Intelligence bill passed

Intelligence bill passed

WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday passed legislation governing next year’s intelligence budget that demands lawmakers be given greater access to the nation’s most closely held secrets.

The bill is the latest attempt by Democrats, struggling to challenge President Bush on major national security issues, to step up their role in overseeing an intelligence program they say has gone astray.

The bill would block two-thirds of the federal covert operations budget until each member of the congressional intelligence committees is briefed on all secret operations under way.

Oil prices drop again

NEW YORK — Oil prices settled sharply lower for the second time in a row Wednesday, leaving crude more than $10 cheaper in just two days of frenzied trading and prompting speculation that the hard-charging market may be running out of steam.

Light, sweet crude for August delivery fell $4.14 to settle at $134.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after earlier sinking as low as $132. The drop follows a $6.44 sell-off Tuesday, crude’s biggest since the Gulf War.

But even with this week’s sell-off, prices remain about 80 percent above where they were a year ago and up about 40 percent from the start of the year.

Criticism of Israeli swap

JERUSALEM — Critics of Israel’s lopsided prisoner exchange with Lebanese guerrillas said Wednesday that such deals only encourage more hostage-taking — a fear underscored by Gaza militants who said the swap proves that kidnapping is the only language Israel understands.

The deal, in which a notorious Lebanese attacker, four other militants and the bodies of 199 Arab fighters were traded for two dead Israeli soldiers, closed a painful chapter from Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon.

But it also raised questions about whether Israel should reconsider its policy of bringing back every soldier from the battlefield at just about any cost.

Car bombs kill 20 in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A car bomb killed at least seven children and 11 other people in a northern city, providing a reminder that militants still can cause casualties despite security improvements that led U.S. troops to return a southern province to Iraqi control Wednesday.

Ninety people also were injured in the blast at a popular outdoor market in Tal Afar, said a police official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Also in the north, a car bomb killed two civilians in Mosul, police reported.

Damaging tobacco report

WASHINGTON — Tobacco companies have manipulated menthol levels to attract young cigarette smokers and keep older ones, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health reported Wednesday.

Their finding, with which industry spokesmen disagree, is based on a review of more than 500 internal tobacco-industry documents dated from 1985 through 2007.

The documents showed, according to the researchers, that tobacco companies studied how controlling levels of menthol could increase brand sales. They concluded that new and young smokers liked mild menthol that masked the harshness of tobacco smoke. Veteran smokers, the companies are said to have concluded, favored stronger doses of menthol for its cooling effects on their throats.

Executive privilege invoked

WASHINGTON — President Bush invoked executive privilege to keep Congress from seeing the FBI report of an interview with Vice President Dick Cheney and other records related to the administration’s leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity in 2003.

The president’s decision drew a sharp protest Wednesday from Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, which had subpoenaed Attorney General Michael Mukasey to turn over the documents.

Waxman left little doubt he would soon move for a committee vote to hold Mukasey in contempt of Congress.

At least 40 die in crash

CAIRO, Egypt — A train plowed into three vehicles in a northern Egyptian town Wednesday, killing at least 40 people and injuring 50, a police official said.

The collision occurred after a large truck slammed into the three vehicles, pushing them onto the tracks, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press. The train en route from Matruh to Alexandria crushed the cars as it reached the intersection.

Thirty-five people were declared dead at the scene, and five died in a hospital.

Combined dispatches