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U.S. energy industry's desperate push to recover from Hurricane Katrina began to pay dividends on Tuesday, as nearly half of the refineries fully or partially closed by the storm returned to service. Since the hurricane ravaged the Gulf Coast more than a week ago, crews have been working around the clock to assess damage, make repairs and restore power at eight refineries situated along the Gulf of Mexico Two of the largest, a 235,000 barrel-per-day plant owned by Motiva Enterprises in Convent, Louisiana, and a 245,000 barrel-per-day plant owned by Marathon Oil Corp. in Garyville, Louisiana, have now been restarted....

The Louisiana bayou, hardest working marsh in America, is in big trouble—with dire consequences for residents, the nearby city of New Orleans, and seafood lovers everywhere. It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as...

Don't know which triggered a rally in homebuilders: the strength in housing, as expressed by new-home sales, or the weakness in the economy expressed by durable goods. Sometimes it is that tough. We are at a really and truly bizarre moment where the papers and the television shows are all filled with how buying a condo's now worse than buying eToys common on that secondary in 2000. We are convincing ourselves -- typically through journalists who couldn't afford or didn't buy homes -- that owning an apartment's dumber than paying $30 for Webvan and owning a beach house is like...

... Believe the 36 "major news organizations and reporters' groups" that filed an amici curiae brief in the D.C. Circuit on the question of whether Matt Cooper and Judith Miller should be compelled to reveal the identities of confidential sources. (HT: Beldar) On page ii of the brief, the lawyers for the media groups assert: "In this case, there exists ample evidence in the public record to cast serious doubt as to whether a crime has even been committed under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (the "Act") in the investigation underlying the attempts to secure testimony from Miller and Cooper....

Publisher Knight Ridder Inc. on Thursday said quarterly earnings fell 14 percent due to circulation declines, while rival Tribune Co. relied on cost cutting to help it post higher profits. Circulation declines at both media companies underscored the problems the industry has faced in subscription drives since do-not-call lists began blocking telemarketers. At the same time, more readers are getting their news from new media such as the Internet rather than traditional newspapers.

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The lawyer for top White House adviser Karl Rove says that Time reporter Matthew Cooper "burned" Rove after a conversation between the two men concerning former ambassador Joseph Wilson's fact-finding mission to Niger and the role Wilson's wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, played in arranging that trip. Nevertheless, attorney Robert Luskin says Rove long ago gave his permission for all reporters, including Cooper, to tell prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about their conversations with Rove. In an interview with National Review Online, Luskin compared the contents of a July 11, 2003, internal Time e-mail written by Cooper with the wording of a...

Wall Street manages to eke out gains and European bourses trim sharp losses seen after London explosions. Experts say investors are starting to focus on fundamentals again. Oil falls after a wild morning of trading. If there's a word for stock markets today, it's "resilience." One word that doesn't apply is "panic." A series of explosions in the London subway system and a blast that destroyed a double-decker bus left at least 37 dead and 700 injured, MSNBC.com reported. But while the explosions, described by Prime Minister Tony Blair as an apparent terrorist attack, scared investors at first, equity markets...

Heinz said that pre-tax profits fell 9.4 per cent last year as the soup and ketchup-maker closed one European business and initiated a strategic review of its international portfolio. ... From continuing operations, earnings per share fell to $2.08 from $2.20 a year ago.

Just this week, Kerry's campaign spokeswoman derided President Bush, stating: "John Kerry is not the type of leader who will sit and read 'My Pet Goat' to a group of second-graders while America is under attack." Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" spends a full seven minutes focusing on this ridiculous argument -- and mislabeling the book Bush read to a group of second-graders "My Pet Goat." The real name of the book is "Reading Mastery 2," and the story Bush read was called "The Pet Goat." Kerry's spokeswoman simply lifted Moore wholesale.

Brett Baer on FNC reports that the Pentagon is reviewing sattelite imagery which reveals considerable truck activity in the days leading up to the Iraq war. The DoD is considering releasing the photographs.

President Bush, on the stump in PA, took some time to address Senator Kerry's reckless handling of the NYT / CBS October Surprise about missing explosives. He noted Kerry is a politician who will say anything to get elected and that his own foreign policy advisor admitted he doesn't have the facts. For a politician to jump to conclusions without the facts, Bush noted, demonstrates Kerry is ill-suited to be Commander-in-Chief. He went on to note that the issue is being investigated and chastised Kerry for belittling our troops, likening it to his attacks against the military for operations in...

... But who else might have known about this ammo dump story? I have a surprise sound bite for you all. I'm going to go back to the October 8th presidential debate in St. Louis. Charlie Gibson moderated that debate. Listen to John Kerry, this is a 30-second bite. It gets real interesting about 20 seconds in. KERRY: You rely on good military people to execute the military component of the strategy. But winning the peace is larger than just the military component. General Shinseki had the wisdom to say you're going to need several hundred thousand troops to win...

Other Dual Use Items The relocation and consumption of some dual use materials has been among the questions raised in connection with Iraq's backlog of semi-annual declarations. The high explosive "HMX" is a prime example of such material. The removal of Agency seals on the HMX and the declared relocation and consumption of some of the HMX must be explained and documented by Iraq before the Agency can reach a conclusion with regard to the use of such material. The Iraqi declarations indicate that out, of the 228 tonnes of HMX available in Iraq at the end of 1998, 196...

The Bush speech has just begun replay on C-SPAN

Peter Beinhart of TNR on now discussing Kerry's puzzling press conference today, Beinhart going nuts after coming close to admitting Kerry plans to cheat & retreat, then goes nuts when challenged about Shinseki, back to talking points ...

Hugh on fire with the correct analysis on last night's debate.

Karl Rove, on the Sean Hannity show, reveals President Bush was working outside at the ranch over the weekend, both riding his bike and clearing some cedar (brush) ... but did NOT get a spray on tan like John Kerry's for tomorrow night's debate.

At the height of Rathergate, it appears Sumner Redstone, Chairman and CEO of Viacom Corporation, has issued his first verdict on the collapse of credibility for its CBS News operation and 60 Minutes programming. In disclosure mandated by the SEC, "STATEMENT OF CHANGES OF BENEFICIAL OWNERSHIP OF SECURITIES", Redstone reveals his transaction promptly followed the disasterous & defiant appearance by Dan Rather on last Monday evening's edition of the CBS Evening News. In official filing, and with Viacom currently selling near 5 year lows, records reveal Redstone sold 341,500 shares of Viacom stock options for an otherwise undisclosed 401K account...

Dan Rather insisted “this was triggered by a carefully orchestrated leak (about Berger), and the timing of it appears to be no coincidence,”