Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain testified before the Hutton inquiry and denied the BBC’s claim that his aides had “sexed up” his dossier on Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction; Blair said he would have resigned if the story had been true.Guardian, BBC, New York TimesAlastair Campbell, Blair’s powerful director of communications, announced his resignation but claimed it had nothing to do with the dossier scandal.BBCMurfreesboro, Tennessee, adopted a new policy banning offensive body odor among city employees.Knoxville News SentinelTwo Iranian intelligence officers were charged with “semi-intentionally” causing the death of a Canadian photojournalist.ReutersAmerican soldiers continued to die in …

A joint congressional committee released an 850-page report concluding that the September 11 attacks could have been prevented; a 28-page section detailing the Saudi Arabian government’s links to the terrorists was redacted.APThe report, which also found no evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, had been slated for release in December 2002 but was delayed due to administrative wrangling over which sections should be classified.UPIAfter killing Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay, U.S. forces circulated grisly photos of the corpses in hopes that the images would help to dispel conspiracy theories, popular among Iraqis, that the United States is …

Russian president Vladimir Putin gave a speech about the Chechen hostage debacle and declared that Russia will attack terrorists wherever they may be (“I stress, wherever they may be located”), suggesting that the Bush Doctrine, which disregards traditional principles of national sovereignty, has become the new international norm. Billboards went up in Moscow quoting Putin’s remark that “We could not save everyone. Forgive us.” Russian TV stations were playing war movies, flags were flying at half mast, and most people seemed to be supportive of the government’s decision to use a deadly gas to save the hostages even though it …

Former senators Warren Rudman and Gary Hart warned in a new report that the federal government has done virtually nothing to secure the nation against terrorist attack. Power plants, refineries, and transportation infrastructure are still unprotected; local police, firefighters, and other emergency personnel are almost as unprepared for attacks now as they were in September 2001; almost none of the cargo containers entering the country are inspected; and the federal government has authorized only $92 million of the $2 billion needed to secure the nation’s ports. The FBI warned that terrorists might be planning an attack somewhere, possibly involving trains. …

President George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair got together at Camp David to talk about Iraq; at a news conference both men cited a satellite photo showing recent construction activity at an old Iraqi nuclear site as evidence that they must invade Iraq now. President Bush compared Saddam Hussein to a crawfish and said he was “stiffing the world.” Bush and Blair also mentioned a 1998 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency and said that Iraq could be six months away from developing nuclear weapons. “I don’t know what more evidence we need,” Bush said. But …

After reviewing the devastation caused by the biggest wildfire in Oregon’s history, President George W. Bush announced his plan to protect 190 million acres of national forest land by allowing more logging to do away with flammable old trees and by protecting the timber industry from environmentalists’ lawsuits that could delay such logging. “There is a fine balance between people expressing themselves and using litigation to keep the United States . . . from enacting a common-sense forest policy,” he noted. Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf rewrote his country’s constitution, creating 29 amendments that allow him to dissolve the elected parliament, …

American newspapers and other content providers were still ignoring growing evidence, reported in the British press, of George W. Bush’s electoral coup, including new evidence that thousands of black Floridians were improperly removed from the list of approved voters. Bill Clinton’s corrupt pardons continued to dominate the news; Senator Hillary Clinton chastised her portly brother for exercising “terrible misjudgment” when he accepted $400,000 to help a coke dealer and another felon obtain pardons from his brother-in-law. Federal authorities in New York were investigating whether the pardon of four Hasidic Jews convicted of fraud was granted in exchange for votes. Roger …

A Concorde airplane crashed in Paris; two amateur Hungarian photographers snapped a picture of the doomed plane with flames shooting from its engines, which were manufactured by Rolls Royce, just before it destroyed a small hotel near the airport. Investigators soon narrowed their suspicions to a fuel leak, saying that previously detected cracks in another Concorde were unrelated. Atmospheric scientists discovered that some 4,000 tons of a new synthetic greenhouse gas have been released into the atmosphere; the gas, which takes 1,000 years to degrade, may be a by-product of weapons production. A Russian spacecraft docked with the International Space …