LONDON (Reuters) - Researchers working in Ethiopia have unearthed the fossils of a 10-million-year-old ape, a discovery they say suggests that humans and African great apes may have split much earlier than thought.

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The Ethiopian and Japanese team named the species Chororapithecus abyssinicus and said it represents the earliest recognized primate directly related to modern-day gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos.

"The human fossil record goes back six to seven million years, but we know nothing about how the human line actually emerged from apes," the researchers said in a statement on Wednesday that accompanied publication of their study in Nature magazine.

"Chororapithecus gives us the first glimpse of the ape side background to the human origins story."

The researchers found the fossils in steep, rough terrain about 170 km (105 miles) east of Addis Ababa.

The team, which dug up one canine tooth and eight molars, determined the molars were from a great ape because they shared special characteristics with modern gorillas for eating fibrous food such as stems and leaves.

They concluded Chororapithecus was either a primitive form of gorilla or an independent branch showing a similar adaptation at about the time when the gorilla line was emerging elsewhere.

"If it's not a gorilla relative, then it's something very similar to what an early gorilla must have looked like," Gen Suwa of the University of Tokyo, one of the researchers, said.

Peter Andrews, a paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum and expert on human origins, called the discovery exciting because the fossil evidence from great apes, the closest living relatives to humans, is almost non-existent.

But he said he was not certain enough about some of the characteristics of the new fossil ape's teeth to name a new species ancestral to gorillas-- as the researchers have done -- that pushes back the timeline of the ape-human split.

"It is stretching the evidence to base a timescale for the evolution of the great apes on this new fossil," Andrews said in a telephone interview.

Some scientists have also speculated that the direct line of ancestral ape that spawned gorillas, chimpanzees and humans came to Africa from Eurasia.

But the researchers said their findings added to evidence that Africa was the place of origin of both humans and modern African apes and indicated that gorillas split off from a common ancestor with humans and chimpanzees long before the generally accepted time of 7 to 8 million years ago.

"Chororapithecus indicates that a reconsideration of this assumption is needed," the researchers said. "In fact, if the orang line was present in Africa prior (to the) first migration of Miocene (some 23-25 million years ago) apes from Africa to Eurasia, then the human-orang split could have easily have been as old as 20 million years ago."

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Mice born without a key brain protein developed obsessive compulsive symptoms that went away when treated with anti-anxiety drugs, giving new clues about the brain mechanism behind the disorder, researchers said on Wednesday.

They said mice who lacked the gene SAPAP3 -- which makes a protein that helps nerves communicate -- groomed their faces until they bled and developed an aversion for bright, open spaces.

"We think they cannot control themselves," said Guoping Feng, a molecular geneticist at Duke University Medical Center whose study appears in the journal Nature.

Feng said these behaviors resembled those of humans with obsessive compulsive disorder, known as OCD.

The anxiety disorder is marked by intrusive thoughts and repetitive compulsive behaviors, such as frequent hand washing, that disrupt daily life. OCD affects up to 2 percent of the world's population.

Feng and colleagues had been focusing their research on the function of the protein made by the gene SAPAP3. They bred mice that lacked the gene.

Initially, these mice were normal but after four to six weeks they developed raw patches on their faces. Videotapes revealed compulsive grooming.

Further testing showed the mice were excessively anxious. When placed in a dark box with a door leading to bright open spaces, normal mice would venture out but mice who lacked the protein remained inside the box.

"They feel the bright place is the riskier environment," Feng said in a telephone interview. "This is additional evidence that they have increased anxiety."

When the researchers restored the missing gene, the mice behaved normally.

Fluoxetine, an anti-anxiety drug sold by Eli Lilly and Co. under the brand name Prozac and used to treat OCD symptoms in humans, also relieved the symptoms.

Feng said the study was the first to suggest that a defect in the part of the brain called the striatum can cause OCD symptoms.

SAPAP3 is part of a family of proteins that regulate the neurotransmitter or message-carrying chemical glutamate. Feng believes this neurotransmitter may be a useful target as companies develop new drugs for anxiety disorders.

