As the editing proceeded, people at the network said, Robert Allan Ackerman, the director, removed himself from the project. Upon hearing that news, people at CBS said, the film's stars, Mr. Brolin and Judy Davis, sent word that they would not participate in publicity for the movie.
Michael Reagan, one of the president's sons and now a conservative radio talk show host, appeared on the Fox News Channel program "Hannity & Colmes" and said, "This is all about the agenda of dismantling my father, dismantling the conservative movement and tearing down Ronald Reagan as we go into an election year."

On Oct. 28, the Media Research Center, a conservative group led by L. Brent Bozell that monitors the news and entertainment industries for what it sees as liberal bias, wrote a letter to a list of 100 top television sponsors urging them to "refuse to associate your products with this movie."

Newsweek reported that CBS was considering relegating the mini-series to Showtime, which has subscribers in about 14 million homes. (CBS is available in 108 million homes.)


Shareholders are worried that with a father-and-son team in the two top jobs at Sky, there is no effective separation of the roles of chairman and chief executive - a basic point of good corporate governance.

Under Russia's criminal code, that could make them guilty of 'organised crime', which would trigger a confiscation of their assets.

Prosecutors imposed a freezing order on 44 per cent of Yukos' shares representing the stakes owned by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. They have since unfrozen 2 per cent as 'not belonging to individuals' under investigation. The block is likely to prevent a rumoured $25bn investment in Yukos by ExxonMobil.
Russia's courts have an acquittal rate of just 2 per cent.
Separately, it has emerged that Khodorkovsky is likely to spend at least a year in jail before trial.

Matthew Yglesias describes how a bill becomes law, Bush style: "First you find a way to help out campaign contributors. Then you find a policy problem that you don't want to solve. Then propose the first thing as the solution to the second thing. And then you move on."

"By passing out condoms, you're acknowledging having sex," he said. "Our school's position is abstinence."

"I feel amazed that in a country like New Zealand a person sending an inoffensive email protesting the war in Iraq can be arrested, taken to the cells, and then appear in court and have charges where they can be imprisoned for three months," he says.

MOSCOW : President Vladimir Putin has reaffirmed his position that Russia can resort to preemptive military strikes because the policy is also practiced by the United States.

The term medical marijuana took on dramatic new meaning in February, 2000 when researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. The ominous part is that this isn't the first time scientists have discovered that THC shrinks tumors.

The Spanish researchers, led by Dr. Manuel Guzman of Complutense University, also irrigated healthy rats' brains with large doses of THC for seven days, to test for harmful biochemical or neurological effects. They found none.

A list of nearly 200 scientific researchers has been compiled and given to federal officials by the Traditional Values Coalition, a conservative group that goes wild over gay issues and federal funding of research related to human sexuality. Science has to suffer when the know-nothings come traipsing through the laboratories, infecting the research with their religious beliefs and political ideologies.
"What makes us unique among all the conservative groups," she said, "is that I believe we truly represent the body of Christ."
"We never said any grant on there was bad," said Lafferty. But she said she wanted to know why the grants were being funded, and why so many had to do with HIV and AIDS.
She insisted that the coalition does not oppose research on HIV and AIDS, but added, "How many times do you have to study something to find out how to stop the spread of AIDS?"
The public officials who got their hands on this sinister list could have thrown it in the garbage. Instead, the list is circulating, like an insidious disease, and some scientists are worried that they are not immune.

But certain words and phrases — descriptive nouns like “bomb” and “ambush,” along with less surprising terms like “WMD” — are missing in action, at least from the Pentagon’s briefings.
any good American will tell you that America cannot afford to lose, the sober ones among them will quickly add, “But that doesn’t mean victory is a foregone conclusion.”
The military goes to great lengths to ensure that those who speak to the media are “on message,” and until this week, sophisticated and coordinated were not acceptable ways to describe those killing American troops in Iraq.

Hertling insisted the bombings could not be called “synchronized.” Coordinated, perhaps, but not synchronized.
“They are a bunch of amateurs,” Hertling said. “They are trying to indicate that Baghdad isn’t secure, which couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“It is perhaps the greatest mistake made by the Johnson and Nixon administrations with regard to Vietnam,” says a Senate Republican source. “You have to tell the American people something that meshes with the facts on the ground, or sooner or later they’re going to stop believing anything you say, and then the critics look like geniuses.”

