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<p>ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — U.S. officials are searching the Internet for the reappearance of a Web site that they believe has been used by al-Qaeda to deliver messages, including possible instructions for its next attacks, to its operatives around the world.</p>

<p>China's military provided training for Afghanistan's Taliban militia and its al Qaeda supporters, according to a U.S. intelligence report.</p> <p>The intelligence was obtained from anti-Taliban Afghan sources. It was surprising to U.S. analysts because China is a target of Islamic separatists, who are known to have been trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan.</p>

As the protesters marched Thursday, Chávez made a surprise visit to the shantytown of Las Malvinas, in south-eastern Caracas, warning supporters to be aware of another coup attempt. ''At any moment they can try to lash out at us like on April 11,'' he said according to The Associated Press. CARACAS - Like a Wild West showdown, six opponents of President Hugo Chávez on Thursday met one of his military guards in the middle of a street blocked off by police, with cheering pro and anti-Chávez crowds at each corner, to deliver a statement demanding the leftist president resign....

JERUSALEM Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat condemned the latest suicide attack in the newspapers yesterday but canceled a television appearance to call for an end to the so-called martyr missions. Arafat gave no explanation for his apparent reluctance to repeat the message of condemnation to the Palestinian people on the small screen."Perhaps he canceled it because the Israeli tanks are moving in and the Israeli government decided to call up the army reserves," Palestinian Labor Minister Ghassan Khatib said.In interviews with reporters, Arafat forcefully condemned the back-to-back suicide bomb attacks in Jerusalem this week that killed 26 Israelis."I personally, and...

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Fidel Castro's government said on Thursday it will adopt amendments enshrining its communist system in the national constitution to counter threats from President Bush. Rejecting U.S. demands that the island open up to democracy and a market economy, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon said Bush -- backed by anti-Castro exiles in Florida -- wanted to destroy Cuba's revolution and reverse half a century of social gains. "We will affirm that the political, economic and social bases of our constitution are unchangeable," Alarcon said at a rally in Havana's Revolution Square where he received 23 truck-loads...

Former President Bill Clinton said yesterday he's "certainly not surprised" prosecutors ended the probe of one of his most controversial pardons without filing charges. The case involved clemency Clinton gave four swindlers from the Hasidic enclave of New Square in Rockland county 10 weeks after the town voted 1,400-to-12 for his wife, Hillary Clinton, in the 2000 Senate race. Confirming a report in yesterday's Daily News, Manhattan U.S. Attorney James Comey said his office "thoroughly investigated and determined it wasn't appropriate to bring charges against anybody in the case." Touring a charter school on W. 170th St. in the...

President George Bush continues to act as if he were a ventriloquist's dummy sitting on the lap of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Sharon says he doesn't like Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Bush says, I don't like Arafat. Sharon says he won't talk peace. Bush says, It's not time to talk peace. And so on and so forth. Most Americans don't give a hoot about the Middle East one way or the other, just as they don't give a hoot about Asia, Africa or Latin America. Americans should understand, however, that as long as the U.S. government assists the Israelis...

<p>No reasonable person believes that the Bush administration should shut Congress out of the War on Terror. But Congress, to evoke an earlier conflict, needs to remember that "Loose Lips Sink Ships."</p> <p>Yesterday, the Washington Post - quoting anonymous sources - revealed that the National Security Agency intercepted messages on Sept. 10 that included the phrases "Tomorrow is zero hour" and "The match begins tomorrow."</p>

<p>In December 1995, a storm hit the Six Rivers National Forest in northern California, tossing dead trees across 35,000 acres and creating dangerous fire conditions. For three years local U.S. Forest Service officials labored to clean it up, but they were blocked by environmental groups and federal policy. In 1999 the time bomb blew: A fire roared over the untreated land and 90,000 more acres.</p>

<p>President Bush was scheduled to deliver a major speech yesterday outlining his vision for the Middle East, including support for some "interim" Palestinian state.</p> <p>He didn't.</p> <p>And good thing, too.</p> <p>"It's obvious [this] is not the right time," his spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said Wednesday. "It's hard to get people to focus on peace today when they're still suffering from the consequences of terrorism as we speak."</p>

