Spitzer said the suit filed in New York City against Intermix Media of Los Angeles combats the redirecting of home computer users to unwanted websites and its own website that includes ads, the adding of unnecessary toolbar items and the delivery of unwanted ads that pop up on computer screens. After a six-month investigation, Spitzer concluded the company installed a wide range of advertising software on countless personal computers nationwide.

"Spyware and adware are more than an annoyance," Spitzer said. "These fraudulent programs foul machines, undermine productivity and in many cases frustrate consumers' efforts to remove them from their computers. These issues can serve to be a hindrance to the growth of e-commerce."

Spitzer's civil suit accuses Intermix of violating state General Business Law provisions against false advertising and deceptive business practices. He also accuses them of trespass under New York common law.

The company is accused of download ads and software that directs ads to a computer based on the user's activities. Spitzer's investigators said the downloads then attach to computers, often slowing their operation and crashing the computers as well as interfering with use of the computer through pop-up ads. Often the downloads were made without notice when a user visited a website, played a game or accepted a screen saver. Sometimes the user was asked permission through an often vague reference in a lengthy licensing agreement which could be misleading or inaccurate, investigators said.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes, according to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a cigar is an economic prop to a brutal totalitarian regime. Arguing against loosening sanctions against Cuba last year, DeLay warned that Fidel Castro "will take the money. Every dime that finds its way into Cuba first finds its way into Fidel Castro's blood-thirsty hands.... American consumers will get their fine cigars and their cheap sugar, but at the cost of our national honor."

DeLay has long been one of Congress' most vocal critics of what he calls Castro's "thugocracy," which is why some sharp-eyed Time readers were surprised last week to see a photo of the Majority Leader smoking one of Cuba's best?a Hoyo de Monterrey double corona, which generally costs about $25 when purchased overseas and is not available in this country. The cigar's label clearly states that it was made in "Habana." The photo was taken in Jerusalem on July 28, 2003, during a meeting between DeLay and the Republican Jewish Coalition at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

Putin's stop in Cairo was the first state visit to Egypt by a Russian or Soviet leader since Nikita Khrushchev came in 1964 to inaugurate construction of the Aswan High Dam, which the Soviet Union helped finance.

Egypt's close ties with Moscow began waning after Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser died in 1970. Nasser's successor, Anwar Sadat, set the regional powerhouse on a pro-American track that accelerated under Mubarak. Putin's trip to Israel is the first by a Kremlin leader to the Jewish state and is part of his effort to burnish an image as a world leader amid accusations of backsliding on democracy at home.

It comes as increasingly close ties between the two countries are threatened by Russia's determination to push ahead with a missile sale to Syria that Israel considers threatening. Other potential sore points are Moscow's nuclear aid to Iran, signs of rising anti-Semitism in Russia and the Kremlin's push to extradite several former Russian billionaires who have taken residence in Israel.

"This is the highest percentage that Gallup has found on this measure since the question was first asked in late May 2003," the pollsters observed. "At that time, 31% said the administration deliberately misled Americans. This sentiment has gradually increased over time, to 39% in July 2003, 43% in January/February 2004, and 47% in October 2004."

Also, according to the latest poll, more than half of Americans, 54%, disapprove of the way President Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, while 43% approve. In early February, Americans were more evenly divided on the way Bush was handling the situation in Iraq, with 50% approving and 48% disapproving. Last week Gallup reported that 53% now believe that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was "not worth it."

Worried about a political deadlock in Iraq and a spike in mayhem from an emboldened insurgency, the Bush administration has pressed Iraqi leaders in recent days to end their stalemate over forming a new government, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney personally exhorting top Kurdish and Shiite politicians to come together.

The White House pressure, reported by Iraqi officials in Baghdad and an American official in Washington on Sunday, was a change in the administration's hands-off approach to Iraqi politics. The change was disclosed as insurgents unleashed a devastating technique, with twin double bombings at a police academy in Tikrit and an ice cream parlor in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad that killed 21 and wounded scores more.

