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Saddam Hussein could face up to 500 charges at a tribunal, but he will be tried on only 12 well documented counts because prosecuting him on all would be a "waste of time," the prime minister's spokesman said Sunday.

 
 
 
 
 
 Saddam keyrings for sale.

A narrow majority of Swiss voters approved joining a European Union passport-free zone, abolishing checks on the country's border by 2007, according to final results from a two-issue national referendum Sunday.

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About 55 percent of voters favored joining the EU's passport-free "Schengen" zone, indicating that the Swiss favor closer integration with the EU of which Switzerland is not a member. That mean Swiss customs controls would remain in place.

Authorities in Aruba detained two men Sunday in connection with the disappearance of an Alabama teenager, who went missing nearly a week ago while on a high school graduation trip, the attorney general said.

ADVERTISEMENT Caren Janssen called the men "suspects" in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, 18, but declined to provide further details. The men, who were not among the three described Saturday by police as "persons of interest," were being interrogated Sunday morning.

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Police also planned to conduct forensic tests on a bloody mattress found on a beach in eastern Aruba. The mattress was found in thick brush at Grapefield beach, deputy police chief Gerold Dompig said.

Experiments at Yale with teaching monkeys how to use money lead to monkey bank robberies and monkey prostitution, proving the old saying, "The love of money is the root of all evil," applies to rest of the primate world as well.

Police made a surprising discovery when they busted the alleged madam of a prostitution ring called "August Playmates": The woman running the show was an 80-year-old grandmother.

Authorities arrested Vera Tursi last month during a sting operation to crack down on prostitution rings posing as legal escort services. Police say Tursi ran the business from her two-bedroom apartment, taking $60 of every $160 she charged clients for one hour with a call girl.

Law enforcement officials say Tursi admitted her role in the business, saying she took it over a few years ago from her daughter, who had died. Police say Tursi told them she needed money to subsidize her Social Security checks.

The New York Times did an analysis of the formula on middle-class incomes in more than a dozen states to see whether families would have to spend a greater part of their income and assets before qualifying for financial aid than they did five years ago. Though the effects of the formula changes vary from state to state, The Times found that families with the same earnings and assets as in 2000 would typically have to pay an extra $1,749 before clearing the eligibility bar for financial aid in 2005, after adjusting for inflation.

Hollywood star Russell Crowe has been arrested in New York and charged with assault after allegedly throwing a telephone that struck a hotel employee in the face, according to police.

Officers said the New Zealand-born actor was expected to appear in Manhattan Criminal Court later on Monday.

"He was upset because he couldn't get a call out to Australia," said Sgt. Michael Wysokowski. "He threw a phone at the employee hitting him in the face and causing a minor laceration."

Federal authorities may prosecute sick people who smoke pot on doctors' orders, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state medical marijuana laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug.

Skip to next paragraph Background: Arguments on Marijuana Case The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug's use to treat various illnesses.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.

The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a case that it lost in late 2003. At issue was whether the prosecution of medical marijuana users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional.

Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state's economic activity so long as it involves "interstate commerce" that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines.

Stevens said there are other legal options for patients, "but perhaps even more important than these legal avenues is the democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress."

"Spamalot," which opened in March to generally good reviews and torrid sales, won three Tonys in all, including one for Mike Nichols's direction, his sixth Tony as a director. Mr. Nichols practically apologized to fellow nominees for his victory. "I guess you're thinking, age before beauty," he said. "Me, too." Sara Ramirez, meanwhile, won best featured actress in a musical for her work as a buxom Lady of the Lake, a star-making turn that featured Ms. Ramirez stealing scenes from her male co-stars: Tim Curry, Hank Azaria and David Hyde Pierce.

It was also a good night for "Doubt, a Parable," John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about suspected child abuse in a Roman Catholic school. It picked up four Tonys, including best play, best direction (Doug Hughes) and best actress in a play, Cherry Jones, who portrays an accusing nun.

