Meanwhile, the size of the Japanese population is shrinking, and for the first time the Government has acknowledged that the falling birth rate is linked to job-related factors. Directors of the Japanese Mental Health Institute blame the same factors for rising levels of depression among workers and the country's suicide rate, which remains the highest among rich nations.

Merit-based pay and promotion are of particular concern because they are at odds with the traditional system, built on seniority, that has reigned supreme in corporate Japan. In the harsh new atmosphere of cut-throat rivalry between workers, the Institute for Population and Social Security argues, young people do not feel financially stable enough to start families.

The trend is put down to Japanese companies' attempts to globalise by adopting working practices more closely in line with US and British models. Larger numbers of temporary staff, a greater willingness to sack people and greater pay disparities are the downside.

A spokesman for the Mental Health Institute said that the emphasis on individual performance was driving Japanese workers - particularly those in their thirties - to mental turmoil. "People tend to be individualised under the new working patterns," he said. "When people worked in teams they were happier."

At issue are interrogations carried out by the CIA and the degree to which harsh tactics such as waterboarding were authorised by administration officials. A separate law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, applies to the military.

The Washington Post first reported on the War Crimes Act amendments yesterday.

One section of the draft would outlaw torture and inhuman or cruel treatment, but it does not contain prohibitions from Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment".

A copy of the section of the draft was obtained by The Associated Press.

Another section would apply the legislation retrospectively, according to two lawyers who have seen the contents of the section.

One of them said the draft was in the revision stage, but the administration seems intent on pushing forward the draft's major points in congress after it returns from its recess in early September.

"I think what this bill can do is in effect immunise past crimes. That's why it's so dangerous," said a third lawyer, Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

Fidell said the initiative was "not just protection of political appointees, but also CIA personnel who led interrogations".

Interrogation practices "follow from policies that were formed at the highest levels of the administration", said a fourth lawyer, Scott Horton, who has followed detainee issues closely. "The administration is trying to insulate policymakers under the War Crimes Act."

The administration argues that Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions includes vague terms that are susceptible to different interpretations. The refurbished War Crimes Act is supposed to rectify that.

Extreme interrogation practices have been a flashpoint for criticism of the administration.

When interrogators engage in waterboarding, a prisoner is strapped to a plank and dunked in water until he fears he is drowning.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a former military lawyer, said congress "is aware of the dilemma we face, how to make sure the CIA and others are not unfairly prosecuted".

He said that at the same time, however, that congress "will not allow political appointees to waive the law".

Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA's executive director, said: "President Bush is looking to limit the War Crimes Act through legislation" now that the supreme court had embraced Article Three of the Geneva Conventions.

In June, the court ruled that Bush's plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals broke Common Article Three.

Some have ratcheted up support for Israel in its current battle in Lebanon with Hezbollah out of belief that a raging war -- perhaps even a nuclear confrontation -- marks a prelude to the apocalypse. Christian groups are sending millions of dollars to Israeli communities and shelters, hosting pro-Israel rallies and urging U.S. politicians to back Israeli military action.

Evangelicals have issued dire warnings about a conflagration in the Middle East for decades, said Clyde Wilcox, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who studies evangelicals and politics. Many evangelicals regard such calls with skepticism, he said.

''Every time there's been a war in the Middle East, this comes up,'' Wilcox said. "Most evangelicals would not interpret this as saying that Christ is coming back in the next couple of years.''

RAISED INTEREST

Since the current crisis erupted July 12, interest in the Rapture Index has mushroomed, said Todd Strandberg, a Christian from Nebraska who updates the index on his website, raptureready.com. The site had a quarter-million unique visitors in July, up from 180,000 the previous month, Strandberg said.

''The Scripture bears witness to these events being part of the end-times prophecy,'' said Gary Cristofaro, pastor of First Assembly of God in Melbourne. "Israel is so important in God's eyes.''

Cristofaro's church is one of a handful of Florida congregations that tithes a monthly donation to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a practice that stems from a belief that Israel must control the Palestinian territories in order to fulfill biblical prophecy. The congregation has donated more than $100,000 to support Israeli settlements in the past decade, Cristofaro said. On Saturday, church members plan to hold a ''Bless Israel'' fundraising event for 2,000 people.

Evangelicals' financial support for Israel has increasingly been supplemented by political action, Christian and Jewish leaders say.

At a July 18-19 pro-Israel rally in Washington, Christians from Florida and other states lobbied politicians to back Israel's military campaign in Lebanon. The Rev. John Hagee, pastor of a mega-church in San Antonio and founder of Christians United for Israel, organized the convention in hopes of launching a pro-Israel political network in 50 states.

