Wausau Daily Herald from Wausau, Wisconsin • 2

2A WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 2004 News wausaudailyherald.com ienate defeats gay marriage amendment federal law that defined marriage as the union between a man and a woman. 1 Bush urged the Republican-controlled Congress last February to approve a constitutional amendment, saying it was needed to stop judges from changing the definition of the "most enduring human institution Republican strategists hope to force Democrats to choose between voting the wishes of their liberal constituents, some of whom favor gay marriage, or in favor of an amendment that polls show is favored by a heavy majority of the country. Democrats, many of whom oppose the measure, took delight in the internal Republican woes, and Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois read aloud from a recent statement on the issue by Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice president. "When it comes to conferring legal status on relationships, that is a matter that should be left to the states," he quoted her as saying.

The emotionally charged proposal, backed by the president and many conservatives, provides that marriage within the United States "shall consist only of a man and a woman." A second sentence says that that seemed in doubt, although their chances improved when an aide to Sen. John Kerry said he and vice presidential running mate John Edwards did not intend to return to the Capitol for what amounted to a procedural vote. Both men oppose the amendment. The Senate moved toward a showdown as House Republicans pursued a different plan seeking to pass legislation rather than an amendment. The House Judiciary Committee scheduled a meeting for Wednesday on a measure to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over a 1996 neither the federal nor any state constitution "shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman." Some critics argue that the effect of that provision would be to ban civil unions, and its inclusion in the amendment has complicated efforts by GOP leaders to gain support from wavering Republicans.

While there was no disagreement that the measure would fall short of the 60 votes needed to advance, Republicans held out hope they could gain a majority. Even The Associated Press WASHINGTON Short on votes and beset by internal divisions, Senate Republicans struggled Tuesday to salvage a respectable defeat for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, an issue that President Bush pushed toward the top of the election-year agenda. This issue is not going away," Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee said in a virtual concession that the measure would fall short of the 60 votes needed to advance past a test vote today. "Will it be back? Absolutely, yes." Weston: Video expected to pay off Same-party showdown highlights fall races said "it's conceivable to spend ($22,000 or depending on what kind of video a municipality wanted produced. "We knew going into it that it was like the Who's Who (national recognition books) and we would have to pay," Zuleger said.

"We were talking about doing a video, and this hit us at the right time." Zuleger was angered by the Stossel report, but he said it did not generate any complaints from Weston residents. "It sounds like a good deal," said Jenny Fletcher, a village taxpayer and business owner. "Our taxes are so low, and $22,000 isn't a lot of money to promote the village." Hooshang Zeyghami, a village resident and president of Central Wisconsin Engineers and Architects in Weston, questioned why Stossel would tee off on the Champions of Industry program. "I have a lot of feeling for this community," Zeyghami said. "It's The Associated Press MADISON State Rep.

Glenn Grothman will challenge Senate Majority Leader Mary Panzer for her seat this fall, breaking GOP ranks and creating a rare matchup between incumbent Republican legislators that could leave a bitter rift in the party. Grothman, of West Bend, filed nomination papers Tuesday with the state Elections Board minutes before the office closed, wading through a dozen or so reporters and onlookers. He said Panzer, also from West Bend, isn't conservative enough and spends money too easily. "It's important for the Republican Party to stand for certain principles," he said. "I've been very frustrated in the last two years in so far as I feel that people vote Republican, they're voting fiscally conservative and socially conservative I don't think we've achieved those goals." Panzer has come under criticism for refusing calls from Assembly Republicans to reconvene the Legislature this summer to take up a proposed amendment to the state constitution limiting government spending.

Republican lawmakers have dubbed the plan the Taxpayer Bill engagement Some unaccounted for of Rights. They've been pushing the issue for months. But Panzer said the party has too many conflicting ideas about how to implement the limits for her to try to pass it now. She called herself "a pragmatic conservative." The GOP controls the Senate 18-15, but Panzer needs 22 votes to override Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle's vetoes.

