Hundreds of thousands of strapped homeowners could get some relief from a plan negotiated by the Bush administration to freeze interest rates on subprime mortgages that are scheduled to rise in the coming months. Bush said 1.2 million people could be eligible for help, but only a fraction will be subject to the rate freeze. Others would get assistance in refinancing with their lenders and moving into loans secured by the Federal Housing Administration.
NASA called off Thursday’s launch of space shuttle Atlantis after detecting problems with a pair of fuel gauges, a recurring problem since the Columbia disaster. Shuttle managers said they would try again Friday, provided the problem can be solved quickly. Preliminary indications are that the problem might be with an open circuit rather than the gauges themselves, which would be easier to fix. Shuttle managers planned to meet in the afternoon to decide on a course of action.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that “people are getting impatient” for the Iraqi government to take advantage of improved security conditions and move toward much-needed political reforms. Gates met Thursday for an hour with his top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, who described a 60 percent decline in violence in the last six months. Gates had spent two days meeting with Iraqi officials and military commanders in both Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul.
Republican Mitt Romney, confronting voters’ skepticism about his Mormon faith, declared Thursday that as president he would “serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause,” and said calls for him to justify his religious beliefs go against the wishes of the nation’s founders. In a speech less than a month before the first primaries, Romney said he shares “moral convictions” with Americans of all faiths, though surveys suggest up to half of likely voters have qualms about a Mormon president.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday debated for the third time since 2004 the rights of foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay. Even if the court sides with the detainees again, it is unlikely that they will see much of a difference before the end of the Bush administration. The U.S. holds about 305 prisoners on suspicion of terrorism or terrorist links at Guantanamo and plans to prosecute about 80. So far, only three detainees have been formally charged and one was convicted in a plea bargain and sent home.
The CIA videotaped its interrogations of two terror suspects in 2002 and destroyed the tapes three years later out of fear they would leak to the public and compromise the identities of U.S. questioners, the director of the agency told employees Thursday. CIA Director Michael Hayden said House and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed of the existence of the tapes and the CIA’s intention to destroy them. He also said the CIA’s internal watchdog watched the tapes in 2003 and verified that the interrogation practices were legal. He said the CIA began taping the interrogations as an internal check on the program after President Bush authorized the use of harsh questioning methods. The methods included waterboarding, which simulates drowning, government officials said.
