.

Nine are under arrest in Yemen in a suspected terrorist plot. A senior US official told the Washington Post the nine are believed to be linked to fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden. The US embassy in Yemen has been a target of terrorists, within just the past few days having "narrowly dodged a serious attack," a US official told Cable News Network Monday. 

The nine men were found with a map of the US embassy along with grenades, arms and explosives. 

Also in Yemen, the USS Cole was bombed in a terrorist attack last year resulting in the deaths of 17 American sailors. 

US investigators say the bombing was also linked to bin Laden.

A judge may have put the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill on shaky ground. The US district judge struck down a portion of Alaska's campaign contributions law, which forbid contributions to political parties by unions and businesses. 

Conservatives are saying the ruling confirms that political party contributions are an equivalent of free speech. 

Their argument: in American culture, "free" speech can cost money; the news media do not offer free platforms for every American to speak; spending money to affirm political opinion, such as giving to political parties, is a form of free speech.

The Washington Times quotes Kentucky Republican US Senator Mitch McConnell as calling the Alaska ruling "a tremendous victory for our democracy. McCain-Feingold...if enacted, would blow up the minute it landed in court."

The bill sponsored by Arizona Senator John McCain and Wisconsin Democrat Russell Feingold is so controversial, opinion of it is split along party lines. The bill would severely limit contributions to parties and associated political groups.

A staffer who worked on McCain-Feingold notes there's a good chance the Alaska decision will be overturned.

The federal government has put a second prisoner to death within a week. A man who ran a marijuana distribution system between the US and Mexico was executed just after eight Tuesday morning at the same federal execution facility in Terre Haute, Indiana where Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was put to death last week.

Juan Raul Garza's Tuesday execution followed an extensive series of last-minute attempts to stop it. 

Prosecutors say Garza killed one man and ordered the deaths of others in the course of his drug business in the 1980s and early '90s.

Before his death, Garza said "I want to say I am sorry. I apologize for all the pain and grief I caused.  I ask for your forgiveness."

Ford and Bridgestone-Firestone executives accused each other of problems with tires on the popular Explorer SUVs at Congressional hearings Tuesday. 

Firestone officials said Tuesday "there's something wrong with the Explorer," saying their tires aren't to blame.  Ford says the tires supplied by Firestone to factory Explorers were defective. The two companies have, of course, severed their century-long affiliation.

Congress is considering an investigation of both Firestone and Ford because of hundreds of deaths linked to tire blowouts and rollovers. 

The so-called "patients bill of rights" is stalled in the newly-Democratic Senate because Republicans are objecting to numerous details in proposals from Democrats, who claim Republicans don't want health care reform.  Republicans claim the details of the Democratic plan resemble "Hillarycare," and are calling for rewrites.

"Hillarycare" is the derisive nickname for a secretive, poorly-constructed proposal for health care reform chaired by then-first lady Hillary Clinton in 1993.

Foot-and-mouth disease is on the agenda of a coming British symposium on international terrorism. The recent outbreak of the virus in England has horrified many, nearly destroyed hundreds of family farms and cost the nation millions in tourism dollars.

Now, security experts are concerned that foot-and-mouth could be used by terrorists or hostile governments as a biological weapon to wipe out food supplies. 

Protesters have scared the World Bank into holding their next development conference over the Internet rather than meeting in person. The annual conference was to have been held in Barcelona.

A World Bank spokesman told the BBC there were fears protests planned violence at the planned meeting. 

Demonstrators, many of whom didn't really know what they were protesting or were out for fun, have disrupted meetings of World Bank and similar organizations in the past year.

At least three are dead in Wisconsin after a tornado destroyed businesses and homes in the town of Siren.

The Reverend Billy Graham is going strong at 82, touring portions of the US over the next several weeks.  He's been undergoing treatment for Parkinsons Disease.

Former Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro has been diagnosed with a rare blood disease.  Half of all patients -- eleven-thousand people a year -- who have malignant multiple myeloma die from the disease. 

Ferraro, Walter Mondale's 1984 running mate, is taking Thalidomide, which doctors say has sent Ferraro's cancer into remission, so she's avoided chemotherapy. 

Thalidomide was in the 1950s used for treating -- and turned out to be extremely dangerous to -- pregnant women and especially their in utero children.

A man accused of road rage -- now found guilty of animal killing, a felony. A Santa Clara, California jury heard the story of the 27-year-old man's road rage after being bumped from behind by a woman. After an argument, the man snapped the woman's 10-year-old dog from her car and flung it into fast-moving traffic, witnesses said.  

Forty-one-year-old Cal Ripkin of the Baltimore Oreoles "Iron Man" fame is quitting, retiring at the end of the current baseball season; final game September 22nd.

Gonzales, Texas -- the price of gas has been going down so precipitously that some service stations are engaged in an old fashioned gas war -- three stations are competing for customers by selling gas for 79-cents a gallon.

So help me.

-- Mike Shiloh

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