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By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER
WASHINGTON — Authorities have some evidence that suspected terror surveillance information on five financial buildings was looked at again and perhaps updated in January, a top homeland security official said Friday.
Separately, President Bush defended the decision to issue terrorism warnings last weekend based on the information.
James Loy, the deputy secretary of homeland security and No. 2 official at the agency, initially told The Associated Press that (…)

By Tim Ahmann
WASHINGTON - U.S. employers added a paltry 32,000 workers to payrolls last month, the government said on Friday in a report that was far weaker than expected and unwelcome news for an election-bound President Bush.
The Labor Department also cut its tally of job growth in May and June by a combined 61,000, adding to the report’s weak tenor.
Bond markets surged and the dollar tumbled as the data raised questions about how successfully the economy shook off June weakness and (…)

A BRITISH citizen facing extradition to the United States on terrorism charges was found in possession of three-year-old plans to attack US Navy ships in the Gulf, a US lawyer said today.
"The documents went on to describe the battle group’s vulnerability to a terrorist attack and provided specific examples of how the ships might be attacked," US lawyer Rosemary Fernandes told a central London court.
Police uncovered the documents in a December 2003 raid on 30-year-old Babar Ahmad’s (…)

al-Qaida Operative Suspected of Authoring Surveillance Report Detained in Britain, Official Says
A key al-Qaida operative suspected of authoring surveillance documents that sparked terror alerts in the United States was among 12 terror suspects arrested in Britain, an official said. The operative is believed to have been in the United States in 2000.
The documents of surveillance of five U.S. financial institutions were found on the computers of two accused members of Osama bin Laden’s (…)

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
ATMORE, Ala, Aug 5 — J.B. Hubbard’s failing body kept him lying in bed — a bunk on Alabama’s death row — most of the last days of his life. Other inmates say they walked his wobbly frame to the showers and listened to him complain about the pain: the cancer in his colon and prostate, the hypertension, the aching back. They combed his hair because he couldn’t. They washed him.
When spasms of dementia made him forget who he was — what he was — they told him: a (…)

US-led forces in Iraq have clashed with Shia militiamen in several cities, in a second day of fighting that has shattered a truce agreed in June.
A US military spokesman said 300 supporters of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr had been killed in Najaf - a claim denied by Mr Sadr’s Mehdi militia.
There has also been fighting in a Shia area of the capital Baghdad, and in a number of southern cities.
Mr Sadr’s aides have called on Muslims to take up arms against "occupiers".
The latest (…)

ST. LOUIS - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry yesterday questioned President Bush’s seven-minute delay in leaving a Florida classroom after learning of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.
"Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear, ’America is under attack,’ I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to," Kerry said.
The remarks by the Massachusetts (…)

By KATRIN BENNHOLD
PARIS. Britain aside, the response in Europe to the latest announcement of terror threats in the United States has ranged from official calm to unofficial cynicism.
Since the Bush administration raised the terror alert to orange for five financial targets in and around New York and Washington, European governments have left their risk assessments unchanged.
Although British officials have arrested a dozen suspected Islamic militants, the possible links between those (…)

by Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS - Iraq’s U.S.-installed interim government, which is planning to spend some two billion dollars on its military this year, has declared it is too poor to pay 14.6 million dollars it owes the United Nations.
"Iraq was not in a position to pay what it owed to the United Nations, although it hopes to do so next year, when oil production has increased," the interim government says in a letter to the U.N. Committee on Contributions, transmitted through the Iraqi (…)

Like thunder on the horizon, Progressive Democrats in Illinois have been rumbling and gathering energy. Through the campaigns of the likes of Dennis Kucinich and Barak Obama they are starting to be heard and seen. In the campaigns of candidates like Rueben Zamora, 14th district challenger to Dennis Hastert, among others, they are gathering strength and reach.
The time has come to bring focus to that energy. To bring brilliant flashes of lightning - of which this may be one of the first. (…)