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 …

Romney bars state security for Iranian's Harvard visit  —  Cites unacceptable use of funds on `a terrorist'  —  Governor Mitt Romney declared yesterday he would not allow any state resources to be used to protect a former Iranian president during his visit to the Boston area this weekend …

Bush plan would withhold terror evidence  —  WASHINGTON - President Bush pushed a hard line Wednesday on trying terror suspects through military tribunals, exhorting Congress to allow evidence to be withheld from a defendant if necessary to protect classified information.

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 …

Bush Compares Iran to Al-Qaeda  —  President Renews Pledge to Attain Victory Over Terrorism  —  President Bush today renewed his pledge to accept nothing less than "complete victory" in the war on terrorism and delivered a strong warning to Iran, which he described as the leader of a strain …

High-Value Detainees Will Be Given Prisoner-of-War Status  —  President Bush Expected to Announce Major Reversal in Handling of Terror Suspects  —  ABC News has learned that President Bush will announce that high-value detainees now being held at secret CIA prisons will be transferred …

Ahmadinejad proposes debate with Bush  —  TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's president proposed Wednesday that he and President Bush should hold a public debate, and suggested that the U.N. General Assembly later this month would be the perfect place.  —  President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first proposed …

To Stay Alive, Iraqis Change Their Names  —  Men waited for new ID cards recently in Baghdad.  Iraqis fear their names, which reveal them as Sunni or Shiite, could become a death sentence.  —  There was nothing out of the ordinary about the young man clutching a sheaf of papers …

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.

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.

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."

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."

Analysis: Terror war may need name change  —  The United States should rethink the label it uses for what is known as the "global war on terror," the chief of strategic planning on the Pentagon's Joint Staff said Tuesday.  —  What is needed, said Army Col. Gary Cheek, is to recast terrorists as the criminals they are.