Tag: The Morning News

While Bollywood films often borrow liberally from Western movies, producers of “Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors” say their movie bears no resemblance to any film in the “Harry Potter” series.

“There is absolutely nothing to link ‘Hari Puttar’ with ‘Harry Potter,'” said Munish Purii, chief executive officer of Mumbai-based producer Mirchi Movies. Hari is a common name in India and “puttar” is Punabji for son, he said.

The audacious strikes suggested a bolder insurgency is now willing to launch frontal assaults on U.S. and NATO troops.

Only months ago, militants shied away from large-scale attacks because of the heavy losses they could incur when jet fighters appeared overhead, NATO and U.S. officials said.

The Congressional Budget Office report comes on the heels of increased scrutiny of contractors in the last year, some of whom have been investigated in connection with shooting deaths of Iraqis and the accidental electrocutions of U.S. troops.

The United States has relied more heavily on contractors in Iraq than in any other war to provide services ranging from food service to guarding diplomats. About 20 percent of funding for operations in Iraq has gone to contractors, the report said.

Currently, there are at least 190,000 contractors in Iraq, a ratio of about one contractor per U.S. service member, the report says.

The pressure on Ivins was extreme, a high-risk strategy that has failed the FBI before. The government was determined to find the villain in the 2001 anthrax attacks; it was too many years without a solution to the case that shocked and terrified a post-9/11 nation.

The last thing the FBI needed was another embarrassment. Overreaching damaged the FBI’s reputation in the high-profile investigations: the Centennial Olympic Park bombing probe that falsely accused Richard Jewell; the theft of nuclear secrets and botched prosecution of scientist Wen Ho Lee; and, in this same anthrax probe, the smearing of an innocent man – Ivins’ colleague Steven Hatfill.

McCain’s shift has come in stages, catching some Republicans by surprise. Speaking with reporters on his campaign bus on July 9, he cited a need to shore up Social Security. “I cannot tell you what I would do, except to put everything on the table,” he said.

He went a step farther Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” in response to a question about payroll tax increases.

Riot police deployed in downtown Belgrade to keep about 200 members of the extremist Obraz group under control. The demonstrators threw stones and clay pots at the officers, chanting “treason!” and trying to break through police cordons.

Five demonstrators and a policeman were injured, doctors at Belgrade emergency clinic said.

“The time has come to move these forward,” Judge Thomas F. Hogan said Tuesday during the first hearing over whether the detainees are being held lawfully. “Set aside every other case that’s pending in the division and address this case first.”

The Bush administration hoped it would never come to this. The Justice Department has fought for years to keep civilian judges from reviewing evidence against terrorism suspects. But a Supreme Court ruling last month opened the courthouse doors to the detainees.

The mortgage aid plan would let the Federal Housing Administration back $300 billion in new, cheaper home loans for an estimated 400,000 distressed borrowers who otherwise would be considered too financially risky to qualify for government-insured, fixed-rate loans.

An 83-9 vote put the plan on track for Senate passage as early as Wednesday, but President Bush is threatening a veto, and Democrats are fighting each other over key details. Those challenges will probably delay any final deal until mid-July.

Gates said that over the past two decades it has become more difficult and time consuming to get key officials into Pentagon jobs early in a new administration. Doing it faster will be even more important this time, he said, in light of the complexities of the wars and difficult security issues elsewhere.

“I’ve been through a lot of these (transitions) and I’ve seen them up close and I want to see if we can improve on the past,” he said. Gates’ national security career dates to the Nixon administration and includes the transition in January 1993 from President George H.W. Bush to President Clinton.

Lab tests have confirmed 40 illnesses in Texas and New Mexico as the same type of salmonella, right down to the genetic fingerprint. An investigation by Texas and New Mexico health authorities and the Indian Health Service tied those cases to uncooked, raw, large tomatoes.

At least 17 people in Texas and New Mexico have been hospitalized. None have died, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.