LONDON (Reuters) - Researchers have found a way to erase long-term memory in rats without damaging their brains in a study that could lead to targeted drugs for people suffering from dementia.

The findings show long-term memories are not as secure as thought and challenge the idea they stabilize after maturing from short-term memories, said Yadin Dudai, who led the study.

"Memory can be erased by applying a drug into a specific part of the brain that stores that memory," he said in a telephone interview. "Long-term memory can be erased."

In the study, published on Thursday in the journal Science, the U.S. and Israeli researchers fed the rats saccharine, which made them sick and taught them to associate the taste with feeling unwell.

They then injected an enzyme inhibitor called ZIP into the rats' brains that blocked a protein, PKMzeta, which controls the flow of information involving memory between brain cells.

After the injection, the rats did not remember the association with saccharine, no matter how long the researchers had trained them to do so, said Dudai, a researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Sciencein Israel.

This suggests a key mechanism in the brain works like a piece of machinery to store long-term memory, Dudai said. Once the machinery stops, memory shuts down.

"This research is important because it casts light on the mechanisms of memory," Dudai said. "It also shows that long-term memory is not a permanent change and can be edited."

While the procedure is experimental and far too invasive to be done on humans, the results give drug makers a roadmap to develop new treatments related to memory, he said.

Once researchers know the mechanism in the brain that plays an important role in storing long-term memory, they can use that information in future studies to look at boosting memory, rather than erasing it, Dudai said.

This could result in potential uses to treat Alzheimer's patients in the early stages of dementia or people wishing to enhance their memory, Dudai said.

"The minute you identify a molecular mechanism that is critical for keeping memory going, you identify a potential target for drugs," he said. "The prime target is people with defective memories."  

BEIJING - The head of a Chinese manufacturer whose lead-tainted Sesame Street toys were the center of a massive U.S. recall has killed himself, a state-run newspaper said Monday.

Cheung Shu-hung, who co-owned Lee Der Industrial Co., committed suicide at a warehouse over the weekend, apparently by hanging himself, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

"When I rushed there around 5 p.m., police had already sealed off the area," the newspaper quoted a manager surnamed Liu as saying. "I saw that our boss had two deep marks in his neck."

Though the report did not give a reason for Cheung's apparent suicide — and the company declined to discuss the matter — Lee Der was under pressure in a global controversy over the safety of Chinese made products. It is common for disgraced officials to commit suicide in China.

This month, Mattel Inc., one of the largest U.S. toy companies, was forced to recall 967,000 plastic preschool toys made by Lee Der because they were decorated with paint found to have excessive amounts of lead. The toys, sold in the U.S. under the Fisher-Price brand, included likenesses of Big Bird and Elmo, as well as the Dora and Diego characters.

Days later, Chinese officials temporarily banned Lee Der from exporting products. The Southern Metropolis Daily, citing unidentified Lee Der workers, said the recall cost the company $30 million.

The recall was among the largest in recent months involving Chinese products, which have come under scrutiny worldwide for containing potentially dangerous high levels of chemicals and toxins.

Chinese officials, eager to protect an export industry crucial to China's booming economy, have aggressively tried to shore up international consumer confidence by cracking down on makers of shoddy goods, crafting new regulations and stepping up inspections.

In one of the more bizarre cases, a court in Beijing on Sunday sentenced a reporter to one year in jail after he pleaded guilty to faking a television report that showed migrant workers making meat buns stuffed with cardboard for sale.

The report, concocted by freelance reporter Zi Beijia, fanned fears in China and abroad about China's poor food safety record. The report appeared on national television and was widely seen on the Web site YouTube.

In the Lee Der suicide, an official who answered the telephone at the company's factory in the southern city of Foshan on Monday said he had not heard of the news. A man at Lee Der's main office in Hong Kong said the company was not accepting interviews and hung up. Telephones at Foshan's police headquarters rang unanswered.

Cheung was a co-owner of Lee Der, according to a registry of Hong Kong companies. The other owner, Chiu Kwei-tsun, did not return telephone messages left for him.

