But Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood said the statement did not go far enough and called on the pontiff to apologise in person. "The Vatican Secretary of State says that the Pope is sorry because his statements had been badly interpreted, but there is no bad interpretation," Abdel Moneim Abul Futuh, a senior official from the opposition party told AFP.

*****

In his speech at Regensburg University on Tuesday, the German-born Pope quoted Emperor Manuel II Paleologos of the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire. Stressing that they were not his own words, he quoted the emperor saying: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." He also said that violence was "incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".

Reactions to the speech have come from such leaders as Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who said efforts to link Islam and terrorism should be clearly opposed. Street protests have been held in Pakistan, India, Turkey and Gaza. In the West Bank city of Nablus, two churches were firebombed on Saturday in attacks claimed by a group which said it was protesting against the Pope's remarks. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come to the pontiff's defence, saying the aim of the speech had been misunderstood.

The sight of a German Pope crossing into the death camp beneath the infamously false Nazi sign, "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Will Set You Free), is arguably the most striking image of Benedict’s 14-month-old papacy. Walking alone with his hands clasped in front of him, an utterly grim expression fixed across his face, the 79-year-old pontiff entered as both the leader of the billion-strong Roman Catholic Church, and a World War II-generation German citizen. "To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man is almost impossible — and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a Pope from Germany," he said.

With these words, Benedict set off on a rather remarkable theological meditation on the Holocaust. "Why, Lord" he asked, "did you remain silent?" It is of course an unanswerable question, but one that Benedict used to implore Catholics and non-Catholics alike to pray — and work — so that it never happens again. He unpacked the singular aims of Hitler’s Final Solution, and discovered universal religious and Christian theological lessons: "The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth," he said. "Deep down, those vicious criminals, by wiping out this people, wanted to kill the God who laid down principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that are entirely valid."

"If this people, by its very existence, was a witness to the God who spoke to humanity and took us to himself, then that God finally had to die and power had to belong to man alone — to those men, who thought that by force they had made themselves masters of the world." He concluded the point by returning to the specific question of Christianity: "By destroying Israel, they ultimately wanted to tear up the taproot of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of man, the rule of the powerful," he said. Benedict went on to say that the remains of cruelty on display at the extermination camps "don’t instill hatred in us; instead they show us the terrifying effect of hatred."

Almost as if on cue, as Benedict's voyage to Auschwitz drew toward its close early Sunday evening, the wind picked up and a cool rain began to fall. The final ceremony began with the Pope pausing to pray at memorials in the different languages of the 1.5 million killed. But by the time he reached the final plaque, the rain had stopped, the umbrellas were tucked away, and the pack of reporters noticed that across the broad field of half-standing brick barracks of Birkenau, a vivid rainbow had appeared. The editors of TIME, like those who A. M. Rosenthal worked for back in the 1950s, would surely not normally consider this news. But on a day that the German Pope came to Auschwitz to ponder God’s silence, that surprising explosion of colors seemed well worth reporting.

"It was moving when he said clearly that the Nazis, by killing the Jewish nation, aimed to kill God," he said. "Linking Christianity's roots with Judaism is a strong argument against anti-Semitism," said sociologist Jadwiga Staniszkis. "I think this speech should be read."

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says he has leg-pressed 2,000 pounds, but some say he'd be in a pretty tough spot if he tried. The "700 Club" host's feat of strength is recounted on the Web site of his Christian Broadcasting Network, in a posting headlined "How Pat Robertson Leg Pressed 2,000 Pounds." This photo provided by the Christian Broadcasting Network shows religious broadcaster Pat Robertson leg pressing what is claimed to be 2,000 pounds at the fitness center at the Founders Inn on Regent University campus in Virginia Beach, Va., Feb. 1, 2003. A CBN spokesman claims the photo is from 2003 even though the date stamp on the photo says 8/1/1994.

According to the CBN Web site, Robertson worked his way up to lifting a ton with the help of his physician, who is not named. The posting does not say when the lift occurred, but a CBN spokeswoman released photos to The Associated Press that she said showed Robertson lifting 2,000 pounds in 2003, when Robertson was 73. He is now 76.

*****

Clay Travis of CBS SportsLine.com called the 2,000-pound assertion impossible in a column this week, writing that the leg-press record for football players at Florida State University is 665 pounds less. "Where in the world did Robertson even find a machine that could hold 2,000 pounds at one time?" Travis asked.

*****

The CBN Web site attributes Robertson's energy in part to "his age-defying protein shake." The site offers a recipe for the shake, which contains ingredients such as soy protein isolate, whey protein isolate, flaxseed oil and apple cider vinegar.

The French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad on Wednesday and published one of its own, further angering Muslim groups.

The weekly's front page carried the new cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad burying his face in his hands and saying: "It's hard to be loved by fools." President Jacques Chirac condemned "overt provocations" which could enflame passions. "Anything that can hurt the convictions of someone else, in particular religious convictions, should be avoided," Chirac said.

Moderate Muslims, while condemning the cartoons, have expressed fears that radicals are hijacking the debate over the boundary between media freedom and religious respect.

