Republican senator says he is leaving Congress

Republican senator says
he is leaving Congress

OMAHA, Neb. — Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, a thorn in his own party’s side when it comes to Iraq, announced Monday that he would retire from the Senate and not seek any elected office in 2008.

“I said after I was elected in 1996 that 12 years in the Senate would probably be enough, and it is,” Hagel said.

His exit means one more seat the minority Republicans will be forced to defend, and both parties are expected to bring in heavy hitters to vie for the spot. The contenders could include Democrat Bob Kerrey, a former U.S. senator and governor, and Republican Mike Johanns, the U.S. agriculture secretary and another former governor. Republican state Attorney General Jon Bruning has already announced his plans to run.

Kerrey has talked to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada about a possible run, and plans to meet today with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who leads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Paul Johnson, who managed both of Kerrey’s Senate campaigns.

Ex-prostitute to detail
relationship with senator

NEW ORLEANS — A former New Orleans prostitute who says she had an affair with Sen. David Vitter has passed a lie-detector test and will provide details of the four-month relationship at a press conference today, according to Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt.

Wendy Cortez, whose real name is Wendy Ellis, says she had a sexual relationship with Vitter, R-La., in 1999, when he was a state legislator.

Copies of the results of Cortez’s polygraph test, which she took at Flynt’s request, will be provided to reporters at the news conference at Flynt’s office in Beverly Hills, Calif., Hustler said in a news release Monday.

Vitter spokesman Joel Digrado wouldn’t comment on the Flynt news conference. In an e-mail, Digrado said, “Sen. Vitter and his wife have addressed all of this very directly. The senator is focused on important Louisiana priorities like the water resources bill and the Iraq debate.”

Rocket fired from Gaza
injures Israeli soldiers

JERUSALEM — A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip struck a tent filled with sleeping soldiers in a southern Israeli army base, wounding more than 25 of them early today, Israeli medics and the army said.

The army confirmed that the soldiers in the tent that was hit were all recent recruits in basic training at an army base in southern Israel less than a mile north of the Gaza Strip.

Eli Bin, director of the Magen David Adom rescue service, said one of the wounded soldiers was in critical condition, two were seriously injured, 25 others were lightly to moderately injured. The wounded were being evacuated to hospitals in southern Israel.

Islamic Jihad, a small radical militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack.

28 killed in suicide attack

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber on a motorized rickshaw detonated explosives Monday in a marketplace in southern Afghanistan, killing 28 people in one of the deadliest bombings since the fall of the Taliban. Children selling chewing gum and cigarettes were among the victims of the blast.

The attacker was apparently targeting a police commander when he detonated his bomb near a taxi stand around 6:30 p.m. in the town of Gereshk in Helmand province, the world’s largest poppy-growing region and site of the country’s worst violence this year.

Gereshk district chief Abdul Manaf Khan said 28 people were killed, including 13 police and 15 civilians. The provincial chief of public health, Enayatullah Ghafari, said the hospital recorded 26 deaths and 60 wounded, though he said some of the dead probably weren’t brought to the hospital and the death toll was likely higher.

Sen. Craig files papers
to withdraw guilty plea

MINNEAPOLIS — Sen. Larry Craig sought to undo his guilty plea in an airport sex sting Monday, claiming that he admitted to the charge in a panic to avoid triggering a story about his sexuality in his hometown newspaper.

Craig had denied to editors at the Idaho Statesman that he was gay just weeks before his June 11 arrest in the bathroom of the Minneapolis airport. The paper didn’t run a story, but Craig thought his arrest would change that.

Craig’s attorneys wrote that “faced with the pressure of an aggressive interrogation and the consequences of public embarrassment, Senator Craig panicked and chose to plead to a crime he did not commit.”

Craig’s affidavit said he decided on the day of his arrest to plead guilty to whatever charge was eventually filed against him.

Associated Press