BAGHDAD — Iraq's parliament met in an extraordinary session of "defiance" Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, and declared it would not bow to terrorism. A bouquet of red roses and a white lily sat in the place of Mohammed Awad, the lawmaker killed in the parliament dining hall suicide bombing claimed by al-Qaida.

Parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani opened the session and asked lawmakers to recite verses from the Quran in honor of Awad, whom he called a "hero."

The unprecedented Friday meeting was called to send "a clear message to all the terrorists and all those who dare try to stop this (political) process, that we will sacrifice in order for it to continue," said al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Muslim.

"We feel today that we are stronger than yesterday," he said. "The parliament, government and the people are all the same — they are all in the same ship which, if it sinks, will make everyone sink."

An al-Qaida-led amalgam of Sunni insurgents claimed one of its "knights" carried out Thursday's suicide bombing in Baghdad's Green Zone and warned the "monkeys in parliament" to brace for more attacks. The U.S. military revised the death toll sharply downward, saying one civilian was killed. Late into Thursday the military had said eight people were killed and 23 wounded.

CIVILIAN DEATHS DOWN IN BAGHDAD BUT UP ELSEWHERE

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi civilian deaths have fallen in Baghdad in the two months since the Feb. 14 start of the U.S.-led offensive, according to an Associated Press tally.

Outside the capital, however, civilian deaths are up as Sunni and Shiite extremists shift their operations to avoid the crackdown.

And the sweeps have taken a heavy toll on U.S. forces: Deaths among American soldiers climbed 21 percent in Baghdad compared with the previous two months.

Since the crackdown began Feb. 14, U.S. military officials have spoken of encouraging signs that security is improving in the capital but have cautioned against drawing any firm conclusions until at least the summer.

Figures compiled by the AP from Iraqi police reports show that 1,586 civilians were killed in Baghdad between the start of the offensive and Thursday.

RUTGERS TEAM ACCEPTS IMUS' APOLOGY

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Rutgers women's basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer said Friday the team had accepted radio host Don Imus' apology. She said he deserves a chance to move on but hopes the furor his racist and sexist insult caused will be a catalyst for change.

"We, the Rutgers University Scarlet Knight basketball team, accept — accept — Mr. Imus' apology, and we are in the process of forgiving," Stringer read from a team statement a day after the women met personally with Imus and his wife.

"We still find his statements to be unacceptable, and this is an experience that we will never forget," she said.

The team had just played for the NCAA national championship last week and lost when Imus, on his nationally syndicated radio show, called the players "nappy-headed hos." The statement outraged listeners and set off a national debate about taste and tolerance. It also led to his firing by CBS on Thursday.

"These comments are indicative of greater ills in our culture," Stringer said. "It is not just Mr. Imus, and we hope that this will be and serve as a catalyst for change. Let us continue to work hard together to make this world a better place."

BUSHES PAY $186,378 IN FEDERAL TAXES

WASHINGTON — President Bush and the first lady paid $186,378 in federal taxes on their income of $765,801 for last year. Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife made twice as much and paid the tax man about $50,000 more than they owed.

The president and Mrs. Bush contributed $78,100 to churches and charitable organizations, including the volunteer fire department in Crawford, Texas, where they own a ranch, according to their tax return, released Friday by the White House.

The Bushes' adjusted gross income of $765,801 was about $30,600 higher than the year before. They paid $27,474 in state property taxes on the ranch — up about $1,000 from the previous year.

The return for the vice president and his wife, Lynne, shows that they owed federal taxes of $413,326 on overall taxable income of $1.6 million. But throughout last year, the Cheneys paid $464,789 in taxes, or $51,463 too much.

Instead of taking a refund, the Cheneys elected to apply the overpayment to their 2007 tax bill.

ROVE UNINTENTIONALLY DELETED E-MAILS

WASHINGTON — Karl Rove's lawyer on Friday dismissed the notion that President Bush's chief political adviser intentionally deleted his own e-mails from a Republican-sponsored computer system.