Thus is another term gaining currency: “Iraqification.”
This is an update on the Vietnam era’s “Vietnamization,” a term, according to William Safire, the conservative New York Times columnist and former Nixon speechwriter, first made popular by Nixon’s Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, who was describing his administration’s plans for getting troops out of Vietnam.
How, for instance, can an Army whose major prospective theater of operations is the Islamic world not realize the implications of a weapon system called the "Crusader”?
Almost universally, U.S. military officers and officials will object to the term “resistance.” Eyebrows were raised in July when Army Gen. John Abizaid, shortly after taking over U.S. Central Command, called them “guerrillas.” Until then, Rumsfeld’s “dead-enders” or “Baathist holdouts” was the preferred reference, each endowed with a requisite hint of the temporary and the doomed.
Whatever they are, it is going to take a lot more than clever words to root them out.


For every soldier killed, Pentagon officials estimate, another seven are wounded.

When Ms. Johnson told her 4-year-old son, Bryan, that Daddy had gone to live with Jesus, he put his hands on her cheeks and said, "It'll be O.K., Mommy, it'll be O.K."

Maj. Gary Tallman, an Army spokesman, said that nearly 50,000 troops in Iraq, more than a third of the total force there, did not have bulletproof vests, but that the Army hoped to have them outfitted by next year.


"WEST POINT, N.Y., Nov. 1 — In the last two weeks, 22 American soldiers have given their lives to the occupation of Iraq, a platoon of 21 men and 1 woman cut down to a stack of photographs by accidents, illness and the rising insurgency.

There is Lt. David Bernstein, a soldier's soldier who was killed two weeks ago and buried on Friday at the United States Military Academy here. As his mother sat with a folded flag in her lap and his father accepted a Bronze Star, even the Green Berets cried.

And there is Sgt. Aubrey Bell, the 280-pound Alabama National Guardsman, who drove a forklift and ate mayonnaise sandwiches, and who was shot to death in front of a police station.

And Pvt. Rachel Bosveld, the 19-year-old military policewoman who loved to draw forest scenes and was silenced by mortars.

And Sgt. Paul J. Johnson, a paratrooper who could imagine no fate better than leaping into the night sky, who died after being burned by a bomb.

And Pvt. Jamie L. Huggins, Pvt. Jason Ward, Pfc. John Hart, Lt. Col. Charles H. Buehring and 14 others.

President Bush declared an end to major combat hostilities in Iraq on May 1. But in the six months since then, 222 American soldiers have died, more than one a day. In October, at least 33 American soldiers were killed by hostile fire, twice as many as in September.

For every soldier killed, Pentagon officials estimate, another seven are wounded.

Back home, the steady rhythm of casualties is producing a steady rhythm of rituals — the gray car with government plates pulling into the driveway, the notification, the papers to sign, the cards to read, the flag to fold.

And then another day, another town, another set of horns to blow.

In Fayetteville, N.C., Missy Johnson was studying for a pharmacology test in her pajamas when she heard the thump on the door.

Who in the world is that? she asked herself.

She glanced out the window. Military men in their dress greens.

"I couldn't believe it," Ms. Johnson said. "I just couldn't believe it. I knew exactly what they were here for."

Her husband, Paul, a decorated paratrooper known as P. J. who had once fought a battle in Afghanistan in a flak jacket and boxer shorts, had been killed. His squad had just finished delivering a load of school supplies in Falluja on Oct. 20 when a homemade bomb ripped through his Humvee. He had burns on 80 percent of his body.

"The secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regret that your husband was killed in action," the notifying officer began. It is a formal script, always delivered standing.

Sergeant Johnson, 29, wanted to be G.I. Joe. At age 5, he announced that he was going to be a soldier. At age 8, he dug ditches in the yard for toy soldiers.

"He put those little plastic men through basic," said his mother, Patricia Urban.

As a teenager, he gravitated to Vietnam veterans, soaking up their stories and their combat aura. On his 16th birthday, the first day he was old enough to do it legally, he jumped out of a plane.

When Ms. Johnson told her 4-year-old son, Bryan, that Daddy had gone to live with Jesus, he put his hands on her cheeks and said, "It'll be O.K., Mommy, it'll be O.K."

The next day she got three envelopes, addressed in a hand that made her feel sick. Because of the delay with mail from Iraq, her husband's letters keep coming.

Worland, Mo.

There is no such thing as a "family" crisis here. Minutes after the family of Sgt. Jamie L. Huggins learned that he had been killed in combat, phones starting ringing across Worland, population 50. The Huggins boy had died. Time to start a collection.

Fay Wehar, a neighbor, started banging on doors, trying to raise some gas money.

"Everyone knew Jamie and everyone's reaction was about the same: it was a horrible thing," she said.

