The civil trial, triggered last year by a classroom battle, marks the beginning of the first major legal assault on evolution science in 18 years. The case also represents the first legal test of "intelligent design," the belief that life on earth is too complex to be explained by random genetic mutation and therefore a guiding force must be involved.

In Monday's court hearings, supporters argued that "intelligent design" does not stipulate what that guiding force might be, and is therefore not a religion. Its opponents derided it as a mere repackaging of creationism, the religious dogma that God brought life into being in its present form a few thousand years ago.

The case is a test of strength that secularist organizations hope will prove decisive in destroying the scientific credibility of intelligent design once and for all. They are therefore determined to pursue it as far as the Supreme Court if necessary.

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The 10,000-strong FLDS, which broke away from the Mormon Church in 1890 when the mainstream faith disavowed polygamy, believes a man must marry at least three women to go to heaven. The sect appeared to be in turmoil Monday after its assets were frozen last week and a warrant was issued in Arizona on Friday for the arrest of its autocratic leader, Warren Jeffs, for arranging a wedding between an underage girl and a 28-year-old man who was already married.

Jeffs is also being sued by lawyers for six of the lost boys for conspiracy to purge surplus males from the community, and by his nephew, Brent Jeffs, who accuses him of sexual abuse.

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A national security directive on space has been sought by the Air Force since last year. The New York Times Wednesday quoted a senior administration official as saying a decision is expected within weeks. Neither the Air Force nor the White House returned calls seeking comment.

The directive will replace a 1996 directive signed by Bill Clinton that was vaguely worded but that emphasized the peaceful use of space, in line with almost unanimous global opinion. Plans for potential space weapons were vetoed by the Clinton White House.

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In a lengthy preamble before his appearance, Senate staff presented a series of documents, enlarged and printed on huge white boards, which they said were Iraqi government memorandums naming Galloway as the recipient of highly lucrative allocations of cheap Iraqi oil under the U.N.-administered oil-for-food program.

Sen. Norm Coleman, the Republican committee chairman who has taken the lead in making allegations against Galloway, repeatedly insisted that the hearing was "not a court of law." But the early stages were nothing if not lawyerly, with Coleman very much in the role of chief prosecutor. In a low, businesslike voice, the senator from Minnesota read out an indictment of Galloway running through the evidence against him.

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The scale of the shipments involved dwarfs those previously alleged by the Senate subcommittee against U.N. staff and European politicians like British M.P. George Galloway and the former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua. In fact, the Senate report found that U.S. oil purchases accounted for 52 percent of the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil -- more than those of the rest of the world put together.

"The United States was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated U.N. sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing U.N. sanctions," the report says. "On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales.

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"If we could get out of this conference without a major blowup we would be doing well," said Matt Martin, a deputy director of the British American Security Information Council, a transatlantic think tank.

Both sides agree that the NPT is outdated, but they differ sharply on how it could be strengthened. The United States, with support from Britain and France, wants stricter controls on the transfer of nuclear technology.

The non-nuclear states, which met separately in Mexico City last week to agree on a common position, argue that more emphasis should be put on banning the development of new weapons by the existing nuclear powers.

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According to an official on the committee, most of the two dozen officials and former officials the senators plan to interview in the next 10 days are thought to have clashed with Bolton, or to have witnessed some of the heated rows for which he earned a reputation in his former job at the State Department. "Most of them are witnesses to some of the controversies we've been talking about," the official said.

President Bush is taking a similar risk in demonstrating Oval Office backing for an embattled congressional leader, Tom DeLay, accompanying him to a public event on board Air Force One at a time DeLay, a fellow Texas conservative, is facing charges of ethics violations.

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"Others may have reasons for not letting them go. I wanted to be on the record that, in respect to the WMD inquiry, we're done," the report's author, Charles Duelfer, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, told the Guardian.

The report is an addendum to a more comprehensive document published last September that concluded that Iraq had abandoned almost all of its WMD programs more than 10 years before the 2003 invasion. The addendum finds no evidence to support a theory raised by Vice President Dick Cheney, and still circulating in right-wing circles, that Iraqi WMD were smuggled to Syria before the invasion. Duelfer adds that the deteriorating security situation made it impossible for the ISG to carry out further investigation.

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The questioning coincided with the publication of diplomatic cables sent by Negroponte in the 1980s which indicate that he secretly sought to undermine the peace process in Central America and entertained the head of a group trying to violently overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The documents show that he sought to cover up clandestine U.S. involvement in the war in Nicaragua.

Nearly 400 cables and memos sent or received by Negroponte, who was the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the U.N. before being nominated for his new intelligence position, indicate that he tried to undermine peace efforts, promoted the war against the Sandinistas -- which he referred to as "our special project" -- and gave tips to the State Department on how to cover up the U.S. role.

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Democrats at Monday's confirmation hearing also demanded explanations from Bolton for past derogatory remarks about the U.N., including one in 1994 suggesting that the removal of the top 10 stories of the organization's New York headquarters "wouldn't make a bit of difference."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to vote on the nomination on Thursday. To tie the vote and therefore stall the nomination, the Democrats must win the support of a Republican moderate on the committee, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. However, Senator Chafee indicated Monday that he was leaning toward confirmation, noting that he had been impressed by Bolton's opening statement.

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A high-powered gray patrol boat with a three-man crew from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security buzzes across this Pacific idyll like a frenetic killjoy, boarding sailing boats, disrupting jolly outings on family motorboats and even accosting tiny sea kayaks.

