John Kerry yesterday said he'll back President Bush's call for $25 billion in extra funds to support U.S. troops in Iraq, after taking lots of heat for voting against $87 billion for the troops last fall.

"The situation in Iraq has deteriorated far beyond what the [Bush] administration anticipated. This money is urgently needed and it is completely focused on the needs of our troops," Kerry said in a statement.

Microsoft is objecting to the size of legal bills submitted by lawyers who brought an anti-trust case in California against the software giant.

Microsoft told a California court that consumers could suffer if it has to pay the full $258m ('/£146.7m) bill.

The legal costs are part of Microsoft's settlement for over-charging consumers buying its software in California.

"I wouldn't have put it in if I didn't think we earned it," said Eugene Crew, the lead attorney against Microsoft.

"Somebody ends up paying for this," said Microsoft attorney Robert Rosenfeld. "These large fee awards get passed on to consumers."

Do they really understand why there are laws?"

Sen. John F. Kerry said Friday that despite public declarations from France and other European countries that they would not send troops to Iraq, there were indications some of the nations would be willing to change course with the right diplomatic effort.

"There are senators and … diplomats who have had conversations with other folks that I think indicate that — given the right equation, given the right statesmanship and leadership — it is possible to have a very different level of participation," Kerry said Friday at his Washington campaign headquarters.

The rise of terrorism and so-called asymmetric warfare only reinforces the wisdom of making distinctions between legitimate POWs and unlawful combatants.

House Bill 1626, also known as the “Baggy Pants Bill” states: “It shall be unlawful for any person to appear in public wearing his pants below his waist and thereby exposing his skin or intimate clothing.”

Various sources last week said the photos displayed by Turner came from a pornography website, and they may well have, although I could not trace it to the source.

Cuban President Fidel Castro launched an immense anti-American protest on Friday with denunciations and ridicule of President Bush, saying the U.S. leader was fraudulently elected and trying to impose "world tyranny."

The Cuban leader led a sea of Cubans past the U.S. diplomatic mission here on the oceanfront Malecon Boulevard in a demonstration organized by the communist government against new U.S. measures aimed at squeezing the island's economy and pushing out Castro.

The crowd chanted "Free Cuba! Fascist Bush!"

Bush's gains were notably big in the 17 so-called battleground states, those that were decided by a close margin in 2000 and promise to be close again this fall.

How do we account for the continued strength of President Bush in the polls, relative to his presumptive Democratic opponent, despite the stream of bad news from Iraq? Much of the journalistic and intellectual establishment is plainly baffled …and dismayed. The answer is not that complex: the public, unlike the class which defines itself as living the life of the mind, understands that we are at war, a war in which our very survival is at stake. This is a gut-level cognition.

Those who pride themselves on their ability to spin chains of logical reasoning, and sometimes arrive at a counter-intuitive conclusion, instinctively recoil from the obvious lesson, especially when it validates the positions of their political opponents. For them, the battle against the hated Bush is more important than the battle against Islamicist terror. Theories which blame the West as the source of all evil take precedence over actual evil, stariung them in the face.

Major news media are the same as reality television.

• Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times:
  
  
  Conservative commentators who seized on this tragedy to complain that the so-called liberal media was more interested in abused Iraqi prisoners than a murdered American civilian are either lying or stupid.
  
  
  
• Sara Shipley, St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
  
  
  The Howard Bend Levee District is nearly finished with a $25 million upgrade designed to protect against a so-called 500-year flood, or one that has a 1 in 500 chance of happening in any given year.

You go first. In a recent column you brought out the big guns, God and the Vatican, to condemn Rush Limbaugh for his support of the troops in the so-called Iraqi prisoner abuse. Who you gonna call on now to comment on the televised beheading of an American civilian -- the liberal high authority Michael "Freaky" Moore? Let's just see if this cold-blooded murder gets as much air time from the media as the naked butts of Iraqi prisoners.

Alberta Dabrowsky, Lake Zurich

The entire world should be condemning that horrific, cowardly murder. As for press coverage: the beheading of the American civilian is a huge story and was treated as such. Conservative commentators who seized on this tragedy to complain that the so-called liberal media was more interested in abused Iraqi prisoners than a murdered American civilian are either lying or stupid.