The Senate has four open seats this election cycle. Overall, 392 candidates filed to run for office, including congressional and district attorney positions. Forty-one races are uncontested in November, continuing a trend of slowing political participation in Wisconsin. State Reps. Johnnie Morris-Tatum and Lena Taylor, both Milwaukee Democrats, will square off with James White of Milwaukee in the primary for Democratic Sen.

Gwen Moore's seat in the 4th District Moore is running for Congress. Republican state Rep. Luther Olsen of Ripon will battle fellow Republicans Roger Cross of Waupaca, John C. Spillner Sr. of Mon-tello and Bill Lorge, an Elvis impersonator from Bear Creek, in the primary for GOP Sen.

Bob Welch's seat in the 14th District. Welch is challenging Democratic U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold. anniversary off or more Bin Laden confidante surrenders to Saudis RIYADH, Saudi Arabia A confidant of Osama bin Laden surrendered to Saudi diplomats in Iran and was flown to the kingdom Tuesday, a potentially valuable asset in the war on terror because of his closeness to the fugitive al-Qaida chief.

Khaled bin Ouda bin Mohammed al-Harby, a crippled sheik, was shown on Saudi TV being pushed in a wheelchair through the Riyadh airport. He is the most important figure to surface under a Saudi amnesty promising to spare the lives of militants who turn themselves in. Al-Harby also known as Abu Suleiman al-Makky is considered a sounding board for the al-Qaida chief rather than an operational planner for his terror network, a U.S. countert-errorism official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Militants say they killed hostage in Iraq BAGHDAD, Iraq Militants said they killed a captive Bulgarian truck driver and threatened to put another hostage to death in 24 hours, Al-Jazeera television reported today.

Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group said last week it would kill the two truck drivers if the United States did not release all Iraqi detainees by Saturday. In a video broadcast on Al-Jazeera, the group said it had carried out its threat against one of the men and would Mil the other in 24 hours. Lawyers for two terror detainees sue U.S. SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico-Lawyers for two Algerian terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said Tuesday they filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. governments authority to hold the men and saying they were wrongly handed over to American forces in Bosnia The lawsuit was filed Monday in U.S.

District Court in Washington, lead attorney Stephen Oleskey said from Boston. Lakhdar Boumediene and Mo- hammed Nechla were doing relief work in Bosnia when they were detained in 2001, according to the suit, which demands the U.S. government justify their detentions or free them. Elderly volunteers to he smog detectors MEXICO CITY A contingent of elderly Mexico City residents will wear smog-detecting vests to study the effects of the sprawling capital's polluted air on people over 65, officials said Tuesday. Thirty-two volunteers from two neighborhoods will strap on blue jackets weighing about 5 pounds and fitted with filters measuring six kinds of air pollution, said Miguel Lombera, coordinator of the federal Health Department's risk and research divisioa Blast misses Chechen president VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia-Chechnya's acting president escaped an assassination attempt Tuesday when an explosion tore through his motorcade, although one of his bodyguards was killed and three other people were wounded, officials said.

Sergei Abramov, who was appointed to lead the Kremlin-backed Chechen government after the May 9 assassination of Akhmad Kadyrov, was not injured by the roadside blast in the ruined Chechen capital of Grozny. The explosion underscored Russian forces' inability to purge insurgents from the city, despite a huge troop presence, and challenged Kremlin contentions that Chechnya is stabilizing after nearly five years of war. French 35-hour workweek under fire PARIS France's 35-hour workweek faced more pressure from business Tuesday, as workers at a Robert Bosch GMBH plant near Lyon chose between longer hours and layoffs. President Jacques Chirac was under pressure, too to say where he stood on the workweek law, which was enacted by the previous, Socialist-led government The Associated Pres9 From Page 1A and could add about $2.5 million in property value to the village, Administrator Dean Zuleger said. Village officials hope that their marketing efforts will attract more companies, and they think the national exposure offered by the Champions of Industry program could draw more medical workers to the area to help staff the Saint Clare's Hospital complex, he said.

