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Rep. Keith Westmoreland Commits Suicide 06-19-2002 -- Kingsport REPORTS OUT OF KINGSPORT SAY THAT REP. KEITH WESTMORELAND HAS COMMITTED SUICIDE. IT APPARENTLY HAPPENED AT HIS HOME IN KINGSPORT. AS REPORTED EARLIER ON FOX 17 NEWS, THE KINGSPORT REPUBLICAN WAS CHARGED WITH FIVE COUNTS OF EXPOSING HIMSELF TO CHILDREN AT A HOTEL SWIMMING POOL. METRO POLICE SAY IT'S NOT THE FIRST TIME WESTMORELAND HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF INDECENT EXPOSURE. ON MARCH 13TH A MANAGER AT THE DAYS INN ACROSS FROM WESTMORELAND'S DOWNTOWN APARTMENT CALLED POLICE TO REPORT A MAN EXPOSING HIMSELF. A FURTHER SEARCH OF RECORDS BY THE DEPARTMENT'S SEX CRIMES...

Lawmaker Sees Export Tax Bill Action Soon Wed Jun 19,10:18 PM ET By Doug Palmer WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a bid to prevent the European Union ( news - web sites) from slapping sanctions on billions of dollars of exported American goods, a key lawmaker said on Wednesday he expected action by early August on bill to revamp tax breaks for U.S. exporters. The United States is under pressure to change the provisions because of a series of World Trade Organization ( news - web sites) rulings that the tax breaks amount to an illegal subsidy under trade rules. The...

Behind the suicide bombers By Suzanne Goldenberg June 20 2002 They are manufactured out of fertiliser, sugar, nails and bolts in bedroom laboratories in the refugee camps and towns of the West Bank, are highly unstable and cost almost nothing to make. But Israeli security officials call them smart bombs because they have a human guidance system - the suicide bomber - and an even more powerful intelligence directing the mission from a distance. "This is the most accurate missile. The bomber can pick exactly where to stand in a restaurant before he blows himself up," says Major-General Eival Gilady, the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and British warplanes were targeted by anti-aircraft guns in a northern "no-fly" zone of Iraq on Wednesday and struck air defense targets in response, the U.S. military said. Iraq said the planes attacked civilian targets in the north and wounded one civilian. A statement released by the U.S. European Command in Germany said all of the aircraft left the area safely after using precision-guided bombs in the latest of a long series of tit-for-tat exchanges since the 1991 Gulf War. The command said Iraqi anti-aircraft guns in the vicinity of Saddam Dam fired at warplanes policing...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush ( news - web sites) on Monday again deferred for six months the moving of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem but said he was still committed to making the transfer sometime in the future. The U.S. Congress passed a bill in 1995 aimed at moving the embassy to Jerusalem, which would anger Palestinians and other Arabs who would view it as recognition of Israel's annexation of the Arab sector, but it left an escape clause allowing the president to postpone the move for national security reasons. Former President Bill Clinton...

Does it count? NewsAndOpinion.com | If someone does something wonderful, but didn't intend to, does it count? Should we see ourselves as blessed? You say, "Williams, what are you talking about

From AP article, below: "Committee chairman Bishop Frank Cummings [far right of photo, seated], who heads the African Methodist Episcopal churches in Florida, said he was at first skeptical about the plan, but has since realized it has the possibility of working. Cummings was not a political supporter of Jeb Bush when the governor was elected in 1998." Independent commission: Gov. Bush's One Florida plan working Tuesday, June 18, 2002 By VICKIE CHACHERE, Associated Press TAMPA - A two-year study of Gov. Jeb Bush's One Florida plan for minority college enrollment and state contracting shows the plan is working,...

Senate leaders reached a short-term understanding this week on moving the confirmations of more than a dozen judges and a Democratic nominee to the Federal Communications Commission.But Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.) said the final seal of approval on the deal was not likely to come until later this week, when he plans to speak with White House officials regarding the procedures the chamber will adopt to handle the contentious nominations."We had a good conversation with Senator Lott yesterday," Daschle said Wednesday, referring to Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), "but we want to have a conversation with the White...

ASHINGTON, June 19 — Federal election regulators rejected an effort today to water down a provision of the new campaign-finance legislation intended to eliminate those "issue ads" that are often thinly veiled attacks on federal candidates paid for by unrestricted donations from corporations, unions and other advocacy groups.Backers of the McCain-Feingold law, which is intended to overhaul the financing of political campaigns, hailed the decision by the Federal Election Commission as a victory that preserved one of the measure's core provisions. But these advocates say other commission rulings today were likely to seriously weaken the law's broader purpose of...

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago agreed to pay a priest dogged by allegations of sexually abusing boys a $200,000-plus settlement as he left the church, according to court records and interviews. The contract came to light during a search last week of the Chicago condominium of former priest Vincent McCaffrey as investigators looked for child pornography in his home. They found thousands of images of kiddie porn, and McCaffrey, 49, was ordered held without bond on Monday, authorities said. A spokeswoman for the archdiocese said it had "no knowledge" of the document prosecutors referred to in court papers, but...

