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46 to 46 in Michigan, reported by Mark Halperin of Time, strange, can't find it anywhere else.

Poll indicates Obama, McCain tied The U.S. presidential race between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain is a draw, with each receiving 42 percent, a CBS News poll indicated Thursday. The poll, conducted Monday through Wednesday, is in contrast to a CBS survey conducted last week, when the Democratic ticket led the Republican ticket 48 percent to 40 percent, CBS said. In the latest poll, 12 percent indicated they were undecided and 1 percent said they wouldn't vote. McCain officially was nominated as the GOP presidential candidate Wednesday after his vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, addressed the Republican...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- A couple accused of tying their 13-year-old son to a tree for two nights to punish him for disobedience has been charged with murder in his death, authorities said Friday. Brice Brian McMillan, 41, of Macclesfield, told a deputy that the child was being disobedient and was forced to sleep outside Tuesday while tied to a tree, the Edgecombe County Sheriff's Office said. The teenager was released Wednesday morning but again tied up that night for bad behavior, authorities said. The boy was left tied to the tree until the following afternoon when his stepmother found him...

BAGHDAD - A son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is behind a group of foreign and Iraqi fighters responsible for this week's devastating explosion in northern Iraq, a security chief for Sunni tribesmen who rose up against al-Qaida said Saturday. At least 38 people were killed and 225 wounded last Wednesday when a huge blast destroyed about 50 buildings in a Mosul slum. The next day, a suicide bomber killed the provincial police chief and two other officers as they surveyed the blast site. Col. Jubair Rashid Naief, who also is a police official in Anbar province, said those attacks...

Contact: M. Royhan Gani rgani@egi.utah.edu 801-585-3539 University of Utah Evolution tied to Earth movementGeologists say 'Wall of Africa' allowed humanity to emerge Nahid and Royhan Gani, geologists at the University of Utah's Energy and Geoscience Institute, stand on the Ethiopian Plateau near the Gorge of the Nile, which was carved by Africa's... Scientists long have focused on how climate and vegetation allowed human ancestors to evolve in Africa. Now, University of Utah geologists are calling renewed attention to the idea that ground movements formed mountains and valleys, creating environments that favored the emergence of humanity. “Tectonics [movement of Earth’s crust]...

Nigeria VP Charged With Corruption(AP) NEW YORK Nigeria's Vice President Atiku Abubakar was charged Tuesday at a special anti-graft court with more than a dozen counts of corruption stemming from the alleged diversion of $125 million of public funds to private interests. Charges filed by prosecutors before the Code of Conduct Tribunal in the Nigerian capital against Abubakar also include allegations he received more than $4.6 million in bribes. Abubakar, who is feuding with President Olusegun Obasanjo, has in the past dismissed the allegations as part of a plot to stop him from running for Nigeria's top office in April's...

LOS ANGELES Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger settled a libel lawsuit Friday with a former late-night British TV personality who claimed she was groped by the Hollywood actor during a 2000 interview and later defamed by his aides during his 2003 campaign for governor. "The parties are content to put this matter behind them and are pleased that this legal dispute has now been settled," said a two-sentence statement issued jointly in London by lawyers for Schwarzenegger and Anna Richardson. No details were released. The statement said Richardson and the three people she sued the governor and two top aides, Sean Walsh...

Congressional candidate Pete McCloskey, running against Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy in Tuesday's GOP primary, is returning a $2,100 campaign donation he received from a man tied to al-Qaeda. The money was from M. Yaqub Mirza, a Pakistan native living in Virginia, who has been investigated by the Justice Department for allegedly helping to finance al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad. Mirza's offices were raided by federal authorities in March 2002. McCloskey, a moderate former House member who has raised questions about Pombo's ethics, said he's never met Mirza but would return the money. "This is America, so you are presumed innocent...

Feds Are Intruding, Says Angry La. Lawmaker Tied to BribesBy Renee D. Turner, BET.com Staff Writer Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) Posted May 23, 2006 – Democratic Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson, rebutting claims by the FBI that he is on tape accepting a bribe, said Tuesday that he would not step down. "I expect to continue to represent the people who have sent me here," Jefferson told reporters, emphasizing that he will seek re-election in November. The Saturday- through-Sunday search into Jefferson’s D.C. congressional offices was an “outrageous intrusion,” the New Orleans representative said at a news conference. “…There are two...