Ms. Wehar collected $371, mostly crumpled bills and one check. She gave it to the Hugginses, who left a few hours later for the 20-hour drive from this prairie town of shuttered coal mines to Fort Bragg, N.C., home of the 82nd Airborne Division.

Sergeant Huggins, a 26-year-old paratrooper, was killed during a patrol in Baghdad on Oct. 26, after his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb, the insurgency's weapon of choice.

Danielle Huggins had just heard from her husband the day before. She said she asked him: "Why are you still needing to be there? You should be at home."

His answer, she remembered, was, "We are doing good, Danielle; we are doing good."

Fort Hood, Tex.

Andrea Brassfield's husband painted a different picture.

"He told me: `They don't want us here. They throw rocks at us. They shoot at us. I don't know what we're doing here,' " she said.

Specialist Artimus D. Brassfield, 22, a tank driver for the 66th Armored Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division, was killed in a mortar attack in Samarra, north of Baghdad, on Oct. 24. His death has not changed his wife's opinion of the war. Ms. Brassfield was against it when it began. She is against it now.

Montpelier, Va.

Capt. John R. Teal was coming home. The table was laid with cakes and cookies; there were flowers, too many flowers, blooming in the living room; his parents, Emmie and Joseph Teal, waited on the couch, hands knitted in their laps.

"I need to see him, Joe," Ms. Teal said.

Mr. Teal looked at his hands.

Captain Teal, 31, Second Brigade, Fourth Infantry Division, was blown up by a bomb while riding in a convoy in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, on Oct. 23. He had been working with Iraqi town councils.

His remains were making the journey from Baghdad to a base in Germany to a funeral home in Montpelier, on the outskirts of Richmond. Army officers told the Teals their son "got the full blast" of the explosion.

"I hope they fix him up good," Ms. Teal said.

"No, no, no," Mr. Teal said. "What's in that casket is a cold, damp piece of shell."

"Maybe they can crack the lid just so I can hold his hand," she said.

"Damn it, honey," Mr. Teal exploded. "That's not him, that's not the person who walked out of here, that's not John Robert!"

"O.K., honey, O.K.," she said.

Rain beat against the windows. The living room grew gray. Both the Teals started to cry. "When I heard the news I felt almost, almost . . ." Ms. Teal paused, knowing the word but not quite ready to bring it into the room. "Relief."

"I was dreading this every day of my life," she explained, between sniffles. "So when the Army finally came to the door and told us J. R. was dead, it was like this big thing hanging over my head just went away."

Tuskegee, Ala.

Sgt. Aubrey Bell grew up poor. He was raised in the woods drawing water from a well and eating whatever his mother stuck between two slices of bread. Butter sandwiches. Mayonnaise sandwiches. Ketchup sandwiches. You name it.

His life, as his friends tell it, was taking a little and making a lot.

"He was just a cheerful, happy dude," said Eric Wingate, a childhood friend.

Sergeant Bell, 32, didn't especially savor the intense Iraqi heat, or sleeping in tents with 100 men and 100 pairs of ripening combat boots.

But he liked children. And in Iraq, the 280-pound soldier in the XXXL uniform drew them like a magnet. "I used to always ask him, why you let them get so close to you?" said his fiancée, Philandria Ezell. "And he'd say, honey, they're just kids."

On Oct. 27, Sergeant Bell, an Alabama National Guardsman with the 214th Military Police Company, was shot in the stomach in front of a police station, where he had been training Iraqi police officers.

His family is furious. As they sat around on folding chairs in his mother's front yard, an ice chest of Miller Lite at their feet, they glared at the ground.

"Why is it O.K. if he dies?" his cousin Vecie Williams asked. "The president don't care. You see him on TV. He says this, he says that. But show me one tear, one tear."

Something that nags them is whether Sergeant Bell was wearing a bulletproof vest. In many of the pictures he sent home he is not. There is nothing between him and the enemy but a few layers of cotton.

"The Army people say he got shot," Ms. Ezell said. "But they don't say nothing more."

Bedford, Mass.

Brian Hart is on a quest for answers. By night, he sends e-mail messages and posts notes on electronic bulletin boards. By day, he works the phones.

Mr. Hart is haunted by the ambush that killed his son. Pfc. John Hart, a 20-year-old paratrooper with the 173rd Infantry Brigade, was hit in the neck and killed on Oct. 18 in Taza, near Kirkuk. It was the same late-night attack that took the life of Lieutenant Bernstein. Their unit was ordered to find the enemy. The enemy found them.

But what happened after that, after the grenades ripped into the Humvee?

