USA
After attending the wedding of his nephew, George P. Bush, the son of Florida's governor, in Kennebunkport, Maine, President Bush returns to the campaign trail Tuesday, where at stops in Florida, New Mexico, and Arizona he will be joined by onetime rival Sen. John McCain, as the campaign focuses more intensely on national security. Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and running mate John Edwards continued their train trip across the Great Plains and Southwest. In his response to Bush's national radio address Saturday, Kerry vowed that, if elected, he would lift the president's ban on using federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research.
Bush's homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, told "Fox News Sunday" that last week's decision to raise the terror alert appeared to have slowed down the planning for a major Al Qaeda strike. Meanwhile, The York Times reported Sunday that Pakistani Mohamed Naeem Noor Khan, whose arrest last month led to information about threats to US finanancial institutions, was in communication with Al Qaeda operatives plotting an attack to disrupt the fall US elections.
The FBI vowed to pursue all legal avenues for prosecution of Benjamin Vanderford, a San Francisco resident who staged his own mock beheading on the Internet, reportedly to see how quickly such postings spread and whether the world news media would be fooled.
FBI agents, working on the unsolved 2001 anthrax mailings case, searched a vehicle owned by bioterrorism expert Kenneth Berry at the Connellsville Airport southeast of Pittsburgh Saturday. The agents did not say what they were looking for, and Dr. Berry, a New York resident with family in the Connellsville area, said he had nothing to do with the anthrax attacks that killed five people.
The petition drive to get independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader's name on the California ballot fell short, his campaign announced Saturday. Nader needed roughly 153,000 signatures by Friday's deadline, but gathered only about 90,000.
Political commentator and former Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes was expected to announce as the Monitor went to press that he will run for the US Senate in Illinois. If so, he will face off against Barack Obama, a Democratic state senator. Keyes currently is a resident of Maryland.
Workers at a Florida dolphin-care facility nursed six roughtooth dolphins Saturday on Hutchinson Island. Because of limited facilities, 30 were euthanized after experts and volunteers spent hours trying to get them to swim back to the ocean.
