USA
Secretary of State Powell described a State Department report showing a decline in worldwide terrorism in 2003 as a "big mistake" in an appearance Sunday on ABC's "This Week." He said he was working with the CIA, which helped to compile the data in the report, to determine why the undercounting - which indicated a 34-year low in terrorist incidents - had occurred.
Large crowds are expected to descend Monday on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., as visitors flock to the reopened site of Friday's sunset burial service for the 40th president. A spokesman for President Bush, an admirer of Reagan, said his reelection effort plans to "strike a delicate balance" in drawing on Reagan's legacy in campaign appearances, but has no plans to cite it in its ads. US Sen. John Kerry, the presumed Democratic candidate who temporarily suspended his own campaign out of respect for Reagan's memory, urged Bush to remove restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research, which Mrs. Reagan supported in trying to tackle the illness her husband faced.
Records linking independent candidate Ralph Nader's presidential campaign and Citizen Works, the public charity he created, may indicate a violation of federal law, according to campaign-finance specialists quoted in a Washington Post report Saturday. Potentially problematic is the shared Washington office of the two activities, which tax laws require be separate. Nader says his campaign took over the charity's lease and that "no wrongdoing" has occurred.
The religious conversion of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols gained enough sympathy with deadlocked jurors to spare him a death sentence, prosecution and defense lawyers said over the weekend. The prosecution's case, which could wind up costing the state $10 million, sought to add the death penalty to the federal life sentence Nichols is already serving for his role in the worst act of domestic terrorism in US history.
Before the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal broke in Iraq, US commanders were trying to deal with recurring alcohol problems and suspected involvement with local prostitutes by guards at the facility in Baghdad, The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
