ASHINGTON - Republican George W. Bush leads Democrat Al Gore by a single percentage point in a Gallup poll released yesterday. The poll of 664 likely voters, commissioned by USA Today and CNN, found Bush with 46 percent and Gore with 45 percent. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader received 3 percent, and Reform Party hopeful Patrick J. Buchanan 1 percent. Since the survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent, the Bush lead is statistically insignificant. Last week the same poll found Gore leading 47 to 46 percent. But CNN said on its Web site that the change is not significant. (Reuters)
Author sues Buchanan, saying book is plagiarism
DALLAS - A Southern Methodist University economics professor has sued Reform Party presidential hopeful Patrick J. Buchanan and his publisher, claiming copyright infringement. A lawsuit filed in federal court Friday by Ravendra Batra alleges that Buchanan's 1998 book, ''The Great Betrayal,'' plagiarized parts of Batra's books, including charts and graphs. ''Copyright is about written expressions, and there are some strong, strong similarities between Mr. Buchanan's work and Mr. Batra's works,'' Arthur Navarro, Batra's attorney, said yesterday. Buchanan's campaign referred questions about the lawsuit to his publisher, Little Brown & Co. Madeleine Schachter, associate general counsel for Little Brown, said company officials had not seen the filing and had no comment. Buchanan's book argues against globalization of economies, and he blasts the major political parties for seeking trade treaties that he believes hurt American workers and undermine the nation's sovereignty. (AP)
Halliburton profited from missions Bush criticizes
WASHINGTON - The company run until this month by former defense secretary Dick Cheney has reaped more than $2 billion in federal contracts to support US troops on some of the peacekeeping missions that George W. Bush says have helped run down the military. US deployments in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, and elsewhere - the kinds of missions Bush has pledged to reduce if elected - have meant big contracts for Dallas-based Halliburton Co., which Cheney, the GOP vice presidential candidate, headed from 1995 until he retired two weeks ago. A big chunk of the business came in 1995, when troops were sent to Bosnia. The Army paid Brown & Root Services, a subsidiary of Halliburton, $546 million to provide logistical support for more than 20,000 American soldiers in Bosnia, Croatia, and Hungary. The company had already earned $269 million on the contract. Two years later Brown & Root received a sole-source contract worth $405 million to continue support services in Bosnia. Last year the company won a five-year Army contract to support US peacekeeping troops in the Balkans. Another contract for support services awarded this year by the Navy will bring in at least $300 million. The government has hired Halliburton for dozens of other jobs, from a $100 million contract to improve embassy security to a $40 million contract to maintain labs at the National Institutes of Health. (AP)
