Collective Sigh

Political observers say so-called values voters were key to President Bush's re-election victory. But at the convention, many of those same voters, their pastors and their leaders said they felt duped by Bush and the Republican Party.

"In the latest election, values voters were used," Rick Scarborough told the convention audience."

Surgeons operated on a 2-month-old Pakistani girl Tuesday to remove two fetuses that had grown inside her while she was still in her mother's womb, a doctor said.

The infant, who was identified only as Nazia, was in critical condition following the two-hour operation at The Children's Hospital at Pakistan Institute of Medical Science in the capital, Islamabad, said Zaheer Abbasi, head of pediatric surgery at the hospital.

Abbasi, the chief doctor who led the operation, said the case was the first he was aware of in Pakistan of fetus-in-fetu, where a fetus has grown inside another in the womb.

"It is extremely rare to have two fetuses being discovered inside another," Abbasi told The Associated Press, adding that he did not know what caused the medical abnormality. "Basically, it's a case of triplets, but two of the siblings grew in the other."

The baby comes from Abbotabad, about 30 miles north of Islamabad. She is the fifth child of a woman in her 30s, who was at the hospital to be with her daughter. Her father works in the Arabian Gulf.

Abbasi said surgeons removed the two partially grown fetuses, totaling about two pounds, that had died at about 4 months.

Other fetus-in-fetu cases have been reported elsewhere in the world. A report in a June 2000 issue of the U.S. journal Pediatrics called such occurrences rare and estimated their rate at about 1 per 500,000 births.

FEMA's top Gulf Coast official says the federal government is stockpiling supplies and ready to give disaster planners guidance ahead of the new hurricane season.

BBC: An anonymous blog by a young woman in war-torn Iraq has been longlisted for BBC Four's Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.

Baghdad Burning, a first-hand account written under the pseudonym Riverbend, is one of 19 books in contention.

Allstate Insurance Co. cannot rely on ambiguous clauses in a homeowner's policy to deny policyholders coverage for damage from Hurricane Katrina's wind and rain.

In an opinion issued Friday in Jackson, U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. denied Allstate's motion to dismiss a lawsuit by Gulfport residents Elmer and Alexa Buente.

Senter ruled policy provisions excluding coverage for water damage are valid, but added:

"To the extent that plaintiffs can prove their allegations that the hurricane winds (or objects driven by those winds) and rains entering the insured premises through openings caused by the hurricane winds proximately caused damage to their insured property, those losses will be covered under the policy and this will be the case even if flood damage, which is not covered, subsequently occurred."

Senter said language in Allstate's policy that attempts to avoid paying the plaintiffs for wind and rain damage is ambiguous and unenforceable. Allstate had paid the Buentes $2,600.35 for their losses.

State Insurance Commissioner George Dale has allowed insurance companies to add exclusions to their policies that have been used to tell policyholders they are due little or no payment for wind damage when their homes were also subjected to tidal surge. Dale said Friday he did not intend such exclusions to be interpreted to deny wind coverage.

Senter also ruled that Allstate bears the burden of proving the water exclusion in its comprehensive homeowner's policy applies to the Buente's damage.

The Buentes, who are from Missouri, bought their home five blocks off the beach in June as a place to visit and eventually retire. They said their Allstate agent sold them a policy to provide up to $252,000 for all damages from a hurricane and told them they did not need flood insurance.

If evidence shows the agent misrepresented the policy, Senter ruled, Allstate may be liable for all damage to the property.

The Buentes' attorney, Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, said, "The federal court's ruling today in the case against Allstate is a monumental victory for Allstate-insured homeowners.

"Allstate and the other insurance companies bragged that they would win every case in federal court. They lost this one as bad as you can lose."

Scruggs' Katrina Group, which has more than 4,000 clients, also has seven other lawsuits pending against property-insurance companies.

Allstate's attorney could not be reached to comment, but a spokesman for the company told The Associated Press the company was pleased the judge validated its policy exclusion for water.

Attorney General Jim Hood has a lawsuit pending against insurers that argues damage from Katrina's tidal surge should be covered.

Vatican change of heart over 'barbaric' Crusades

THE Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference at the weekend that portrays the Crusades as wars fought with the “noble aim” of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity.

The Crusades are seen by many Muslims as acts of violence that have underpinned Western aggression towards the Arab world ever since. Followers of Osama bin Laden claim to be taking part in a latter-day “jihad against the Jews and Crusaders”.

The late Pope John Paul II sought to achieve Muslim- Christian reconciliation by asking “pardon” for the Crusades during the 2000 Millennium celebrations. But John Paul’s apologies for the past “errors of the Church” — including the Inquisition and anti-Semitism — irritated some Vatican conservatives. According to Vatican insiders, the dissenters included Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

The entire Uwharrie, prior to becoming a national forest, was cleared for timber and farming. Today you'll find young second- and third-growth mixed forests have grown up to provide new habitat for wildlife eradicated by earlier development. The Uwharrie also boasts more archaeological sites per acre than any other forest in the southeast. (link)

Gov. Mike Easley said Tuesday that he does not want the federal government to sell nearly 10,000 acres of national forest in North Carolina, even if the money raised would go to education.

"We don't like it," Easley said Tuesday in a brief moment with reporters at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington. "We're hoping to acquire more [land] at every opportunity."

Although the governor has used conservation money in the past to plug holes in the state budget, he has pushed recently for increased conservation efforts.

On Tuesday, the Bush administration released details of its proposal to sell about 300,000 acres of federal land across the country. In North Carolina, the proposal includes 9,828 acres scattered across the state's four national forests -- Nantahala and Pisgah in the mountains, Uwharrie in the central part of the state and Croatan on the coast.

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The $800 million raised nationally through the sales would fund the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. The six-year-old act was created to help rural counties make up for the decline in revenue from timber harvests. The money would pay for the program for another five years, and then it would be phased out.(link)

BBC: Troops began moving aid into Innisfail on Tuesday, as residents picked their way through the debris-filled streets.

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Speaking from Innisfail, about 95km (60 miles) south of Cairns, Mr Beattie said food, clean water, power generators and tarpaulins would be delivered to affected areas on Tuesday.

"The whole bloody place is blown apart and [the emergency services and local communities are] standing there fixing it up," he said. "I just think it says a lot about us as Australians."

He said the bill for the cyclone was likely to run into tens of millions of dollars.

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Officials said it could be a week before power was restored to more than 80,000 homes left without electricity.

"We are doing the right thing. A democracy in Iraq is going to affect the neighborhood. A democracy in Iraq is going to (inspire) reformers in a part of the world that is desperate for reformation."