The emergency notice from the Ministry of Agriculture said U.S. poultry products that have already arrived at Chinese ports would be returned or destroyed.

The notice, carried by the government's Xinhua News Agency, said China was suspending new import permits for U.S. poultry and canceling any permits already issued.

China's action follows similar bans on U.S. poultry by Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea, after officials in the U.S. state of Delaware reported avian flu in a flock there.

According to the Agriculture Ministry, in 2003 the country's total import of poultry meats and products was 709,000 tons — 96% of which came from the United States.

That's a small fraction of China's poultry market; the country produced more than 9.9 million tons) of chicken meat alone last year — 20% of total worldwide production.

China itself is a large chicken-farming country, and bird flu is confirmed or suspected in 14 of the nation's 31 regions.

China has slaughtered millions of fowl to try to contain the disease's spread and inoculated millions more.

The government has reported no human cases of bird flu.

In December, China banned beef products from the United States after a case of mad cow disease was reported there. That prohibition has not been rescinded.

U.S. officials in Baghdad put the figure at 35 killed and 75 wounded but said the figure could be higher since Iraqi authorities were handling the investigation.

U.S. paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division sealed off area around the station and refused to allow journalists near the blast site about 30 miles south of Baghdad.

However, hospital director Razaq Jabbar said his facility had received 50 dead and 50 injured. He said he had heard that three others died at another hospital.

"This figure might increase," he said. "There were some body parts that haven't been identified yet. Some more bodies may be trapped under the rubble."

In Baghdad, Lt. Col. Dan Williams, a coalition spokesman, said no U.S. or other coalition forces were killed or injured.

Policeman Wissam Abdul-Karim said he was standing in front of the nearby courthouse when "I heard a very strong explosion" and "the blast threw me on the ground."

"It was the day for applying for new recruits," Abdul-Karim said. "There were tens of them waiting outside the police station."

He did not know whether the blast was caused by a suicide driver or from a stationary vehicle. Abdul-Karim said security for the facility included a checkpoint surrounded by sandbags and barbed wire.

Hussein Mohammed, 18, said he was standing in the public market when he heard a tremendous explosion about 9:15 a.m. Another witness, who refused to give his name, described the blast as "really strong" and said body parts littered the street near the station.

"There was not one body in one piece," he said.

Jabbar said some of the victims were policemen "but many more were civilians applying for jobs and passers-by."

Malik Moussa, a 63-year-old lawyer, said he was walking to the police station when the blast occurred.

"I saw two cars totally burned out," Moussa said. "Blood was gushing out of my right arm."

Insurgents have mounted a string of car and suicide bombings in recent weeks. The deadliest so far has been in the northern city of Irbil on Feb. 1 when two suicide bombers blew themselves up at two Kurdish party offices celebrating a Muslim holiday, killing at least 109 people.

A suicide car bomb exploded near the main gate to the U.S.-led coalition's headquarters in Baghdad, killing at least 31 people.

The worst previous car bombing before the Irbil attack occurred Aug. 29 outside a mosque in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, killing more than 85 people, including Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim.

Meanwhile, the Baghdad Convention Center, which houses the U.S. military press center and other coalition facilities, was evacuated Tuesday after bomb-sniffing dogs detected something suspicious, Williams, the coalition spokesman, said. The center was later reopened.

On Monday, a suicide bomber walked up to the house of brothers Majid and Amer Ali Suleiman in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, and detonated explosives strapped to his body, witnesses said.

Three guards were seriously injured but the brothers — who are among the city's most prominent tribal leaders working with coalition forces — escaped unhurt.

The bomber had approached the house earlier when the brothers were receiving callers, and was told to leave, the witnesses said.

Insurgents have repeatedly warned Iraqis not to cooperate with the Americans. The most recent threats were contained in pamphlets circulated in Ramadi and nearby Fallujah by a purported coalition of 12 insurgent groups.

Ramadi and Fallujah are located in the Sunni Triangle, a major center of resistance to the U.S.-led occupation.

This is the second instance of a suicide bomber carrying out an attack with explosives on his body although several suicide car and truck bombings are not unknown.

Also Monday, defense officials in Washington said American forces in Iraq have detained one of the remaining most-wanted members of Saddam Hussein's government.

Muhsin Khadr al-Khafaji, No. 48 on the 55 most-wanted list, was turned over last weekend to U.S. troops in the Baghdad area, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The officials did not say who turned him over.

The senior point guard had 20 points, including the winning free throw with 9.6 seconds left in the second overtime, six assists and no turnovers in 49 minutes in the Pirates' 68-67 victory.

Barrett had five of the seven points the Pirates (16-5, 6-3 Big East) scored in the second overtime as they won their fifth of six and improved to 11-1 at home.

"I knew he had pushed me. I thought they were going to let it go, but they called it and I was able to go to the free throw line," Barrett said of the foul charged to Pittsburgh point guard Carl Krauser.

"After I missed the first one, there was no way in the world I was missing two. This game wasn't going to go into another overtime. It's over with if I have a chance to make a shot to win the game."

The Panthers (22-2, 8-2) had won four straight overall and four of their last five against Seton Hall.

"This is a great win for us, for the program and hopefully we can build off this," Barrett said. "That's all I think about, building off of this. When you think about trying to get into the Top 25 and the NCAA tournament, that's all in the future. We're thinking in the present now."

Pittsburgh and No. 5 Connecticut enter their matchup for first place in the conference on Sunday coming off a loss. The Huskies, who handed Pitt its other loss, fell 80-74 at Notre Dame earlier Monday.

"These guys don't like losing in practice," first-year Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon said. "Responding to a loss is part of being a good team. I'm sure our guys are anxious to get out there and play."

Pittsburgh and Seton Hall came into the game ranked 1-2 in the Big East in scoring defense and both lived up to that stat, finishing regulation tied at 57.

The Pirates, who last beat a team ranked No. 4 in 2000 with a win at Syracuse, also got 10 points each from Kelly Whitney and J.R. Morris.

"We haven't played in any tournaments or anything like that," Seton Hall's John Allen said. "To play against the No. 4 team, to beat the No. 4 team is probably the highlight of everybody's career."

Krauser, who picked up his fifth foul on the call that sent Barrett to the line with 9.6 seconds left, had 23 points for Pitt.

"Originally they called it on Mark McCarroll but the other official said it was on me," Krauser said of the foul against Barrett, his former AAU teammate in New York. "It was a good play. The call was made."

Freshman Chris Taft had 16 points and 15 rebounds, and Chevon Troutman had 10 points and 10 rebounds for the Panthers. Taft had seven offensive rebounds and the Panthers finished with a 46-38 advantage on the boards.

"The defense we played was physical and so was what they did," Taft said. "I was blocking out and trying to get everything whoever missed."

Pitt held Seton Hall to three field goals over a 13-minute stretch of the second half as it rallied from a 43-35 deficit. Krauser scored the Panthers' last eight points of regulation, including a free throw with 19 seconds left that tied it at 57. Seton Hall didn't get off a shot on the final possession.

Each team scored four points in the first overtime, the last a rebound basket by Taft that tied it at 61 with 3:01 to play.

Taft scored on a rebound with 47 seconds left in the second overtime to tie the game at 67. After a timeout, Barrett drove and the seemed to have the ball knocked away but Krauser was called for the foul and Barrett missed the second free throw.

"He played like a heavyweight fighter," Seton Hall coach Louis Orr said of Barrett. "I thought Andre showed great poise out there. He made big plays for us and never quit. It was a great battle, he and Krauser. Andre is a seasoned vet and he showed a lot of poise and leadership out there."

Freshman Antonio Graves, who played a total of three minutes and came in when Krauser fouled out, got off a runner in the lane just before the final buzzer but it bounced off the rim and the ball went to the floor in a scramble.

"We were just trying to get the best shot we could and I was happy with what we did and how we executed," Dixon said. "Most people would be happy with the shot we got and we'll move on and keep working."

"If I turned around and punched everybody in the face that did that ..."

He pauses.

"But it's cool. However, one day. One day. I don't know when that's going to be, but one day I may do something. I just hope I don't hurt nobody."

He hasn't yet.

Oh, he's been suspended a couple of times for attacking back, but his forays into revenge have been conspicuously gentle.

In 1997 O'Neal, upset at what he perceived to be trash-talking by Utah's Greg Ostertag, assaulted the Jazz center in between shoot-arounds at the Great Western Forum with an open-fisted slap that knocked Ostertag to the floor but didn't hurt him.

Shaq's tough guys

Shaquille O'Neal on the toughest players in the NBA:
Philadelphia 76ers guard Allen Iverson.

Los Angeles Lakers forward Karl Malone.

Los Angeles Lakers guard Gary Payton.

Other tough NBA big men

Wilt Chamberlain - Played almost every minute of every game, averaging a league-record 45.8 for his career. He averaged 48.5 minutes during the 1961-62 season.

Bill Russell - Unheralded as an ironman, but his career 42.3 minutes a game is second only to Chamberlain.

A.C. Green - Holds the league record with 1,192 consecutive games played.

Larry Bird - Dislocated the index finger on his right (shooting) hand and asked teammate Danny Ainge to pop it into place during a timeout. Bird ended up doing it himself - Ainge was too squeamish to look at the finger - and returned to the game.

Karl Malone - Entered the season having played in 1,434 of a possible 1,444 career games. He once played after receiving round-the-clock treatment for an ankle sprain so severe that he had to ride a golf cart to the locker room before the game started. Shaq's tough guys






Two years ago he went after Brad Miller, then with the Chicago Bulls, during a game. But he seemed to pull his punch, grazing Miller in the ear.

"He missed him on purpose, I believe," says veteran Sacramento Kings center Vlade Divac, now a teammate of Miller's.

No question, O'Neal, who has a Superman logo tattooed on his biceps and sometimes refers to himself as "Diesel," is intimidating and dominating and overpowering and, when healthy and motivated, generally as impossible to contain as a tornado.

But tough?

Ask some Lakers who is the toughest among them, and Karl Malone, Gary Payton and Kobe Bryant are mentioned before O'Neal.

If toughness is as toughness does, O'Neal falls short in some categories.

Is O'Neal an ironman? Hardly. He has missed a significant number of games the last three seasons with foot and leg injuries.

Does he play hurt? Sometimes.

Does he play in pain? Often.

O'Neal says he hasn't been healthy for an entire season since his first, 1992-93. The worst of it, he says, was in 2001-02, when he was dogged all year by an arthritic big toe that caused him to use painkillers frequently and required surgery after the season.

"I had to take the drugs, and the drugs messed my stomach up," he says. "After the Alonzo Mourning (career-ending kidney disease, possibly linked to extensive use of painkillers), that kind of scared me, so I'm backing away from the drugs. My father told me that if you can't run effectively, you shouldn't play."

For a stretch this season, O'Neal wasn't able to run effectively: He missed 12 games in a row with a strained calf. After scoring seven points in his return Jan. 28, he averaged 26.4 in the next five games.

There are those who question O'Neal's determination to return to action quickly, and those who believe he'd avoid injuries if he kept himself in better shape.

"Those are the same people who don't know how to play, who don't know what real pain is like," O'Neal says. "Those are the same people who won't question me in front of me."

There are two primary reasons someone would call O'Neal tough. One is to not make him mad.

"I'm not going to say Shaq's not tough. He might beat me up," L.A. Clippers forward Elton Brand says.

The other reason is the physical abuse O'Neal takes in the post. He went to the free throw line more than any player four of the last five seasons and has attempted 8,204 free throws in his 12 seasons. Next season he probably will be sixth on the all-time list — behind Malone, Wilt Chamberlain, Moses Malone, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson.

Because O'Neal has missed 3,772 free throws — he's a career 54% foul shooter — opponents keep on sending him to the line. Sometimes viciously.

Brand says his approach to fouling O'Neal is fairly typical of most NBA big men.

"I know when I foul him, I jump on his head," he says. "If not, he's going to make the basket. The average foul is not a Shaq foul. You have to attack him."

Says Divac: "He's a target. Sometimes the fouls are pretty ugly. Obviously he's tough because he just takes it. I mean, he could go off and hurt somebody."

Which, fortunately for opponents, is not his nature. "Sometimes you just want to knock somebody out and send a message," O'Neal says. "But I've got five kids now, and I don't want them to watch that stuff."

The U.S. Supreme Court was considering an appeal by the state Monday night. Justices could let the ruling stand or they could overrule the 9th Circuit and allow the execution to go forward.

The ruling came amid a flurry of legal developments in the case.

On Sunday, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit refused in a 2-1 ruling to stop the execution.

But on Monday, the full 9th Circuit granted a stay to consider whether DNA evidence connecting Cooper to the crime should be retested amid repeated claims that he was framed by law enforcement. The 11 judges then overturned the decision by the three-judge panel and decided to take a closer look at the evidence.

Cooper's attorney, Lanny Davis, cheered the ruling.

"What this means is that for the very first time, one court and one neutral fact-finder can hear all of the evidence that the jury was not allowed to hear," Davis said. "This suggests not only that Kevin Cooper can be found innocent once and for all, but that there may be three murderers out there who need to be found and prosecuted."

Cooper's plea for clemency was recently denied by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the first such decision to cross the governor's desk. Schwarzenegger said the evidence of Cooper's guilt was overwhelming.

Earlier Monday, lawyers for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate the appeals court's decision to have a larger panel reconsider the case. Deputy Attorney General Holly Wilkens said Cooper cannot reopen his case so close to his execution date.

"The order of the 9th Circuit constitutes an unwarranted intrusion on California's ability to carry out a lawful and final judgment that has been the subject of over 18 years of post-conviction appeals and collateral challenges," Wilkens wrote to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court reconsidered the case with the 11 judges at the request of Cooper's attorneys and of a dissenting judge, James R. Browning, who said "there should be no hurry" to execute Cooper.

"If he is truly guilty, these simple tests will resolve the matter. If he is truly innocent, those same tests will tell us that," Browning wrote. "When the stakes are so high, when the evidence against Cooper is so weak ... there is no reason to hurry and every reason to find out the truth."

When the 9th Circuit issued a stay in the case, the decision was welcomed by Cooper's celebrity supporters, including actor Denzel Washington and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. But prosecutors and family members of the victims were outraged.

Cooper was convicted of stabbing and hacking to death Douglas and Peggy Ryen, both 41, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and 11-year-old Christopher Hughes after escaping from prison in 1983. The Ryens' son, Joshua, then 8, survived a slit throat.

Cooper claims DNA evidence was planted, but the courts have balked at new tests, saying there was no evidence of tampering. Cooper's attorneys also insist they have new evidence, producing a woman Sunday who said that on the night of the murders, she saw two men covered in blood at a bar near the scene.

The court will decide whether the law authorizes renewed DNA testing of blood evidence linking Cooper to the crime, and whether he can seek testing of hair found in one of the victims' hands. The hair has not undergone forensic testing.

John Kochis, the prosecutor who tried Cooper, said that the hair was from the victim's own head. However, DNA testing was not available in 1984, when authorities came to that conclusion.

Two U.S. teams are so close to launching people into space that they have applied for licenses from the Federal Aviation Administration, FAA officials said Monday.

The $10 million X Prize contest seems likely to change the government monopoly on space flight. About two dozen teams from around the world are competing to launch the first privately funded vehicle that would fly people into space. Organizers believe there will be a market for space tourists willing to spend sizable sums for a short ride into space to experience weightlessness.

To win, a craft capable of holding three people doesn't have to orbit the Earth but must fly to an altitude of 62 miles. NASA considers anyone reaching an altitude of 50 miles to have flown in space. There's a catch: The spacecraft must make a second flight within two weeks to win. That rule would've eliminated America's first manned spacecraft, the Mercury capsules, which flew only once.

"This year we do expect to have a winner," X Prize spokeswoman Diane Murphy said.

The X Prize Foundation, based in St. Louis, promotes the development of private, reusable launch vehicles. Board members include Dennis Tito, the American who spent $20 million to fly in a Russian spacecraft in 2001, and Erik Lindbergh, grandson of Charles Lindbergh.

The leading contender for the prize is a company led by Burt Rutan, who designed the Voyager, the first plane to fly nonstop around the world without refueling in 1986. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is funding Rutan's effort.

Rutan's spacecraft would be carried to 50,000 feet by a jet before being released and firing its own rocket. It has made 11 test flights. During its most recent flight in December, it reached 13 miles and broke the sound barrier. Rutan estimates that anyone aboard would experience weightlessness for three minutes. Commercial jetliners cruise at roughly 35,000 feet, or 6½ miles high.

Rutan's company, Scaled Composites of Mojave, Calif., is one of two competitors for the X Prize that has applied for an FAA license to launch into space, says Patricia Grace Smith of the FAA. Also competing is Armadillo Aerospace of Mesquite, Texas, headed by computer game designer John Carmack, who made a fortune on the games Doom and Quake. The team is testing its rocket engines and plans to launch this year.

Smith said they were "very close" to granting a license to either Scaled Composites, Armadillo Aerospace or a third company that is still far from flying into space.

The winning flight will be similar to Alan Shepard's in 1961. That flight included five minutes of weightlessness.

President Bush said in an attached statement, "As 2004 begins, America's economy is strong and getting stronger."

His jobs prediction is politically risky. If most of the jobs materialize before the November election, Bush would be able to point to the marked improvement in making his case for re-election. But if they don't, that will provide ammunition to Democrats who say the president's economic stewardship is a failure. During Bush's tenure, 2.2 million jobs have been lost, according to the Labor Department.

The president credited income tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 for fueling an economic rebound that became apparent in the second half of last year. Bush said his administration's leadership has steadied an economy rocked by an inherited recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Last year, the report projected creation of 1.7 million jobs in 2003, but by the end of the year, 53,000 jobs had been lost.

This year, the number of jobs is increasing, but at half the rate Bush is projecting. In January, 112,000 jobs were created.

White House analysts say job growth is speeding up. Their optimism is based partly on the belief that a rise in productivity, or worker output per hour, will slow from recent high levels. Gains in productivity have helped businesses increase output with little hiring.

The analysts also note that companies have improved profits and reduced debt, providing greater potential to invest, expand and hire.

"Our projections are in line with private-sector forecasts," said Trent Duffy, White House deputy press secretary.

Some private economists agree with the assessment but not the time frame.

"We also believe a job rebound is around the corner," said Sophia Koropeckyj, analyst at Economy.com, a consulting firm. "But it's a matter of timing. Normally, once job growth occurs ... you see growth of about 200,000 or more a month." That pace would come close to Bush's goal of 2.6 million jobs, a 2% increase. But "the job market is quite fragile. I don't think the momentum is there yet."

On Monday, Bush was in Missouri, site of a Democratic presidential primary that Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry won last Tuesday. He chided his Democratic rivals who call for rolling back the tax cuts. Kerry says he wants to undo them for the wealthiest taxpayers.

"When they say, 'We're going to repeal Bush's tax cuts,' that means they're going to raise your taxes," Bush said at an auto engine manufacturer in Springfield.

Kerry, the front-runner for his party's nomination, called the Bush outlook "more empty promises and false hope."

The service plans to boost average rates by more than 3% starting March 1 — an increase "tied to the increasing escalation of programming costs," says Steve Cox, executive vice president of sales, distribution and customer acquisition.

The new prices will range from $36.99 a month for basic service with 125 channels to $90.99 for the "premier" package with 210 channels and free TiVo service. The increase is the fourth in 10 years, but the last, 3.3%, came in March.

Pay-TV networks such as ESPN are pushing up prices, Cox says. "We have to pass along some of it to our consumers." ESPN spokeswoman Katina Arnold responds: "We're worth what we're paid."

Trying to undercut DirecTV on price, No. 2 satellite operator EchoStar is raising rates an average of 1.7% on its most popular packages this year, according to spokesman Steve Caulk.

But DirecTV won't be the leader in pay-TV rate increases in 2004.

Comcast, the nation's largest cable operator with 21 million subscribers, will boost average cable rates by 5.4%, spokesman Tim Fitzpatrick says. Time Warner Cable will raise average rates by 4.9%, spokesman Mark Harrad says. Cox Communications' rates are going up by an average 3% to 4%, spokeswoman Laura Oberhelman says. Cablevision is upping rates by an average of 3.2%.

"The cable industry is raising prices. That gives (Murdoch) some room. EchoStar will play bottom-feeder," says Larry Gerbrandt, senior analyst at Kagan World Media.

The disparity also will help keep a price advantage that boosted satellite subscriptions last year, while cable was flat. Satellite service averaged $64 a month in 2003 vs. $72 for a typical package of two premium services, 100 cable channels, local channels and about 40 channels of music, consulting firm the Carmel Group says.

Also adding to rate competition this year: Local phone providers and satellite services have rolled out, or are planning to offer, discounted bundles of phone, Internet and pay TV. The ventures will allow them to offer inclusive packages similar to the bundles of phone, Internet and TV service from cable operators.

Rescue workers could be seen searching the flaming, smoking wreckage for survivors at the Sharjah airport. Bodies were covered in red blankets and placed in a row.

The number of passengers and crew on the Kish Airline turboprop wasn't clear, with officials and local media variously reporting 40 to 50 people, including at least one child, on board.

A Civil Aviation official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, said 35 people were confirmed dead.

The plane was arriving from the Iranian resort island of Kish. Previous reports incorrectly said the aircraft crashed on takeoff.

Mehdi Mehranpour, deputy managing director of Iran's national carrier, Iran Air, confirmed that the plane belonged to Kish Airline, a separate Iranian company. Kish Airline officials could not immediately be reached.

Speaking to The Associated Press in the Iranian capital of Tehran, Mehranpour said the airliner was a Fokker 50, which can carry about 60 people, and that it had crashed in a populated area near Sharjah airport.

Kish Airline operates a fleet of four TU-154M jets, a Russian aircraft, on domestic and international flights and four short-range Fokker-50s, German turboprops, according to the company's Web site.

Iran has a history of air accidents, often blamed on badly maintained planes. In June, an Iranian military C-130 transport plane crashed outside Tehran, killing all seven people on board. In February, a Russian-made Ilyushin-76 crashed in southeastern Iran, killing all 275 aboard.

In Belarus in September, a Tupolev-154 belonging to Kish Air on a Tehran-Minsk-Copenhagen went off course while making its landing approach at the Minsk-2 airport, striking trees which caused serious damage to the plane's wings. None of the 40 people aboard were hurt.

In 1995, an Iranian flight attendant hijacked a Kish Air Boeing 707 to Israel during a flight from Tehran. The plane was returned to Tehran with 174 passengers and crew.

Last month, a top Iranian aviation official asked the United States to lift sanctions on its airline industry as a humanitarian gesture so the country can buy spare parts for its airplanes.

Tehran has blamed many of its air crashes on U.S. sanctions, saying they have prevented the country from repairing and replacing an aging fleet that includes many Russian-made Tupolev planes. Iran has complained of trouble buying European-made planes as well because some Airbus parts are American-made.

Though both Southern candidates say they will stay in the race after today's voting, finishing third would be devastating. Clark, whose Little Rock campaign staff voted to forgo a week's pay so the candidate could run TV ads in Tennessee, is considered more likely to drop out if he doesn't do well.

"There's only one alternative to Kerry, and it will be decided on Tuesday," Republican pollster Frank Luntz said.

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean has skipped both contests and is concentrating on the Wisconsin primary Feb. 17 to resurrect his stumbling campaign. Victories by Kerry today and in Wisconsin could all but end the nomination fight.

Despite his wins from New Hampshire to Washington, Kerry has yet to prevail in the South. Assailed by Republicans as a "Massachusetts liberal," he wants at least one win today to prove he is running a national campaign and that a Northerner can succeed in the region.

But the primaries aren't as critical to Kerry as they are to his two main challengers. "Kerry can lose both of these states and still be a front-runner," Democratic strategist Steve Jarding said.

Clark, campaigning in Memphis Monday, acknowledged that he faces a different predicament. "You've got a front-runner, you've got a good lawyer and you've got an underdog," he said, referring to Kerry and Edwards, a former trial lawyer. "I'm the underdog."

The former NATO commander, who spent his sophomore year of high school at a military academy near Nashville, has staked his campaign on Tennessee after winning narrowly in Oklahoma Feb. 3. He has become more aggressive in recent days, lashing out at Kerry and assailing Edwards for his votes on the Iraq war, education, tax cuts and veterans issues.

Edwards has called Clark's remarks "the kind of attacks that people are sick of." The senator has run television ads deriding "these petty snipings that are going on."

Edwards and Clark skipped last weekend's Michigan, Washington and Maine caucuses, all won by Kerry. They have focused on conservative, rural Democrats and blue-collar workers in Virginia and Tennessee. Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, hopes to do well in heavily military Norfolk and with more-liberal voters in Northern Virginia and Nashville.

All three candidates have tailored their stump speech to appeal to Southern voters:

• At a dinner of 2,000 Democratic activists here Saturday, Kerry accused President Bush of "extremist" policies. Kerry is the candidate of "mainstream" values, he said.

• Clark talks up his religious upbringing. He also speaks more often about being wounded in the Vietnam War.

• Edwards, who practiced law in Nashville early in his career, said his appeal to Southerners "is not about political strategy." He reminds crowds, "The South is not George Bush's backyard. It's my backyard, and I will defeat George Bush in my backyard."

For Tennesseans and Virginians unaccustomed to voting this early or having this much clout, the condensed primary calendar has been thrilling.

