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JERUSALEM – Benjamin Netanyahu, once considered a shoo-in to become Israel’s next prime minister, is sliding in the polls and may not even win an upcoming contest against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for leadership of the Likud Party. In a time of crisis, voters appear to prefer Sharon’s somber message …

WASHINGTON – Republicans got a surprising boost from AARP, the nation’s largest and most powerful seniors group on an issue that’s bedeviled Washington for years — prescription drugs for seniors. “I think it’s important news that there is one party that can essentially control the outcome here,” Chris Hansen, director …

BATON ROUGE, La. – Authorities charged the two Beltway Sniper suspects with murder Thursday in a Louisiana shooting that came just two days after a similar slaying in Alabama. Officials in Alabama also said they had definitively linked the two men to the Alabama murder. John Allen Muhammad, 41, and …

CRAWFORD, Texas – President Bush is asking Americans to regard Thanksgiving and the upcoming holidays as a “season of service.” In his weekly radio address, the president noted that “many people struggle every day — men, women, and children facing hunger, homelessness, illness, addiction, or despair.” He said Americans can …

NEW YORK – Perhaps Paul Volcker (search), head of the United Nations-authorized inquiry into the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, was speaking solely of graft when he said recently that the internal audits of Oil-for-Food contained “no flaming red flags.” But if he meant anything beyond outright criminality, he was surely wrong. …

LOS ANGELES – “Babe” farmer James Cromwell (search) filed to divorce his actress-wife Julie Cobb (search) after more than 18 years of marriage. Cromwell, 64, filed a dissolution of marriage petition in Superior Court on Tuesday citing unspecified irreconcilable differences as the reason for the split. The couple married May …

NEW YORK – DirecTV Group Inc. (DTV) Thursday posted a narrower fourth-quarter loss, but the top U.S. satellite television operator’s subscriber growth disappointed some Wall Street analysts, sending shares down 3 percent. DirecTV posted a loss of $283 million, or 20 cents a share, compared with a loss of $310 …

WASHINGTON – Marching bands, giant floats and two U.S. senators on horseback paraded up Pennsylvania Avenue on Thursday, turning the capital’s downtown into a sea of red, white and blue for President Bush’s (search) inauguration. Bands from as far away as Alaska, women dressed in blue jumpsuits and waving silver …

High-deductible health insurance (search) plans heavily touted by President George W. Bush could wind up damaging access to medical care and increasing the likelihood of high medical bills for lower-income policy holders, according to data released by the Commonwealth Fund (search) Thursday. Meanwhile, one expert warns that wider use of …

NEW YORK – Regional supermarket chain Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. (GAP) on Friday reported a wider-than-expected quarterly loss as it pushed ahead with a reorganization and called its near-term outlook “conservative.” Its loss swelled to $75.3 million, or $1.96 a share, in its fiscal third quarter ended Dec. …