New Hampshire Health News Digest

U.S. Officials See Hussein : "Saddam Hussein may be playing a significant role in coordinating and directing attacks by his loyalists against American forces in Iraq, senior American officials said Thursday. The officials cited recent intelligence reports indicating that Mr. Hussein is acting as a catalyst or even a leader in the armed opposition, probably from a base of operations near Tikrit, his hometown and stronghold. A leadership role by Mr. Hussein would go far beyond anything previously acknowledged by the Bush administration, which has sought in its public remarks to portray the former Iraqi leader as being on the run and irrelevant. Officials acknowledged that the reports of a significant role by Mr. Hussein could not be corroborated, and one senior official cautioned that recent intelligence reports contained conflicting assessments. Nonetheless, three senior officials described reports of a larger role by Mr. Hussein as credible, and a Defense Department offic...

Iraqis Get Used to Life Without Hussein, and Many Find They Like It : "On Friday evening, the American authorities lifted the curfew on Baghdad starting early Sunday morning, saying life here was returning to normal. Across the city on Saturday, numerous Iraqis agreed and provided ample evidence. Streets swarmed with people shopping and socializing. Coffee houses were packed. Families strolled; vendors clogged the sidewalks. The manager of a travel agency said he is busy for the first time in more than a decade, primarily booking thousands of vacations to the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, where Iraqis had been forbidden to travel since 1991. 'People feel free to travel now, and they want to go because there's amazing scenery up there, and it's clean and safe,' said Ahmed Abdel Hamid, the manager. Outside the city passport office on Saturday afternoon, dozens of Iraqis milled about, waiting to apply for travel papers. Rouda Jasim Ali sat under a tree outside...

WorldNetDaily: Al-Qaida planned U.S. forest fires : "In August, Australian authorities launched an investigation into reports al-Qaida planned to spark bushfires in a new wave of devastating terror attacks. A June 25 FBI memo to United States law enforcement agencies revealed a senior al-Qaida detainee claimed to have developed a plan to start midsummer forest fires in the U.S >>> The memo, obtained by the Arizona Republic newspaper, said an unidentified detainee revealed he hoped to create several large, catastrophic wildfires at once. "The detainee believed that significant damage to the U.S. economy would result and once it was realized that the fires were terrorist acts, U.S. citizens would put pressure on the U.S. government to change its policies," the memo said. The detainee told investigators his plan called for three or four operatives to travel to the U.S. and set timed explosive devices in forests and grasslands. >>> In fact, Ar...

Telegraph | News | After Tony and Kofi fail, Brad and Jennifer try Mid-East diplomacy : "After Tony and Kofi fail, Brad and Jennifer try Mid-East diplomacy By Inigo Gilmore in Jerusalem (Filed: 26/10/2003) Bill Clinton failed, Tony Blair drew a blank and Kofi Annan made little progress. But now a team of Hollywood film stars is about to visit the Middle East on a private peace mission, in the belief that their charms will work magic on the Israeli-Arab conflict. Brad Pitt, his wife, Jennifer Aniston, and Danny DeVito are among the stars who aim to succeed where world statesmen have stumbled. >>> In a region suffering from peace initiative fatigue, however, Israelis and Palestinians have greeted news of the Hollywood initiative with bemusement and incredulity. For some, the prospect of DeVito sitting down to talk peace with Hamas militants over a cup of sweet tea, or Pitt breaking bread at a sabbath dinner with hardline Jewish settlers, is preposterous. Oz ...

: "42 die in Baghdad carnage By Paul Sims, Evening Standard Up to 42 people are feared dead today after five large explosions ripped through the centre of Baghdad in the bloodiest day of terrorism since the end of Saddam Hussein's regime. The blast blew down a 40ft section of the wall in front of the three-storey Red Cross building, destroying a dozen cars and shattering a water main. Emergency services fought to control the blaze as ambulances swept through the city, ferrying the injured to hospital. Witness Salah Mansour as he said: 'When the driver reached near the Red Cross building he got down from the vehicle and a guard went up to ask him why he had stopped there. 'The driver said he was trying to fix the car and then the blast just went off.' In apparently co-ordinated attacks across the city at the height of the morning rush hour, four police stations were also targeted, bringing the total dead to at least 37. At least 225 other people were in...

