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Bush reasserts importance of Guantanamo in meeting with German leader WASHINGTON - President Bush rejected a suggestion by Germany's new leader that the U.S. close its prison at Guantanamo Bay, saying after a first meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday that the facility is "a necessary part of protecting the American people." Guantanamo has become a symbol in Europe for what many people see as Bush administration excesses in hunting down and interrogating potential terrorists. At least one German is among about 500 foreign-born men held indefinitely at the prison camp on Cuba's eastern tip. "So long as the...

Houston ranked seventh on a list released Wednesday of 20 U.S. cities with particularly harsh measures that criminalize sleeping in public, begging or other behavior associated with homeless people. In including Houston on the "meanest cities" list for the first time in the four years it has been compiled, leaders of two national homeless-advocacy organizations cited other neighborhoods' efforts to be added to the areas covered under a city ordinance that makes it illegal to lie, sit or place belongings on downtown or Midtown sidewalks from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. The report's authors also cited rules the city adopted...

SAN ANTONIO — President Bush today strongly defended his domestic spying program, saying it's a limited initiative that tracks only incoming calls to the United States. "It's seems logical to me that if we know there's a phone number associated with al-Qaida or an al-Qaida affiliate and they're making phone calls, it makes sense to find out why," Bush said. "They attacked us before, they'll attack us again." Bush spoke to reporters at Brooke Army Medical Center where he was visiting wounded troops. He said the leak of information about the secret order to eavesdrop on Americans with suspected ties...

An aspiring attorney who has failed the licensure test four times challenges the state's limit, which gives him just one more try to pass CLIFTON Eames moved to Houston with big plans. Having just finished law school in Washington, D.C., in 2002, he hoped to open a small practice here, specializing in civil rights and discrimination cases. His dream of helping others right legal wrongs hit a snag, however, when he got the results from his Texas bar exam. Eames failed the test. Three subsequent attempts also have ended in failure, leaving him with a law school degree but no...

Until Jim Bishop shows off his "before" pictures, his story is almost impossible to believe. Before was the summer of 2003: 31 years old, 600 pounds, a constant diet of junk, smoking, drinking, barely able to move. "I was heading for death," Bishop says. "I became a recluse. I didn't want to see anybody, and I didn't want anybody to see me." Now he's stabilized at 220, and he got there the old-fashioned way — no surgery, no drugs, no shortcuts. Bishop, a data-security consultant who lives in Garland, says he was in a "contemplative state" for about a year...

DULUTH, Minn. — Scott Cameron never imagined his modest memorial to American troops in Iraq would transform a quiet street here into the latest front of the nation's tense debate about the war in Iraq. His sign tallying the war's dead and wounded rests feet from the local Army recruiting office, and Cameron's refusal to take it down despite Army requests has drawn national attention. The fuss is giving the Vietnam veteran a chance to air a view he wishes he'd expressed long ago. "The way veterans have been treated in this country is shameful," Cameron said this week. His...

A shooting Friday night at a southeast Houston apartment complex in which four people were reportedly wounded is another example, one tenant said, of the tension between Katrina evacuees and local residents. According to the father of one of the shooting victims, a disagreement between two girls, possibly in their early teens, had been brewing all day. "They were just fighting over a boyfriend," said Michael Smith, 35, whose son Nikita Williams was wounded in the leg and hand. The shooting happened at the Cullen Park Apartments in the 4700 block of Wenda at about 8 p.m., residents said. A...

RICHMOND, Calif. — A porn actress was arrested in Oklahoma on child rape charges after allegedly persuading a high school student to run away from home and have sex with her, authorities said. Genevieve Elise Silva, 20, remained in jail in Kiowa County, Okla., on Thursday in lieu of $10,000 bail and was fighting extradition back to California, said Richmond police Sgt. Mitch Peixoto. Silva was arrested a day earlier at her mother's house in Roosevelt, Okla., on charges of rape using a controlled substance, statutory rape and detaining or concealing a child, Peixoto said. Her next hearing was set...

NEWARK, N.J. — Trustees of the nation's largest medical school appointed a federal monitor Thursday to oversee its finances amid an investigation of Medicare and Medicaid fraud that could amount to tens of millions of dollars, officials said. The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey agreed to the federal monitor last week after a threat from U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie to indict the school if it did not accept. Trustees voted 5-0 in favor of appointing Herb Stern, a former federal prosecutor and judge, to a two-year term as monitor to sort out the institution's finances. Stern, 69,...

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A judge ruled the state's system of funding poor schools unconstitutional Thursday, saying it fails to provide adequate education by not offering early childhood programs. Circuit Judge Thomas W. Cooper said the state's previous spending to improve achievement in poor schools failed because those efforts did not address the early impact of poverty on children's lives. "The expenditure of those monies has been largely ineffective because they come too late," Cooper wrote. If the ruling stands, lawmakers will have to find a way to provide free preschool to low-income students. Both sides indicated they likely will appeal...

