LAFAYETTE, La. — Six rail cars derailed in southern Louisiana Saturday, causing a hydrochloric acid leak from two of the cars that forced police to evacuate thousands of residents within a 1-mile radius of the accident.

The two cars began leaking after the 2:20 a.m. Saturday derailment, Lafayette Corporal Paul Mouton said. Authorities went door to door, asking residents to leave the area.

Local firefighters and state police were on the scene, Mouton said.

He said the area is mostly businesses, but there was also a few apartment complexes and a nursing home. Mouton estimated thousands will have to be evacuated.

Acadian Ambulance official Clay Henry said 20 bedbound residents of Our Lady of the Oaks nursing home were being taken to a hospital. He also said two railroad workers had been taken to a hospital for possible exposure and for observation.

The Federal Railroad Administration agency will conduct an investigation, an agency spokesman said. Such an action is typical in cases that involve the release of hazardous materials.

BAGHDAD — Nearly 1,000 people have been detained in a sweep to break al-Qaida in Iraq's sway in Iraq's third largest city, Mosul, but many of the fighters have fled to nearby areas, where troops are hunting for them, Iraqi officials said Saturday.

Iraq's leaders presented the crackdown as a success so far in depriving the terror network of what has been its most prominent urban stronghold since it lost hold of cities in Iraq's western Anbar province.

But the flight of al-Qaida fighters raises the concern they can regroup elsewhere, as has often happened in the past.

Yassin Majid, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said most of the leading insurgents had fled to the outskirts of Mosul or to a neighboring country amid the operations. He did not name the neighboring country. Mosul is about 60 miles from the Syrian and Turkish borders.

"Operations will continue and the Iraqi army will not leave Mosul until security and stability have been accomplished," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Duraid Kashmola, the governor of Ninevah province, where Mosul is the capital, said this week's sweep would "not ease for fear gunmen might return back in strength to the field."

The sweep was launched Thursday, after five days of preparatory operations and arrests in the city. U.S.-backed Iraqi police and soldiers have been conducting raids on homes and have fanned out with checkpoints on city streets, though no clashes have been reported in the city, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said 1,068 people have been detained over the past week, but 94 were cleared and have since been released. Kashmola said most of those arrested were al-Qaida members.

The assault on the Sunni al-Qaida in Iraq group was launched in the wake of two other major crackdowns against Shiite militiamen in the southern city of Basra and the Baghdad district of Sadr City in the past two months. Those two sweeps continue but uneasy truces with the powerful Shiite Mahdi Army militia have eased the heavy violence they sparked.

Al-Maliki said Saturday the series of crackdowns would bring a boost to reconciliation efforts, saying it has "reflected positively on the political process."

Al-Bolani told a gathering of some 300 former Saddam Hussein-era officers in Mosul that the army and police would make room for them and that al-Maliki was urging them to return. Many in the crowd cheered the announcement.

Mosul's Sunni Arab population was once a major source of officers for Saddam's army, many of whom were removed because of their ties to his regime in a purge that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion. Their bitterness is believed to have fueled the Sunni-led insurgency.

On Friday, al-Maliki offered amnesty and cash to fighters in Mosul who surrender their weapons within the next 10 days. Al-Bolani said no one has surrendered any weapons yet and warned they had "no other choice" but to comply or face being targeted by security forces in the coming days.

Al-Maliki made a similar offer to Shiite militias in Basra during the sweep there, but few surrendered weapons.

The prime minister returned to Baghdad from Mosul _ where he has been overseeing the crackdown _ to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who made a surprise visit to Iraq on Saturday.

Pelosi, a top Democratic critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, expressed confidence that expected provincial elections will promote national reconciliation.

She welcomed Iraq's progress in passing a budget as well as oil legislation, and a bill paving the way for the provincial elections in the fall that are expected to more equitably redistribute power among local officials.

"We're assured the elections will happen here, they will be transparent, they will be inclusive and they will take Iraq closer to the reconciliation we all want it to have," said Pelosi. She also met with Iraq's parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq.

Pelosi, who also traveled to Iraq in January 2007 shortly after the Democrats assumed congressional control, has been a sharp critic of the Bush administration's conduct of the war and has pressed for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country this year.

She also has called for the Iraqi government to contribute more money to the reconstruction of the country.

President Bush's Iraq war funding request failed in the House on Thursday as anti-war Democrats and Republicans unhappy about added domestic funding formed an unlikely coalition to kill, for now, $163 billion to support U.S. troops overseas.

In violence Saturday, a female suicide bomber blew herself up near an office for a U.S.-allied Sunni group, then a suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi police patrol heading to the scene in the Diyala provincial capital of Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad.

Police said at least 15 people were wounded in the attacks, including two children.

___

Associated Press writers Hamid Ahmed and Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Pulsars are supposed to be highly magnetized rotating stars which emit a beam of radiation in the form of radio waves. They usually have a circular orbit around white dwarf stars. Now scientists have found a pulsar which behaves quite differently from the usual. Instead of traveling in a circular orbit this one seems to be moving in an oval fashion. Why? Nobody knows. But did you know that at one time, astronomers believed that pulsars were beacons from extraterrestrial civilizations?
(Photo Credit: Thomas Tuchan /iStockphoto)

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt — President Bush said Saudi Arabia's small increase in oil production will not solve soaring U.S. fuel prices, but he defended the wealthy kingdom Saturday against American lawmakers "screaming the loudest" for Riyadh to open its spigots.

