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Ballance to hold another fundraiser before prison term starts Dec 26, 2005 : 3:37 pm ET RALEIGH, N.C. -- Former Rep. Frank Ballance is holding one last fundraiser before he begins serving a four-year prison term at the end of this week. Ballance, a Democrat from Warrenton who represented the First District of North Carolina, resigned in June 2004 for health reasons before completing his first term. He was sentenced to prison in October after pleading guilty to funneling tax dollars into his foundation and using $100,000 for himself and his family. He will be honored Wednesday at the Roanoke...

In the wake of the voters’ stinging repudiation of all four ballot measures he backed in the costly and contentious Nov. 8 special election, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is working feverishly to regain his political footing. In a recent staff shake-up, the Governor’s chief of staff, Republican Pat Clarey, announced her resignation. But in choosing her successor, Governor Schwarzenegger has made one of the biggest mistakes of his political career. He has selected Susan Kennedy, a former top aide to recalled Governor Gray Davis and former executive director of the California Democratic Party and of the California Abortion Rights Action...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3, 2005 – Operation Shank wrapped up today, officials in Iraq announced. The operation, conducted in central and southern Ramadi, was the fifth in a series by the Iraqi army and coalition forces engaged in combined clearing operations to disrupt terrorism and set conditions for a successful Dec. 15 election in the provincial capital of Anbar. Shank primarily involved targeted raids conducted by Iraqi soldiers and U.S. forces against terrorist safe houses in the area. The raids resulted in the detention of four suspected members of al Qaeda in Iraq, who were held for questioning. About 200 Iraqi...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 14, 2005 – Years from now, the Iraqi people may look on Oct. 15, 2005, as the beginning of their new lives under freedom. Iraqi voters go to the polls to decide on their new constitution - the first constitution in the country's history that is the product of a freely elected assembly. The referendum continues the process of establishing a democratic government in Iraq. U.S. officials say that a democracy in the heart of the Middle East will be an example to the rest of the region. Coalition officials want an Iraq that respects the rights of...

Just before departing New York Sunday night, PM Sharon allegedly managed to violate campaign funding laws by taking part in a dinner at which participants donated well over the permitted amount. A report by Israel's Channel Ten television reporter Raviv Drucker last night provided a detailed report on the Sunday night affair. He related how the organizer and hostess - NIna Rosenwald - sent letters to selected invitees asking for $10,000 per person or couple, and how the 5th Avenue location was closed off for over an hour for what the police described as a "top secret" reason. Only the...

SACRAMENTO – Four years after electricity prices soared and blackouts rolled across California, the state is in danger of another energy crisis – this one involving gasoline and natural gas as well, said a draft report Friday. The state is a captive of its own geographic and regulatory isolation, separated by miles and mountains from many refineries and fossil fuel sources. Moreover, the state sets stricter fuel standards to trim air pollution, driving up prices and limiting availability as is evident in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, said the California Energy Commission. "California's way of life is threatened by its...

Democrats split over position on Iraq war Leaders want to stay the course, voters call for exit strategy By Peter Baker and Shailagh Murray Updated: 10:48 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2005 WASHINGTON - Democrats say a long-standing rift in the party over the Iraq war has grown increasingly raw in recent days, as stay-the-course elected leaders who voted for the war three years ago confront rising impatience from activists and strategists who want to challenge President Bush aggressively to withdraw troops. Amid rising casualties and falling public support for the war, Democrats of all stripes have grown more vocal this...

War prisoner believes atomic bomb saved his life By DAVID LEVINSKY Burlington County Times Thomas Calderone believes the atomic bomb saved his life. Sixty years ago today, the Pemberton Township man was in a Japanese prisoner of war camp wondering how he would survive a fourth year of daily work and few rations when word was received that Japanese forces had surrendered. Calderone's lasting memory of the day - dubbed V-J Day for "victory over Japan" - was simply the Japanese guards telling the prisoners, "no more work." "We didn't understand why," Calderone said last week. "We didn't understand a...

Kerry cautious on probing `Downing Street Memo' By Noelle Straub Monday, June 20, 2005 - Updated: 10:36 AM EST WASHINGTON - Walking a tightrope on a politically charged issue, Sen. John F. Kerry vowed weeks ago to raise the controversial ``Downing Street Memo'' as an issue in Washington, but has since publicly held his tongue on the matter. Instead, Kerry has been enlisting other senators to sign onto a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee seeking answers about the memo, aides said. The memo contained minutes of a 2002 meeting in which British officials told Prime Minister Tony Blair they...