Virginia is holding its first Democratic presidential primary since 1988. Although the state hasn't gone for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Alexandria Democratic Party Chairwoman Susan Kellom says her party is energized. Noting the state's diverse population, she said, "How Virginia goes is going to be a very telling bellwether for how the country goes" in November.

In Tennessee, "people are excited," said state Democratic Party Chairman Randy Button, who predicts a record turnout. He expects a close race in the state that rejected native son Al Gore in favor of Bush in 2000. Democrats gathered in Nashville on Sunday to honor Gore, who endorsed Dean before he began his decline in the race.

Clark has said he expects to win at least one contest today. But the polls show him running a distant third here and in a tight race with Edwards for second in Tennessee.

"He's toast if he doesn't win Tennessee," said Ed Cromer, editor of The Tennessee Journal, a political newsletter. "He's teetering on the brink now."

Political observers say Edwards, who campaigned in both states Monday, must come in a close second to Kerry if he is to survive the next round of primaries. "Make no mistake," Jarding said. "John Edwards is on a bit of thin ice, but he hasn't fallen through."

Isawi pauses to take a drag on a cigarette and adds, "Get revenge for your colleagues."

There will be no revenge today. The police at the checkpoint couldn't call for help because they didn't have radios. At least 45 minutes had elapsed by the time word got to Isawi and his officers arrived at the scene. The attackers, who had sprayed the checkpoint with gunfire, were long gone.

The U.S.-led coalition occupying Iraq, facing continuing attacks from anti-occupation fighters, is eager to turn responsibility for security over to Iraqis like this police chief.

A native of Fallujah, Isawi, 52, says he took the job because he was concerned that the growing lawlessness here would destroy his hometown. "I was much worried about the future," he says.

U.S. officials say Iraqis such as Isawi who agree to help coalition forces are heroes because of the risk they face. "Being a policeman in Fallujah is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world," says U.S. Army Lt. Col. Brian Drinkwine, 38, a West Point graduate who commands the battalion responsible for the city.

Isawi's gap-toothed grin and readiness to laugh belie atoughness that carried him through the ranks of Saddam Hussein's police and intelligence apparatus. Isawi says he isa bridge between a population wary of occupiers and the U.S. soldiers trying to pacify this insular region.

Fallujah is a pivotal test for the U.S.-to-Iraqi security program.

In the heart of the Sunni Triangle, an area that harbors the strongest resistance to the U.S.-led occupation and its Iraqi allies, it is perhaps the most dangerous city in Iraq's most dangerous region. Criminals and insurgents who support Saddam Hussein's former ruling Baath Party range freely on roads around the city at night.

"If you want to take control of the country, Fallujah is the key," Isawi says.

The level of unrest here seems disproportionate to the size of the population. Fallujah, 60 miles west of Baghdad, has about 250,000 residents. American helicopters have been shot out of the sky here. U.S. and Iraqi patrols and convoys frequently are ambushed.

While U.S. military officers report progress in combating the insurgency, it is far from over. U.S. troops in the area were attacked about 60 times a month by jury-rigged explosives along the road in August and September, when anti-American attacks in this area reached a peak.

In December, the number of attacks dropped to 38 and remained at about that level through January, says Col. Jefforey Smith, commander of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division.

Tribal leaders rule

Tribal rulers, or sheiks, and clerics control much of the city and surrounding farmland. Locals in the mainly Sunni Muslim area follow centuries-old traditions. Women work the fields but rarely are seen in town. Men congregate in local hangouts where they smoke pipes and talk. At the noisy Haji Hussein restaurant, men look up from their stacks of flat bread and steaming lamb kebabs to eye a passing U.S. foot patrol. Outsiders are not welcome.

When the British occupied Iraq after World War I they largely avoided this area.

"Even Saddam Hussein had problems in Fallujah," Smith says. The former Iraqi leader maintained some control over the restive tribes by paying the sheiks.

The U.S. Army at first had difficulty understanding how things work here. As a result, the occupation didn't begin well. In April, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division killed 18 protesters. Army officers quickly learned that they needed the support of sheiks. But figuring out which ones to trust cost lives and money.

According to a report by two officers from the 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, U.S. officers last summer had to sort through hundreds of tribal and religious figures all claiming to represent thousands of followers in the city.

Taha Bedawi, a local leader, was chosen as the city's first mayor. But it turned out his administration embezzled coalition reconstruction money and funneled projects to two favorite tribes, according to the report.

Worse, the mayor's chief assistant was accused last summer of calling in a mortar strike on his own city hall to scare off a visiting civilian delegation from the Baghdad-based Coalition Provisional Authority. No one was injured, but the assistant was arrested.

The mayor finally was forced out in November when city hall was ransacked. The Army was called in. The building was secured, but several Iraqis were killed. "That was the end" of Bedawi, who resigned, Smith says.

An interim mayor, Raad Hussein, has the confidence of most sheiks, who consider him fair.

U.S. military officers plan on broadening the 31-man Fallujah council, a governing body set up with the assistance of Americans, to include professionals.

Violence continued even after the new mayor took over. Army raids in search of pro-Saddam fighters were angering locals.

After Saddam's capture on Dec. 13, protesters stormed city hall again. They looted and burned the building. Mayor Hussein and his security team retreated without a fight. By the time the Army arrived, the building had been nearly destroyed.

Tribal leaders approached Isawi about the job. He won unanimous approval from the Fallujah council. Americans who vet police applicants were satisfied that Isawi was not a ranking member of the Baath Party.

A Sunni Muslim like Saddam, Isawi is a 1971 graduate of Baghdad's police academy. By 1993, he had become head of the Foreign Residency Department, which reviewed foreigners' visa requests, in Saddam's notorious Mukhabarat intelligence service.

Isawi says he quit the job in 1993 because he was concerned Saddam's regime was heading for disaster.

"On television, Saddam would laugh and smile," he says. "But he was a butcher, a killer." He returned to his family's farm in Fallujah. Isawi still lives there with his two wives and their 12 children.

In December, Isawi told the tribal leaders he would accept the job on one condition: that the sheiks sign an agreement that says police are exempt from tribal law when they kill a criminal in the course of their duties.

Families of the dead would be prohibited from conducting revenge attacks, as had been the habit in the past. The sheiks signed. Given the region's long tradition of retribution, Smith is withholding judgment: "We'll see how it goes," he says.

One of Isawi's greatest strength is that he is a native of the area and from one of the region's largest tribes. He often wears a red-and-white checked scarf wrapped around his head instead of a traditional police hat. At the end of the day, he dons the ankle-length robes favored by sheiks and joins the diwaniyah, a gathering of men who smoke water pipes and talk — an Arab tradition.

"I explain to them what we are facing," Isawi says. "We share problems." He asks tribes for their backing.

"We are ready to support the police," says Sheik Khadir Abbas, a tribal leader. As a show of support, some tribes have provided the police with ammunition when they run low, Isawi says.

It's been quieter since Isawi took charge in December. But police still are regularly threatened or killed. Grenades recently were tossed at the home of Isawi's deputy.

Still, the Americans are impressed with Isawi's attempts to restore peace here. "We were concerned he'd come here and tell us, 'Here's what I need,' " Smith says. Instead, he said he was going to fix his department first and win the confidence of his officers.

Police once 'the lowest tier'

There is a lot to fix. Police departments under Saddam were at the bottom of the nation's security network. Law enforcement was the work of the Mukhabarat, the Fedayeen militia and other security agencies that reported to Saddam. Police were poorly equipped and had little training. Generally, they stayed inside the police stations until called.

"Police were the lowest tier of security for this town," says Smith. "It's an uphill fight to change a mindset they've lived with for years."

The first thing the coalition did to recruit people was to offer good pay and provide the right equipment. Rank-and-file police earn about $220 a month. Officers receive about $285. Under Saddam, they earned a fraction of that, though many boosted their pay by taking bribes. Isawi earns about $330 a month. The coalition has provided 40 portable radios and 48 protective vests for Isawi's 2,000-man force.

The city's two-story police headquarters is noisy, dirty and thick with cigarette smoke. Concrete barriers outside the entrance protect against car bombs. Police with new U.S.-issued protective vests stand at checkpoints on streets around the station.

Isawi says he is instilling some esprit in the force. An officer enters his office to discuss the case of an officer who failed to stand at attention when addressing the chief. The chief approves two days in the lockup for the offender.

"My job is to keep them disciplined," Isawi says. "I am taking everything under my control. That is the difference." U.S. officers say his predecessors had a more "hands-off" approach. Isawi spends hours at the station, inspects checkpoints and makes many decisions himself.

Getting cops into the streets

He also is trying to get police to go into the streets and fight when necessary. "If they strike once, we will strike them twice," Isawi says about insurgents.

Later, Isawi barrels through Fallujah on an inspection tour of police checkpoints. Cradling an AK-47 between his legs, he sits in the passenger seat of a white Toyota Land Cruiser. A handful of armed men are crowded in the back. Isawi stops at one checkpoint to order a cluster of officers to disperse so they aren't an easy target. They salute smartly as he drives off.

A report comes over the radio. Three men on motorcycles are driving through town with AK-47s strapped to their backs. Isawi considers them a threat. "Take your weapons off safe," he orders the men in the back seat. "We're going to have a fight." But the patrol loses sight of the men before Isawi can head them off in his vehicle.

Isawi and other officers describe attackers as common criminals and dismiss the notion of an insurgency.

"They are evil and we are good," he says. He says the presence of Americans in this foreigner-phobic region provokes the attacks: "I know Americans will not leave Iraq, but let them stay away from here. When Americans come through here, you hear shooting."

Isawi's strategy is to prove he's interested in the town's success, not in lining his own or his tribe's pockets. As he sits in his office, where tea is continuously served to the procession of visitors, a call comes from the dispatcher's office. Two men are brazenly selling black-market kerosene off the back of a tanker truck in town. They are charging double the official rate.

Arrest the two men, Isawi orders over the radio. "Give the kerosene to everyone for free."

Contributing: Sabah al-Anbaki in Fallujah

The women's blood was tested because experts suspected they may have caught the disease from their brother, who also died; but that link could not be proven because the brother's body was cremated. So far, there have been no known cases of person-to-person transmission in the current bird flu outbreak.

Health experts have been most worried about the possibility of the disease combining with the human influenza virus to create a more lethal version that could be spread between people — giving rise to a global pandemic.

The new data is "reassuring" evidence that the H5N1 bird flu virus that's hitting Asia has not acquired that ability, the WHO said in a statement posted on its Web site late Friday.

Vietnamese officials, meanwhile, denied claims that pigs have been infected with the disease that has forced the slaughter of millions of chickens throughout Asia and killed at least 18 people.

China's Agriculture Ministry reported bird flu in three more provinces on Saturday.

The cases were in the provinces of Hubei, Henan and Jiangxi and quarantine measures were imposed, the ministry said in a statement released through the official Xinhua News Agency. Both Hubei and Jiangxi have reported previous cases in fowl in recent days.

The WHO was investigating Cambodia's first suspected human case — a woman who fell ill in Takeo province and died in a hospital in neighboring Vietnam, said Sean Tobin, a WHO medical epidemiologist in the capital, Phnom Penh.

Separately, South Korea and Singapore effectively banned chicken and duck imports from the United States after avian influenza was detected in Delaware, the countries' goverments said Saturday.

Officials in Delaware ordered Friday the destruction of some 12,000 chickens after confirming that the flock was infected by bird flu. The birds have a milder form of the virus that has devastated poultry stocks in Asia.

Still, South Korea's Agriculture and Forestry Ministry said in a statement that it will indefinitely halt customs inspection of U.S. poultry "as a precautionary measure." Last year, South Korea imported 40,107 tons of chicken meat and 87 tons of duck meat from the United States.

Singapore also stopped U.S. poultry imports, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority said in a statement. The city-state imported 19,300 tons of frozen chicken meat worth about $19.5 million from the United States last year.

Health officials have said the bird flu is contracted through direct contact with infected birds, but experts have said it's possible the virus jumped to humans through a mammal, like pigs, which have been implicated in past human flu outbreaks.

Swine often are housed with poultry in traditional family farms in Asia, and are more genetically similar to humans than birds are.

Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, which has run separate, extensive tests on pigs in bird flu-affected areas, said their findings have all turned up negative for the H5N1 flu virus, said Bui Quang Anh, director of the ministry's Veterinary Department.

"I can formally announce that no bird flu virus has been found in pigs in Vietnam," he said Saturday.

Anh said 179 samples were taken from pigs in the country's north and south. The samples were then sent to the WHO's Hong Kong laboratories.

He also criticized an announcement Friday by Anton Rychener, Vietnam representative of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, who said preliminary tests on nasal swabs taken from pigs in and around Hanoi showed the presence of the H5N1 strain.

"I don't know on what justification FAO made such a statement," Anh said.

Officials at the Rome headquarters of the U.N. agency later downplayed the findings, saying that the results do not necessarily mean the pigs are infected.

The tests may merely be confirming the presence of infected chicken droppings on their snouts. Rigorous tests look for the virus or antibodies in the blood, the agency said.

The avian influenza has killed 13 people in Vietnam, and five in Thailand. More than 50 million chickens have been slaughtered in Asia to stem the spread of the virus.

Grief counselors gathered at McIntosh Middle School Saturday to console Carlie's classmates. The slaying hit particularly hard because of the video capturing some of the last moments of the girl's life, said Robin Maranelli, head of student services for Sarasota County schools.

"It makes it very real ... we saw it happen," Maranelli said.

Investigators refused to say exactly how Carlie Brucia was killed or whether she had been raped. The arrest report said only that she died "as a result of homicidal violence."

Sheriff's officials and the medical examiner's office did not immediately return calls seeking comment on Saturday, and no police briefings were immediately planned.

"We now stand ready to complete our obligation, and assure you that he will pay the ultimate price for what he did to her," said Sheriff's Capt. Jeff Bell said Friday.

On Friday, investigators in white coveralls searched the area around the Central Church of Christ where Carlie's body was found, and Carlie's friends and family gathered outside the church. Her stepfather, Steven Kansler, and some friends knelt in a prayer circle.

Hundreds mourned Carlie at a Friday evening prayer vigil.

"She's in a better place. She got there in a horrific manner, but now she's watching me all the time," said her father, Joe Brucia.

Smith, 37, is believed to be the man seen on the surveillance video in a mechanic's shirt with a name patch, leading Carlie away by the arm Sunday as she walked home from a slumber party. Investigators said the man on the tape had tattoos on both forearms. Smith has many tattoos on his arms.

The kidnapping set off a frantic search for the girl, and the tape was beamed across the nation as Carlie's family and authorities pleaded for her safe return.

Investigators said they were led to Smith after a tipster identified him as the man in the video. Authorities said he had a Buick station wagon that was seen in the surveillance footage shortly before the kidnapping.

Smith has been arrested at least 13 times in Florida since 1993.

He served 17 months in prison in 2001 and 2002 for heroin possession and prescription drug fraud. Eight days after he got out, he was arrested for cocaine possession and placed on probation for three years. He also received probation for aggravated battery in 1993 and heroin charges in 1999.

Neighbors said Smith and his wife had separated recently and he had moved out of the house.

Linda Thompson, who lives next door to the Smith family, described Smith as a good father to his three daughters. She remembered him playing with them in the yard, buying them a puppy and building a goldfish pond for them in the front of the house.

"That's the Joe we saw, so when this started it was hard to believe that there's a different side," Thompson said.

Carlie's friends said the blonde, blue-eyed girl idolized Jennifer Lopez and enjoyed going to the mall and hanging out with friends. She had a cat named Charlie and a 6-year-old half brother and a 10-year-old stepbrother.

"She was loving and caring. She doesn't like to see other people hurt. She'd be really crying if this was one of us or someone else she knows," said Tiffany Meeks, a friend at school who placed flowers along a memorial at the car wash. "It's just hard to talk about."

"She was too little to resist the surgery," the mother, 26-year-old Maria Gisela Hiciano, said by telephone from her home, sobbing softly.

Hiciano said doctors told her Rebeca died around 6 a.m.

The second head, which doctors said threatened the girl's development, grew from the top of Rebeca's skull and had its own partly developed brain, ears, eyes and lips.

During the surgery, 18 surgeons, nurses and doctors had taken several rotations to cut off the undeveloped tissue, clip the veins and arteries, and close the skull using a bone and skin graft from the second head.

Doctors had warned her parents that Rebeca confronted "the second big risk, the post-operation recovery," according to Dr. Santiago Hazim, medical director of Santo Domingo's Center for Orthopedic Specialties, where the surgery was performed.

The operation was critical because the head on top was growing faster than the lower one, said Dr. Jorge Lazareff, the lead brain surgeon and director of pediatric neurosurgery at the University of California at Los Angeles' Mattel Children's Hospital.

Lazareff led a team that successfully separated conjoined Guatemalan twin girls in 2002.

Hiciano and her husband, 29-year-old Franklin Martinez, have two other children, ages 4 and 1.

Also Saturday, a Palestinian military court charged four suspects with planting explosives along a main road in Gaza. A prosecutor said the defendants targeted Israeli tanks, but that one of their bombs may also have ripped apart a U.S. diplomatic vehicle and killed three American security guards Oct. 15.

The Palestinian killed in Saturday's air strike was identified as Aziz Mahmoud Shami, leader of Islamic Jihad's military wing in Gaza City. The Israeli military said Shami was in the midst of preparing for "a major attack" on the Gaza Strip settlement of Netzarim.

The army also said he was behind a 1995 double suicide bombing near the coastal city of Netanya that killed 21 Israelis, all but one of them soldiers, and a more recent infiltration into a Gaza Strip military base in which three soldiers were killed.

Shami was driving in a white Peugeot in a busy Gaza City street when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile, ripping apart the front of the vehicle. Witnesses also heard the roar of F-16 fighter jets breaking the sound barrier over Gaza.

The attack also killed Tarek Sousi, who was on his way to school, doctors said.

Onlooker Mohammed Taleb, 36, said he was a few yards from the car when it exploded, and was knocked to the ground. After a moment he ran to the flaming car.

"The driver had lost his leg and he was lying half in and half out of the car bleeding heavily," Taleb said. "A small boy with his school bag was covered with blood and two other boys were screaming next to him."

Three of the 10 wounded were being operated on for shrapnel wounds to the chest and legs, doctors said.

Israel's military has routinely sent helicopters and F-16 jets to kill Palestinian militants in targeted missile attacks throughout more than three years of fighting.

Members of Islamic Jihad said Shami was the leader of the group's military wing in Gaza City and a cousin of the overall Islamic Jihad leader, Abdullah Shami.

Abdullah Shami said his group, which has carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Israel, would have its revenge.

"The Islamic Jihad movement is a resistance movement and it will respond to this aggression with all its force," Shami said, kissing his cousin's forehead at the morgue of Shifa Hospital in Gaza city.

Meanwhile, Palestinian authorities indicted four men for planting explosives on the main road in Gaza, leading from the Erez crossing to Gaza City.

U.S. officials have been pressing the Palestinians to find those responsible and have repeatedly said they are disappointed with the level of cooperation with Palestinian police. Recently U.S. officials have warned that some U.S. aid programs could be scaled back or canceled if there is no progress in the probe.

A military prosecutor said those bombs were intended to target Israeli tanks entering the Strip, but one of the explosives may have ripped apart a U.S. diplomatic car in the Oct. 15 attack on the convoy.

Palestinian and U.S. investigators found evidence indicating that the bomb was detonated by someone who intentionally targeted the U.S. convoy after watching it pass from a nearby hiding place. A wire found in the road after the blast was attached to a remote control device in a nearby shack.

The court set a Feb. 29 trial date for the four men.

Saturday's air strike came several days after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he would remove nearly all the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip as part of a "disengagement plan" from the Palestinians.

On Friday, Sharon's spokesman said Israel is considering relocating Gaza settlers in areas of the West Bank it wants to annex in a final peace deal. Palestinians denounced that plan as a land grab and a violation of international law.

As part of the disengagement plan, Israel would move soldiers and settlers out of some Palestinian areas and impose a boundary that would fall far short of turning over all the territory the Palestinians want for a future state.

The plan is to be completed within two or three months, Sharon spokesman Assaf Shariv said Friday.

Some 7,500 Jewish settlers live among 1.3 million Palestinians in the crowded Gaza Strip. Sharon's plan would leave at least three Gaza settlements in place, at least until a final peace deal.

In Tennessee, country music singer George Jones lent his voice to a Clark radio ad debuting Sunday. The native Tennessean tells listeners, "Like Wes Clark, I'm no career politician, but I know a leader when I see one."

Edwards told an overflow crowd at the University of Memphis that President Bush is out of touch. "He lives a sheltered existence," he said. "He needs to be out here in the real world doing what I'm doing." An Elvis Presley impersonator was in the audience.

Clark tried to shrug off remarks that surfaced Saturday, from a 2000 interview, when he alleged that certain unidentified members of the Clinton administration were in a rush to end the Kosovo war so the conflict would not hurt Al Gore's presidential campaign. Clark was the military officer in charge of prosecuting the war, as NATO supreme commander. Gore was vice president.

Campaigning in western Virginia on Saturday, Clark said President Clinton and his national security adviser, Sandy Berger, "were totally committed to this operation. I never had any political pressure to do anything but succeed." (Related story: Clark denies political pressure)

The retired general told a rally at a Roanoke, Va., biscuit shop that he lived four times in the state during his military career, and that he is new to politics. "Nobody owns me," he said.

Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, kept his focus on attacking Bush and tried to stay above the fray as Clark and Edwards intermittently bickered.

Kerry recently spoke dismissively of the South's political value to Democrats, saying they don't need it to win the presidency. He sang a different tune in Nashville.

"This administration is busy trying to paint everybody else as out of touch, out of synch, somehow out of the mainstream," he said Saturday. "But let me tell you something: I'm not worried about coming down South and talking to people about jobs, schools, health care and the environment. I think it's (Bush) who ought to worry about coming down here."

Kerry is the only candidate advertising in the District of Columbia, reaching Democrat-heavy northern Virginia. Howard Dean is devoting most of his efforts to Wisconsin, which holds a primary Feb. 17. That could become a multi-candidate contest if Clark and Edwards do well in Tuesday's races.

But first Clark and Edwards, two candidates who have tended to take the campaign high road, had to survive the weekend, after the back-and-forth barbs of recent days between the two campaigns peaked Friday. Clark argued that his rival turned his back on veterans and Edwards replied that the allegations were "baseless, false attacks."

Democratic strategists said Clark and Edwards have few options left. They can't afford to lose in the South on Tuesday, and Kerry is on a hot streak — winning seven of nine contests. Traditionally, the best way to curb a front-runner's momentum is with attacks. But Clark and Edwards are wary of the lesson learned in Iowa, where voters punished candidates who went negative.

Edwards said he will compete in Wisconsin no matter Tuesday's outcome and added a weekend trip there to his itinerary to pick up the endorsement of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.

Tennessee is do-or-die country for Clark, who was born in Chicago but grew up in Arkansas.

A Virginia poll out Saturday found Kerry with the backing of 34% of likely voters, Edwards at 25% and Clark at 14%. The Mason-Dixon poll reported 13% undecided.

The poll was taken Wednesday and Thursday of 625 likely voters and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The 11-year-old's abduction on Sunday was caught by a car wash surveillance video camera.

The Brucia family has been notified, and tests are pending to confirm the identity of the body.

Surveillance video from a car wash showed a man approaching Carlie and leading her away by the arm. Police subsequently arrested Joseph Smith based on a tip from his housemate and are holding him on drug charges. Smith has not been charged in Carlie's disappearance.

Smith, 37, who has a lengthy criminal record, was arrested at his home Tuesday.

Authorities said Thursday that Smith was not cooperating with the investigation.

Susan Schorpen, the girl's mother, had pleaded for more information from the public Thursday.

"Please help me bring my baby home," Schorpen told a news conference. "Carlie Brucia is a beautiful intelligent girl and she's got to come home."

Sarasota County Sheriff Bill Balkwill told reporters there have been more than 750 leads in the case and each was being investigated.

Investigators impounded a 1992 Buick station wagon on Wednesday. Balkwill told reporters investigators are "certain" the vehicle "was used in the abduction."

He urged those in the area to try to remember whether they had seen the station wagon between Sunday afternoon and Tuesday. Investigators still need to know where Smith traveled after Carlie disappeared.

The girl's disappearance has received national media attention since it was recorded by a security camera behind the car wash.

In the videotape, recorded just after 6:20 p.m. Sunday, a white man in some kind of a work uniform is seen approaching Carlie. He briefly speaks to her as she hesitates, then takes her by the forearm and leads her away.

The man in the video has tattoos on his forearms, as does Smith. He also works as a mechanic.

NASA experts and those at the FBI's lab in Washington worked to enhance the videotape to get a clearer image of the man's face, tattoos, and the apparent name tag on his shirt.

The images have been enhanced and are in Sarasota. Balkwill said the images will be released to the public soon.

Authorities searched Smith's home Wednesday, as well as a field with tall grass behind it, and found nothing immediately linking Smith to the girl's disappearance, a law enforcement source involved in the investigation told CNN.

Forensic examinations are being conducted on certain items taken in the search, the source said.

No bond is being offered Smith on the charges of possessing cocaine and drug paraphernalia and violating probation from a previous drug conviction.

Carlie Brucia's mother says to reporters "Please help me bring my baby home."
"We will not be letting him out of our custody whatsoever," Balkwill said. "He is not answering any of our questions that we've asked. We have made it clear to Joseph and his counsel that we want to know where Carlie is."

The public defender's office said Smith's two attorneys had no comment on the case.

