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By WILLIAM KATES
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — When the government issues a terror warning, the president’s approval rating increases an average of nearly three points, a Cornell University sociologist says.
"The social theories predict it, and anecdotally we know it to be true. Now we have statistical science to confirm it," said Robb Willer, assistant director of Cornell’s Sociology and Small Groups Laboratory.
On average, a terror warning prompted a 2.75 point increase in President George Bush’s (…)

The Monday Interview: Former senator and twice-failed presidential candidate
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Gary Hart, the former senator and presidential candidate, has been around politics for a long time. That experience is telling him that John Kerry is going to win the US presidential election when America goes to the polls one week tomorrow.
"It’s partly intuitive and partly based on several hidden votes that are not [shown in the polls]," he said. "The hidden votes are new (…)

The Mosh View Video
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The Mosh Continues (New post-election version) View Video
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by Dan Glaister
Eminem has become the latest music star to weigh in on this year’s presidential election. In a video for his new single, Mosh, the singer takes George Bush to task for raising taxes and waging the war in Iraq.
"Strap him with AK-47, let him go/Fight his own (…)

Dear participants at the Conference of the International anti-war and anti-globalization movement in Beirut,
by Maren Karlitzky
As Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign we would like to thank all participants of the Conference for the great amount of solidarity shown with our struggle against the Wall and Israeli Apartheid and Occupation.
Our struggle is continuing in daily resistance to Israeli destruction, humiliation and assassinations. Marches, local initiatives and soon the (…)

By Kim Sengupta in Baghdad
For the American military, Fallujah is "the last battle", an overwhelming assault that will destroy the epicentre of the rebellion sweeping through the country, the beginning of the end of major American military action in Iraq.
For the insurgents, Fallujah is a rallying cry. An American attack will, they declare, lead to retribution throughout Iraq, re-invigorating the resistance, just as an attack on the city did six months earlier.
Talks are still taking (…)

By Ben Mitchell
Two police constables called to assist a drunken woman who had been attacked outside a nightclub drove her home and raped and indecently assaulted her, a court heard yesterday.
Winchester Crown Court heard how PC Mark Witcher and PC Andrew Lang performed what they called a "spit roast" on the woman. This involved one officer having sex with her while she was forced to perform a sex act on the other.
The victim, who cannot be named, described how the officers laughed at (…)

By Alistair Lyon
BAGHDAD - The Black Watch battalion has begun moving from Basra to take over an area near Baghdad in a move that could set the stage for a U.S. attack on rebel-held Falluja.
"We can confirm that Black Watch is moving north. For security reasons we cannot give numbers," Squadron Leader Steve Dharamraj told Reuters on Wednesday from Basra, the southern city where British troops have been based since last year’s Iraq war.
A column with Warrior armoured vehicles on (…)

AFTER months of embarrassed silence over links with US Democrats, Downing Street finally admitted yesterday that Tony Blair had twice met John Kerry, who is challenging the Prime Minister’s war ally President Bush for the Oval Office.
The disclosure suggests that Mr Blair may be hedging his bets on the outcome of the US elections.
Previously the Government has raised no objection to claims, repeated on both sides of the Atlantic, that Mr Blair had “never met” the Democratic presidential (…)

By Harold Meyerson
With Election Day almost upon us, it’s not clear whether President Bush is running a campaign or plotting a coup d’etat. By all accounts, Republicans are spending these last precious days devoting nearly as much energy to suppressing the Democratic vote as they are to mobilizing their own.
Time was when Republicans were at least embarrassed by their efforts to keep African Americans from the polls. Republican consultant Ed Rollins was all but drummed out of the (…)

Postal Experts Hunt for Missing Ballots in Florida
by Michael Christie
MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. Postal Service investigators on Wednesday were trying to find thousands of absentee ballots which should have been delivered to voters in one of Florida’s most populous counties, officials said.
The issue evoked memories of the polling problems that bedeviled the Florida election in 2000 and which the state has been trying to address before next Tuesday’s presidential election, which is again (…)