The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the U.S.
Vermont, where nearly three quarters of residents oppose the Iraq war, has the nation's highest per capita death rate in the conflict. It's a statistic seemingly at odds with the state's reputation as a liberal utopia, a low-stress playground for snowboarders and the escape-from-New York crowd. But with the tally of dead American servicemen and women now past 3,000, the situation in Iraq grim, and President Bush calling for more troops, many Vermonters are asking whether they've already sacrificed too much for a cause whose lofty aims they think may be unreachable.
Milton, Vt.—The last of the thin December light was fading as Heather Sheehan made her way past rows of gray, age-pocked headstones that line the old Milton Village Cemetery road.
Call it the Rocky Economy–as in Rocky Balboa. During 2006, the U.S. economy took a beating (a 38 percent rise in gasoline prices, 100 basis points in Fed rate hikes, the end of the housing bubble) and got knocked hard to the mat (gross domestic product growth fell from 5.6 percent in the first quarter to 2.0 in the third). But now it looks as if the Rocky Economy is back on its feet and throwing haymakers. (OK, a merciful end to the over-the-top cinematic boxing analogy.)
AP - Investigators who made the incredible discovery of two kidnapped boys in a tiny apartment turned Saturday from euphoria to some troubling questions.
AP - The Pentagon and to a lesser extent the CIA have been using a little-known power to look at the banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage within the United States, officials said Saturday.
AP - A crippling winter storm lashed the central part of the nation with another blast of freezing rain, sleet and snow Saturday, causing widespread power outages and tying up highways and airports.
Two beaming families hugged their sons at news conferences Saturday, the day after their two missing boys were found. Ben Ownby was found four days after he disappeared; Shawn Hornbeck had been missing for more than four years. "He's grown up on me, that's for sure," his mother said.
![[logo]](http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/bbc_news_120x60.gif "BBC News")
![[logo]](http://www.csmonitor.com/images/logo_88x31.gif "Christian Science Monitor"){kind=logo}
![[logo]](http://graphics.nytimes.com/images/section/NytSectionHeader.gif "NYT > Home Page")
![[logo]](http://www.usnews.com/usnews/images/rss/logo_rss.gif "USNews.com"){kind=logo}
![[logo]](http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/nws/th/main_142b.gif "Yahoo! News")
![[logo]](http://image.guardian.co.uk/sitecrumbs/Guardian.gif "Guardian Unlimited")
![[logo]](http://i.cnn.net/cnn/.element/img/1.0/logo/cnn.logo.rss.gif "CNN.com"){kind=logo}
