Pakistan Denies Bin Laden Gets a Pass  —  Brian Ross Reports:  —  The government of Pakistan today denied it would allow Osama bin Laden to avoid capture under terms of a peace agreement it signed with Taliban leaders in the country's North Waziristan area.

Republican Rift Over Wiretapping Widens  —  Party at Odds on Surveillance Legislation  —  Deepening Republican divisions over the future of President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program may jeopardize GOP leaders' hopes of making terrorism surveillance legislation a centerpiece of their final legislative push this month.

Time for Answers  —  For three years, Washington has been periodically consumed with the question of who unmasked a covert C.I.A. agent to the columnist Robert Novak.  It has been a huge distraction for the White House, resulted in the unjustified jailing of one reporter …

War Backfiring on U.S., Khatami Says  —  Ex-Iranian President Also Calls Strikes Against His Country Unlikely  —  NEW YORK — On the eve of his first trip to Washington, former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami warned that U.S. military action in the Middle East has backfired …

Harris wins Fla. GOP Senate nomination  —  MIAMI - U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris (news, bio, voting record) overcame a campaign ridiculed even by her own party to easily claim the GOP nomination for the Senate on Tuesday, and Rep. Jim Davis (news, bio, voting record) won the Democratic nomination to succeed popular Gov. Jeb Bush.

Vast Oil Pool Tapped in Gulf of Mexico  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — A trio of oil companies led by Chevron Corp. has tapped a petroleum pool deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico that could boost the nation's reserves by more than 50 percent.  —  A test well indicates it could be the biggest …

Lobbying Probe Looks at Payments To DeLay's Wife  —  WASHINGTON — The Justice Department's congressional lobbying-and-bribery investigation is looking into whether former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's wife received money from a lobbying firm for a no-show job, recent FBI interviews indicate.

Zogby Poll: 9/11 + 5 Reveals Dramatic Partisan Split  —  9/11 + 5 finds a nation badly divided as GOPers back U.S. war on terror, wiretapping, and Saddam's role in 9/11; Dems, Indies suspicious of all three  —  Five years after 9/11, the bitter division between Republicans and Democrats …

Once a Progressive State, Minnesota Is Now a Fief of the N.R.A.  —  A couple of weeks ago, I checked into a hotel in Bloomington, a Minneapolis suburb framed by the airport and the Mall of America.  On the hotel door was a sign: "Firearms Banned on These Premises."

'That sort of self-delusion is what it takes to be a real Aussie larrikin'  —  The world mourns.  World-famous wildlife warrior Steve Irwin has died a hero, doing the thing he loved, filming a sequence for a new TV series.  He was supposed to have been making a new documentary …

NEW BOOK REVEALS ROVE'S FATHER WAS GAY...  In The Architect, a new book chronicling Karl Rove's life and conservative agenda, authors James Moore and Wayne Slater, reveal Rove's father, Louis Rove, was homosexual.  —  Louis Rove left his family during the 1969 Christmas holidays and moved to Los Angeles where he eventually "came out."

White House backs Rumsfeld, says he's no bogeyman  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Tuesday Democrats were trying to turn Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld into "a bogeyman" two months before U.S. congressional elections, and it dismissed their calls for his ouster.

Hezbollah doubtful over German role in UN force  —  BERLIN - The Shiite Hezbollah militia has expressed "reservations" about Germany's involvement in the multinational UN force deploying for Lebanon, owing to German demands that its troops be allowed to stop and search boats bound for the country.

USC Study: Celebrities Really Are More Narcissistic Than the General Public  —  LOS ANGELES, Sept. 5 /PRNewswire/ — Celebrities have more narcissistic personality traits than the general population, and people with narcissistic tendencies seem to be attracted to the entertainment industry rather …

Judge Hears Arguments on Federal Spying Program  —  In a lively oral argument lasting almost three hours, a federal judge in Manhattan indicated yesterday that he had serious reservations about the legality of a National Security Agency surveillance program that monitors the international communications of people in the United States.