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Show Sunday, Ae302006 ae HERALD ~ MORNIN(j NING BRIEFING FAST FACT in Death Valley, Calif. on each consecutive day from July 6 to Aug. 17 in 1917 the maximum temperature reached 120 degrees or higher. Source: Micropecha of Word Facts Compiled from Dail Herald Oklahoma courthouse is going to trial STIGLER. Okla. — The 8foot granite slab planted in the Haskell County courthouse lawn makes the Ten Command- ments easy toread and hard to muss from the state highway that doublesas this town’s main thoroughfare. The monument, erected with private money in 2004 with the county's approval. doesn't stop traffic and courthousevisitors na recent morning barely gaveit a glance don’t see anything wrong said 73-vear-old Launa xk. “We've got to have mn, 100 has drawnnanonal ntion, and county offic uals | heenpreparingto d a rial that beets (00, sitting 90miles southsd. There advertising placesof up flanking the courtwn. Altstatt, a 42-vear-old ctor who does business with the county. said some people might see the marker as “church pushed down their throat.” But he expressed am- lence. 1 don't have to look at if I don’t wantto.” he said. ae lawsuit challenging the r’s location comes amid national debate over displaysof Ten Commandments onpublic property. Court challenges have vielded mixed results, Limbaugh, prosecutors can declare victory WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — After three vears under suspicion. Rush Limbaugh can finally put behindhim the investigation that exposed the conservative commentator’s own drug problems, thrusting him into the spotlight for the very things he deridedinothers. GEORGETULEY ‘Corpus Christi Caller Time Noneofit affected his ratings fora radiotalk showthat Catch your wave, dude stations and draws about 20 mil- An unidentified surfer rides the big waves near BobHall Pier on PadreIsland, Texas on Saturday. airs weekdays on nearly 600 lion listeners a week, Limbaugh spokesman Tony Knight said. This investigation didn't have any impact on his audience or onhis advertising.” Knight said Saturday. a dayafter defense attorneys announced a deal with prosecutors. A single prescription fraud charge will be dismissed after 18 months if Limbaughstays drug free and doesn’t violate anylaws. Prosecutors launched their investigationin 2003after up as prosecutors and Black Mark Freeman andhis colleague Olivia LeMaistreare trybattled in court over whether Limbaugh's constitutional right ing to determine howa species to privacy was violated when * that's typically wary of humans the records wereseized, but the is faring as development exstate prevailed. Is the deal a vic- pands into rural areas. Their program is among tory for Limbaugh? Fed. os fund study of suburban bobcats manyin a US.Fish and Wildlife Service grant program that has spent $317 million since 2001 COLCHESTER. Vt. — For populations across the country to gaugethe health of wildlife Limbaugh's housekeeperalleged ’ one’afternoonearlier this month « andin U.S. territories. he abused OxyContin and other on the back roads of Vermont's In New Hampshire,biolo- the grants for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from Virginia to Maine. Cheney exempts his own office from reporting on classified material WASHINGTON — As the Bush administration has dramatically accelerated the classification of information as “top secret”or “confidential,” one his addiction onsevere backpain. Prosecutorsseized Limbaugh's B15 became the hunted. “She's probably maybe football field anda half in front of gists are encouraging school childrento plant blue lupines that Karnerblue butterflies need to survive. Thereare also programs to protect bats in medical recordsafter learning us,” Freeman said. “She's right Pennsylvania. bay scallops in documents:the office of Vice tree frog in NewJersey. A standing executive order, strengthened by President Bush in 2003, requires all agencies — widens between al-Qaida, Muslim groups Italy‘s Berlusconi: He wil 7. to make way for Prodi government painkillers. He entered a five-week reha- bilitation program and blamed that he received about 2,000 pain- killers, prescribed byfour doctors in six months. Theinvestigation washeld most populous county, a 26- funding and direct some funding to them,” said Dee Mazzarese, who helps administer pound female bobcat dubbed off in that scrub, someof the thickerstuff maybe.” New York andthe Pine Barren “It's to lookatthe critters out there that haven't had dedicated In tracking B15 in Chittenden County, state wildlife biologist Office is refusing to report on its annual activity in classifying President Dick Cheney. and “any otherentity within the executive branch”to provide an annual accountingoftheir classification of documents. Morethan 80 agencies have collectively reported to the National Archives that they made 15.6 million decisions in 2004 to classify information, nearly double the numberin 2001, but Cheney continuesto insist he is exempt. Explaining whythe vice president has withheld evena tally ofhis office's secrecy when suchoffices as the National Security Council routinely report theirs, a spokeswoman said Cheneyis “not under any duty” to provideit. Thatis only one way the Bush administration, from its opening weeksin 2001, has asserted control over information. By keeping secret so many directives and