New York City

Women’s sex patch coming to U.S. market

Viagra-popping men soon will meet their match in patch-wearing women. The latest tool in the battle to rev up listless libidos is a little oval skin patch aimed at boosting a woman’s sex drive.

Trial runs of the patch, called Intrinsa, have been so promising that the Food and Drug Administration put it on the fast track to approval Tuesday.

The patch was tested on women whose ovaries had been surgically removed, decreasing their hormone levels. The device releases testosterone.

Procter & Gamble officials said if all went well, the patch could be available sometime next year.

Washington, D.C.

CDC: Too many people not getting flu shots

Of the Americans who most need a flu shot, fewer than half get one, federal health officials warned Thursday as they called for attention to babies, toddlers and the elderly as vaccinations begin next month.

A record 100 million doses of flu vaccine will be available this year, the vast majority of it shipped to doctors’ offices by the end of October, said Dr. Keiji Fukuda of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Every year the flu kills about 36,000 Americans.

Seattle

Plane crash survivors huddled together in cold

Two Forest Service workers who were believed killed in a fiery plane crash huddled together to stay warm in the freezing temperatures of the Montana wilderness, and one was in such excruciating pain that he had trouble bending over to get water from a stream, a doctor said Thursday.

Matthew Ramige, 29, and Jodee Hogg, 23, walked away from the Monday crash in northwest Montana and emerged from the wilderness on a highway Wednesday afternoon. Three others died in the crash.

Hogg was in stable condition Thursday at Kalispell Regional Medical Center in Montana. Ramige was in serious condition at a Seattle hospital with a spinal fracture and burns over 20 percent of his body on his hands, face and chest.

Dr. David Heimbach said the pair endured temperatures that fell to 20 degrees by huddling together to stay warm. They remained by the plane for a day and a half, hoping someone would come to rescue them, but decided to walk out when no one arrived, he said.

New York City

Stations get e-mails seeking Rather ouster

Station managers at several CBS affiliates said Thursday they appeared to be a target of a national e-mail campaign placing pressure on the network to oust Dan Rather as anchorman of the “CBS Evening News.”

The anger stems from Rather’s role in a “60 Minutes” report on President Bush’s service in the National Guard. CBS has apologized for reporting on documents critical of Bush’s service, widely assumed now as fakes, and appointed a panel to investigate what went wrong in the report.

Bob Lee, president and general manager of WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Va., and head of the CBS affiliate board, said many e-mailers offer the same message: I will not watch CBS News again until Rather is gone.

Florida

Fire kills five in home with windows boarded

A predawn fire burned a Homestead home where windows were covered with plywood, turning the house into a “convection oven” and killing four children and an adult Thursday, officials said.

The fire did not reach the bedroom where the victims were sleeping, and they apparently died of smoke inhalation, Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue Lt. Eugene Germain said.

Investigators were trying to determine what sparked the blaze, which began in the living room. The house became a “convection oven” when the boards and burglar bars trapped the fire’s heat, gas and smoke, said Lt. Eric Baum, a fire-rescue spokesman.

The house did not have smoke alarms, and the victims may not have known there was a fire, Germain said.

Four of the victims died at the scene, and one died on the way to a hospital, he said. Their identities and relationships were not immediately known. A neighbor, Loretta Hanna, said the children were two girls and two boys, ranging in age from 11 to 16.

Their mother was not home because she had recently given birth and was staying with a relative, said Arthur Brown, the children’s uncle.

Washington, D.C.

Justice Department steps up vigilance amid fears of attack

As the election nears, U.S. officials say they are increasingly concerned al-Qaida will attempt to mount a devastating attack aimed at disrupting the political process.

Though they have no new information indicating a time, place or method of attack, government agencies are stepping up counterterrorism efforts.

In an unusual move, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, Deputy Atty. Gen. James Comey and other senior officials recently held a conference call with all 93 U.S. attorneys to reinforce that prosecutors and law enforcement officers must take every conceivable step to counter the threat, two senior law enforcement officials said.

