President Bush criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Damascus, Syria on Tuesday, saying it sends mixed signals to President Bashar Assad. The trip was the highest-ranking American politician to visit Syria since relations began to deteriorate four years ago. The United States accuses Syria of interfering in Iraq and Lebanon and sponsoring terrorists – charges Syria denies.
A French train with a 25,000-horsepower engine and special wheels broke the world speed record Tuesday for conventional rail trains, reaching 357.2 mph as it zipped through the countryside to the applause of spectators. It surpassed the record of 320.2 mph set in 1990 by another French train.
The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season should be “very active,” with nine hurricanes and a good chance that at least one major hurricane will hit the U.S. coast, a top researcher said Tuesday. Forecaster William Gray said he expects 17 named storms in all this year, five of them major hurricanes with sustained winds of 111 mph or greater.
A man and a woman were shot inside the building complex that houses CNN’s headquarters in what police described as a “domestic situation.” The two were arguing when the man pulled out a gun and shot the woman. He said the man was then shot by a CNN security guard.\nItalian researchers have excavated the 33-foot skeleton of a 4 million-year-old whale in the Tuscan countryside, a discovery that could help reconstruct the prehistoric environment of the sea that once covered the region, officials said Tuesday.
CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaida militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and abuse, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.
