Saddam could be hiding, influencing insurgency
TIKRIT, Iraq (AP) - Saddam Hussein is believed to have been hiding out recently in Tikrit, influencing the anti-American insurgency, the U.S. military said Monday. Fresh attacks by resistance forces across central Iraq were reported to have killed three American soldiers and wounded five others. "We have clear indication he has been here recently," Maj. Troy Smith, a deputy brigade commander, told reporters in Tikrit, the fugitive former president's hometown and now headquarters for the 4th Infantry Division. "He could be here right now," he said of Saddam.
Nature of Iran's nuclear program still in question
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - In a previously unannounced visit, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency chief will visit Iran this week to help persuade the Tehran regime to meet an Oct. 31 deadline to prove it is not producing atomic weaponry, the agency said Monday. In a statement, the agency spoke of "important questions that are still outstanding," about the nature of Iran's nuclear program - wording that suggested Tehran was not forthcoming with information needed to dispel suspicions about its activities.
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Security Council votes to expand forces past Kabul
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Monday to expand the 5,500-strong NATO-led force in Afghanistan to areas beyond the capital, Kabul. The vote, which had been expected, comes after Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the world body last month to deploy peacekeepers into regions where increasing lawlessness is causing many Afghans to long for the security that marked the rule of the rigid Taliban regime.
New Mexico scientists advocate space elevator
LOS ALAMOS (AP) - Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers are proposing an elevator reaching 62,000 miles into the sky to launch payloads into space more cheaply than the shuttle can.
"The first country that owns the space elevator will own space," said lab scientist Bryan Laubscher. "I believe that, and I think Los Alamos should be involved in making that happen."
Some Los Alamos scientists are so convinced it can be a reality that they are working on their own time on technical details.
State's adults continue to drive while intoxicated
SANTA FE (AP) - A new study indicates 2 percent of New Mexicans age 18 and older have gotten behind the wheel after drinking too much, the state Department of Health reports.
The state's drunken driving rate dropped between 2000 and 2002. However, drunken driving claimed more than 200 lives in New Mexico last year.
The Health Department's Office of Epidemiology said it discovered, after conducting its annual survey for the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that the self-reported DWI rate peaked in 2000 at 2.8 percent of the state's adult population. Projecting the self-reported figures across the entire population, that translates mathematically to more than 917,000 episodes of drunken driving, according to a Health Department news release issued Friday. The original numbers were gathered through telephone surveys, the Health Department said.
