Last week Al Gore said the obvious. ""The media is kind of weird these days on politics,"" he told The New York Observer, ""and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party.""

7 Freeze to Death MOSCOW (AP) -- At least seven people froze to death in Moscow since a cold snap hit the city Friday, news reports said Sunday. At least 64 people were admitted to city hospitals suffering from hypothermia, the city's emergency medical service told Interfax. Temperatures plummeted to minus 20 Celsius late Friday, and the cold spell, unusual for this time of year, was expected to last at least another two days, television reported. A total of 108 people have died from the cold since early October, Interfax said. Turkmen Plea ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan (AP) -- Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov has appealed directly to President Vladimir Putin to hand over three of the Turkmen opposition figures accused of conspiring to assassinate him, Turkmen television reported Saturday. Niyazov made the request during a telephone conversation with Putin, naming three exiled opposition leaders who are reportedly living in Russia. Turkmen television did not give Putin's response.

Dissident paramilitary groups plan to join a unilateral cease-fire called by Colombia's largest far-right militia, the AUC, broadening the scope of possible future peace talks with the government.

International weapons monitors inspected an idle air field north of Baghdad where Iraq once tested devices that can spray deadly microbes, while allied aircraft firing was reported in southern Iraq on Sunday.

The United States military is installing a new command center at a heavily guarded base in this small Persian Gulf state that would be ready to serve as the main headquarters for a war on Iraq.

China's catastrophic mismanagement of its AIDS crisis has come to this: Xie Yan is trying to give away her son. ""I don't want to give him away,"" said Xie, 35, as she watches the 4-year-old boy, her eyes filled with love and hurt.

The attack last week on an Israeli charter plane in Kenya underscores the vulnerability of commercial jets to terrorists wielding shoulder-held missiles, which are relatively cheap, portable and widely available on the international black market, U.S. and Israeli officials and private analysts said.

Kenyan and Israeli authorities attempted Sunday to reassemble hundreds of shattered fragments of the vehicle used in a suicide attack three days ago on a resort hotel frequented by Israeli tourists in which 16 people were killed.

Israeli forces killed two people in a raid on a Gaza Strip town and wounded four others in a helicopter gunship attack nearby, Palestinian sources said Sunday.