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KARACHI, Pakistan—Heavy rains and thunderstorms that struck Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi have killed 43 people, an official said Sunday.

Several homes collapsed in the rains across Karachi on Saturday, killing 18 people who were trapped or struck by debris, said Karachi Mayor Mustafa Kamal.

At least 20 people were reported killed in separate incidents of electrocution on Saturday.

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CHICHAWATNI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's suspended chief justice carried his fight for reinstatement and the independence of the judiciary deep into the south of Punjab province on Sunday, milking support from towns along the way.

Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has become a symbol of resistance to President Pervez Musharraf, since he refused to quit in the face of pressure from the country's military leader and intelligence chiefs in March.

"Chaudhry's refusal, not bow to five generals who threatened him of dire consequences is the real lifeline of this movement," Aitzaz Ahsan, the leader of the legal team fighting misconduct charges against the judge, told some 1,500 lawyers in Sahiwal in the city's courthouse.

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KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) -- Heavy rains and thunderstorms that struck Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi have killed 43 people, an official said Sunday. Several homes collapsed in the rains across Karachi on Saturday, killing 18 people who were trapped or struck by debris, said Karachi Mayor Mustafa Kamal. At least 20 people were reported killed in separate incidents of electrocution on Saturday. Kamal said the death toll rose after 23 more casualties were reported, including the 18 who ...

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The bombing of what remained of the historic Shiite shrine in Samarra and subsequent bloodshed in Iraq were more reminders of a terrible truth: The war in Iraq is lost. The only question that remains – for our gallant troops and our blinkered policy-makers – is how to manage the inevitable. What the United States needs now is a guide to how to lose – how to start thinking about minimizing the damage done to American interests, saving lives and ultimately wresting some good from this fiasco.

No longer can we avoid this bitter conclusion. Iraq’s winner-take-all politics are increasingly vicious; there will be no open, pluralistic Iraqi state to take over from the United States. Iraq has no credible central government that U.S. forces can assist and no national army for them to fight alongside. U.S. troops can’t beat the insurgency on their own; our forces are too few and too isolated to compete with the insurgents for the public’s support. Meanwhile, the country’s militias have become a law unto themselves, and ethnic cleansing gallops forward.

But the most crucial reason why the war is lost is that the American people decisively rejected continuing U.S. military involvement last November. As far as the voters are concerned, the kitchen is closed. U.S. policy-makers have not yet faced this hard fact. Some disasters are irretrievable, and this is one of them. Unless we admit that, we cannot begin the grueling work of salvage.

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A pool party? In Afghanistan? Navy reservist Marc Soss can swing it.

TAMPA - Marc Soss sits in a cheerless, bare-walled office, high in a Tampa tower. His necktie is tight, his shirt is starched stiff, and his resume bears the dry loyalties of a tax lawyer: wills, contracts, trusts -- revocable, irrevocable and charitable.

Soss drove a Honda to work. He left a suburban home, where he watches HGTV and the History Channel, reads Tom Clancy and plays with his daughter. But as the city moves outside his window, Soss launches a computer slide show that shatters the button-down image of a 41-year-old tax lawyer.

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