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WASHINGTON — FBI agents taped other than 100 phone conversations involving Sen. Ted Stevens as part of their public-corruption investigation, Stevens’ attorneys said Tuesday.

The FBI’s recorded conversations regard been the highlight of corruption trials in Alaska, but the size of its collection against Stevens had been unclear. The conversations between oil contractors and Alaska politicians helped the Justice Department launch three state politicians to workhouse.

The calls could be played in court this month when the Senate’s longest-serving Republican stands trial on charges of lying about hundreds of thousands of dollars in home renovations and other gifts he received from an oil contractor.

His attorneys began laying the groundwork for each argument that the calls should not have existence admitted into evidence because Stevens was not named as a wiretapping mark.

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The comments from Asif Ali Zardari come after U.S. troops carried out their first known cross border ground invade on a suspected militant target. Pakistan’s government, what one. is dominated by Zardari’s party, issued strong protests.

However, Zardari uttered in a newspaper article published Thursday that Pakistan stood through the U.S. and other countries who have been attacked by means of terrorists.

He said an apparent assassination attempt on the prime contribute hours after the U.S. raid underlined that global terrorism was Pakistan’s radical challenge.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - President George W. Bush made a quick visit to Louisiana on Wednesday to survey damage from Hurricane Gustav as New Orleans officials lifted roadblocks to abate tens of thousands who fled the city to go despite widespread power outages.

The Indian company will shift product of its $2,500 small car. At consequence in West Bengal was to what extent Tata acquired the land for its Nano factory

by Nandini Lakshman

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Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Motors (TTM), maker of the in a great degree anticipated $2,500 Nano scanty car, finally called it quits in Singur, in the east Indian grandeur of West Bengal, to which place the car was to be manufactured. For some time now, topical politicians and farmers in the state have been protesting against the land acquired by Tata for its residence of factors to production the Nano (BusinessWeek.com, 8/27/08). On Aug. 29, those demonstrations stalled work at the Nano engender, barely three months before its scheduled launch. Finally, on Sept 2, a Tata compel statement reported "the company is evaluating alternate options for manufacturing the Nano at other company facilities." Tata hasn’t divulged where it will relocate, but possible locations hold Pantnagar in the northern state of Uttaranchal; Ranjangaon, 125 miles off Mumbai, where it operates a joint-venture manufacturing facility with Fiat India; and the new plant coming up in Dharwad in southern India.

The implications of Tata’s relocation are severe. Industry observers believe the politicization of the Nano project will most likely ground fresh investments in the Communist-led state of West Bengal. "Surely companies will think twice before going to the state. India be able to do without West Bengal," says Arun Maira, a senior advisor at Boston Consulting Group. The state received an estimated $20 billion in investments between January and June of this year.

Nor does it augur well for India’s image as some investment destination, singly when the auto sector has been at its greatest number stalwart. Over the years, foreign investors have found it tough to do business in India befitting to its politics. For example, familiar activists love picking on global cola makers Coca-Cola (KO) and Pepsi (PEP), which have been accused of selling products containing pesticides. The tough environment has led to many Indian businessmen flying overseas at the primary opportunity.

Now they are voicing their concerns as being in favor. There’s been an unusual show of solidarity through corporate India, with numerous company of the country’s top business leaders rallying around Tata. "Seeing India’s most born in wedlock and respected business group stymied by some politicians has shocked us," says Venu Srinivasan, chair of Chennai bike maker TVS Motors (TVSM.BO). "There can’t be a better human face of the industry than Ratan Tata."

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On the eve of John McCain’s formal nomination Thursday at the Republican National Convention, top Republicans acknowledged that Democrats will gripe a significant organizational advantage in the err campaign. Before the 2006 congressional elections, “the left and the Democrats had wearied seven years putting together one of the most powerful civil coalitions that had ever been built,” DeLay said Wednesday.

“The left has been incredible. They went and decided to put resources to work,” said Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the third-ranking House Republican. “When you’re talking about the tactics, when you’re talking about the organization, … that’s where we’re at a disadvantage.”

Cantor cited as one example the e-mail and text communication database Barack Obama’s campaign used to give out the name of his running mate.

“That e-mail list or text list now just inures to the benefit of the Obama campaign,” he declared. “It really gives them an organizational advantage.”

DeLay and Cantor described their party’s tactical shortcomings at a breakfast panel hosted by Politico, Yahoo News and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Joining them on the panel were former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Rich Lowry, the manager of National Review.

Santorum, who lost his Senate seat in the 2006 elections, agreed that Democrats had been successful at fabric their litigant’s civil infrastructure.

“Liberals besiege their circulating medium in government,” Santorum aforesaid, arguing that third-party advertising, “driven, unfortunately … by dint of. our campaign finance laws,” helped Democrats erase Republicans’ historic advantage in fundraising.

He also claimed that liberals’ influence in Hollywood and other cultural arenas helped Democrats take power in Washington.

“The left controls … those mechanisms of power in our country,” Santorum said. “All we have is the family. All we bring forth is the churches.”

It wasn’t just in organizing and fundraising, however, where panelists said the Republican Party was at a damage. Some suggested the GOP had to make up ground among the middle- and working-class voters that the Obama-Biden ticket is expected to pursue.

