In campaign news, 48 Nobel Prize-winning scientists issued an open letter yesterday backing Democrat John Kerry while charging that President Bush has compromised the world’s future by shortchanging scientific research.

Lynne Stewart Trial Set to Open
Opening arguments are scheduled to begin today in the the U.S. government’s case against radical attorney Lynne Stewart. The government has accused her of illegally passing on messages of her client, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, at a press conference. Stewart and her lawyer Michael Tigar contend she was simply carrying out her duty as an attorney to represent her client. At a hearing on Friday, Tigar said, “Lawyers, particularly lawyers for those accused of terrorism, are also constitutionally-mandated independent voices. The Bush/Ashcroft/Rumsfeld administration does not like independent and courageous lawyers — not in the prisons of Iraq, not at Guantanamo, not in the military brig in Charleston … and not in New York.”