STATEMENT BY DAVID M.SCHIZER RE: SIPA INVITATION TO MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD  —  A controversy has developed about the invitation extended to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran by the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs.  Although Columbia Law School was not involved in arranging …

New York Times Says It Violated Policies Over MoveOn Ad  —  After two weeks of denials, the New York Times acknowledged that it should not have given a discount to MoveOn.org for a full-page advertisement assailing Gen. David H. Petraeus.  —  The liberal advocacy group should have paid $142,000 …

U.S. Aims To Lure Insurgents With 'Bait'  —  A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of "bait," such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents.

'Meet the Press' transcript for Sept. 23, 2007  —  Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan  —  MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: the Iraq war, healthcare, campaign fund-raising and more.  Our Meet the Candidates 2008 series continues.

French PM Fillon tells farmers 'France is broke'  —  France is bankrupt and can no longer afford to pay its workers generous salaries and subsidies, its prime minister has declared.  —  Francois Fillon made the undiplomatic outburst during a trip to the French island of Corsica, where farmers were demanding more government money.

Buy a Laptop for a Child, Get Another Laptop Free  —  One Laptop Per Child, an ambitious project to bring computing to the developing world's children, has considerable momentum.  Years of work by engineers and scientists have paid off in a pioneering low-cost machine that is light, rugged and surprisingly versatile.

The Future in our Hands: Addressing the Leadership Challenge of Climate Change … UN SECRETARY-GENERAL CONVENES WORLD LEADERS TO BUILD MOMENTUM FOR CLIMATE CHANGE TALKS IN BALI  —  United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will seek to advance the global agenda on climate change …

President predicts GOP will keep control of White House after 'tough race' in 2008  —  Washington, D.C. (Map, News) - President Bush, for the first time, is predicting that Hillary Rodham Clinton will defeat Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primaries.

Free-Speech Hypocrisy  —  Institutional memory is short, so just a flashback to the Qadhafi speech at Columbia.  The sad thing is that while faculty fall all over themselves to bring repressive dictators to campus, many dissidents from the same countries are ignored.

Politics in Black and White  —  Last Thursday there was a huge march in Jena, La., to protest the harsh and unequal treatment of six black students arrested in the beating of a white classmate.  Students who hung nooses to warn blacks not to sit under a "white" tree were suspended for three days …

Iran's German Enablers  —  Berlin puts business interests ahead of nonproliferation.  —  JERUSALEM—Business opportunities in Iran were the theme of a German government-sponsored conference last week in Darmstadt, Germany.  "Iran is accustomed to crises," the conference invitation delicately noted …

Giuliani's Rhetoric on Terror Contrasts With His Record  —  As Rudolph W. Giuliani campaigns for president, he rarely misses a chance to warn about the threat from terrorists.  "They hate you," he told a woman at an Atlanta college.  They "want to kill us," he told guests at a Virginia luncheon.

First Read: Thompson's Mackinac disadvantage  —  NBC/NJ's Adam Aigner-Treworgy reports... Attendees of the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, MI over the weekend were billing Fred Thompson's much anticipated speech on Saturday as an important first impression.

Hard Case: Job Market Wanes for U.S. Lawyers  —  Growth of Legal Sector  —  Lags Broader Economy;  —  Law Schools Proliferate  —  A law degree isn't necessarily a license to print money these days.  —  For graduates of elite law schools, prospects have never been better.