In its report, the Southern Metropolis Daily said Cheung, a Hong Kong resident in his 50s, treated his 5,000-odd employees well and always paid them on time. The morning of his suicide, he greeted workers and chatted with some of them, the report said.

After the recall, Lee Der maintained that its paint supplier, Cheung's best friend, supplied "fake paint" used in the toys, the Southern Metropolis Daily said.

"The boss and the company were harmed by the paint supplier, the closest friend of our boss," Liu, the manager, was quoted as saying.

Mattel Inc., based in El Segundo, Calif., issued a statement Monday expressing sorrow over Cheung's death.

"We were troubled to hear about this tragic news," the statement said. "This is a personal misfortune not a corporate event. Any loss of life is a tragedy and we feel for the family during this difficult time."

Separately, Mattel was preparing to announce the recall of another Chinese-made toy as early as Tuesday because it may also contain excessive amounts of lead paint. The latest recall, whose details could not be immediately learned, involves a different Chinese supplier, according to three people close to the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

In announcing the temporary export ban against Lee Der, a government quality inspection agency also slapped a similar prohibition on Hansheng Wood Products Factory and said police were investigating both companies' use of "fake plastic pigment." Such pigments are a type of industrial latex used to make surfaces smoother and shinier.

Hansheng made wooden railroad toys that a New York company, RC2 Corp., sold under the Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway product line. RC2 had to recall 1.5 million of the toys earlier this year because of lead paint, which can cause vomiting, anemia and even neurological damage.

Chinese companies often have long supply chains, making it difficult to trace the exact origin of components, chemicals and food additives.

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Associated Press writers Dikky Sinn in Hong Kong and Anne D'Innocenzio in New York contributed to the story.

MEXICO CITY (Hollywood Reporter) - Commercial TV in Mexico is suffering an identity crisis.

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Light-skinned actors bearing little resemblance to the average Mexican typically land lead roles. Meanwhile, actors with indigenous features often settle for secondary parts because casting thinks they look too Mexican.

Sociologist Murilo Kuschick says that as the gap widens between Mexico's haves and have-nots, television programs and commercials aren't helping matters by reinforcing stereotypes across racial and socio-economic lines.

A recent promo for Televisa's hit soap "Destilando Amor" (Distilling Love) offers a poignant example of how characters are often portrayed.

In one of the scenes, a well-heeled character with bleached-blond hair sits at a dinner table expressing her concern that a family member has lowered himself by falling in love with a working-class woman. As the fair-skinned woman prattles on, a servant with dark, indigenous features stands silent in the background.

TV critic Alvaro Cueva says his biggest concern is that networks and advertisers here have come to define beauty based on European standards.

"Now this may sound like an extreme thing to say, but if Salma Hayek were working in Mexican television right now as an unknown actress, she would have a hard time finding work," he says. "That's because she's not light-skinned and she's not tall."

Elio Lozano, an agent who represents about 20 actors, couldn't agree more. Some of his most talented clients have had little choice but to accept roles as criminals or domestic servants because they don't fit the European mold.

MEXICAN BECKHAM

Ad agencies here see the preference for light-skinned actors as a global trend.

"Everything has moved toward a more globalized vision," says Alfonso Carbo, who heads media advertising at ad agency Publicidad Ferrer y Asociados. "I think we should depict people as they really are, and the people we see on TV obviously do not look very Mexican. But our clients prefer to see someone who looks like David Beckham."

Advertisers here primarily target middle- and upper-class audiences. It all boils down to purchasing power in a nation where about half of the population lives below the poverty line and most indigenous people live in conditions of extreme poverty.

"Indigenous people would be given more consideration if they were actually seen as consumers, but they are totally marginalized," Kuschick points out. "The interesting thing is that you will see dark-skinned and indigenous people appear in televised public-service messages, especially before elections."

Billy Rovzar, co-founder of Mexico City-based shingle Grupo Lemon, produces feature films, television programs and commercials. Rovzar enjoys complete freedom when casting for movies and he can take certain liberties when it comes to television. Casting for commercials, however, is a different story.

