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MOSCOW (AP) - The militants who raided a school in southern Russia last week were led by a man dubbed the Colonel, who enforced obedience by killing three fellow attackers - two by detonating the explosives they had strapped to their bodies. Two days later, the attackers were moving the explosives they rigged around the gym where hundreds of hostages were held, and a bomb went off accidentally. That began the spiral of panic that led to the bloody conclusion of the standoff, in which more than 320 people were killed. Those details were among several disclosed by Prosecutor-General Vladimir...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - Lionel Tate, the teen who walked out of prison eight months ago after his life sentence for the killing of a 6-year-old playmate was overturned, was arrested on charges of violating his probation. A judge said earlier this year that Tate could be sent back to prison if he violated probation. Officials found Tate, 17, and a friend walking near Tate's Pembroke Pines home last Friday, sweating and panting as though they had been running, the Broward Sheriff's Office said. Tate, who gave a false name, and his 18-year-old friend told sheriff's officials they had...

Judge To Hear Case For NJ Special Election Lawsuit States NJ Voters Deprived Of Constitutional Rights Sep 8, 2004 6:53 am US/EasternTRENTON, N.J. (CBS) A federal judge is scheduled to hear arguments Wednesday that New Jersey voters should choose Gov. James E. McGreevey's interim replacement in a special election this November. A federal lawsuit filed Aug. 16 by two Princeton lawyers charged that McGreevey's impending resignation is actually a vacancy, and that by staying in office until it is not possible to hold a special election, he is depriving voters of their constitutional rights, including due process. The filing came...

A 23-year-old man who fled to Pakistan after allegedly kidnapping and raping a woman in 2002 has been extradited to Oakland County to face charges. Mohammed Haris Hasan was arraigned Tuesday in the 51st District Court on one count of kidnapping, eight counts of criminal sexual conduct, one count of assault with intent to murder and one count of assault with intent to do great bodily harm, less than murder, according to Waterford police. The charges stem from an incident on Jan. 20, 2002. A woman was picked up at a Pontiac bar, driven to River Rouge where she...

Local readers on both sides of the political spectrum want to check out "Unfit for Command." Phil Pons of Newport News ordered his copy early, so he was one of the lucky ones. ............Pons pre-ordered his copy through Beck & Stein Books, a locally owned Port Warwick shop that does not ordinarily stock books with an inflammatory political tone. Because Pons ordered early - and perhaps because the shop had requested only one copy - Beck & Stein received his book on its Aug. 15 release date. Local readers who had reserved copies through the larger chain stores had to...

Even as they fretted about Bill Clinton's heart condition, Democrats were looking for a different sort of medical miracle. Could surgeons, during Clinton's bypass procedure, have snipped out a bit of whatever organ or gland made him such a fabulous politician (if flawed human) and transplanted it quickly into John Kerry? And maybe, while the doctors were at it, some of Clinton's superb push-back genes, too? Remember, this is the guy who talked his way out of a sexual scandal and draft controversy, either of which would have sunk almost any other politician. And that was just during the 1992...

When two Russian aircraft exploded in the air simultaneously two weeks ago there was no word about terrorism from President Vladimir Putin. When a suicide bomber blew up near a subway station in the center of Moscow a few days later, the Russian people again waited in vain to hear something from their president. - - - - - - -Snip - - - - - - . After years of pretending that there was no crisis in Chechnya, it is now very hard for the government to admit that the inflamed North Caucasian province isn't becoming a utopia. What...

Report: Makers Taking Orders Gun manufacturers are gearing up for the scheduled expiration next week of a 10-year-old federal ban on assault weapons and are taking orders for semiautomatic rifles and high-capacity ammunition magazines that may soon become legal again, according to a report released yesterday. The report by the Consumer Federation of America, which favors greater regulation of the gun industry, concludes that "assault weapons will be more lethal and less expensive" without the ban and argues that police "may be forced to adopt a more militaristic approach" as greater numbers of firearms flood the market. The report, based...

On Wednesday, September 22 -- and continuing for the next six weeks leading up Election Day November 2 -- Priests for Life will begin airing a historic six-part television program on Mother Angelica's EWTN cable network. These powerful programs will empower you to inform your friends of their moral duty to vote responsibly and to inform them that all human rights are based on the RIGHT TO LIFE -- a right our bishops call "the fundamental civil rights issue of our day." The programs in the six-week series will air every Wednesday at 5:00 AM (EST) and every Friday at...

Senator John Kerry's Congressional Record In spite of his close ties to Ted Kennedy and others, Kerry has not gained a reputation as a key legislative figure in the Senate. Only three pieces of legislation bear his name; two of these involve marine microbiology. According to Americans for Democratic Action, a far-left watchdog group, Kerry has a higher lifetime liberal voting record at 93% than Ted Kennedy with 88%. In 2001, 1999, 1998, 1993, 1992, 1989, 1988, 1987, 1986, and 1985, Kerry voted with Kennedy -- known for being to left of even his own party on every social issue...

