Putin Is Said to Compare U.S. Policies to Third Reich

Michael Moore faces U.S. Treasury probe

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore is under investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department for taking ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers to Cuba for a segment in his upcoming health-care documentary "Sicko," The Associated Press has learned.

The investigation provides another contentious lead-in for a provocative film by Moore, a fierce critic of President Bush. In the past, Moore's adversaries have fanned publicity that helped the filmmaker create a new brand of opinionated blockbuster documentary.

Dems shift focus in prosecutors' probe

Democrats are shifting their attention on the botched firings of eight federal prosecutors from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' fitness to head the Justice Department to the White House role in the dismissals.

In the three weeks since Gonzales testified before a Senate committee, the department disclosed that it is investigating whether his former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, weighed the political affiliations of those she considered hiring as entry-level prosecutors. Consideration of such affiliations could be a violation of federal law.

Blair set to announce his resignation

Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday that he will step down as prime minister on June 27, after a decade in office in which he brokered peace in Northern Ireland and followed the United States to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Spellings faces student loan questions

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says she's prepared to defend her agency from criticism that it failed to address conflicts of interest in the student loan industry and in a reading program for young children.[...]Spellings was referring to a recent comment by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who said the department was "asleep at the switch" when it came to overseeing the student loan industry.

Cuomo has led an investigation into the $85 billion industry that has turned up evidence that some colleges received a percentage of loan proceeds from lenders given preferred status by the schools — a practice Cuomo calls "kickbacks." Cuomo also said some college loan officers received gifts from lenders to encourage them to steer borrowers their way.

Indictment in ’65 Killing That Inspired March

A grand jury in Alabama handed up an indictment on Wednesday in an obscure killing that helped inspire the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. The case is the latest in a series of belated prosecutions of crimes from the civil rights era.

In February 1965, a black farmer, Jimmie Lee Jackson, 26, was shot by Alabama state troopers who were suppressing a voting rights demonstration in Marion in the Black Belt. Historians have said the killing indirectly helped lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Putin Is Said to Compare U.S. Policies to Third Reich

President Vladimir V. Putin seemed to obliquely compare the foreign policy of the United States to the Third Reich in a speech on Wednesday commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.

The comments were the latest in a series of sharply worded Russian criticisms of the foreign policy of the United States — on Iraq, missile defense, NATO expansion and, more broadly, United States unilateralism in foreign affairs.