After all, a pragmatic alternative was available: to allow companies from all countries to bid, but quietly to award the best contracts to the preferred ones. No: Wolfowitz's statement was an expression of distilled ideology, and so something of a diplomatic indulgence.

Federal officials said Thursday that the flu has hit hard in 24 states, nearly doubling the number since last week and including almost the entire Western half of the country.
The early and intense outbreak in some Western states has swamped many hospitals with sick children and dried up vaccine supplies.
epidemiologists are not ready to predict just how severe the flu season will be, since it still may peak as early as December, rather than February, which is the norm.
The CDC also said Tuesday it is trying to redistribute what's left of the 83 million flu shots made, and may buy fewer than 500,000 additional doses from a British maker.

Home Secretary David Blunkett threatened to quit as a member of Amnesty International tonight after the human rights group criticised his anti-terror policies.
Amnesty said the Government’s emergency measures to combat terrorism had created a “Guantanamo Bay in our own backyard”.

Yet Canadian officials suggested Bush had backed down in a conversation Thursday with Prime Minister Jean Chretien. "(The president) told me that the mention of Canada in some press that we were to be excluded from economic activities in Iraq was not appropriate and that he was telling me basically not to worry," Chretien said.
McClellan had reiterated earlier Thursday that the administration had no intention of rethinking the policy

"KPMG's actions "demonstrate a concerted pattern of obstruction and non-compliance, threatening the integrity of the IRS examination process," the U.S. Justice Department alleged in a filing in federal court in Washington on Dec. 8. "
mr ed- sounds like the 911 inquiry.

REBEL attacks in war-torn Chechnya killed eight Russian soldiers and wounded eight more over the last 24 hours, an official in the Moscow-backed Chechen administration said today.
Federal positions came under rebel fire 22 times in the past day, killing five soldiers and wounding seven, the Chechen official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
At least 150 Chechens were rounded up in security sweeps over the past 24 hours. The sweeps have been widely condemned by civilians for alleged mass human rights abuses.

A majority of the US Federal Communications Commission has conditionally voted for News Corp's acquisition of the No.1 US satellite television service DirecTV, sources said.
News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch has said he would not have any financial incentive to engage in anti-competitive tactics. The company has also agreed to concessions that would make sports and local broadcast stations available to competitors at a reasonable cost.

ABOUT 300 of the 700 members in the first new Iraqi army battalion set up by the US-led coalition have resigned, a coalition official said today.

A U.S. military investigator has recommended administrative action -- not a court-martial -- for a U.S. lieutenant colonel accused of using improper methods to force information out of an Iraqi detainee, a defense attorney said Wednesday.

In an embarrassing setback that threatens the credibility of Germany's terrorist investigations, a Hamburg judge today released a Moroccan man from prison based on new evidence indicating he did not belong to the Al-Qaeda cell implicated in the Sept. 11 attacks.

By implication, the judge's decision also raised questions about the conviction of another man in the case, Mounir el-Motassadeq, who was sentenced this year to 15 years after being convicted of similar charges.

Red-faced Australian police investigating two men in Ku Klux Klan hoods who sped past a police camera at twice the legal speed limit making rude gestures have admitted the offenders were senior constables.

The preamble to the agreement states that government procurement: "...should not be prepared, adopted or applied to foreign or domestic products and services and to foreign or domestic suppliers so as to afford protection to domestic products or services or domestic suppliers and should not discriminate among foreign products or services or among foreign suppliers."