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Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Oct 24, 2006

WASHINGTON - The House ethics committee questioned Speaker Dennis Hastert's top aide for more than six hours Monday, as investigators tried to determine whether Hastert's office knew at least three years ago of Rep. Mark Foley's come-ons to male pages.

The closed-door testimony by Hastert chief of staff Scott Palmer could help determine who is telling the truth about when the speaker's office first learned of Foley's conduct. Hastert has said it was in the fall of 2005.

Campaigning for a Republican candidate in Tennessee, Hastert said he plans to testify before the committee this week.

"What Mark Foley did was wrong. It was ethically wrong. It's a shame," Hastert told reporters after a campaign rally.

NATION

SPENCER DENIES COMMENTING ON HILLARY'S LOOKS: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton accused her Republican challenger of getting into "swampy territory" after he was quoted Monday as saying that Clinton was unattractive when she was younger and that she had a lot of work done on herself.

John Spencer denied discussing the senator's looks during a conversation with a New York Daily News reporter.

The tabloid quoted Spencer as saying: "You ever see a picture of her back then? Whew. I don't know why Bill married her."

Spencer, former mayor of the New York City suburb of Yonkers, was also quoted as saying that Clinton underwent millions of dollars of "work" and "looks good now."

After the newspaper came out, Spencer said the comments were "a fabrication. I would never call Hillary Clinton ugly. That's outrageous. I didn't do it."

HUBBLE COULD GET ONE MORE REPAIR: The fate of what some scientists dub "the people's telescope" is again up in the air as NASA decides soon whether to squeeze in a last astronaut repair mission to extend the life of the Hubble Space Telescope.

On Friday, NASA engineers will debate the safety of sending a fifth and final manned space shuttle flight to the 16-year-old telescope, probably in 2008. Soon afterward, NASA administrator Michael Griffin will make the final call.

His decision could prolong Hubble's ability to capture some the most spectacular images of the universe well into the next decade or allow the telescope to deteriorate into oblivion by 2009 or 2010.

RESEARCH LINKS VEGETABLES TO MENTAL SHARPNESS: New research found that eating vegetables appears to help keep the brain young and may slow the mental decline sometimes associated with growing old.

On measures of mental sharpness, older people who ate more than two servings of vegetables daily appeared about five years younger at the end of the six-year study than those who ate few or no vegetables.

The research in almost 2,000 Chicago-area men and women doesn't prove that vegetables reduce mental decline, but it adds to mounting evidence pointing in that direction.

ONLINE PLAINTIFFS FIGHT PROTECTION LAW: Eight years after Congress passed a law aimed at protecting children from online pornography, free speech advocates and Web site publishers argued in a Philadelphia federal court Monday that the never-enforced measure is fatally flawed.

Salon.com, Nerve.com and other plaintiffs warned that the 1998 Child Online Protection Act could be used to criminalize such things as sexual health information erotic literature and news photographs of naked prisoners tortured at Abu Ghraib.

The law, signed by then-President Clinton, says Web site operators must prevent youngsters from seeing material "harmful to children" by demanding proof of age from computer users.

WORLD

U.S. SOLDIER MAY HAVE BEEN ABDUCTED: A U.S. soldier in Baghdad was reported missing late Monday, and residents said American forces sealed the central Karadah district and were conducting door-to- door searches.

A military official in Washington said the missing service member was a translator and that the initial report was he may have been abducted. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information wasn't cleared for release.

An employee at Baghdad's al-Furat TV, which was raided by American forces earlier Monday, said the U.S. forces conducting the search told him they were looking for an abducted American officer of Iraqi descent.

IRAN EXPANDING URANIUM PROGRAM: Iran is expanding its uranium enrichment program even as the U.N. Security Council focuses on possible sanctions for its defiance of a demand to give up the activity and ease fears it seeks nuclear weapons, diplomats said Monday in Vienna, Austria.

The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren'tauthorized to divulge the information to media, told The Associated Press that within the past few weeks Iranian nuclear experts had started up a second pilot enrichment facility.

HURRICANE THREATENS BAJA CALIFORNIA: Hurricane Paul swirled toward the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula Monday, becoming the third hurricane this season to threaten the resort.

Paul had maximum sustained winds of 90 mph and was moving north at about 6 mph, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Paul's winds weakened from 105 mph earlier and the storm was downgraded to a Category 1, the center said.