FT.com Home US : "Bill Gates (pictured) on Monday offered the first public look at Longhorn, the next generation of the Windows PC operating system that he said would be Microsoft's 'biggest release of this decade and the biggest since Windows 95.' However, the Microsoft chairman gave no timetable for the launch of the software, which has already slipped to a later timetable than originally thought. With Longhorn now not expected before 2006, Microsoft faces a gap in its new product cycle that has left a question over its growth rate in the meantime. Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer, has called Longhorn a 'bet the company' product for Microsoft and insisted it will not be released before the company is confident it is ready. Despite the delays, Microsoft gave an early look at the next Windows on Monday in an effort to build backing for the operating system among the many independent software developers who write their own applications to run on P...

ABCNEWS.com : Attack Drives U.S. Forces From Baghdad HQ : "BAGHDAD, Iraq Oct. 27 BAGHDAD, Iraq Oct. 27 � The U.S. occupation authority retreated from its headquarters after Iraqi insurgents attacked the heavily guarded hotel with a missile barrage that killed an American colonel, wounded 18 people and sent the visiting U.S. deputy defense secretary scurrying for safety. The bold blow at the heart of the U.S. presence here clearly rattled U.S. confidence that it is defeating Iraq's shadowy insurgents. Paul Wolfowitz, the shaken-looking but unhurt Pentagon deputy, said the strike Sunday against the Al Rasheed Hotel, from nearly point-blank range, "will not deter us from completing our mission" in Iraq. "We'll have to get the security situation under control," Secretary of State Colin Powell told NBC TV.

Wired News: Three R's: Reading, Writing, RFID : "Radio-frequency identification tags -- which have been hailed as the next-generation bar code -- consist of a microchip outfitted with a tiny antenna that broadcasts an ID number to a reader unit. The reader searches a database for the number and finds the related file, which contains the tagged item's description, or in the case of Enterprise Charter, the student's information. Unlike bar codes, which must be manually scanned, RFID-tagged items can be read when they are in proximity to a reader unit, essentially scanning themselves. The school uses passive RFID tags that are activated when radio waves from the reader reach the chip's antenna. (Active RFID tags incorporate a battery that constantly broadcasts the chip's ID number and are much more expensive.) The technology has raised a ruckus in recent months, as companies such as Wal-Mart move from bar codes to RFID to track merchandise and libraries plac...

Wired News: The Great Library of Amazonia : "Getting to this point represents a significant technological feat. Most of the material in the archive comes from scanned pages of actual books. This may be surprising, given that most books today are written on PCs, e-mailed to publishers, typeset on computers, and printed on digital presses. But many publishers still do not have push-button access to the digital files of the books they put out. Insofar as the files exist, they are often scattered around the desktops of editors, designers, and contract printers. For books more than a few years old, complete digital files may be lost. John Wiley & Sons contributed 5,000 titles to the Amazon project -- all of them in physical form. Fortunately, mass scanning has grown increasingly feasible, with the cost dropping to as low as $1 each. Amazon sent some of the books to scanning centers in low-wage countries like India and the Philippines; others were run in the United States usi...

CNN.com - Iraqi official says limited German, French help won't be forgotten - Oct. 23, 2003 "MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A top Iraqi official attending an international conference on raising funds to rebuild Iraq warned Thursday that France and Germany's limited donations would not be forgotten. Ayad Allawi, the current head of Iraq's U.S.-appointed governing council, said he hoped German and French officials would reconsider their decision not to boost their contributions beyond funds already pledged through the European Union. 'As far as Germany and France are concerned, really, this was a regrettable position they had,' Allawi said. 'I don't think the Iraqis are going to forget easily that in the hour of need, those countries wanted to neglect Iraq.' U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- also attending the conference -- urged the international community to give billions of dollars to rebuild the nation, saying reconstruction cannot wait ...

News : "Iran bows to Europe over nuclear crisis By Angus McDowall in Tehran 22 October 2003 Iran has agreed to more intrusive nuclear checks and to freeze its uranium enrichment programme in an important concession to the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany."