The attorney said Rove believed the communications were being preserved in accordance with the law.

The issue arose because the White House and Republican National Committee have said they may have lost e-mails from Rove and other administration officials. Democratically chaired congressional committees want those e-mails for their probe of the firings of eight federal prosecutors.

At the same time, documents released by the Justice Department Friday showed a new contradiction in the administration's accounting of the firings, indicating that replacements for those dismissed were being considered by department officials nearly a year beforehand. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' former chief of staff told a Senate panel last month that he had no replacements in mind when the first seven prosecutors were fired on Dec. 7.

But the missing e-mails posed some of the weightiest questions, namely whether White House officials such as Rove purposely conducted official business on RNC e-mail servers — and then deleted the e-mails — in violation of the law.

WORLD BANK PRESIDENT'S FRIEND SAYS SHE'S A VICTIM

WASHINGTON — The woman at the heart of the controversy that has embroiled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz says she is a victim and was forced into a job transfer because of their relationship.

Shaha Riza's comments are included in new documents released by the World Bank on Friday that also show Wolfowitz had a direct hand in arranging her promotion and generous pay package. Wolfowitz is fighting to retain his job.

Riza said that at no time did she report directly to Wolfowitz and that he had proposed to recuse himself from any decisions involving her to avoid a potential conflict of interest.

She said the ethics committee of the World Bank's board had required her "to go on external assignment contrary to my wishes."

Riza was moved to a high-paying job at the State Department in September 2005. "I have now been victimized for agreeing to an arrangement that I have objected to and that I did not believe from the outset was in my best interest," she said.

MAN JUMPS TO DEATH FROM EMPIRE STATE BUILDING

NEW YORK — A man jumped to his death Friday out the window of a 69th-floor law office in the Empire State Building.

Police responded to the New York City landmark shortly before 3 p.m. after a 911 caller reported seeing a severed leg — covered in a gray sock — on the street below. The rest of the body was recovered from a setback on the 30th floor.

The tragedy in the 102-story building closed portions of the busy Midtown Manhattan street while the investigation continued.

The name of victim, a lawyer in his 30s, was not immediately released.

More than 30 people have committed suicide at the Empire State Building since it opened in 1931, including a 21-year-old man in February 2006. The skyscraper reaches 1,454 feet to the top of its lightning rod.

RESEARCHERS SUGGEST INTERNET STARTS OVER

NEW YORK — Although it has already taken nearly four decades to get this far in building the Internet, some university researchers with the federal government's blessing want to scrap all that and start over.

The idea may seem unthinkable, even absurd, but many believe a "clean slate" approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock helped supervise the first exchange of meaningless test data between two machines on Sept. 2, 1969.

The Internet "works well in many situations but was designed for completely different assumptions," said Dipankar Raychaudhuri, a Rutgers University professor overseeing three clean-slate projects. "It's sort of a miracle that it continues to work well today."

No longer constrained by slow connections and computer processors and high costs for storage, researchers say the time has come to rethink the Internet's underlying architecture, a move that could mean replacing networking equipment and rewriting software on computers to better channel future traffic over the existing pipes.

Even Vinton Cerf, one of the Internet's founding fathers as co-developer of the key communications techniques, said the exercise was "generally healthy" because the current technology "does not satisfy all needs."

BETUS.COM TAKING BETS ON GLOBAL WARMING

NORFOLK, Va. — Think global warming will raise the oceans enough to submerge Cape Hatteras? Want to bet on it?

An online gambling service has started taking bets on global warming, including whether it can submerge some of the East Coast's top vacation spots.

The odds that Virginia's Cape Henry will be under water by 2015 — 200-to-1 at BetUs.com. Its odds for Cape Hatteras flooding by the same date — 300-to-1.

Don't bet on it, says Phil Roehrs, a coastal engineer for the city of Virginia Beach. Roehrs said although sea levels are rising along the East Coast, scientists are not predicting anywhere near the levels and dates provided by the gambling service.