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WASHINGTON - Three senators who met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf after opposition parties won a governing majority last week urged a "graceful exit" from power for the close Bush terror-fighting ally. "Were I their political adviser, that's what I would advise," Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday. He did not favor an attempt by that new coalition to impeach Musharraf; the parties have enough seats to govern, but not enough to impeach the president. "I firmly believe if they do not focus on old grudges — and there's plenty in Pakistan — and...

WASHINGTON - United for urgent action, the White House and Congress raced toward emergency steps Thursday to rescue the national economy from a possible recession, including tax rebates of at least $300 a person — and maybe as much as $800. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke endorsed the idea of putting money into the hands of those who would spend it quickly and boost the flagging economy. All the talk of rescue efforts failed to soothe Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrials plunged 306.95 points, underscoring deepening concern about the country's economic health. The sudden scramble to take action came...

(AP) A national assembly of Evangelical Lutherans urged its bishops Saturday to refrain from defrocking gay and lesbian ministers who violate a celibacy rule, but rejected measures that would have permitted ordaining gays churchwide. Still, advocates for full inclusion of gays were encouraged, calling the resolution a powerful statement in support of clergy with same-gender partners. The conservative group Lutheran CORE, however, said bishops will now feel more secure in ignoring denomination policy. The 538-431 vote came on the final day of a weeklong meeting in Chicago _ and after emotional debate over how the denomination should interpret what the...

As early as this week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will appoint a new judge to one of the state's 58 trial courts – and begin seizing an unprecedented opportunity to leave a lasting mark on the state judiciary. Legislation passed last year empowers Schwarzenegger to appoint 50 new judges beginning this month and 100 more in the coming years. These are positions the judiciary says are needed to meet growing demands on trial and appellate courts. The seats are newly created, not replacements for retired or departed judges. Never before has a California governor been given such a chance to affect...

Moderate Muslims Urged to Speak Out Sunday October 1, 2006 2:16 AM By JAN M. OLSEN Associated Press Writer COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - Moderate Muslims must take a stand against extremists, speakers said Saturday at a conference marking a year since the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons that led to violent demonstrations in Muslim countries. The 12 drawings, first published in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in September, were reprinted in several European countries four months later, prompting angry mobs to attack Western embassies in countries including Lebanon, Iran and Indonesia. The cartoons, which included a drawing of the prophet with...

Cleric who urged jihad to be freed from prison Jamie Doward, home affairs editor Sunday August 20, 2006 The Observer (UK) An Islamic cleric who influenced at least one of the 7 July bombers and whose videos may have been seen by several of the terror suspects arrested earlier this month, is to be freed from prison in weeks. Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal encouraged Muslims to attend training camps so they could wage jihad on the West. He was jailed in February 2003 for nine years, reduced to seven on appeal, after being convicted of soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred....

The National Council of La Raza's annual convention in downtown Los Angeles today is turning out to be a who's who of Latino power brokers - with local politicians rearranging their schedules and attendees buzzing about who will come. But behind all the schmoozing and banquets, one of the nation's best-known civil rights groups is courting a lower-profile player, one some say is just as powerful a player: hometown associations. The hundreds of associations - built up over decades by tens of thousands of expatriates who send home billions of dollars a year - are increasingly flexing their political muscle...

Gung-ho US troops urged to be more British By Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 03/05/2006) A senior American general has ordered his troops to reduce the lethal force used against Iraqis, citing fears that trigger-happy behaviour is aggravating the insurgency. Lt Gen Peter Chiarelli, who commands operations for the 132,000 American soldiers in the country, told his men to display more sensitivity and reach for their guns less often. "We risk the chance of creating an insurgent, of creating somebody who gets so disgusted. . . that they get off the fence and go to the wrong side," he told...

Calm is urged over bird flu caseAREA ON ALERT* Poultry owners within wild bird risk area must keep birds indoors or, if not possible, ensure they are kept away from wild birds * Bird transport within 6 mile (10km) surveillance zone will be curbed * Poultry within 1.8 mile (3km) protection zone must be kept indoors and will be tested A minister has warned against the temptation to "turn a drama into a crisis" over the discovery of H5N1 bird flu in a dead swan in Scotland. Scottish Rural Affairs Minister Ross Finnie said the case was being dealt with...

Act now to protect poultry, UK urged James Sturcke and agencies Monday February 20, 2006 All Britain's 180 million farm birds should be brought indoors or vaccinated against bird flu, a respected expert said today, as the government admitted the risk of the virus reaching the UK had increased. Tony Blair's official spokesman conceded there was a "higher" risk of the virus hitting the UK but said this was not yet inevitable. Ministers attempted to curb panic and said there were no plans to bring poultry indoors at this stage or carry out mass vaccinations. France and the Netherlands have...