Bush also encountered bitter Arab criticism that he favors Israel too heavily and was bluntly questioned by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak about whether he is serious about peacemaking. Bush said he was "absolutely committed" to reaching an Israeli-Palestinian agreement by the end of his presidency next January. But there was no sign during Bush's five-day Mideast trip that the two sides are moving closer toward an accord.

"It breaks my heart to see the vast potential of the Palestinian people really wasted," Bush said. Pledging the creation of an independent homeland, Bush said "It'll be an opportunity to end the suffering that takes place in the Palestinian territories."

With Israel's occupation of Arab lands captured in the 1967 Mideast war entering its fifth decade, most Palestinians live in dire poverty.

On the last stop of his travels, Bush held a rapid-fire series of diplomatic meetings at this posh Red Sea resort, famous for its brilliantly clear waters and sea-snorkling reefs. After talks with Mubarak, Bush saw Afghan President Hamid Karzai and had dinner with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. On Sunday, he will confer with the leaders of Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq. He said every meeting advances prospects for peace.

As oil prices hit another record high on Friday, Saudi King Abdullah rebuffed Bush's request for higher oil production to take the pressure off prices. The high prices are a political nightmare in a presidential election year for Bush and his would-be Republican successor, Sen. John McCain. Bush said he cautioned the king about the repercussions of skyrocketing prices.

"I said very plainly, I said, `You've got to be concerned about the effects of high oil prices on some of the biggest customers in the world. And not only that, of course, high energy prices (are) going to cause countries like mine to accelerate our move toward alternative energy."

Saudi officials said the kingdom was pumping all the oil that its customers want and that production had been increased by 300,000 barrels a day earlier this month.

"It's something, but it doesn't solve our problem," Bush said. "Our problem in America gets solved when we aggressively go for domestic exploration. Our problem in America gets solved if we expand our refining capacity, promote nuclear energy, and continue our strategy for the advancement of alternative energies, as well as conservation."

Rather than criticize the Saudis, Bush turned his fire on Democrats back home threatening to kill a $1.4 billion arms sale to Riyadh unless it pumps at least 1 million additional barrels a day.

"One of the interesting things about American politics these days is those who are screaming the loudest for increased production from Saudi Arabia are the very same people who are fighting the fiercest against domestic exploration, against the development of nuclear power, and against expanding refining capacity," Bush said, standing on a manicured lawn overlooking the sea after talks with Karzai.

The president's first appointment was with 80-year-old Mubarak, who has led an authoritarian government in Egypt since 1981. In unusually blunt criticism, Egypt's state-owned press attacked Bush for his speech Thursday before the Israeli Knesset. The media accused Bush of being overly supportive of the Israelis and not mentioning the Palestinians' plight.

"The Torah-inspired speech of Bush raised question marks over the credibility of the U.S. role in the Middle East," wrote Mursi Atallah, the publisher of Al-Ahram, the flagship daily of the state-owned press. "Bush aims to do nothing but appeasing Israel."

Bush, in his address Thursday, showered Israel with praise, strongly reiterated its right to defend itself and only gently urged leaders to "make the hard choices necessary," without mention of concrete steps. He did not visit the Palestinian territories nor mention the Palestinians' plight. He spoke of them only in one sentence saying that Israel's 120th anniversary _ in 2068 _ would see it neighboring an independent Palestinian state.

Bush said Mubarak "wanted to make sure that my approach toward the Middle Eastern peace is firm, and that we work hard to get the Palestinian state defined." Bush said that "I believe we can get a state defined by the end of my presidency, and we'll work hard to achieve that objective."

He repeated those assurances later to Abbas. The Palestinian leader said that "we are working very seriously and very aggressively with the hope that we will be able to achieve this objective before the end of the year."

Bush said he and Abbas agreed on their concern about "radical elements undermining" the U.S.-backed government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.

"This is a defining moment," he said. "It is a moment that requires us to stand strongly with the Saniora government and to support the Saniora government."

The militant group Hezbollah overran Beirut neighborhoods last week in protest of measures aimed at the group by Saniora's government, a display of power that shocked and concerned the West. The violence only ended when Lebanon's Cabinet reversed the measures and Saniora's government reached a deal with the Shiite militant group, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization. Bush had planned to meet with Saniora in Egypt on Sunday, but the session was canceled.

Progressive Media USA was a more important organization to the progressive movement than many people know. For one thing, it employed a large number of progressive movement types with an online focus. Also, even though it was accomplished behind the scenes, it is responsible for a strikingly large number of the anti-McCain stories to appear in the national press over the past six months. Further, it was not meant to just operate during the campaign, but also to fight media pushback against a new Democratic administration in 2009 and beyond.

Basically, it was a very netroots friendly organization doing a lot of very positive anti-McCain work, and was also a potentially important allay of a new Democratic administration. However, at the behest of the Obama campaign senior leadership, it has now been decapitated and decommissioned by Barack Obama's uber-wealthy donors.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain's family background as the son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military, "and he has a hard time thinking beyond that," Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said Friday.

"I think he's trapped in that," Harkin said in a conference call with Iowa reporters. "Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous."