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> Percent DEM Democratic Biden, Joseph R. 1,773,404 46.16%   REP Republican Trump, Donald J. 2,010,030 52.31%   LIB Libertarian Jorgensen, Jo 42,809 1.11%   UST US Taxpayers Blankenship, Don 4,978 0.13%   GRN Green Hawkins, Howie 9,070 0.24%   NLP Natural Law De La Fuente, Rocky 1,965 0.05%   Total Votes: 3,842,256

It's a long-agonized-over machine recount total delivered two minutes too late. But there's nothing ironic about it -- this is, after all, Florida's Broward County, which has been plagued with issues in its vote-counting efforts for years. Given that history, it was unsurprising -- but still galling to volunteers -- when the director of elections here revealed that the county had submitted its machine recount data two minutes after the state-mandated 3 p.m. Thursday deadline. The secretary of state's office did not accept the new numbers and so, after days of painstaking work, Broward's count Thursday remained the same as...

URGENT: Five people described as anarchists were arrested Monday in a Cleveland-area park for allegedly trying to blow up a bridge, sources tell Fox News.

An off-duty Chicago police officer dressed up as a clown for a South Side fundraiser shot and killed a teen who held him at gunpoint tonight after the event, authorities said, citing preliminary information. The officer, who is assigned to the Near North police district, was in his clown outfit for a fundraiser for a day-care business, attended by about 50 children near West 87th Street and South Damen Avenue.

Around the world, government-run health care is failing patients. Long waiting times, rationing or denying life-saving treatments and lower-quality care are common in government systems like Great Britain and Canada. Maybe that’s why major government systems are looking to the United States for innovations that make health care work better for everyone. Some policymakers in Congress want a public plan to “compete” with private health insurers. Everyone agrees that we can improve our health care system, but why would anyone expect government-run health care to work for patients in the United States when it doesn’t work for other countries? Click...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress sent President Bush legislation Friday to intensify anti-terror efforts in the U.S., shifting money to high-risk states and cities and expanding screening of air and sea cargo to stave off future Sept. 11-style attacks. The measure carries out major recommendations of the independent 9/11 Commission. The bill, passed by the House on a 371-40 vote, ranks among the top accomplishments of the six-month-old Democratic Congress. The Senate approved the measure late Thursday by 85-8, and the White House said the president would sign the bill. Six years after the Sept. 11 attacks and three years after...

SAN DIEGO – A man being pursued after he illegally crossed into the United States from Mexico was run over by a freight train late Thursday morning as he tried to escape a Customs agent near the San Ysidro crossing, federal authorities reported. The man lost several fingertips on his right hand and had his left foot severed. He was taken to a San Diego hospital. There was no word on his condition. The incident took place in an area known to Border Patrol agents as “the loading docks,” a spot just east of the San Ysidro port of entry...

EL ARISH, Egypt - Egyptian police captured six Sudanese, including a one-year-old boy, who were trying to cross into Israel early Friday to seek asylum, a security official said. The six were arrested at dawn as they tried to get over the coil of barbed wire that marks the border in Egypt's northeast Sinai desert, said Brig. Gen. Adel Fawzi, the chief of the North Sinai criminal investigation department.

Can millions of listeners just disappear? That's a question plaguing Howard Stern and one with vital implications for radio itself in the wake of the shock jock's heralded and hyped switch from free to satellite broadcasting. The self-proclaimed King of All Media once commanded a national audience of 12 million daily listeners before jumping to satellite in January. But since then, his kingdom has shrunk to a small fraction of that size. Meanwhile, the shock jock's main replacements thus far have failed to hold very much of the former flock.

Rumsfeld: We're trying to figure out what to do if Iraq falls into civil war By James Langton in Washington (Filed: 19/03/2006) America has begun making plans to deal with a civil war in Iraq, three years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. As sectarian violence continues to claim lives every day, Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, has disclosed that United States military intelligence is holding war games to predict what might happen in such a situation. Donald Rumsfeld: War games Mr Rumsfeld's admission that "the intelligence community are thinking about this and analysing it" comes despite the...

