A day after losing badly to Hamas, Fatah supporters held demonstrations across the Gaza Strip, including Bureij refugee camp, above.

Fatah Members Rally Against Corruption

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Thousands of members of the ruling Fatah Party, which badly lost Palestinian parliament elections to Hamas this week, burned cars and shot in the air in demonstrations across the Gaza Strip, demanding the resignation of corrupt officials and insisting that Fatah form no coalition with Hamas.

About 1,000 angry party activists, including 100 gunmen, drove by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' resident in Gaza, calling from loudspeakers for all corrupt leaders to step down and urging Abbas not to form a coalition with Hamas. Abbas was in the West Bank town of Ramallah at the time.

''We don't want to join the Hamas government. We don't want corrupt leadership. We want reform and we want to fire all the corrupt,'' one group of thousands of people gathered outside a Palestinian government building in Gaza City said. Several gunmen shot in the air.

A mourner cries outside the Bright Star Freewill Baptist Church in Melville after learning of the death of the two miners.

2 Missing Workers Are Found Dead in West Virginia Mine

MELVILLE, W.Va., Jan. 21 - An agonizing two-day wait came to a tragic end on Saturday when rescue workers found the bodies of two miners who were trapped by a fire that began on a conveyor belt 900 feet underground.

Gov. Joe Manchin III, whose state is still reeling from the deaths of 12 miners in Sago after a Jan. 2 explosion, expressed anguish Saturday and pledged to introduce legislation on Monday to improve mine safety.

"I can't tell you the pain that we have," Mr. Manchin said at a news conference after visiting the families who were gathered at the Brightstar Freewill Baptist Church in this tiny mining community 60 miles southwest of Charleston.

Rove Says Democrats Wrong on War on Terror

By RON FOURNIER
AP Political Writer

WASHINGTON

Embattled White House adviser Karl Rove vowed Friday to make the war on terrorism a central campaign issue in November and said Democratic senators looked "mean-spirited and small-minded" in questioning Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

"Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview _ and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview," Rove told Republican activists. "That doesn't make them unpatriotic, not at all. But it does make them wrong _ deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong."

President Bush's top political lieutenant, making a rare public address while under investigation in the CIA leak case, joined Republican Party chairman Ken Mehlman in warning GOP leaders against falling prey to the corrupting nature of power.

"The GOP's progress during the last four decades is a stunning political achievement. But it is also a cautionary tale of what happens to a dominate party _ in this case, the Democrat Party _ when its thinking becomes ossified; when its energy begins to drain; when an entitlement mentality takes over; and when political power becomes an end in itself rather than a mean to achieve the common goal," Rove told Republican National Committee members ending a two-day meeting.

"We need to learn from our successes," he said, "and from the failures of others."

The admonition reflects growing concerns among senior Republicans that ethics scandals in the Republican-led Congress could hurt the party in November, even among staunch GOP voters who may begin to blame corruption for Congress' runaway spending habits.

Mehlman couldn't have been more blunt: "One of the oldest lessons of history is that power corrupts," he said, telling RNC members that any Republicans guilty of illegal behavior should be punished. "The public trust is more important than any party."

The investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff threatens to ensnare at least a half dozen members of Congress of both parties and Bush administration officials. His ties to GOP congressional leaders and the White House pose a particular problem for Republicans. Abramoff, who has admitted to conspiring to defraud his Indian tribe clients, has pleaded guilty to corruption-related charges and is cooperating with prosecutors.

In an unrelated scandal, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, is expected to stand trial in the CIA leak case this summer, just ahead of the midterm elections.

Al Qaeda's No. 2 Follows Bin Laden's Lead and Resurfaces

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 20 - Just a day after Osama bin Laden resurfaced in a lengthy audiotape, a new recording by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, appeared today, praising the "martyrs of holy war" in Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere.

The Central Intelligence Agency confirmed today that the voice on the 18-minute audiotape, posted on an Internet forum that has carried Al Qaeda communiqués before, was Mr. Zawahiri's.

Pakistani tribesmen marched Saturday near Damadola to protest the airstrike. Local officials in the region, the Bajaur district, said the attack destroyed three houses in the village and killed at least 18 civilians.

Airstrike by U.S. Draws Protests From Pakistanis

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan. 14 - Pakistan's government on Saturday condemned a deadly American airstrike on a village in the northwestern tribal region, and a senior Pakistani security official said he was confident that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 leader of Al Qaeda and the target of the strike, had not been in the village when it was hit.

