- Here's a new Olympic sport.   Find a 16 year old Chinese girl at the Olympics.

- Somali resident comes to Denver, through Canada, and is found dead in hotel with a half a liter of cyanide, two weeks before the Democrat Convention.  Suspicious, ya think?

IT HAPPENED ON THIS DAY

T H E      B R I E F

Russia stood behind its pledge to withdraw its troops from most of neighboring Georgia by Friday, rebuffing pressure from the United States, United Nations and NATO to leave sooner.

It remains to be seen whether Russia will follow through with the pledge, as a Pentagon official said Tuesday that there appears to be no significant change in the Russian military's occupation of the region despite an earlier promises to withdraw.

Russia signed a cease-fire with Georgia on Saturday, but since then, its troops have appeared to be digging in rather than pulling back after the fighting over the rebel province of South Ossetia.

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Just two weeks before the start of the Democratic National Convention a string of security scares have federal investigators working to downplay potential terrorist threats.

Almost two weeks ago, a jihadist Web site posted a call to poison a major city's water supply. The posting, reportedly discovered Aug. 9 on a site favored by Al Qaeda, called for an attack on "atheist Europe," a reference that some terror watchers believe represents Western nations in general.

Just days later a Canadian immigrant was found dead in a Denver hotel room with a pound of cyanide, only blocks away from the site of the Democratic National Convention.

Both cases have mobilized federal investigators into action, although they say that neither case carries any real terror threat.

One U.S. official confirmed intelligence analysts are reviewing the Web posting, but said it appeared to be a garden-variety threat the intelligence community sees from time to time.

The FBI also said that it continues to investigate the case of 29-year-old Saleman Abdirahman Dirie of Ottawa, but the Dirie case may not lead anywhere. The key witness with all the answers — Dirie himself — is dead after investigators say he ingested a concoction of the chemical and water.

About one-third of those younger than 25 said they get no news on a typical day, up from about 25 percent in 1998. 

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A racy, historical novel based on the Prophet Muhammad's child bride A'isha was supposed to hit book stores in the U.S. Tuesday.

But in a rare case of self-censorship to preempt possible violent reaction by Muslims, one of the world's largest publishing houses pulled the plug on the book just before its release date.

Sherry Jones, author of The Jewel of Medina, said she received word from Random House Inc. that the book's release would be "postponed indefinitely." The decision came after copies of her book were sent to stores, her book tour was scheduled and her work of fiction was accepted by the Book of the Month Club (it was scheduled to be in the August selection).

"My book is a respectful portrayal of Islam, of A'isha, of Muhammad. And anyone who reads it with [an] open mind will come away with an understanding of Islam as a peaceful religion," said the American author.

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A British man who did not tell anyone he was going on vacation to Australia came home to find they were mourning his death.

The confusion began in June, when 49-year-old Michael O'Neill, from Middlesbrough, England, made a last-minute decision to head Down Under without telling a soul.

His neighbors grew worried and called police, who broke into his flat and found no evidence of his whereabouts.

The situation grew even worse last week when his friends saw a death notice in a local newspaper. By an incredible coincidence, another Michael O'Neill from Middlesbrough had died — and both have brothers named Kevin and Terry.

"I went out on June 2 to stay with a friend and when I got back last Monday I found my door had been smashed in," the living O'Neill told Britain's Daily Telegraph. “My neighbors thought I had died so they got in touch with police who came and broke the door down.”

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Former OU gymnast Jonathan Horton won silver on the high bar Tuesday, just missing a gold medal.  He scored a 16.175, only .025 points behind China's Kai Zou. 

The high bar competition will be broadcast tonight on NBC. 

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An election coming up?  Here comes the propaganda from the left:  We now know the name of Bob Woodward's fourth investigative work on the Bush administration, just three weeks before the book's release.

"The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008" will be published Sept. 8 by Simon & Schuster with an announced first printing of 900,000 copies. Simon & Schuster is keeping the book under strict embargo - although such embargoes are often broken - and had even held back the title.

