USA

September 23, 2003

President Bush said he'll ask UN members for more help in stabilizing Iraq, but will assert that the US-led invasion was "the right decision" in Tuesday's address to the General Assembly. In a pretaped interview with Fox News, broadcast on the eve of the speech, Bush said he is open to a greater role for the UN in crafting a new constitution and overseeing postwar elections - a vision that falls short of what France, Germany, and Britain, among others, have called for. He didn't outline a time frame for the steps his administration says are prerequisites for returning the nation to Iraqi control. France wants a handover in as few as six months.

Presidential aspirant Carol Moseley Braun formally kicked off her campaign for the 2004 Democratic nomination, calling herself "the clearest alternative" to an administration "whose only new idea has been preemptive war and a huge new bureaucracy" in a speech at Howard University, a historically black college in Washington. The former US senator from Illinois is the only African-American woman to serve in the chamber but has struggled to raise funds and lags in most opinion polls on the 10 Democratic candidates.

The Galileo spacecraft made a final, fiery descent into Jupiter's atmosphere Sunday, ending its 14-year, $1.5 billion mission. Despite some problems, the spacecraft is regarded as a success for NASA, documenting a comet strike on the solar system's largest planet and finding evidence of salt oceans on three of its moons. Scientists consider one of them, Europa, as the most likely nearby place to contain extraterrestrial life.

Two thousand people evacuated due to a chemical plant explosion in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio, were awaiting the all-clear to return home. Firefighters were helping workers to contain a nitric oxide leak at the Isotec facility when the blast occurred Sunday morning. One Isotec worker was treated for a minor injury.

The head of one of the nation's most prominent abortion-rights groups is resigning. Citing family concerns, Kate Michelman announced she will step down as president of NARAL Pro-Choice America following a planned April 25 march in Washington. Michelman has led the group for the past 18 years.

CBS's "Everybody Loves Raymond" and NBC's "The West Wing" won best comedy and drama series, respectively, at the 55th annual prime-time Emmy Awards in Los Angeles. Among other honorees at the ceremony Sunday night were Debra Messing (below) of NBC's "Will and Grace," Tony Shalhoub of "Monk" on USA, James Gandolfini and Edie Falco for "The Sopranos" on HBO, and William H. Macy for the TNT movie "Door to Door."