• Because the Port of Newark is an easy target:
  
  
  He [Tony Soprano] comes across a documentary about the potential use by terrorists of the nearby Port of Newark. The Port of Newark, the biggest port on the eastern seaboard, receives millions of ship containers each year; the feds say they can check only 2%; terrorists could easily smuggle in a dirty nuke.
  
  Tony becomes alarmed. He knows Port Newark. The mob is there, his people are there. It is corrupt, lazy, badly run. Suddenly he realizes there's nothing between his home and kaboom but a chain-link fence and a mall.
  
  
  
• Because the Port of Newark is an attractive target:
  
  
  Port Newark is just beyond the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. A hit on Newark would cause panic in al Qaeda's great target, New York--stock market crash, terror in the streets. A hit on Port Newark would deal a blow rich in practical and symbolic terms.
  
  
  
• Because New Jersey is becoming the center, in America, of the movement for cloning:
  
  
  But there's more and for me it's more central, and the reason my pings began. New Jersey is becoming the center, in America, of the movement for cloning. Its governor just signed the most liberal cloning bill in the United States. There is money in cloning research, and status: We're the coming intellectual center of science! We're not just the Meadowlands and the mob, we're Princeton and Einstein! There is greater suburban affluence to be gained, and higher tax revenues for politicians to spend on community centers built through no-bid contracts by big contributors. The Robert Torricelli Psychotherapy Institute for the Differently Abled. The Jim McGreevey Carpal Tunnel Trauma Research Facility.

Some newcomers are planning to move to Chicago, and the invasion sounds as though it will be a grim affair. "They're a negative for the city," said one fearful alderman. They're guilty of "treating people wrong," said an angry minister. They exploit a "slave mentality," charged another clergyman.

You'd think Genghis Khan was riding in our direction, with his marauding hordes in tow. In fact, the would-be migrants are from Wal-Mart, whose chief crime is to become one of the most successful companies in American history. All the giant retailer is threatening to bring is a few hundred jobs and a lot of inexpensive products. But critics want the City Council to block the project.

• "Love is a Battlefield" by Pat Benetar. The 13 year old in 1987 knows this song by heart. This song was released in 1983 on Live From Earth. It was a very big deal back then, but by 1987, it wasn't popular.
  
  
• "Thriller" by Michael Jackson. Again, since this album was released in 1982, when the main character would have been 8 years old. By 1987, Bad had been released, redefining Michael Jackson as "tougher" or something. Regardless, the youth of 1987 thought Michael Jackson was gay, werd, and no one would have thought to imitate the dance from the video, which was not getting that much airplay on MTV in 1987.
  
  
• Worst of all, the main character has a crush on Rick Springfield, and she apparently kisses her middle school love interest to the song "Jessie's Girl", which came from 1981's Working Class Dog and didn't get airplay that a person born in 1974 would have remembered until the 1980s stations started cropping up around the turn of the century.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry warned his political opponents on Monday against attacking his outspoken wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, saying, "They're going to have to go through me."

Commercials featuring topless models with buff bodies and unattainable physiques may make the viewers feel depressed and unhappy with their bodies.

Sound familiar? It is, but this time it's the men's turn to feel insecure.

"The level of muscularity and attractiveness that are idealized in the media often are not attainable for the average man," says researcher Stacey Tantleff-Dunn, professor of psychology at the University of Central Florida. "Men see more of a discrepancy between how they want to look, or think they need to look, and the image they see in the mirror. Such discrepancies can cause the dissatisfaction and low self-esteem that lead to extreme and often unhealthy actions, such as eating disorders, exercising too much, and steroid abuse."

Debbie Williams, a fortune teller, was caught faking a fall in aisle nine of a New York City grocery store. Williams — who is also a fortune teller — knew she was going to fall before she walked into the store.

The federal government should give New Yorkers unused housing subsidies earmarked for other states, Sen. Charles Schumer said yesterday.

The media coverage of the violations of American law against Iraqi prisoners is in peril of setting a dangerous double standard for America and the Arab world. The administration must be very careful in explaining how we feel and what we will do. Otherwise our enemies will use our own words as an excuse to exploit this double standard.

To be clear, a very small number of Americans did a terrible thing at Abu Ghraib. And because we live under the rule of law, and we take protecting the Constitution seriously, the accused will be investigated and, when guilty, punished. The incidents themselves are to be condemned.