Clothes also make the woman trying to look smart amid disaster Leonard Pitts Jr. / Syndicated columnist New Orleans cultural ambassador, Irvin Mayfield, plays a tribute to first responders as Mayor Ray Nagin, left, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, second from left, Lt. Gov Mitch Landrieu, and Gov. Kathleen Blanco, center, listen during an Interfaith Celebration in front of the Superdome in New Orleans, La., Sunday Jan. 1, 2006. The event was sponsored by Louisiana Rebirth celebrating the strength of those dedicated to the rebirth of Louisiana. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) Apparently, Brownie wasn't the only one. You remember the grief that...

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) - A man who tried to sell fighter jet parts to China and falsely certified the quality of other aircraft parts was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison by a judge who called him "a menace to worldwide air safety." Amanullah Khan was sentenced Monday to 15 years and eight months by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who also ordered him to pay $5.4 million in restitution. The sentence came two years after Khan, 56, interrupted his jury trial to plead guilty to 12 felony counts of conspiracy and aircraft parts fraud. Authorities...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - As Israeli police on Tuesday confronted supporters of Jewish settlers protesting the planned Gaza Strip withdrawal, Palestinians were fighting among themselves. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is trying to contain increasingly defiant Islamic militants, with gunmen from his Fatah party confronting armed Hamas fighters. The result: offices torched by arsonists, wrecked cars and casualties on both sides. Fatah has unofficially asked its affiliated militant group, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, to help fight Hamas as Abbas seeks to ensure a smooth Israeli pullout from Gaza settlements, Fatah and Al Aqsa members said. Israel and the...

Let the honeymoon begin. With Antonio Villaraigosa officially ensconced as mayor, many of his supporters are viewing his first year as a test as much of the city as of him. "The biggest enemy out there for Antonio Villaraigosa is Antonio Villaraigosa," one supporter said at the $500-a-person Music Center gala that preceded Friday's inauguration. The fear, voiced by many, is that Villaraigosa - and his staff - will begin to believe all the hype about his political potential. Most immediately is the prospect of him entering the governor's race next year. As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's poll numbers drop and...

Reggie trying to get officer impersonation charge tossed By The Associated Press TGRETNA -- A Democratic Party operative who is the brother-in-law of U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy has asked a state judge to throw out a charge accusing him of impersonating a police officer in suburban New Orleans in June 2002. Raymond Reggie's attorney, Mike Ellis, contends in court documents that the two-year time limit to bring the case to trial expired June 21. But prosecutor Kim McElwee said she has until October to try the case. At issue is what court events stop the clock on Reggie's right to...

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!

PHILADELPHIA - A smiling, energetic former President Clinton (news - web sites) campaigned for Democratic Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites) on Monday just seven weeks after undergoing heart surgery, telling a crowd of thousands that President Bush (news - web sites) and Republicans are trying to "scare the undecided voters" away from the Democratic nominee. "If this isn't good for my heart, I don't know what is," Clinton said of the enthusiastic response from the lunchtime crowd. Democratic strategists hoped Clinton's appearance in the final days of the campaign would provide a jolt of excitement that would help...

California Highway Patrol Commissioner D.O. "Spike" Helmick, who has criticized fellow officers who too liberally used past injuries to beef up their retirement benefits, is seeking that type of lucrative pension himself. On Friday, neither Helmick nor the state retirement system would describe the injuries involved. But in workers' compensation cases Helmick filed during the past three years, the 59-year-old commissioner said he injured his back falling off his office chair and hurt his knee riding a stationary bike. The cases also cited the cumulative effects of traffic accidents and scuffles. The commissioner is seeking an industrial disability retirement after...

City trying to turn table on police Eyeing pickets, contributions in PR offensive By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff July 17, 2004 City officials, scrambling to salvage the Democratic convention's opening festivities, launched a public relations offensive against Boston's police union yesterday in its intensifying battle over a new police contract. At a hastily arranged press conference called by Boston's convention organizers, small business owners said the police union is putting its own concerns before the needs of struggling small firms, including those owned by minorities. They said their businesses would lose an opportunity to prosper if the union goes ahead...

A security officer in the Israeli Embassy in Beijing caught a group of Chinese technicians last month attempting to plant electronic eavesdropping devices in the embassy's telephone lines. The officer spotted the technicians near a telephone switch box on the street near the embassy, according to the Ma'ariv newspaper. The Chinese told the Israeli guard that they were from the Chinese Foreign Ministry information security department. The officer then asked the technicians to undo the work and leave. The Chinese are known to conduct aggressive electronic eavesdropping operations on all foreign facilities in China. This was not the first time...