Bush lied, Gore contends

Bush lied, Gore contends
WASHINGTON -- Al Gore accused President Bush on Thursday of lying about a link between Al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein and said the president refuses to back down from that position to avoid political fallout.
"They dare not admit the truth lest they look like complete fools for launching our country into a reckless, discretionary war against a nation that posed no immediate threat to us whatsoever," Gore, the former vice president who lost the presidency to Bush in 2000, said during a speech at Georgetown University Law Center.
Gore accused Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney of deliberately ignoring warnings from international intelligence services, the CIA and the Pentagon before the Iraq war that their claim of a link between Al-Qaida and Saddam was false.
Gore then added: "So when the bipartisan 9/11 commission issued its report finding 'no credible evidence' of an Iraq-Al-Qaida connection, it should not have come as a surprise. It should not have caught the White House off guard."
Bioterrorism's price tag
PITTSBURGH -- The federal government has spent $14.5 billion over the past four years to bolster the country's defenses against a bioterror attack, according to an analysis by university researchers.
In what they claim is the most comprehensive accounting of government spending on bioterrorism, researchers with the Biosecurity Center of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center say the federal government has spent nearly all that money -- about $14 billion -- since Sept. 11, 2001, to prevent a bioterror attack on American soil.
The report, published this month in the center's quarterly journal, Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, does not include federal spending by law enforcement agencies such as the FBI and most of the bioterrorism-prevention money spent by the Pentagon, the Department of Energy or Department of Justice. The report also does not evaluate how the money has been spent.
Dozens hurt in Iran crash
TEHRAN, Iran -- A tanker truck carrying gasoline crashed into packed buses in southern Iran and erupted in flames, killing more than 70 people, news reports said today. At least 100 people were said to be hurt. The buses were stopped at a police station on the main road between Bam and Zahedan when the truck smashed into them Thursday evening, said Heidar Ali Nouraei, mayor of the city of Zahedan, about 70 miles away.
Trucks and buses often wait outside police stations on highways in Iran to be inspected for drugs and other contraband. The truck was carrying more than 4,500 gallons of gas. Nouraei said the casualties could have been much lower but there wasn't any firefighting equipment nearby to douse the flames.
S. Korea to investigatebeheaded man's case
SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea will investigate its handling of the kidnapping case of Kim Sun-il, a South Korean worker beheaded by Islamic militants in Iraq earlier this week, officials said. The government is looking into the role of Kim's employer in reporting the disappearance and a controversy surrounding a videotape that Associated Press Television News received before it was widely known that Kim was missing.
The Board of Audit and Inspection will investigate a "dispute" between the Foreign Ministry and The Associated Press over an AP statement that one of the agency's reporters asked the ministry about the missing South Korean in early June, Presidential spokesman Yoon Tae-young said. President Roh Moo-hyun ordered the investigation Thursday. Kim, 33, was killed by militants after South Korea refused the kidnappers' demand to stop a troop dispatch to Iraq and his body was found near Baghdad on Tuesday.
Appeals court thwartsFCC's attempts at change
NEW YORK -- A federal appeals court struck down an effort by the Federal Communications Commission to make sweeping changes in media ownership rules, handing a victory to public interest groups and consumer advocates who argued the changes would limit diverse sources of news.
The ruling by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia threw out rules that would have allowed companies to own more television and radio stations in a single market. The court also left intact an order it made in September blocking the rules, announced in June 2003, from taking effect.
However, the court also found the FCC was within its rights to repeal a blanket prohibition on companies owning both a newspaper and a television station in the same city.
Associated Press