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Both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the Americas are vulnerable to tsunamis like the one that devastated Indian Ocean shorelines in December and experts said on Tuesday they are scrambling to try to get warning system in place before politicians lose interest. "It's not if but when," said Laura Kong, director of the International Tsunami Information Center run by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and the United Nations (news - web sites) Educational, Scientific and Cultural organization. She and other experts want to use momentum from the Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed or left missing nearly 300,000 people...

In many ways, Tom Daschle was the perfect senator for a state like South Dakota. Daschle presented a calm, quiet, serious demeanor, well in keeping with the stoic nature of the northern half of the Great Plains, where geography can make life bleak. Senator Daschle was the principal voice of the one of the two major political parties for the last four years. When Daschle - along with Reid and others - persuaded Senator Jeffords to become an independent voting with Democrats, it was the only major political victory that Democrats have had in the last six years. The Bush...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Congress's top Democrat, Tom Daschle, lost his bid to be reelected to the Senate, US networks reported, capping a night of defeats his party, which also failed to win control of either chamber of the US legislature. Daschle, arguably the most powerful Democrat in the US Congress, lost the Senate's most closely-watched election in a 51 percent to 49 percent squeaker to Republican challenger John Thune, a former member of the House of Representatives. In failing to hold on to the seat he first won in 1986, Daschle becomes the first Senate leader to lose reelection...

WASHINGTON - With polls showing Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle's re-election in jeopardy, hundreds of Republican and Democratic activists, including scores of Senate aides, are being dispatched to South Dakota for the final get-out-the-vote push. For Republicans, toppling Daschle ranks second only to hanging onto the White House in Election Night prizes. Not only would a loss by Daschle to Republican John Thune set back Democratic plans to take control of the Senate, it would give Republicans a psychological boost in the increasingly bitter struggle over who runs the federal government. "To knock off a member of the leadership of...

PIERRE - A planned U.S. Senate vote on a flag-burning amendment will take up time that could be better spent on other issues important to South Dakota, Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said Monday. Republican congressional leaders plan to hold votes on politically sensitive issues before the election. The House will vote on measures dealing with gay marriage and the question of whether the Pledge of Allegiance can include the words "under God." The Senate is expected to debate and vote on a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to pass laws prohibiting desecration of the U.S. flag. Daschle, who...

Sioux Falls, SD, Sep. 13 (UPI) -- Republican John Thune now leads Sen. Majority Leader Tom Daschle by three points in the South Dakota Senate race, pollster Scott Rasmussen said Monday. Thune, who served for four years as South Dakota's lone representative in the the U.S. House of Representatives, leads Daschle 50 percent to 47 percent among the 500 likely voters surveyed, inside the survey's 4.5 point margin of sampling error. In the last Rasmussen survey, conducted in February, Daschle led Thune by three points. Thune leads 51 percent to 46 percent among men and 49 percent to 47 percent...

Friends of mine called the other day to say that they will be cutting their summer vacation short and returning to New York a week early. Their daughter has announced that she intends to get arrested at the Republican National Convention, and my friends want to be sure they are around to bail her out of jail. Like so many of us who came of age in the '60s, my friends feel they are in no position to advise political caution. They were activists throughout their 20s and 30s, and they feel it is hypocritical-to say nothing of middle-aged-to tell...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi forces have captured a cleric who is a senior al Qaeda leader in Saudi Arabia and is on the kingdom's list of 26 most-wanted terror suspects, officials say. Cleric Faris al-Zahrani was captured in Abhar, a town in the mountains of southwest Saudi Arabia near the Yemeni border on Thursday evening, an Interior Ministry official told CNN.

<p>It was said of Willie Mays that his glove was the place where triples went to die. The U.S. Senate has earned a similar reputation of late, but one that is hardly a compliment: It's the place where good ideas go to die.</p>

WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Alan Greenspan (news - web sites) said Wednesday that President Bush (news - web sites)'s three rounds of tax cuts prevented a severe recession and helped spark the current economic recovery. But he warned that Congress must pay attention to the long-term consequences of its spending and tax decisions in order to keep rising budget deficits from harming the country's growth potential. Greenspan said that "what we are missing is a process, a long-term outlook" of the impact of spending and tax decisions on the budget. "We need a mechanism which...

<p>Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, for years the most public face of the Bush administration's war on terrorism, has suddenly become scarce.</p> <p>Burdened by the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal and constrained by the presidential election campaign, the Pentagon chief who spearheaded the Afghanistan and Iraq wars has been relegated to a less visible role.</p>

Did they or didn't they? Depends on what the definition of hug is. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) has denied reports attributed to quotes made by Michael Moore that the two shared a hug at a Washington premiere of Moore's film "Farenheit 9/11." In a Time magazine piece about the movie, Moore claims that the two shared an embrace and that Daschle promised the film maker they would fight the good fight together. "He gave me a hug and said he felt bad and that we were all gonna fight from now on," Moore said. Sen. Daschle not only...