"There has not been such an authoritative and intimate account of presidential decision making since the Nixon tapes and the Pentagon Papers," Woodward's longtime editor, Alice Mayhew, said Tuesday in a statement. "This is the declassification of what went on in secret, behind the scenes."

Yeah, right.

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Federal inspectors at U.S. border crossings repeatedly turned back filthy, disease-ridden shipments of peppers from Mexico in the months before a salmonella outbreak that sickened 1,400 people was finally traced to Mexican chilies.

Yet no larger action was taken. Food and Drug Administration officials insisted as recently as last week that they were surprised by the outbreak because Mexican peppers had not been spotted as a problem before.

But an Associated Press analysis of FDA records found that peppers and chilies were consistently the top Mexican crop rejected by border inspectors for the last year.

Since January alone, 88 shipments of fresh and dried chilies were turned away. Ten percent were contaminated with salmonella. In the last year, 8 percent of the 158 intercepted shipments of fresh and dried chilies had salmonella.

On Friday, Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's food safety chief, told reporters peppers were not a cause for concern before they were implicated in the salmonella outbreak.

"We have not typically seen problems with peppers," Acheson said. "Our import sampling is typically focused on areas where we know we've got problems or we've seen problems in the past, which is why we're now increasing our sampling for peppers."

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So it really was a rubber suit. 

The excitement over a supposed Bigfoot body that built all last week, culminating Friday in a circus-like press conference in Palo Alto, Calif., collapsed like a wet soufflé over the weekend as an independent investigator found out it was all fake.

SearchingforBigfoot.com owner Tom Biscardi paid an "undisclosed sum" to Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, the two Georgia men who say they found the body, for their frozen corpse and the privilege of trotting them out in front of TV cameras.

At the same time, Biscardi sent self-described "Sasquatch detective" Steve Kulls back to Georgia to check out the body.

Kulls, it's safe to say, was severely disappointed.

The upshot? The real Bigfoot, once found, is now missing. So are Whitton, Dyer and Biscardi's money.

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He's the "eight" wonder of the world!

Here is the iconic first photo of a bare-chested, medal-clad Michael Phelps doing his best Mark Spitz impression - sporting an Olympic-sized grin as his eight golds dangle from his neck. The photo - taken inside an ancient temple in Beijing on Sunday night - will grace the cover of Sports Illustrated, which hits newsstands tomorrow.

The smiling champ - with his hands on his hips - appears under the headline, "The Alltime Olympian Michael Phelps."

"This one being the first [photo] of him with all eight medals, we hope that our cover will stick in everyone's mind," SI's managing editor Terry McDonell said yesterday.

Phelps' pose is reminiscent of the well-known 1972 photograph of Spitz with his seven gold medals draped across his chest.

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More American women in their early 40s are childless, and those who are having children are having fewer than ever before, the Census Bureau said Monday.

In the last 30 years, the number of women age 40 to 44 with no children has doubled, from 10 percent to 20 percent. And those who are mothers have an average of 1.9 children each, more than one child fewer than women of the same age in 1976.

The report, Fertility of American Women: 2006, is the first from the Census Bureau to use data from an annual survey of 76 million women, ages 15 to 50, allowing a state-by-state comparison of fertility patterns. About 4.2 million women participating in the survey, which was conducted from January through December 2006, had had a child in the previous year. The statistics could be used by state agencies to provide maternal care services, the report said.

The survey found that in 2006 women with graduate or professional degrees recorded the most births of all educational levels. About 36 percent of women who gave birth in the previous 12 months were separated, divorced, widowed or unmarried.

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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans to celebrate his 72nd birthday on Aug. 29 by naming his running mate at a huge rally in the battleground state of Ohio, Republican sources said.

That’s a week from Friday, and the day after his rival, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, accepts the Democratic nomination at a 70,000-person spectacular in a Denver stadium.

