Quake Death Toll Up to 30,000 & Reported Plot to Bomb NYC Subways STILL Uncorroborated in Today's Details Part II 10/9/05

- An estimated 30,000 people were killed in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir by a massive earthquake, the region's Minister for Works and Communication Tariq Farooq has told AFP. "Our rough estimates say more than 30,000 people have died in the earthquake in Kashmir," he said on Sunday. Pakistan's military said earlier that at least 18,000 died in the 7.6 magnitude quake that hit Saturday.

- A reported plot to bomb city subways with remote-controlled explosives has not been corroborated after days of investigation, law-enforcement officials said Sunday amid an easing sense of concern.Interrogations of suspects captured in Iraq last week after an informant's tip about bomb-laden suitcases and baby carriages have yet to yield evidence that the plot was real, officials said. (Still say there's something fishy to this story.)

-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said he wants to know whether presidential adviser Karl Rove privately assured a conservative activist about how Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers would rule from the bench. Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said he will would look into a statement by James Dobson, president of the Colorado Springs, Colorado-based advocacy group Focus on the Family, that Dobson has had ``conversations'' with Rove about the woman nominated to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and knows things about Miers ``that I probably shouldn't know.”

- Senior U.S. officials have begun to question a key presumption of American strategy in Iraq: that establishing democracy there can erode and ultimately eradicate the insurgency gripping the country. The expectation that political progress would bring stability has been fundamental to the Bush administration's approach to rebuilding Iraq, as well as a central theme of White House rhetoric to convince the American public that its policy in Iraq remains on course. But within the last two months, U.S. analysts with access to classified intelligence have started to challenge this precept, noting a "significant and disturbing disconnect" between apparent advances on the political front and efforts to reduce insurgent attacks. (Well looks like the latest reason for us being in Iraq now openly being admited as a failure. Wonder what the new spin will be for us staying in Iraq. Anyone want to start a pool?)

- If its recent track record is any guide, The New York Times, later today or tomorrow, will get around to confirming Michael Isikoff’s Newsweek revelation late Saturday that the missing notes Judith Miller suddenly found and turned over to the federal prosecutor on Friday in the Plame case were located in a notebook in the newspaper’s Washington, D.C. bureau. The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has now scheduled another meeting with Miller on Tuesday.

- Two New Orleans police officers repeatedly punched a 64-year-old man accused of public intoxication, and another city officer assaulted an Associated Press Television News producer as a cameraman taped the confrontations. There will be a criminal investigation, and the three officers were to be suspended, arrested and charged with simple battery Sunday, Capt. Marlon Defillo said.