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry condemned the loss of civilian lives and said it had delivered an official protest to the American ambassador in Islamabad. The information minister, Sheik Rashid Ahmed, said in Islamabad that the government wanted "to assure the people we will not allow such incidents to reoccur," The Associated Press reported.

Dow Crosses 11,000 for 1st Time Since 2001

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Dow Jones industrial average crossed 11,000 Monday for the first time since before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, buoyed by a rally that has sent stock prices soaring through the first five sessions of 2006.

Wall Street's best known stock indicator reached 11,003.50 shortly after 1 p.m. EST, the first time since June 13, 2001, that the index of 30 blue chip stocks traded above that milestone. It last closed above 11,000 on June 7, 2001, when it stood at 11,090.74.

Monday's advance following a 241-point surge last week as investors grew increasingly optimistic that the Federal Reserve will soon end its string of interest rate hikes. The Dow came within 16 points of 11,000 last March 7, but fell back amid worries about inflation and higher oil prices, concerns that dogged the market for much of 2005.

The blue chips are still more than 6 percent below their all-time high of 11,722.98, reached Jan. 14, 2000, as the high-tech boom approached its peak, but they have recovered well from their low of 7,286.27, reached on Oct. 9, 2002, while the nation wrestled with an economic slowdown spurred by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon the year before.

Only 1 W. Virginia coal miner now said found alive

TALLMANSVILLE, West Virginia (Reuters) - Only one of 13 miners who were in a West Virginia coal mine when it was hit by an explosion was found alive, a company official told family members on Wednesday, after reports hours earlier that 12 had survived led to rejoicing.

This is by far the sadest article I've had to publish. I had to delete the previous one that said 12 survived. So is the speed of communication today. Fast enough to cause a heartbreak.

With the miners' fate uncertain, friends and relatives shared a moment of prayer Monday. Gases kept rescuers from the mine for 11 hours.

Blast Traps 13 in a Coal Mine in West Virginia

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va., Jan. 2 - A thunderous explosion in an underground mine on Monday morning trapped 13 coal miners behind a wall of rubble more than a mile from the mine shaft opening, stymieing rescue crews that worked frantically into the night to save them.

By midevening, rescuers still had not been able to communicate with the trapped miners, and it was unclear whether any of them were still alive, officials said. Five other miners were able to walk out of the mine unhurt and call for help.

Gov. Joe Manchin III said the 13 miners had just entered the mine for the start of their shift shortly after 6 a.m. when the explosion occurred. A crew behind them fled, then tried to go back but were unable to reach the miners, Mr. Manchin said.

Fires Ravage Oklahoma City, Texas Towns

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Grassfires raged across the dry southern prairie Sunday, burning homes in Oklahoma City, destroying two small towns in Texas, and creating patchworks of flames as burning embers were blown by winds gusting up 50 mph.

At least a dozen wildfires were burning across Oklahoma. In Texas, more than 20 fires sprang up, including a 22,400-acre blaze threatening 200 homes near Carbon, about 125 miles west of Dallas.

Crews flying over the Texas communities of Ringgold, a town of about 100 people near Wichita Falls, and tiny Kokomo, near Eastland, reported both had essentially been wiped out by flames, officials said.

In New Mexico, just across the Texas line, two dozen elderly residents were moved out of a nursing home in Hobbs, and a casino, community college and several neighborhoods were evacuated in the town of 29,000 as firefighters battled spreading grass fires at the edge of the city.

US planning strike against Iran

The United States government reportedly began coordinating with NATO its plans for a possible military attack against Iran.

The German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel collected various reports from the German media indicating that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are examining the prospects of such a strike.

According to the report, CIA Director Porter Goss, in his last visit to Turkey on December 12, requested Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide military bases to the United States in 2006 from where they would be able to launch an assault.

The German news agency DDP also noted that countries neighboring Iran, such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman, and Pakistan were also updated regarding the supposed plan. American sources sent to those countries apparently mentioned an aerial attack as a possibility, but did not provide a time frame for the operation.

Although Der Spiegel could not say that these plans were concrete, they did note that according to a January 2005 New Yorker report American forces had entered Iran in 2005 in order to mark possible targets for an aerial assault.