Arrest pedlars of hate, police urged By George Jones and Ben Fenton (Filed: 06/02/2006) Police were under pressure last night to adopt "a no tolerance" approach to Muslim demonstrators threatening violence in Britain after a third embassy was set on fire in the Middle East. Government ministers and religious leaders appealed for calm as violent protests intensified across the Muslim world over cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed that were first published in Denmark. Muslims in London protesting against the publication of cartoons they say are offensive The Conservatives called for firm action against any further militant demonstrations as police faced...

Overthrow president, Syrians urged By Patrick Bishop in Moukhtara (Filed: 16/01/2006) Walid Jumblatt seemed admirably composed for a man whose name had just appeared on a hit list of Lebanese public figures. "The whole of Lebanon is on the death list, not only me," said the Druze leader and anti-Syrian figurehead. "The Syrian regime will not accept easily its defeat last year when the Lebanese people obliged them to get out. The regular forces left but [its] agents are still here." Mr Jumblatt, 56, has taken precautions. For the moment he is not leaving his rocky domain in the Chouf...

Trustees of San Diego's embattled retirement system yesterday urged consultants they hired two months ago to get their report out first on how the pension fund came to be saddled with a deficit of at least $1.4 billion. Navigant Consulting, a Chicago-based company that advises public agencies, is at least the fifth firm examining decisions made in 2002 to underfund the system while also increasing employee benefits. The teams of consultants appear to be competing in a race to see "who will be last" to finish their work, said pension board President Peter Preovolos. He added that one of the...

Return To New Orleans Is Urged Mayor Travels Louisiana to Tout Work, Housing By Peter Whoriskey and Spencer S. Hsu Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, October 13, 2005; Page A01 ALEXANDRIA, La., Oct. 12 -- Amid fears that the effort to repopulate New Orleans is stalling, Mayor C. Ray Nagin hopscotched shelters across the state Wednesday to assure Hurricane Katrina evacuees that the city is beginning to operate again and urged them to "come on home." For the charismatic first-term politician, it was a novel kind of political campaign: not for votes necessarily, but for voters themselves. It is a...

Bishop Gerald Barnes, leader of the Diocese of San Bernardino, is urging federal legislators to extend disaster aid to illegal immigrants uprooted by Hurricane Katrina, and not to deport undocumented immigrants who fled the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast. "Now is the time to serve our common humanity and not discriminate against victims of the disaster because they are not U.S. citizens," Barnes, the chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration, said in a Tuesday letter to federal lawmakers. "Like U.S. citizens, noncitizens have suffered from the hurricane and its aftermath, having lost their loved ones, their...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Administrators for San Diego's scandal-plagued retirement system faced renewed calls Friday to relinquish documents sought by federal prosecutors. Michael Young, an attorney for consultants hired to speed completion of a long-overdue audit, urged the pension board to turn over documents sought by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. "Where improprieties have surfaced, it is a fiduciary's responsibility to get to the bottom it, to see that wrongdoing is exposed," Young said during a sometimes testy exchange that lasted more than an hour. The city's outside auditor, KPMG LLP, will not bless the...

State Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi yesterday urged insurers to cut their workers' compensation rates by 18 percent July 1 to reflect the savings they have received from recent regulatory reforms. An insurance industry spokeswoman responded that double-digit reductions are likely, although not necessarily as deep as those Garamendi recommends. "Eighteen percent is not unreasonable," said Nicole Mahrt, public affairs director for the Western Region American Insurance Association. "It's higher than what some companies are able to do, but some companies are already planning cuts higher than that." Twice a year – on Jan. 1 and July 1 – the state...

Hard-pressed employers could get a big break on workers' compensation premiums later this year if insurers follow a rate recommendation issued by a key agency Wednesday. The Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau in San Francisco, an industry-backed private organization that provides statistical analysis, recommended that insurance companies drop their premiums by about 10% beginning in July. The bureau is expected to make the recommendation official Friday. If, as is likely, such a cut is reflected in rates submitted by insurance companies to regulators, employers would see the first double-digit decline resulting from a two-year campaign to overhaul the state's system...

LONDON (AP) - A group of public health experts sharply criticized Britain and America on Friday for failing to count the number of Iraqis who have died as a result of the war in Iraq. The group said the United States and Britain rely on the Iraqi Ministry of Health tally and that number was "likely seriously to underestimate" deaths. It urged officials of the two countries to immediately commission "a comprehensive, independent inquiry into Iraqi war-related casualties." The Iraqi Health Ministry has estimated that 3,853 civilians were killed and 15,517 injured between April and October 2004. Britain's Foreign Office...

