News

AP - Detailed plans for the new U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad appeared online Thursday in a breach of the tight security surrounding the sensitive project.

AP - Five Americans and two other soldiers died when a Chinook helicopter was apparently shot down Wednesday evening in Afghanistan’s most volatile province, a U.S. military official said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

AP - Robert Zoellick, a nimble negotiator who has crisscrossed the globe as President Bush’s trade chief and as the country’s No. 2 diplomat, is the White House’s choice to be the next World Bank president. Bush will announce the decision on Wednesday, according to a senior administration official.

AP - The United States and Iran broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze Monday with a four-hour meeting about Iraqi security. The American envoy said there was broad policy agreement, but that Iran must stop arming and financing militants who are attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces.

AP - A blaze that killed five federal firefighters last year has emboldened those who question the cost of saving the ever expanding number of homes on the fringe of wilderness.

AP - Americans have opened nearly 1,000 new graves to bury U.S. troops killed in Iraq since Memorial Day a year ago. The figure is telling — and expected to rise in coming months.

AP - President Bush signed a bill Friday to pay for military operations in Iraq after a bitter struggle with Democrats in Congress who sought unsuccessfully to tie the money to U.S. troop withdrawals.

AP - Bowing to President Bush, the Democratic-controlled Congress grudgingly approved fresh billions for the Iraq war Thursday night, minus the troop withdrawal timeline that drew his earlier veto.

AP - Iraqi police found the body of a man who was wearing what appeared to be a U.S. military uniform and had a tattoo on his left hand floating in the Euphrates River south of Baghdad on Wednesday morning. One Iraqi official said the body was that of an American soldier.

AP - President Bush, trying to defend his war strategy, declassified intelligence Tuesday asserting that Osama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005 to form a terrorist cell that would conduct attacks outside Iraq — and that the United States should be the top target.

AP - Lebanese troops blasted a Palestinian refugee camp with artillery and tank fire again Monday, seeking to destroy a militant group with al-Qaida ties. The barrage smashed buildings and sent plumes of black smoke towering over the crowded camp on the Mediterranean.

AP - Bombings killed seven U.S. soldiers in Baghdad and a southern city, the U.S. military said Sunday, and the country’s Sunni vice president spoke out against a proposed oil law, clouding the future of a key benchmark for assuring continued U.S. support for the government.