actions, the administration has precluded the public — and often members of Congress — from knowing about someof the most significant decisions andacts of the White House. In the aftermath ofthe terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the administration has based much ofits need for confidentiality on the imperative of protecting national securityata time of war. Yet experts say Bush and his closest advisers demonstrated their proclivity for privacy well before Sept. 11: Startingin the early weeks of his administration with a move to protect the papers of former presidents, Bush has clamped downontherelease of governmentdocuments. The WORLD CAIRO, Egypt — Whenterrorists blew themselves upin Egypt's Sinai Peninsula this week,the radicalPalestinian group Hamas quickly joined Arab governments and Western leadersin condemning a “criminalattack againstall humanvalues.” Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood called the bombings “aggression on human souls created by God.” The denunciations were unexpectedly harsh from the Islamic fundamentalist groups — Hamas has killed hundreds ofIsraeli civilians in suicide bombings, and the Brotherhood is determined to impose an Islamic government — but ex- perts agree that radical Muslim organizations want to distance themselves from al-Qaida. The widening rift largely has not been acknowledged among Western powers, who tend to lump Islamic radicals together. The U.S. list of “Foreign Terror- ist Organizations,” for example, puts al-Qaida with Hamas and the Lebanese-based Hezbollah. Scholars of Islamic move- ments and some Western policy-makers, however, say . distinctions now must be made between hard-line Islamist organizations and “holy warrior” groups such as Osama bin Laden'sterror network. DMITRY LOVETSKY/Associated Press Mistakenly crowned Bermudez Romero celebrates after she mistakenly was called the winner of the Mrs. World 2006 pageantin St. Petersburg, Russia, late Saturday. Sofia Arzhakovskaya, Mrs.Russia, won the Mrs. World he ‘pageant. Mrs.Costa Rica Andrea ROME — PremierSilvio Berlusconi indicated Saturday he was readytoresign after long denying electoral defeat, saying a Cabinet meeting expected to makehis departureofficial was scheduled for Tuesday. Berlusconi did not directly say that he would hand his resignationto Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. But, asked when he would step down,he replied, “The Cabinet meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday,” and added he would soon go to see Ciampi. EventhoughItaly’s top court certified center-left former premier RomanoProdi’s razor-+thin victory in the lower house of parliamentafter April 9-10 elections, Berlusconi, billionaire media mogul, denied his loss and vowed to keepup his fight throughlegal challenges. Nepal lawmakers demandking relinquish control of army KATMANDU,Nepal — New. ly returned Nepalese legislators demanded Saturdaythat King Gyanendrabe stripped of control over the 90,000-strong army,fearing he coulduse it to regain power after his recent concession to weeks of pro-de- mocracyprotests. Nepal's constitution gives the monarch supreme command of the army, and Gyanendra’ssei- zure of power in February 2005 included sending soldiers to ar- rest opposition politicians, censor the media and guard his palace. Legislatorssaid Saturday the king must lose control over the army whentheconstitution is rewritten by a special assem- bly. Elections for the assembly wereproposed Friday by lawmakers meeting forthe first timein four years. “It is the prime minister who should be the supreme commanderof the armyand not the king. The existing laws should be amended immediately, and that is what weare going to do,” Shivraj Basnet, a lawmakerfrom Nepali Congress, the country’s largest party, said Saturday. Chinese church to defy Vatican wishes on bishop appointment BEIJING — China's statesanctioned Roman Catholic Churchwill install a new bishop opposed by the Vatican on Sunday,potentially damaging efforts to restoreofficial ties betweenthe sides, a Vaticanlinked news agency reported. Hong Kong's Catholic diocese, whichis under. Vatican jurisdiction, protested the planned ordainmentSaturday. The Chinese Patriotic Catho. lic Association will ordain Ma Yinglin as bishop ofthe city of Kunmingin southwestern Yunnan province, Rome-based AsiaNewssaid Friday. Newsof the ordainment comes amid indications that Sino-Vatican talks on resuming ties are entering a substantive phase. AsiaNewssaid the Vati“can opposes Ma because he is too closeto the official Chinese church's leaders andhas little pastoral experience. It said the Holy See had asked that Ma's ordination be delayed. The association's vice chairman,Liu Bainian,said the onus for improvingrelations is on the Vatican. U.S. Increasingly Sees Division of Iraq WASHINGTON — Asthe US.military struggles against Persistent sectarian violence in Iraq,military officers and security experts find themselves in a vigorous debate over an idea ly dismissed as a fringe thought: that the surest — and perhaps now the only — wayto bring stability to Iraq is todivide the country into three pieces. Those who see the partitioningofIraq as increasingly at- tractive ala that separating the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds maybe the only solution to the violence that many experts believe verges on civil war. |