"When we cast for ads, we've had companies tell us things like 'That guy looks too poor' or 'That guy looks too Mexican,"' he says.

REALITY CHECK

Televisa and TV Azteca, Mexico's top two broadcasters, have made some efforts to offer a more realistic portrayal of Mexico. Several years ago, Azteca aired "Los Sanchez," a comedy series featuring a traditional working-class Mexican family. Televisa currently airs "Una Familia de Diez," a comedy about a lower-middle-class family of 10.

But the exceptions are few and far between.

A more typical example of the type of programming audiences are tuning in to is Televisa's new soap "Muchachitas como tu" (Girls Just Like You), which centers on four attractive, young Mexican women who could easily pass as French, American or German.

"It's pretty ironic when you think about it," TV critic Cueva says. "The program is called 'Girls Just Like You,' but the girls who are watching the program at home look absolutely nothing like the main characters."

Some industry figures hope television will eventually move in the direction of film, which offers a much more realistic take on Mexican society.

"El Violin," a small black-and-white picture about traveling rural musicians involved in a guerrilla movement, performed extremely well at the box office because it offered the kind of honesty that audiences are thirsting for.

"It was successful because it's a film about real people," says Pablo Cruz, co-founder of distributor Canana Films.

Lemon's Rovzar says there's no denying that Mexican television could use a serious reality check these days: "If we could move toward being proud of our indigenous culture, we would advance a lot faster. I think the problem is that we are trying to sweep it under the bed."

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

NEW YORK - With the 2008 election season heating up, familiar scapegoats continue to take the hit for past hang-ups at the polls. Those include bad graphic design (Florida's confusing "butterfly ballot" in 2000) and software glitches in certain voting machines.

But this week's edition of "Dan RatherReports" explores other culprits: the very paper from which punch-card ballots were made, and glaring shortcuts in how certaintouch-screen voting machines were produced.

"Our story is not that the election would have turned out differently in 2000 if certain things hadn't happened. No one can know that," Rather said Monday. But his eight-month investigation has "dug down vertically as deep as we were capable of doing" to probe the brewing problems — including on-camera interviews with workers who had a front-row seat.

The hourlong news program premieres Tuesday at 8 p.m. EDT on cable's HDNet channel, with subsequent re-airings and streaming online video.

Rather's report begins with the current congressional bid by Democrat Christine Jennings, who lost her 2006 race by 369 votes in Florida's Sarasota County, where touch-screen machines showed 18,000 ballots with no candidate selected in that race.

How could that happen?

The broadcast hears from Gene Hinspeter, an electronic operations specialist in nearby Lee County, who speaks of a "calibration issue" with the touch-screen devices: on a misaligned display, choosing one candidate's name might actually trigger a vote for another candidate.

The touch-screen machines are hard to keep calibrated, says Hinspeter. He describes them as "unreliable."

While the touch-screens at issue were manufactured in the U.S., they are one of many components assembled in a factory in the Philippines.

Eddie Vibar, an electrical engineer who worked there between 1999 and 2002, describes the bare-bones performance testing ("They shook the machines"). He adds that conditions were oppressive at the factory, where the temperature sometimes rose above 90 degrees and only a few air conditioners were operative.

"It's hard to do repairs while you're also holding a fan or a piece of cardboard (to keep cool)," explains Vibar. He says he earned about $2.50 a day.

In a separate interview, Landen Tuggle, an American dispatched to overhaul factory operations, says that, despite his best efforts, 15,000 to 16,000 potentially defective voting machines were shipped to the U.S.

Rather's report also takes a look back at the fiasco that spurred the widespread changeover to touch-screen machines: the 2000 election, notably in Florida, where "hanging chads" and other irregularities caused havoc. In that state, more than 50,000 punch cards were discarded as invalid because voters appeared to have voted for more than one presidential candidate (or none).

Rather interviews seven former employees of the company that made punch cards used in Florida. They agree that after decades of maintaining high production standards, their company in 2000 began opting for cheap, even defective, paper.

"It's the flour for the bread," says one former worker. "I mean, if you don't have good paper, you won't make good ballots."

