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Tonight on Countdown
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Anti-terrorist officers arrested nine men in raids early Thursday in connection with the botched July 21 attacks on London's transit system, bringing to 20 the number of people police have in custody, including one of the alleged bombers.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8687124/Forget the war on terror. Now the Bush administration has a new description: "A global struggle against violent extremism." That's a mouthful. But the issue is not just semantics; it will help define what resources ought to be used in that "struggle."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/234205_wared.htmlCountdown w/ Keith Olbermann broadcasts LIVE at 8 pm et, and the count is never complete without you. Join us.
Keith's back!
Discovery docked at the international space station Thursday after performing an unprecedented back flip to allow those aboard the outpost to photograph the shuttle's belly, looking for signs of damage.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8736011/In the same week in July 2003 in which Bush administration officials told a syndicated columnist and a Time magazine reporter that a C.I.A. officer had initiated her husband's mission to Niger, an administration official provided a Washington Post reporter with a similar account. The first two episodes, involving the columnist Robert D. Novak and the reporter Matthew Cooper, have become the subjects of intense scrutiny in recent weeks. But little attention has been paid to what The Post reporter, Walter Pincus, has recently described as a separate exchange on July 12, 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/28/politics/28leak.html?Philadelphia police were intensively searching the area of Cobb's Creek Park Thursday for clues to the whereabouts of a pregnant woman missing since early last week. LaToyia Figueroa, 24, is five months pregnant and has a 7-year-old daughter.
The mystery over the existence of "Bigfoot" will have to remain a mystery a little longer. A hair sample that some claimed came from a sasquatch has turned out to be from a bison.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1122562817375_22/?hub=SciTechThat's some of what we're planning for tonight's show.
Finally,
A man who compared a woman's anatomy to a carburetor won an annual contest that celebrates the worst writing in the English language. "As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire," he wrote, comparing a woman's breasts to "small knurled caps of the oil dampeners." The competition highlights literary achievements of the most dubious sort - terrifyingly bad sentences that take their inspiration from minor writer Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" began, "It was a dark and stormy night."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WORST_WRITING?SITE=NWCN&TEMPLATE=STRANGEHEADS.html&SECTION=HOMEKeith blogs:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/Countdown Home:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/More:
Rescuers searched for survivors buried under debris Thursday and rushed aid to villages cut off by record-breaking rains that paralyzed Bombay and its surrounding state, leaving more than 500 dead.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8721885/The Irish Republican Army announced Thursday it is renouncing violence as a political weapon and resuming disarmament in a dramatic declaration designed to revive Northern Ireland's peace process.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8738475/American Muslim scholars who interpret religious law for their community issued an edict Thursday condemning terrorism against civilians in response to the wave of deadly attacks in Britain and other countries.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8740980/A judge on Thursday sentenced a Yemeni cleric who bragged about his ties to Osama bin Laden to 75 years in prison, the maximum penalty in a case that was shaken when the star witness set himself on fire outside the White House.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8741872/Seduced into scams: Online lovers often duped. Dating sites, singles chat rooms latest target of Nigerian scams.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8704213/The House by a wide margin approved a mammoth energy plan for the nation Thursday that sends billions of dollars in tax breaks and subsidies to energy companies, but is expected to do little to reduce U.S. oil consumption or dampen high energy prices, at least in the short term.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8739555/"Monster mice" are eating much larger albatross chicks alive, threatening rare bird species on a remote South Atlantic island seen as the world's most important seabird colony.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8739804/