more "Kumbayah crap"

WASHINGTON - The American government is demanding that Saudi Arabia account for its distribution of hate material to American mosques, as the State Department pressed Saudi officials for answers last week and as the Senate later this month plans to investigate the propagation of radical Wahhabism on American shores. (NY SUN)

Iran was today accused by Britain of supplying Iraqi insurgents with the technology and explosives to kill its soldiers in the south of the country. A senior government official, briefing correspondents in London, said that there was evidence that the Iranians were in contact with insurgent groups fighting coalition forces in Iraq.
(http://www.guardian.co.uk)

UNITED NATIONS — United Nations investigators scrambling to discover the extent of a bribery scandal spreading out from the organization's procurement department may soon be looking toward the building's 38th floor — the U.N's executive offices.( Claudia Rosett and George Russell)

"It all circles back to fears of inflation and fears of further rate increases" by the Federal Reserve, said Larry Peruzzi, and equity trader at Boston Company Asset Management. (WSJ)

WASHINGTON -- Amid growing concerns about bird flu spreading to humans, the Bush administration says it plans to bolster vaccine production in the U.S., purchase huge quantities of antiviral drugs and lay out a detailed system to coordinate federal, state and local response efforts to a pandemic. (WSJ)

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration opposes a bailout of municipal bondholders on the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, Treasury Secretary John Snow told Congress. (WSJ)

Democrats need to cut the “Kumbayah crap” from their rhetoric, James Carville said Thursday night.

WASHINGTON - The world's largest "wealth management" firm, UBS, will be investigated by Congress for possibly laundering money for two state sponsors of terrorism, Cuba and Iran, lawmakers here told The New York Sun.

BERLIN – Conservative leader Angela Merkel confirmed a coalition deal that will make her Germany's first female chancellor under the terms of a power-sharing agreement that would end Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder's seven years in office. (WSJ)

“If Schröder was a sprinter, Merkel is a long-distance runner,” says Wolfgang Nowak, head of the Alfred Herrhausen Society, a think-tank run by Deutsche Bank. She is considered extremely methodical, going through all the options before making a decision. Insiders call her a “learning machine”. And she has certainly learned a lot since Helmut Kohl picked her out of obscurity in 1991, not least from Mr Schröder’s often frustrated efforts to reform the economy.(the Ecomomist)

Will post-war Germany’s second grand coalition be a success? If history is any guide, a new marriage of elephants would neither disappoint nor over-perform. The first grand coalition, in 1966-69, worked through quite an impressive legislative agenda: emergency legislation, …(the Economist)

NEW YORK -- Refco Inc. said it discovered through an internal review that the company was owed about $430 million by an entity controlled by Chairman and Chief Executive Phillip Bennett, who has repaid the receivable, including accrued interest, in cash. Refco also said that Mr. Bennett is taking a leave of absence, at the request of Refco's board. Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President William Sexton, who previously planned to leave the company, agreed to remain at the financial-service company as CEO. (WSJ)

October 10, 2005 -- Giant Verizon is stepping up its battle to win control of wireless Internet business from a group of rivals offering popular Wi-Fi access. Verizon's effort comes in the wake of Philadelphia's government-backed effort to make the entire city a Wi-Fi hotspot — an area in which anyone could get on to the Internet without wires (NY POST)

Three explosive devices found in a courtyard between two Georgia Tech dormitories on the East Campus Monday morning were part of a "terrorist act," an Atlanta police official said. (http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=70306 )

According to most reports, Joel Hinrichs III was a young man with a history of depression who used a homemade explosive device to commit suicide just 100 yards or so from the school’s football stadium, which was filled with over 80,000 people at the time. Officials were quick to call the incident a suicide, but rumors and reports of Hinrichs’ attempts to buy large quantities of ammonium nitrate and ties to the Muslim community have raised a lot of questions and the answers thus far are not forthcoming. (http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2005/10/10/publiceye/entry931118.shtml )

Boys and young men in the key demographic group reported watching a whopping 24 percent fewer films in the all-important summer cinema season in 2005 than they did over the same period in 2003, consumer research firm Online Testing eXchange (OTX) said. "The perception among young male moviegoers that there wasn't much to see his year was a difficult barrier to overcome, regardless of price," said Vincent Bruzzese of OTX. (AFP)