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PHILADELPHIA -- A 25-year-old North Philadelphia man has been charged with killing his young daughter. The mother said 17-month-old Alayiah was violently punched by Tyrone Spellman over a video game. "My baby is gone at the hands of her father," Mia Turman said tearfully. "I have to put her in the ground, I shouldn't have to do this." As the 21-year-old took a nap inside their row-home on the 1500 block of 29th Street, Turman left Alayiah in the care of Spellman, who also goes by the name Anwar Salahuddin. Turman said that when she woke, "I asked why my...

Breaking News >> Authorities capture Ralph 'Buck' Phillips, who was being sought in connection with the death of a New York state trooper and the wounding of two others, sources tell CNN.

President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia has been given the green light to run for a second term in office in 2006 after legislators overturned a constitutional ban on immediate re-election. The majority vote in favour of permitting an immediate second term in the presidency, cast late on Tuesday, is an important boost for the hardline but popular Mr Uribe, who is more than halfway through his four-year mandate. Mr Uribe has energised the authorities' war on leftwing guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) in an attempt either to defeat them militarily or to force them to the...

FALLUJAH, Iraq — The Marlboro man was angry: He has a war to fight, and he's running out of smokes. "If you want to write something," he tells an intruding reporter, "tell Marlboro I'm down to four packs, and I'm here in Fallujah till who knows when. Maybe they can send some. And they can bring down the price a bit." Those are the unfettered sentiments of Marine Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller, 20, a country boy from Kentucky who has been thrust unwittingly and somewhat unwillingly into the role of poster boy for a war on the other side...

American led forces today said they had trapped insurgents in southern Falluja, on the fifth day of their assault on the rebel-held city. The US also confirmed it had launched air strikes on the northern city of Mosul, where militants have defied a curfew for the past three days, setting fire to at least seven police stations and government buildings. Masked gunmen have been roaming the streets with Kalashnikovs taken from the police. "We have targeted known concentrations of terrorists in specific areas of the city," said Captain Angela Bowman, an army spokeswoman. "We have used all assets available to...

Could the Guardian and its Operation Clark County be responsible for a second Bush term? That was one topics round the water cooler today, and it seems we're not the first to think of it. Just dipping into the Guardian's blog, someone has written in: "Just wanted to thank the Guardian for helping deliver Ohio to Bush. Cheers!" For those of you who aren't familiar with Operation Clark County, it was a project launched by the left-leaning Guardian newspaper in the UK. The well-meaning but not well received project attempted to link political pen pals in Britain with residents of...

The BBC's team of correspondents log their reports and personal impressions as Americans cast their vote in the country's presidential and congressional elections. Come back for the latest - most recent entries are at the top. -SNIP- Adam Brookes :: Crawford, Texas :: 1525GMT President Bush looked very, very calm, very relaxed when he appeared here to cast his vote. He didn't look like a man who yesterday had visited six states in 19 hours. He enjoys the campaign, I think he's a different man when he's away from Washington and on the campaign trail. -SNIP- Daniel Griffiths :: Washington...

Washington D.C.'s Secret Service is investigating Charlie Brooker of the UK Guardian. The entertainment writer's weekend, anti-Bush tantrum, ending with the words, "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr.--where are you now that we need you," was picked up by the Drudge Report,--using Brooker's provocative last words as the main headline. Citing federal statute 18 USC 879, Florida attorney John B. Thompson, called in the Secret Service Protective Intelligence Unit. "Please do whatever is necessary to punish the UK Guardian and to educate Matt Drudge on the meaning and scope of statute 18," Thompson wrote in a letter...

Following closely on the heels of its disastrous attempt to meddle in the US elections through a letter writing campaign, the Guardian has published a column that appears to plead for an assassin to come forward and kill President George W Bush. It could represent a new low in mainstream media commentary. The columnist, Charlie Brooker, apparently reviews television programmes for the Guardian. In his October 3 column, Dumb Show, Mr Brooker reviews the debates between Mr Kerry and Mr Bush and finds both candidates lacking -- but reserves a particularly venomous evaluation for Mr Bush. He writes: Throughout the...

THIS year's presidential election in the United States has special significance for East Asia. A Pacific Ocean diminished in size by technology has linked East Asia's economic future with America's. Any slowdown in the US spells problems for Asia. Although intra-East Asian trade has grown by double digits yearly since the 1990s, the end destination for about 25 per cent of the region's manufactured products is still the US. Asia needs a US administration that supports free trade and is able to restrain domestic pressures to protect American jobs by restricting outsourcing.AMERICA'S FRIENDS TARGETED OF EVEN greater concern to...

WKYT and WYMT Response to Recent CBS Reporting. CBS Acknowledges It Cannot Prove Documents Are True. Rather Apologizes for Error. We appreciate the trust each of you as viewers have put into WKYT and WYMT during the past several decades. Because of that trust, we strive to be both fair and accurate in our local coverage of news, weather and sports. We want to hear from you when you think we've been unfair. We will often respond to your suggestions to provide better balance and fairness to our coverage. We want to know if you think we've been inaccurate. We...