<p>NEW YORK — Millions worshipped Fox's American Idol Tuesday night, giving the reality show a promising start.</p> <p>About 9.9 million viewers tuned in to the two-hour debut, which made it the most-watched show of the night.</p> <p>At its peak, from 9:30 p.m. to 10 p.m., Idols drew about 11 million viewers. The show did so well, Fox officials changed the rules yesterday to give the three judges — '80s pop-icon Paula Abdul, Grammy winner Randy Jackson and British record producer Simon (nicknamed ‘Mr. Nasty') Cowell — even more pull.</p>

he nation's biggest tobacco companies suffered their first defeat in a secondhand smoke case this week, and they said yesterday that they would use the setback to challenge a critical ruling governing the $349 million settlement they struck with the nation's flight attendants nearly five years ago.On Tuesday, a Miami jury awarded $5.5 million in compensatory damages to Lynn French, 56, a flight attendant who does not smoke but has chronic sinus problems from spending more than a dozen years in smoky airplane cabins.She is one of 2,800 flight attendants with similar cases against the tobacco industry under unusual...

President Bush began his day by announcing $500 million in aid to Africa to promote new mother and child HIV prevention. Later, at the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America 2002 Legislative Conference, the President urged congress to act quickly on terrorism insurance. Later in the afternoon, Bush spoke at the White House Conference on Character and Community and stressed the importance of education accountability in American schools. This evening, the White House was evacuated after a small plane failed to communicate with controllers. According to a senior administration official, President Bush, who had just returned from the...

ASHINGTON, June 19 — The National Security Agency intercepted two cryptic communications on the day before the Sept. 11 attacks that referred to a major event scheduled for the next day, but analysts at the secret eavesdropping agency did not read the messages until Sept. 12, American intelligence officials said today. One of the conversations intercepted by the agency on Sept. 10 said that "the big match" is scheduled for tomorrow, referring to Sept. 11. A second message called the next day "zero hour." Agency analysts did not process, translate and review the intercepted Arabic communications until the day...

TAMPA, Fla., June 19 — The operators of a Florida Web site that served as an international advertising hub for prostitutes have been arrested following a two-year investigation, police said Wednesday. THE TAMPA-BASED Web site, Bigdoggie.net, carried advertisements from prostitutes in the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and South Africa that enabled then to arrange dates with customers, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. About 50,000 people worldwide paid $129.95 per year to join the Web site, which gave them access to the list of “escorts,” some of whom offered discounts for members, as well as...

<p>Washington -- Raising unprecedented questions about the role of media war correspondents, attorneys for John Walker Lindh asked a judge Tuesday to bar as evidence from his trial an incriminating, widely seen interview Lindh gave to CNN in December.</p> <p>The San Francisco-based attorneys for the 21-year-old Marin County man charged with terrorism argued that the interview with CNN contributor Robert Pelton was coerced out of a frightened, wounded and dazed Lindh.</p>

A decade ago, police used to find painstakingly clipped pictures of children in underwear ads pasted into homemade scrapbooks by men trying to satisfy their perverse sexual interests. Now child molesters post photos online that show their underage victims in the act, feeding collectors who swap thousands of illegal images over the Internet. The World Wide Web has sparked an explosion of child pornography, giving quick and easy access to volumes of hard-core images. "Now with a touch of a button, you can access thousands of pictures," said Leigh Ann Retelsdorf, who prosecutes sex crimes for Douglas County. "I'm sure...

Gov. Jeb Bush Bush, Cabinet Call For End to Dredging Project [Jeb saves FL taxpayers $20 million per year] By: Times Staff Writer The St. Petersburg Times June 13, 2002 For years, environmentalists have complained that Florida's mightiest river -- the Apalachicola -- is being ruined by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The corps dredges the river to let a dwindling fleet of barges travel north to Georgia and Alabama. On Wednesday, Gov. Jeb Bush and the Florida Cabinet joined the critics, passing a resolution that asks Congress to pull the plug on the controversial dredging project. "It's incredibly...

"It is never a wrong time to talk about hate. It's just not. That's all our show is about. It is not in any way about the homosexual lifestyle. It's not even introducing the subject to most kids." - Linda Ellerbee, producer of "My Family is Different" Nickelodeon advertises itself as a network that parents can trust, but this effort to promote homosexuality shows that parents should think twice before allowing their children to watch this cable channel." - Andrea Lafferty, Traditional Values Coalition

  Grand Jury Indicts Wildfire SuspectThe Associated Press D E N V E R, June 19 — A federal grand jury charged a veteran U.S. Forest Service worker Wednesday with intentionally setting the largest wildfire in Colorado history, saying she maliciously sent flames licking through bone-dry timber southwest of Denver. The charges came after prosecutors expressed doubt about Terry Barton's story that the fire got out of hand when she tried to burn a letter from her estranged husband. Investigators now contend the fire was staged to look like an escaped campfire. Barton, 38, was charged with setting fire to...