Pentagon spy team \nhelped find Saddam Hussein's foxhole\nWASHINGTON -- When U.S. troops pulled Saddam Hussein from a hole in the ground a year ago, the capture was described afterward as the work of a team of conventional and special operations troops.\nNothing was said about an assist from an intelligence unit the Pentagon created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to expand the military's ability to collect human intelligence -- information from spies as opposed to listening devices or satellites.\nThe unit's existence was revealed by The Washington Post Sunday.\nPentagon officials said Monday that the unit, called the Strategic Support Branch, had a hidden hand in interrogations and other aspects of the clue-sifting work inside Iraq that narrowed the search for Hussein and led eventually to the cramped underground chamber where he was hiding.
Palestinian truce could bring peace to Middle East\nGAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Militant groups have agreed to suspend attacks as they near a formal truce deal with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and await Israel's response, a senior Palestinian official said Monday.\nThe militants' promise came after Israeli leaders said Sunday that Israel is ready to hold its fire if calm prevails, moving the two sides closer to ending four years of bloody conflict.\nU.S. envoy William Burns, a senior State Department official, is to arrive in the region later this week for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on the emerging cease-fire deal. Abbas is seeking Israeli guarantees that it will halt military operations, including arrest raids and targeted killings of militants.\nIsrael in the past has refused to grant amnesty to militants, but appeared to be softening its position. Asaf Shariv, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said Israel would not make public declarations. "It will be a de facto cease-fire," he said. "If there is quiet, we will respond with quiet."
Homeland Security official resigns after being passed over\nWASHINGTON -- A top Homeland Security Department official resigned Monday after he was passed over twice by the Bush administration to be secretary of the agency.\nUndersecretary Asa Hutchinson, in charge of border and transportation security issues, submitted his resignation to the White House early Monday morning. He is a former Arkansas congressman and former federal drug czar who is considering a run for Arkansas governor next year.\n"With confidence in the work that has been done and in the team that is being assembled for your second administration as president, I am satisfied that I can in good conscience take leave of administration service and pursue other responsibilities," Hutchinson wrote to President Bush.\nHutchinson ended his letter by thanking "the people of Arkansas who have faithfully supported me in my journey through public service."\nHis resignation is effective March 1.
Two earthquakes shake Indonesia; little damage reported\nJAKARTA, Indonesia -- Powerful earthquakes sparked panic in two countries Monday, nearly a month after a quake triggered a deadly wall of water that killed more than 160,000 people, but there was little damage, no reported injuries and no tsunami.\nThe two quakes, both magnitude 6.3, jangled nerves across the Indian Ocean region hit by the Dec. 26 tsunami.\nPanic briefly spread through the streets of the Indian coastal city of Madras after residents felt an earthquake centered in the Bay of Bengal, about 930 miles away, near the Nicobar and Andaman Islands.\nThe aftershock was felt in Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra, but such tremors have been common in the past month and residents have largely come to ignore them.\nSeismologists said the quake near the Andamans was clearly an aftershock of the 9.0 magnitude quake that struck off the coast of Sumatra a month ago. The two lie on the same fault line, said John Bellini, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo.
Florida loses appeal keeping in brain-damaged woman's feeding tube\nWASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court refused Monday to reinstate a Florida law passed to keep a severely brain-damaged woman hooked to a feeding tube, clearing the way for it to be removed. How soon that would happen, however, was unclear.\nThe Florida Supreme Court had struck down the law last fall, and the justices were the last hope for state leaders who defended the law in a bitter, long-running dispute over the fate of Terri Schiavo.\nHer husband, Michael Schiavo, contends she never wanted to be kept alive artificially. But her parents told justices in a filing that their son-in-law is trying to rush her death so he can inherit her estate and be free to marry another woman.\nThe Supreme Court did not comment in rejecting an appeal from Gov. Jeb Bush, who argued that the state had the authority to step in and pass the 2003 law that ordered Terri Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted six days after her husband had it removed.\nThe case goes back to state Judge George Greer, who already has ruled the brain-damaged woman's husband could withdraw her feeding tube. Although several legal challenges are pending, the Supreme Court was considered the best hope to stop the removal of the tubes.
