Senate OKs nuclear fuel, technology for India

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly endorsed a plan allowing the United States to ship civilian nuclear fuel and technology to India, handing President Bush an important victory on one of his top foreign-policy initiatives.

Senior lawmakers from both political parties championed the proposal, which reverses decades of U.S. anti-proliferation policy, saying it strengthens a key relationship with a friendly Asian power that has long maintained what the United States considers to be a responsible nuclear program. The vote was 85-12.

Lawmakers in the House, which overwhelmingly endorsed the plan in July, and the Senate must now reconcile their versions into a single bill before the next congressional session begins in January. That bill would then be sent to Bush for his signature.

Foley now subject of criminal probe

Florida authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the sexually explicit computer messages that former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley sent to former congressional pages.

"It was a preliminary inquiry before, but we found the basis to open up a criminal investigation," Kristen Perezluha, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said Thursday. She would not elaborate.

The FBI is investigating whether Foley broke federal laws, and the House ethics committee is looking into whether senior Republican officials hid what they knew about the messages.

Foley resigned Sept. 29 after being confronted with the lurid communications. His attorney, David Roth, has said Foley never had inappropriate sexual contact with minors. He declined to comment Thursday on the criminal investigation.

Pentagon bypasses its own travel system

The Pentagon that gave taxpayers a $434 hammer and a $600 toilet-seat cover now has a half-billion-dollar travel-booking system that is bypassed by more than eight in every 10 users.

Senate investigators found the Pentagon's Web-based product — despite its high price tag — fails to find the cheapest airfares, offers an incomplete list of flights and hotels and won't recognize travel categories used by the National Guard and Reserves.

The investigators found that Defense Department travelers are contacting professional travel agents to find their hotels, flights and rental cars, and then using the computer system to enter those choices. (Once the system is activated at an installation, travelers must use it to make their reservations, the Pentagon said.) The result: a half-hour booking process that, according to testimony before a Senate subcommittee, would take travel professionals five minutes.

McCain moves to put his brand on party

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., took the first formal steps toward a 2008 presidential campaign Thursday and argued in two speeches that his brand of conservative, reform-minded politics and hawkish foreign policy can restore the Republican Party to power.

On a day when he filed papers to set up a 2008 presidential exploratory committee, McCain served notice to rivals for the GOP nomination that he intends to move aggressively to try to put his stamp on the party.

He said voters punished Republicans last week for having become intoxicated with power, and he urged a return to what he called common-sense conservative principles espoused by former President Reagan.

"Americans had elected us to change government, and they rejected us because they believed government had changed us," he said.

Seattle Times news services