Inspectors’ return “first step” to solving Iraq crisis, Powell says

WASHINGTON -… Inspectors’ return “first step” to solving Iraq crisis, Powell says

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday that the Bush administration wants the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq to be the “first step” toward solving the crisis over the military threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Powell’s comments to the British Broadcasting Corp. appear to contradict statements by Vice President Dick Cheney, who last week rejected the possibility of restarting U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq and called instead for a U.S. military strike against Baghdad.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan Sunday downplayed Powell’s apparent contradiction of Cheney. As President Bush prepared to return to Washington after a vacation in Texas, McClellan said Powell’s comments echoed the administration’s call for “unfettered” inspections of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. “It’s what we’ve been saying all along,” McClellan said.

– Tony Pugh

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Community colleges cut back course options as enrollment climbs

SAN JOSE, Calif. – A word to the wise: If you are a student or laid-off worker planning on community college this fall, don’t procrastinate. By the time you get around to signing up, classes may be full.

Community colleges in California and across the country are bracing for the worst budget crunch in a decade. Course sections are being cut, staff positions left vacant, supply budgets decimated. And most college officials predict it will only get worse next year.

California’s community colleges are struggling with a triple whammy: dramatic enrollment growth, significant cost increases they can’t control and a state budget crisis with no end in sight. Despite their mission of serving every person who shows up, the colleges could end up turning away tens of thousands of students this year, even as more people than ever seek educational opportunities.

– Becky Bartindale

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Republicans confident they will defy history in midterm election

WASHINGTON – With control of Congress up for grabs in November, republicans are hoping to avoid a jinx that has plagued the party that rules the White House for more than half a century – losing congressional seats in a president’s first midterm election.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s democrats gained seats in Congress in 1934, the first election of his presidency. But every president since has seen his party lose seats in the House of Representatives in his initial midterm election. The 10 presidents since FDR lost, on average, 27 seats each. The worst erosion came in 1994, when Bill Clinton’s democrats lost 52 seats and control of the House for the first time in 40 years.

This year, if President Bush’s republicans have a net loss of just six seats, the democrats will regain control of the House, and Bush will face a much more hostile Congress.

In the Senate, Bush’s party faces similar, though less daunting, historical odds. republicans need to gain only one seat to retake control of the Senate. Only three post-FDR presidents – Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan – have seen their parties gain Senate seats in their first midterm elections. The other seven – Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Ford, Carter, the first Bush and Clinton – lost an average of nearly five each in their first midterms.

– Steven Thomma

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Dismissed dean at UT-Arlington says she wasn’t treated fairly

ARLINGTON, Texas – The first female dean of the UT-Arlington architecture school said Thursday that she sees the administration’s decision not to renew her contract as a fairness issue.

“What I needed was the opportunity to be treated fairly, to be given a fair chance and enough time to do the job I came home to Texas to do, and to be held to the same standards and expectations regardless of gender,” said Martha Ellen LaGess, who also was the school’s first tenured female faculty member.

– Jan Jarvis

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Suspect’s lawyer denies he planned to hijack or crash plane

STOCKHOLM, Sweden – A lawyer for 29-year-old Kerim Chatty, charged with attempting to hijack a commercial flight to Britain, denied Sunday that his client intended to seize control of the plane or crash it into a U.S. embassy in Europe.

About 20 other Muslims aboard the Ryanair jet were planning to attend an Islamic conference in Birmingham, England. Police spokesman Ulf Palme said the Muslims were taken from the plane and questioned but released around midnight Thursday after police concluded they were not part of a hijacking plot.

Police denied news reports that they had evidence of a plot involving others, or that Chatty, a former student pilot, intended to crash the plane into an American embassy.

Chatty, a recent Muslim convert with a petty criminal record, was arrested at Vasteras airport in central Sweden around 4 p.m. Thursday after a scanner detected a handgun in his carry-on bag.

– John Crewdson

Knight Ridder Newspapers

World leaders arrive for final days of summit

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – Business partnerships for development, from homegrown projects like Honey Care Africa to multimillion dollar programs backed by multinationals such as Shell Oil, were on display Sunday as world leaders flooded into Johannesburg for the final days of the summit.

In closed sessions, negotiators were working overtime to settle the remaining contentious issues in the summit’s action plan in time to have it signed by heads of state this week.

Key obstacles, United Nations officials said, were a Europe-backed proposal to set 2010 as a target for countries to get 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources and a 2015 goal for cutting in half the number of people without access to sanitation services. Rich and poor nations also had not settled on wording describing the “differentiated responsibilities” of nations to pay to solve the world’s problems and on language asking for a shift to sustainable patterns of consumption and production.

– Laurie Goering

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Fast-food lawsuits latest legacy of Big Tobacco penalties

WASHINGTON – When a 56-year-old maintenance worker from the Bronx sued four fast-food restaurants last month for allegedly making him fat and causing his health problems, he quickly found himself facing a super-size round of ridicule.

Commentators mocked his claims – “fatuous,” said one columnist – and comedians poked fun. Even non-professional humorists couldn’t resist: a “real Whopper,” the Libertarian Party declared in a press release.

But it may not be so easy to laugh lawsuits like Caesar Barber’s out of court. Although the prospect of a fat person suing McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and KFC may sound like a bad joke, it’s an outgrowth of the groundbreaking litigation against Big Tobacco.

– Jan Crawford Greenburg

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Airline, travel industries still reeling from attacks

DETROIT – The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks almost put several of the nation’s airlines out of business, and the airline and travel industries still have not recovered.

With fewer Americans flying, Northwest Airlines laid off 10,000 employees. US Airways cut employee pay. Other airlines took similar measures. The airlines cut travel agent commissions and found other ways to slash costs.

– Daniel G. Fricker

Knight Ridder Newspapers