National and International News-Friday, Nov.10th

WHITE HOUSE (AP) - For a second day, President Bush hosts winning Democrats at the White House. Yesterday it was soon-to-be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Today, it's likely Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and the number-two Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin. Both Reid, and soon-to-be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are promising to work in a bipartisan way with the president. Bush was also stressing bipartisanship during a meeting with Pelosi
yesterday. But White House spokesman Tony Snow says the president's cooperation won't involve going back on his principles. After meeting with Reid, the president will attend the dedication of the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman won't be in that job next year.
A party official says he decided, well before Thursday's Republican drubbing at the polls, that he would not run for it
again. An official announcement is expected any day. Mehlman traveled extensively during his tenure but his party was unable to keep control of Congress or the majority of governorships heading into the 2008 presidential election.
The officials who spoke asked not to be identified because Mehlman had not yet made his intentions public. A protege of Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, Mehlman became R-N-C chairman after managing Bush's re-election campaign in 2004.

CHICAGO (AP) - U-S Senator Barack Obama says he'll have to make a decision about whether to run for president in 2008 over the next "several months." He told reporters in Chicago Thursday that what other potential candidates decide won't factor into his own decision. Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack Thursday became the first Democrat to
formally announce a 2008 bid. Obama also says the pressure will be on Democrats to produce results now that they've won control of both the House and Senate. He says if Democrats squander the opportunity they've been given over the next two years, they'll have problems in 2008.

LONDON (AP) - Britain's intelligence chief says her agency is aware of about 30 terror plots. The B-B-C quotes Eliza Manningham-Buller as saying that M-I-Five is aware of "numerous" plots to kill people and damage Britain's economy. She put the figure at near 30 in a speech to a group of academics. Manningham-Buller says the plots often have links to al-Qaida in Pakistan, and says the terror group's presence in Britain is "extensive and growing."
The intelligence chief says agents currently are watching 200 groups or networks that are "actively" engaged in plotting or carrying out terrorist acts in Britain and abroad. And she says it's likely there are plots they are not aware of.

YONKERS, N.Y. (AP) - Don't look now, but some U-S made cars are creeping up on their Japanese competitors in terms of reliability. In its Annual Car Reliability Survey, Consumer Reports says, as a group, family and small cars have the best predicted reliability. However, it says Asian models continue to be the most reliable overall. Among the U-S standouts are the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan sedans, which scored slightly better than the Honda Accord V-six and Toyota Camry V-six. The Buick Lucerne and Cadillac D-T-S, both first-year models, scored above average in the large-car category. But overall, 39 of the 47 vehicles with the highest predicted reliability scores are Japanese, while just six are domestic models.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The U-S military has announced the deaths of three more troops in Iraq, bringing to 23 the number of servicemembers killed so far in November. Two of the victims were soldiers. They were killed when their
vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Baghdad yesterday. Another soldier was wounded in the incident. And a Marine died yesterday from injuries suffered in fighting in Anbar province. According to an Associated Press count, at least
two-thousand-843 members of the U-S military have died since the Iraq war began in March 2003.

STATE DEPARTMENT (AP) - The secretary of state says the Democratic victory in Congress will not stop the Bush
administration from keeping its commitment to Iraq. Condoleezza Rice says the election did nothing to deter the U-S
from continuing its mission until "the goal that took us to Iraq" is achieved. The secretary tells a Singapore newspaper "Iraq has to be successful for America to be secure." However, Rice joins other administration officials in showing some post-election flexibility on the issue, saying, "We will certainly look to new ideas" about Iraq. The interview was distributed Thursday by the State Department.

BEIJING (AP) - China's top veterinary official is dismissing a study that reports a new strain of bird flu in China.
The study by scientists in the United States and Hong Kong says the new strain (H-five-N-one Fujian-like) has been found in almost all poultry outbreaks and some human cases in southern China. It's now the dominant version in Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia and Thailand. But the director of the Chinese Agriculture Ministry's veterinary bureau says there is no new strain at all. He calls the findings "utterly groundless." International health experts have repeatedly complained about Chinese foot-dragging in cooperating on investigating diseases such as bird flu and SARS. SARS emerged in southern China in late 2002 and eventually killed 774 people worldwide.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) - A U-N report says the flush toilet, taken for granted in most rich countries, could be a cheap but powerful tool to reduce childhood deaths and boost global development. The U-N Development Program report says lack of access to clean water and basic sanitation kills nearly two million young children each year. That amounts to nearly five thousand deaths per day, most of them preventable. And the report says poor sanitation makes diarrhea the second biggest childhood killer. The report cites studies that, in Peru, a flush toilet installed in the home increased by almost 60 percent the chances of a child surviving to the first birthday and in Egypt by 57 percent. The U-N agency calls for a global campaign to try to coordinate all the fragmented efforts of different agencies working with water.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The F-B-I is now investigating video footage that appears to show a police officer repeatedly striking a suspect's face, during a struggle on a Hollywood street. The arrest report, obtained by The Associated Press, says the officers feared the man might grab their guns. L-A Police Chief William Bratton calls the tape "disturbing." The tape shows two police officers holding down 24-year-old William Cardenas on a Hollywood sidewalk, with one of the officers repeatedly hitting Cardenas in the face. The struggling suspect yells repeatedly: "I can't breathe." The F-B-I says it began a civil rights inquiry after video of the three-month-old incident came to the bureau's attention. The footage is posted on YouTube-dot-com. The Police Department has begun criminal and administrative use-of-force investigations. Chief Bratton says: "There's no denying the video is disturbing." He says the investigation will determine whether the force was appropriate in light of what the officers were experiencing."

WASHINGTON - (AP) - Ed Bradley started in jazz, got wounded as a reporter in Cambodia, and was a tough interviewer on C-B-S' "60 Minutes" for 26 years. But now, his sudden death from leukemia is the news. Former
colleague Mike Wallace tells C-N-N's "Larry King Live" he was stunned at the news. President Bush says he and wife Laura are"deeply saddened." In a statement, the president says Bradley "produced distinctive investigative reports that inspired action and cemented his reputation as one of the most accomplished journalists of our time."
Other Bradley colleagues, like Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer say he'll be missed. Bradley died of leukemia Thursday at Mount Sinai hospital in New York. He was 65. The award-winning television journalist broke racial barriers at C-B-S News and created a distinctive, powerful body of work during his 26 years on "60 Minutes." Bradley joined the program in 1981 when Dan Rather left to replace Walter Cronkite as anchor of "The C-B-S Evening News."