Smith's criminal record in the area dates to 1993, when he was convicted of aggravated battery and sentenced to probation.

In November 1997, Smith was arrested on a charge of kidnapping and false imprisonment in neighboring Manatee County. He was acquitted of those charges a year later.

According to records from the Manatee County Sheriff's Department, a woman said Smith grabbed her as she was walking along a street and threatened to "cut her if she failed to remain quiet."

A passing vehicle stopped and intervened, allowing her to flee, the record said.

The records also said Smith told authorities "he had been in an altercation earlier" that evening "and wanted somebody to walk with."

A few months before the incident in Manatee, Smith was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon -- a knife, according to his arrest record from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Smith has faced numerous drug charges, and in 2001 was convicted of heroin possession, possession of controlled substances, and attempting to obtain controlled substances by fraudulent means. He served a little more than a year in prison. He was on probation when he was arrested Tuesday.

Authorities named Joseph P. Smith. 37, as a suspect in Carlie Brucia's disappearance.
A woman who lives with him said she has known Smith and his ex-wife, whom he divorced in 1996, as well as their three children for many years. She would not say how long he has been living with her.

"He never knew the dark side of anybody," she said.

Smith's neighbor, Ron Thompson, said he was shocked to hear of his arrest.

"[He] has three beautiful little girls," Thompson said. "And he just adored them. And he played with them. And he took good care of them. It's just a different picture than what we see today."

CNN's John Zarrella, Susan Candiotti, Rich Philips and Patrick Oppmann contributed to this report.

"You're told it's a rivalry and everything, but when you're on the court, the emotion of everybody — your teammates and the Carolina players — it's like you're giving it everything," Duke freshman Luol Deng said. "It was just a fight from both teams and Chris (Duhon) made an unbelievable play to win it for us."

Duke's victory was its 13th in the last 15 against the Tar Heels and the fifth in the last six at the Smith Center. The Tar Heels (13-6, 3-5 ACC) forced the overtime when junior forward Jawad Williams made a three-point shot with 18.3 seconds to go. Rashad McCants, who led all scorers with 27 points, tied the game at 81-81 with a three-point shot with 13.5 seconds to go in overtime.

Shelden Williams led the Devils with 22 points. The sophomore had 12 rebounds and five blocked shots, two in the extra period. (Related item: Game recap)

"I told Shelden after the game, 'Your post defense was best when most people will have played their worst — the end of the game,'" Krzyzewski said.

More than a decade ago, former Florida State guard Sam Cassell decided that the Smith Center inhabitants were a "cheese and wine" crowd. That was then, and this is now, with Carolina students sitting near the floor in the overflow crowd announced as 21,750.

"That was a big-time college basketball game and it's tough saying that when you're on the short end," first-year Tar Heels coach Roy Williams said. "If I could coach to the enthusiasm we had in the building, I'd be one hell of a coach."

The Tar Heels, who won nine of their first 10 home games this season, including a victory against then-No. 1 Connecticut on Jan. 17, fell behind by seven points in the first 3:21. But the Blue Devils then began to fall into some uncharacteristic lapses. Three consecutive turnovers — out of 10 Duke committed in the first half — helped the Heels achieve some stability.

Duke's previous opponents had made just 38.6% of their shots. The Tar Heels, however, made 15 of 30 in the first half, including a stretch of scores on six consecutive possessions during an 11-3 run to come within 32-29. Five different Carolina players were responsible for the six scores. When McCants made a three-pointer — one of just two the Heels had in the half — Carolina was within three points and the volume was turned up.

But for all of Carolina's achievements in the first half, there were defensive lapses that left coach Roy Williams shaking his head. The Blue Devils had led for nearly 560 of the 600 minutes they played before Thursday. The noise in the Smith Center did not obscure another Duke achievement: It never trailed in the first half.

Daniel Ewing scored 19 points for Duke, while Deng had 17 points and 12 rebounds, and J.J. Redick added 14 points.

Sean May had 15 points and 21 rebounds for the Tar Heels, but was 7-for-18 from the field and missed a number of close-in shots.

"I told the team we all could point to one or two plays that you could have made that you didn't make that would have made a difference," Roy Williams said. "We had a lot of opportunities early from 2 or 3 feet, and we just didn't make the baskets."

The sellout crowd, most wearing "Turn It Blue" T-shirts, was loud all night — but it was roaring and shaking the floor when McCants' fast-break dunk with 5:45 to go gave North Carolina a 69-62 lead.

Duke then turned up the defense and went on a 10-0 run, taking a 72-69 lead on two free throws by Deng with 1:06 left.

"That was the pivotal point of the game because a lot of teams would have been run out of here," Krzyzewski said. "All of a sudden we had the lead, which I think was shocking. That showed our team played major, major manly minutes."

May scored on a rebound with 53 seconds to go, and Redick restored the three-point lead on a drive with 38 seconds left.

North Carolina called a timeout, and Jawad Williams hit the game-tying 3-pointer. Ewing missed a 3 with 3 seconds left for Duke.

Shelden Williams was a force inside in the overtime. His defense forced North Carolina into a 35-second shot clock violation with 22 seconds left. Redick then made two free throws to make it 81-78 and McCants, who finished 2-for-4 from 3-point range, drilled the 3 that tied it and set the stage for Duhon's heroics.

"Those two shots they hit, come on," Krzyzewski said. "Those aren't shots kids are supposed to hit. Men do. They're the best team we have played."

Duhon said it helped the team's confidence that Krzyzewski didn't call a timeout after either of the tying 3-pointers.

"He told us he wanted us to win the game," said Duhon, who did. "I just kept going and it opened up and I was able to make the layup. I don't think anybody on either team could've handled (another overtime). I tried to do both of us a favor."

Melvin Scott missed a 3 at the buzzer for North Carolina, and it was appropriate that Shelden Williams grabbed the game's final rebound.

The win evened Krzyzewski's record against North Carolina at 28-28, and he is 8-5 against the Tar Heels when his team is ranked No. 1.

Krzyzewski wouldn't get caught up in his first Duke-Carolina game with Williams on the other bench.

"This was a players' game," he said.

Contributing: The Associated Press

"The feeling is just so draining, so unbelievably rewarding to win a game in this environment against a team obviously that's that good," Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma said.

"I couldn't be prouder of my players. This wasn't one of those typical Diana Taurasi gets 35 and everybody just kind of goes along for the ride. Everybody in their own way had some huge plays."

Ann Strother added 17 points for Connecticut, and Barbara Turner had 16 points and nine rebounds. Ashley Battle scored 11 points.

The Huskies, two-time defending NCAA champions, made a compelling case to return to the top of the polls for the second time this season. Connecticut was No. 1 until Jan. 5, after losing at home to Duke two days before.

"This is the best I've seen them play this year," Tennessee coach Pat Summitt said. "They were just a lot tougher than us. They got the loose balls. We need five people on the floor that are competing at a high level and intensity. We have some players who need to decide when they're going to do that."

This was only the third meeting in which Tennessee was ranked No. 1. The Huskies' regular-season victory in 1995 knocked the Lady Vols from the top spot, and the schools have been fighting to be the best women's program ever since.

Tennessee was able to defend its top ranking in 1998, when it finished the season undefeated and won the NCAA title.

Connecticut has been ranked No. 1 in 11 matchups against the Lady Vols.

The Huskies ran out to a 21-13 lead midway through the first half and never let go of the lead.

Each time Tennessee appeared to mount a rally, Connecticut would get an easy basket on a backdoor cut or come off a screen to hit a 3-pointer.

Tennessee looked out of sync on offense again without point guard Loree Moore, who is out for the season with a torn knee ligament.

And again Tennessee melted on defense in the biggest regular-season game in women's basketball.

Connecticut often had several shots on each possession, grabbing 17 offensive rebounds and scoring 20 second-chance points.

The Lady Vols were at a loss to explain why they couldn't match Connecticut's aggressiveness or intensity.

"We're playing one of the best games in women's college basketball. Millions of people are watching that game, and it's disappointing for us, the coaching staff and the people who played here before us to go out there and lie down like that," Tennessee's Shyra Ely said.

Taurasi, who was booed every time she touched the ball, said the Huskies knew they had to play hard.

"I guess when you come into a situation where 25,000 people are against us, that if you don't, you're going to get spanked," she said. "We're not the most talented team. They're bigger and quicker. If we don't bring that extra effort and intangibles, we don't win this game."

The Lady Vols got as close as 67-63 with 6:28 remaining after Tasha Butts made two free throws, but Connecticut had a quick 5-0 run to go up by nine.

The Huskies outscored Tennessee 7-2 down the stretch to win their sixth straight game after losing at Notre Dame last month.

Reserve Tye'sha Fluker and Shanna Zolman each scored 14 points for Tennessee, which had its 11-game winning streak snapped. Ely and Brittany Jackson added 10 points apiece, and Ely grabbed 14 rebounds.

The Huskies owe much of their success against Tennessee in recent years to Taurasi, who averaged 23 points in the previous six games she played against the Lady Vols.

Taurasi was 3-of-7 from beyond the arc, and the third made her the career leader at Connecticut with 230 3-pointers.

She hurt her back Saturday at St. John's and played only 12 minutes as a precaution, but showed no signs of problems against Tennessee.

Auriemma often complained about fouls not called on Taurasi, who fouled out with 46 seconds left.

After Turner picked up her fourth with 2:05 to go, Auriemma ran to the near sideline and clapped sarcastically in front of a small contingent of Huskies fans.

Fitzgerald, who was credited for the year he spent at a military academy because he would have graduated from high school in 2001, finished last season the Heisman Trophy runner-up and likely will be a top-five pick in the draft.

But even after Clarett sued the NFL nearly five months ago in hopes of becoming eligible for the 2004 draft, he wasn't even so much as an afterthought for teams already busy making early but exhaustive evaluations of college talent.

Well, he's at least that now, given Thursday's ruling by a federal judge that the 20-year-old running back is eligible for the April 24-25 affair.

But don't expect Clarett, after just one season of college football — albeit a wildly successful one — to immediately become a top-tier target.

That's the word from Gil Brandt, long one of the league's top evaluators of talent while with the Dallas Cowboys.

"Sure, I think someone will draft him, but I don't think he's in the top 64," Brandt said Thursday.

Added Frank Coyle, who publishes Draft Insiders Digest: "Clarett's maybe a top-50 kid, but certainly not a top-25."

ESPN draft expert Mel Kiper said on the network he believes Clarett will go in the second round but possibly could be a top-five pick in the first round if he returns to Ohio State and has another strong season.

Coyle puts Clarett, 6-feet, 230 pounds, among the top 10 available running backs, but no higher than fifth.

Oregon State's Steve Jackson and Virginia Tech's Kevin Jones, who opted out of their senior seasons for the draft, are widely considered the most attractive NFL running back prospects.

Clarett ran for 1,237 yards and 16 touchdowns two seasons ago when, as a true freshman, he led Ohio State to the national title despite missing three games because of injuries.

"But if he had been playing for a lesser team than Ohio State, which had a great offensive line, would he have done as great as he did?" Brandt said. "I think the answer is no.

"Obviously, if you start for a championship team, you must have some talent, but I don't think he runs all that fast and I don't think he has all the quickness you need to be a great pro."

There also are questions about Clarett's abilities as a blocker and a receiver. He caught just 12 passes for Ohio State.

"He has the body type to be a good NFL runner," Coyle said, "but I don't think in any way he's a special runner."

Other aspects of Clarett's resume give Brandt reason for pause.

They include his suspension from the team last season after Ohio State said he accepted improper benefits and misled investigators. "Maturity," Brandt said, "is very, very important for a player coming into the (NFL)."

Kerry spokesman David Wade said the Missouri lawmaker will give Kerry his backing on Friday in two blue-collar Michigan cities, Warren and Flint.

He confirmed the endorsement as two labor officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an alliance of labor groups formed by the Teamsters and more than a dozen industrial unions planned to endorse Kerry. The Alliance for Economic Justice made the decision after a morning meeting in Boston, where Kerry began his day, but must seek approval of their boards, which is expected in the next week.

A Democratic official, familiar with the talks, said Gephardt urged the group to back Kerry. The coalition was formed in the fall by unions that supported Gephardt after it became clear that some of the larger public and service sector unions did not want to give him a laborwide endorsement from the AFL-CIO. They include the steelworkers, laborers, machinists, ironworkers and others.

Kerry tightened his grip on the front-runner's title with back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire and victories in five of the seven states that voted Tuesday. Gephardt's backing caps a series of endorsements Thursday for Kerry, including Maine's governor, the two Michigan senators and former Senate majority leader George Mitchell, D-Maine.

Howard Dean, the front-runner just six weeks ago, is in danger of losing support from three major unions backing him — the Services Employees International Union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.

The three union presidents plan to talk Friday about how much — and how much longer — they're willing to keep their financial and political commitments to Dean. SEIU President Andy Stern is said to be behind Dean through the Feb. 17 Wisconsin primary, which Dean says is make-or-break, though his union's influence is relatively small in the state. AFSCME President Gerald McEntee is thought to be more anxious, two Democratic officials said.

Kerry's new labor endorsements won't be announced until at least next week. The union presidents wanted time to brief their members before making the endorsement public, the sources said.

Gephardt dropped out of the race last month after a fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. He said then that he intended to support the party's nominee, but had no immediate plans to endorse any of the contenders.

The 14-term congressman gained the support of more than 20 unions with more than 5 million members. He failed in a bid to win the backing of the AFL-CIO, though, when Dean collected the support of SEIU and AFSCME, two of the labor federation's largest members.

Rival John Edwards, campaigning in Tennessee, called Gephardt a "wonderful man," but argued that "if you look at the history of endorsements in this campaign, they haven't had a lot of sway with voters, which is understandable. Voters make their own decisions."

Among former presidential candidates, only Carol Moseley Braun has endorsed, and she chose Dean.

Anton Rychener, Hanoi representative for the U.N. agency, said the pigs were tested recently in and around Hanoi. He did not specify how many were sampled and which lab did the testing.

Test results on blood samples taken from the pigs have not been completed, Rychener said.

"Nasal swabs taken from pigs have been positive for H5N1," Rychener said. "It continues to be under investigation and is of concern. We'll be bringing in an expert."

Rychener's comments came after Vietnamese officials said Thursday that tests done on samples taken from 179 pigs by Hong Kong laboratories showed they did not have the bird flu.

"The tests of the pig samples came in negative for H5N1 strain of the bird flu," said Nguyen Ngoc Nhien, deputy director of the Institute for Animal Health in Hanoi.

A total of 179 samples taken from pigs in bird flu-affected areas in the northern provinces of Ha Tay and Thai Binh, along with Haiphong city, were sent to World Health Organization's labs in Hong Kong last week, he said.

So far, officials believe that the bird flu is contracted through direct contact with infected birds. There has been little evidence of human to human transmission, though one case in Vietnam is under investigation.

Health officials have warned that if the bird flu virus combines with a human influenza virus, the result could create a more lethal strain that can be passed from human to human.

Experts have said it's possible that the virus has jumped to humans through another mammal, such as pigs.

But the long-awaited good news is expected to be overshadowed at the Group of Seven meeting in Boca Raton, Fla., by growing concern about the declining value of the dollar. (Related chart: Currency per U.S. dollar)

Officials from some nations in the G7 — which includes the USA, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Italy — worry the dollar's decline will sap strength from their economies.

Those concerns are expected to fall on deaf ears while the dollar's decline is seen as a boost to the U.S. economy. Snow and other U.S. officials have given no sign they are considering attempts to stem the dollar's fall.

"They still view the weakness in the dollar explicitly as an opportunity to foster the economy in the U.S.," says David Ingram, director of international economics at Economy.com.

The dollar has fallen 9% against major currencies in the past year, and the drop against some currencies has been steeper. The euro has appreciated 16% against the dollar in the past year. After recently hitting a record high, it costs $1.25 to buy a euro, up from 94 cents in February 2001.

Currency movements can directly affect economies. When the dollar depreciates, it makes U.S. goods cheaper on world markets and makes foreign goods more expensive for Americans to buy.

European officials have stepped up their public comments about the euro's appreciation. Thursday, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said he was concerned about "exaggerated" changes in currency prices, at a news conference held after the ECB left interest rates unchanged.

Other international officials have expressed concern about Japan's repeated intervention in currency markets to stem the yen's appreciation.

Although there is little chance U.S. officials will give hope to those who want them to prop up the dollar, U.S. groups aren't taking chances. Trade groups this week sent a letter to Snow urging him to hold the line. "What we want is for the G7 to reiterate strongly that there will not be intervention," says Frank Vargo, head of international economics at the National Association of Manufacturers.

Other topics for the G7:

• Representatives from Iraq and Afghanistan will update G7 members on the state of their economies.

• Officials are expected to discuss terrorism financing and the economies in developing nations.

• The large U.S. trade and budget deficits will likely come under fire from foreign ministers.

Contributing: Reuters

The silence from Joseph Smith, 37, prompted Carlie Brucia's distraught mother on Thursday to plead for help from the public in finding the girl. (Related video: Police believe they have the suspect. Courtesy: WTSP-TV)

"Please air her face and air that (Smith's) car on TV as often and as much as possible," Susan Schorpen urged camera crews at a news conference. "We need to have more leads. Carlie Brucia is a beautiful, intelligent girl, and she's got to come home."

Carlie disappeared Sunday as she walked home from a friend's house in Sarasota, about 50 miles southwest of Tampa. Authorities said they have "strong evidence" that Smith is the man seen approaching Carlie on the videotape, then leading her away. A surveillance camera at a carwash recorded the incident.

"Joseph Smith is not cooperating with us at this time," said Sarasota County Sheriff Bill Balkwill. "We are working diligently, trying to get him to let us know where Carlie is."

Smith has not been charged in the disappearance. He was arrested Tuesday for allegedly violating probation on a cocaine violation. A citizen's tip helped investigators link Smith to the videotape.

Smith has been arrested at least 13 times in Florida since 1993. He was acquitted of kidnapping in 1998 after allegedly grabbing a 20-year-old woman as she left a pool hall and trying to pull her away.

The Brucia case has parallels with the disappearance Nov. 22 of Dru Sjodin, 22, a University of North Dakota student. She was last seen in the parking lot of a shopping mall in Grand Forks, N.D. Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., 50, a convicted sex offender, has been charged with kidnapping her. He has denied involvement. Sjodin has not been found.

"Our case is similar," Grand Forks police Lt. Dennis Eggebraaten said. "We have ours in custody, and we don't have information about where our victim is. It's like, these guys, they're holding the bag. How do we get to them? There's got to be a way to get them to be humane and do the right thing."

In such cases, authorities can try various tactics to gain information, said Eugene O'Donnell, professor of law and police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. Examples: monitoring phone conversations, talking with other inmates and interviewing family members. "You're trying to put some heat on," he said.

But such strategies often don't succeed. "Even with incontrovertible evidence, they don't give it up," Eggebraaten said. "We have this system that's been established. We surely would like to use some other methods (of interrogation), but we can't."

In the Florida case, investigators have postponed releasing NASA-enhanced images of Carlie Brucia being abducted by a tattooed man at a car wash because the quality wasn't much better than pictures they already had, a sheriff's office official said Thursday.

Detectives investigating the disappearance of Brucia had turned to NASA to sharpen and enlarge the images and had planned to make them public Thursday evening in an effort to jar the memories of anyone who may have seen the 11-year-old and her abductor.

But the quality of the NASA-enhanced images wasn't much better than the originals, said Maj. Kevin Gooding, a spokesman for the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office. Photos with additional enhancement by the space agency would not be ready before Friday for possible distribution to the public, he said.

Elements of the video pictures of Brucia and her kidnapper were supposed to be sharpened and enlarged by special equipment used at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Investigators in Sarasota first turned to NASA on Wednesday for help in getting a clearer look at the suspect, JosephSmith, who was filmed by a surveillance camera as he led the girl away.

David Hathaway, a NASA physicist at Marshall, refused to say whether investigators asked him to sharpen the suspect's tattoos or the name on his shirt during the five hours he studied the images.

"They gave me a list of things they wanted to look at," he said. "It would be easy to guess what they're interested in."

Contributing: The Associated Press

The scientists' report, recently made public with other findings from the investigation, signals that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is considering whether the jet itself could be partly to blame for the accident that killed 265 people.

The NTSB has not yet concluded what caused American Flight 587 to crash into Queens shortly after takeoff Nov. 12, 2001. It was the second-worst airline crash in U.S. history. A spokesman for the agency declined to comment on the scientist's report. Airbus, however, says its data will show that the jet in the accident, the A300-600, was not at fault.

If the NTSB cites the jet's design in its findings, that could prompt a call for changes in the way the government certifies the design of rudders on all aircraft. It also could affect the legal battle between American and Airbus over which company should pay damages in lawsuits filed by victims' families.

How a jet’s rudder works

Rudders are the least used flight controls on commercial jets. Their primary purpose is to keep a jet flying straight if an engine on one side dies. Sometimes pilots use the rudder when landing with a wind from the side. But pilots use separate devices to turn or to climb and descend.

Pilots move a rudder side-to-side using foot pedals in the cockpit.

When a rudder swings left, it causes the nose to move left. A rudder swing to the right moves the nose to the right.

Source: USA TODAY research






Using too much rudder

Investigators have long since concluded that the co-pilot of Flight 587 triggered the accident by repeatedly punching the jet's rudder back and forth, according to NTSB documents. The rudder is a movable panel at the rear of the jet's 27-foot-tall tail fin. It swings the nose of the aircraft right or left but is so powerful that it can damage the tail fin if misused.

Several sources familiar with the crash investigation told USA TODAY that an intense debate is underway over the underlying reasons for a pilot to make such severe rudder movements on a routine flight. The NTSB is expected to release its findings this spring.

Some argue that blame lies with the pilot and American's training program, which taught pilots to use the rudder in an emergency. Pilot groups and American insist that is not true.

But others suspect that the rudder system on the A300-600 — which moves with less pressure from the pilot than any other large jet — was at least partly to blame. Foot pedals on the floor of the cockpit move the rudder.

The scientist hired by the NTSB, Ronald Hess, writes in his report that the Airbus accident is "consistent" with a rare phenomenon in which a pilot essentially loses control of a plane because he or she is tricked by the controls.

Hess is an aeronautical engineering professor at the University of California-Davis. He says that on an A300-600, a pilot could apply more rudder than intended because its pedals are so sensitive, particularly at higher speeds. This could cause the pilot to slam the jet from side to side while intending to straighten it.

A similar situation could occur in a car. A driver who suddenly swerves to avoid debris in the road might overcorrect and skid in the other direction if the steering is difficult to control. That could trigger a series of increasingly larger skids back and forth.

Many other factors have been cited to explain why co-pilot Sten Molin turned the flight into a terrifying ride that fatally damaged the jet.

Another American pilot who had flown with Molin told the NTSB that he believed the co-pilot had used too much rudder on a previous flight.

American taught its pilots to use rudder to help stabilize a jet if they felt it was going out of control. Federal regulators had warned that the training was dangerous, NTSB records show. The records also show that American's flight simulators also distorted the way a rudder works on a real jet.

The airline says its training was the same as other airlines and had no role in the accident.

In addition, virtually no airline pilots knew before the accident that they could damage a jet by moving the rudder from side to side at such a speed.

Airbus officials, meanwhile, have attacked the theory that their rudder could be flawed.

The European jet manufacturer, which last year delivered more planes than Boeing for the first time, says its data show Molin put far more pressure on the rudder pedals than was needed.

Rudder sensitivity

The Airbus A300-600 jet requires significantly less force from pilots to move its rudder than other large jets. The higher the value, the more a rudder moves when a pilot applies equal pressure to foot pedals on the cockpit floor. A report filed with federal crash investigators says that the A300-600’s rudder controls may have contributed to a 2001 accident because it is so sensitive. Airbus officials say the rudder controls had nothing to do with the accident.

Rudder sensitivity comparisons:

A300-600: 0.93
McDonnell Douglas MD-11: 0.273
Boeing 777: 0.214
Boeing 747: 0.197
Boeing 767: 0.127

Sources: National Transportation Safety Board, University of California at Davis aeronautical engineering professor Ronald Hess.






That suggests he would have caused similar extreme motions on any jet model, company officials say. A report filed by French accident investigators, who represent Airbus' interests in the case, also disputes Hess' report.

The A300-600 and the A310, a similar model that shares the same rudder, have flown 16 million hours since being introduced in the early 1980s, and "there has never been an issue with rudder pressure," says Airbus spokesman Clay McConnell.

About 460 of the two models are used around the world. In the USA, only American carries passengers on the jet.

Out of control on Flight 587

A few minutes before takeoff on Flight 587, co-pilot Molin pushed down on one rudder pedal and then the other, the plane's data recorder shows. They each moved 4 inches and required 65 pounds of pressure to depress as far as possible.

The rudder performed perfectly in this preflight check. But the check might have given Molin a distorted idea about how the pedals worked at higher speeds.

Just 85 seconds after Flight 587 lifted off, as the jet flew at 290 mph, the pedal moved only 1.3 inches and required half the pressure to swing the rudder as far as possible, according to tests after the accident. This was when Molin began the series of extreme rudder movements that tore the vertical fin off the tail.

Like all rudder pedals on commercial jets, a pilot must push with about 20 pounds before the rudder on the A300-600 moves. Pedals are designed this way so that pilots don't move the rudder accidentally.