Yahoo! News - Soldiers Must Wait for Their Iraqi Wives : "PENSACOLA, Fla. - Two National Guard soldiers who married Iraqi women against their commander's wishes will have to wait at least eight months to return home with their brides, according to a lawyer for one of the soldiers. The women's visas will take at least that long to process by mail because the State Department is not issuing visas in Iraq (news - web sites), said Richard Alvoid, an attorney hired by Sgt. Sean Blackwell's family. The wait could be even longer if the military decides to charge the men with disobeying orders, Alvoid said. Blackwell, 27, and Cpl. Brett Dagen, 37, were Christians who converted to Islam so they could be married under Iraqi law. Their commanders took the unusual step of ordering the men not to marry. The soldiers, members of the 3rd Battalion of the Florida Guard's 124th Infantry, are expected to remain in Iraq at least until February. The men had wanted to s...

Economist.com | Handheld computers : PDA, RIP The next big thing that wasn't�or was it? IS IT time to declare the demise of the handheld computer, also known as the personal digital assistant (PDA)? A lot of people suddenly think so, for despite high hopes that the devices�made by such firms as Palm, Sony, HP and Dell�would someday become ubiquitous, annual sales have stayed flat at around 11m units worldwide. This compares poorly with PCs, around 130m of which are sold every year, and mobile phones, with sales of around 460m units. �The PDA market will never be a mass market,� says Cindy Wolf, an analyst at In-Stat/MDR, a market-research firm. Almost everyone who wants a PDA, she says, now has one. Palm springs eternal In contrast, sales of smartphones, high-powered mobile handsets capable of doing most things PDAs can do, are rising fast. Smartphones can be used to store addresses and phone numbers, download small pieces of software (such as games), browse the interne...

New Scientist : Meet the people shaping the future of science This interview was first published in New Scientist print edition, subscribe here I want to live forever Photo: Timothy Archibald Cynthia Kenyon thinks we can have it all: health, wealth, hordes of children - and a long life. A very long life. She disagrees with prevailing ideas that we can only live longer by paying a high price in terms of reduced fertility or a sluggish metabolism. What made this professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, so sure? A little worm. James Kingsland was keen to discover the secret >>> "How would you go about developing an anti-ageing drug? It's just a question of finding a drug that would mimic the changes that we've made in worms, flies and mice. Basically we should have a hard look at the insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) endocrine systems. The receptors for both have been shown to...

Yahoo! News - Iraq War Swells Al Qaeda's Ranks, Report Says : "LONDON (Reuters) - War in Iraq (news - web sites) has swollen the ranks of al Qaeda and galvanized the Islamic militant group's will, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said on Wednesday in its annual report. The 2003-2004 edition of the British-based think-tank's annual bible for defense analysts, The Military Balance, said Washington's assertions after the Iraq conflict that it had turned the corner in the war on terror were 'over-confident.' The report, widely considered an authoritative text on the military capabilities of states and militant groups worldwide, could prove fodder for critics of the U.S.-British invasion and of the reconstruction effort that has followed in Iraq. Washington must impose security in Iraq to prevent the country from 'ripening into a cause celebre for radical Islamic terrorists,' it concluded. 'Nation-building' in Iraq was...

New Scientist : "Humanoid robots capable of performing somersaults and complex martial arts moves were demonstrated at Asia's largest electronics and computing fair in Tokyo on Saturday. Visitors to CEATEC 2003 (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) met Morph3, a human-like robot about 30-centimetres tall developed by researchers at the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan. It can perform back flips and karate moves thanks to 138 pressure sensors, 30 different onboard motors and 14 computer processors. Another miniature humanoid robot on display was Fujitsu's HOAP-2. This droid has been programmed to perform moves from the Chinese martial art taijiquan, as well as Japanese Sumo wrestling stances. HOAP-2 is designed as an aid to robotics research and therefore runs on open source, Linux-based software. Fujitsu believes it will sell between 20 and 30 of the robots to universities and companies in 2004. But impressive as these high-kicking robots are, Fr...

Saudi Arabia to hold democratic elections - The Washington Times: World JIDDA, Saudi Arabia � Saudi Arabia announced its first-ever democratic elections yesterday, to be held within a year in all 14 of its regions. A council for each region will be selected as a step toward implementing reforms promised by King Fahd in May and long backed by the de facto leader, Crown Prince Abdullah. Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, has an appointed advisory Shura Council instead of a national parliament, and it has never had elections for public office at any level.

