Teachers Are Executed in Iraq & SEC Chairman Recuses Self From Frist Investigation in Today's Details 9/26/05

- The speed with which the federal government marshaled significant military and other resources to evacuate, rescue and care for victims of Hurricane Rita raises new questions about why Washington was so slow to respond to Hurricane Katrina less than four weeks earlier.

- Sen. John McCain, decrying new allegations of prisoner abuse in Iraq by U.S. soldiers, on Sunday backed an amendment to force the American military to live up to its international obligations under the Geneva Convention and "not engage in torture" of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. McCain (R-Ariz.) was responding to complaints by Army Capt. Ian Fishback and two sergeants, who all served with the 82nd Airborne Division. Their description of routine harsh treatment of captives in Iraq parallels the abuse caught in photographs at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad and was contained in a Human Rights Watch report issued Friday by the advocacy group.

- A suicide bomber driving a minibus pulled alongside a convoy of elite Iraqi commandos in the capital Sunday and detonated his explosives, killing 10 people in a spray of burning metal, witnesses said.


- The chaotic evacuations of New Orleans and Houston have prompted local officials across the country to take another look at plans for emptying their cities in response to a large-scale natural disaster or a terrorist attack. What they have found is not wholly reassuring.

- Christopher Cox, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said on Monday he has recused himself from an SEC probe of sales of stock in hospital company HCA Inc. by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a former congressional colleague of Cox. "The staff of the (SEC) have commenced a review of sales of HCA stock by a blind trust established by the U.S. Senate Majority Leader. Because of my service in the congressional leadership for the last 10 years, I have recused myself in this matter," Cox said in a statement.

- Army Pfc. Lynndie England, whose smiling poses in photos of detainee abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison made her the face of the scandal, was convicted Monday by a military jury on six of seven counts.

- Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who became a leader of the anti-war movement after her son died in Iraq, was arrested Monday along with hundreds of others protesting outside the White House. Sheehan, carrying a photo of her son in his Army uniform, rallied with other protesters in a park across the street from the White House and then marched to the gate of the executive mansion to request a meeting with President Bush.

- A group of armed men burst into a primary school in a town south of Baghdad today, rounded up five teachers, marched them to an empty classroom and executed them, a police official said. All of those killed were Shiite.

- Don Adams, the wry-voiced comedian who starred as the fumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart in the 1960s TV spoof of James Bond movies, "Get Smart," has died. He was 82.