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On the Net:

http://www.hd.net

LOS ANGELES - Brad Garrett is the latest celebrity to tangle with photographers. Garrett, who stars in the Fox sitcom "'Til Death," is shown slapping away a camera in a video posted online Monday.

The camera belonged to a photographer working for TMZ.com, which posted the video, TMZ Managing Editor Harvey Levin said Monday.

The 47-year-old actor was leaving a restaurant Sunday night, according to TMZ, when he was surrounded by paparazzi. He's seen chatting amiably with them as he walks to his car, when one begins shouting insults.

He looks into the video camera of a TMZ photographer, says, "Excuse me," and slaps the lens.

"What are you hitting me for?" the videographer shouts, adding he wasn't the one yelling at Garrett. "You hit my face with that," he says as Garrett gets in his car to leave.

Levin said the man suffered minor injuries, including a swollen eye.

Garrett's manager, Glenn Robbins, didn't immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Levin said TMZ wouldn't press charges because the camera wasn't damaged.

Garrett won three Emmy Awards for his role as Ray Romano's brother, Robert, on CBS' "Everybody Loves Raymond."

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Fox is a unit of News Corp.

___

On the Net:

TMZ:

http://www.tmz.com

Fox:

http://www.fox.com/tildeath/

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 8 (OneWorld) - A new public opinion poll has found nearly two thirds of Iraqis oppose plans to open the country's oilfields to foreign companies.

The poll found a majority of every Iraqi ethnic and religious group believe their oil should remain nationalized. Some 66 percent of Shi'ites and 62 percent of Sunnis support government control of the oil sector, along with 52 percent of Kurds.

Eric Leaver, of the Washington, DC-based Institute for Policy Studies, a non-profit think tank that helped pay for the poll, said it was the first time ordinary Iraqis have been asked their views about an oil law geared towards privatizing Iraq's most lucrative natural resource.

The law has been debated in Iraq's parliament for more than a year.

"You have a question that's of vital importance to the future of the country," Leaver said. "Most of the Iraqi budget comes from the development and sale of Iraqi oil and here we have arguably one of the largest questions that's going to be decided for the future of Iraq being done without any citizens' consultation or input."

Only 4 percent of Iraqis polled said they had been given "totally adequate" information for them to feel informed about the oil law.

The U.S. government has been pressuring the Iraqi government to pass the oil law by September. Anontia Juhasz of the group Oil Change International told OneWorld that the Bush administration and Congress have made the law's passage one of the "benchmarks" that would indicate the U.S. is making progress in the war.

According to Oil Change International, the oil law sets no minimum standard for the extent to which foreign companies would have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers, or share new technologies.

It also would allow multinational oil companies to sign exclusive 30-year contracts with Iraq's current government.

"We're talking about opening up the second largest oil reserves in the entire world to foreign investment," Juhasz said. "It costs about $75 a barrel -- and about 60 cents to get it out of the ground. Do the math."

So far the Iraqi Parliament has resisted the bill. After debating it for more than a year, the body adjourned for a month-long vacation and so will not take up the issue until at least September.

But officials in northern Iraq passed their version of an oil law Tuesday, a move that the Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani called a "historic moment."

The measure gives Kurdish leaders the right to administer its oil wealth in the three northern governates -- Arbil, Sulaimaniyah and Dohuk -- as well as what it called "disputed territories," including the ethnically mixed, oil rich city of Kirkuk.

In June, the Kurdish regional government said it was planning to offer 40 new oil blocks to foreign companies.

"The Kurds are really pushing this process of extreme federalism by entering into their own oil agreements," Leaver told OneWorld. "This is causing a destabilizing effect on the rest of the country because now they feel like they really need to move on getting a grip on what the oil laws will be before they become de facto, because that's the way the Kurdish area has been operating."

The poll was based on interviews with 2,200 Iraqis conducted in June and July by KA Research and was paid for by a coalition of non-profit groups in the United States and Great Britain, including Oil Change International, the Institute for Policy Studies, Global Policy Forum, PLATFORM, and Jubilee Iraq.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The resignation of Karl Rove, architect of President George W. Bush'selection triumphs and a crucial behind-the-scenes policy guru, is the latest sign of the White House's diminished agenda and shattered dreams of a Republican super-majority, analysts said.

