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The government provided details Sunday of new intelligence it had obtained that led to the increased threat level against financial institutions, including several specific buildings.
A senior intelligence official described the details only on condition of anonymity. He said it was the most extraordinary detail he had seen in 24 years of intelligence work. The flow of pedestrians outside one building — 14 people per minute midweek on each side of the sidewalks, or 28 per minute. (…)

By Firas Al-Atraqchi
Saying it possessed classified documents on US soldiers carrying out abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib prison, Rolling Stone magazine has accused the US military of foot-dragging on investigations.
"The Pentagon is stalling on several investigations, and congressional inquiries have ground to a halt," Rolling Stone editors wrote in the foreword to the article titled The Secret File of Abu Ghraib by Osha Gray Davidson.
"The foot-dragging is astonishing, given that (…)

By BRAD HAMILTON
U.S. Special Forces and military disaster-response teams guarding New York during the Republican convention will be armed with the latest high-tech weaponry, including "ballistic" sunglasses, advanced machine guns and a flashlight that can blind attackers, The Post has learned.
As many as 25 sniper teams will ring Madison Square Garden, including black-clad Secret Service sharpshooters, sources said.
The units will go into heightened alert when President Bush arrives (…)

BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA AND TOSHI MAEDA
Joseph Rodriguez, the troubled former cop at the center of the pipe bomb explosion in Times Square, was arrested yesterday on charges of planting the bomb there himself, police said.
Detectives picked up Rodriguez, 27, at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where he had been under psychiatric observation since July 21, two days after he was injured by the blast in the subway station at West 43rd Street and Eighth Avenue.
Rodriguez, whose family was (…)

EDITOR’S NOTE - Nearly a year before photographs surfaced of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi man was beaten by Marines at a military jail in southern Iraq. His death was declared a homicide, the first POW death acknowledged as such by the U.S. military. But witness statements and military documents obtained by the Associated Press show who and what killed the prisoner may never be known.
Always, there was the heat. Steaming like a cauldron at 125 degrees during the day, parboiling (…)

ASUNCION, Paraguay — Fire roared through a supermarket on the outskirts of the Paraguayan capital Sunday, and a television report said more than 200 people died and dozens were injured.
The fire broke out at the Ycua Bolanos supermarket while it was crowded with Sunday midday shoppers.
Paraguay’s Channel 9 reported that 217 bodies had been recovered, citing rescue workers and police accounts. The government had no official toll of deaths and injuries hours after the fire erupted. (…)

by Tom Junod
It happened again this morning. I saw a picture of our president-my president-and my feelings about him were instantly rekindled. The picture was taken after his speech to the graduating seniors at the Air Force Academy. He was wearing a dark suit, a light-blue tie, and a white shirt. His unsmiling visage was grim and purposeful, in pointed contrast to the face of the elaborately uniformed cadet standing next to him, which was lit up with a cocky grin. Indeed, as something (…)

By JAY AMBROSE
If Congress or the administration dawdles over recommendations of the 9/11 commission, the worst could happen, some reportedly think. There could be a terrorist attack and it would look as if the dawdlers were responsible.
That possibility — plus public anxiety and urgings by the commission, families of victims in the terrorist attacks in 2001 and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry — seems to have prompted scurrying. The administration is conducting meetings to (…)

By John Spritzler
The United States is not a democracy. Sure, we have elections and all the trappings of a democracy. But if, by democracy, we mean a society shaped by the values of ordinary people rather than by the values of a wealthy and privileged elite, in which the popular vote actually determines the direction of the society, then no, we don’t have a democracy. We have a plutocracy. Billionaires hold the real power because they own the media and the entire private sector and they (…)

Ten Iraqis have been killed and 38 injured, in continuing clashes between US occupation forces and resistance fighters in Falluja following a US attempt to enter the city on Saturday.
Most of the injured are civilians, who were trying to flee the site of the clashes, particularly those bombed by US occupation forces earlier, Dr Rafya al-Isawi, director of Falluja hospital, told Aljazeera.
"People and officials of Falluja have questioned the reasons behind the attempt by six US military (…)