MILWAUKEE — Three juveniles suspected in the brutal mob beating of a motorist appeared in court Thursday and were ordered held in custody while authorities investigate the attack. None of the juveniles _ a 14-year-old and two 16-year-olds _ was charged. Police continued to seek more suspects. A prosecutor told a juvenile court judge the 14-year-old allegedly stomped and did a front flip onto 50-year-old Samuel McClain after he was yanked from his car on Monday. A 16-year-old was accused of jumping off a car onto McClain and hitting him in the face with an ice ball, while the other...

Mourners asked to remember not how he died but how he had lived Jonathan Finkelman was surrounded by family and friends Thursday — just as he was in life. Hundreds attended his funeral, many of them teenagers, exchanging smileless greetings, silent embraces and tears. They spilled out from beneath a green tent at Beth Yeshurun's synagogue cemetery where his parents and brothers sat in the front row. Before them, Finkelman lay enclosed in a plain pine coffin adorned with a Star of David. He was 16. They gathered to mark Finkelman's death from a gunshot Tuesday night in an incident...

Houston police are investigating a shooting that left a man dead late Wednesday outside a hotel near Reliant Park. The victim, who has not been identified, was fatally shot shortly before 10 p.m. outside the StudioPLUS hotel in the 1300 block of La Concha near Kirby. Officers at the scene said the altercation apparently began on the second floor and ended with the man's death near the hotel's front door that was shattered by gunfire. HPD homicide detectives early this morning were questioning a witness to the fatal shooting along with several suspects whose hands were covered with paper bags...

CHICAGO - Nearly three-quarters of Americans wouldn't buy a car from a bankrupt company, according to a recent survey. a nationwide survey by the Cincinnati-based research firm Directions Research Inc. published Friday, only 26 percent of respondents said they would purchase or lease a new car from a manufacturer that had declared bankruptcy. General Motors Corp. lost nearly $5 billion in its North American automotive business in the first nine months of 2005, and speculation has mounted among investors that the auto maker may eventually be forced to file for Chapter 11 protection. GM recently announced it would close 12...

A fair-housing watchdog group says it found discrimination against black Hurricane Katrina evacuees at two out of three apartment complexes it surveyed in Houston and 16 other cities. Between mid-September and mid-December, the National Fair Housing Alliance had callers pose as hurricane victims seeking information at mid-priced apartment complexes in Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee. At 66 percent of the apartments, white callers were treated more favorably than blacks, the group reported. "I was surprised at the amount of hostility that came out over the telephone when apartment managers could discern the caller was African-American," said Shanna L. Smith,...

AMARILLO — A former high school valedictorian killed in Iraq last week is being remembered for his commitment to his country — and his determination to excel at everything he tried. First Lt. Benjamin T. Britt, 24, of Wheeler, was killed Thursday by an improvised explosive device that detonated near his position. "He loved Wheeler, he loved Wheeler County, he loved the Panhandle, and he thought Texas was the greatest state in the United States," Dave Britt Jr., the soldier's father, said in Tuesday editions of the Amarillo Globe-News. He played in two state championship games as a tackle for...

As the holiday grows with greeting cards and citywide celebrations, some wonder whether it's losing the intimacy that once fueled it ON the table are children's books. Not Dick and Jane. Not Judy Blume. These are Afrocentric volumes about Kwanzaa, colorful hardcovers and paperbacks featuring dark-skinned children in African dress. "Look at these," Angela Lindsey says to her kids, Chrishonta, 10, and Jaques, 4, while at the SHAPE Community Center recently. "These are nice." Nice, but no sale. She's not there to buy Kwanzaa material. The single parent is a Houston Community College student and needs to use a computer....

WASHINGTON - Sexual assaults and harassment are still significant problems at the nation's military academies, polls of students at the schools show, despite recent scandals that triggered intensive training to prevent the behavior. Up to 6 percent of the women at the Army, Navy and Air Force academies said they experienced sexual assault during the 2004-2005 school year, and about half or more said they were sexually harassed, according to a survey released Friday by the Pentagon. The survey comes more than two years after a sex abuse scandal rocked the Air Force Academy, leading to a purge in its...

A southwest Houston business owner chased after the men who robbed him at gunpoint Wednesday, ramming their vehicle and causing it to flip over, police said. The robbery happened shortly after 4 p.m. after the victim brought a money bag from his bank to the strip shopping center he owns in the 8800 block of West Belfort, police said. The robbers fled in a white van with the victim in pursuit. Police said he struck the rear of the getaway vehicle, causing the van to roll on its side and slide about 100 feet. They managed to escape in a...

The Air Force Reserve is discharging a lieutenant colonel accused of causing thousands of dollars in damage by defacing cars bearing pro-Bush bumper stickers, his lawyer and military officials confirmed Friday. Lt. Col. Alexis Fecteau, a pilot with 500 combat hours in the first Persian Gulf war and the Balkans, is charged with felony criminal mischief. He is accused of using paint stripper and grease to write "F--- Bush" in 18-inch-high letters on cars at Denver International Airport that had bumper stickers supporting President Bush and conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh. Jim Miller, a spokesman for the Air Force Reserve...