WASHINGTON

VICE PRESIDENT HOSPITALIZED WITH SHORTNESS OF BREATH

Medication that Vice President Cheney was taking for a foot problem caused fluid retention that in turned caused shortness of breath, resulting in a brief but not serious hospital stay early yesterday for the vice president, his office said.

Mr. Cheney was taken to the hospital at 3 a.m. About four and a half hours later, he headed for home – walking out of the hospital without the use of a cane and carrying coffee and a newspaper. By mid-afternoon, the vice president was at the White House attending meetings and following his regular schedule, Mr. Cheney spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said.

“He’s feeling well,” she said.

The 64-year-old vice president has a long history of mostly heart-related health problems. But doctors determined from an unchanged EKG, or electrocardiogram, that the shortness of breath was related instead to anti-inflammatory drugs he was taking for a foot problem, Ms. McBride said.

– Associated Press

IT WASN’T MY FAULT, BREMER SAYS OF FAILURES IN IRAQ

Paul Bremer, the former American administrator in Iraq, denied responsibility yesterday for the widely derided decisions taken during the critical months after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

“It wasn’t me,” Mr Bremer said of the savagely criticized decision not to reconstitute Saddam’s armed forces after military victory in 2003.

Speaking during a lengthy interview with NBC television, he also recounted that he had asked for a tripling of the number of American occupying troops but had been rebuffed. As for the failure to predict an insurgency, Mr Bremer suggested most of the blame lay with America’s much criticized intelligence services.

Opponents of the coalition’s policies in Iraq, both pro and anti-war, have focused their wrath on the decision not to use Saddam’s policemen and soldiers to restore order after the coalition’s victory. But Mr Bremer said they were wrong “in two respects: a) it wasn’t me, b) we didn’t disband it.”

He explained that there was no army to disband, because Saddam’s units had broken up under the overwhelming force of the American and British attack.

– The Daily Telegraph

CLASSIFIED BRIEFING FOR JUDGES BYPASSED IN DOMESTIC SPYING CASE

The federal judges who were bypassed when the Bush administration ordered warrantless wiretaps in America received a secret briefing yesterday on details of the surveillance. Separately, a former FBI director and other lawyers questioned whether the surveillance is legal.

The classified briefing at the Justice Department had been requested by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. Established by Congress in the late 1970s, the court oversees the government’s handling of espionage and terrorism investigations.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson last month resigned from the FISA court and other judges voiced concerns about the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance program.

– Associated Press

HEALTH CARE COSTS TAKE UP 16% OF NATION’S ECONOMIC OUTPUT

Rising health care costs, already threatening many basic industries, now consume 16% of the nation’s economic output – the highest proportion ever, the government said yesterday in its latest calculation.

The nation’s health care bill continued to grow substantially faster than inflation and wages, increasing by almost 8% in 2004, the most recent year with near-final numbers. Spending for physicians and hospitals shot up considerably faster than in recent years, while drug costs grew at a slower rate than over the past decade.

Even as health care costs continue to escalate, however, many Americans – especially minorities and the poor – don’t get high-quality care, according to two other federal reports yesterday.

– The Washington Post

SOUTHWEST

YATES PLEADS INNOCENT BY REASON OF INSANITY

HOUSTON – Andrea Yates pleaded innocent by reason of insanity in the drowning deaths of her children yesterday as she made her first court appearance since her 2002 capital murder convictions were overturned.

Ms. Yates, 41, will remain in the custody of the Harris County Sheriff’s Department until she is retried for the deaths of three of her five children on March 20.

During her original trial, jurors rejected Ms. Yates’ insanity defense and found her guilty for the 2001 deaths of three of the children drowned in the family bathtub.

Ms. Yates was sentenced to life in prison. Her convictions were overturned last January by a state appeals court. – Associated Press

SOUTH

SURVIVING MINER DEVELOPS SLIGHT FEVER, BUT RESPONDS TO STIMULI

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Mining disaster survivor Randal McCloy Jr. has been responding to stimuli, but has developed a slight fever and remains in critical condition, doctors said yesterday.

Mr. McCloy, 26, was taken off sedation Sunday and has been breathing without the help of a ventilator, though he remains connected to the device, said his attending physician at West Virginia University’s Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, Dr. Larry Roberts.

– Associated Press