From the heavyweight Southern California Water Authority to the scrappy little County Council in Moab, Utah, a determined chorus is rising to urge the U.S. Department of Energy to move a 10-million-ton pile of radioactive waste away from the banks of the Colorado River. "This water supply and the health of millions of people are too important to leave to chance," a letter from the San Diego County Water Authority urges the Energy Department. "Moving the pile would lessen these risks significantly." Three of the four largest water agencies in the region have insisted that the waste pile be moved...

LOS ANGELES – The committee that will dole out $3 billion in state grants for stem cell research heard yesterday from critics and some of its own members who said the group should slow down in its race to get money to scientists. As the committee met for the second time, one of the overriding messages from the public and some of the committee members was to start by establishing standards for complicated and weighty issues such as how to reimburse taxpayers for their investment. "No one wants results to come back faster than I do," said committee member Joan...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the Security Council urged Rwanda on Thursday to refrain from any military action in Congo after reports as many as eight battalions of Rwandan troops may be in Congo. The head of U.N. peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno warned the council at a closed-door briefing of the danger of increased tensions, saying there is a lot of stake for the Congo as well as the region, according to a diplomat at the session, speaking on condition of anonymity. Algeria's U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Baali, the current council president, said Guehenno told members that according...

Charges reported urged for Vietnam soldier Associated Press 9/6/2004 TOLEDO, Ohio - A military attorney has recommended charging a former soldier in a 1967 rampage of alleged atrocities committed by U.S. troops against hundreds of civilians in Vietnam, a newspaper reported. The Blade, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the elite Tiger Force platoon, said in its Sunday edition that the recommendation involved retired Maj. James Hawkins, 63, a former unit commander who now lives near Orlando, Fla. Hawkins declined to comment on the military attorney's recommendation, the newspaper said. Army Reserve lawyer Michael Walther reviewed the...

Americans Urged to Leave Haiti Thursday February 19, 2004 11:46 PM By GEORGE GEDDA Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - All non-government Americans in Haiti should leave while transportation is still available, the State Department said Thursday, citing the violent uprising. Peace Corps personnel are being withdrawn, and the government has authorized the departure of family members and non-emergency employees of the U.S. Embassy on a voluntary basis, the department said. Separately, the government said it was sending a military team to assess the security of the embassy in light of the uprising against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The embassy has...

SACRAMENTO - In a rare move, the nonpartisan legislative analyst yesterday recommended raising the gasoline tax to improve a state road system hurt by four years of diverting transportation funds to tighten budget gaps. Californians pay hundreds of dollars more than the average American for auto repairs and other costs due to rough roads, Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill said, adding that increased traffic congestion is harming the state's economy. She pointed to a recent study that found bad roads cost the average San Diego motorist $667 a year, far above the national average of $396. Another study revealed that congestion...

Bush urged to reveal secret Saudi links with al-Qa'ida By David Usborne in New York 26 July 2003 The White House came under fresh pressure last night to launch an aggressive investigation into claims that Saudi Arabia thwarted American efforts to investigate al-Qa'ida before the terrorist attacks of 11 September, 2001. Democrats also called for a inquiry into allegations that the kingdom might have, wittingly or unwittingly, channelled money to the hijackers. The Democrats want President George Bush to declassify 28 pages of a congressional report on the failures of US intelligence in the run-up to the attacks. The censored...

<p>CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Columbia accident investigators urged NASA on Friday to develop an inspection and emergency repair plan for astronauts in orbit before space shuttle launches resume.</p> <p>It was the third preliminary recommendation issued by the investigation board in advance of its final report, due out in a month. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said Thursday he hopes to resume shuttle flights by April.</p>

ON CAPITOL HILLBush urged to fight for EstradaDemocrats, GOP continue sparring over D.C. circuit nominee Posted: April 21, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern By Jon Dougherty © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Though President George W. Bush has won high marks for his handling of Saddam Hussein, he continues to take a beating at home from Senate Democrats who have torpedoed his nomination of Miguel Estrada to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals via a filibuster. One legislative-policy analyst thinks Bush should take a more active role in defending his man. Now that the war in Iraq is winding down, Bush needs to "go out into the...

<p>The Legislative Analyst's Office on Wednesday proposed an overhaul of state school programs that is more drastic, and more refined, than a similar plan announced by the governor in January.</p> <p>In particular, Wednesday's report makes the controversial recommendation that the state's massive and popular Class Size Reduction program for kindergarten through the third grade be dismantled -- a move that would be fought by education interest groups, including the powerful California Teachers Association.</p>