But after the A300-600's rudder begins to move, it requires far less pressure to swing the rudder an equal distance than on other types of jets. At 290 mph, a pilot who had begun to move the rudder need only add 10 pounds to the pedal to swing the rudder all the way to one side.

By comparison, the similar-sized Boeing 767 requires 63 pounds of additional pressure to move the rudder as far as possible.

A severe fire broke out in the underground train and passengers were being evacuated from Avtozavodskaya station, which was about 300 yards from the site of the explosion, ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said.

Authorities are investigating the explosion as an act of terrorism, said Kirill Mazurin, spokesman for the Moscow police. The Interfax news agency, citing police sources, reported that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.

The Emergency Situations Ministry said more than 30 people were wounded, although Russian news reports put the number of injured as high as 150.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been informed.

The explosion occurred in the second car of the train after it left the Avtozavodskaya station and headed northwest to the central Paveletskaya station, which is on Moscow's busy circle line, Mazurin told NTV television. The circle line is one of Moscow's deepest subway routes.

Police immediately barricaded the two metro stations and stopped all traffic between the stations. Dozens of buses were rerouted to deal with the evacuated passengers, clogging up the already busy streets of the Russian capital.

Ambulances crowded the street outside the metro station entrance and paramedics, carrying stretchers or equipment in backpacks, rushed down the steps.

Bystanders stood by in the snow, watching emergency workers treat the wounded outside the station. In one ambulance, medics bandaged the hand of a woman whose face was smeared with blood. In another, a boy appeared uninjured but his face was blackened with soot.

More than 700 people have been evacuated, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported, citing metro staff. Most Russians are dependent on public transportation, and the subway is usually packed tight during rush hour traffic.

The Russian capital has been on alert for terrorist attacks following a series of suicide bombings that officials have blamed on Chechen rebels.

In December, a female suicide bomber blew herself up outside the National Hotel across from Moscow's Red Square, killing at least five others. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a Moscow rock concert in July, killing themselves and 14 other people. That was followed five days later by an aborted suicide bomb attack at a central Moscow restaurant that killed the sapper trying to defuse the bomb. The suspected attacker was arrested and is currently awaiting trial.

In August 2000, a bomb exploded at a crowded pedestrian underpass filled with kiosks at Pushkin Square, a popular meeting place located near a metro line. The attack was initially blamed on Chechen rebels, but some police later said that a turf battle between rival businessmen or criminal gangs could have been the motive.

A large storm moving east from the Plains and Midwest Friday is likely to bring more precipitation, first as snow and later as ice and rain in much of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Another Arctic blast is expected Sunday.

The federal government's Climate Prediction Center forecasts below-normal temperatures virtually coast-to-coast from Tuesday through Feb. 18.

Forecasters blame the "Arctic Express," a steady stream of cold air from Canada, and eastbound fronts full of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. The "lake effect" from shots of cold over Lake Ontario smothered parts of Upstate New York last week in up to 7 feet of snow. (Related story: Pattern opens door to cold)

"It's kind of surreal. Everything's just completely buried," says Patrick O'Hara, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Buffalo. A storm from Jan. 28-31 dumped 86 inches of snow on Parish, N.Y., about 25 miles north of Syracuse.

• New York City had its second-coldest January in 70 years, with temperatures below normal every day from Jan. 6 through last Monday. Snowfall in December and January totaled 37.1 inches, more than three times average.

• Omaha had three times as much January snow as normal. Just five days into February, snowfall for the month already is triple the normal amount. Minneapolis also has passed its average for February.

• Syracuse's 132.7 inches of snow this season is more than twice the normal amount.

• Boston dropped below zero four times last month, the coldest in nearly 25 years. December snowfall was three times normal.

• Grand Forks, N.D., recorded its lowest temperature ever on Jan. 30 — minus-43 degrees. The 23.7 inches of snow in January was twice the month's average.

"We shot really high," said USC coach Pete Carroll. "We didn't get them all, but we hit pretty well."

USC returns 16 starters and 35 players who were on the 48-man depth chart. Last season, USC's freshmen were instrumental in leading the Trojans to a shared national title.

Co-champion LSU, which also used several key freshmen last season, also signed an elite class Wednesday, taking eight of Lemming's top 100.

Miami (Fla.) landed a linebacker and trouble. Willie Williams, who chose the Hurricanes over Florida State, had three separate sworn complaints — two misdemeanor battery charges and a felony — filed against him after his recruiting visit to Florida last weekend. His legal problems could jeopardize his future with the Hurricanes.

How analysts rank them

Allen Wallace
SuperPrep magazine
1. Southern California
2. LSU
3. Florida State
4. Michigan
5. Miami
6. Oklahoma
7. Ohio State
8. Texas
9. Maryland
10. Oregon

Tom Lemming
Prep Football Report
1. Southern California
2. LSU
3. Miami
4. Michigan
5. Florida State
6. Ohio State
7. Oklahoma
8. Florida
9. Tennessee
10. Texas A&M

According to a University of Florida police report, Williams, a USA TODAY first-team player, grabbed a female student from the front against her will; got into a fight at a nightclub; and discharged three fire extinguishers at a hotel on campus. The State Attorney's Office in Gainesville will investigate before deciding whether to charge Williams.

Other notable signings: Quarterback Brian Brohm, USA TODAY Offensive Player of the Year, signed with Louisville. Defensive back Ted Ginn Jr., the USA TODAY Defensive Player of the Year, signed with Ohio State.

"USC's recruiting class is the best in the 11 years I've been doing this," said recruiting analyst Bobby Burton of rivals.com. "It's the highest quality class you're ever going to see."

Gatorade and Parade national player of the year Jeff Byers of Loveland, Colo., leads coach Pete Carroll's incoming freshmen. Not only was he the most highly recruited center in years. He had 56 sacks and 14 forced fumbles on defense.

The AP national champion Trojans signed two top California high school players in defensive end Jeff Schweiger and offensive lineman Thomas Herring. They also journeyed into recruiting hotbeds Ohio (wide receiver Fred Davis) and Florida (linebacker Keith Rivers) to land key recruits.

Allen Wallace of SuperPrep called the Trojans' recruiting class "phenomenal."

"There are no all-regional players on their list, there are no second-list players there at all," Wallace said. "USC never dipped below (the top level), even though they had great regional kids who wanted offers."

LSU was much the same way, capitalizing on its USA TODAY/ESPN national championship with a recruiting class arguably just as good as last year's top-ranked class.

The Tigers, already loaded at receiver, landed not one but three of the nation's top pass catchers — Early Doucet of St. Martinville, La., Xavier Carter of Melbourne, Fla. and Lavelle Hawkins of Stockton, Calif.

Doucet scored 79 touchdowns and had 7,104 all-purpose yards in his high school career. Carter is one of the nation's fastest sprinters and could be a future U.S. Olympian.

"It was a great year for receivers, and LSU got three of the best," recruiting analyst Max Emfinger said. "You wonder why another receiver would want to go there, but the answer is they want to wear a national championship ring."

LSU stayed in-state to land dominating 310-pound lineman Marlon Favorite, then went next door to sign massive 395-pound lineman Herman Johnson from Denton, Texas.

"He looks like he is all ready to go down the I-395 freeway and report to the Dallas Cowboys' camp," Emfinger said.

Student Sports.com's Doug Huff, who has been tracking national high school recruiting since the 1960s, wasn't surprised last season's strongest teams — USC, LSU, Oklahoma — had big recruiting years.

"Recruits see teams in the big bowl games on national TV and atop the rankings, and that's where they want to play," he said.

Oklahoma signed the nation's most-recruited player: running back Adrian Peterson, who ran for nearly 3,000 yards last season at Palestine, Texas. He was ranked as the nation's best player by rivals.com and Lemming's Prep Football Report and No. 2 by SuperPrep and StudentSports.com.

Oklahoma also got another top-five player in quarterback Rhett Bomar of Grand Prairie, Texas, plus highly sought Chicago linebacker Chris Patterson.

While Southern Cal and LSU had their classes mostly locked up weeks ago, it was Miami's late surge that was the biggest surprise on signing day.

Coach Larry Coker's Hurricanes signed two Top 50-caliber players they weren't expected to get in linebacker James Bryant of Reading, Pa., and defensive lineman Rhyan Anderson of Oak Creek, Wis.

"They really came on strong, and that's tough to do this late in the game," Lemming said.

Williams, however, is facing three sworn criminal complaints stemming from his official visit to the University of Florida last weekend. The State Attorney's Office in Gainesville will investigate the sworn complaints before deciding whether to officially charge Williams.

Florida's Big 3 had big days Wednesday, with Florida and Florida State also wrapping up highly regarded classes. The Seminoles had a comeback year after last year's class finished well down the charts.

Florida State's top recruit is quarterback Xavier Lee, Florida's all-time career passing leader (9,082 yards, 98 touchdowns) at Daytona Beach's Seabreeze High. The Seminoles also signed another prized in-state quarterback in Drew Weatherford, plus running back Jamaal Edwards of Greensboro, N.C.

"I told them (the quarterbacks) to come in here with the idea they're going to play," coach Bobby Bowden said. "They're both the quality of quarterbacks we've brought in here in the past. They bring a lot to the table."

Other schools that did well at the finish were Maryland, Michigan State, North Carolina State and Penn State.

The Nittany Lions took away Anthony Morelli from rival Pitt at the last minute; Morelli, a top five quarterback had committed to the Panthers months ago. Michigan high school receiver Carl Grimes signed with Michigan State after giving a verbal commitment to Florida State.

North Carolina State landed two excellent defensive linemen in DeMario Pressley of Greensboro, N.C., and Willie Young of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Pressley was one of the last top 25-caliber players to make up his mind.

"You can't find good defensive linemen, everybody wants them, yet they got two of the best," Emfinger said.

Contributing: The Associated Press

O'Neal was back after serving a one-game NBA suspension for profanely criticizing officials during a live TV interview following a win at Toronto on Sunday.

But he said he isn't sorry for his R-rated comments. And he had no qualms with these officials as he was able to foul out both of Cleveland's 7-foot centers, Zydrunas Ilgauskas and DeSagana Diop, and attempted 20 free throws.

"I said what I felt," said O'Neal, who wanted to score 50. "You can never control me. I'm a 31-year-old juvenile delinquent. No one can control me."

O'Neal finished 9-of-20 from the line, and the rest of the Lakers weren't much better, making just 26-of-40 (62 percent).

But when it counted most, O'Neal and his teammates, who attempted 38 free throws after halftime, stepped up and drilled their foul shots.

Los Angeles scored its final 10 points on free throws, sinking its final eight tries while outscoring the Cavs 19-14 in overtime.

LeBron James scored 32 points — including three 3-pointers in OT — but shot an airball from 21 feet with a chance to win it at the end of regulation.

"It was right online," Cleveland's rookie star said. "It just fell short."

Carlos Boozer had 25 points and 16 rebounds and Eric Williams scored all 20 of his points after halftime for the Cavs, who despite the loss are 7-3 since Jan. 17.

Leading by two, the Cavs decided to employ the "Hack a Shaq" strategy and fouled O'Neal with 32.9 seconds remaining in regulation. But L.A's big man dropped in two knuckleballs to tie it 92-92.

Jeff McInnis missed a runner in the lane with 14 seconds left, but Boozer tipped the ball back out to give the Cavs a final chance.

James ran the clock down to about three seconds, but instead of driving to the basket on Payton, he chose to try an off-balance fadeaway jumper that barely grazed the net.

"I took a swipe at it but didn't get it, and he shot an airball," Payton said. "I knew what was going down and I played him hard. I figured I'd make him take the fadeaway but make him think I might get a piece of it."

Cavs coach Paul Silas didn't second-guess his young star's decision to try an outside shot.

"You've got the ball in your best player's hands," Silas said. "I couldn't ask for more."

O'Neal scored underneath to open overtime, and after the Cavs missed their first three shots — all from the perimeter — Payton's jumper put the Lakers up by six. James tried to rally the Cavs with his 3s, but the Lakers closed it out at the line.

O'Neal said he had no regrets about the suspension, and his only complaint was his foul shooting.

"If I would have hit my shots, I would have had 50," he said.

Rookie Maurice Carter, playing in just his second game since being signed as a free agent by the Lakers last week, made five free throws in the final 53 seconds to ice it.

Coming off his lowest scoring game (12 points) in two months on a day he failed to make the All-Star team, James scored eight points in a span of 1:13 in the first quarter on a 17-foot fadeaway, a reverse dunk, a drive in the lane and a 22-foot jumper.

In the second quarter, James followed up an alley-oop dunk by stomping down the floor with his own version of O'Neal's "gorilla walk". O'Neal didn't realize what James had impersonated him until James came over after a timeout to tell him.

Notes: Stung by his All-Star omission, James said Tuesday he wouldn't want to play if he was a late addition because another player was injured. Cavs coach Paul Silas said he'll urge James to take part if he's asked. "It's such an honor," Silas said. "You can't take it personally if you don't make it." ... After appearing in court in Eagle, Colo., on Tuesday, Lakers F Kobe Bryant, out with a hand injury, returned to Los Angeles. Lakers coach Phil Jackson said Bryant may rejoin the club Sunday in Orlando. ... Payton was examined by team doctors after scraping his left leg against a glass table in his hotel room. "I'm fine, it was just one of those things," Payton said. ... Payton still needs two steals to move past Clyde Drexler into fifth place on the all-time list.

But Wednesday's opinion by the Supreme Judicial Court left no doubt: Only marriage would pass constitutional muster.

"The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal," four justices wrote. "For no rational reason the marriage laws of the commonwealth discriminate against a defined class; no amount of tinkering with language will eradicate that stain. The (civil unions) bill would have the effect of maintaining and fostering a stigma of exclusion that the Constitution prohibits."

Paul Martinek, editor of Lawyers Weekly USA, said that the blunt opinion erases any confusion.

"The fat lady has sung and she's singing the wedding march," Martinek said. "It's clear from reading the majority opinion that there's no basis on which the (court) will OK anything other than marriage."

The much-anticipated opinion came a week before next Wednesday's Constitutional Convention, where the Legislature will consider an amendment backed by Republican Gov. Mitt Romney that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

But the soonest a constitutional amendment could end up on the ballot would be 2006, meaning that until then, the high court's decision will be Massachusetts law. Gay couples could get married in Massachusetts as soon as May, the deadline set by the court last fall.

"We're going to have to start looking for a band," said Ed Balmelli, who put down a deposit for a wedding after the opinion.

The case represents a significant milestone in a year that has seen broad new recognitions of gay rights in America, Canada and abroad, including a June U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down a Texas ban on gay sex.

The White House called the Massachusetts ruling "deeply troubling."

"Activist judges continue to seek to redefine marriage by court order without regard for the will of the people," said presidential spokesman Scott McClellan.

Senate President Robert Travaglini, who will preside over the constitutional convention, said he would consult with fellow lawmakers about the next step.

"I want to have everyone stay in an objective and calm state as we plan and define what's the appropriate way to proceed," he said. "There is a lot of anxiety out there obviously surrounding the issue but I don't want to have it cloud or distort the discussion."

The federal government and 38 other states have enacted laws barring the recognition of any gay marriages in other jurisdictions. Vermont recognizes marriage-like civil unions that grant gay couples nearly all the rights and benefits of full marriage, such as health insurance, hospital visitation and inheritance rights.

The Massachusetts decision will probably lead to multiple lawsuits about whether gay marriage benefits can extend beyond the state's borders. The right to same-sex marriage would be for state residents only, but the rules are unclear on how it would be enforced.

The legal battle in Massachusetts began in 2001, when seven gay couples went to their city and town halls to obtain marriage licenses. All were denied, leading them to sue the state.

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled in November that gay couples have a constitutional right to marry, and gave the Legislature six months to change state laws to make it happen.

The state Senate then asked for more guidance from the court.

"The dissimilitude between the terms 'civil marriage' and 'civil union' is not innocuous; it is a considered choice of language that reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples to second-class status," the justices wrote.

Conservative leaders said they would redouble their efforts to pass the constitutional ban on same-sex marriages.

"This now puts the pressure back on the Legislature to do their job to protect and defend marriage for the citizens of the state to allow them to vote," said Ron Crews, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute.

Residents and leaders of Massachusetts towns with sizable gay populations saw the ruling as a good business opportunity. "The town can now offer something gays and lesbians have waited their whole lives for," said Provincetown tourism director Patricia Fitzpatrick.

Mark Carmien has a sign in his gay-themed bookstore counting down the days to May 17 — 103 as of Wednesday. His store is located in Northampton, a college town in western Massachusetts that has a large gay population.

"It's now crystal clear, if it wasn't before, that the court meant marriage. The word itself has power and benefits that are intangible," said Carmien, who plans to marry his partner in June. "It's a very brave and historic decision."

SUVs scored as well as or better than a compact station wagon and several pickups also tested by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. None of the SUVs scored the highest five-star rating, but many earned four stars, meaning they have a 10% to 20% chance of rolling over in a single-vehicle crash. None of the SUVs scored the lowest rating, one star. (Related story: Value of crash test questioned)

Rollover ratings for SUVs, pickups, passenger cars
A five-star rating means the likelihood of rollover during a single vehicle crash is less than 10%; four-star, between 10% and 20%; three-star, between 20% and 30%; two-star, between 30% and 40%; and one-star, greater than 40%.
SUVs Rating
Buick Ranier 4x4 ****
Chevrolet TrailBlazer 4x4 ****
GMC Envoy 4x4 ****
Oldsmobile Bravada 4x4 ****
Volvo XC90 4x4 ****
Buick Ranier 4x2 ***
Chevrolet TrailBlazer 4x2 ***
GMC Envoy 4x2 ***
Jeep Liberty 4x2, 4x4 ***
Oldsmobile Bravada 4x2 ***
Toyota 4Runner 4x2, 4x4 ***
Ford Explorer Sport Trac 4x21 **
Pickup trucks
Chevrolet Silverado 4x2 ****
Chevrolet Silverado 4x4 ****
GMC Sierra 4x2 ****
GMC Sierra 4x4 ****
Toyota Tacoma 4x2 under review
Toyota Tacoma 4x4 ***
Passenger cars
Ford Focus Wagon ****
Subaru Outback wagon ****
Toyota Echo ****
1 Vehicle tipped up on two wheels during testing.

Note: Models currently under review include: three Ford Explorer models and two Mercury Mountaineer models.

Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration



Of nearly 11 million passenger-car, SUV, pickup and van crashes in 2002, only 3% involved a rollover. But rollovers accounted for nearly 33% of all deaths in crashes.

For years, auto safety advocates have said SUVs are at a higher risk for rollover. Their arguments mounted in 2000 when Bridgestone/Firestone and Ford Motor (F) began recalling tires because they could lose tread. Most of the tires were on Ford Explorer SUVs, and the Explorer sometimes rolled over, killing or injuring occupants, when the tire failed.

The tire recall led to a new law requiring, among other things, that NHTSA begin rollover testing with 2004 models. NHTSA had been using a mathematical calculation to rate vehicles on rollover propensity, but the new test involves actually driving the vehicles.

In the test, after the vehicle accelerates to between 35 and 50 miles per hour, a mechanical device turns the steering wheel to the left 270 degrees, then to the right 540 degrees. The sharp right, simulating a driver's attempt to correct, is the most likely maneuver to cause a vehicle to roll over.

Initially, auto safety advocates praised the new test. But after Wednesday's ratings were released, Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, said the results could be misleading. "Two stars may be interpreted as a good or safe rating. However, a vehicle that receives two stars has a 30% to 40% chance of rolling over in an emergency maneuver," she said.

Claybrook says Congress and federal regulators should require stronger roofs, side head air bags, safety belts that tighten during a rollover and improved side-window glazing to better protect occupants in a rollover.

Automakers praised the test results. "We've tried our best to tell people that when it comes to stability in an SUV, you have to look at the total vehicle and what's integrated into the vehicle, such as tires and suspension, to maintain its stability," said Jim Schell, a General Motors (GM) spokesman.

And SUV lovers said they are vindicated. The results "indicate that widely promoted hysteria over SUV rollover risks is overblown and misplaced," said Barry McCahill, president of the SUV Owners of America club.

Abdelghani Mzoudi, 31, had no visible reaction as presiding Judge Klaus Ruehle read the verdict to the court, keeping his arms folded and looking down toward the floor.

Prosecutors had sought the maximum 15 years in prison on more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization. Last February, similar evidence secured the maximum sentence against Mzoudi's friend Mounir el Motassadeq — the world's first Sept. 11 conviction.

Federal prosecutors alleged Mzoudi provided logistical support to the Hamburg cell under lead hijacker Mohamed Atta, helping with financial transactions and arranging housing for members to evade authorities' attention. Mzoudi spent time at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan in 2000.

Mzoudi's attorneys denied the charges, saying that while their client was friends with many of the Sept. 11 principals, he knew nothing in advance of the plot to attack the United States.

The acquittal on all counts came after the court rejected a last-minute motion from an attorney representing relatives of American victims of the attacks.

The attorney, Andreas Schulz, said his clients had access to "new information" from the U.S. Department of Justice but that he was "not authorized" to tell the court what it was.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, is poised to be the big winner in Saturday's caucuses here. Michigan and the labor movement that has for so long dominated its political landscape may be the big losers.

In Saturday's caucuses, state Democrats will deliver the campaign's largest bloc of convention delegates so far. Fewer than 300,000 voters are expected to take part, a fraction of the more than 6 million who are registered to vote. There is no registration by party.

Michigan will send 154 delegates to the convention; 26 are party officials who won't have to declare a preference but 128 will be awarded to candidates based on how they do in the caucus voting. A candidate must win at least 15% of the vote to qualify for delegates.

But the candidates aren't spending much time or money to win them. The only Democratic presidential hopeful to run TV ads here was Dick Gephardt, who dropped out of the race two weeks ago.

Kerry will be in Michigan for a day. Howard Dean, who is hoping to reverse his slide in the polls with a victory here, plans to spend the most amount of time in Michigan between now and Saturday: 48 hours. The two other contenders, South Carolina Sen. John Edwards and retired general Wesley Clark are skipping Michigan altogether.

Local Democratic leaders moved up the state's caucuses in hopes of getting national attention on the problems of the industrial heartland. Now they are trying to shrug off their disappointment. "I'd like them to spend more time in the state," says Democratic Sen. Carl Levin. "Michigan is still going to have a significant impact."

Not everyone agrees. "In terms of what the party leaders were hoping to achieve, it's a bust," says Bill Ballenger, editor of the influential newsletter Inside Michigan Politics.

The situation in Michigan is the latest campaign disappointment for the labor movement. The two candidates who had the most enthusiastic early union backing have proven to be bad bets for big labor.

• Gephardt, endorsed by the Teamsters and several other unions, finished fourth in Iowa and dropped out.

• Dean is in deep trouble. His labor backers, the presidents of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees' International Union, are flying here for a summit Thursday.

Unions represent 22% of Michigan's workers, compared with 13% nationwide. Many assumed that this state would be a forum for some of labor's key issues. Instead, the state appears likely to add to the momentum for Kerry, a candidate about whom many union leaders are uneasy.

In Washington, D.C., Kerry the American Federation of Teachers, which has 1.3 million members, endorsed Kerry on Wednesday.

But in Michigan, some union leaders are holding back. The United Autoworkers, who make up more than half of Michigan's 1.1 million union members, are making no endorsement. The Teamsters are telling members to "vote their consciences," says Bill Black, the union's state director.

Union leaders are torn between political pragmatism and principle. They want to avoid criticism of a candidate whom many see as the inevitable Democratic nominee. But they're reluctant about a senator who has backed tighter automotive fuel economy standards and free-trade deals. Both issues are seen as threatening the economy of a state that lost 185,000 manufacturing jobs in the last three years.

Kerry "needs to become more sensitive on this issue," says Denise Cadreau, political director of the state AFL-CIO.

In the Senate, Kerry supported tougher fuel efficiency standards, which would require automakers to improve their vehicles' gasoline mileage. Auto executives say that such measures could cost American jobs — a contention that is disputed by environmentalists.

Another sore point: Kerry's support of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a 1994 pact that dropped trade barriers between the USA, Canada and Mexico. Critics of NAFTA point to developments like last month's announcement by Electrolux that it is moving its Greenville, Mich., refrigerator plant to Mexico. The move cost 2,700 jobs. It came despite offers of $30 million in contract givebacks by the local union and a 20-year state tax holiday by Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

Granholm says she decided to endorse Kerry only after he assured her that he agrees NAFTA "needs fixing" and that he's willing to "work with the industry" on developing a suitable timetable for phasing in tougher automotive fuel economy standards.

"I was at first in the Dean camp, but the more I listen to Kerry, the more I think he can stand up to George Bush," says Tom Zerafa, of Oakland County, a suburb of Detroit.

The overall lack of attention has exacerbated a sense of abandonment that many here feel. "It's like we've become a bicoastal society and the Midwest is just a place people fly over," says Jim Jacobs, an economist with Macomb County Community College, just outside Detroit. "It's not just the loss of jobs. You really feel in Michigan a loss of significance."

Contributing: Jill Lawrence in Washington

"We have strong evidence that he is in fact the perpetrator," said Capt. Jeff Bell, the lead Sarasota County sheriff's investigator on the case.(Related video: Footage of the abduction)

Sheriff Bill Balkwill said a telephone tip from a citizen led to Smith's apprehension.

The surveillance camera shot a series of digital photographs of a man in a dark-colored work shirt walking up to the girl in the car wash parking lot, saying something, then grabbing her forearm and leading her away. Carlie did not appear to know him. The car wash was closed at the time.