Dementia off the Menu: Mediterranean diet tied to low Alzheimer's risk Ben Harder People who eat a Mediterranean-style diet are less likely than their peers to develop Alzheimer's disease, according to new research on elderly Manhattan residents. The study is the first to link brain benefits to a comprehensive dietary pattern rather than to individual foods or nutrients, say the scientists who performed the research. BRAIN FOODS. A diet rich in vegetables, their oils, and certain other menu choices appears to guard against Alzheimer's. Traditional Mediterranean menus are rich in fruits and vegetables, fish, and unsaturated fat. They contain little...

SACRAMENTO — A television ad campaign portrayed as an independent effort to help Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been bankrolled partly by a group with deep ties to his political operation. An official with the New Majority, a Southern California Republican group at the core of Schwarzenegger's fundraising apparatus, said its members have given about $1 million to the Washington, D.C., business group that is the public face of the ads: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. By pumping the ad money through the chamber, well-heeled New Majority members have bypassed requirements that their donations be publicly disclosed. And they skirted the...

DETROIT - A Cleveland imam convicted of hiding terrorist ties has agreed to leave the United States, ending his deportation case, his attorney and government officials said Thursday. The agreement allows Fawaz Damra to resettle in Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Egypt or the Palestinian territories, said Greg Gagne, a spokesman for the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review. A judge has approved the agreement with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which will decide his destination. Damra is still in federal custody, said Robert Birach, a Detroit lawyer who negotiated for him. He declined to discuss more...

Genes tied to recent brain evolution Bruce Bower Two genes already known to influence brain size have undergone relatively recent, survival-enhancing modifications in people and appear to be still evolving, a research team reports. Specific variants of these genes have spread quickly by natural selection, say Bruce T. Lahn of the University of Chicago and his colleagues, who published separate reports on each gene in the Sept. 9 Science. The researchers examined DNA from 1,186 adults representing 59 populations worldwide and determined the frequency of specific variants of the two genes called microcephalin and ASPM. A variant of microcephalin originated...

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Brazilian police arrested a Colombian man Wednesday accused of being an unofficial ambassador for Colombia's largest rebel group. The arrest of Francisco Antonio Cadena Collazzos came at the request of the Colombian government so he can be extradited to Colombia, officials said. A police statement said that Cadenas is accused in Colombia of homicide for terrorist purposes and links to the leftist rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Cadena has long acted as the FARC's spokesman to Brazil, and had been arrested once before in Sept. 2000 after his visa had expired and...

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Spanish police on Friday arrested a Syrian who they believe helped recruit radical Islamists to be sent abroad and had ties with suspects charged in last year's train bombings. Police, who gave the suspect's name as Mohannad Almallah Dabas, was arrested at his home in Madrid. The Interior Ministry said he and his brother used an apartment in Madrid to house recruits or people passing through. They were assisted by Basel Ghalyoun, a Syrian already jailed for his suspected role in the March 11, 2004 bombings that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500, the...

Washington -- The House Tuesday tacked on a provision to President Bush's emergency $81.3 billion war spending legislation that would make it all but illegal for California to issue driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants. By voice vote, the Republican-led House added the driver's license provision -- and the other immigration security measures it had approved as a separate bill in February -- to the spending legislation that will help pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House is expected to approve the war spending bill today and send it to the Senate, where the immigration provisions create a...

October 19, 2004--Two weeks to go and the Presidential race is tied in the critical battleground state of Ohio. The latest Rasmussen Reports survey shows both President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry earning 47% of the vote and the Buckeye State remains a Toss-Up for our Electoral College projections. Last week, immediately prior to the final debate, Rasmussen Reports data showed the President ahead by two percentage points, 49% to 47%. Four years ago, the President earned a four-point margin of victory in Ohio over Al Gore. Rasmussen Reports Premium Members receive daily Tracking Poll updates on Ohio...

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget is perilously linked to a variety of bond issues that could fail at the ballot box and in the Legislature, toppling his financial rescue plan and further damaging the state's battered credit ratings, Wall Street analysts warned Friday.</p>

Well surprise, surprise. Documents found in the headquarters of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence service, show that Saddam Hussein's people were talking to Osama bin Laden's people, according to a story in the Toronto Star. Actually, make that "STAR FINDS DOCUMENTS LINKING BIN LADEN, IRAQ" -- at the Toronto Star, the Toronto Star is always the story. The minor detail that a reporter for the Daily Telegraph was also present when the documents were found, or that the crucial reference to bin Laden was spotted by their interpreter, played rather below the fold. Still, it is fortuitous that the Star,...

From the Washington Post: Police officials declined to discuss a report on WTTG-Fox News on Thursday night that described the discovery of evidence indicating Levy may have been tied up. The report, attributed to law enforcement sources, was not confirmed or denied today.