Deal frees U.S. citizen captured in Afghanistan

Deal frees U.S. citizencaptured in Afghanistan
RICHMOND, Va. -- A U.S. citizen who was captured on the Afghanistan battlefield and held without charges for nearly three years has been freed and returned to Saudi Arabia today, his lawyer said.
A military plane carrying Yaser Esam Hamdi landed at 6 a.m. Eastern time in Riyadh, Frank Dunham Jr. said. Hamdi's case led to a Supreme Court decision limiting the president's powers to indefinitely hold enemy combatants.
Hamdi will be not be charged with any crime under an agreement negotiated by his lawyer and the Justice Department. The agreement requires Hamdi to give up his American citizenship, renounce terrorism and not sue the U.S. government over his captivity.
Hamdi was born in Louisiana in 1980 to Saudi parents and raised in Saudi Arabia. He was captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan in late 2001 during the fight against the Taliban regime.
He contends he never fought against the United States and that he had been trying to get out of Afghanistan when he was captured.
Investigators seek causeof bus crash that killed 15
WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. -- While relatives kept vigil at hospitals and church parishioners prayed for the dead, investigators scoured the crash site where a bus packed with gamblers overturned, killing 14 passengers and the driver.
Thirty people were aboard the Mississippi-bound charter bus from Chicago when it flipped over early Saturday on Interstate 55, 25 miles north of Memphis. Sixteen people were injured, many seriously.
The twice-a-year trip had become a tradition for the passengers, as much about visiting, laughing and reminiscing as it was about trying to strike it rich at a casino in Tunica, Miss.
A reconstruction of the accident was under way. But officials cautioned that a final police report would not be ready for a week. Findings by the National Transportation Safety Board will take longer.
American, Norwegianshare economics prize
STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- An American and a Norwegian won the 2004 Nobel prize in economics today for their work in determining the driving force behind business cycles worldwide.
Finn E. Kydland, 60, of Norway, teaches at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Edward C. Prescott, 63 -- the fifth American to receive the economics award since 2000 -- teaches at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz., and serves as an adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
The pair received Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their work that showed that driving forces behind business cycle fluctuations and the design of economic policy are key areas in macroeconomic research.
Kydland and Prescott made fundamental contributions to macroeconomic analysis and the practice of monetary and fiscal policy in many countries, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in its citation.
Prescott earned a doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University in 1967. His research has focused on what causes economic depressions, why some countries thrive while others stagnate economically and what boosts a nation's economic productivity.
Kydland has done work on how the money supply affects the business cycle and on international trade.
This year's prize is worth $1.3 million.
Last year's winners were American Robert F. Engle and Briton Clive W.J. Granger for developing statistical tools that improved the forecasting of rates of economic growth, interest rates and stock prices.
The economics prize is the only award not established in the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. The medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace prizes were first awarded in 1901, while the economics prize was set up separately by the Swedish central bank in 1968.
Sharon is facingno-confidence votes
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has alienated his right-wing Likud party with plans to withdraw from Gaza, begins a new legislative session fighting for his government's survival.
Lawmakers were scheduled to vote on two motions of no confidence today, the first day of Israel's winter parliamentary session. Sharon was expected to survive the votes with help from the moderate Labor Party, which is not in the coalition but supports the Gaza disengagement plan.
But Labor said it would not necessarily support Sharon on other fronts, such as domestic policy.
"There is no longer an automatic safety net," Labor legislator Dalia Itzik told Israel's Channel Two TV.
Associated Press