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The White House remains elusive about the timing of a physical exam for President Joe Biden, as more Americans question his physical and mental health. The White House previously said last May Biden would get a physical before the end of the year and in October, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it would be “soon.”

Before it gets pulled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-L2hUkeqJ0

Presidential candidates who seem to change positions as they change audiences should avoid accusing others of flip-flopping. It makes them look silly. That's the lesson for John McCain, who has criticized Barack Obama for reversing his views on campaign finance and easing off his keep-up-with- Hillary-Clinton opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Obama also flip-flopped on building hundreds of miles of fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border; the Illinois Democrat voted for the fence before he was against it. “This election is about trust and trusting people's word,” McCain recently told supporters in Louisville, Ky. “And unfortunately, apparently on...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Now that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead, there seems little certainty who will succeed the brutal killer who was the most wanted terrorist in Iraq. An American general thinks it will be Egyptian-born, Afghanistan-trained Abu al-Masri, whose name is an obvious alias, meaning "father of the Egyptian." Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said Thursday that al-Masri was the "most logical" successor but offered no details on why. Caldwell said al-Masri is thought to have come to Iraq in 2002 after training in Afghanistan with the mission of creating an al-Qaida cell...

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted yesterday it's "just not clear" if his Mexican-immigrant grandparents settled in the U.S. legally. The nation's top cop - who is the first Hispanic attorney general - has become a pointman for the White House on divisive immigration reforms President Bush is pushing. "Three of my grandparents were born in Mexico. They came to Texas," Gonzales told CNN. Pressed by Wolf Blitzer, Gonzales conceded he didn't know if they sneaked across the border like millions of illegals at issue in the current debate. "It's unclear. It's unclear," Gonzales said. "And I've looked at...

SACRAMENTO - Federal authorities who arrested two men and detained three others this week in a terrorism probe say they have been investigating members of a Central Valley Pakistani community for years and expect more developments in the weeks ahead. But they aren't saying just how the men came to their attention, how far the connections extend and exactly what kind of attacks - if any - they were plotting. FBI spokesman John Cauthen on Thursday said the investigation was not triggered by an internal rift within Lodi's Pakistani community, as some members had suggested. "This specific investigation has been...

ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans for a combined air and ground attack on targets in Iran if diplomacy fails to halt the Iranian nuclear programme. The inner cabinet of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave “initial authorisation” for an attack at a private meeting last month on his ranch in the Negev desert. Israeli forces have used a mock-up of Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant in the desert to practise destroying it. Their tactics include raids by Israel’s elite Shaldag (Kingfisher) commando unit and airstrikes by F-15 jets from 69 Squadron, using bunker-busting bombs to penetrate underground facilities....

WASHINGTON - Newly released U.N. audits of the oil-for-food program leave unanswered questions about whether Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) used the program to illegally raise billions of dollars, congressional leaders said Monday. Lawmakers had repeatedly demanded that the United Nations (news - web sites) turn over more than 50 internal audits on the program, suspecting they would provide evidence that the former Iraqi president manipulated the humanitarian program with the help of corrupt or inept U.N. overseers. But the audits released Sunday night didn't tackle the corruption issues at the heart of the matter. While finding repeated examples...

A lawyer for an Orthodox Jewish couple claimed Monday that the Internal Revenue Service has violated the First Amendment by refusing to allow tax deductions for their children's religious schooling. The IRS should allow the deductions because it permits members of the Church of Scientology to write off the cost of spiritual counseling sessions, attorney Jeffrey Zuckerman said during the first day of a non-jury trial in U.S. Tax Court before Judge John O. Colvin. The First Amendment prohibits the IRS from discriminating on the basis of religion, Zuckerman said. Michael and Marla Sklar of Los Angeles brought the lawsuit...

A college student was injured after a police officer's gun accidentally fired inside a sandwich shop in Brooklyn Wednesday. The officer stopped at a Blimpie store in Flatbush on his way to work. While he was eating, his gun slipped off of his waistband and fired a shot, according to police. The bullet hit the ground, police said, fragments of the floor tile hit the 19-year-old student. She was treated and released from an area hospital.

Missing, presumed dead The fate of many people - on both sides of the conflict - is still unclear 13 April 2003 The soldiers "I didn't receive any order from the beginning." An Iraqi colonel with the elite Republican Guard, who commanded a force of about 600 men, has revealed that his demoralised men fled from their units, without fear of punishment, as Allied bombs crashed on to their positions. The colonel, who joined other comrades changing back into civilian clothes to catch the bus home about a week before Baghdad was taken, said he had initially been ordered to...