Ms. Rice on Friday telephoned Iraq's new president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, to urge him to complete the government "as soon as they could" and "to get a status of where things were," a senior State Department official in Washington said Sunday. The official stressed that Ms. Rice did not tell Mr. Talabani how to form a government, just that the process needed to be concluded.

Mr. Powell has not spoken publicly about the Bolton nomination. But his associates said he had told two Republican senators, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, that he had been troubled by the way Mr. Bolton had treated an intelligence analyst and others at the State Department who had disagreed with him.

Mr. Chafee and Mr. Hagel, both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have expressed concern about Mr. Bolton's temperament, credibility and treatment of intelligence analysts. The senators' concerns, with those of Senator George V. Voinovich, the Ohio Republican, were among the factors that led the committee to postpone a vote on Mr. Bolton's nomination until next month.

Accounts were conflicting as to whether Mr. Powell or the senators had initiated the phone calls. A spokeswoman for Mr. Powell said he had only returned calls from others, but one person familiar with one conversation said it had been Mr. Powell who had reached out to Mr. Hagel.

When a high-level meeting between governments has not gone especially well, the participants sometimes speak afterward of their "frank exchange of views." Such was apparently the case on Wednesday in Moscow, where Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But on issue after issue -- the pace of Russia's democratization, restrictions on foreign oil investors and the security of Russian nuclear materials -- the secretary spoke only of differences aired, not of tangible progress made. At one point, her host, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, responded sarcastically to Rice's exhortations.

"I would say, like the U.S. is interested in a strong and a democratic Russia that could play its active role internationally, we are also interested that the U.S. should be a strong and democratic partner and country playing an active role internationally," said Lavrov.

Sen. Biden of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the committee, read from a letter [Melody Townsel, a former contract worker for the United States Agency for International Development] had sent the committee, although he did not name her.

Ms. Townsel, whose allegations had begun to emerge in the news media , has said that for two weeks in 1994, when Mr. Bolton was working as a private lawyer for a subcontractor that clashed with her employer, he harassed her in a Moscow hotel, falsely claiming that she had misused funds and could face jail.

"'Mr. Bolton,'" Mr. Biden read from the letter, "proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel, throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door, and genuinely behaving like a madman. I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr Bolton then routinely visited me to pound on the door and shout threats.'"

Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, said today that Mr. Bolton's alleged comments to Ms. Townsel about possibly facing jail were "absolute lies."

John R. Bolton -- who is seeking confirmation as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations -- often blocked then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and, on one occasion, his successor, Condoleezza Rice, from receiving information vital to U.S. strategies on Iran, according to current and former officials who have worked with Bolton.

In some cases, career officials found back channels to Powell or his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, who encouraged assistant secretaries to bring information directly to him. In other cases, the information was delayed for weeks or simply did not get through. The officials, who would discuss the incidents only on the condition of anonymity because some continue to deal with Bolton on other issues, cited a dozen examples of memos or information that Bolton refused to forward during his four years as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

Bolton's time at the State Department under Rice has been brief. But authoritative officials said Bolton let her go on her first European trip without knowing about the growing opposition there to Bolton's campaign to oust the head of the U.N. nuclear agency. "She went off without knowing the details of what everybody else was saying about how they were not going to join the campaign," according to a senior official. Bolton has been trying to replace Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who is perceived by some within the Bush administration as too soft on Iran.

Iraq's interim government said Sunday that it had dispatched several battalions of security forces to a small village in central Iraq in response to reports of Sunni Muslims capturing and holding large numbers of Shiite hostages.

Jouwad al-Maliky, a member of the National Assembly's Shiite majority, claimed about 200 people were being held in the village of Madain. He gave no further details about the incident.

But an Interior Ministry spokesman, Sabah Khadim, said no hostages or militants were found after security forces surrounded the village. Security forces will continue to search the area, he said. Khadim said early reports of the hostage-taking, which emerged Thursday, were unsubstantiated and being exploited by politicians.

One of the entomologists said he admired all three men for "having the courage of their convictions" and standing up for freedom and democracy.