In countries including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Muslims are boycotting Danish goods, and, in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian militants threatened to kidnap Westerners if governments don't apologize for the actions of newspapers in their countries. Iran cut trade relations with Denmark when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Feb. 4 issued a decree calling on the Trade Ministry to terminate economic agreements with all Western countries where the cartoons were published.

• The Pakistan Medical Association is now refusing to prescribe any drugs from firms based in European countries where the Mohammed cartoons were published. The Association will boycott drugs from from Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Germany and France to protest the "blasphemous" drawings. That means no Tamiflu for Pakistanis -- Tamiflu is made by Roche in Switzerland. Roche also manufactures the breast cancer drug Herceptin, the HIV drugs Fortovase and Invirase, the Cystic Fybrosis drug Pulmozyme and the acne drug Accutane -- just to name a few. Hey, what a great idea -- make sure your own people don't get their cancer drugs just to spite a bunch of Danish cartoonists.
• In India riots broke out over the cartoons. The riot police used tear gas and water cannons to quell the protest -- four students were injured.
• Four are dead in Kabul where 2,000 armed protesters tried to break into a U.S. army base outside Bagram, the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan. They must not have gotten the sniveling memo from the U.S. State Department condemning the cartoons.
• British Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed has declared that the Danish cartoonists should be tried under Islamic law and then (after it's proven that they committed the crime of blasphemy) they should be executed. He noted with dismay that this did not appear to be legal under British law. Bummer.
• Meanwhile, American Muslims peacefully protested against the Philadelphia Inquirer for reprinting the cartoons; they also have threatened a boycott of the newspaper if the newspaper does not apologize. The demonstrators carried signs that said, "Freedom of Speech, Not Irresponsible Speech," "No to Hate" and "Islam=Nonviolence." Not a death threat or burning effigy in sight so far, just civilized, non-violent protests -- the way citizens of enlightened nations tend to do.

Publication of the cartoons in Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands triggered condemnation in the Muslim and Arab world, where consumers turned their anger on Danish companies.

Arla, the dairy company based in Denmark, where the cartoons were first published, admitted on Thursday its sales in some Middle East countries had fallen to zero. Carrefour, the French retailer, said it had removed Danish products from shelves in its Middle East operations.

Other Danish companies targeted in the boycott include Lego, the toymaker, and Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceuticals company.

As popular protests spread, the leaders of Egypt and Afghanistan warned the cartoons had offended millions of Muslims and could be exploited by terrorists in their war against the west.

Meanwhile, a Jordanian gossip tabloid defiantly published three of the cartoons that have triggered outrage in the Arab and Muslim world.

"Muslims of the world, be reasonable," said the editor-in-chief of the weekly independent newspaper Al-Shihan in an editorial alongside the cartoons, including the one showing the Muslim religion's founder wearing a bomb-shaped turban.

The German-born Pope delighted the crowds at his weekly audience by wearing a red velvet cap trimmed with white fur along with his scarlet cape as he drove around the square. A Vatican insider said: "The Pope was told it was cold outside and he said he had just the thing. "He came out holding the hat and said he would wear it. He even joked that it made him look like Father Christmas."

The traditional hat, known as a camauro, used to be worn by popes in the Middle Ages to keep their heads warm. In modern times only John XXIII, who was pope from 1958 to 1963, was regularly seen in one.

Pope Benedict changed into his more familiar white skull cap when he arrived at the podium, where he told a packed square that Christmas was a time to remember the true roots of the faith.

Looking over the crowd towards a 100ft Christmas tree, the Pope said that Christmas lights adorning cities and houses around the world should "remind us of another light, invisible to the eyes but not to the heart". The Pope has already shown a taste for traditional papal dress, preferring delicate red slippers for daily wear rather than the robust walking shoes favoured by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the Genesis description of how God created the universe and Darwin's theory of evolution were "perfectly compatible" if the Bible were read correctly. His statement was a clear attack on creationist campaigners in the US, who see evolution and the Genesis account as mutually exclusive.

"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," he said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator".

This idea was part of theology, Cardinal Poupard emphasised, while the precise details of how creation and the development of the species came about belonged to a different realm - science. Cardinal Poupard said that it was important for Catholic believers to know how science saw things so as to "understand things better". His statements were interpreted in Italy as a rejection of the "intelligent design" view, which says the universe is so complex that some higher being must have designed every detail.

On a radio show being broadcast Wednesday, Dobson said he discussed Miers with Rove on Oct. 1, two days before her nomination was announced. Dobson said Rove told him "she is from a very conservative church, which is almost universally pro-life," but denied he had gotten any assurances from the White House that she would vote to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

Dobson said Rove told him that Miers had been a member of Texas Right to Life. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said she was not a member of the organization "that I'm aware of." "My understanding is that she attended some events, some fund-raising events that they had," McClellan said.

