News bits & clips
Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein turned the court into his own stage after the trial was resumed on Tuesday in the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad.
Saddam Hussein’s trial was delayed Wednesday after the ousted president refused to attend the session, court officials said. Defense lawyers huddled with the judges in hopes of resolving the latest test of wills in the often-unruly trial.
An angry Saddam threatened at the end of the Tuesday court session to boycott the next day’s proceedings after complaining that he and the seven other co-defendants had been mistreated by the “unjust court.”
Saddam told the judge overseeing his trial in Iraq to "go to hell"
Standing up and waving his finger back and forth, Saddam has repeatedly said that he is still the president of Iraq, reminding Iraqis of decades of rule.
"Saddam was acting as if he was in power and still a president and the judge was too weak to stop him," said Raed Abdul Kareem, 38, a printing house worker in Baghdad.
The question on people's minds in Iraq's largest Kurdish city as they watch Saddam Hussein's trial on television is not whether he should be executed, but how and when.
Some argue that the ousted leader should be convicted and put to death immediately after the trial, which is being broadcast live on Kurdish television.
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"We are in Iraq not just to defeat the terrorists — not even mostly to defeat the terrorists. We are there to provide the security for self-government by the Iraqis — the creation of a modern, open, thriving state in this historic center of the Arab and Islamic worlds. If we accept defeat in Iraq, we will have lost the opportunity to create a larger victory in the so-called war "for the hearts and minds" in the Islamic world.
"As I see it, the war, which arguably began as a "war of choice," has become a "war of necessity" we can't afford to lose.
-Sen. Lieberman's - yesterday at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment's forum on "Next Steps for Successful Strategy in Iraq."
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"Once Iran gets its uranium enrichment plant at Natanz up and running, it will likely be months away from having a nuclear weapon." - International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei this week in an interview with The Independent newspaper of London. The IAEA's estimate is potentially within the tenure of a Bush Administration that has staked its legacy on preventing WMD proliferation
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OReilly Watch: A former Florida professor,Sami Al-Arian, was acquitted on a key charge today that he helped lead a Palestinian terrorist group that has carried out suicide bombings against Israel. In one of the biggest courtroom tests yet of the Patriot Act's expanded search and surveillance powers, the jury acquitted Sami Al-Arian on eight of the 17 counts against him. The jury deadlocked on the others.
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The Supreme Court appeared ready Tuesday to rule that Congress can withhold money from colleges that protest the Pentagon's ban on gay men and lesbians by denying military recruiters access to campuses.
Most of the nine justices seemed skeptical of claims by a group of 30 law schools that said their First Amendment rights to speak out against discrimination are violated by a law that could allow the U.S. government to withhold billions of dollars from colleges that inhibit military recruiters. Chief Justice John Roberts, echoing a theme among the justices, said the government's bottom line is this: "If you want our money, you have to let our recruiters in."
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New York Stock Exchange members overwhelmingly approved a landmark deal to acquire electronic-trading operator Archipelago Holdings Inc. and become a for-profit company.
The decision sends the exchange into a new era in its 213-year history, clearing the way for it to become a public company -- and all that that entails, including shareholders from around the world who will expect NYSE Group Inc., as it will be known, to cut costs and compete with rival markets that also are publicly traded. These publicly listed markets include Nasdaq Stock Market Inc., the International Securities Exchange Inc. and Europe's Deutsche Börse AG and Euronext NV.
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Al-Qaida’s second-ranking figure called on Iraqi insurgent groups to unite and claimed President Bush is deceiving the American people about successes against Islamic militancy, according to a videotape broadcast Wednesday.
“The lies that Bush is trying to use to deceive the American that he has wiped out half of al-Qaida or three quarters of al-Qaida are lies that only exist in his head,” al-Zawahri said. “We tell all the Muslims and mujahedeen that al-Qaida, God willing, is spreading and increasing and becoming more powerful.”
He added: “Its prince Sheikh Osama bin Laden, may God protect him, is still leading its jihad (holy war).”
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Most Americans and a majority of people in Britain, France and South Korea say torturing terrorism suspects is justified at least in rare instances, according to AP-Ipsos polling.
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This Christmas, no prayers will be said in several megachurches around the country.
Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anticipating low attendance on what they call a family day.
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BOGALUSA, La. - A mother was booked on a charge of first-degree murder for allegedly placing her 3-month-old son in a clothes dryer and turning it on.
The infant had third-degree burns over 50 percent of his body and suffered blunt force trauma to the head, the St. Tammany Parish coroner said.
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Legendary Hawaiian crooner Don Ho was recovering Tuesday at a hospital in Thailand after undergoing an experimental stem cell procedure on his ailing heart.
Ho, 75, known for his signature tune “Tiny Bubbles,” underwent a new treatment that has not been approved in the United States. It involves multiplying stem cells taken from his blood and injecting them into his heart in hopes of strengthening the organ, according to Ed Brown, a close friend.
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Bitterly cold arctic air continued to funnel into the Rocky Mountains and Midwest on Tuesday, sending temperatures plummeting below zero throughout much of the region. A storm front creeping south since the weekend has driven down temperatures from Montana to the Midwest.
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$1,845,034,000 worldwide and $600,788,188 are the all-time boxoffice records for a single movie, TITANIC, first released on December 19, 1997.
Now roars along another December blockbuster, KING KONG, a film many top Hollywood executives predict will break the record!
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Pam Wimbish is a celebrity of sorts. A couple of years ago, the speaker of the House featured her at a press conference. She even scored an invite to the White House on her birthday. Ms. Wimbish purchased her way to fame, quite literally. She was the first person in America to buy a new type of health insurance -- the health savings account (HSA). The second anniversary of the legislation that created the HSA, the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, is tomorrow.
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Most of the estimated 6.3 million Mexicans who are in the USA illegally came because of family connections and better job opportunities here, not because they were unemployed or destitute in their homeland, according to a survey released Tuesday.
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NBC Universal on Tuesday became the second big broadcaster to agree to sell shows to users of Apple's new video iPod.
ABC in October ignited the trend with reruns of hits such as Desperate Housewives and Lost. Now NBC Universal is offering 300 episodes from new shows such as Law & Order and The Office, classics Dragnet and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and segments from Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien's late-night shows.