As winter storms battered the country this January, Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas and his wife, Christine, flew to Hawaii. They stayed at the Big Island's Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel with views of what Cond? Nast Traveler calls America's No. 1 beach. Mr. DeLay also played on an Arnold Palmer-designed golf course that climbs from the shoreline to a 700-foot-high bluff overlooking the ocean.

The DeLays' five-day trip cost $10,000, according to congressional travel records, but they didn't pay for it. Instead, the tab was picked up by corporations and trade organizations that represent U.S. airports and airlines. The Republican leader's sole obligation was to participate in a panel discussion on the first morning of the annual aviation conference of the American Association of Airport Executives. More than 40 lawmakers and staffers from both parties also attended the conference.

John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, desperately needs a haircut. It does not have to be a $600 Sally Hershberger cut. Bolton simply needs the basics. Tidy the curling, unruly locks at the nape of his neck, tame the volume at the crown, reel in the wings flapping above his ears, and broker a compromise between his sand-colored mop and his snow-colored mustache.

He needs to do this, not because he should be minding the recommendations of men's fashion magazines or grooming experts but because when he settled in before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week to answer questions about his record, his philosophy and his intentions at the U.N., he looked as though he did not even have enough respect for the proceedings to bother combing his hair -- or, for that matter, straightening his tie, or wearing a shirt that did not put his neck in a chokehold. Bolton was one wrinkled suit away from being an insolent mess.

Bolton sat across from his questioners with a thick, dull slab of hair positioned diagonally across his forehead. It is tempting to say that he has a sloppy schoolboy's haircut, but that would malign studious young men and suggest that they are dismissive of propriety and the importance of making a good public impression. Looking back to Bolton's school days at Yale, one notices that he was better groomed in his younger years. In his 1970 class book photo, Bolton essentially has the same haircut, but his locks are not drooping over his forehead as if he'd stepped from the shower and shaken his hair dry in the manner of an Afghan hound. His tie also appears to be straight. Thirty-five years ago, his shirt fit. (Perhaps it is the same shirt?)

"When I first read that in the newspaper about the need to have passports, particularly the day crossings that take place, about a million for instance in the state of Texas, I said, 'What's going on here?'" Bush said when asked about the new rules at an American Society of Newspaper Editors convention. "I thought there was a better way to expedite the legal flow of traffic and people."

The president said he has instructed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and officials from the Department of Homeland Security to see if there is enough flexibility in the new policy to accommodate regular travelers, including truckers and tourists. Bush said one option might be electronic fingerprint imaging, "to serve as a so-called passport for daily traffic."

A senior U.S. government official involved in the policy change said Homeland Security and State Department officials had vetted the change exhaustively with the White House before announcing it. The officials said they always anticipated some changes would be needed.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is all but certain to press for a rule change that would ban filibusters of judicial nominations in the next few weeks, despite misgivings by some of his fellow Republicans and a possible Democratic backlash that could paralyze the chamber, close associates said yesterday.

The strategy carries significant risks for the Tennessee Republican, who is weighing a 2008 presidential bid. It could embroil the Senate in a bitter stalemate that would complicate passage of President Bush's agenda and raise questions about Frist's leadership capabilities. Should he fail to make the move or to get the necessary votes, however, Frist risks the ire of key conservative groups that will play big roles in the 2008 GOP primaries.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

And if you want the menu -- here, I'll just give you the menu for the lunch. They had Arugula and Blood Orange Salad, Pecan-Smoked Beef Tenderloin -- which was very good -- Grilled Asparagus and Roasted Seasonal Vegetables, some Homemade Peach Sorbet, and then topped it off with some Brownies.

This is the first time that salaries have increased more slowly than prices since the 1990-91 recession. Though salary growth has been relatively sluggish since the 2001 downturn, inflation also had stayed relatively subdued until last year, when the consumer price index rose 2.7%. But wages rose only 2.5%.

The effective 0.2-percentage-point erosion in workers' living standards occurred while the economy expanded at a healthy 4%, better than the 3% historical average.