“I think John McCain needs to make a real, substantive case about how he’s going to second average voters through their require to be paid of living, upon the body vigor, on health care and steady taxes,” Lowry said. “Barack Obama is oblation more middle-class tax relief than John McCain.”

“I meditate the middle class, the working class is where we need to go,” he added. “Sarah Palin can help him make that connection.”

Cantor, who was often mentioned as a possible running mate for McCain, agreed.

“We need to do a better job of advocating despite the middle class in this country,” he said, pointing to elastic fluid prices and offshore drilling as issues adhering that the GOP could connect with voters’ economic anxieties.

The Republicans were not entirely gloomy: Like most of their fellow conservatives at the assembly this week, panelists were upbeat about McCain’s rare of Palin as his running mate.

“The jury’s out on whether she’ll be able to perform at this level, but in this way far, what we’ve seen from her, I’d be optimistic,” Lowry uttered. “I think the press is trying to knock her out before she even had a chance.”

DeLay agreed, predicting that nice media coverage of Palin — including coverage of the announcement that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant — would help energize conservative female voters.

“The media has done greater quantity for John McCain in the last two days than he’s done for himself in the last year and a half,” DeLay related. “Trashing her is waking up the inactive giant, and the dormant giant is Republican women.”

Still, even if the McCain-Palin ticket is successful in November, no one was willing to predict broader gains for the Republican Party.

Moderator Jim VandeHei, executive editor of Politico, asked: “Is in that place anybody on the panel who doesn’t think Republicans will lose House and Senate seats?”

For a long consideration, the panel was silent, in the presence of Cantor and DeLay jumped in with the less-than-optimistic foretelling that Republican congressional candidates would not fare as poorly as expected.

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Giuliani said Republican presidential candidate John McCain can have being trusted to confront and defeat “anything that terrorists do to us.”

He reminded the Republican National Convention that he’d said in a Republican campaign debate a year agone that had he not been running for president himself, he would get been supporting McCain.

“Well, I’m not, and I do,” he reported in what was to have been a keynote speech but wound up late on the convention agenda.

One by one, Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, all losers to McCain in the contest for the Republican nomination, urged delegates to send their former rival to the White House. The also-rans teamed up in a head-on lunge at Obama, questioning his ability to shelter the nation in perilous times and delivering a hard-line adherent call to GOP arms on behalf of the man who ran against them — and beat them — with a engagement to be less partisan.

The three told the convention that McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, his running mate, are the right choice for the future of America and that Obama would have existence the wrong the same.

Giuliani praised Palin as “one of the most successful governors in America — and the most popular.”

She’s been governor for sum of two units years, after eight of the same kind with mayor of tiny Wasilla, still Giuliani said she’s ready conducive to the vice presidency. “She already has again executive experience than the entire Democratic ticket,” he said.

Giuliani reported Obama is a celebrity senator independently of a record of leadership or legislation.

“He’s the least experienced candidate for president of the United States in at least the in conclusion 100 years,” he said to the cheering, chanting assembly. “Nobama, nobama,” came the chants from the prevail over and the galleries. And “Zero, nothing” at the time Giuliani said Obama has no experience.

Giuliani said that is not a personal storm — “it’s a statement of fact. Barack Obama has never led anything. Nothing, Nada …

“The excellent in this election comes down to substance over cast,” he said. “John McCain has been tested. Barack Obama has not.”

With that, Giuliani turned to the placed under that once led Sen. Joe Biden, now the Democratic vice presidential nominee, to say that his sentences as candidate consisted only of a noun, a verb and 9-11. Giuliani came to national note with his personal leadership in New York after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, what one. killed nearly 3,000 people. His work in rallying the city vaulted him into the presidential race.

“There’s one purpose that John McCain understands, Republicans comprehend, that overrides everything else,” Giuliani aforesaid. “John McCain behest keep us on offense against terrorism at hearth and abroad.

“For four days in Denver and for the sake of the past 18 months, Democrats have been afraid to use the words ‘Islamic Terrorism,’” Giuliani said. “… They are in a case of denial about the biggest threat that faces this country.”

He said McCain will audacity that threat and win.

The McCain campaign had announced that Giuliani would be the convention keynote speaker on Tuesday night, but the scroll was shuffled and most of opening day was dropped because of the threat of Hurricane Gustav to the Gulf Coast. Giuliani’s speech was delayed, but he parsimoniously doubled his allotted 15 minutes and set the convention to roaring. When he said that McCain advocates an energy program that would use every approximate, including drilling, they shouted “Drill baby, drill.” He chuckled and repeated the line.

Romney played on Obama’s campaign call for change — excepting not the change the Democrat wants.

“We need make some change in. all right,” the former Massachusetts governor said. “Change from a plentiful Washington to a conservative Washington. We bring forth a prescription for every American who wants make some change in. in Washington — throw out the big government liberals and elect John McCain.”

Romney said Obama “ducked and dodged” when he was asked around the threat of Islamic terrorism. “John McCain collision the talon on the be aimed,” he said. “Radical violent Islam is pernicious, and he will defeat it.

Huckabee, once governor of Arkansas, said that Obama lacks experience and notion in foreign policy.

He said the Obama’s nomination as the first black candidate on a major-party ticket is value celebrating “for the reason that it elevates our country.”

“But the presidency is not a symbolic work at jobs,” he said, “and I don’t believe his preparation or his plans resoluteness lift America up.”