Hagee has issued dire predictions about instability in the region leading to apocalypse. In his 2006 book Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World, Hagee warns: "The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty. The war of Ezekiel 38-39 could begin before this book gets published.''

Other high-profile Christian leaders have espoused similar views. In a July 22 commentary, the Rev. Jerry Falwell predicted present-day conflict in the Middle East will ''serve as a prelude or forerunner to the future Battle of Armageddon and the glorious return of Jesus Christ.'' Pat Robertson has shied away from declaring Armageddon but has warned ''God himself'' will fight for Israel.

WARY OF SOME EFFORTS

While a number of Jewish leaders have courted evangelicals' support for the Jewish homeland, others are troubled by its theological underpinnings, said Rabbi James Rudin, senior interreligious advisor at the America Jewish Committee in New York. Jewish leaders have long been wary of evangelicals' effort to convert Jews to Christianity through messianic groups such as Jews for Jesus and the Chosen People Ministries.

''Is the motivation to stand up for Israel, or convert the Jewish people and bring on the end of days?'' said Rabbi Solomon Schiff, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Association of Greater Miami.

Other Jewish leaders say evangelicals have toned down the religious aspects of their pro-Israel mission in recent years, particularly their insistence that Jews convert.

Avi Mizrachi, executive director of the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach, said he was overwhelmed by fervor for Israel at the Washington rally for Christians United for Israel.

''I saw more Israeli flags there than on Israeli independence day,'' he said. 'In the past, there was concern about them trying to convert us. It doesn't even come up anymore.''

Christian Zionism -- the belief that Israel will set the stage for prophetic events such as the rise of the Antichrist, the Battle of Armageddon and Christ's 1,000-year reign -- has steadily gained popularity since the rise of the Christian right in the 1970s and '80s, said Timothy Weber, author of On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friend.

In the most gruesome scenario, evangelicals envision a global battle breaking out when a 200-million-man army invades from the east and Jesus returns to take on the Antichrist. Jews and other non-Christians will face conversion or death.

In the past, some Christians predicted the armies would come from Russia or China, and today, many foresee an Islamic army led by Iran, Weber said.

Hagee and others caution that while Christians may have stepped up preparations for the end times, most believe the fate of the world remains in God's hands.

''No Christian or groups of Christians can do anything to hasten the return of Jesus Christ,'' Hagee said.

Watch it:



Strangely, after his tirade, Hunt acknowledged that in some cases, "we have to directly talk to these guys to find out what they want."

Full transcript:

HANNITY: How naive is this notion - the New York Times editorial today - that the idea that we can talk to Syria, talk to these terrorist regimes. Can you talk to Ahmadinejad? Can you talk to an Assad? Can you talk to Usama bin Laden? Can you get anywhere? Is that an...

HUNT: I think we can talk to them when we line them up and kill them. I don't think - the only reason to talk to some of these guys is to just do that. However, we're not going to wipe out, as we talked offline, the entire country, but we have to directly talk to these guys to find out what they want. If they're not going to cooperate, yes, they have to go.

HANNITY: Regime change.

HUNT: Absolutely, 100 percent.

Eight students remain at large. They arrived in New York on July 29 as part of a group of 17 students. Six students reported to Bozeman on time.

The missing students pose no terrorism threat, the FBI said.

Hamvi Kassab, a Minneapolis grocer who said he is El-Dessouki's uncle, told television station KSTP that his nephew was in town to visit relatives and to inquire about attending the University of Minnesota.

Montana State repeatedly tried to contact the missing students. When that failed, the school notified
Homeland Security officials and registered the Egyptians as "no-shows" in the system developed after the Sept. 11 attacks to track foreign students.

The government tightened the student visa process after the attacks. One of the hijackers involved in the attacks had arrived in the U.S. with a student visa, and immigration officials approved student visas for two other hijackers after they entered the country. A fourth attended flight training school without a student visa.

American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Ann Beeson says the documents show the government engaging in "a clear case of overcensoring" during the yearlong dispute on the FBI's request for subscriber and billing information from a library computer used in a 45-minute span on Feb. 15, 2005.

Four librarians resisted the FBI directive. They were put under a gag order that prohibited them from even acknowledging the existence of the demand for information, which came in the form of a national security letter rather than a subpoena signed by a judge. Such a letter allows the executive branch of government to obtain records about people in terrorism and espionage investigations without a judge's approval or a grand jury subpoena.