"Did John bleed to death? Did he suffer?" asked Alma Hart, his mother.

Mr. Hart is more critical.

"The Army hasn't given us any more information than a three-sentence press release," he said. "It's awful."

An Army spokeswoman, Shari Lawrence, said what relatives are told about a soldier's death was sometimes incomplete "because we try to notify the family as quickly as possible."

So the Harts have turned to their son's comrades for information. They have learned that some soldiers have been camping out in water treatment facilities and sleeping on pipes. And that others lack the right protective gear. And that most Humvees, like the one their son was riding in, are not armored.

"It breaks your heart that these kids are living in real deprivation out there and we don't know about it," Mrs. Hart said.

Maj. Gary Tallman, an Army spokesman, said that nearly 50,000 troops in Iraq, more than a third of the total force there, did not have bulletproof vests, but that the Army hoped to have them outfitted by next year.

The Harts are working with members of Congress to get more resources now. They still support the war. They just want it fought better.

These are the other Americans who died in Iraq in the last two weeks:

Pfc. Paul J. Bueche, 19, of Birmingham, Ala., died on Oct. 21 in Balad when a tire on a helicopter exploded as he was changing it.

Over the next two days, Pvt. Jason M. Ward, 25, of Tulsa, Okla., and Specialist John P. Johnson, 24, of Houston — died of injuries not related to combat.

On Oct. 24, Sgt. Michael S. Hancock, 29, of Yreka, Calif., was killed when a grain silo he was guarding in Mosul was attacked by Iraqis, and Specialist Jose L. Mora, 26, of Bell Gardens, Calif., was killed in a mortar attack in Samarra.

On Oct. 26. Pfc. Steven Acosta, 19, of Calexico, Calif., died in Baquba from a "non-hostile" gunshot wound, an incident that is still under investigation. Lt. Col. Charles H. Buehring, 40, of Fayetteville, N.C., was killed in a rocket attack on the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad. Pvt. Joseph R. Guerrera, 20, of Dunn, N.C., was killed in Baghdad when his vehicle was hit with a bomb. And Pfc. Rachel K. Bosveld, 19, of Waupun, Wis., died in a mortar attack on a police station in Abu Ghraib.

The next day, Pvt. Jonathan I. Falaniko, 20, of Pago Pago, American Samoa, was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near a police station in Baghdad.

On Oct. 28, Pvt. Algernon Adams, 36, of Aiken, S.C., died of injuries not related to combat. And Sgt. Michael Paul Barrera, 26, of Von Ormy, Texas, and Specialist Isaac Campoy, 21, of Douglas, Ariz, were killed in Baquba when a tank was hit by a bomb. The last two soldiers were killed on Saturday in a roadside bombing in Mosul. The military has not yet named them.

West Point, N.Y.

The sky was clear, the air was crisp and the general had a story to share.

The old men in the American Legion hats tipped their heads forward to listen. The Green Beret commanders looked down at their boots.

Brig. Gen. Leo Brooks Jr., commandant of the United States Military Academy, explained why Lieutenant David Bernstein, 24, valedictorian of his high school class, fifth in his class at West Point, was winning a Bronze Star. "That night there had been a rocket attack at the Kirkuk airfield," General Brooks began.

Lieutenant Bernstein and his men were searching the countryside. Suddenly, Iraqi forces surrounded them and blasted their Humvee with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Private Hart was killed instantly.

"They were taking fire from the back and from the front," the general said. "And Lieutenant Bernstein was hit."

But his driver had fallen out of the truck and was pinned underneath. And the enemy was advancing. With a bullet in his leg, Lieutenant Bernstein tried five times to rescue his driver. The fifth time, he pulled him out.

But the lieutenant had lost so much blood, he was now dying. He fired a few rounds before he fell.

"I have seen the face of terror, I have felt the stinging cold of fear, I have lived the times most would say are best forgotten. But at least I can say I am proud of what I was — a soldier," Lt. Col. Kevin McDonnell said in a graveside speech. "I am not sure who originally said those words. But they remind me of David."

War horror: Rape ruining women's health
During five years of war in Congo, gang rape has become so prevalent that thousands of women are suffering from vaginal injuries. There are so many cases being reported that the destruction of the vagina is considered a war injury and recorded by doctors as a crime of combat.
Young soldiers from the dozens of factions that roam eastern Congo -- wired on cocaine, drunk from palm wine -- have turned rape into a primary weapon of war.
In March, for instance, hundreds of women stripped naked in the center of Goma and challenged thousands of dumbfounded onlookers, mostly men.
''If you are going to rape us, rape us now, because this must stop today,'' Mama Jeanne Banyere, head of the Federation of Protestant Women in Goma, recalled telling the crowd.

