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WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's relief at the agreement that could quiet the political crisis over Afghanistan's spoiled election masks his predicament as he weighs an expansion of the unpopular Afghanistan war.

The administration says its ambitious plans for Afghanistan rely on a "credible partner" in Kabul. But there is no guarantee that the hastily arranged voting will confer the legitimacy the fraudulent Aug. 20 election lacked.

No matter who wins the November election runoff that Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai agreed to during pressured consultations with American leaders, the United States is wedded to a shaky government in which corruption has become second nature.

"This has been a very difficult time in Afghanistan to not only carry out an election under difficult circumstances, where there were a whole host of security issues that had to be resolved, but also postelection a lot of uncertainty," Obama said Tuesday.

Obama pointed to the Nov. 7 runoff as "a path forward in order to complete this election process." He said nothing about his deliberations over what could be a huge surge of U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan, a calculation badly thrown off by the botched August voting.

For the U.S., a runoff emerged as perhaps the least bad option to restore momentum and the important perception that Afghans themselves are invested in their government and its success. Karzai's chief political rival, Abdullah Abdullah, agreed Wednesday to participate in the run-off.

"You have to learn from mistakes, and everybody needs to do that here," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who stood with Karzai for an awkward announcement of the run! off plan . He said Afghan officials and international election shepherds must work fast to get standards and plans that all agree on.

Another election risks the same fraud that derailed the Aug. 20 vote, and the same risk of inciting violence and increasing ethnic divisions.

If there are any more delays, the vote could also could be hampered by winter snows that block off much of the north of the country starting mid-November.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a warning to Afghan election officials.

"We will advise the Independent Election Commission not to re-recruit those officials who might have been involved in fraudulent electoral processes," Ban said. "And we will ensure to make all administrative and technical (measures) to ensure that this election will be carried out in a most fair and transparent manner."

Having pushed for a do-over, U.S. officials have even less ability to scold the winner. That winner is likely to be incumbent Karzai, who conceded Tuesday, under heavy international pressure, that a runoff was "legitimate, legal and according to the constitution of Afghanistan."

The Afghan leader did not express any regret over fraud that led U.N.-backed auditors to strip him of nearly a third of his votes.

"This is not the right time to discuss investigations, this is the time to move forward toward stability and national unity," Karzai said at a joint appearance with U.S. and U.N. go-betweens.

The Obama administration has kept an obvious distance from Karzai, a silver-tongued charmer whom the Bush administration had considered a successful protege despite mounting claims of incompetence and corruption.

Kerry leaned hard on Karzai over several days to concede that he did not win in the first round. The two men took a long, dramatic walk Tuesday before an uncharact! eristica lly grim Karzai came to the microphones.

Kerry spoke to The Associated Press en route home from Kabul on Tuesday and said Karzai had worried aloud about the direction of his relationship with the United States.

"He came to the conclusion that Afghanistan's interests and his interests coincided in making sure there was a legitimately accepted government and that he needed to take this step in order to restore that," Kerry said.

Although Karzai was favored to win all along, Obama's advisers thought they could forge a workable partnership that would be the building block for a new war strategy emphasizing the security and welfare of ordinary Afghans.

The strategy, which military officials quickly assumed would mean an infusion of thousands of additional U.S. troops and a larger expansion of Afghanistan's own armed forces, frayed when the expensive, carefully monitored election went bad.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates sounded pessimistic when asked about the runoff at a Tokyo news conference Wednesday.

"I think we need to be realistic that the issues of corruption and governance that we are trying to work with the Afghan government on are not going to be solved simply on the outcome of the presidential election," he said.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama has not decided whether to move ahead with a revamped strategy, and the prospect of more troops, before results of the runoff are known. Gibbs told reporters he still expects that decision within weeks.

The Taliban will surely try to disrupt the voting again, and turnout is expected to be low in areas where voters were intimidated.

"Another election where there's no credible government to operate with continues to undermine our reason for being there," said Richard "Ozzie" Nelson, a former White House countert! errorism expert now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It would push us further down the slippery slope of what to do next."