The FBI said the government had sound legal reasons for the secrecy and that under other circumstances the librarians' refusal to cooperate could have increased the danger of terrorists succeeding.

The newly released records showed that the government deleted references in a court decision to the fact that The New York Times had already ascertained and published the name of the library group challenging the FBI. The government had kept a copy of the Times article under seal in the case.

Another document was a Supreme Court opinion written in October 2005 in which Ginsburg pointed out that the library group already had been identified publicly. "That cat was inadvertently let out of the bag," she wrote. The government kept the quote secret.

Also among the fresh disclosures was a previously excised section of an opinion by U.S. District Judge Janet Hall in Connecticut rejecting the government's demand for secrecy about the name of the plaintiff, the Library Connection.

Describing how irrelevant it was to national security that the name of the group would get out publicly, Hall had written that "the universe of people who could be the subject of this investigation would likely be in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands."

The Library Connection, which fought the government's request for information, is a network of 26 Connecticut public and private libraries serving more than 288,000 library cardholders, along with others who do not hold cards.

Ginsburg's action opens the way for release of more material from the case by the federal court in Connecticut and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.

The fair, which averages about 40,000 to 120,000 people daily depending on the day and weather, has been incident-free over the years, he said.

The extra security is part of the city's response to the slayings, including stepped-up police patrols and extending officers' shifts by two hours, said Indianapolis Police Department spokesman Maj. Lloyd Crowe.

Nan Johnson, who lives in Lebanon just northwest of Indianapolis, went to the fair with her sister and three nieces. She said she's been attending for years and has never felt unsafe - but is uneasy about the neighborhoods surrounding the fairgrounds.

"Once you're on the grounds you're fine, but it's not in a real safe neighborhood. I wouldn't be out here at nighttime," she said, gesturing to the gas station where she had stopped.

Even before the rash of killings stunned the city of about 863,000, Indiana's capital already was on track for its bloodiest year since 1998, when 162 people died. So far this year, 94 people have been slain in Indianapolis.

City leaders announced a plan Wednesday to relieve the strain on the Marion County Jail by spending about $2.2 million this year to create a night court. The jail recently released hundreds of inmates to ease crowding, a situation Prosecutor Carl Brizzi blamed for the spike in crime.

Dozens of Indianapolis residents joined a prayer vigil Wednesday evening, visiting neighborhoods caught up in the violence.

This memory black hole is essentially the problem of the older crowd: 48 percent of those who did not know were between the ages of 55 and 64, and 47 percent were older than 65, according to the poll.

The Post telephone survey was carried out July 21-24 among 1,002 randomly selected adults. The margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.

In 'Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action,' author David Ray Griffin calls the United States the world's 'chief embodiment of demonic power, says he initially scoffed at 9/11 conspiracy theories.

But after investigating he concluded that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolition, military personnel were given stand-down orders not to intercept hijacked flights and the 9/11 Commission, ostensibly created to uncover the truth behind the events of 9/11, 'simply ignored evidence' that the administration was involved in the attacks.

Griffin further asserts that such events such as that of 9/11 are part of a long history of 'false-flag attacks,' attacks orchestrated by governments against their own people to garner popular support for military action.

Griffin is a professor at California's Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, and a codirector of the Center for Process Studies.

"This is the first time they've said they're not moving forward, they're essentially done looking at it," said Weiner. He called the decision "the final victory of the terrorists on Sept. 11."

In a letter to Weiner dated Aug. 4, outgoing Park Service Director Fran Mainella wrote that "the current access patterns reflect a responsible management strategy in the best interests of all our visitors."

Another congressman, who oversees the House subcommittee on national parks, said he may hold hearings to re-examine the issue and the agency's decision.

"While I respect the Park Service's justified concern for public safety, I am disappointed with their apparent decision to stop trying," said Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M. "Americans have a right to hear something better from their National Park Service than the implied message of this letter, which is 'never.'"

Mainella said that even before 2001, the park service had been re-evaluating public safety at the statue, particularly concerns about fire safety on the 168-step ascent from the base to the crown. She said the crown was originally designed for maintenance workers, not the public.

The statue, which sits on 12-acre Liberty Island in New York Harbor, was shut down after Sept. 11, 2001. After spending $20 million on security and safety improvements, the government reopened the statue in 2004, but only up to the top of the pedestal, or Lady Liberty's toes.

The new security measures included a bomb detection device that blows air into clothing and then checks for particles of explosives residue. Bomb-sniffing dogs also have been seen at the site.

The Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1886 and was designated a national monument in 1924. It was restored for its centennial on July 4, 1986. Its torch has been closed since 1916.