Meanwhile, corporate profits hit record highs as companies got more productivity out of workers while keeping pay increases down....

But higher wages could hurt the economy by stoking inflation further. Employers might pass the costs on to consumers in higher prices, and that in turn might prompt the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more aggressively, possibly slowing the recovery or even triggering a recession.

With benefits factored in, workers' total compensation did outpace inflation in 2004, even if they didn't see it in their paychecks. But employers also are requiring workers to pay a greater share of their premiums.

"Healthcare has eroded the wage base," said Janemarie Mulvey, chief economist with the Employment Policy Foundation, a business-funded think tank in Washington.

Army Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester bolted from her Humvee, took cover behind a berm along the road and began firing at the swarm of insurgents ambushing a U.S. military convoy south of Baghdad.

"Bullets were flying everywhere," said Hester, 23, of Bowling Green. "I could hear them pinging off the truck in back of me. I could hear them hitting the ground next to me. It was pretty crazy."

For almost a half-hour, Hester and nine other Kentucky National Guard soldiers, including another woman, Spec. Ashley Pullen, fought off 40 to 50 attackers armed with assault rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. When the shooting ended, 26 insurgents lay dead and seven were wounded.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, asked for information on the bill a Martinez authored in regards to the Schiavo case, Martinez said, and Martinez "pulled a one-page document from his coat pocket and handed to Harkin," according to AP.

"Unbeknownst to me," Martinez revealed, "I had given him a copy of the now infamous memo."

One of the surest paths to riches in Washington is to have these five words on a resume: "Office of Representative Tom DeLay." Eleven lobbyists who once worked for the Texas Republican and House majority leader helped bring in at least $45 million in fees for their firms in the past two years. By comparison, former aides of House Speaker Dennis Hastert lobbying during that period helped bring in about $2.1 million.

Hirschmann [DeLay's chief of staff until 2002] lobbied Congress to add a prescription-drug benefit to Medicare that would prevent the government from negotiating lower prices, according to disclosure records compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics. She also worked to curb class-action lawsuits; Wyeth has set aside more than $21 billion to pay claims that its diet drugs caused heart and lung complications in patients.

Both measures, which were strongly backed by DeLay, are now law. Hirschmann declined to comment on her activities on behalf of the company; Wyeth had no immediate comment.

DeLay, 57, an 11-term congressman, also sought over Senate opposition legislation to protect oil companies from being sued for using MTBE, a gasoline additive that was found to contaminate groundwater.

Altria and Reynolds

When the Senate voted in 2004 to link a multimillion-dollar buyout of tobacco farmers with a provision allowing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the industry, DeLay objected, saying it was an attempt to ban tobacco through a "back-door regulatory process." The Senate agreed to drop the FDA provision.

The wife and daughter of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, have been paid more than $500,000 since 2001 by Mr. DeLay's political action and campaign committees, according to a detailed review of disclosure statements filed with the Federal Election Commission and separate fund-raising records in Mr. DeLay's home state, Texas.

Although several members of Congress employ family members as campaign managers or on their political action committees, advocacy groups seeking an overhaul of federal campaign-finance and ethics laws say that the payments to Mr. DeLay's family members were unusually generous, and should be the focus of new scrutiny of the Texas congressman.

Mr. DeLay, whose position as majority leader makes him the second-most-powerful House member, has offered a vigorous public defense in recent weeks to a flurry of ethics accusations from Democratic lawmakers and campaign watchdog groups, including charges that he violated House rules on travel. The executive director of Americans for a Republican Majority and a major fund-raiser for the committee were indicted in Texas last year on charges of illegal fund-raising, and prosecutors there have refused to rule out the possibility of charges against Mr. DeLay in the continuing inquiry.

In recent weeks, public interest groups have called on the House ethics committee and the Justice Department to review lavish, privately financed overseas trips for Mr. DeLay and his aides, including a 1997 trip to Russia that was underwritten by a conservative education group closely linked to a powerful Republican lobbyist who often boasted of his influence with the majority leader.