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Associated Press writer Andrew Miga contributed to this report.

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EDITOR'S NOTE - Anne Gearan has covered U.S. national security issues for The Associated Press since 2004.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans seem to be cooling toward global warming.

Just 57 percent think there is solid evidence the world is getting warmer, down 20 points in just three years, a new poll says. And the share of people who believe pollution caused by humans is causing temperatures to rise has also taken a dip, even as the U.S. and world forums gear up for possible action against climate change.

In a poll of 1,500 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, released Thursday, the number of people saying there is strong scientific evidence that the Earth has gotten warmer over the past few decades is down from 71 percent in April of last year and from 77 percent when Pew started asking the question in 2006. The number of people who see the situation as a serious problem also has declined.

The steepest drop has occurred during the past year, as Congress and the Obama administration have taken steps to control heat-trapping emissions for the first time and international negotiations for a new treaty to slow global warming have been under way. At the same time, there has been mounting scientific evidence of climate change - from melting ice caps to the world's oceans hitting the highest monthly recorded temperatures this summer.

The poll was released a day after 18 scientific organizations wrote Congress to reaffirm the consensus behind global warming. A federal government report Thursday found that global warming is upsetting the Arctic's thermostat.

Only about a third, or 36 percent of the respondents, feel that human activities - such as pollution from power plants, factories and automobiles - are behind a temperature increase. That's down from! 47 perc ent from 2006 through last year's poll.

"The priority that people give to pollution and environmental concerns and a whole host of other issues is down because of the economy and because of the focus on other things," suggested Andrew Kohut, the director of the research center, which conducted the poll from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4. "When the focus is on other things, people forget and see these issues as less grave."

Andrew Weaver, a professor of climate analysis at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said politics could be drowning out scientific awareness.

"It's a combination of poor communication by scientists, a lousy summer in the Eastern United States, people mixing up weather and climate and a full-court press by public relations firms and lobby groups trying to instill a sense of uncertainty and confusion in the public," he said.

Political breakdowns in the survey underscore how tough it could be to enact a law limiting pollution emissions blamed for warming. While three-quarters of Democrats believe the evidence of a warming planet is solid, and nearly half believe the problem is serious, far fewer conservative and moderate Democrats see the problem as grave. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans say there is no solid evidence of global warming, up from 31 percent in early 2007.

Though there are exceptions, the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring and that the primary cause is a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal.

Jane Lubchenco, head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told a business group meeting at the White House Thursday: "The science is pretty clear that the climate challenge before us is very real. We're already seeing impacts of climate change in our own backyards."

Despite misgivings about th! e scienc e, half the respondents still say they support limits on greenhouse gases, even if they could lead to higher energy prices. And a majority - 56 percent - feel the United States should join other countries in setting standards to address global climate change.

But many of the supporters of reducing pollution have heard little to nothing about cap-and-trade, the main mechanism for reducing greenhouse gases favored by the White House and central to legislation passed by the House and a bill the Senate will take up next week.

Under cap-and-trade, a price is put on each ton of pollution, and businesses can buy and sell permits to meet emissions limits.

"Perhaps the most interesting finding in this poll ... is that the more Americans learn about cap-and-trade, the more they oppose cap-and-trade," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who opposes the Senate bill and has questioned global warming science.

Regional as well as political differences were detected in the polling.

People living in the Midwest and mountainous areas of the West are far less likely to view global warming as a serious problem and to support limits on greenhouse gases than those in the Northeast and on the West Coast. Both the House and Senate bills have been drafted by Democratic lawmakers from Massachusetts and California.

One of those lawmakers, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, told reporters Thursday that she was happy with the results, given the interests and industry groups fighting the bill.

"Today, to get 57 percent saying that the climate is warming is good, because today everybody is grumpy about everything," Boxer said. "Science will win the day in America. Science always wins the day."

Earlier polls, from different organizations, have not detected a growing skepticism about the science behind global warming.