Rove, the last and most prominent of Bush's inner circle of Texas advisers to quit the administration, leaves a lame-duck president suffering from low approval ratings, an unpopular war in Iraq and public rejection in the 2006 elections.

With Democrats in control of Congress and brimming with optimism about the 2008 White House race, Rove's talk of a lasting and historic shift to Republican dominance seems long ago.

"This closes the chapter where George Bush and Karl Rove thought they were building a new Republican majority that would last a generation. That is clearly off the table," said Cal Jillson, a political analyst at Southern Methodist University inDallas.

Bush's top domestic priorities -- overhauls of Social Security and immigration -- are dead in Congress, leaving the administration scrambling in its final 17 months to save his first-term tax cuts, blunt Democratic spending priorities and salvage the war in Iraq.

"At this point all they are trying to do is save some of the signature items from their first term and hand off the war in Iraq to the next guy in better shape than it looks today," Jillson said.

Rove, known as "Bush's brain" by foes but nicknamed "boy genius" by the president, said on Monday he will leave the White House at the end of the month to return to Texas with his family.

His departure leaves a huge void in a White House where his influence was matched only by Vice President Dick Cheney, and where since the 2004 election he had filled multiple policy roles as deputy chief of staff.

"Rove is the guy who wove all the policy and political threads through the needle. Now you're talking about a small committee to just duplicate the expertise and perspective he brought," said Bruce Buchanan, a political analyst at the University of Texas.

BUSH ISOLATED

He said Rove's departure, along with the recent resignation of adviser and longtime Bush aide Dan Bartlett, would leave Bush increasingly isolated in the White House.

"There is nobody left with that kind of relationship with Bush and that closeness," he said, adding that might explain a recent increase in Bush's visits with his father, the former president.

But White House spokesman Tony Snow said Rove's resignation was not a sign the administration was starting to count down the days to the end on January 20, 2009.

"If you take a look, the president's got a pretty aggressive domestic agenda and there's a lot of stuff to be done on foreign policy," Snow said. "As the president has said many times, he's going to sprint to the tape."

Analysts said Bush's declining political fortunes and the Democratic win in 2006 had proved the flaws in Rove's political strategy, implemented after the September 11 attacks, of focusing on pleasing the Republican Party's conservative base.

"The idea you could govern by appealing to the Republican base was simply wrong," Jillson said. "The independents drifted away until all they had was the base."

Rove told reporters traveling to Texas with the president he viewed November's election results as a temporary setback for Republicans. He said he would not take an "official" role with any 2008 Republican presidential campaign, but left the door open for an unofficial consulting position.

Democrats, happy to see Rove go, condemned him for increasing political partisanship and divisiveness in Washington.

"Goodbye, good riddance," Democratic presidential contender John Edwards said in a statement.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The resignation of Karl Rove, architect of President George W. Bush'selection triumphs and a crucial behind-the-scenes policy guru, is the latest sign of the White House's diminished agenda and shattered dreams of a Republican super-majority, analysts said.

Rove, the last and most prominent of Bush's inner circle of Texas advisers to quit the administration, leaves a lame-duck president suffering from low approval ratings, an unpopular war in Iraq and public rejection in the 2006 elections.

With Democrats in control of Congress and brimming with optimism about the 2008 White House race, Rove's talk of a lasting and historic shift to Republican dominance seems long ago.

"This closes the chapter where George Bush and Karl Rove thought they were building a new Republican majority that would last a generation. That is clearly off the table," said Cal Jillson, a political analyst at Southern Methodist University inDallas.

Bush's top domestic priorities -- overhauls of Social Security and immigration -- are dead in Congress, leaving the administration scrambling in its final 17 months to save his first-term tax cuts, blunt Democratic spending priorities and salvage the war in Iraq.

