Two Egyptian students at the University of South Florida were indicted Friday for carrying explosive materials across states lines and one of them was charged with teaching the other how to use them for violent reasons.

Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, 24, an engineering graduate student and teaching assistant at the Tampa-based university, faces terrorism charges for teaching and demonstrating how to use the explosives.

Nuclear Agency Sees Progress on Iran

The International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday reported ''significant'' cooperation from Iran with its nuclear probe and noted that Tehran had slowed uranium enrichment -- assessments that could hamper U.S. hopes for new U.N. sanctions.

Iran Expanding Its Nuclear Program, Agency Reports

Iran is expanding its nuclear program in defiance of United Nations’ resolutions, even as it has promised to answer questions about an array of suspicious nuclear activities in the past, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Thursday

The RCMP's news release said warrants for the men's arrests were issued after they failed to report in Gjoa Haven.

Reporting to police ensures people who could be a threat to the country are not let in, Semotiuk said, but added that the Wild Vikings' arrest does not mean they pose a threat.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category  (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis.  This is no "consensus."

Mark Fitzpatrick, nuclear analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London said: "There is a real possibility that President Bush will feel compelled not to allow this problem to pass to his successor.

For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13.  Dr. Tuberville elaborated, "because the government's established by the Lord, you know.  And, that's what we believe in the Christian faith.  That's what's stated in the scripture."

The median price of American homes is expected to fall this year for the first time since federal housing agencies began keeping statistics in 1950.

. . .

The reversal is particularly striking because many government officials and housing-industry executives had said that a nationwide decline would never happen, even though prices had fallen in some coastal areas as recently as the early 1990s.

Unless the real estate downturn is much worse than economists are expecting, the declines will not come close to erasing the increases of the last decade. And for many families who do not plan to move, the year-to-year value of their house matters little. The drop is, of course, good news for home buyers.

In the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago, the town house that Ian R. Perschke, a technology consultant, and Jennifer Worstell, a lawyer, bought in late 2004 has appreciated more than 30 percent, they estimated. The gain was big enough to allow them to take out a larger mortgage and renovate two rental units in the house. But Mr. Perschke said he understood that he was “not going to see that appreciation over the next three years.”

Brogan said the military and its contractors were working as hard as possible to get MRAPs to Iraq.

"We're going to get them there as quickly as we can," said Brogan, the head of Marine Corps Systems Command, which is in charge of procuring the vehicles for the military.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has made MRAPs the Pentagon's top procurement priority. In June, he said scores of Americans would die for every month of delay in getting MRAPs into the field.

Quebec provincial police admitted Thursday that three of their officers disguised themselves as demonstrators during the protest at the North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que.

However, the police force denied allegations its undercover officers were there on Monday to provoke the crowd and instigate violence.

. . .

Police said the three were told to monitor protesters who were not peacefully demonstrating to prevent any violent incidents, but they were called out as undercover agents when they refused to throw objects.

The President is going to argue that after the US pulled out of Southeast Asia, millions of people died.

One more time. Millions of people died while we were there. A fair proportion of them were people we ourselves killed. In any reckoning of the costs of intervening and withdrawing from Indochina, those people count too. It’s a bizarre, narcissistic blind spot to imagine otherwise.

Which brings us to Iraq, per the President’s insistence. It is possible that if we leave, hundreds of thousands will die and millions be displaced. That has already happened under our government’s tender and expert care. There is no short-term prospect that it will stop happening. But I guess if you die while the US is around, you have the comfort of knowing we were trying.

The fact that average incomes remained lower in 2005 than five years earlier helps explain why so many Americans report feeling economic stress despite overall growth in the economy.

The growth in total incomes was concentrated among those making more than $1 million. The number of such taxpayers grew by more than 26 percent, to 303,817 in 2005, from 239,685 in 2000.

These individuals, who constitute less than a quarter of 1 percent of all taxpayers, reaped almost 47 percent of the total income gains in 2005, compared with 2000.

. . .

Nearly half of Americans reported incomes of less than $30,000, and two-thirds make less than $50,000.

Sens. Warner and Levin Travel to Iraq, Praise Surge Results

Senators offer bleak assessment of Iraq after governor killed

The 2003 removal of Saddam refuted doom-and-gloom critics who predicted thousands of deaths and millions of refugees, just as the subsequent messy four-year reconstruction hasn't evolved as anticipated into a quiet, stable democracy-to say the least.

The committee questioned the additional costs involved in using contractors, citing an estimate that a government civilian employee costs on average $126,500 a year, while the annual cost of a core contractor, including overhead and benefits, is $250,000.

Many companies that provide contract workers to the CIA and Pentagon intelligence agencies are headed by former employees of those agencies. For example, Abraxas, which is run by a former CIA case officer, has hired -- and then contracted out to the government -- more than 100 former intelligence employees over the past six years.

Experts agreed that moving production out of China would not necessarily make consumer goods safer given other issues in global production.

“Where would you go right now? If you go to Thailand, they just don’t have the capacity and the knowledge base,” Dean said. “I’m not sure they’d be any more reliable. . . . The reliance on China is paramount.”[emp. added]

. . . regardless how bad the US dollar gets, they are still going to need to buy plenty of manufactured goods, and all of the factories are still in China. . . . Money valuation can change rapidly, factories don't move nearly as fast.