Poll suggests most in Baghdad don't want troops to leave too quickly : "When Gallup set out recently to poll Baghdad residents, the biggest surprise may have been the public's reaction to the questioners: Almost everyone responded to the pollsters' questions, with some pleading for a chance to give their opinions. 'The interviews took more than an hour to do, people were extremely cooperative with open-ended questions,' said Richard Burkholder, director of international polling for Gallup. 'People went on and on.' But many of those Iraqis still have sharply mixed feelings about the U.S. military presence. The Gallup poll found that 71 percent of the capital city's residents felt U.S. troops should not leave in the next few months. Just 26 percent felt the troops should leave that soon. However, a sizable minority felt that circumstances could occur in which attacks against the troops could be justified. Almost one in five, 19 percent, sa...

Telegraph | News | EU viewed by China as world power to rival US : "The European Union is the world's rising superpower, poised to overtake both America and Japan as the biggest trade and investment force in China, according to a strategic policy paper published by Beijing yesterday. The Chinese government said the EU was transforming the global landscape with its successful currency launch and strides towards a joint foreign policy, defence, and judicial union. Describing EU integration as 'irreversible', Beijing marvelled at Europe's 25-35 per cent share of the global economy and its projected 450 million population after expanding into the former communist bloc next year. The white paper follows a flurry of Sino-EU ventures, including the Galileo global satellite system, described as a direct challenge to the American GPS monopoly in space. The two sides are also working together on nuclear research."

Degeneration Y: Adam is on the eve of extinction - National - www.theage.com.au : "In Australia, ahead of the book's release here today, Professor Sykes said men would last for only another 5000 generations before dwindling fertility and a decrepit Y chromosome consigned them to the history books along with Neanderthals and trilobites. Women, on the other hand, could look forward to plum jobs, good pay, tax-deductible child care, subsidised tampons, clean bathrooms and global peace. 'This . . . is a look into the future at how the Y chromosome will deteriorate, and I think it certainly will,' Professor Sykes said. 'The timescale is debatable but I think it is inevitable. 'I predict that the Y chromosome will be so damaged by that time that males will only be 1 per cent as fertile as they are now.' The Y chromosome, which carries the genetic switch to turn babies into boys at six weeks of gestation, is doomed, he argues in his book. 'The ...

Moscow prepared to stage pre-emptive strikes - www.smh.com.au : "While taking pains to play down possible new nuclear threats to NATO, the Kremlin has made it clear it is prepared to use pre-emptive strikes against perceived threats and will continue to mobilise Russia's vast nuclear arsenal to deter a new generation of low-level instability on its borders. A wide-ranging new doctrine for Russian military preparedness, presented to NATO generals in Colorado Springs, Colorado, last week, states that large-scale war with the US or NATO has for the first time 'been excluded from the spectrum of the most probable conflicts'. Yet it warns that Russia must be prepared for a growing number of conflicts - such as the US-led war in Iraq - waged outside the authority of the United Nations, and wars increasingly motivated as much by economics or the interests of what it termed 'big transnational companies' as by national security. Terrorism and instability in the...

Monkeys Control Robotic Arm With Brain Implants (washingtonpost.com) : "Scientists in North Carolina have built a brain implant that lets monkeys control a robotic arm with their thoughts, marking the first time that mental intentions have been harnessed to move a mechanical object. The technology could someday allow people with paralyzing spinal cord injuries to operate machines or tools with their thoughts as naturally as others today do with their hands. It might even allow some paralyzed people to move their own arms or legs again, by transmitting the brain's directions not to a machine but directly to the muscles in those latent limbs. The brain implants could also allow scientists or soldiers to control, hands-free, small robots that could perform tasks in inhospitable environments or in war zones." What's that I hear in the distance? Is it the marching of a robot army, slowly inching it's way closer?

News : "Suicide bombers driving two cars attacked a central Baghdad hotel yesterday where senior US officials and CIA agents are thought to have been staying. At least six people were killed and 32 wounded. All of the dead and most of the injured were Iraqis. But the blast, aimed at a hotel full of American officials, showed the effectiveness of the resistance in its campaign to destabilise the US presence. The heavily guarded Baghdad hotel was used by American officials, security agents, members of the Iraq Governing Council and US building contractors. It was also believed by Iraqis to house members of the CIA and there were rumours in Baghdad that it was home to members of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service."

