>

<p>When Fox News Channel was founded by Rupert Murdoch, the consensus was that no startup all-news cable channel could possibly compete with CNN, and if any startup had a chance, it was MSNBC, which had the combined clout of NBC's esteemed news division and Microsoft, which in those days was believed to own the future.</p>

<p>IN THE WEEKS since the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison were revealed, evidence continues to seep out of similar mistreatment of prisoners in other US military detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Top White House and Pentagon officials have sought to deny any pattern of illegality in the interrogation and treatment of prisoners in US custody. They insist that members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban fall outside the protections of the Geneva Conventions.</p>