The push for a U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, already under fire in South Korea, is being viewed skeptically by U.S. manufacturers, especially carmakers, according to industry and congressional officials.
Emboldened with ideas aired at two private retreats, Senate Republicans are planning as soon as Thursday to release their 2007–2008 legislative agenda, which they hope will help the 21 GOP senators up for re-election next year keep their seats.
The nuclear deal unveiled today in Beijing to freeze North Korea's plutonium-yielding reactor and readmit inspectors is, as a smiling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "the result of patient, creative, and tough diplomacy." True as that is, her statement masks the range of difficulties that had to be overcome in reaching this point. They include not only the obvious North Korean obstinacy but also the nagging policy disputes within a Bush administration that, at times, has seemed ambivalent about doing diplomatic business with a troublemaking communist regime.
AP - Supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr said Wednesday that the radical Shiite cleric was still in Iraq, denying a report that he fled to Iran ahead of a security crackdown targeting his militia.
AP - House Republicans are pulling out all the stops to win over GOP colleagues who may be wavering on whether to publicly rebuke President Bush's decision to send more troops into Iraq.
AP - A Sea Knight helicopter that crashed last week northwest of Baghdad was shot down, the U.S. military said Wednesday, reversing earlier statements that it appeared to have been due to mechanical failure.
An Iraqi-American soldier abducted last October while serving in Baghdad was seen alive in a video posted on an Shiite militant Web site today and identified by his uncle to CNN. Spec. Ahmed K. Altaie was kidnapped while serving as a translator and has since been listed by the U.S. military as "duty status and whereabouts unknown."
A Utah police officer hailed for helping stop a rampaging shooter who killed five people in a Salt Lake City mall said he simply did what his fellow officers would have done. "I was in a situation that I was carrying my gun, and I felt that I had to do something," Officer Ken Hammond said.
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