Politics

On a CNN Wolf Blitzer Late Edition broadcast Sunday, U.S. Senators George Allen (R-VA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) both told Blitzer that in the furore created by the protest that they believe President Bush should personally meet with Cindy Sheehan. She is the mother of a soldier son killed in Iraq in April 2004, and leader of a protest march now camped near the presidential ranch in Crawford, Texas. After returning from commercial break, Blitzer told his guests that CNN had just received a news bulletin from the White House. The bulletin said t

U.S. veterans groups and Midwest politicians are angered by the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church's recent practice of protesting at the funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in the Iraq War. The Topeka, Kansas-based church led by Fred Phelps sent 6 protestors with picket signs to the memorial service of 49 Ohio servicemen killed in Iraq. They were members of the Third Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment of Brook Park, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. Last week at the August 5 funeral of Army Specialist Adam Harding in the Chicago suburb of Portage, India

Local elections intended for this fall have been pushed back in Haiti. On Tuesday the electoral council said that they had determined that the best course of action would be to postpone the October 9 municipal elections until December. The idea is to allow for all efforts to be put into the presidential elections. In addition, the presidential elections will be moved up from November 13, to a new date of November 6. The runoff for the presidential election is scheduled for December 11. About 1.5 million people have registered to vote so fa

Newsweek journalist Michael Isikoff reported that the U.S. leak probe into revealing the CIA status of Valerie Plame is likely to soon be under the oversight of one of Bush's fellow Skull and Bones members, a man, Isikoff writes, who is an "old friend" of the president. The investigation by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leak is on a timetable to conclude this October 2005, so the probe is nearing its final stages. Fitzgerald's current boss, Deputy Attorney General James Comey gave Fitzgerald broad leeway to prosecute the case.

Robin Cook, the former British foreign secretary and current Member of Parliament, has died of a suspected heart attack after collapsing on a walk with his wife on Ben Stack hill, Scotland. Cook, aged 59, was flown to a hospital in Inverness by a rescue service helicopter half an hour after collapsing. A spokesperson for NHS Highland said that Mr. Cook arrived at hospital 90 minutes after his collapse, and was reported dead five minutes later. A postmortem examination has concluded that he died from hypertensive heart disease. Mr. Cook was b

Afghan citizens currently held captive in US prisons at Guantanamo Bay and Bagram will be transferred to the custody of Afghan authorities following an agreement reached Thursday between United States diplomats and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The agreement did not immediately establish a timetable for the repatriation. None of the detainees have been charged with any crimes. Karim Rahimi, the Afghani presidential spokesman said today, "Afghanistan and the United States reached an understanding that will allow for the gradual transfer of Afg

The journalist who first revealed in print the Valerie Plame CIA connection, Robert Novak, angrily left the set of an Inside Politics segment Thursday night. The discussion, led by Ed Henry of CNN, centered on the Florida republican House representative Katherine Harris election prospects in a possible square-off against Florida’s democratic Senate representative Bill Nelson. The Chicago Sun-Times syndicated columnist and CNN contributor, Novak took offense when co-appearing James Carville interrupted Novak when he was defending the Harris

Speaking in Texas, President Bush in a Wednesday address to the American Legislative Exchange Council in the city of Grapevine said, "The violence in recent days in Iraq is a grim reminder of the enemies we face." "After September the 11th, I made a commitment to the American people that the United States of America will not wait to be attacked again." Bush said. "We will take the fight to the enemy, and we will defend our freedom." There has been debate within the Administration as to how to refer to the ongoing conflict. In recent appeara

Challenger Freman Hendrix has upset incumbent Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in the August 2 Detroit mayoral primary election. The top two contenders will face each other in the general election on November 8. Kilpatrick, the youngest mayor in Detroit history, is seeking his second term. The Detroit Free Press reports that with 664 of the city's 720 precincts reporting (92 percent), Hendrix had 44 percent of the vote, Kilpatrick had 34 percent, City Councilwoman Sharon McPhail had 12 percent, and state Sen. Hansen Clarke had 9 percent. Eight

Massey Energy Co., the fourth largest coal producer in the U.S., filed a federal lawsuit against the Governor of West Virginia, Joe Manchin. Massey’s CEO Don Blankenship alleged that Gov. Manchin acted in retaliation against the company’s coal mining operations because the company spent $650,000 in an advertising campaign to defeat the governor sponsored pension bond proposal. The $5.5 billion bond proposal, intended to shore up the state's sagging pension plan, was defeated in a special election held in June. The Massey lawsuit, filed last

John Garang, recently sworn in as Vice President of the Sudan, was confirmed dead after his helicopter disappeared yesterday. Sudanese state television initially reported him to be alive but it now appears Mr. Garang died after his helicopter crashed. Garang became Vice President in a historic deal, which ended the southern rebellion after 20 years of fighting. The deal created a government of national unity, giving hope to many that problems endemic to the region, including the Janjaweed militia in Darfur, could finally be solved and that the

Poland has called for the EU to assist curtailing what it has called human rights abuses in Belarus. Belarusian papers describe this as a 'dirty political game', and part of a 'cold war' waged on president Alexander Lukashenko. The Belarusian Riot police with guns and dogs seized the headquarters of the Union of Poles in Belarus, an association representing the 400 thousand ethnic minority Polish people living in western areas of Belarus that were part of Poland until World War II. Earlier this year, Amnesty International reported a "pattern