"At this point all they are trying to do is save some of the signature items from their first term and hand off the war in Iraq to the next guy in better shape than it looks today," Jillson said.

Rove, known as "Bush's brain" by foes but nicknamed "boy genius" by the president, said on Monday he will leave the White House at the end of the month to return to Texas with his family.

His departure leaves a huge void in a White House where his influence was matched only by Vice President Dick Cheney, and where since the 2004 election he had filled multiple policy roles as deputy chief of staff.

"Rove is the guy who wove all the policy and political threads through the needle. Now you're talking about a small committee to just duplicate the expertise and perspective he brought," said Bruce Buchanan, a political analyst at the University of Texas.

BUSH ISOLATED

He said Rove's departure, along with the recent resignation of adviser and longtime Bush aide Dan Bartlett, would leave Bush increasingly isolated in the White House.

"There is nobody left with that kind of relationship with Bush and that closeness," he said, adding that might explain a recent increase in Bush's visits with his father, the former president.

But White House spokesman Tony Snow said Rove's resignation was not a sign the administration was starting to count down the days to the end on January 20, 2009.

"If you take a look, the president's got a pretty aggressive domestic agenda and there's a lot of stuff to be done on foreign policy," Snow said. "As the president has said many times, he's going to sprint to the tape."

Analysts said Bush's declining political fortunes and the Democratic win in 2006 had proved the flaws in Rove's political strategy, implemented after the September 11 attacks, of focusing on pleasing the Republican Party's conservative base.

"The idea you could govern by appealing to the Republican base was simply wrong," Jillson said. "The independents drifted away until all they had was the base."

Rove told reporters traveling to Texas with the president he viewed November's election results as a temporary setback for Republicans. He said he would not take an "official" role with any 2008 Republican presidential campaign, but left the door open for an unofficial consulting position.

Democrats, happy to see Rove go, condemned him for increasing political partisanship and divisiveness in Washington.

"Goodbye, good riddance," Democratic presidential contender John Edwards said in a statement.

ARLINGTON, Texas - A megachurch canceled a memorial service for a Navy veteran 24 hours before it was to start because the deceased was gay.

Officials at the nondenominational High Point Church knew that Cecil Howard Sinclair was gay when they offered to host his service, said his sister, Kathleen Wright. But after his obituary listed his life partner as one of his survivors, she said, it was called off.

"It's a slap in the face. It's like, 'Oh, we're sorry he died, but he's gay so we can't help you,'" she said Friday.

Wright said High Point offered to hold the service for Sinclair because their brother is a janitor there. Sinclair, who served in the first Gulf War, died Monday at age 46 from an infection after surgery to prepare him for a heart transplant.

The church's pastor, the Rev. Gary Simons, said no one knew Sinclair, who was not a church member, was gay until the day before the Thursday service, when staff members putting together his video tribute saw pictures of men "engaging in clear affection, kissing and embracing."

Simons said the church believes homosexuality is a sin, and it would have appeared to endorse that lifestyle if the service had been held there.

"We did decline to host the service — not based on hatred, not based on discrimination, but based on principle," Simons told The Associated Press. "Had we known it on the day they first spoke about it — yes, we would have declined then. It's not that we didn't love the family."

Simons said the decision had nothing to do with the obituary. He said the church offered to pay for another site for the service, made the video and provided food for more than 100 relatives and friends.

"Even though we could not condone that lifestyle, we went above and beyond for the family through many acts of love and kindness," Simons said.

Wright called the church's claim about the pictures "a bold-faced lie." She said she provided numerous family pictures of Sinclair, including some with his partner, but said none showed men kissing or hugging.

The 5,000-member High Point Church was founded in 2000 by Simons and his wife, April, whose brother is Joel Osteen, well-known pastor of the 38,000-member Lakewood Church in Houston. Now High Point meets in a 432,000-square-foot facility in Arlington, near Dallas.

Wright said relatives declined the church's offer to hold the service at a community center because they felt it was an inappropriate venue. It ultimately was held at a funeral home, but the cancellation still lingered in some minds, she said.

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On the Net:

High Point Church: http://www.churchunusual.com