Many soldiers, same letter / Front Page -The Olympian "Letters from hometown soldiers describing their successes rebuilding Iraq have been appearing in newspapers across the country as U.S. public opinion on the mission sours. And all the letters are the same. A Gannett News Service search found identical letters from different soldiers with the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, also known as 'The Rock,' in 11 newspapers, including Snohomish, Wash. The Olympian received two identical letters signed by different hometown soldiers: Spc. Joshua Ackler and Spc. Alex Marois, who is now a sergeant. The paper declined to run either because of a policy not to publish form letters. >> It describes people waving at passing troops and children running up to shake their hands and say thank you. It's not clear who wrote the letter or organized sending it to soldiers' hometown papers. >> Sgt. Christopher Shelton, who signed ...

'A Gift From God' Renews a Village (washingtonpost.com) : "A dozen years after Saddam Hussein ordered the vast marshes of southeastern Iraq drained, transforming idyllic wetlands into a barren moonscape to eliminate a hiding place for Shiite Muslim political opponents, Iraqi engineers have turned on the spigot again. The flow is not what it once was -- new dams have weakened the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers that feed the marshes -- but the impact has been profound. As the blanket of water gradually expands, it is quickly nourishing plants, animals and a way of life for Marsh Arabs that Hussein had tried so assiduously to extinguish. In Zayad, a tiny hamlet about 210 miles southeast of Baghdad that was one of the first places to be flooded, residents have rushed to reclaim their traditions. Kerkush drove to the port city of Basra to buy a wooden boat known as a mashoof. His children assembled fish nets. Other relatives scoped out locations to build a house of re...

Yahoo! News - Shiite Muslims Converge on Iraq Holy City : " Last week, al-Sadr followers clashed with the U.S. military in Baghdad's Sadr City, a 2 million-resident slum and Iraq's largest Shiite enclave, where the young cleric holds sway. The battle killed two American soldiers and at least one attacker. Al-Sadr's newly founded militia � the Imam al-Mahdi Army � challenges a U.S. military ban on carrying arms in public without a license. On Friday, al-Sadr, said to be 30, told worshippers in the town of Kufa, south of Baghdad, that he had formed a rival government and called on Iraqis to express their support for "our new state" through peaceful demonstrations. "This poses some danger to me personally," he told worshippers about his decision, "but the interest of the public takes precedence. I have formed new ministries for our new state, the state of dignity, pride and freedom." Such announcements are likely to reinforce the ...

CNM.com - Study: New study shows that fellatio may reduce the risk of breast cancer - Oct. 2, 2003 : "Women who perform the act of fellatio on a regular basis, one to two times a week, may reduce their risk of breast cancer by up to 40 percent, a North Carolina State University study found. >> "I think it removes the last shade of doubt that fellatio is actually a healthy act," said Dr. B.J. Sooner of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. "I am surprised by these findings, but am also excited that the researchers may have discovered a relatively easy way to lower the occurance of breast cancer in women." The University researchers stressed that, though breast cancer is relatively uncommon, any steps taken to reduce the risk would be a wise decision. "Only with regular performance will your chances be reduced, so I encourage all women out there to make fellatio an important part of their daily routine,"...

Forbes.com: Is Sex Necessary? : Alan Farnham "Fans of abstinence had better be sitting down. 'Saving yourself' before the big game, the big business deal, the big hoedown or the big bakeoff may indeed confer some moral benefit. But corporeally it does absolutely zip. There's no evidence it sharpens your competitive edge. The best that modern science can say for sexual abstinence is that it's harmless when practiced in moderation. Having regular and enthusiastic sex, by contrast, confers a host of measurable physiological advantages, be you male or female. (This assumes that you are engaging in sex without contracting a sexually transmitted disease.) In one of the most credible studies correlating overall health with sexual frequency, Queens University in Belfast tracked the mortality of about 1,000 middle-aged men over the course of a decade. The study was designed to compare persons of comparable circumstances, age and health. Its findings, published in 19...

Conversation With Khomeini - The ayatollah's grandson calls for a U.S. invasion of Iran. By Christopher Hitchens : "A sentence of death for apostasy cannot really be pronounced, or acted upon, unless there is 'an infallible imam,' and there is no such thing. The Shiite faithful believe in a 'hidden imam' who may one day be restored to them, but they have learned to be wary of impostors or false prophets. In any event, added Khomeini, there was an important distinction between what the Quran said and what an ayatollah as head of state might say. 'We cannot nowadays have executions in this form.' Indeed, he added, it was the policy of executions that had turned the Islamic revolution in Iran sour in the first place. 'Now we have had 25 years of a failed Islamic revolution in Iran, and the people do not want an Islamic regime anymore.' It's not strictly necessary to speak to Hossein Khomeini to appreciate the latter point: Every visitor to I...

