Senator questions Bush's priorities

Senator questionsBush's priorities
WASHINGTON -- Sen. John Edwards is calling for major improvements to national security, saying the Bush administration has addressed some vulnerabilities against terrorism, but not the "full range" of threats.
Favoring tax cuts for the wealthy over adequate funding for domestic security is "out of whack," Edwards said in remarks prepared for delivery today.
Edwards, a freshman lawmaker and likely Democratic candidate for president, says the country needs a new intelligence agency, improved security for vulnerable targets like nuclear power plants and skyscrapers, and better funding and equipment for firefighters, police officers and health care workers.
"Against all reason, the administration stubbornly clings to tax cuts that will benefit only the top 1 percent of Americans while arguing that we can't afford critical measures to protect the very lives of our people," Edwards says.
"This administration continues to have its priorities out of whack," he says.
Sentenced to death
NEW DELHI, India -- Three Indian men were sentenced to death today for their role in a deadly attack on Parliament that brought India to the brink of war with Pakistan.
Judge S.N. Dhingra sentenced the three under a new law that describes any aid to terrorists as terrorism, a capital offense.
Lawyers for the three defendants -- all Indian citizens -- said they will appeal. The wife of one was sentenced to five years in prison for failing to alert police about the plot.
The three men were convicted Monday of helping to plan the Dec. 13, 2001, assault, in which five suspected Islamic militants shot nine people to death before they were themselves were killed by security forces.
Russia's concerns
MOSCOW -- Russia expressed regret today over the U.S. decision to begin deploying strategic interceptors to defend the United States from missile attack, a move Moscow said would destabilize the international security system and lead to a new arms race.
The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a two-page statement that also expressed concern that the development of such a system would divert resources from other real threats, above all the fight against international terrorism.
Development of missile defense systems was severely limited under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which expired in June, six months after President Bush announced that Washington would withdraw from the 30-year old agreement.
Marshal Igor Sergeyev, a senior adviser to President Vladimir Putin on strategic issues, told the Interfax news agency that Washington had not provided "any weighty arguments" that the new system was not directed against Russia.
Associated Press