There is no evidence that Soros is planning a financial attack on U.S. markets. But with a bankroll of $7 billion and a passionate hatred of George Bush, Soros has many people worried.

No doubt we should brace ourselves for Bush pounding his fist on the table, demanding to know "who ordered this goddamned war anyway?"

After Hutton, we should all be on our guard for narrowly drawn terms of reference that handily exclude any discomfort for the government. Having learned our lesson, what do we spot in yesterday's Commons announcement by Jack Straw? For one thing, there is an ambiguity, arising from a poor bit of wording. The panel is "to examine any discrepancies between the intelligence gathered, evaluated and used by the government before the conflict, and between that intelligence and what has been discovered by the Iraq Survey Group since the end of the conflict". It sounds nerdy, but the meaning of that clumsy sentence all turns on the second "and". One reading is that it allows the inquiry to probe the difference between the raw intelligence and the way it was "used" by the government to make the case for war. Alternatively it could mean the inquiry is only to investigate the difference between the raw data and the actual picture on the ground.

The latter interpretation would favour the government, by putting the spies in the dock alone, forcing them to explain why their estimate proved so wrong - and skipping over the politicians' role entirely. You don't have to be a cynic to expect that this is precisely how the new committee will define its terms. After all, Straw said there was no need to examine the way government processed and presented the intelligence it received - no need because those issues had been so "comprehensively covered by Lord Hutton".

The Massachusetts high court ruled Wednesday that only full, equal marriage rights for gay couples ? rather than civil unions ? are constitutional, clearing the way for the nation's first same-sex marriages in the state as early as May. "The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal," the four justices who ruled in favor of gay marriage wrote in the advisory opinion requested by the state Senate.

Moreover, it is likely, as in the anthrax case, that the ricin attack was homegrown and not a result of international terrorism.
And at presstime, officials were trying to confirm their initial findings that the powder is ricin. The tests were being performed at the US Army's Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMARIID) at Fort Detrick, Md.
Indeed, to this day, the FBI still hasn't been able to re-create the kind of anthrax that was used in the 2001 attacks.
"It's the third most toxic substance known to mankind," says Bruce Hoffman, an expert on terror at the RAND Corp. in Washington.
The FBI has identified the sender as a fleet owner of a tanker company, although no arrests have been made.

mred - of course the ricin found in paris was of course, not ricin. "Substance Found in Train Station Was Not Ricin, French Say"

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he is not ready to conclude that Iraq (news - web sites) did not have weapons of mass destruction before U.S. troops invaded to depose Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) last year.
Rumsfeld offered several examples of what he called "alternative views" about why no weapons have been discovered in Iraq, starting with the possibility that banned arms never existed. "I suppose that's possible, but not likely," he said.
Other possibilities cited by Rumsfeld:
_ Weapons may have been transferred to a third country before U.S. troops arrived in March.
_ Weapons may have been dispersed throughout Iraq and hidden.
_ Weapons existed but were destroyed by the Iraqis before the war started.