It would serve Dan Rather and CBS News better to devote their current maniacal efforts to prove that the documents (which they used as the basis for their now-descredited story on President Bush's national guard service) had at least a billion-in-one chance of being true, and instead tried to uncover those who had perpetrated the forgery on the network. A Nixonian bunker psychology in those quarters, however, apparently continues — although there are now reports that Mr. Rather may concede the documents are false while contending the story itself is true. If Mr. Rather is saying that, it is one...

NEWSWEEK: A Principal Source for Network's Bush National Guard Story Was Disgruntled Former Guard Officer Sunday September 12, 11:22 am ET Kerry Campaign Setting Up 'Oppo' Squad Whose Mission Will Be 'Message, Debate Prep, Attack, Attack' # NEW YORK, Sept. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- A principal source for the CBS story about President Bush's National Guard duty was Bill Burkett, a disgruntled former Guard officer who lives in Baird, Texas, who says he was present at Guard headquarters in Austin in 1997 when a top aide to then Governor Bush ordered records sanitized to protect the Boss, Newsweek reports in the...

Despite a rising death toll, the war - framed as a global defense of democracy - may be tilting in Bush's favor. By Liz Marlantes | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON – Just a few months ago, Iraq looked like President Bush's albatross. Facing a violent insurgency, bodies of contractors being dragged through the streets of Fallujah, and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, polls showed public opinion turning sharply against the war, dragging down the president's approval ratings. Today, however, while the violence in Iraq continues, the war has become less of a political negative - and...

BESLAN, Russia (Reuters) - Russia's top general threatened Wednesday to attack "terrorist bases" anywhere in the world, as security services put a $10 million bounty on two Chechen rebels they blame for last week's school siege. In Vladikavkaz, capital of North Ossetia where the school is located, an angry crowd of around 2,500 protested against the president, forcing him to promise to sack his administration. "As for launching pre-emptive strikes on terrorist bases, we will carry out all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world," said General Yuri Baluevsky, chief of Russia's general staff. The FSB...

Al-Jazeera, the Arabic news channel that gained international prominence during the Gulf war, has hit back at a "ridiculous" attack on its most senior editor in the Daily Express, which branded him "Bin Laden TV chief". The BBC has also defended its decision to hire al-Jazeera's editor-in-chief, Ibrahim Helal, to train journalists throughout the Middle East. In a front-page splash today, the Express lashed out at Helal under the headline: "Now BBC signs up Bin Laden TV chief - new insult to viewers just days after Kilroy sacking." The paper branded al-Jazeera "terror chief Osama Bin Laden's mouthpiece TV channel"...

NGLOCOKTAN, SUBTERRAIN VOLGATH – Broadcast marketing analysts at Xanthro, Inc. reported an overnight ratings bonanza for the widely anticipated landing of the Exploration Rover Spirit, dispatched from Earth only two and one half maxi-Kline solar revolutions ago. The Rover, which was detected inbound for the Upper Reaches Northern Division early in its journey, landed safely as nearly 730 million Marsonites viewed from the comfort of their chambers in the Subterrain. “This it it?” asked a disappointed Mister Haklxx. “I expected more from the planet that created taxes and fluffy nougat.” “I found it disturbingly anti-climactic,” said Mistress Hanna Jovad. “Thirteen...

AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar (AFPN) -- When I was notified about my Air Expeditionary Force Silver deployment in October, I knew I would be spending the holiday season, my birthday and my promotion away from my wife and miss sharing these cherished times with her. What I didn't know then was that I would have an opportunity to do something fulfilling we can both look back on proudly for years to come. Helping people is a great feeling, but helping a country in need is something I never expected to be involved with before taking part in a historic...

Remember your kids during those impossible teenage years? You gave them protection, entertainment, tried to teach them values, provided education as well as the latest hi-tech devices – yet, somehow, they rebelled and detested you. Children believe their "parental figures" are usually wrong and often use the occasion to be quite critical. Many Americans, like Colin Powell and Howard Dean, keep thinking, "How can we get all those little European sophisticated, pseudo-intellectual grown-up juveniles to love us?" Should Americans be surprised that Europeans hate us with such passion? Old Europe, led by France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Greece, and a few...

Excerpted from news services: "To grasp the magnitude of what American scientists achieved this past weekend with the successful landing of the robot rover Spirit on Mars, you can't do much better than a TV reporter we heard on Sunday, who likened it to thwacking a golf ball in Los Angeles and having it land on precisely the green you were aiming for -- in New York City. Think about it: Scientists launched the tiny Spirit seven months ago, guided it almost 50 million miles across our solar system, slowed it from 12,000 miles per hour -- that's more than...