The campaign has begun building a crowd of 10,000 for Dayton, Ohio, according to an organizer. McCain is scheduled to appear with his running mate at a large-scale event in Pennsylvania shortly thereafter.

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"Last weekend's McCain-Obama proto-debate made it clear why Obama won't keep his promise to debate McCain "anywhere, anytime." McCain, with a robust resume and details at his fingertips, won big." - Investor's Business Daily

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Vietnamese authorities freed British glam rocker Gary Glitter on Tuesday after nearly three years in prison on child molestation charges, then moved immediately to deport him.

Guards removed Glitter, 64, from the Thu Duc prison in Binh Thuan province and were transporting him Tuesday morning to the Ho Chi Minh City airport, some three hours away, said prison director Tran Huu Thong.

Glitter has said he does not want to return to the UK. In a recent interview with Vietnamese newspaper Cong An Nhan Dan (People's Police), Glitter said he was thinking about resuming his singing career and that he might move to Hong Kong or Singapore.

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Two female cops were busted for punching, kicking and pistol-whipping a Bronx driver until his head cracked open - just beacuse he refused to close a car door blocking their path, authorities said yesterday.

Michelle Anglin 37, and Koleen Robinson, 24, were stripped of their shields and service weapons, and slapped with a laundry list of charges topped by gang assault, authorities said.

"I'm not feeling so well right now," said driver Marlon Smith, 35, a father of three who needed 25 staples to close three gashes in his head.

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Phil Collins' divorce from his third wife has landed him at the top of the list for the biggest divorce- payout by a British celebrity in legal history, according to the U.K.'s Mirror.

Collins, 57, paid Swiss-born Orianne Cevey, 35, $46.68 million, topping the Mills-McCartney divorce by $1 million.

The couple, who met while Collins was on tour, announced their separation in 2006.

Collins and Cevey, who was working as a translator at the time, had been married for six years and have two children — Nicolas, 8, and Matthew, 4, the Mirror reported.

But this isn't the first time Collins' bank account has taken a significant dip.

"Marriage has certainly not come cheap for Phil," said a music industry source.

In 1980, Collins divorced his first wife, Canadian-born Andrea Bertorelli. She reportedly ran off with their interior decorator.

In 1994, Collins divorced his second wife, Jill Tavelman, paying her $34 million after he famously dumped her via fax.

It is estimated Collins has paid nearly $84 million in divorce settlements to his ex-wives, according to the Mirror. 

The "Genesis" singer recently announced he is giving touring up for good after losing some of his hearing to an ear infection.

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College presidents from more than 100 schools across the country are calling on lawmakers to do something about binge drinking: Consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18.

"Twenty-one is not working," says the group's statement, signed by presidents from prominent colleges such as Dartmouth , Duke and Syracuse . "A culture of dangerous, clandestine 'binge drinking' - often conducted off-campus - has developed."

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MILFORD, Conn. —  A Connecticut school superintendent wants his district to be able to test students with a Breathaylzer at school events, NewHavenRegister.com reported Monday.

Milford Superintendent of Schools Harvey Polanksy said the proposed policy would be used when there is "reasonable suspicion" that a student had been drinking prior to school-sanctioned social events like high school dances and athletic events, NewHavenRegister.com reported.

"You read in the papers on a regular basis (about) teens not making good judgments with alcohol," Polansky told the New Haven Register. "We just want to promote a safer environment … underage drinking is an epidemic."

Any student who is determined to be intoxicated by the Breathalyzer would not be allowed into the school event. If the offending student were to become belligerent, police would then be notified, the New Have Register reported.

Milford's Board of Education will reportedly vote on the proposal Monday. If approved, the policy could take affect as early as this fall.

"It’s really clear most teens are drinking and we need to provide a deterrence,” Polansky told the New Haven Register.

PAGE CONSTANTLY UPDATED 

What's  On  DRUDGE?

E - B R I E F

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