In theory, the crew's primary task is to stop terrorists infiltrating the United States. Ever since Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian militant, was caught a few miles from here in December 1999 with more than 100 pounds of explosives in the boot of his car, border patrols have been braced for the next episode. One of the crew wears a radiation detector at all times.

Since then, however, the Homeland Security patrol has been finding mainly marijuana on the boats it searches -- industrial quantities of a potent strain known as B.C. Bud, named in honor of the Canadian province where much of it is grown, British Columbia.

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The assessment by a presidential commission on WMD intelligence follows 14 months of mostly secret inquiries at an undisclosed location in Virginia. It reportedly concentrates on mistakes in a multiagency assessment in October 2002, the National Intelligence Estimate, which portrayed Saddam Hussein's weapons programs as a serious threat to the United States.

A yearlong search by the U.S. Iraq Survey Group later concluded that those programs had collapsed more than a decade before the invasion.

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The sole hint of color in the whole panorama is a thin yellow band on the western horizon. It is the haze drifting in from the oil fields 100 miles up the coast: an unsightly stain on a picture postcard and a possible portent for the refuge.

This month Congress voted to insert a special measure in the federal budget opening the coastal plain (known as Area 1002) for drilling. For the first time in 25 years of struggle over the refuge, the White House and Congress are lined up on the same side, behind the oil industry. The battle is not yet over, however. The Senate vote passed by just 51 to 49, and there are still legislative hoops to be jumped through. There are also doubts about how profitable drilling will be. The oil is thought to be of low quality, and the average estimate is that there is only enough down there to keep the United States going for six months.

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Sneddon said only one of the five would appear in person. Testimony in the other four cases, including that of former child actor Macaulay Culkin, would come from nine third-party witnesses.

He successfully argued that the evidence would show a pattern of "very similar, if not identical" behavior to the 10 charges the singer faces in his current trial, including the "grooming" of young boys, preparing them to be receptive to molestation by plying them with alcohol, and showing them pornography.

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Kennedy had already canceled his traditional St. Patrick's Day meeting with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. He said in a statement after meeting the sisters: "Their presence in Washington on this St. Patrick's Day sends a very powerful signal that it's time for the IRA to fully decommission, end all criminal activity and cease to exist as a paramilitary organization."

Standing beside the McCartneys, he told CNN: "There's no question Sinn Fein and the IRA are involved in a coverup there. Gerry Adams has to free himself." Modern Western democratic parties "do not, and should not, and cannot have private armies, and cannot be involved in criminality and violence."

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Its findings could also knock a significant dent in the Bush administration's Iran policy, which is built on the presumption that Tehran is bent on building nuclear weapons and is not prepared to trade that for economic and diplomatic incentives, as European states hope. Late last year, CIA Director Porter Goss reported to Congress that Iran continued "to vigorously pursue indigenous programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."

In response to Wednesday's report, Bush insisted that Washington was not alone in its skeptical view of Iran's intentions. "I think it's very important for the United States to continue to work with our friends and allies which believe that the Iranians want a nuclear weapon and which know that Iran possessing a nuclear weapon would be very destabilizing. In my trip to Europe, I discovered common ground with a lot of European nations which believe and are worried about Iranian intentions."

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Announcing his nomination, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: "The president and I have asked John to do this work because he knows how to get things done. He is a tough-minded diplomat." Although his previous job at the State Department had nothing to do with it, Bolton asked to be allowed to sign an official letter in 2001 withdrawing the U.S. from the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. More recently, Bolton led Washington's campaign to oust Mohamed ElBaradei from his post as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency because he had not ruled Iran in violation of its international obligations.

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Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said that with the ruling the United States had joined "the community of nations." "The Supreme Court decision confirms recent, compelling scientific research findings that the capacity for curbing impulsiveness, using sound judgment and exercising self-control is much less developed in adolescents than in adults," Carter said in a statement.

The ruling, passed by a 5-4 majority, was made in the case of Christopher Simmons, who was 17 in 1993 when a woman died after he threw her off a bridge in Missouri. The swing vote came from Justice Anthony Kennedy, who normally sides with the conservatives on the bench.

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"If we're going to stop the terrorists before they strike, we must ensure that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified enterprise," Bush said. The president made it clear he meant the DNI to be a figure of real authority, giving Negroponte control over the budgets of America's 15 competing intelligence agencies and primary responsibility for daily Oval Office briefings. "He will have the authority to order the collection of new intelligence, to ensure the sharing of information among agencies and to establish common standards for the intelligence community's personnel ... Vesting these authorities in a single official who reports directly to me will make our intelligence efforts better coordinated, more efficient and more effective," Bush said.

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His killing was condemned by world leaders and drew a sharp response from the White House, which directed pointed remarks toward Syria. The blast left a five-meter deep crater on Beirut's seafront, where restaurants were serving lunch. It tore apart the armor-plated vehicles of Hariri's motorcade and broke windows up to a mile away.

A previously unknown group calling itself Support and Jihad in Syria and Lebanon claimed to have carried out the bombing, calling the attack the first of a campaign of "martyrdom attacks" aimed at "infidels, renegades and tyrants." In a video aired on the Al-Jazeera television network, a bearded man in a turban read a statement on behalf of the group, describing the killing as "just punishment" for Hariri's close ties to the Saudi government.

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