LONDON: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown insisted Sunday he would not quit despite a rumbling scandal over MPs expenses and dire poll ratings for his ruling Labour Party ahead of European and local elections.He said the expenses furore was "appalling" and "offends everything that I believe in" as well as promising that every lawmaker would be forced to account for all their expenses from the last four years. A total of 13 lawmakers from Labour and the main opposition Conservatives have said they will stand down since the scandal broke over three weeks ago.The Daily Telegraph newspaper has been publishing leaked documents detailing hundreds of claims from the public purse for everything from moat cleaning to a duck island. On Sunday, the Telegraph published an ICM poll suggesting Labour would come third in the European elections, in which Britons vote Thursday, with just 17 percent, behind the second opposition centrist Liberal Democrats. Even more damagingly, it suggested Labour would also come third in a general election with just 22 percent of the vote -- the worst Labour has done in an opinion poll since 1987.But Brown dismissed suggestions he could step down to make way for a more popular leader in an interview with British Television.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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