Tuesday, April 5, 2005 - Page updated at 01:17 p.m Kate Riley / Times staff columnist Another bone of contention over Kennewick Man Kennewick Man is poised to tell his secrets. Almost nine years after the 9,300-year-old remains were found on the banks of the Columbia River and a fierce legal battle, federal courts agreed unequivocally scientists should be able to study Kennewick Man. However, U.S. Sen. John McCain has colluded with those who want to stifle the stories of similar old bones and the light they can shed on the earliest Americans and where they came from. The Arizona...

Sen. Jarrett Barrios (D-Boston) will file a bill banning the sale of two types of guns in Massachusetts: a "cop killer" handgun and a rifle capable of disabling aircrafts. Barrios, who chairs the Joint Committee on Public Safety, said the .50 caliber rifle - a weapon capable of firing a five and a half inch round into a target outside the George Sherman Union from Danielsen Hall - opens the door to potential terrorist attacks on "easy targets" around Massachusetts, such as Logan International Airport and the Liquid Natural Gas Tankers in the Mystic River. Barrios and others said the...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's government said on Friday it had captured a key lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who is al Qaeda's leader in Iraq and has been behind some of the country's worst attacks. It said Talib Mikhlif Arsan Walman al-Dulaymi, also known as Abu Qutaybah, was captured on Feb. 20 in Anah, a town northwest of Baghdad, about 35 miles from the Syrian border. "Abu Qutaybah was responsible for determining who, when and how terrorist network leaders would meet with Zarqawi," the government said in a statement."Abu Qutaybah filled the role of key lieutenant for...

'Chaos in Iraq could produce another Hitler' By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor (Filed: 14/12/2004) The chronic instability and widespread feeling of humiliation in Iraq could give birth to an "Iraqi Hitler", the country's president, Ghazi al-Yawar, said yesterday as a suicide car bomber killed at least seven people in Baghdad. The explosion at the entrance of the "Green Zone", the capital's fortified government and diplomatic compound, left 19 people wounded. All the victims were reported to be Iraqis. An US soldier surveys the blast zone in Baghdad The blast came on the anniversary of the capture of Saddam Hussein....

SACRAMENTO – The solar panels gleam like black fish scales on the roof of Mark Louvier's Santa Ana factory. They save him $2,500 a month as they pour electricity into the machines below that grind out doors and fixtures for tract homes. They also cost $1.2 million to install, way beyond Louvier's budget without the government subsidies and tax breaks he got that brought the bill down to less than $600,000. "Without the credits, I wouldn't have anything to do with it," said Louvier, president of Trimco Finish. It's businessmen like Louvier and homeowners throughout California that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger...

Former US president Bill Clinton wins another Grammy nod 2 hours, 9 minutes ago LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Former US president Bill Clinton, movie star Steve Martin, actor John Lithgow and comedienne Ellen DeGeneres won places alongside the world's top musicians as Grammy Award nominees. An unlikely nominee, Clinton won his second consecutive nod for music's top awards in the best spoken word album category for the recording of his best-selling autobiography "My Life." Earlier this year, the former leader of the free world won a golden gramophone statuette for lending his voice to the spoken word recording of Russian...

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MONTREAL -- Montreal's exclusive Lower Canada College is again in an embarrassing spot after two graduating students placed coded messages calling for death to all Jews in the school's yearbook as a joke. The statements, in a jumble of acronym-like e-mail shorthand, were spotted hours before the 2003-2004 yearbook was to be widely distributed this month. All 1,000 copies were destroyed. "It was a hidden message that was intended to be a secret between two students," headmaster Paul Bennett said in an interview yesterday. "These students don't represent anyone but themselves but they've caused a tremendous amount of harm and...

Iraqi rebels slip away to fight another day By Aqeel Hussein in al-Nouaimia and Toby Harnden in Fallujah (Filed: 14/11/2004) Families fleeing the besieged city of Fallujah say that rebel fighters have slipped through the American and Iraqi military cordon and have been driven away in Mercedes cars to rejoin the battle elsewhere in Iraq. The fighters, said to include foreign militants using satellite telephones, are believed to be heading for Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul, to open a new front. Abu Haider, 47, a mechanic who escaped with his family on Friday, said: "I saw many fighters...

NEW ORLEANS - Days after Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites) and former President Clinton (news - web sites) had a lengthy, late-night telephone chat to discuss campaign strategy, the two were at it again on Thursday. Only this time, politics weren't involved, says a Kerry aide. Kerry just wanted to check in and see how Clinton was doing as he recuperates in a New York City hospital after heart bypass surgery earlier this week, said Kerry spokesman David Wade. Before giving a speech Thursday to the National Baptist Convention, Kerry said he had spoken to Clinton and that...

BOSTON -- OK, here's my brilliant Insider Insight du jour: The D's aren't going to get much of a bounce out of this convention because this race is already so tight there just ain't enough swing votes to bounce anywhere.