The hospital is slated to open in the middle of next year. "The added value is that I get to use the Forbes and CNN name alongside the village of Weston," Zuleger said. Andy Becker, an account executive at Becker Communications which produces videos, said it's hard to calculate the cost of a typical video production and declined, to quote a price for a community promotional video. But Becker Detainees: From Page 1A States is obliged to give the neutral, Swiss-run ICRC access to prisoners of war and other detainees to check on their conditions and allow them to send messages to their families. The United States says it is cooperating with the agency, and has allowed Red Cross delegates access to thousands of prisoners in Afghanistan, at the U.S.

naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq, where agency delegates have visited Saddam Hussein. It is unclear whether terror suspects would be covered by the Geneva Conventions, but Notari said that "for humanitarian reasons" the Red Cross should be told about all detainees. ICRC President Jakob Kellen-berger made the request in January on a visit to Washington during which he met with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and National Security Adviser Ditka: Da From Page 1A onto another gridiron, said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "I'd say, 'Mike, you've had several bruising experiences in your life.

Be prepared for another one," McCain said. Off the field, Ditka is well known as a conservative Republican. In 2000, he warmed up a crowd for then-candidate George W. Bush by saying the "stands for women. I believe women want a man for president of the United States." If he ran for Senate, Ditka could energize the Republican base as rv shortsighted of him the village is trying to promote itself." Village President Vilas Mach-mueller and board member Barb Ermeling both said they are happy that Weston paid to be in the Champions of Industry program and that they have not heard any negative comments from village residents about the cost.

Ermeling also said that al-' though the village had to pay to be in the program, not every community is eligible to participate. Pat Summerall Productions contacted the village after receiving its growth statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, said Bob May, president of Pat Summerall Productions. The village had to submit financial information, pass two interviews and answer two surveys to be considered for the award. "The award isn't why they did it.

They needed the video, and most communities enjoy the exposure," May said. the conditions that it finds in places of detention, preferring to negotiate directly with the authorities. The agency faced criticism for not speaking out about the abuse at Abu Ghraib until it was revealed in the media. "Certain people had the impression that our repeated, confidential approaches to the U.S. authorities were falling flat," Kellenberger said.

"But impressions can be wrong. When we visited Abu Ghraib in January 2004, we found improvements compared with October 2003, and when we visited in March it was better than in January." Keith is on assignment. His column will return next Wednesday. Keith Uhlig On Learning Lottery Numbers selected Tuesday: Pick 3: 0,3 and 1. Maximum prize: $500.

Pick 4: 4, 2, 6 and 3. Maximum prize: $5,000. Badger Five: 7,11,17, 29 and 31. Maximum prize: $26,000. SuperCash: 5,9,14,16,19 and 35.

Maximum prize: $250,000. For more information 1-608-266-7777 Bv; 1 Condoleezza Rice. "So far we haven't had a satisfactory reply," Notari said. She said the FBI has posted details of arrested suspects on its Web site, and other arrests have been reported by the media, but some of those people have never shown up in prisons that the Red Cross visits. Notari said she had read media reports that some people are being held at Diego Garcia, a British-held island in the Indian Ocean that the United States uses as a strategic military base, but the ICRC has not been notified of any prisoners there.

"We just simply have absolutely no confirmation of this in any formal way," she said. ICRC delegates visited nearly 500,000 detainees in around 80 countries last year, including almost 11,000 in Iraq. In an interview in Tuesday's edition of the German business daily Handelsblatt, Kellenberger defended the ICRC's policy of refusing to comment publicly on candidate? well as independent voters, and possibly put Illinois back into play for Bush, Fitzgerald said. Ditka, 64, said a potential run is very much on his mind, even though his wife, Diana, has been telling the media: "I wouldn't bet on it." "I'm getting excited about it and I'm just thinking about it," Ditka told WGN-TV from his Chicago restaurant on Monday. Thousands of fans have weighed on the draftditka.com Web site created to urge Ditka to become the state's GOP chairman but transformed into a Ditka-for-Sen-ate movement.

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