SPB News for Monday.

No more hugs as Obama tears into McCain — RENO, Nev. - So much for hugging in church. — A day after Barack Obama and John McCain exchanged an embrace during a faith forum at a California megachurch, Obama called the U.S. economy a disaster thanks to “John McCain's president, George W. Bush …

Hillary Clinton stumps for Obama in New Mexico — ESPANOLA, N.M. (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday urged her supporters to work as hard for the election of her former rival, Barack Obama, as they had for her. — “We may have started out on two separate paths, but we are on one journey now …

Sen. Ted Stevens: An Innocent Man — Just the headline of this piece alone, I'll bet, shocks a number of people. — Most people assume, or have concluded, that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is guilty. After all, didn't a D.C. grand jury indict Mr. Stevens on seven felony counts?

Newspaper: Blackwater guards get target letters Half a dozen Blackwater Worldwide security guards have gotten target letters from the Justice Department in a probe of shootings in Baghdad that killed 17 Iraqis, The Washington Post reported. The Post described the six guards as former U.S. military personnel, but did not identify them by name.

Record number of US contractors in Iraq --Roughly $12 billion of the $100 billion total paid for mercenaries – the gun-toting guards of Blackwater and other paramilitary personnel providers. The scale of the use of CONtractors in Iraq is unprecedented in US history, according to a new congressional report that may be the most thorough official account yet of the practice. As of early 2008, at least 190,000 private personnel were working on US-funded projects in the Iraq theater, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) survey found. That means that for each uniformed member of the US military in the region, there was also a contract employee – a ratio of 1 to 1.

Iran launches satellite carrier Iran says it has successfully launched a rocket capable of carrying its first domestically built satellite. Officials said only the rocket had been fired, correcting state media reports that the communications satellite itself had been sent into orbit.

Preparing for an urban WMD attack By Daniel Terdiman On Saturday, the San Francisco Fire Department, along with a group of other public and private agencies, ran a large-scale training exercise revolving around an urban weapons of mass destruction terrorist attack. Here, an emergency worker in a full hazmat suit examines the faux chemical that was supposedly found in the attack, which was said to be sodium cyanide, a poison that quickly affects peoples respiratory systems.

Erickson's Cuba trip: More cigars, less charity --The congressional hopeful's 2004 visit wasn't humanitarian, "it was a pleasure trip," a friend says Congressional candidate Mike Erickson (R) took a six-day visit to Cuba in 2004 that he called a "humanitarian trip" to aid disabled Cubans oppressed by Fidel Castro, but the trip was instead a vacation that included bars, Havana cigars and the Tropicana nightclub. Erickson said he visited a medical center, met with doctors and attended a presentation on the plight of the disabled. But travel documents obtained by The Oregonian, others who accompanied Erickson and representatives of U.S. and Cuban charities tell a different story. For example, the medical center Erickson said he visited does not exist.

L.A., Long Beach OK grants for Mexican carriers The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach boast of bringing in 40 percent of the nation’s imported goods, and plans to cut emissions at each port have been highlighted in mainstream news programs and the cable TV show "America’s Port." A Land Line investigation into the ports’ multibillion-dollar clean truck program, however, shows that the $2.2 billion program could pay for the replacement of trucks owned by Mexican trucking companies while it excludes U.S. trucks that run any miles outside of California.