Miers bought a $150 ticket to a 1989 fund-raising dinner for another anti-abortion group — Texans United for Life — according to the president of the group, now called the Texans for Life Coalition.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said: "The rest of America, including the Senate, deserves to know what he and the White House know. We don’t confirm Justices of the Supreme Court on a wink and a nod. And a litmus test is no less a litmus test by using whispers and signals," the Vermont senator said. "No political faction should be given a monopoly of relevant knowledge about a nomination, just as no faction should be permitted to hound a nominee to withdraw, before the hearing process has even begun."

Although he said that curriculum decisions should be made by school districts rather than the federal government, Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories.

"Both sides ought to be properly taught . . . so people can understand what the debate is about," he said, according to an official transcript of the session. Bush added: "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. . . . You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

These comments drew sharp criticism yesterday from opponents of the theory, who said there is no scientific evidence to support it and no educational basis for teaching it.

Much of the scientific establishment says that intelligent design is not a tested scientific theory but a cleverly marketed effort to introduce religious -- especially Christian -- thinking to students. Opponents say that church groups and other interest groups are pursuing political channels instead of first building support through traditional scientific review.

Consultative Council member Mohammad al-Zulfa's proposal has unleashed a storm in this conservative country where the subject of women drivers remains taboo. Al-Zulfa's cell phone now constantly rings with furious Saudis accusing him of encouraging women to commit the double sins of discarding their veils and mixing with men. He gets phone text messages calling on Allah to freeze his blood. Chat rooms bristle with insulting accusations that al-Zulfa is "driven by carnal instincts with 454 horsepower."

There even have been calls to kick al-Zulfa from the council and strip him of his Saudi nationality. The uproar may be astounding to outsiders. But in Saudi Arabia, where the religious establishment has the upper hand in defining women's freedoms, the issue touches on the kingdom's strict Islamic lifestyle.

Conservatives, who believe women should be shielded from strange men, say driving will allow a woman to leave home whenever she pleases and go wherever she wishes. Some say it will present her with opportunities to violate Islamic law, such as exposing her eyes while driving or interacting with strange men, like police officers or mechanics. "Driving by women leads to evil," Munir al-Shahrani wrote in a letter to the editor of the Al-Watan daily. "Can you imagine what it will be like if her car broke down? She would have to seek help from men."

But al-Zulfa contends neither the law nor Islam bans women from driving. Instead, the ban is based on fatwas, or Islamic edicts, by senior clerics who say that any driving by women would create situations for sinful temptation.

It is the same argument used to restrict other freedoms. Without written permission from a male guardian, women may not travel, get an education or work. Regardless of permission, they are not allowed to mix with men in public or leave home without wearing black cloaks, called abayas.

Some Quranic etiquette is intellectual: One should pronounce each word correctly; one should seek to discover what difficult words mean. There are also prestige issues. For instance, one should not place any other book on top of the Quran. This last was a violation that my Cairo doorman Muhammad was ever concerned to root out. Once he had satisfied himself that I had not put the Quran under any other book or item in my apartment, he would instruct me to pour us both a glass of whiskey, after which he would not touch the Quran again until he was sober and had somewhat repented for a clear transgression.

Once, Muhammad discovered in my garbage an exam I had taken that tested knowledge of certain ayat (or verses) from the Quran, and he reproached me for putting the holy book in the trash. I said that it was not the Quran itself, but only words taken from it. His response was astonishing: "You can either burn your exam," he explained, "or do this...." At which point, he tore off a verse, rolled it up, put it into his mouth, and swallowed it. I note that Muhammad was a doorman and not a scholar, but apparently in this particular instance, there was no problem if the Quran was to wind up in the toilet presently.....

At any rate, it is dangerous to invest artifacts with too much metaphysical significance. The fact that many Muslims regard the Quran as the literal word of God, as we have frequently been reminded over the last week, poses an enormous problem. Without reinterpreting or recontextualizing a sacred text that suited the exigencies of an ancient Arabian community, it is going to be difficult for 21st-century believers to get along with non-Muslims on a very small planet.

Ladies and gentlemen, I've been attending these dinners for years and just quietly sitting there. Well, I've got a few things I want to say for a change.

This is going to be fun because he really doesn't have a clue about what I'm gonna' to say next. George always says he's delighted to come to these press dinners. Baloney. He's usually in bed by now.

I'm not kidding.

I said to him the other day, "George, if you really want to end tyranny in the world, you're going to have to stay up later."

I am married to the president of the United States, and here's our typical evening: Nine o'clock, Mr. Excitement here is sound asleep, and I'm watching Desperate Housewives— with Lynne Cheney. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a desperate housewife. I mean, if those women on that show think they're desperate, they oughta be with George.

One night, after George went to bed, Lynne Cheney, Condi Rice, Karen Hughes and I went to Chippendale's. I wouldn't even mention it except Ruth Ginsberg and Sandra Day O'Connor saw us there. I won't tell you what happened, but Lynne's Secret Service codename is now "Dollar Bill."

But George and I are complete opposites — I'm quiet, he's talkative, I'm introverted, he's extroverted, I can pronounce nuclear —

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."

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."

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.

"Ken Mehlman is not gay," Steve Schmidt, a senior official of the Bush campaign and a friend of Mehlman’s told Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent who wrote the piece for the magazine.