WASHINGTON — John Kerry has brought veteran political operative John Sasso into his campaign, the clearest sign yet that the Democratic nominee intends to take off the gloves against President Bush. Few Kerry advisers have the kind of bare-knuckle experience Sasso, who had been serving as general chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has gained from nearly a quarter-century in Boston politics. "He is the Democratic Lee Atwater," Brown University political science professor Darrell West said Tuesday, referring to the late GOP political operative who played a key role in the first President Bush's sharp-toned 1988 race against Michael Dukakis....

MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- BIO-key International, Inc. (BULLETIN BOARD: BKYI) , a leader in finger-based biometric identification and wireless public safety solutions, today announced that the Pegasus Program, a nationwide information sharing system designed by and for the Nation's Sheriffs, has implemented the first phase of BIO-key's state-of-the-art WEB-key fingerprint authentication system. The Pegasus Program is deploying approximately 1,100 fingerprint access authentication devices for 220 Sheriffs' offices in the first phase of this project. Plans are in place to expand the rollout to over 3,000 Sheriffs' offices nationwide, as well as local law enforcement and first responder agency partners....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Gun control activists, health care advocates and law enforcement groups geared up on Tuesday for a last-ditch effort to prevent a 1994 ban on assault weapons from expiring next week, but even its most ardent backers acknowledge the drive is all but futile. But the influential National Rifle Association gun lobby, meanwhile, said it would "not take anything for granted" as it works to send the ban into oblivion. Ban advocates called on President Bush (news - web sites) to intervene and get Congress to act. But Bush, who in his 2000 campaign promised to sign legislation,...

Gun control activists, health care advocates and law enforcement groups geared up on Tuesday for a last-ditch effort to prevent a 1994 ban on assault weapons from expiring next week, but even its most ardent backers acknowledge the drive is all but futile.

WASHINGTON The Congress's September stampede is on. One purpose is to force votes that will embarrass the political opposition. From the G.O.P. comes the constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage. This Bush-supported grandstand play has no chance of final passage in a two-thirds' vote, and rightly so: the Supreme Court should be asked to decide conflicts among the states before any move is made to pre-empt or overrule its decision. But on another issue, because the court long ago decided that an amendment to prohibit flag-burning was unconstitutional, here comes an amendment to overrule it. House Republicans will pass this,...

Dr. Selig Neubardt, an obstetrician and gynecologist and an author who was a prominent early advocate for birth control and safe abortion, died Aug. 24 in White Plains, N.Y. He was 78 and lived in New Rochelle, N.Y. The cause was pneumonia, said a son, Dr. Seth Neubardt, a spinal surgeon at White Plains Hospital Center, where his father died. Neubardt had a private gynecological practice in New Rochelle for four decades, but he developed a larger profile through his books, articles and television appearances. His first book, "A Concept of Contraception" (1967), was aimed at a general audience and...

http://www.illinoisleader.com STANEK: Biohazard bags and buckets Tuesday, September 07, 2004 By Jill Stanek (Jill@illinoisleader.com) OPINION -- Three weeks ago I wrote about specific instances of babies being aborted alive in hospitals around the country and allowed to die with no medical intervention. That column prompted additional nurses to contact me about live birth abortions they have witnessed in their hospitals. I also had an incredible telephone conversation with an abortion clinic nurse who saw them as well. Although it was only first acknowledged publicly in 1999, the practice of live birth abortion is now known to be widespread. The...

Kerry's Quagmire (Source: The Federalist Patriot) "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams There is a chronic state of superciliousness manifest in some members of Congress who are perennially re-elected by their loyal lemmings -- an unmitigated arrogance called "Potomac Mentation Syndrome" (PMS). Its primary symptom is the angry projection of invincibility by its victim, and John Kerry, who's been occupying a seat in the Senate for the last two decades, appears to have a terminal case. Kerry,...

Police looking for man wanted on Canada-wide immigration warrant TORONTO -- Police are looking for a man from Bangladesh, wanted on a Canada-wide immigration warrant, who is suffering from highly contagious tuberculosis. Police say Jaman Uzzol, 25, was in the custody of Canada Immigration officers at the William Osler Health Centre when he escaped Sunday. Uzzol suffers from tuberculosis and is thought to be contagious. Anyone coming in contact with him should take precautions to guard against contracting the highly contagious disease. He is described as 5-foot-10, with brown skin, thin build, short black hair and dark eyes. He has...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Gun control activists, health care advocates and law enforcement groups geared up on Tuesday for a last-ditch effort to prevent a 1994 ban on assault weapons from expiring next week, but even its most ardent backers acknowledge the drive is all but futile. But the influential National Rifle Association gun lobby, meanwhile, said it would "not take anything for granted" as it works to send the ban into oblivion. Ban advocates called on President Bush (news - web sites) to intervene and get Congress to act. But Bush, who in his 2000 campaign promised to sign legislation,...