In 10 years almost 400 women have been murdered in this city on the border between Mexico and El Paso, Texas, and the killings continue. Now a courageous Mexican-American journalist is alleging a group of six businessmen is behind the slaughter. Described as 'untouchables', their wealth puts them above the law. Their motive is said to be blood sport. Law enforcers on either side have the choice, according to one former trafficker, of being 'very rich, or very dead'.
Since then, 370 women have been killed. Some deaths may be attributed to domestic violence or random crime. But more than a third of the women were raped before death. Most victims are tortured and mutilated. Sometimes the killer leaves a signature; a breast or a nipple is sliced off.
'The girls are carefully screened,' she says. 'They're always a safe bet. Disposable women. They are watched in advance for suitability - young and poor.'
Washington alleges at least 100 women have been killed by these men, of whom all but one are multi-millionaires.

'It sounds crazy,' said psychologist Dr Stanley Krippner, who teaches in Cuidad Juarez, at the Institution of Medical and Advanced Behavioural Technology. He attributes the murderers' behaviour to a mix of male bonding and wild fantasies.
'It is one aspect of men in power,' he said, 'especially in a developing country. They know they can get away with outrageous behaviour because they are more powerful than the police and the government.'

The wealth of Diebold e-mail, which totals about 11MB when compressed, includes internal conversations that cast doubt on the company's ability to sell secure software. Some messages note that lists of bugs were "irrecoverably lost," while others complain that "I have never been at any other company that has been so miss (sic) managed."


He is condemned in this by his own words. Who can forget this touching bit or propaganda:
"There's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to hug and that's me and I know what it's like."

And if there are TV cameras he talks tough, like the hero he imagines himself to be. "Bring 'em on! " he challenged Iraqis. "We'll smoke 'em out of their holes!" he said about the Taliban (uh, George, they're still there...) "Dead or Alive!" he told the cameras about Osama (who is still out there leading the Chimp like a bull with a nose ring!)

Remember how Bush likes to call terrorists "cowardly killers"? That is the pot calling the kettle black if I've ever heard it. Hello Pot? You're a former college cheerleader who went AWOL from the reserves and now is afraid to attend even one military funeral for a soldier you sent to die.
And then when the real men die in battle Bush goes into hiding and tries to pretend that they never even existed — because it would freaking look BAD if the public saw that he had sent troops to their deaths?

Box cutters were found on US Airways planes in Boston and Philadelphia on Tuesday, and federal officials said they were investigating how the tools made it on board. A passenger spotted the box cutter and pointed it out to the crew,

When a reporter than asked, “Is that what you thought it meant when you wrote it?” Rumsfeld answered, “It’s close enough for government work!”

The significant thing about the Bannergate flap is that it was, like the invasion of Iraq itself, totally optional.


For example, at Diebold -- whose corporate chief, Wally O'Dell, a top Bush fundraiser, has publicly committed himself to "delivering" his home state's votes to Bush next year -- the election division is run by Bob Urosevich. Bob's brother, Todd, is a top executive at "rival" ES&S.

Ahmanson also has major holdings in ES&S, whose former CEO is Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. When Hagel ran for office, his own company counted the votes; needless to say, his initial victory was reported as "an amazing upset." Hagel still has a million-dollar stake in the parent company of ES&S. In Florida, Jeb Bush's first choice for a running mate in his 1998 gubernatorial race was ES&S lobbyist Sandra Mortham, who made a mint installing the machines that counted Jeb's votes.

Sequoia also has a colorful history, most recently in Louisiana, where it was the center of a massive corruption case that sent top state officials to jail for bribery, most of it funneled through Mob-connected front firms. Sequoia executives were also indicted, but escaped trial after giving immunized testimony against state officials. The British-owned company's corporate parent is private equity firm Madison Dearborn -- a partner of the Carlyle Group, where George Bush I makes millions trolling the world for war pork, privatizations and sweetheart deals with government insiders.

Meanwhile, the shadowy defense contractor SAIC has jumped into the vote-counting game, both directly and through spinoffs by its top brass, including Admiral Bill Owens, former military aide to Dick Cheney and Carlyle honcho Frank Carlucci, and ex-CIA chief Robert Gates.

The mad rush to install unverifiable computer voting is driven by the Help America Vote Act, signed by Bush last year. The chief lobbying group pushing for the act was a consortium of arms dealers -- those disinterested corporate citizens -- including Northop-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin.