in and out of the news

Louisiana disaster plan, pg 13, para 5 , dated 01/00'The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating'...(Matt Drudge)

WALL STREET shuddered yesterday after Alan Greenspan, the United States’ central banker, warned American homebuyers that they risk a crash if they continue to drive property prices higher.(TIMES ON LINE)

J.D. Smith, a defense contractor who claims he worked on the technical side of the unit, code-named "Able Danger" (search), told reporters Friday that he helped gather open-source information (search), reported on government spending and helped generate charts associated with the unit's work. Able Danger was set up in the 1990s to track Al Qaeda activity worldwide. (FOXNEWS)

Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson prompted a firestorm of media outrage on Tuesday after he suggested that the Bush administration should assassinate a foreign leader who posed a threat to the U.S. - in this case, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But when senior Clinton advisor George Stephanopoulos publicly argued for the same kind of assassination policy in 1997, the press voiced no objection at all. (NEWS MAX)

(CNSNews.com) - The al Qaeda terrorist network may be planning a terrorist attack in a major city in Asia as a bid to undermine investor confidence and cause serious economic damage, one of Europe's leading terrorist investigators has warned.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. jets launched airstrikes Tuesday near the Syrian border, destroying three houses and killing a ``known terrorist,'' the U.S. military said. Iraqi authorities said fighting had broken out in the area between a tribe that supports foreign fighters and another that backs the government. (AP)

Washington (CNSNews.com) - The Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the current home of hundreds of wounded veterans from the war in Iraq, has been the target of weekly anti-war demonstrations since March. The protesters hold signs that read "Maimed for Lies" and "Enlist here and die for Halliburton."

UNITED NATIONS - In a move hailed by American officials as "dramatic," and which has given hope to Syrian dissidents who aim to replace the Baath regime of Bashar Assad with a democracy, a U.N. investigator yesterday pointed to five former Lebanese security officials - all of whom have close ties to Syria - as possible suspects in the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. (NY SUN)

A group led by New York financier Carl Icahn is considering making a tender offer to buy as much as 10% of Time Warner Inc., hoping to put more pressure on the media conglomerate to respond to Mr. Icahn's overtures (WSJ)

BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.N. investigators quizzed five senior pro-Syrian figures, including a top aide to Lebanon's president, on Tuesday as suspects in the February killing of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Lebanese police and U.N. investigators detained three former security chiefs in dawn raids, the first time they have implicated allies of Syria in the killing that shook Lebanon and hastened the departure of Syrian troops after three decades.

JERUSALEM – The arrests today of three pro-Syrian security chiefs over the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri has many leaders, security officials and top journalists in Beirut who may be seen as threats to Damascus worried about possible reprisals against them – with some having already departed the country. (ARON KLIEN, World Net Daily)

UNITED NATIONS -- A sweeping yearlong probe of the Iraq oil-for-food program has concluded that the United Nations allowed "illicit, unethical, and corrupt behavior" to overwhelm the $64 billion operation, and must adopt sweeping reforms to reclaim its credibility before taking on such tasks again. (WSJ)

the issue is becoming the scale of corruption in the U.N.'s normal operations — and which individuals and corporations are reaping the benefits of a network of bribery and conspiracy that investigators have just begun to uncover. So far, those identities are still a mystery — but perhaps not for much longer. (FOXNEWS)