<p>Eight others - possibly including other children of the mother - were wounded.</p> <p>The bloody raid - responsibility was claimed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - was the third major terrorist attack in three days, and brought the Israeli death toll to 29.</p>

WASHINGTON -- In the first flash of partisan dissent to President Bush's homeland-security plan, Democrats on Thursday assailed a provision that could allow leaders of the proposed new Cabinet agency to bypass federal personnel rules that protect civil servants. The Democratic criticism emerged as Tom Ridge, Bush's point man on homeland security, appeared before House and Senate committees to give his first formal testimony to Congress since he came to Washington last fall to help improve domestic defenses against terrorism. Ridge, a former congressman and governor of Pennsylvania, received a warm reception. So did most of the administration's plan to...

<p>June 21, 2002 -- ON THE night that "Saratoga" Marty was given a racehorse as a gift, Martha "Moneybags" Stewart made a horse's you-know-what of herself.</p> <p>The recipient of the horse was former Post publisher Marty Singerman.</p> <p>It was a retirement gift to a very dear gentleman who has had more farewells than the Carnival Cruise liners.</p>

<p>Six Minneapolis police officers were cleared by a Hennepin County grand jury Thursday of criminal wrongdoing in connection with the fatal shooting of a machete-wielding Somali man.</p> <p>Details of the investigation indicated that Abu K. Jeilani spoke English, though friends and relatives had questioned whether he understood police commands to drop his weapons during a confrontation in south Minneapolis on March 10.</p>

<p>June 21, 2002 -- PRESIDENT Bush has asked for $27 billion in emergency funding for the war on terrorism - but now is threatening to veto the bill Congress is preparing to answer that urgent need.</p> <p>Why? Because the Senate has larded the war-spending measure with an amount of pork that's extreme even by the standards of official Washington. It's also cut out part of the meat.</p>

<p>June 21, 2002 -- HOUSTON - Exactly one year after Andrea Yates shocked the world by drowning her five children in a bathtub, her husband said yesterday he still loves her and believes mental illness led her to do "the unthinkable."</p>

England crash out of World Cup SHIZUOKA, Japan (Reuters) - England are out of the World Cup after losing 2-1 to Brazil in their quarter final match. Brazil played most of the second half with just ten men after Ronaldinho was sent off in the 57th minute for a high tackle on England defender Danny Mills. Here are the running highlights of the game: 4 - England striker Emile Heskey gets on the end of a David Beckham free kick but heads the ball straight at Brazil keeper Marcos. 14 - Brazil wing back Roberto Carlos fires in a...

Fresno Support Our Troops Rally Corner of Blackstone and Shaw 5:00 p.m. 7:00 p.m. Tonight Join us if you can! Thanks, Jim Robinson On behalf of the Fresno/Central Valley Chapter

<p>NABLUS, West Bank (CNN) -- A Palestinian gunman killed five Israelis, including a mother and her three children, at a Jewish settlement near Nablus late Thursday, Israeli military sources said. Continues.</p> <p>To hear CNN tell it, Yasser Arafat is a man of peace. A pacifist. In no way is he a terrorist. His motives are purely benevolent, bighearted, unselfish, benign. And well-intentioned. His struggle is humanitarian: The establishment of a "Palestinian" homeland. Winner of the Nobel Peace prize, the 'mild-mannered' Arafat believes fervently in peaceful co-existence with Israel, side-by-side -- the 'two-state' "solution".</p>

Okay, this isn't really a story...yet. It's more of a head's up for what's coming up. At my current workplace, for the moment, I am performing a tedious task, and I listen to the radio to keep me awake. Unfortunately, there are only a few radio stations that come through loud and clear through the steel office walls - none of them are the AM talk stations I prefer. I constantly am flipping up and down the dial on my Walkman. One of the stations that come in clearly is KMEL, one of the two hip-hop stations in the Bay...