Bill Irwin, meanwhile, whose role is that of a long-suffering and sharp-tongued professor in the revival of "Edward Albee's 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,' " was a surprise winner in the best leading actor in a play category. Out of breath and beaming, Mr. Irwin thanked his cast, his producers and his family, before exhorting people to come to the show. "This is Broadway!" he said. "We do this every night."

Ominously for Bush and the Republicans, a strong majority of self-described political independents -- 68 percent -- say they disagreed with the president's priorities. That suggests Bush's mixed record in the second term on issues the public views as critical -- particularly on Iraq and the economy -- may be as much a liability for GOP candidates in next year's mid-term election as his performance in his first term was an asset to Republican congressional hopefuls last year and in 2002.

Overall, the president's job approval rating stood at 48 percent, virtually identical to where it was last month. Currently 52 percent of the public disapproves of the job Bush is doing as president, the first time in his presidency that more than half of the public has expressed negative views of the president's performance.

Continuing violence in Iraq continues to fuel negative views of the White House. Four in 10 Americans currently approve of the job that Bush is doing in Iraq while 58 percent disapproved. It marked the 13th consecutive month that less than half of the country approved of Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq.

A total of 1,002 randomly selected adults were interviewed June 2-5 for this survey. Margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

"We didn't need those aircraft either, but we didn't screw the taxpayer in the process," Garant added, referring to widespread sentiment at the Pentagon that the proposed lease of Boeing 767s would cost too much for a plane with serious shortcomings.

Garant's candid advice, which top Air Force officials did not follow, is disclosed for the first time in a new 256-page report by the Pentagon's inspector general. It provides an extraordinary glimpse of how the Air Force worked hand-in-glove with one of its chief contractors -- the financially ailing Boeing -- to help it try to obtain the most costly government lease ever.

The inspector general's report, slated for release today at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, adds a new dimension to what Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) have already called one of the most significant military contracting abuses in several decades. Already, the scandal has resulted in prison terms for former Air Force principal deputy assistant secretary Darlene A. Druyun, and a senior Boeing official, Michael M. Sears.

Besides documenting precisely who was responsible, the new report details the Air Force's vigorous efforts on Boeing's behalf. It also shows how Air Force leaders and Boeing officials jointly manipulated legislation to authorize the deal and later sought to suppress dissenting opinion throughout the Pentagon.

After interviewing 88 people and reading hundreds of thousands of pages of e-mails, the inspector general's office concluded that four top Air Force officials and one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's former top aides, Undersecretary of Defense Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge, violated Pentagon and government-wide procurement rules, failed to use "best business practices," ignored a legal requirement for weapons testing and failed to ensure that the tankers would meet the military's requirements.

The Senate on Tuesday ended a two-year filibuster of California judge Janice Rogers Brown, clearing for final vote her nomination to the U.S. Appeals Court and hewing closely to a historic deal to avert a partisan showdown over judicial filibusters.

By a vote of 65 to 32, Brown's nomination for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was cleared for a final floor vote, expected Wednesday. It takes 60 votes to bypass a filibuster, a total that Brown's Republican supporters have not been able to muster since November 2003, when they were only able to get 53 votes for the conservative California Supreme Court justice.

In later years she continued to appear in films, although the roles grew smaller. She was briefly on screen as Nicolas Cage's mother in "Honeymoon in Vegas," trained a young woman as an assassin in "Point of No Return," scored a few points as a wily senator in "G.I. Jane" and had some campy fun in an updated version of "Great Expectations" as a loony character based on Dickens's Ms. Havisham.

She fared better in television, earning Emmy nominations playing a killer in the PBS drama "Mrs. Cage" and the title role in "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All" on CBS.

She was resigned to the fact that age and changing times worked against her. In a 1992 interview with The Times's Bernard Weinraub she admitted to taking parts "even if they're one page," because "there are very few good scripts, even for Julia Roberts." She preferred a good bit part to a heftier bad one. She often rejected work in favor of family life - for a while. "I retire after every project," she once said. "Then somehow there's always something that pulls me out of retirement."

Games that depend on artifical intelligence demonstrated at the first Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment conference.