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Investigators continued their search for the source of the Salmonella saintpaul outbreak that has sickened hundreds of people in 43 states and set off a consumer scare that cost the produce industry more than $200 million. At least 252 people were hospitalized and two people have died.

Federal investigators say they identified the source of the contamination in serrano peppers grown on a farm in Tamaulipas, the Mexican state that borders South Texas. They also found traces of the elusive bacteria in irrigation water collected from the same farm. The contamination of the peppers could have started when they were harvested in Mexico or on their way to be distributed, to McAllen, Texas.

By Jonathan Weisman and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 1, 2008; A04

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa, July 31 -- Sen. John McCain's campaign accused Sen. Barack Obama of playing the "race card" on Thursday, a day after the Democrat said his opponent and other Republicans would try to scare voters by pointing to Obama's "funny name" and the fact that "he doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills."

The charge was the first time the campaigns had directly confronted the subject of race. Although both sides have sought to avoid raising the thorny issue, the back-and-forth showed that it was perhaps inevitable the topic would emerge in a campaign in which an African American is headed for a major-party nomination for the first time.

By Michael Gerson
Friday, August 1, 2008; A17

It is an extraordinary bit of political trivia that two popular red-state Democratic governors -- both in presidential battleground states -- spent time as Catholic lay missionaries in the developing world.

Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia taught at a Jesuit school in Honduras in the early 1980s, an experience he credits with turning his life toward public service. "It was life-changing to live among the poorest of the poor," he has said.

By J. Freedom du Lac
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 1, 2008; C01

In the arsenal of the culture wars, rap music remains somewhat radioactive -- and Barack Obama now finds himself exposed.

Avowed Obama supporter Ludacris on Wednesday released a freewheeling song called "Politics" in which he repeatedly praised the candidate -- as well as himself, for having found a home on the senator's iPod. But the Atlanta rapper also used a derogatory term to describe Hillary Clinton; asserted that John McCain should be in a wheelchair, not the White House; and declared that President Bush "is mentally handicapped."

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2008; 5:40 PM

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) pleaded not guilty this afternoon to charges of making false statements about more than $250,000 in renovations to his Anchorage-area home and other gifts he received from executives of an oil services company.

At Stevens's arraignment in U.S. District Court, the senator's attorneys and prosecutors agreed they could start a trial by late September, just a month before the 84-year-old senator could face a tough battle in the November election. After a 30-minute recess to consider Stevens's request, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan set a Sept. 24 trial date.

By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2008; 10:09 AM

The brothers behind the popular Facebook application Scrabulous have returned with a new word puzzle game, only two days after they took down their Scrabble-like game in the wake of a lawsuit filed against them by board-game maker Hasbro.

The free game had been one of the most popular applications on the social-networking site, and many fans who turned to the game for a dose of procrastination each day griped loudly online when it disappeared. Hasbro had complained that Scrabulous infringed on its copyright.

Jason Kincaid
TechCrunch.com
Wednesday, July 30, 2008; 2:24 PM

It was only a matter of time. Cuil, the "massive" new search engine that was supposed to be able to keep up with Google, has just gotten its first knockoff. It's Yuil, a Yahoo-powered mashup that looks almost exactly like Cuil. And, oddly enough, Yuil might actually work better than its much-hyped predecessor.

By Juliet Eilperin and Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 31, 2008; A01

KANSAS CITY, Mo., July 30 -- Sen. John McCain last week delivered one of his sharpest critiques yet of Sen. Barack Obama's Iraq policies, carefully reading a prepared speech that accused his Democratic rival of failing the commander-in-chief test and promoting ideas that would force American troops to "retreat under fire."

But just hours after his crisp performance, the Republican presidential candidate blurred his own message with an offhand comment to a television interviewer that Obama's proposal for a 16-month time frame for removing combat troops from Iraq might be a "pretty good timetable." That seemed to run counter to his attempts to cast Obama as naive on foreign policy, and it sent his aides scrambling.

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2008; A01

ANCHORAGE, July 30 -- Alaska's vast landscape is littered with federally funded tributes to Sen. Ted Stevens's single-minded promotion of the state, from the brushed steel of Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport to the $187 million that subsidizes air mail for the one-third of residents who live beyond the reach of roads.

In his almost 40 years in the Senate, the octogenarian Republican in many ways defined the shape of the Last Frontier, not least by using his perch on the Appropriations Committee to ensure that his state's tiny population remained the nation's richest in federal spending per capita. More than $9 billion arrived in Alaska from Washington in 2006, twice as much as a decade earlier.

For car-leasing addicts accustomed to climbing into a new car every few years, the party may be ending, at least for customers of Detroit's Big Three auto makers.

Chrysler LLC's finance arm last week decided to get out of the auto-lease business. Now, General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. are signaling that they're paring leasing at their captive finance companies. As a result, many Americans will have to change their car-shopping habits.