In the News

WORLD

PADANG, Philippines – Rescuers scouring mountain villages buried under mud and boulders loosened by a powerful typhoon discovered more bodies Saturday, raising the death total to more than 300, with another 300 missing.

Officials fear the number of those killed by Typhoon Durian will rise as rescue operations continue in devastated villages on the slopes of the Mayon volcano, 210 miles southeast of Manila in the northern Philippines.

The Disaster Coordinating Council of worst-hit Albay province reported 285 dead, including 165 in the town of Guinobatan, swamped by floodwaters in the Mayon volcano’s foothills. At least 66 people were reported dead in three towns on Mayon’s slopes.

Another 300 people were missing, and the storm affected 800,000 people, officials said. Four other provinces reported deaths, but accurate figures were hard to come by, with the disaster’s devastation so widespread and power and phone lines down.

Ash and boulders had been building on the slopes of the 8,077-foot Mayon – one of 22 active volcanoes in the Philippines – which has been coming to life in recent months. Typhoon Durian’s 139 mph winds and drenching rain on Thursday raked it all down on the deluged villages.

NATION

WASHINGTON – President Bush said Saturday he wants to hear all advice before making decisions about changes in Iraq strategy, even as it was disclosed that Donald Rumsfeld called for major changes in tactics two days before he resigned as defense secretary.

“In my view it is time for a major adjustment,” Rumsfeld wrote in a Nov. 6 memo to the White House. “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.”

Existence of the classified memo was first reported by The New York Times on its Web site Saturday evening in a story for the paper’s Sunday editions.

Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff said he was not the source of the leak to the Times but confirmed the memo’s authenticity to The Associated Press late Saturday.

The president is under pressure to decide a new blueprint for U.S. involvement in Iraq. A bipartisan commission headed by James A. Baker III, a former Republican secretary of state and Bush family friend from Texas, and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana is to present its recommendations to Bush in the coming week.

STATE & LOCAL

HOT SPRINGS – New Virginia Republican chairman Ed Gillespie urged quarreling GOP conservatives and moderates Saturday to reconcile and refrain from anger over last month’s troubling election losses.

About 600 statewide Republican activists at the party’s annual December gathering also heard Sen. George Allen, pensive after his loss to Democrat Jim Webb last month, urge them not to be too discouraged by the Democratic sweep of Congress he called “a big, blue northern wind.”

Gillespie took over with overwhelming support as the party copes with the defeat of Allen, its dominant and most inspirational figure since he abolished parole and reformed welfare as a popular governor more than 12 years ago.

A majority of the party’s congressional district chairmen backed his nomination very early, making Saturday’s vote a formality. Backers said Gillespie’s national profile and experience gives the party respect and revives its lagging fundraising efforts, and his outsider status – he’s a New Jersey native – averts a power struggle among the party’s regional and ideological factions.