National attention

Carlie's abduction, because it was captured as it happened, quickly galvanized national attention in a way that missing children seldom do. News programs have shown the footage repeatedly, putting viewers at the scene.

"You have the most dramatic evidence, the guy leading her away, the horror of watching a crime committed," said Mike Foley, master lecturer in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Experts said that seeing the little girl so clearly allows viewers — indeed, almost forces them — to identify with her and her parents.

"The video pictures put a human face to this otherwise abstract report," said Robert Thompson, professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University. "It immediately turns one of these stories into a tragedy with real characters. When people see it on television, it's so much more compelling."

Carlie was wearing a red shirt and blue jeans and carrying a pink backpack when the dark-haired man approached her about 6:20 p.m. Sunday. The man, who appeared to be in his late 20s or early 30s, had on a work shirt with a name patch like that worn by auto mechanics or repairmen.

Investigators worked with NASA to enhance images of the suspect's clothing and tattoos on his forearms in an attempt to identify him. Engineers at Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral were using equipment brought online to help return the space shuttle to flight. The equipment can enhance images as much as 1,000%.

Balkwill did not say Wednesday night whether the NASA equipment played a part in Smith's arrest.

A national hotline — 888-382-6237 — was established to gather information. "People are calling in," Balkwill said. More than 400 leads were being investigated.

Bob O'Brien, deputy director of the missing children's division of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said the high visibility of this abduction might help authorities find Carlie.

"It really gives people an opportunity for personal involvement, because the pictures are real," he said.

Many children found safe

Two consultants from the center were working with authorities in Sarasota, O'Brien said. Posters of Carlie were sent to more than 16,000 law enforcement agencies, news outlets, hotels, motels, hospitals and convenience stores within a 100-mile radius of where the girl was abducted.

Since Jan. 29, 2003, consultants from the center have been deployed 68 times on cases involving 81 missing children in 27 states. Seven of those children were found dead, seven were never found, and 67 were safely returned to their families.

Carlie's mother, Susan Schorpen, went Tuesday to the parking lot where her daughter was videotaped and pleaded for her safe return.

"I love you," she said tearfully, clutching Carlie's cat, Charlie. "I need her home. I'm begging and pleading. "

On Wednesday, Carlie's father, Joe Brucia, appeared on ABC's Good Morning America. "I'm doing OK," he said. "I have to be for Carlie's sake. I always have hope."

Steven Kansler, Carlie's stepfather, said the family was encouraged. "I know Carlie is a strong-willed person," he said. "She's full of life and she's not going to give up."

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said he had asked law enforcement officials to determine why it took the sheriff's office 24 hours to issue an Amber Alert for Carlie. Sheriff's officials have said they issued it after they obtained the videotape and were certain that Carlie was missing.

Amber Alerts, which inform the public of a child's abduction through radio, television, road signs and lottery machines, were developed in memory of Amber Hagerman, 9, a Texas girl who was abducted and killed in 1996. Florida adopted the system in August 2000.

According to O'Brien, 123 children have been recovered through Amber Alerts. "The Amber Alerts have had a significant beneficial effect in locating many kids," he said. "Many are located before I can even get a consultant there."

Contributing: Associated Press

A U.S. official familiar with Tenet's plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tenet would aim to correct misperceptions and inaccuracies about the CIA's performance. The official said Tenet planned to argue that it is premature to conclude that Iraq had no chemical or biological weapons.

The speech, to be given at Georgetown University, comes as the Bush administration is mounting its first coordinated response to weeks of criticism about its insistence that war on Iraq was justified by its possession of banned weapons.

Kay, appointed to his post by Tenet, told Congress last week that he believes Iraq had no banned weapons and that "we were almost all wrong." Kay also said U.S. intelligence must confront a "fundamental problem" in assessing threats.

Kay has said the hunt for weapons in Iraq is 85% complete. The official with knowledge of Tenet's planned speech said that Tenet would argue that "those who say the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is 85% complete are 100% wrong." Tenet also planned to highlight findings of Kay's inspection teams that Iraq was trying to develop the toxin ricin, the same poison found in a Senate mailroom this week, and upgrade its missile program.

For Tenet, who is at the center of a controversy that threatens political consequences for President Bush in an election year, the stakes are enormous. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, following the CIA's inability to crack the Sept. 11 terror plot, has led to calls for his resignation and for revamping the structure of U.S. intelligence.

A graduate of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, Tenet has been looking for a forum to defend the intelligence community's work. Bush did not ask him to give the speech, the U.S. official said. The speech is his first extensive public statement on Iraq in a year.

Under strong pressure from Congress, Bush agreed this week to appoint a commission to examine the performance of the intelligence community. Bush said Wednesday that war removed "a ruthless dictator who had the intent and capability to inflict great harm on his people and people around the world."

On Capitol Hill Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spent much of two hearings on the administration's request for $402 billion in defense spending next year defending prewar judgments.

Rumsfeld called Kay's conclusion that Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons a "hypothesis" and offered alternatives. Iraq could have shipped its weapons to a neighboring country, destroyed them just before the invasion, or hidden them in places that have not yet been searched, he said.

"From time to time I say something that I wish I hadn't," Rumsfeld said. " 'We know where they are' probably turned out to be not exactly what one would have preferred in retrospect."

Faneuil's testimony — the first time Stewart had been directly implicated in court — holds together prosecutors' theory that Stewart and Bacanovic conspired in the first few months of 2002 to obstruct a federal investigation of her sale of ImClone stock, allegedly based on inside information. He originally supported the pair's explanation for the stock sale, but in June 2002, he agreed to cooperate with investigators. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in October 2002.

During cross-examination Wednesday afternoon, David Apfel, an attorney for Bacanovic, attacked Faneuil's credibility and asked him to describe his use of illegal drugs during his employment at Merrill. Faneuil said he had used marijuana and ecstasy during that period, but not while he was at the office.

Cross-examination will continue today. Wednesday, Faneuil walked jurors through Stewart's ImClone stock sale and its aftermath. While Faneuil covered for a vacationing Bacanovic Dec. 27, 2001, Stewart called in response to a message Bacanovic had left.

Faneuil introduced himself, he testified. "Immediately, she said, 'Hi, this is Martha. What's going on with Sam?' So I said, 'Well, we have no news on the company, but Peter thought you might like to act on the information that Sam Waksal was trying to sell all of his shares.' "

Stewart sold the stock. A few days later, after bad news drove down ImClone's stock price, Merrill officials began nosing around sales of the stock by Waksal family members Dec. 27. They asked Faneuil about Stewart's trade, and he told them that Stewart had called that day, asked for the price of ImClone stock, then sold her shares.

Starting to panic, he called Bacanovic in Florida. According to Faneuil's animated testimony, "Peter said, 'It was tax-loss selling.' " Stewart's attorney, Robert Morvillo, objected, calling Faneuil's description of the conversation acting. Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum overruled and let Faneuil continue. "I tried to get a word in edgewise," Faneuil said. "I tried to say something, and he cut me off every time, really didn't let me say a single word, just kept telling the same story."

Faneuil said he lied to SEC investigators Jan. 3, 2002, telling them simply that Stewart had called for a price on ImClone, then sold the stock. After one of Stewart's employees called him to say the ImClone sale "completely screws up our tax-loss selling plan," Faneuil again called Bacanovic. This time, Bacanovic told him that he and Stewart had an agreement to sell the stock if its price ever dropped below $60 a share, which it did Dec. 27.

Faneuil also described a meeting he had with Bacanovic at a gourmet coffee shop near their office. Bacanovic said that he and Stewart were "close friends and extremely loyal to each other," and that she was one of the main reasons for his success at Merrill.

In late January, Faneuil met with Bacanovic again, this time in the office. "Peter called me in and said, 'Listen, I've spoken to Martha. I've met with her. And everyone's telling the same story. Everyone's telling the same story. This was a $60 stop-loss order. That was the reason for her sale. We're all on the same page, and it's the truth. It's the true story. Everyone's telling the same story.' And I just said, 'OK.' "

The halftime extravaganza featured coarse lyrics and bump-and-grind dancing, with a measure of crotch-grabbing for choreographic emphasis. That was before singer Justin Timberlake uncovered Janet Jackson's breast before a national television audience, young and old. The commercials also clearly delineated the gap, with an array of sophomoric themes from dogs biting crotches to horses passing gas.

Whether the Federal Communications Commission finds weapons of mass defilement in its investigation of the MTV-produced halftime show, the NFL is left to defend a marketing strategy that exposed its inevitable drawbacks.

When an establishment corporation caters to the video-game generation of male America, it is dancing with the devil. And as seen at halftime, that's not a fox trot (at least in the context Grandma taught).

"What did they expect?" asks Professor James Twitchell of the University of Florida, author of five books on pop culture. "When you put your primary goal as reaching young men, your advertisers are going to show dogs jumping into the crotches of people."

The NFL disputes it is selling itself primarily to young men, saying it seeks as wide an audience as possible. Super Bowl entertainment the previous two years featured Sting, U2 and Shania Twain at halftime, with Barry Manilow and the Boston Pops in pregame festivities.

But sports, Twitchell says, "is one of the few places adolescent males will slow down long enough to be sold to." And the NFL and its sponsors obviously want to use that to their advantage.

"It's a very delicate balancing act," says Greg Aiello, NFL vice president of public relations, "and sometimes you can fall off the tightrope."

Going edgy, left on edge

Marketing experts universally applaud the league's pitch to younger fans. CBS pocketed an average of nearly $2.3 million per 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl. Numbers like that justify the eight-year, $18 billion contract the NFL commanded for its television rights.

Dean Bonham, chairman of the Bonham Group, which advises sports leagues and major corporations on marketing, says he didn't think the league was doing enough to draw young viewers a few years ago.

"Now they're trying to be more edgy and encouraging a younger demographic into the fold. It's an enlightened, wise strategy," Bonham says, adding it doesn't risk alienating the rest of the audience if done correctly.

NFL promises changes

The National Football League will take a more hands-on role in future Super Bowl halftime shows, a league vice president said Tuesday.
Greg Aiello, NFL public relations VP, says MTV is out as a producer and the league is likely to take a more active role in contracting the talent for the halftime extravaganza.

This year, the NFL hired MTV to produce the 12-minute show and the music network signed up the talent. That included singer Janet Jackson, who took responsibility for the finale in which her right breast was exposed.

"We will not rely on a TV network to produce our Super Bowl halftime show. MTV embarrassed us and our fans," Aiello said. "We realize our office needs to take responsibility as well.

"Changes will be made."

Rudy Martzke and Mike Dodd






Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon, says marketing to such a niche audience is fine for the pregame festivities, like the Nickelodeon and MTV shows Sunday.

"The concern is when you get inside the venue, you are really speaking to the core product, and that's something you want to be careful with," he says.

The NFL says it hired MTV to produce the halftime show at the request of CBS. (Both networks are owned by Viacom.) The league acknowledges oversight of the halftime show, but says its assurances of appropriateness were not met. Aiello says league personnel saw the only dress rehearsal and "some of the things that turned out to be offensive (beyond the finale) were not part of the rehearsal."

He says the league submitted a list, requesting changes to certain lyrics and dancing. "Some were made, some weren't," he says, adding it was the league's expectation that all would be made. "We were given assurances the halftime show would be appropriate and not be offensive. They were not met."

Bonham doesn't think the NFL is culpable for Timberlake's and Jackson's "tasteless stunt."

"This is not about the NFL. This is about MTV, the production and the performers," he says. "I hope there are serious penalties imposed on MTV and the performers."

Adds former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson: "I don't think the NFL had any prior knowledge this was an edgy act. I don't think they thought this was a high-risk element."

Experts say the NFL has responded appropriately to the controversy, promising to take more control of halftimes.

The problem is inherent in live television, Pilson says. It's the same headache the awards ceremonies face — and CBS announced Tuesday it will employ a five-second delay for Sunday's Grammy Awards show to enable it to edit out inappropriate content.

Pilson says the NFL could go that route, but more likely will hire safer, more reliable acts.

Super Bowl ads a mirror on society

Super Bowl halftimes have evolved from a parade of marching bands to Up With People concerts to the high-profile pop/rock acts of today.

Pilson, now a TV consultant, says the goal of halftime is threefold: maintain the television audience built in the first half, entertain the stadium audience, and draw in a broader audience of young people and hope they'll watch the second half.

The Timberlake-Jackson billing helped Sunday's record telecast: it lost only 1% of the audience at halftime, compared with a 3% drop last year.

Super Sunday halftime is 26 minutes — twice the duration of regular-season intermissions. Aiello says the NFL seeks an extravaganza as part of its biggest event and the additional time is needed to set up and take down the stage for the 12-minute performance.

If it also gives the network time for a few more commercials at $2 million-plus a pop, all the better.

The ads, geared largely to the testosterone generation, only fueled the controversy. When the erectile dysfunction (ED) ads are the most tasteful and comfortable to watch, many viewers know it's not their old coach's Super Bowl.

Bonham disagrees. "I don't think the spots were up to the standards we've seen in recent years, but the vast majority were well done," he says, citing the ED ads as the poorest.

Pilson says the ads merely reflect the tastes and appetite of the American public. "What we see on TV is a mirror of American culture," he says.

Aiello says the NFL contract with the networks prohibits gambling-related ads, but beyond that the league has no control over the content of the commercials. CBS prescreens them to make sure they pass the network standards and practices.

Lost in the post-Super Bowl aftermath is the buzz for one of the best games in the history of the often overhyped championship. For all the talk of risks and demographics, that is what matters most.

"You have to hope, at the end of the day, the game sells itself," Swangard says.

Contributing: Rudy Martzke

The Musketeers (11-9) pulled off another stunning upset of their crosstown rival by getting big games from their two senior guards. (Related item: Game report)

Chalmers repeatedly drove to the basket and made floating jumpers over the outstretched arms of the Bearcats' brawnier front line. Romain Sato added 18 points with a game-high 11 rebounds for the home team.

Cincinnati (15-3) has lost six of its last eight games against Xavier, which usually plays its best against its crosstown rival. That eight-year stretch includes two upsets when Cincinnati was ranked No. 1.

Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins criticized Xavier fans leading up to the game, and Bearcats players said the game was more important to the Musketeers — a way of belittling the small Jesuit school.

Chalmers would have none of it.

"Our fans were amazing," he said. "That had a lot to do with the win. Those guys talk trash."

After a pause, Chalmers added, "By the way, we've still got the trophy."

They do, thanks to Chalmers.

He made a 3-pointer that tied it for the third and final time in the second half. Two minutes later, he stepped back from a double-team and made an 18-foot jumper for a 70-69 lead with 27 seconds left.

Cincinnati then threw away a chance for the last shot. Nick Williams' crosscourt pass for Armein Kirkland flew over his head with 4.9 seconds left, Cincinnati's 18th turnover.

Cincinnati initially tried to get the ball inside to Jason Maxiell, who was covered.

"We knew they wanted to go to Maxiell," Xavier forward Anthony Hicks said. "I wanted to force him higher, because he's no threat from the outside. When we did that, they didn't know what to do."

Chalmers was fouled and missed two free throws, but Eric Hicks knocked the ball out of bounds as he and Sato fought for the rebound. Sato made one free throw after an intentional foul with 2.2 seconds left, and the game ended with Xavier's inbounds pass getting swatted around.

Tony Bobbitt scored 17 points for Cincinnati, which has lost three of its last five games after a 13-0 start.

"We lost our swagger," Hicks said. "We've got to get back to being ourselves. If we don't play hard and rebound, everybody's going to beat us."

Xavier's struggles this season — five losses in its previous six games — took some of the luster but none of the emotion out of the annual rivalry.

Huggins stirred it up the last few days by saying Xavier's fans were the most profane he'd ever encountered. Xavier officials apologized for the student section's conduct after that game, but were miffed when Huggins brought it up again this week.

The two school presidents sat together on the Xavier bench during warmups, chatting and sharing a few laughs. The Rev. Michael Graham of Xavier then walked to midcourt and asked the crowd of 10,250 to applaud new Cincinnati president Nancy Zimpher.

When Huggins came out to the court for his postgame radio show, one fan yelled at him, "A bitter pill!" Huggins didn't acknowledge the comment.

"The crowd was great," Huggins said in a raspy voice. "What Father (Graham) did was a classy thing. They were terrific. That's the way it ought to be."

The crowd went silent as the Musketeers fumbled around in the opening minutes.

Cincinnati abandoned its customary press, wary of Xavier's three slick guards, and went with a straight man-to-man defense that locked up the Musketeers' perimeter-oriented offense. Xavier missed nine consecutive shots while Cincinnati went on a 15-1 run, pulling ahead 19-8.

Then, it was Xavier's turn.

Chalmers had two of his early shots swatted away, but didn't back down and led a 23-7 spurt that closed the first half. Chalmers hit two 3s and made a leaning bank shot at the buzzer, putting Xavier up 37-32.

Justin Doellman's three-point play opened the second half and gave Xavier its biggest lead, 40-32.

Cincinnati recovered by hitting its first four 3-point attempts in the second half. Bobbitt's fastbreak layup and his 3 from the top of the key gave Cincinnati a 48-44 lead. There were three ties and six lead changes in the second half.

No. 9 Kentucky sneaks past No. 21 Florida

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida's youth was no match for Kentucky's experience in crunch time.

Erik Daniels scored 22 points and Cliff Hawkins had a crucial steal and scored four points in an 11-0 game-ending run that gave the ninth-ranked Wildcats a 68-65 victory over No. 21 Florida on Tuesday night. (Related item: Game report)

Hawkins' poor free throw shooting kept the outcome in doubt until Florida turned the ball over with 1 second to go, but the guard's steal and layup gave the Wildcats (15-3, 5-2 Southeastern Conference) the lead for good in the final minute.

"It was a great comeback. It showed a lot of poise and character on our behalf to hang in there after losing the lead," Kentucky coach Tubby Smith said. "We have had that problem most of the year, but tonight we found a way to overcome that."

Hawkins was just 4-of-11 from the foul line, but made two of his last four to finish Kentucky's comeback from an 11-point deficit in the second half.

The victory was Kentucky's fifth straight in a series that has developed into one of the fiercest rivalries in the SEC in recent seasons. Florida (13-6, 4-4) hasn't beaten the Wildcats since March 2001, when they claimed a share of the SEC Eastern Division championship, but none of the losses were more disappointing than this one.

The Gators led 65-57 with just under 3 minutes to go, but didn't score the rest of the way. Anthony Roberson led Florida with 19 points, but missed a layup that would have reclaimed the lead before misfiring on a tough 3-pointer that could have given the Gators the lead in the closing seconds.

"I thought our guys, in the last five minutes, played not to lose," said Florida coach Billy Donovan, who started four sophomores and a junior. "At the same time, Kentucky kept playing with the same intensity. ... Their experience, knowing how to win, was a factor."

Gerald Fitch scored 10 points and Hawkins finished with nine for Kentucky.

Matt Walsh scored 16 points for Florida, but the Gators hopes to force overtime with a desperation shot ended when he stepped out of bounds trying to get the ball to midcourt on Florida's final possession.

Florida trailed 33-29 at halftime despite shooting less than 35% (9-of-26) from the field. Roberson was the reason, overcoming a slow start to make two 3-pointers that helped the Gators cut into a 10-point deficit.

Kentucky faltered down the stretch during a 66-60 loss to Vanderbilt last Saturday and looked like they were going to let another game slip away when Christian Drejer hit 3-pointers on consecutive possessions to finish a 22-6 run for Florida early in the second half.

Drejer is one of Florida's best passers, but his crosscourt throw proved to be the Gators' undoing. Hawkins stepped in front of the errant pass and was left with a clear path to the basket for a 66-65 lead.

"I was anticipating it and just reading his eyes the whole time. He threw it right to where I thought he would," Hawkins said. "You want to try and make them pass the ball crosscourt in that situation because it is a tough pass to make."

Florida State drives past No. 16 Georgia Tech

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — For the third straight home game, Florida State's Tim Pickett came on after halftime to lead the Seminoles to a victory over a ranked team.

Pickett scored 25 of his career-high 33 points in the second half Tuesday night and the Seminoles beat No. 15 Georgia Tech 81-65. (Related item: Game report)

"He's a tremendous scorer, a tough shot maker," Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt said of Pickett. "If you've seen him before you know he's more than capable of knocking down those shots."

Pickett was 7-of-8 from the field, including 4-of-5 from 3-point range, and made seven free throws without a miss in the second half despite Hewitt switching defenders in hopes of slowing him down.

"Everybody had a try," Hewitt said.

Pickett wasn't taking any individual credit.

"We just tried to make them do things they don't want to do," he said. "I'm just trying to do whatever it takes to win."

Florida State point guard Nate Johnson, who had nine assists, acknowledged what Pickett does for the Seminoles.

"When he gets going there's not too much anybody can do," Johnson said. "He can get his shot off against anybody. When we need a bucket, we'll run something to get him the ball."

The second-half heroics are becoming almost second nature for Pickett.

He scored 22 points after halftime in an overtime win over North Carolina on Jan. 22 and 18 more in the second half in a victory over Wake Forest on Jan. 25.

"I think the coach needs to tell him an hour earlier that the game has started so he can come out and play like that the first half," teammate Michael Joiner teased. "He's a different person out there."

The Seminoles (16-6, 4-4 Atlantic Coast Conference) also made 16 straight free throws in the second half when they broke open a close game with a 14-0 run to take a 73-56 lead as the Yellow Jackets went scoreless for 6:14.

Georgia Tech (16-5, 4-4) went cold from 3-point range after halftime, making just one of 13 tries from beyond the arc while Pickett was putting on a shooting show in addition to getting eight rebounds and three steals.

Georgia Tech fell behind 16-4, but rallied to lead 35-33 at halftime.

Ismail Muhammad led Georgia Tech with 14 points while Jarrett Jack and Marvin Lewis each had 10.

Two free throws by Jack with 12:27 left gave Tech its last lead, 52-51.

Adam Waleskowski's three-point play put Florida State ahead for good just 10 seconds later.

"I thought we had pretty decent control of the game early in the second half," Hewitt said. "They established what they wanted to do."

B.J. Elder, Tech's scoring leader this season, had nine points and was just 1-of-6 from 3-point range.

The bill is a direct response to the case of Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman who never wrote down her wishes and has been at the center of a lengthy, nationwide right-to-die debate. Schiavo is being kept alive in a nursing home.

Her husband and parents disagree about what she would have wanted. The courts last year allowed her feeding tube to be removed at her husband's request, but the Legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush intervened, siding with her parents. Lawmakers gave Bush the power to order the tube reinserted.

The House Judiciary Committee considered a bill Tuesday that would make it harder to remove feeding tubes in such cases. The committee did not take a vote, however, after several panel members expressed misgivings about details in the bill.

The panel will take it up again in the coming weeks and it could quickly get to the House floor, but the Senate is unlikely to move as quickly and may not consider the issue at all. Senate President Jim King has already expressed his reluctance to deal with it this year.

The magnitude-6 quake hit in the Pacific Ocean, about 47 miles southeast of the coastal city of Hualien, the Central Weather Bureau said.

The tremor was strong enough to shake buildings in the capital, Taipei, about 75 miles northwest of Hualien.

Temblors frequently rattle Taiwan, but most are minor and cause little or no damage. However, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake in September 1999 in central Taiwan killed more than 2,300 people.

Investigators also are trying to determine whether the White House and Senate attacks are related to a case in Greenville, S.C. A vial of low-grade ricin was found in a post office Oct. 15, the sources said. The vial was in a letter addressed to the U.S. Transportation Department that warned of future attacks if rules limiting truckers' driving hours aren't relaxed. The White House letter contained similar threatening language. A reward up to $100,000 is being offered in the Greenville case.

The White House wouldn't comment Tuesday about the letter.

On Tuesday, three Senate office buildings were closed after a large amount of white powder was discovered Monday afternoon in the mailroom of Senate Republican leader Bill Frist of Tennessee. Frist said advanced testing showed the substance was an "active" form of the ricin poison. But analysis was continuing in at least four laboratories to measure its potency and to test swabs taken from the majority leader's mailroom.

"This is an insult, an assault on the Senate side of the United States Capitol," Frist said.

At least 16 people were treated for possible exposure. But the U.S. Capitol physician said there were no signs of illness. Inhalation or ingestion of ricin can lead to death. And there is no antidote.

Federal officials said it was unclear whether the substance was sent through the mail or hand-delivered. There was no evidence to identify the source of the attack or if it was linked to international terrorism, including al-Qaeda.

An intern assigned to open Frist's mail discovered the substance Monday on a letter-opening machine. About 40 letters near the machine were sealed in a barrel that remains in the senator's office suite in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. FBI agents were expected to examine the contents as soon as Tuesday night.

Similar investigative precautions were taken in October 2001, when deadly anthrax was discovered in mail addressed to Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Tom Daschle, D-S.D. The anthrax attack crippled Capitol Hill and scared the nation still reeling from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The anthrax case remains an open criminal investigation.

On Tuesday, Daschle called the ricin threat a "criminal act" and "an act of terrorism."

In a separate incident in Connecticut, U.S. postal inspectors found a letter addressed to the Republican National Committee that contained a suspicious substance at a mail-sorting center in Wallingford. Tests late Tuesday revealed it was not ricin.

Kevin McDonough, Boston's assistant postal inspector-in-charge, said initial field tests Monday night had been inconclusive. The Connecticut facility remained open during Tuesday's testing.