Police Subdue a Tiger in Harlem Apartment o the sounds of enormous jungle roars, a police sniper rappelled down the side of a Harlem apartment building yesterday and fired tranquilizer darts through an open fifth-floor window to subdue � seat belts, please � a 350-pound Bengal tiger. The daring, and creative, bit of sharpshooting helped end an episode in which the New York Police Department, unaccustomed to bagging big game, nonetheless managed to sedate the beast. Officials planned to send the tiger, temporarily being held at the Center for Animal Care and Control on 110th Street, to a conservancy in Ohio. What the tiger, along with a four- to five-foot reptile called a caiman, was doing inside a cluttered apartment in the Drew Hamilton Houses at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 141st Street remained a mystery yesterday. In a news conference at the scene, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the police became involved in the case on Wednesday when the apartment'...

I found a new site that has descriptions of the 16 Myers Briggs types that I think is among the best so far. It's the Kiersey site. Kiersey is the man who took the 16 MBTI types and sorted them into 16 temperments. I'm INTP, and I'm finding that all my friends are ISTP's or ENTJ's, with one ENTJ and one INFP. Scroll all the way to the bottom for the type descriptions. The other articles on the site are also very good. Here's the link:

FOXNews.com - Foxlife - Fox Features - Kites Inspire New Extreme Sports : "Some thrill-seekers are taking the phrase 'Go fly a kite!' to new heights. That's right, kiting is making a comeback with a twist. A growing number of daredevils are adding the childhood wind toys to their favorite outdoor activities, speeding them up and creating new sports, such as kite skating, skiing, snowboarding and even kite surfing. Known as kite traction sports, the activities have seen a gradual increase in participants over the past decade � but have bloomed in the last couple of years, particularly kite surfing, according to kite traction enthusiast Bob Childs. "The appeal � for some is the all-out speed and power," said Childs, 42, who sells kite sports equipment on doomwheels.com. "For some it is the sense of motion using only the force of the wind. I personally like both." Kite traction enthusiasts, who are mostly between 25 and 30 but can be as ...

Report Offered Bleak Outlook About Iraq Oil : "The Bush administration's optimistic statements earlier this year that Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq were at odds with a bleaker assessment of a government task force secretly established last fall to study Iraq's oil industry, according to public records and government officials. The task force, which was based at the Pentagon as part of the planning for the war, produced a book-length report that described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent, panel members have said "

FOXNews.com - Top Stories - Angry Ex-Iraqi Soldiers Charge U.S. Troops; 4th ID Soldier Killed in Attack "BAGHDAD, Iraq � An angry mob of former Iraqi soldiers charged at U.S. troops and Iraqi police on Saturday, throwing rocks during a protest to demand jobs and back pay -- prompting U.S. and Iraqi security to fire shots, killing at least one and wounding 25 according to witnesses and hospital officials. Among the injured are two Iraqi policemen, said Dr. Abbas Jafaar, an official at a nearby hospital said. Also Saturday, the military said that a 4th Infantry Division (search) soldier was killed and one was wounded in an attack in southeast Baghdad. The patrol was hit Friday night with small arms fire and a rocket-propelled grenade in the As Sadiyah (search) region. The unrest, which began outside an American base in central Baghdad, spilled into the upscale Monsour (search) district, where four liquor stores were burned along with an Iraqi police car. The Americ...

Kuwait foils smuggling of chemicals from Iraq : HindustanTimes.com Kuwaiti security authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads from Iraq to an unnamed European country, a Kuwaiti newspaper said on Wednesday. The pro-Government Al-Siyassah, quoting an unnamed security source, said the suspects had been watched by security since they arrived in Kuwait and were arrested "in due time." It did not say when or how the smugglers entered Kuwait or when they were arrested. >> Iraqi Interior Minister Nouri Al-Badran met on Tuesday with Sheik Nawwaf and discussed cooperation between the two countries in security matters. His visit is the first by an Iraqi interior minister to Kuwait since 1990.