USA
President Bush will meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the White House Monday. Although a staunch US ally, Karzai has said his government wants control of US military operations in his country. He also is reportedly angered by a US Army report, details of which were published in The New York Times, of prisoner abuse, including two deaths, at the Bagram detention center. Bush didn't mention the abuse in his weekend radio address, which focused on Afghanistan. On Saturday, Bush spoke at graduation ceremonies at Calvin College, a small Christian liberal arts school in Grand Rapids, Mich. This coming Friday, he will deliver the commencement address at the US Naval Academy.
The Senate is expected to remain in session through Monday night as centrists try to reach a compromise in the acrimonious showdown over efforts to block a vote on President Bush's most controversial judicial nominees. If no deal is struck, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will force a test vote Tuesday on Texas judge Priscilla Owen's nomination to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals. If the nomination doesn't garner 60 votes - the threshold for overcoming a filibuster - Frist then will have the presiding officer, expected to be Vice President Dick Cheney in his role as Senate president, declare that filibusters are illegal for Supreme Court and federal appellate court nominees.
A small plane on a sightseeing tour over Brooklyn's Coney Island went into a tailspin after stalling and slammed into the famous New York beach Saturday, killing all four people aboard but injuring none of the stunned sunbathers who witnessed the crash. Relatively few people were on the beach at the time, and no one on the ground was hurt.
More than 100 American Indians ousted from their casino-owning tribes gathered Saturday in Temecula, Calif., to protest what they called money grabs by tribal leaders through disenrollment. It was the first such large-scale organized demonstration for people who contend they've been cut from tribal rolls by leaders seeking a larger share of gambling profits. As tribal gambling grows into a $17 billion industry, disputes over disenrollment have flared nationwide. More than 1,000 people in California are fighting their ouster.
The final chapter of the "Star Wars" movie saga - "Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" - grossed a record $50 million from its first 24 hours in North American theaters late last week, according to estimates.
