USA

Two days after a critical report about intelligence failings at the CIA in the leadup to the war in Iraq, leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee urged the White House Sunday to name without delay a new permanent director to replace George Tenet, who left office Sunday. John McLaughlin, the temporary chief, was acknowledged as a capable professional, but committee members said they believe new leadership is needed in the face of terrorist threats. Among possibilities discussed by the committee: Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; former US Sen. Sam Nunn (D) of Georgia; House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss (R) of Florida; and former Navy Secretary John Lehman.

The NAACP reinvited President Bush, who shunned an earlier invitation, to speak at its annual convention in Philadelphia. Bush addressed the group in 2000, but since then has been harshly criticized by it. Herbert Hoover is the last sitting president not to address the convention. Bush said Friday the NAACP's "rhetoric" made his relationship with its leaders "virtually nonexistent."

For the first time, oil tankers sailing Alaska's Prince William Sound turned in a spill-free year, regulators and industry officials said Saturday. An official partly credited the double-hulled tankers that Congress mandated after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. Four companies shipped 330 million gallons of North Slope crude oil from the Valdez terminal last year.

Hundreds of fatal accidents involving motorists at railroad crossings were not promptly reported by the railroads during the past eight years, according to a story on The New York Times website Saturday. Lax reporting is in violation of federal regulations. About one person a day dies at crossings in the US, and while most of these are blamed on driver error, some railroads have hindered investigations into their own culpability, the report said.

The family of Charles Jenkins, a reputed US Army deserter, petitioned the Justice Department to pardon him 40 years after his disappearance while serving in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. Jenkins and his two daughters were reunited Friday with his wife in Indonesia.

Star sprinter Marion Jones, who has asserted her innocence in the face of drug-use suspicions, failed to qualify for the US Olympic team in her signature event, the 100 meters, during a meet in Sacramento, Calif. Jones, who won five Olympic gold medals in 2000 at Sydney, Australia, still could make the team in other events. The Summer Games open Aug. 13 in Athens.