Some have called for Donald Rumsfeld to resign. However, he has led the process of exposing the wrongdoing and investigating the charges. Moreover, he will see to it that the accused get a fair and honest trial, in which there is a presumption of innocence until guilt is proved and the guilty are punished. That due process is something we as Americans should be proud of, and unequivocal about. In view of Mr. Rumsfeld's significant contribution to our security, this incident will be but a footnote.

Explaining our anger at these misdeeds and our determination to punish the wrongdoers is appropriate. Appearing overly contrite or overly apologetic, however, will be a big mistake.

• (No) Opponents of new casino tell tales of addiction's toll
  
  Looking back, Connie realizes she should have seen the problem. Her family members always wanted her to take a separate car to the casinos - they knew she would want to leave long before they did.
  
  She should have known the $50 here, $100 there that they borrowed was not a coincidence. She had lost a few bucks playing bingo before, she knew grocery bills were hard to cover sometimes. No big deal. They always paid her back.
  
  Had she been asked three years ago to vote on a new casino in Lemay, where she lives, "heck, yes, I was all for it," said Connie.
  
  The loan requests grew larger and more frequent.
  
  "They ran themselves low on one person, and they couldn't go to them anymore, so they would start on other people, and pretty soon, I realized they were all hitting on me," Connie said of her family members.
  
  None of these relatives had gambling problems before casinos came to the St. Louis area. They had never visited Las Vegas. There was a history of alcoholism in the family, and Connie smoked through three pregnancies before she finally quit.
  
  "I know about addiction," she says.
  
  
  So we start with an anecdotal lead that, I guess, will support the argument that government should pad the harsh walls of reality to make it safe for the least responsible or intelligent members of society, because if they can, stupid people will do stupid things.
  
  
• (Yes) Supporters for new casino see cash for education
  
  Last week, Hancock High School Principal Jason Naucke bluntly told his students that if they even considering drinking, don't bother showing up for the prom. Fifth graders got a one-hour lesson from a police officer about the consequences of joining a gang, the 15th week of a 17-week course urging them to reject drugs and violence.
  
  Just another week in the "values" curriculum at Hancock Place School District, while the district's superintendent was pushing for a casino to come to the neighborhood.
  
  A casino means money, and Superintendent Ed Stewart hasn't seen enough of that.
  
  
  A new "casino" would mean "tax revenue" that "scare-quoted" "educators" could [Please punch up with use of term so-called. --Ed.] use in promoting "values" in their so-called curricula, and the unintelligent educators "educators" don't capture the "irony" of raising money from gambling while promoting other "values" (which are obviously "scare-quoted" because anything valued by someone other than the journalist is "suspect"). Thus begins the story favoring the casino.

Perhaps the only wild creatures Melody Noel studied in law school were F. Lee Bailey and Alan Dershowitz. But today, Noel is an expert on penguins, cheetahs and addaxes.

"Farmers in Botswana are shooting cheetahs because they eat their livestock," Noel said. "It's going to take some creative solutions and some time to work through the problem."

Noel has no background in biology, but she is married to St. Louis Zoo president Jeffrey Bonner. And anyone who lives in Bonner's world - whether for two decades, like Noel, or two years, like the Zoo's 1,000 employees - invariably adopts his passions.

"I am a perfect example of a convert," said Noel, who practices domestic law. "These are not things I thought about before, but he knows how to get people fired up."

Now Bonner wants to convert St. Louisans and one of the city's most beloved institutions. Soon, he promises, visitors will see a new sort of St. Louis Zoo, one that confronts the destruction of the wild, the slaughter of endangered species and the hard choices the public must face if it wants to change the world. This new Zoo that Bonner envisions looks a lot like the old one: The train still runs, sea lions still flip for fish and Raja still roams the sprawling River's Edge. But with the fun comes a sober message of conservation and responsibility.

"What we have failed to do is really show people the world around us. In Africa, the loggers are putting in the roads, and the hunters go in with their AK-47s and slaughter every animal they see.

To Bonner, who studied anthropology, the human element matters most.

"The environment is never the problem. It's the people that are the problem - always the people," he said.

"Conservation ultimately requires compromise," Bonner said. "I think people struggle with that all of the time, but if you look at the big picture, there are ways of balancing your lifestyle with the good you do."

In Bonner's case, he drives a sport utility vehicle, eats meat and wears leather shoes.

Jerry Borin, director of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, calls Bonner "a big-picture person."

"He is always two or three steps ahead but he brings people along," Borin said. "That's important in the zoo community. We are not that large of an industry, and by nature we have to cooperate."