Wallingford also processed an anthrax-laced letter in 2001 traced to the death of a 94-year-old woman. She was one of five people killed and 17 who became ill in the anthrax attacks.

Contributing: Andrea Stone

Edwards easily won his native South Carolina and Clark, a retired Army general from Arkansas, eked out victory in neighboring Oklahoma. Howard Dean earned no wins and a handful of delegates, his candidacy in peril. Joe Lieberman was shut out, too, and dropped out of the race.

"It's a huge night," Kerry told The Associated Press, even as rivals denied him a coveted sweep.

Racking up victories in Missouri, Arizona, North Dakota, New Mexico and Delaware, Kerry suggested that his rivals were regional candidates.

"I compliment John Edwards, but I think you have to run a national campaign, and I think that's what we've shown tonight," the four-term Massachusetts senator said. "You can't cherry-pick the presidency."

With Iowa and New Hampshire already in his pocket, Kerry boasts a record of 7-2 in primary season contests. He won three states with more than 50% of the vote Tuesday, and ran strong in all seven states, especially among voters favoring a candidate with experience or someone who can beat President Bush. Still, the undisputed front-runner missed a chance to put two major rivals away.

It was a night of blown opportunities all around. Edwards narrowly lost to Clark in Oklahoma, missing a chance to show his presidential mettle outside the South and emerge as Kerry's chief rival.

Clark did better than expected — one victory and at least two second-place finishes — but it came at a heavy price. He spent $11 million on TV ads in hopes of standing alone against Kerry.

Of the 269 pledged delegates at stake Tuesday night, an AP analysis showed Kerry winning 88, Edwards 58, Clark 25, Dean three and Al Sharpton one, with 94 yet to be allocated. Kerry won the two most delegate-rich states, Missouri and Arizona, while Clark and Edwards divided the next two biggest prizes.

Tuesday's results pushed Kerry just over 200 delegates out of 2,162 needed for the nomination, including the superdelegates of lawmakers and party traditionalists. Dean trailed by nearly 70, Edwards by nearly 100.

Democrats award delegates based on a candidates' showing in congressional districts, giving Kerry's rivals a chance to grab a few delegates even in contests they lost.

In nearly every region of the nation, the most diverse group of Democrats yet to cast votes this primary season said they had a singular priority: Defeat Bush.

"I don't care who wins" the Democratic primary, said Judy Donovan of Tucson "I'd get my dog to run. I'm not kidding. I would get Mickey Mouse in there. Anybody but Bush."

In state after state, exit polls showed Kerry dominated among voters who want a candidate with experience or who could beat Bush.

Edwards had said he must win South Carolina, and he did by dominating among voters who said they most value a candidate who cares about people like them.

"It's very easy to lay out the map to get us to the nomination," Edwards told the AP, drawing a line from Michigan on Saturday to Virginia and Tennessee next Tuesday.

To the roar of his South Carolina supporters, Edwards declared, "The politics of lifting people up beats the politics of tearing people down."

Clark declared victory from Oklahoma, standing before a red-white-and-blue banner and a crowd of cheering supporters. Calling himself "an old soldier from Arkansas," the political novice said he was excited by "the first election that I ever won."

Dean saved his money for a last stand in Wisconsin on Feb. 17, a long-shot strategy that some of his own advisers questioned.

"We're going to have a tough night," Dean told supporters as he promised to keep "going and going and going and going and going — just like the Energizer bunny."

Said Steve Murphy, who ran Rep. Dick Gephardt's campaign: "Howard Dean is done." The list of ex-candidates grows: Florida Sen. Bob Graham dropped out first, then Carol Moseley Braun, Gephardt and Lieberman.

"Today the voters have rendered their verdict and I accept it," Lieberman said.

Kerry, who just six weeks ago was written off as a candidate, reshaped the race with victories in Iowa and New Hampshire while Dean's candidacy cratered. "I'll keep working and fighting until I win the nomination, and then I'll keep working and fighting until I beat George Bush," he told the AP.

Kerry is racking up endorsements as he tries to unite the party behind his front-running candidacy. To that end, the 1.2 million-member American Federation of Teachers, the country's second largest teachers' union, planned to back Kerry on Wednesday, a senior union official said on condition of anonymity.

Even Democrats who didn't vote for Kerry appear fairly comfortable with him. Large majorities of voters — ranging from about 70% in Oklahoma to more than 80% in Delaware — said they would be somewhat or very satisfied if Kerry wins the nomination, exit polls showed.

Nearly half the voters in South Carolina were black and nearly one in six in Arizona were Hispanic, the first contests with sizable minority populations in the primary campaign. In Missouri and Delaware, about 15% of the voters were black, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.

Looking beyond Tuesday, Kerry planned visits to Washington state and Michigan, where polls show him leading Saturday's caucuses. Edwards and Clark focused on Tennessee and Virginia. All three candidates planned to air ads in the two southern states.

Kerry plans to buy ad time in Washington, D.C., to reach Democratic-heavy northern Virginia, aides said. It's an expensive market, and it was unclear whether Edwards would have the money to match Kerry ad-for-ad as he did in Tuesday's states.

Dean, a former Vermont governor, ran out of cash and momentum after finishing third in Iowa and a distant second in New Hampshire. He ran no TV ads in the seven states and intended to stay off the air for a spate of other contests until Feb. 17, when Wisconsin votes.

On a deeply divided staff, some Dean aides were focused on raising money to cover campaign debts, an emphasis that gave a backseat to costly political tactics such as television commercials.

Exit polls also showed that nearly half of voters in five states said they made up their minds within the last week. One in five waited until Tuesday to pick a candidate.

Texas Tech coach Bobby Knight reportedly is in trouble for yelling at the school's chancellor.

Texas Tech coach Bob Knight's temper has gotten him in hot water again.

Knight, fired from Indiana University in 2000 after numerous complaints and incidents involving the temperamental coach, reportedly yelled at the Texas Tech chancellor at a grocery store on Monday, prompting a review by school officials.

School spokeswoman Sally Logue Post said she did not know details of the encounter between the basketball coach and Dr. David Smith. No one was injured, she said.

The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported that Knight raised his voice to Smith after the chancellor complemented the coach on his recent good behavior.

A witness told the paper that Knight berated Smith and started yelling, saying that there had been nothing wrong with his behavior.

Smith turned to leave the area, the Avalanche-Journal reported, but Knight followed. The chancellor then told Knight that he deserved more respect than Knight was showing him, according to the Avalanche-Journal.

The newspaper reports that no physical contact took place before Knight left the establishment after the confrontation, got in his car and pulled into traffic. According to the Avalanche-Journal, Knight stopped his car then and briefly got out before getting back in and driving away.

“This is obviously an issue that is internal to the university,” Smith told The Associated Press. “Right now the athletic director and the president’s office at the university are looking into the incident. We’ll wait to hear more in the next few days about their review.”

Asked whether there was any discussion of removing Knight, Smith said: “I can’t comment on any of those things right now.”

Gerald Myers, the university’s athletic director who was instrumental in bringing Knight to Tech in 2001 after he was fired at Indiana, witnessed the encounter, Post said.

The men were getting food around lunchtime at Market Street, an upscale grocery store about two miles from the university, said Dan Sanders, chief marketing officer for United Supermarkets, which owns the store where the incident occurred.

“Apparently, there was some sort of disagreement,” Sanders said. “It took place very quickly.”

Neither Myers nor sports information director Randy Farley immediately returned telephone messages Monday night.

While still at Indiana in March 2000, Knight was investigated by the university after former player Neil Reed said the coach choked him at a practice in 1997.

In May 2000, Knight was fined $30,000, suspended for three games and placed under a “zero-tolerance behavior policy.

In early September 2000, Knight was accused of grabbing a student by the arm, cursing and lecturing him about manners after the coach was addressed “Hey, Knight, what’s up?”

In September 2000, Knight was fired from Indiana for violating the behavior policy. Indiana’s president Myles Brand, now president of the NCAA, fired him for what Brand called a “pattern of unacceptable behavior.”

In late December, Knight went into a profanity-filled tirade after an ESPN reporter asked about his relationship with former player Steve Alford, who was also participating in the interview. He later apologized for the incident.

Texas Tech is 4-2 in the Big 12 Conference this season. The No. 19 Red Raiders had been unbeaten in the league until last week, when they lost to Texas and Oklahoma State.

And that has caused pizza makers around the nation to wonder if the low-carb craze will force changes in one of America's best-loved foods.

They're saying, "Hey, we've got a problem here. Pizza's built on bread. It's the No. 1 enemy of the Atkinites," said Tom Boyles, senior editor of PMQ Magazine, a publication that follows the pizza industry.

Boyles has a word for those who want to avoid carbohydrates: "carbavoids."

Although industry sales haven't taken a hit yet, some pizza operators are considering offering customers low-carb pizzas.

"Pizza operators are asking themselves, 'Do I want to do this?' and they're bouncing the idea back and forth," Boyles said. "It's at that point where they're going, 'Just how far is this going to go?"'

According to the National Association of Pizzeria Operators (search), about 3 billion pizzas are sold each year in the United States by about 40,000 shops.

At the same time, low-carb diets like the Atkins (search), South Beach and Zone have gained wider popularity. A Harris Interactive poll done last summer for Novartis Consumer Health Inc. estimated that 32 million Americans were on some kind of high-protein, low-carb diet.

Doug Ferriman, owner of Crazy Dough's Pizza Co. in Cambridge's Harvard Square, said he didn't think low-carb dieters would put "too much of a dent" in the pizza business, but he had clipped a recipe for low-carb dough from an industry publication and was going to try it in the spring.

"We're going to have to fiddle around with it for a while," he said.

Some local pizza shop owners and some smaller chains have already moved to meet low-carb dieters' demands.

In Columbus, Ohio, Donatos Pizzeria has announced it will roll out a pizza with a low-carb crust in its 182 outlets. Spokesman Tom Santor said the pizza dough, made out of soy protein and other ingredients, "tastes fabulous."

In Louisville, Ky., Bearno's Pizza, a small chain, offers a crustless pizza on the usual circular baking pan.

And in Escondido, Calif., John Pontrelli, owner of Pit Stop Pasta, offers what may be a traditionalist's worst nightmare: "pizza in a bucket." It has all the pizza toppings placed in a crock or, for takeout customers, a metal can.

While it's not a big item, he said, some people have asked for it, and "Our motto here is: you want to say no to people as little as possible."

At Low-Carb Creations in Vancouver, Wash., Craig Adams, vice president and general manager, said sales of low-carb pizza dough had risen 300 percent to 400 percent in the past six months. Adams said the small company, which has 17 employees, had signed agreements to provide the skins to several smaller chains and dozens of other stores.

Tom Lehmann, of the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas, a consultant who works with bakeries and pizza operations worldwide, said, "Low-carb is probably the biggest pebble to be dropped in this little pizza pond for a long time. There's just a huge, huge amount of interest."

Lehmann, who writes in industry publications as "The Dough Doctor," said he has received an average of five requests per day for the past three months on how to make low-carb dough.

He said his own experiments so far with making a low-carb dough had turned out a product that tasted, well, different.

"If you consider a pizza crust as being an edible breadlike product that's located beneath the toppings, the cheese and tomato sauce, OK, that's all we can say about it. ... Wipe away any memories of your old traditional pizza crust," he said.

Steve Coomes, editor of pizzamarketplace.com, wondered if the low-carb craze would last and whether it was just part of New Year's resolution dieting.

"I still think that the vast majority of American pizza consumers are going to look at pizza and those side items like wings as an indulgence and will continue to enjoy them in their intended form," he said.

"They love it to the tune of $26 billion per year."

In Boston's Italian North End, talk of a low-carb pizza was viewed as sacrilege.

"In my culinary heart, I will never do low-carb," Salvo Goglio, 36, a native of Sicily and chef at Antico Forno, said while chopping zucchini in a cramped kitchen.

Brandishing a container of golden polenta, he asked, "How can you get low-carb and keep the flavor?"

Just then, an order came off the printer above the counter where Goglio was working: roast chicken on a salad, hold the bread. And it turned out that several members of the staff, including Goglio himself, had been "on the Atkins."

Still, Goglio said, "If you want to really eat good food, you can't cut down carbs."

Campaign manager Roy Neel said some of those who were let go had worked on projects either at campaign headquarters in Burlington, Vt., or in Iowa and New Hampshire and were no longer needed.

Neel described the layoffs as routine, but word of them came just days after Dean brought the former aide to Al Gore in last week as part of a staff shake-up to watch the budget and help turn around the former Vermont governor's struggling bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. The campaign has pulled its advertising from several states to save money and had asked staffers to defer paychecks. The payroll freeze was lifted Monday.

"Every campaign, once they finish a cycle or run of primaries essentially downsizes related to the staff that is working in those states, and the same thing even working in headquarters," Neel said in an interview Monday night. "None of our layoffs are anything other than work-related or function-related."

About a half dozen staffers in Burlington, Vt., and a dozen or so in the field were let go, Neel said.

Additional layoffs were not ruled out.

"It's a natural down scaling," Neel said. "Then of course you beef up in those states when you're moving into the next round" of primaries. Neel replaced Joe Trippi, who resigned rather take another position with the campaign.

Once the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Dean said Sunday that he regretted burning through much of the record $41 million he raised for his campaign last year only to lose both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Dean spent all but about $8.5 million of that total.

He finished a distant third in the Jan. 19 Iowa caucuses, then saw his lead in the New Hampshire polls evaporate into a second-place finish on Jan. 27. Dean has said he doesn't expect to win any of the seven states that vote on Tuesday, with the possible exception of New Mexico.

He is not advertising in any of the seven states, and is focusing on contests this coming weekend in Michigan, Washington state and Maine, but is not advertising in those three states either.

Dean's staff had worked without pay since Jan. 28 to shore up campaign coffers after the New Hampshire loss. But the pay freeze was lifted Monday and staff was told they will get the paychecks that were expected last week.

Despite his campaign's fall from the front of the Democratic pack, Dean is still raising $200,000 a day from supporters on the Internet. Aides, however, are reluctant to run up a campaign debt that might become a personal burden to Dean after the race. Dean is well known as someone who hates running into debt.

Blair told a parliamentary committee that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw would announce details later Tuesday.

"I think there are issues" about intelligence that need to be looked at, Blair said. But he insisted Saddam Hussein had had "weapons of mass destruction capability" when Britain and the United States went to war.

The announcement comes a day after President Bush said he would name an independent, bipartisan inquiry into faulty intelligence in Iraq and less than a week after a judge cleared the British government of allegations it distorted what it knew about Iraqi weapons to build a case for war.

The threat posed by Iraq's alleged nuclear, chemical and biological weapons was Blair's main argument for war. No such weapons have been found, and David Kay, the former head of the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group, has said he doesn't believe they ever will be.

Kay, who quit last month, told the U.S. Congress last week that "it turns out we were all wrong, probably" about the Iraqi threat.

"What is true about David Kay's evidence, and this is something I have to accept as one of the reasons why I think we now need a further inquiry ... we have not found stockpiles of actual weapons," Blair told the lawmakers.

"What is untrue is to say that he is saying that there was no weapons of mass destruction program or capability, and that Saddam was not a threat."

The British government previously rejected calls for an inquiry. But on Monday, Blair's spokesman said last week's ruling by senior judge Lord Hutton that the government had not "sexed up" intelligence cleared the air and allowed for a rational discussion of Iraqi weapons.

Bush announced Monday he would name an independent, bipartisan inquiry into faulty intelligence in Iraq and intelligence gaps concerning other areas, including Iran, North Korea and terrorist groups. He did not set a timetable for the investigation.

Blair denied he had been forced into an inquiry by Bush's announcement.

"It did not take us by surprise," he said. "We've been working very closely with the Americans about this."

Before last year's war, Blair maintained that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. In September 2002, the government published a dossier of intelligence about Iraq; Blair told the House of Commons that Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction program is active, detailed and growing."

Blair told Parliament at that time that "extensive, detailed and authoritative" intelligence had concluded "that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population, and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability."

Eight months later, a BBC report claimed some people in the intelligence services had had doubts about the 45-minute claim, were unhappy that it was included in the dossier and that the government "probably knew ...that it was wrong."

The story sparked a feud between the British Broadcasting Corp. and the government that culminated in Hutton's investigation that exonerated Blair but was harshly critical of the BBC. Hutton said the government had not manipulated intelligence, but said the issue of the accuracy of that intelligence was outside the scope of his inquiry.

After publication of the Hutton report, Blair acknowledged that "it is absolutely right that people can question whether the intelligence received was right, and why we have not yet found weapons of mass destruction."

On Tuesday, he insisted his position on Iraq's weapons had not changed.

"It's not a question as it were of changing a position, it's a question of recognizing the fact that though there has been ample evidence of weapons of mass destruction programs and capability, the actual weapons have not been found as yet in Iraq," he said.

"And the view of the head of the Iraq Survey Group is that he does not believe that the intelligence in relation to the stockpiles of the weapons. Now that's exactly what we need to look into."

He said he still believed the war had been just.

"I have no doubt whatever that we did the right thing," Blair said. "Now I think there issues to do with intelligence that we need to look at — and that's not just the intelligence agencies but the government as well, incidentally.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly met Monday with South Korea's Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun and Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon before leaving for Tokyo.

"We very much hope that the six-party talks can resume before much longer," said Kelly, who indicated Sunday they could happen this month.

Stepping up the diplomatic push, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage already was in Japan and expressed similar optimism Monday.

South Korea's unification minister also said he will use Cabinet-level talks with North Korea this week to urge the North to come to the negotiating table.

Those four-day talks begin Tuesday in Seoul with a North Korean delegation led by Kim Ryong Song, a Cabinet councilor, who was to arrive in the South Korean capital later Tuesday.

Meanwhile, in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, a team of Australian diplomats discussed the issue with North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun, the North's official KCNA news agency reported. Australia, a close U.S. ally, has diplomatic relations with North Korea while Washington does not.

Washington and North Korea, however, still disagree over ground rules for negotiations.

For months, the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea have been trying to resume talks on persuading North Korea to abandon its atomic ambitions. A first round ended in August without much progress or a date for a second meeting.

North Korea has insisted it needs nuclear weapons as a deterrent against a possible U.S. attack. But it says it will suspend its nuclear programs as a first step in talks if Washington lifts sanctions, resumes oil shipments and removes North Korea from its list of countries sponsoring terrorism.

The United States says North Korea must first begin dismantling its nuclear programs. U.S. officials believe the North already has one or two nuclear bombs and could make several more within months.

Kelly and Ban reaffirmed the U.S. position on dismantling Monday, adding that it must be done in a "complete, verifiable and irreversible" manner, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Shin Bong-kil as saying.

The nuclear dispute started in October 2002 when U.S. officials accused North Korea of running a uranium program in violation of a 1994 deal requiring the North to freeze its nuclear facilities. North Korea has denied ever having a uranium program.

North Korea has never confirmed or denied having atomic weapons.

Republican candidates are the big winners in this year's election. They received about 85% of the company's contributions, including those of its political action committee, employees and children of founder Sam Walton.

Wal-Mart's rise is significant because of the impact it might have on congressional debates about health care, labor and other hot-button regulatory issues, says Larry Noble, the center's executive director. "They're clearly making a move," he says.

The company has more than $250 billion in annual revenue. (No. 2 is General Motors, with $187 billion in annual revenue.) Wal-Mart is also the USA's biggest private employer, with 1.2 million workers.

But unions say Wal-Mart's push to keep costs low is driving thousands of factory jobs overseas. It's facing a potentially costly sex discrimination lawsuit from female workers. Plus, a federal grand jury is investigating claims that Wal-Mart cleaning companies used illegal immigrants.

Wal-Mart denies the sex discrimination claims. It says it is innocent in the case of illegal immigrants. Still, the growing criticism has tarnished the company's image, and helped spur its leap into Washington. "Our voice wasn't there to be heard," says company spokesman Jay Allen.

It's now being heard through:

•Campaign donations. Wal-Mart's political action committee and employees have given about $1 million in the 2004 elections so far — almost entirely to congressional candidates. Just $5,000 went to President Bush, and none to Democrats seeking the White House — a trend underscored Monday in campaign finance data released by the center. Bush's No. 1 donor to date: Merrill Lynch's (MER) PAC and employees. They gave $432,104 of the $132 million Bush raised. Wal-Mart gives to pro-business candidates, without expectations, Allen says. "There are no quid pro quos," he says.

Walton's children are big givers, too. Wal-Mart Chairman Rob Walton last year gave $25,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. His brother, John Walton, gave more than $150,000 to Republican causes since 2000. Their sister, Alice Walton, gave more than $100,000 in the same period.

•Lobbying. Wal-Mart has five staff lobbyists in Washington — up from one when it opened its office there in 1999.

The survey, taken Thursday through Sunday, reflects the battering Bush has received from the Democratic presidential contenders for months and the questions raised in the past week about the administration's rationale for going to war with Iraq.

Even as a snapshot at a difficult moment, the poll shows perils for Bush early in the election year:

• Kerry defeated Bush 53% to 46%, a lead outside the poll's margin of error. North Carolina Sen. John Edwards edged Bush at 49%-48%, a statistical tie. Bush bested former Vermont governor Howard Dean by 7 points and retired Army general Wesley Clark by 3.

• Bush's job-approval rating dipped below 50% for the first time in his presidency, to 49%, and his disapproval rating rose to a record 48%. His approval ratings for handling the economy, Iraq and health care all fell to near-record lows.

• Support for going to war with Iraq also dipped below 50% for the first time, to 49%. The proportion of Americans who were certain that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to develop them before the war fell dramatically. More than four in 10 said the administration deliberately misled the public about whether Iraq had the banned weapons.

In an attempt to address that concern, Bush agreed Monday to order a bipartisan probe into prewar intelligence. He spoke before meeting with former chief U.S. arms inspector David Kay, who has told Congress that reports the arms existed were wrong.

Bush, whose job approval was a robust 60% just three weeks ago, faces a more difficult landscape and some sobering history. Since World War II, only two presidents have trailed challengers early in the election year. In 1948, Harry Truman was behind Thomas Dewey but won in November. In 1976, Gerald Ford was behind Jimmy Carter and lost.

"Kerry's got a big bloom on the rose ... and as soon as that wears off, this race is going to be competitive from start to finish," says Matthew Dowd, strategist for the Bush campaign. He predicts that either candidate will find himself up or down 3, 4 or 5 percentage points through the year: "In a tight race in a closely divided country, this is where we'll operate."

Mark Mellman, a pollster and strategist for Kerry, says the poll underscores the opening for Democrats.

"People are unhappy with his (Bush's) economy performance, they're unhappy with the situation in Iraq, and Kay has dealt his credibility and/or his competence a real blow," Mellman says. He said Kerry has shown "tremendous strength" in recent weeks.

Among the Democratic candidates, Kerry was supported by a commanding 49% of Democrats nationally who are registered to vote. Former front-runner Dean was second at 14%, followed by Edwards at 13%.

"We have had several confirmations that it is ricin," Gainer said.

Dirksen and the other two main Senate office buildings were to be closed Tuesday for officials to check other mail in the buildings, but the Capitol was to remain open with the Senate convening Tuesday morning as scheduled.

Gainer said it was unclear whether the substance was contained in a letter or a package.

Authorities shut down ventilation equipment in the building and evacuated people from the fourth-floor room where the powder was found, Gainer said.

Sixteen people who were on the fourth floor when the powder was discovered were undergoing decontamination procedures Monday night, Gainer said. However, no one was expected to get sick, said Frist, who normally uses his Capitol majority leader's office instead of the Dirksen office. If symptoms of ricin poisoning have not surfaced in about eight hours, contamination is unlikely, said Frist, a surgeon before his election to the Senate.

"I would regard this as a bioterrorist agent," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said.

Frist stressed that nobody had developed ricin-poisoning symptoms, which include shortness of breath.

"Nobody is sick, and we don't expect anybody to get sick," said Frist, who is also a doctor.

Ricin is a poison derived from castor beans. The poison can be injected, ingested or inhaled.

There is no antidote for ricin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Death can take place within 36 hours. However, victims who do not die within three days usually recover.

Ricin poisoning is not contagious.

More definitive tests on the powder were being conducted overnight, Gainer said. Results were expected sometime today.

"At the moment, we're in a wait-and-see position," Gainer said.

If tests confirm that the substance found Monday is ricin, its release would mark the second bioterror attack on Capitol Hill.

In 2001, anthrax-tainted letters were sent to Democratic Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.

Letters with anthrax were also sent to NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw and the New York Post. In those attacks, five people died from exposure to anthrax, 17 others were sickened and thousands were forced to take antibiotics.

That case remains unsolved.

The Centers for Disease Control said that reports have shown that ricin was found in caves used by al- Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan.

Ricin was used to assassinate a Bulgarian writer in London in 1978.

Georgi Markov died after an attacker poked him with an umbrella that had been rigged to inject him with the poison.

Contributing: The Associated Press

•Worst hands: Panthers safety Deon Grant nearly intercepted a Tom Brady pass in the first quarter after reading a bootleg and jumping a route over the middle. Snag it, and there was a clear path of about 45 yards to the end zone. Also, receivers Deion Branch (New England Patriots) and Karl Hankton (Carolina) dropped passes to kill first-half drives.

•Best hand: With an inside push, Carolina defensive tackle Shane Burton blocked Adam Vinatieri's 36-yard field goal attempt in the second quarter to keep the game scoreless.

