VoteKansas.org

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed legislation smoothing the way for Libya to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to compensate U.S. victims of bombing attacks that Washington blames on Tripoli.

ROME (Reuters) - State prosecutors in Italy lodged an appeal on Thursday against a court ruling authorizing a man to remove the feeding tube which has kept his comatose daughter alive for 16 years.

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - The Guantanamo war crimes court conducted its first secret session on Thursday to hear defense testimony from a U.S. Army psychiatrist who helped train mental health officials involved in prisoner interrogations.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of lawmakers is working on another comprehensive energy bill to try to break the Congressional deadlock over how to contain the price of gasoline, which looming as one of the biggest issues in U.S. elections, a Democratic aide said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Sen. Ted Stevens pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges of concealing more than $250,000 in gifts from an oil services company, and his lawyer asked for a quick trial in an effort to clear his name before the November election.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation that seeks to protect college students from lending abuses and expands scholarship aid was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Gunmen shot dead six people, including children, in western Mexico in an execution-style massacre of the kind often carried out by drug gangs, Mexico media said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge ruled on Thursday that Congress in its fight with the Bush administration can subpoena current and former top White House aides in its investigation over the firing of U.S. attorneys.

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - U.S. military prosecutors finished their case against Osama bin Laden's driver on Thursday after presenting a week's worth of evidence in the first trial in the war crimes court at the Guantanamo Bay naval base.

DAKAR (Reuters) - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Thursday he was "fairly satisfied" with talks with President Robert Mugabe's party to end a political crisis, and said a Monday, August 4 deadline was "not inflexible".

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua said on Thursday the biggest problem in Africa's most populous nation was poor leadership and rounded on public servants who abused their positions of power to gain personal wealth.

RACINE, Wisconsin (Reuters) - Republican White House hopeful John McCain's campaign accused Democrat Barack Obama on Thursday of playing racial politics in some of the most biting back-and-forth of the presidential campaign.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury on Thursday said it blacklisted six more companies and 13 individuals linked with Colombia's FARC guerrillas in an effort to squeeze the group's financing from narcotics sales.

Corrects in paragraph 11 to Robert Spellane, a Democrat, from Paul Loscocco, a Republican.

DAKAR (Reuters) - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Thursday he was "fairly satisfied" with talks with President Robert Mugabe's party to end a political crisis, and said a Monday, August 4 deadline was "not inflexible".

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W., Virginia (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush said on Thursday that the latest economic data showed the foundations of the U.S. economy are strong.

COLOMBO (Reuters) - The Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers held talks in Colombo on Thursday against a background of an increase in border skirmishes and bomb attacks on Indian cities that threaten a sluggish peace process.

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - A man sleeping on a Greyhound bus as it rolled across the Canadian Prairies was killed and decapitated by his seatmate as horrified passengers fled to safety in the night, witnesses and police said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday held out the prospect of further troop reductions in Iraq later this year as he hailed a new "degree of durability" in security gains there.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidates have spent some $50 million and aired more than 100,000 TV ads since the start of the general election campaign in early June, far outpacing the rate of the 2004 campaign, a report showed on Wednesday.