Moscow

$20 million in aid still yet to reach school siege victims

Ongoing confusion over exactly how many people were taken hostage during a deadly siege at a southern Russia school is delaying the distribution of more than $20 million in charity aid, officials said Thursday.

In the three weeks after the school in Beslan was seized by Chechen rebels, leading to the deaths of more than 330 people, nearly $20.4 million was collected from corporate and private donors in Russia and abroad, according to the Web site of the Regional Development Bank, which is handling the money.

But none of that money has been given to survivors, said Fatima Khabalova, spokeswoman for the North Ossetian parliament. Beslan is in North Ossetia.

Washington, D.C.

Bush policies add $1.3 trillion to 10-year deficit, study says

Responding to an election-season request by Democrats, the Congressional Budget Office estimated Thursday that some of President Bush’s budget policies, plus other costs, would add $1.3 trillion to federal deficits in the next decade.

Republicans said the exercise was a blatantly political attempt by Democrats to use the nonpartisan budget office’s projections to attack Bush and the GOP.

White House budget office spokesman Chad Kolton said while Bush’s fiscal blueprint addressed terrorism and economic growth, Democrats wanted “tax hikes and trillions in additional spending, and all the politicized reports in the world can’t paper over that fact.”

Democrats said the figures provided a telling depiction of how Bush’s tax and spending plans — along with other looming costs — would drive huge projected deficits even higher.

Texas

Ivan’s remnants return

Making an encore appearance in the Gulf of Mexico as a tropical storm, Ivan swirled toward the Texas coast Thursday with a potential for up to 10 inches of rain over the weekend.

In all, four tropical weather systems were churning Thursday, with the most immediate threat coming from the 22-day-old Ivan, which will not seem to go away after causing 70 deaths in the Caribbean and 60 more when it plowed into the Gulf Coast and through the South last week.

Ivan was expected to make a button-hook turn and sit over Houston through the weekend, bringing 4 to 10 inches of rain and threat of flooding.

Chad

Darfur rebels favor U.N. sanctions against Sudan

One of western Sudan’s main rebel movements urged the United Nations on Thursday to go through with threatened sanctions on Sudan, and warned it would resume fighting in Darfur if attacked.

Two political leaders of the Sudan Liberation Army spoke to The Associated Press in Chad, the western neighbor of Sudan, days after the U.N. Security Council agreed to consider oil sanctions on Sudan for that government’s alleged backing for ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

“Sanctions will help pressure this government, will help this government come to its senses,” said Sharif Harir, who was chief negotiator for the Sudan Liberation Army at the failed peace talks in Nigeria.

LONDON

Singer vows to find out why U.S. banned him

Puzzled and angry at being barred from the United States, the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens returned Thursday to London vowing to find out why.

Surrounded by a throng of reporters at Heathrow Airport, Yusuf Islam said it was ludicrous that he was on Washington’s no-fly list for having suspected ties to terrorists, and he said he would challenge the decision to block him from entering the country.

“Half of me wants to smile, and half of me wants to growl. The whole thing is totally ridiculous,” Islam said.

“Everybody knows who I am. I am no secret figure. Everybody knows my campaigning for charity, for peace. There’s got to be a whole lot of explanation.”

Afghanistan

U.S. soldier wounded in rocket attack on base

U.S. troops clashed with militants in southern Afghanistan, killing at least two fighters, and a rocket attack on the main American base in the country wounded a U.S. soldier, officials said Thursday.

The shootout was sparked Wednesday when two men on a motorcycle refused to stop when U.S. troops confronted them near Poshakan village in the southern province of Uruzgan province, a hotspot for U.S. troops battling Taliban militants, the local mayor said.

Also Wednesday, three rockets were fired at Bagram Air Base, the hub of U.S. military operations since the war that scattered the Taliban and their al-Qaida allies nearly three years ago.