•Best read: Panthers linebacker Will Witherspoon blew up a reverse on a third-and-3 to kill a first-quarter drive, having noticed Troy Brown sneaking around in the backfield after lining up in a trips left formation. Witherspoon knifed into the backfield and crashed into Brown at the point of the exchange for a 10-yard loss.

•Best trend: The Pats-Cats provided the first scoreless first quarter in a Super Bowl since Washington Redskins-Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXVI, which was right up Carolina's alley. The Panthers held opponents scoreless in the first quarter in 12 games this season.

•Worst trend: The Patriots offense struggled in the red zone all season and in the AFC title game scored just one TD on seven trips inside the 20. On their first two trips inside to the red zone on Sunday, the Pats settled for Vinatieri field goal attempts ... and came away empty.

•Best rush: Patriots linebacker Mike Vrabel's tomahawk chop on Delhomme in the second quarter led to the game's first touchdown. It was Vrabel's second sack of the game, and the chop jarred the ball loose to be recovered by Richard Seymour. Four plays later, Brady connected with Branch for a 5-yard TD.

•Best pass: Delhomme's 39-yard touchdown pass to Steve Smith tied the game at 7 late in the second quarter. While Smith shook free of Tyrone Poole to run a streak route, Delhomme made sure the ball met him at the end zone by slinging a perfectly-thrown spiral.

•Worst anticipation: Panthers D-tackle Kris Jenkins was flagged three times for jumping the snap count.

•Best rebound: Three snaps after Smith's TD, Brady beat a blitz and found Branch for a 52-yard completion. It set up Brady's 5-yard TD pass to David Givens.

•Best flurry: The game was scoreless for nearly 27 minutes — longest in Super Bowl history. Then, after 11 scoreless possessions, the fireworks began. The teams combining for 24 points in the final 3:05 of the first half.

•Best leg: Carolina kicker John Kasay nailed a 50-yard field goal to close New England's gap to 14-10 as time expired in the first half.

•Best hit: On a second-and-four early in the third quarter, Delhomme found Muhsin Muhammad for an apparent first down in the right flat. But a thunderous hit by Ty Law separated the receiver from the ball. Two plays later, the Panthers punted.

•Worst track: Cutting was hardly automatic for the receivers and defensive backs. The turf was way too slippery.

•Best luck: Patriots tight end Daniel Graham, who has struggled with his hands, was thrown to for the first time in two games and hauled in a 33-yard completion on a seam route in the third quarter that set up Antowain Smith's 2-yard TD. The ball popped out at the end of the play, and Graham's lucky the ground can't cause a fumble.

•Best catch: Smith's leaping 18-yard snag along the sideline to salvage a high throw from a scrambling quarterback.

•Worst tackle attempt: Pats safety Eugene Wilson missed DeShaun Foster on the draw play that produced a 33-yard TD in the fourth quarter.

•Worst pass: With a chance to put a dagger in the Panthers' heart with just under eight minutes to play and third-and-goal from the 9, Brady made a horrible pass that was easily intercepted at the goal line by Reggie Howard. The receiver? There was none within 5 yards of the pass.

•Best touchdown: Delhomme connected with Muhammad for longest TD in Super Bowl history — 85 yards at expense of rookie Wilson.

•Best surprise: Linebacker Vrabel, who set up a TD with a sack, scored the go-ahead, 1-yard TD late in the fourth quarter from his double-duty position as a tight end on the short-yardage offense. Now that's versatility.

•Worst kickoff: After the Panthers tied the game at 29 with 1:08 remaining, Kasay's kickoff sailed out of bounds to set up the Patriots' eventual game-winning drive at the 40-yard line.

• Best finish: After such a ho-hum start, the game evolved into a classic shootout that went right down to the wire — and Vinatieri's golden leg.

Singer Justin Timberlake ripped off a piece of Jackson's outfit and blamed a "wardrobe malfunction," but Federal Communications Commission chief Michael Powell on Monday called the display "a classless, crass and deplorable stunt." (Related item: CBS apologizes for incident)

MTV, which produced the show, and CBS, which broadcast it, said they had no idea the Sunday night show would include such actions.

"CBS deeply regrets the incident," spokeswoman LeslieAnne Wade said.

The two singers were performing a flirtatious duet to end the show, with Timberlake singing, "Rock Your Body," and the lines he sang at the moment of truth were: "I'm gonna have you naked by the end of this song."

Timberlake then reached across Jackson's leather gladiator costume and pulled off the covering to her right breast, which was partially obscured by a sun-shaped, metal nipple decoration. The network quickly cut away and did not mention what happened on the air.

"I am outraged at what I saw during the halftime show of the Super Bowl," Powell said. "Like millions of Americans, my family and I gathered around the television for a celebration. Instead, that celebration was tainted by a classless, crass and deplorable stunt. Our nation's children, parents and citizens deserve better."

He told the commission to open an investigation, promising it would be "thorough and swift." Such an investigation could result in a fine of up to $27,500 or — if the FCC applied the sanction to each CBS station — in the millions.

Messages left with Jackson's record company and her personal publicist were not returned Monday morning.

At the White House, President Bush said he missed the show.

"Saw the first half, did not see the halftime — I was preparing for the day and fell asleep," he told reporters Monday after a Cabinet meeting.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "Our view is, it's important for families to be able to expect a high standard when it comes to programming."

The FCC has come under fire from lawmakers and outside groups who say the agency hasn't done enough to shield the public from indecent programming on radio and TV.

Legislation has been introduced in Congress to increase by 10-fold the $27,500 maximum fine that the FCC can levy for indecency. The Bush administration has endorsed the bill raising the fine to $275,000. The agency has said it may start issuing the fine per incident rather than per program, and is talking about revoking licenses.

Last month, the FCC proposed a $755,000 fine against Clear Channel Communications for the "Bubba the Love Sponge" program that aired multiple times on four of its Florida radio stations. The fine was a record for a single complaint. The largest cumulative fine for indecency was $1.7 million paid by Infinity Broadcasting in 1995 for various violations by Howard Stern.

MTV, CBS' corporate cousin in Viacom, also apologized, saying the display was "unrehearsed, unplanned, completely unintentional and was inconsistent with assurances we had about the content of the performance."

Timberlake said he did not intend to expose Jackson's breast and was "sorry that anyone was offended by the wardrobe malfunction."

"It was not intentional and is regrettable," he added.

Wade said CBS officials attended rehearsals all week, "and there was no indication any such thing would happen. The moment did not conform to CBS' broadcast standards." The show also featured P. Diddy, Nelly and Kid Rock.

NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue called the conduct "offensive, embarrassing to us and our fans, and inappropriate."

"We will change our policies, our people and our processes before the next Super Bowl to ensure that this entertainment is far more effectively dealt with," he said.

Over-the-air television channels cannot air "obscene" material at any time and cannot air "indecent" material between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. The FCC defines obscene material as describing sexual conduct "in a patently offensive way" and lacking "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." Indecent material is not as offensive but still contains references to sex or excretions.

In an interview posted on MTV.com in the days before the show, Jackson's choreographer, Gil Duldulao, talked about the show, saying: "She's more stylized, she's more feminine, she's more a woman as she dances this time around. There are some shocking moments in there, too."

"Kobe's sick," defense attorney Pamela Mackey told the judge, who agreed to begin the two-day hearing without Bryant.

Court administrator Chris Yuhas said Bryant waived his right to be at the hearing. She said the Los Angeles Lakers star was in the area, but she wouldn't be more specific. He is recovering from a severe cut on his finger when he put his hand through glass in his garage last week.

The hearing began behind closed doors, with attorneys arguing over whether the medical history of the 19-year-old accuser can be used against her. The defense has suggested that she twice attempted suicide and was taking antidepressants in the months before the incident with Bryant at the resort where she worked.

Court officials confirmed medical privacy issues were being discussed at the hearing, but declined to release details.

Defense attorney Hal Haddon has argued in court filings that Bryant's statements recorded the night after the alleged attack June 30 cannot be used during the trial.

He also wants the judge to prohibit prosecutors from using physical evidence obtained during and after the interview at the Lodge & Spa at Cordillera near Vail.

That physical evidence includes clothes Bryant wore the night of the alleged attack and samples taken during his hospital examination following the interview.

Much of the hearing will be closed to the public. State District Judge Terry Ruckriegle ruled last week that any testimony or evidence about Bryant's statements will be heard in private because the statements could influence potential jurors and may not even be allowed at trial.

However, arguments about whether the statements, which have not been publicly released, and physical evidence were obtained legally will remain open to the public.

Bryant, 25, faces four years to life in prison or 20 years to life on probation if convicted of felony sexual assault. He has said he had consensual sex with the woman.

Officers were well within their rights to use a hidden tape recorder, said attorney David Lugert, a former prosecutor. The real fight, he said, will be whether the judge believes Bryant made his statements voluntarily, meaning officers did not use coercion or inducement.

Another key decision the judge has to make is whether Bryant felt free to leave at the time of the questioning.

A decision for the defense could either prohibit prosecutors from using Bryant's statements and the physical evidence at trial, or restrict their use of it, Lugert said.

Haddon said in court filings that Bryant was kept a virtual prisoner in his hotel room for part of the July 2 interview because officers were confrontational and sat between him and the door.

Eagle County Sheriff Joseph Hoy has defended his detectives' actions, and spokeswoman Krista Flannigan has said prosecutors have no concerns about how the investigation was handled.

Separately, the judge has decided that portions of the hearing involving testimony from plainclothes law enforcement officers will be public.

But under an agreement among attorneys for the two sides and media organizations including The Associated Press, undercover officers will testify behind a privacy screen. Their names will not be used.

Emily Perret, secretary to former ImClone CEO Sam Waksal, said Stewart asked her what was going on with ImClone stock. Perret said she answered that she did not know and would leave a message for Waksal to call Stewart back.

The call took place Dec. 27, 2001. The government says it happened just after Stewart sold 3,928 shares of ImClone.

Perret said on cross-examination that Stewart's tone that day was no different from her tone on other days she called.

The government also put into evidence Perret's log of Stewart's call: "Martha Stewart something is going on with ImClone and she wants to know what."

Stewart and her co-defendant, broker Peter Bacanovic, are accused of lying to investigators about why Stewart sold 3,928 shares of ImClone stock just before bad news about the firm's anti-cancer drug sent the stock tumbling.

Earlier Monday, the judge in the case ruled that Douglas Faneuil, the government's star witness, will be allowed to testify beginning Tuesday afternoon.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum was a boost for prosecutors because Faneuil's testimony — which had been put off since Thursday — is the most critical piece of their case.

The judge did not elaborate on the ruling.

Prosecutors were forced to reconfigure their case after the judge postponed the testimony of Faneuil, a former brokerage assistant.

Faneuil had been set to testify last Thursday. But late Wednesday night, the government turned over to defense lawyers documents that could damage the credibility of Faneuil's testimony.

Defense lawyers argued they should have received the material long ago, and Cedarbaum said prosecutors had been too slow in turning it over.

Stewart and her co-defendant, broker Peter Bacanovic, are accused of lying to investigators about why Stewart sold 3,928 shares of ImClone Systems (IMCL) stock on Dec. 27, 2001, just before bad news sent the stock tumbling.

The government says Bacanovic ordered Faneuil to tip Stewart that ImClone founder Sam Waksal was trying to get rid of his own shares. Waksal later admitted having advance word of the negative report that damaged the stock.

Stewart and Bacanovic say they had an agreement to sell the shares if ImClone stock fell to $60.

Flights canceled amid new worries about al-Qaeda)
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said current intelligence does not indicate any more threats against specific flights.

Six international flights from the United Kingdom and France and Continental Airlines Flight 1519 from Washington to Houston, site of the Super Bowl, were grounded Sunday and Monday after security concerns were raised by the Homeland Security Department.

Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said there was "specific and credible intelligence information suggesting that al-Qaeda would attack these flights on those dates."

"It wasn't as specific as to method of attack," he said.

The cancellations were the first since December, when the nation's terror alert level was increased from elevated, or yellow, to high, or orange.

The Continental flight was the first domestic flight to be canceled. Roehrkasse declined to provide details about the nature of the threat but said the federal agency and Continental "worked closely on the matter."

The flight was scheduled to take off from Dulles International Airport outside Washington at 5:45 p.m. ET and arrive at Bush Intercontinental Airport at 8:10 p.m. CT.

The poll showed Bush with the lowest approval rating of his presidency at 49%, plus other top Democratic presidential candidates fared well against him in head-to-head matchups. Bush also had the lowest approval ratings of his presidency for his handling of the economy, foreign affairs and his performance on health care policy, with the numbers on those issues sinking substantially in the past few weeks.

"It's hard to believe that these numbers could turn as quickly as they have," political analyst Stuart Rothenberg said of the poll results. "My gut tells me that the direction is right, but the magnitude may be a bit of an exaggeration."

The poll was conducted among 1,001 adults from Jan. 29-Feb. 1. The questions about presidential preference have a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Rothenberg noted the poll was taken shortly after the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary — a time when Democrats dominated the political news. "As long as the Democrats are driving the discussion, he (Bush) is not going to be in good shape," Rothenberg said.

Among likely voters, Kerry held a 53%-46% edge over Bush, a gap larger than the margin of error and a substantial turnaround from the 55-43 edge Bush held only three weeks ago. Most of the other leading Democrats landed in a statistical tie, polling within the margin of error in head-to-head matchups. Sen. John Edwards led Bush 49-48 among likely voters, and retired Gen. Wesley Clark trailed Bush 47-50.

The notable exception was former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who trailed Bush by a 52-45 margin in a head-to-head matchup. That number still is an improvement for Dean from a poll three weeks ago, in which Dean trailed 56-41.

Bush's low approval rating was matched by the highest disapproval rating — 48% — of his presidency. Three percent of those polled had no opinion.

Fifty-four percent of Americans disapproved of the way Bush is handling the economy, compared to 43% who approve. Those numbers are a mirror opposite from polling in early January, in which Bush received 54% approval and 43% disapproval for his performance on the economy.

By a 51-46 margin, Americans disapproved of Bush's handling of foreign affairs. The disapproval rating grew when those polled were asked about Bush's Iraq performance, with 53% disapproving to 46% approving. And on health care, Bush received a 57-35 disapproval rating.

In all cases except the Iraq question, the approval ratings were the lowest of the Bush presidency. Bush received a 45% approval rating in early November 2003 on the Iraq situation.

"These are numbers that will probably keep changing throughout the year. It's evident that this is a very fluid time in what could be a very volatile political year," said political analyst Rhodes Cook. "It underscores the belief that this could be a very close election, rather like 2000."

The poll comes a day before key Democratic primaries and caucuses in seven states that put 269 delegates at stake.

WHAT'S AT STAKE TUESDAY

There are 269 delegates at stake Tuesday. Here are the seven states holding Democratic contests that day and the number of delegates in each:

Arizona, 55
Delaware, 15
Missouri, 74
New Mexico, 26
North Dakota, 14
Oklahoma, 40
South Carolina, 45

Kerry was campaigning Monday in New Mexico, where a new poll shows him as the front-runner.

Kerry garnered the support of 31% of the 500 likely Democratic voters in the copyright poll published in Sunday's Albuquerque Journal. The poll showed former front-runner Howard Dean with 15% and Wesley Clark with 14% — a statistically insignificant difference given the margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

Some 27% of the Democrats questioned in the random telephone poll Jan. 28-29 remained undecided.

"We feel good about how the undecided are going to go," Bill Burton, one of Kerry's spokesmen in New Mexico, said Monday.

Edwards improved to 7% from the 4% showing in another Journal poll taken before Kerry's victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, while Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman dropped from 8% to 3%. Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich hit 2% Sunday. The poll was conducted by Albuquerque-based Research & Polling Inc.

The earlier Journal poll had shown 8% for Kerry, 18% for Dean, 16% for Clark, 6% for Kucinich and 34% undecided with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Kerry spoke to about 300 people at a rally Monday morning at the University of New Mexico, telling them President Bush does not understand the struggles facing the nation and needs to go. Lieberman spoke Monday to children at an Albuquerque elementary school, telling them America is a place where dreams can be realized. Clark planned appearances in Albuquerque and Las Vegas, N.M., Monday, while Dean traveled to Santa Fe for a rally Monday.

Non-Kerry camps emphasized the large number of undecided voters in the most recent poll.

Luis Vizcaino, spokesman for Clark in New Mexico, said the poll was taken on the first day of a major campaign push in New Mexico by Clark, and said the campaign seems to be gaining momentum.

"Polls are fluid and we're just going to move forward," Vizcaino said.

"We're very confident we'll do well in New Mexico," he said.

Dean campaigners also said respondents were registered Democrats who voted in the last two primary and general elections, whereas the actual voters might be more diverse.

"We have brought a lot of new people into the process," said Andres Gonzalez, Dean's director of national Hispanic strategy who has been in New Mexico since the Iowa caucuses. "We've had Greens who've reregistered as Democrats. We've had Republicans reregister as Democrats. We've had a lot of people who've never registered register to vote for Howard Dean. None of them were represented in that poll."

State party officials expected the caucus vote to reflect about 50,000 party members, or roughly 10% of the party's state membership.

Dean officials emphasized the thousands of mail-in ballots sent in to the state Democratic Party, some before the Iowa and New Hampshire contests. Of the more than 29,000 mailed out, party officials on Sunday said they had received 24,475.

"What that poll doesn't reflect is that we had a very strong absentee voting program, stronger than anyone else's," Gonzalez said.

Edwards' wife Elizabeth said her husband's improvement in the numbers in New Mexico echoes his improving numbers nationwide.

"That's what we've seen nationwide, frankly, in every state — he keeps increasing his numbers," said Elizabeth Edward, who was stumping in northern New Mexico on Sunday for her husband.

Rep. Dick Gephardt, who has dropped out of the race but whose name will appear on caucus ballots, had the support of 1% of those polled.

"The reason we are where we are is because we went through a recession, we were attacked and we're fighting a war. Those are high hurdles for a budget and for a country to overcome," Bush told his Cabinet.

2005 BUDGET PLAN

A summary of President Bush's proposal:
Receipts: $2.036 trillion
Outlays: $2.4 trillion
Deficit: $-364 billion
Discretionary outlays: $914 billion
Mandatory outlays: $1.308 trillion
Interest: $178 billion

He said he was confident he could cut the deficit in half in five years by working with Congress "to bring fiscal discipline to the appropriations process."

White House budget director Joshua Bolten said the administration will not make a request for a wartime supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan until after the November elections. He said $50 billion would probably be the "upper limit" of what would be needed in 2005. If that level is reached, it would mean Bush's $364 billion deficit target for 2005 would rise to $414 billion.

Bolten said "hopefully the needs will be less" for military costs in Iran and Iraq next year. But he said "the uncertainty of the security situation" prompted the administration to wait and request a supplemental appropriation rather than include estimated costs in Monday's budget request.

BUDGET PROPOSALS

Budget authority by federal agency as proposed in President Bush's 2005 budget, in billions of dollars. Figures for 2004 are estimated.
2004 2005
Legislative Branch 3.6 4.0
Judiciary 4.8 5.4
Agriculture 20.7 19.1
Commerce 5.8 5.7
Defense 375.3 401.7
Education 55.7 57.3
Energy 23.3 23.6
Health-Human Svcs 69.3 68.2
Homeland Security 27.1 28.3
Housing-Urban Dlvp 30.4 31.3
Interior 10.6 10.8
Justice 19.3 18.7
Labor 11.7 11.9
State 9.3 10.3
Transportation 13.9 13.3
Treasury 11.2 10.8
Veterans Afrs 29.1 29.7
Corps of Engineers 4.6 4.0
EPA 8.4 7.8
Exec. Office Pres. 0.3 0.3
General Svcs Admin. 0.5 0.2
International Asst. 15.7 19.3
NASA 15.4 16.2
Nat. Science Found. 5.6 5.7
Small Bus. Adm. 0.8 0.7
Social Security 7.2 7.6
Other Agencies 8.0 6.5

Democrats, however, charged that Bush left the war spending out of the budget in order to make the deficit appear smaller.

To battle the soaring deficits, Bush proposed squeezing scores of government programs and sought outright spending cuts in seven of 16 Cabinet-level agencies. The Agriculture Department and the Environmental Protection Agency were targeted for the biggest reductions in discretionary spending.

In total, Bolten said Bush's budget would eliminate 65 government programs for a saving of $4.9 billion. The budget proposes trimming spending in 63 other programs.

Bolten said the administration targeted duplicative programs and those not achieving their objectives. A total of 38 education programs are targeted for elimination.

The president declared that his spending blueprint, which will set off months of heated debate in Congress, advances his three highest priorities — winning the war on terror, strengthening homeland defenses and boosting the economic recovery.

"Our nation remains at war," Bush said in his budget message. "This nation has committed itself to the long war against terror. And we will see that war to its inevitable conclusion: the destruction of the terrorists."

The president's plan for the 2005 budget year, which begins next Oct. 1, proposes spending $2.4 trillion for all government activities, up 3.5% from the current year. Revenues will total $2.04 trillion, a sizable 13.2% increase that the administration forecasts will occur from growing tax receipts powered by a stronger economy.

The president's budget, featuring a line drawing of the White House in forest green on the cover, states that stronger economic growth and reductions in general government spending will produce steady improvements in the deficit. It projected the deficit would decline to $237 billion in 2009, a cut of 55% from this year's projected $521 billion record.

Democrats immediately attacked the spending proposal for what they viewed as harmful reductions in various government programs and the president's insistence on making his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent at a cost projected in the budget of more than $900 billion over 10 years.

"This administration pledged that its tax cuts and policy choices would not turn record surpluses into record deficits, but this budget shows that's exactly what's happened," said Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle.

Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass, called on Congress to reject Bush's spending plan, charging it was the "most antifamily, anti-worker, anti-healthcare, anti-education budget in modern times."

Rep. John Spratt, senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said Bush's budget would reduce government spending on a broad swath of government programs from transportation to environmental protection that provide "priority services that the American people want and expect."

On the campaign trail, Democrats running for Bush's job were also critical. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark said the budget showed Bush's priorities were "tax cuts for the rich and tough luck for everyone else." Sen. Joe Lieberman said the country "can't afford another four years of the same destructive fiscal leadership."

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said Bush's budget represented the "same failed Republican prescription that has caused Bush to lose 2.5 million jobs in the last three years."

Bush would boost military spending by 7% in 2005 and provide a 10% increase for homeland security.

A firestorm of criticism erupted last week when it was revealed the administration had re-estimated the 10-year cost of the newly enacted Medicare prescription drug benefit program at $534 billion, far above the $400 billion figure Congress used in passing the measure two months ago.

The budget documents said the major reasons for the discrepancy were higher estimates for the number of participants in the program and new projections for health care price increases.

As previously announced, Bush's budget proposes an ambitious program to return Americans to the moon as early as 2015 and eventually send a mission to Mars. However, the budget only contains $1 billion in new money for the effort over the next five years with another $11 billion reallocated from current NASA programs. In 2005, Bush proposes increasing NASA's budget by 6% to $16.2 billion.

Other programs that would receive boosts in Bush's budget include his No Child Left Behind education program; job training programs, including one that links community colleges with employers' and an $18 million increase for the National Endowment for the Arts.

Bush's budget proposes to hold the spending increase for all of the government's discretionary programs — those other than mandatory entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare — to 3.9% in 2005. That average rise includes big boosts for the military and homeland security.

Scores of government programs outside those two areas will be restrained to an overall increase of just 0.5%, below the rise in inflation, and some agencies will suffer outright cuts.

The budget calls for outright spending cuts in seven of 16 Cabinet-level agencies.

The Agriculture Department's budget authority for 2005 would be reduced by 8.1% while EPA's budget would be cut by 7.2%. The departments of Commerce, Health and Human Services, Justice, Transportation and Treasury would also see their funding for discretionary programs decrease in 2005 under Bush's spending plan.

Some non-Cabinet agencies would also see large reductions for 2005 including a 49.2% cut for the General Services Administration, the government's landlord, and a 10.4% reduction in spending at the Small Business Administration.

The Corps of Engineers, builder of dams and other water projects favored by members of Congress, would see its budget reduced by 13.1% under Bush's proposal.

In fact, ad watchers might have felt more as if they were viewing Animal Planet than the Super Bowl. Each of the top four ads featured animals. Pepsi clawed its way to the No. 2 slot with a spot featuring a bear that disguises itself as a grizzled bear hunter to pass a check for Pepsi at a convenience store. (Chart: Complete Ad Meter results)

A Clydesdale-wannabe donkey finished third for Anheuser-Busch, followed by another A-B ad featuring a gas-passing horse that spoils a sleigh-ride date.

Anheuser-Busch flexed its marketing muscle to claim six of Ad Meter's top 10. Several of its ads had an almost frat-house overtone that included bathroom humor.

As usual, many of the biggest advertisers focused on making viewers yuk it up — but often with crude, lewd jokes. One year after a somewhat subdued Super Bowl atmosphere in which America was preparing for war in Iraq, advertisers let loose with an R-rated comedy club for Super Bowl viewers.

"It was a good mirror of what's going on in TV overall. Dumb is funny. Jessica Simpson is funny," says Donny Deutsch, CEO of Deutsch Inc., whose agency created Super Bowl spots for Mitsubishi, Monster.com and Expedia.com. "In many ways, it's a continuation of the dumbing down of America."

No. 2: Pepsi took the runner-up spot with an ad featuring a bear who disguises himself to get some Pepsi.

On Super Bowl Sunday, the stakes are huge. The world's most powerful marketers spent well over a combined $100 million on Super Bowl airtime — all hoping to present that one knockout commercial that folks nationwide talk about around the water cooler today. Marketers hope that office buzz about Super Bowl ads evolves into brisk sales.

"I only watch for the commercials," says Kelly Fenstermacher, 42, a banking executive from Tampa.

Ads cost a record average $2.3 million per 30-second slot. The Ad Meter focus group members surveyed second-by-second all the spots broadcast during a game watched in the U.S. by an estimated 90 million viewers.

There were several commercial themes familiar to Super Bowl viewers. Some, such as Pepsi and AOL, tried hard to impress viewers with their cultural hipness.

Others, such as Anheuser-Busch and Chevy, tried to tickle America's funny bone.

While viewers loved the animal ads, some were curious about what happens to the animals after the ads, especially because the animals were often the stars.

"Hopefully, some of the proceeds go to food and medicines for animals," says Robert Hill, 44, a retired nurse from Tampa.

Hardly.

But not many celebrities cashed in, either. Celebrities were mostly in the seats, not in the commercials. The key exception was race-car driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was in ads for Anheuser-Busch and Nextel, which both placed in the top 10.

For Anheuser-Busch, which controls more than half of U.S. beer sales, it was a night to toast — and toast again. Not only are Budweiser and Bud Light the world's top-selling brews, but they also appear to own Madison Avenue's most effective laugh-generating commercials.

Did the brewing giant lower its taste standards this year?

"We had to talk about (some) spots to make sure we didn't offend anybody or go over the top," says President August Busch IV. "We hope the humor didn't offend anybody."

Ditto for Chevy. The GM division blew past all other carmakers with an ad for its new pickup that featured kids getting soap stuck in their mouths for appearing to utter an incredulous expletive at the sight of the SSR pickup.

But some viewers didn't approve. Certainly not Dave Wolcott, 43, a home builder from Tampa. "The ad was absolutely inappropriate" at any time, he says. "Every year, we lower our standards just a little bit."

Chevy executives say their research says otherwise.

"Consumers told us they thought the ad was intelligent and charming," says Kim Kosak, general director of advertising for Chevrolet.

Contributing: Theresa Howard in Tampa, Michael McCarthy in New York

Contributors to Ad Meter: Kelly Barry, Anne Carey, Denyse Clarke, Barbara Hansen, Annette Hartman, Tim Hartman, Lisa Hitt, Henry Hsiao, Allie Hsiao, Lisa Kiplinger, Joyce Lamb, Tracy Lucht, Fred Meier, Chris Norman, John Norman, Dennis Peters, George Petras, Jim Sergent and Pat Walkup.

But the case took an unexpected turn last week that could strain their unified defense.

The twist involved the government's star witness, former Bacanovic assistant Douglas Faneuil. He was expected to testify that Bacanovic instructed him to give Stewart a secret tip that led her to sell nearly 4,000 shares of ImClone Systems stock in 2001, just before it plummeted on bad news.

Stewart and Bacanovic — whose attorneys spent months together devising a defense strategy — say they had agreed beforehand to sell ImClone if the stock fell to $60 per share.

However, Bacanovic's attorney also has suggested Faneuil, star-struck by the domestic style-setter, decided on his own to tip Stewart about the stock's impending drop.

And Faneuil's testimony was delayed last Thursday by the surprise disclosure of an FBI interview with his former attorney. In a blow to prosecutors, transcripts of the interview suggest ImClone founder Sam Waksal himself — not Bacanovic — might have asked Faneuil to tip Stewart.

Bacanovic's lawyers could use the document to subtly distance their client from Stewart while bolstering his defense, said Dan Small, a former federal prosecutor in Boston.

Bacanovic "doesn't want to help the government by pointing the finger at Martha Stewart," Small said. "But he also doesn't want to go down with the ship."

The stakes are high: Stewart is charged with obstruction of justice, securities fraud and other counts that carry a total of 30 years of prison time. Bacanovic faces up to 25 years if convicted of perjury, conspiracy and other charges.

While not exposed to the level of scrutiny aimed at Stewart, Bacanovic, 41, has seen his share of press, good and bad. Some portray him as a shallow social climber who sabotaged himself by lying to regulators, others as an honorable person with an intense devotion to friends and investors.

Bacanovic "has always been very social," a tireless worker with the rare ability to convert friends into clients, said his brother, Paul, an investment banker at Lehman Brothers.

Successful brokers "start work when they leave the office," he said. "That was especially true in my brother's case."

After a brief stint at ImClone's marketing department, Bacanovic joined Merrill Lynch in 1993. He became one of the firm's top-producing brokers, with a list of well-heeled clients who invested tens of millions of dollars with him.

"He's no lightweight," Paul Bacanovic said. "No one handed him any clients."

He was refined enough to fit in with his clients in high society settings, where he has been photographed smiling and mixing with Stewart. A bachelor, Bacanovic was known to sometimes escort older socialites to galas and cultural events — fodder for unflattering gossip items since his indictment.

Friends and family of Bacanovic have been quoted insisting his social acumen and relationship with Stewart have been overemphasized and distorted. They say his friendships run deep, but that his loyalty to Stewart was strictly about business.

Bacanovic — after purposely keeping a low profile in the months leading up to the trial — expects to clear his name and resume his career, his brother said.

"Everyone who knows him knows this is ridiculous," he said.

"I look forward to that debate when John Kerry, a war hero with a chest full of medals, is standing next to George Bush, a man who was AWOL in the Alabama National Guard," he said. "George Bush never served in our military in our country. He didn't show up when he should have showed up."

Republican National Chairman Ed Gillespie in a telephone interview called McAuliffe's comments "despicable" and "an affront to all those who serve honorably in the National Guard."

The issue of Bush's service in the Air National Guard in Texas during the Vietnam War is a regular topic on talk radio and Internet chat rooms but hasn't been raised by Kerry. Bush did not appear for duty for several months in 1972 while working for a Senate candidate in Alabama, but Bush's spokesmen have said that he made up the dates he missed, as the Guard allows.

McAuliffe's charge and Gillespie's response preview some of the sharp lines that a Bush-Kerry race may draw. It also underscores the growing assumption in both parties that Kerry is likely to win the Democratic nomination.

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, just two weeks ago viewed as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Sunday that he isn't likely to win any of the seven contests being held on Tuesday and has spent most of the record $41 million he raised last year.

"How the mighty have fallen," Dean said with a smile on NBC's Meet the Press. He said he planned to fight for convention delegates in coming weeks but wouldn't stay in the race "if we get blown out again and again and again."

But Dean also blasted Kerry for leading the Senate in campaign contributions from lobbyists during the past 15 years. He refused to apologize for calling him a Republican. An e-mail release sent by Dean's campaign to reporters ridiculed his rival as "Cash-and-Carry John Kerry."

Kerry, campaigning Sunday in North Dakota, seemed poised to add victories to his opening wins in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. He held significant leads in polls in Arizona and Missouri, the two biggest states that vote on Tuesday, as well as in New Mexico.

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina was ahead in South Carolina. Also voting: Delaware and Oklahoma.

The statewide surveys showed as many as 30% of voters were undecided, however, and the dramatic shifts in the candidates' standing during January were a warning against easy predictions about what will happen next.

Still, a near-sweep by Kerry on Tuesday could put him in a commanding position for the nomination even before the biggest primary day March 2, when Democrats in California, New York and Ohio vote. His rivals targeted individual states to slow his rise: Retired Army general Wesley Clark in Oklahoma and Arizona, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman in Delaware, and Edwards in South Carolina.

Dean's advisers say he hopes to score well in the Michigan's caucuses on Feb. 7 and the Wisconsin primary 10 days later.

Campaign-finance reports filed Saturday showed how much Dean's campaign had bet on victories in the two opening contests, however. By Dec. 31, Dean had spent all but about $8.5 million of the record $41 million he raised last year. He spent about $8.5 million on staff salaries and consultants, $7 million on ads and $4.5 million on direct-mail appeals.

"We took an enormous gamble and it didn't work," Dean said.

Kerry spent nearly $23.6 million last year, slightly more than he raised.

When Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, won the first Midwestern and Northeastern contests, "I saw more of him," says Otto Lickenbrock, 72, a Brentwood, Mo., retiree, who liked what he saw. "He's very straightforward. I like the idea he's a veteran like I am."

Multiply this reaction by thousands, and you get results like Sunday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch-KMOV poll of 500 likely voters. It showed Kerry at 44%, dominating Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who had 14%. Howard Dean was at 9%. Retired general Wesley Clark and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman were tied at 5%, with 19% undecided. Kerry's lead is well outside the poll's margin of error of +/- 4.5 percentage points. And it's in line with his 37%-11% lead over Edwards in a Saturday Los Angeles Times/CNN poll of likely primary voters in Missouri.

Perception as a winner

Iowa and New Hampshire brought Kerry "enormous visibility, positive press and perception as a winner," says Ken Warren, a pollster and political scientist at St. Louis University. "Everyone else looks like a loser to voters — and you don't vote for losers."

Missouri, which has 5.6 million people, has no registration by party. Any voter can ask for a Democratic ballot Tuesday. Election officials expect a turnout of 23% of the 3.6 million registered voters.

President Bush won Missouri in 2000. It's a state that's considered a national election bellwether; Missouri has voted for the winner every time but once in the past 100 years, when it went for Adlai Stevenson over winner Dwight Eisenhower in 1956.

In a sign that all the contenders, including Kerry, are sure he'll win here, state Democratic officials canceled a St. Louis debate planned for tonight. None of the candidates had committed to it. Kerry will be in Arizona, where he's also leading in polls.

Kerry could capture all 74 of Missouri's national convention delegates at stake if Edwards and the others fail to reach the state party's threshold of 14.6% for the award of a share.

"I wasn't surprised at all to see the switch of preference to Kerry," Warren says. "Missourians were so much behind Dick Gephardt that when he dropped out, they didn't know where to go. The burst of momentum a candidate gets from New Hampshire and Iowa is enormous. Kerry benefits from the luck of being on a roll while Dean was heading the other way. "

Not that Missourians are admitting it. Asked in the Times/CNN poll whether Iowa and New Hampshire were influences, 20% said they were, 78% said they weren't.

So could the factor at work be candidates' appearances in Missouri? Kerry and Edwards were each in the state for two days after Gephardt threw the state open after his fourth-place finish in Iowa.

Could TV ads be making the difference? Combined, Kerry and Edwards have spent a nearly invisible $200,000 on TV. No one else has advertised.

Powerful support

Endorsements — themselves the product of momentum — are contributing to Kerry's strength, campaign strategists say. In a scramble with Edwards for Gephardt supporters, Kerry emerged on top.

Kerry signed up former senators Jean Carnahan and Thomas Eagleton, former governors Warren Hearnes and Roger Wilson, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and county executives in St. Louis and Kansas City. Edwards got Lt. Gov. Joe Maxwell, former Kansas City mayor Emanuel Cleaver and U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton. The Post-Dispatch and The Kansas City Star, Missouri's largest newspapers, endorsed Kerry on Sunday. Gephardt, Gov. Bob Holden and the labor unions that had embraced Gephardt made no endorsements.

Roy Temple, Kerry's Missouri campaign director, set up a state headquarters Jan. 25 in cramped offices subleased from a St. Louis firefighters' union. He had eight days to round up endorsements, recruit volunteers and set up phone banks. He credits momentum from Iowa and New Hampshire for at least part of Kerry's status here.

"People in Missouri knew that Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire had really taken a close look at this race, and came down for John Kerry," Temple says. "Missourians are independent-minded. They're not going to defer to anybody, but success is one factor that they'll weigh."

Endorsements don't mean much in a "normal campaign," Temple says, "but in a campaign like this that's eight days long, I think that people are going to be looking for cues and clues. When all the arrows are pointing in the same direction, all of a sudden you go, 'Wow, that looks like the route we're supposed to take.' "

Punxsutawney Phil, a groundhog said to have forecasting abilities, was to emerge from his burrow Monday and tell Americans whether another six weeks of winter was on tap — depending, of course, on whether he sees his shadow.

The tradition is rooted in a German superstition that if a hibernating animal casts a shadow Feb. 2 — the Christian holiday of Candlemas — winter will drag on. If no shadow is seen, legend says spring will come early.

If history is an indicator, the odds are that Phil will see his shadow. In the past 117 years, the groundhog is reported to have seen his shadow 93 times and the last four Groundhog Days.

A day before the furry forecaster was to make his 118th annual weather prediction, people from as far away as England descended on this small town to shake the winter doldrums.

Mike and Anne Castledine, a retired couple from Derbyshire, England, caught groundhog fever after seeing the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day, and just wanted to experience it for themselves.

"We were quite hooked once we'd seen the movie," Anne Castledine said Sunday after driving in from New Jersey.

Back home, "There's really no knowledge of what it entails," she said.

What Groundhog Day entails is a lot of revelry, although alcohol has been banned from Gobbler's Knob, the site just outside of town where Punxsutawney Phil issues his proclamation.

Music and dancing go on all night and the town's population of roughly 6,700 grew nearly six-fold to a record 40,000 last year. Because this year's Groundhog Day falls on a weekday, crowds are expected to be down considerably, although the festivities still include seven scheduled weddings.

"We couldn't care less if he sees his shadow," said Bill Cooper, president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club. "It's a people holiday."

Punxsutawney Phil is perhaps the most watched on Groundhog Day, but he certainly isn't alone among marmot meteorologists. More than a dozen states celebrate the day with their own critters, including Dixie Dan in Mississippi, Buckeye Chuck in Ohio and Gen. Beauregard Lee in Georgia.

Even Pennsylvania has a competing ceremony. About 165 miles to the southeast, the Slumbering Groundhog Lodge of Quarryville has been forecasting with the animals since 1908.

Early on Groundhog Day, the group sends six squads into the fields to observe groundhog holes. Their findings are then relayed through Octoraro Orphie, a stuffed groundhog representing the group.

Members would likely be former intelligence analysts, government officials and members of Congress from both parties, the official said. He would not say whether the panel's conclusions would be released before the November election.

The White House had previously rejected calls for such a panel, arguing that U.S. arms inspection teams should first completely finish their work in Iraq. But the president has come under pressure for an independent probe from both parties in recent days, as well as from former chief U.S. inspector David Kay.

Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that "we were almost all wrong" in believing weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq. That conclusion has prompted a controversy about the administration's reliance on allegations that Iraq possessed banned weapons as the chief justification for last year's war.

However, the new investigation is likely to center on the CIA and its director, George Tenet, and could move the weapons firestorm away from the White House. A CIA spokesman declined to comment on Bush's decision. The agency already is cooperating with internal administration and congressional probes.

Kay, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said that if Bush plans an independent probe, "I'm very happy...It's important to know that an honest effort is underway." Republicans and Democrats said Bush was yielding to political reality. "I don't think there's any way around it," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., on CNN's Late Edition.

White House officials, while saying that a probe would unearth no wrongdoing, worry that it might create political election-year problems for Bush.

Democratic presidential candidates have seized upon Kay's comments. "We need to find out what the truth is. What information did the president have? What information did the intelligence community give to the president?" Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., said on CBS' Face The Nation.

But administration officials believe that a probe could exonerate Bush. Kay has stressed that he has found no evidence that intelligence analysts were pressured to tailor their findings to support the administration's desire to topple Saddam Hussein. "This is not a witch hunt," Kay said. "This is a hunt about fundamental flaws in the way we collect, and have collected over a considerable period of time, our intelligence."

As befit two evenly matched rivals, it came down to almost the last play and the hero of the Patriots' previous Super Bowl win. Adam Vinatieri, who missed a 31-yard field goal try earlier and had another blocked, sailed a 41-yard try down the middle with four seconds left to give the Patriots a 32-29 victory.

"To win this the way we did is just unbelievable," said Patriots quarterback and now two-time Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady, who passed for 354 yards and three touchdowns, completing a Super Bowl record 32.

ANATOMY OF A WIN STREAK
Facts and figures about the Patriots' march to the championship: All but one of the victories were by 14 points or fewer. The average margin was 8.8 points, with eight games decided by six or fewer.

They had a 100-yard rusher twice.

They had a 100-yard receiver five times.

Quarterback Tom Brady passed for more than 300 yards in three games.

Brady passed for less than 170 yards in three games.

They scored in at least three quarters of all but four games.

They allowed one individual 100-yard rushing game (Denver's Clinton Portis, 111 yards on Nov. 3).

They allowed only two teams to rush for at least 100 yards (the New York Jets had 109 on Dec. 20).

They allowed one rushing play of more than 25 yards (a 33-yard touchdown by DeShaun Foster on Sunday).

They allowed two 100-yard receiving games (Miami's Randy McMichael, 102 yards on Oct. 19; Muhsin Muhammad, 140 yards on Sunday).

They allowed three 300-yard passing games (Tennessee's Steve McNair and the New York Giants' Kerry Collins in the first two games, and Jake Delhomme on Sunday).

They had at least one interception in every game except Sunday's.

They never trailed in 10 of the games.

Sources: New England Patriots, USA TODAY research




SLOW START, SUPER FINALE
Quarterback Tom Brady was named Super Bowl MVP for the second time in three years after leading New England to a 32-29 win against Carolina.

The final three minutes of the first half, when all 24 first-half points were scored, was just a prelude to the fourth quarter, when the teams combined for a record 37 points:

Eleven seconds into the quarter, the Patriots score on a 2-yard run by Antowain Smith. New England 21, Carolina 10.

The Panthers get the ball, and quarterback Jake Delhomme passes a total of 53 yards on three plays.

DeShaun Foster runs for 33 yards for a touchdown. New England 21, Carolina 17. Two-point conversion fails.

Carolina's Reggie Howard intercepts Brady.

Delhomme hits Muhsin Muhammad for 85 yards and a touchdown. Carolina 22, New England 21.

Brady completes six passes for a total of 46 yards.

Brady passes to Mike Vrabel for a 1-yard touchdown. New England 29, Carolina 22.

Delhomme fires back.

Delhomme hits Proehl for a 12-yard touchdown. Carolina 29, New England 29.

Adam Vinatieri kicks the game-winning 41-yard field goal. New England 32, Carolina 29.

Super finish.

How the first three quarters compared to the fourth:

1st-3rd quarters 4th quarter
Total points 24 37
First downs 23 23
Total yards 441 427
Rushing 139 80
Passing 302 347

Source: Associated Press





The Patriots surrendered the tying points with 1:08 left on Ricky Proehl's 12-yard touchdown catch but immediately caught a break when John Kasay's kickoff went out of bounds; possession was awarded to the Patriots at their 40.

Despite an offensive pass interference penalty, the Patriots pushed their way into Panthers territory to position Vinatieri's kick. It was almost dιjΰ vu, bringing to mind the game two years ago when the underdog Patriots beat the St. Louis Rams on Vinatieri's 48-yard field goal.

"Tom was amazing again. His receivers made unbelievable catches and gave us an opportunity again," Vinatieri said. "If you ever give us time, look out."

Underdogs two years ago, two-time champions now, the Patriots can make a legitimate claim on some bit of greatness. Their 15 consecutive victories are the most in one season by any team other than the 1972 Miami Dolphins, who posted the only perfect record in NFL annals — 17-0. New England's coach, Bill Belichick, once was described as having the personality of a probation officer. Now he's the game's ranking mastermind.

Which wasn't the case a few days before the season opener when he cut popular safety Lawyer Milloy in a dispute over salary. Milloy went to Buffalo and so did the Patriots for their first game, which became a 31-0 beating. Pundits said Belichick had lost his team, but he found them — and they him — quickly enough to streak to the AFC East title and the top seed in the conference.

The Patriots came into this game as seven-point favorites, befitting their stature as not only the NFL's winningest team but its hottest. Carolina might have been the lesser light in the public's mind but "never gave up. They were down 11 at one point. They really played their butts off," Brady said.

Patriots can relate to Dolphins

As did New England (17-2), which began to evoke memories of that Dolphins team that went to three consecutive Super Bowls and won the last two. Miami's offense featured such Hall of Famers as Bob Griese and Larry Csonka, Larry Little and Jim Langer. On the other side of the ball, anonymity shrouded the "No Name Defense." The Patriots can relate.

Just two of their defensive players earned a nomination to the Pro Bowl despite their dominance. This unit shut out three of its last four opponents at home during the regular season, gave up the fewest points in the league and allowed only one 100-yard rusher. But the defense did not accomplish these feats through the heroics of a single standout. Its use of varied looks that emphasized the versatility of all of them created the mismatches and advantages that led to turnovers and drive-killing plays.

That's where linebacker Mike Vrabel figured Sunday. He had two of New England's three sacks in the first half, including the strip of a harried Jake Delhomme that led to the Pats' first touchdown. That score, on a 5-yard pass from Brady to Deion Branch, set off an offensive explosion heretofore lacking. Vrabel would later catch a 1-yard touchdown pass, further exemplifying the emphasis on versatility.

Until Branch made his fingertip grab with 3:05 to go, the scoring drought was the longest in Super Bowl history. Then, suddenly, the teams couldn't move end to end quick enough, putting up a total of 24 points before the break, at which the Patriots led 14-10.

Brady. Branch. Vrabel. Maybe not celestial beings in the NFL's scheme of things, but the foundation on which the Patriots were built. Not high draft picks, but guys who fit the scheme. Which should not disqualify them as marquee players.

"I've been to three Super Bowls. We've been to two Super Bowls in the last three years. I listen to some of the stuff on TV and it says, 'This team doesn't have a lot of superstars but they have a lot of good players.' I don't understand what qualifies a superstar," said Patriots linebacker Willie McGinest, a 10-year veteran. "We have a Super Bowl MVP on our team. We have guys going to the Pro Bowl. We have guys that have been playing well all year long. What's a superstar if you can't go to the big game? Maybe the team concept isn't that popular in the league, but it works for us."

Panthers came long way

As it worked for Carolina (14-6). Here were the Patriots, trying for a 15th consecutive win. And here were the Panthers, two seasons removed from a 1-15 mark lowlighted by 15 consecutive defeats.

In coming from nowhere to reach the NFL's apex, they skipped all the normal stages of rebuilding that allow fans to grow familiar and comfortable with their players. They were 7-9 in 2002, 11-5 in 2003 and suddenly the next hot thing if not the next best thing.

Underdogs in road playoff games at St. Louis and Philadelphia, the Panthers prevailed in two overtimes against the Rams and by squashing the life out of the Eagles and knocking out quarterback Donovan McNabb. Go ahead, doubt them. Join the long list of skeptics who took pokes at Jake Delhomme, Stephen Davis and even the explosive Steve Smith.

Their surprising run from putrescence to mediocrity to the brink of a title ended late Sunday, but their future holds promise.

"We've got a young football team that's going to be around for a few years," second-year coach John Fox said. "I like our football team. I think we have a good core of players."

That wasn't always the case for this 9-year-old franchise that peaked early and then wandered in the valley of desperation.

Their first No. 1 pick, quarterback Kerry Collins, helped them get within a game of the Super Bowl in just their second season, then fell apart. He made a racially insensitive remark to a teammate, developed an alcohol problem and eventually told the coach, Dom Capers, his heart was not in leading the team. The Panthers cut him. Collins eventually rebuilt himself and his career but the team continued to struggle, never again to have a winning season until 2003.

And that was probably the best of the worst. Rae Carruth, a highly touted wide receiver who was also a No. 1 pick, left an indelible image in Charlotte when he was found cowering in the trunk of his car as police sought him in connection with the killing of his pregnant girlfriend. He's in prison today, convicted of conspiracy in the death of Cherica Adams.

Go back to that 1-15 season. It ended with New England pounding the Panthers 38-6 in Charlotte, with 21,070 moaning and moping in a stadium that holds 73,366. The Patriots went on to upset the Rams in the Super Bowl while the Panthers would fire their coach, George Seifert, the following day.

Now this. In a mere two years.

Even as the Patriots stymied the Panthers and stifled them through a mostly miserable first half, the Panthers kept the faith. They hung on as their opponents squandered numerous scoring chances. The Patriots missed a 31-yard field goal and had a 36-yard try blocked by the Panthers. They botched a shot at another three-pointer when a reverse to Troy Brown lost 10 yards and they had to punt.

They gave up 387 yards to the Panthers and three TD passes to the excitable Delhomme, including a Super Bowl-record 85-yarder to Muhsin Muhammad. They made a game that shouldn't have been this close a narrow escape.

"No matter what the situation, no matter what, we stick together and we believe in one another," Patriots safety Rodney Harrison said.

Nothing fazed them at the end. They allowed no sacks against Carolina's vaunted front, giving Brady time enough to throw. Even when they fell behind in a game for the first time since Nov. 23 — ironically enough in this stadium but against the Houston Texans — they kept their poise and moved with purpose into Vinatieri's range. Brady hoped his hometown could maintain its cool as well.

"Don't tear down the city," he told fans. "We'll be home tomorrow."

Notes: Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle performed the coin toss which was won by Carolina. Other Houstonian Hall of Famers, including Earl Campbell, Don Maynard and Ollie Matson stood at midfield for the coin toss. The Panthers chose to receive the opening kickoff. ... The Patriots were designated as the home team for the game. ... Due to the possibility of inclement weather, Reliant Stadium's retractable roof was to remain closed for the game. ... Panthers QB Jake Delhomme became the 46th different quarterback to start in a Super Bowl. He was the second undrafted signal caller to start in the game; Kurt Warner was the first in Super Bowl XXXIV. ... Brady became the ninth quarterback to win two Super Bowls as a starter.