[AP World News]   By DULUE MBACHU, Associated Press Writer

LAGOS, Nigeria - When British officials intercepted a Nigerian man with a briefcase stuffed with $200,000 at London's Heathrow airport, they thought they had stumbled upon a terrorist trail.

Instead, the cash-filled carry-on has led to the highest-profile corruption case yet in Nigeria, where bribery scandals have been reaching to the world's leading capitals, including Washington. ...

It's only one international Nigerian payoff probe: In Paris, a French judge has reportedly warned that Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) could be charged over allegations that his former company, Halliburton, paid $180 million in bribes to build a Nigerian gas plant. Halliburton has called the accusations untrue, and Cheney's spokesmen have refused to comment on the case.

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Belleville: "U.S. Rep Jerry Costello has called for impeachment hearings against U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.
Costello questioned the award of billions of dollars of contracts to Cheney's former corporation Haliburton to extinguish fires and rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure after the war.

'Can you imagine what the Republicans would be doing to a Democratic president who was a CEO of a company that now has gotten billions of dollars worth of contracts - no-bid contracts - without competition?' Costello, D-Belleville, was quoted as saying." [Heli's Heaven and Hell Radio]

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Today, as the Los Angeles Times reports, Norton signed off on a plan to open an 8.8 million acre swath of land in Alaska's North Slope to oil and gas exploration. The area is just west of the of the 1.5 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an area the Bush administration wants to open to oil and gas drilling. The Senate has already blocked that plan twice.

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[AP Politics]  By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

CONCORD, N.H. - John Kerry (news - web sites) accused the Bush administration on Friday of shortchanging veterans, focusing fire on Republicans while Democratic presidential rivals hoped his surge in the polls would soon subside.

"The first definition of patriotism is keeping faith with those who have worn the uniform of the country," said the Massachusetts senator, who served in Vietnam. He said some veterans must wait too long for health care, while others who are disabled receive a reduced pension.

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By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff, 1/23/2004'

'Fact sheet' asserts no rules, laws broken

WASHINGTON -- Although Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle's investigation into GOP surveillance of Democratic Judiciary Committee communications from 2002 to 2003 is not yet complete, Republicans are preemptively trying to head off any criminal charges or even ethics complaints in the Senate or the D.C. Bar.

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[Washington Post: Nation and Politics]   By Carol D. Leonnig

A furious federal judge ordered Justice Department lawyers yesterday to explain why they should not be held in contempt of court for telling subpoenaed witnesses not to testify before him in a class-action discrimination lawsuit.

Three Department of Agriculture employees were subpoenaed and scheduled to answer questions yesterday in court about whether top USDA officials had acknowledged any discrimination against Native American farmers when providing loans and assistance. A group of Native American farmers sued the USDA in 1999, but the case has been bogged down as the Justice Department unsuccessfully sought to appeal U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan's rulings that the farmer group qualified to file the broader class-action case.

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