Since 1997, the percentage of Americans that believe the Earth is heating up has remained constant - at around 80 percent - in polling done by Jon Krosnick of Stanford University. Krosnick, who has been conducting surveys on attitudes about global warming since 1993, was surprised by the Pew results.

He described the decline in the Pew results as "implausible," saying there is nothing that could have caused it.

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Associated Press Writers Seth Borenstein and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Treasury Department on Thursday ordered seven companies that accustomed billions of dollars in government bailouts to bisect total advantage for their top executives. But the big reductions will not apply to pay becoming before November.

Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury official arch the pay review, told reporters that boilerplate salaries for the top 25 admiral are being cut 90 percent starting next month.

The action will apply to the top admiral at Bank of America Corp., American International Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., General Motors, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve unveiled a proposal Thursday that would police banks' pay behavior to ensure they don't animate advisers to take reckless gambles like those that contributed to the banking crisis.

Unlike the Treasury plan, the Fed proposal would awning bags of banks, including abounding that never accustomed a bailout. But the central coffer would not absolutely set compensation. Instead, the Fed would review - and could veto - pay behavior that could cause too abundant risk-taking by executives, traders or accommodation officers.

The government did not appetite to make admiral return advantage already accustomed this year, but the bargain pay levels will be the base for making decisions on salary in 2010, Feinberg said.

The admiral will still be subject to advantage limits as long as their companies are accepting abutment from the government's $700 billion bailout fund. Their total advantage was being cut in half, on average.

Cash salaries will be limited to $500,000 for added than 90 percent of affe! cted emp loyees. Personal costs for such allowances as aggregation autos and corporate jets will be capped at $25,000 without approval from Feinberg's office for college payments.

Feinberg got the job as pay czar earlier this year when Congress, responding to outrage about huge bonuses being paid to AIG, adapted the bailout law to crave that controlling advantage at companies accepting exceptional abetment be curbed.

He has been reviewing advantage bales since August and called abounding of the negotiations "intense."

Speaking earlier at the White House, President Barack Obama welcomed Treasury's decision and said Americans' ethics are offended by boundless paychecks for admiral whose companies were bailed out by taxpayers. He urged Congress to pass legislation to accord shareholders a articulation in controlling pay packages.

"It does affront our ethics when admiral of big banking firms that are struggling pay themselves huge bonuses alike as they await on extraordinary abetment to stay afloat," Obama said.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner additionally praised the outcome of Feinberg's deliberations.

"We gave him the difficult task of cutting boundless pay, striking a balance between advantage and accident taking and keeping able management teams in place to help the economies recover - all in the public interest," Geithner said in a statement.

Smaller companies and those that accept repaid the bailout money, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., are not affected by the plan.

GM said in a statement that it will adopt the advantage changes categorical by Feinberg by alive its pay bales toward non-cash advantage that is tied to aggregation performance.

"Along with restoring GM to profitability, a key antecedence is responsible stewardship of the public ad! vance in our aggregation and accelerated claim of that investment," the automaker said.

Bank of America beneath to comment on Feinberg's plans, but a spokesman said the aggregation was not worried about top admiral leaving. "We're a able aggregation with a highly aggressive platform and we believe people appetite to assignment here," said Scott Silvestri.

Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne and other Fiat admiral who assignment for both Chrysler and Fiat were exempted from the pay cuts as part of the agreement with the U.S. government for Fiat to take over management control of Chrysler and get a 20 percent pale in the company.

Executives who assignment solely for Chrysler could be affected, but abounding of the top earners under Chrysler's above owner accept left the aggregation including above CEO Robert Nardelli and above Vice Chairman Tom LaSorda. Deputy CEO Jim Press additionally is about to leave the company.

Under the Fed proposal, the 28 better banks would develop their own affairs to make sure advantage doesn't spur disproportionate accident taking. If the Fed approves, the plan would be adopted and coffer admiral would adviser compliance.

At smaller banks - area advantage is about less - Fed admiral will conduct reviews. Those banks don't accept to abide plans.

The Fed refused to analyze the 28 banks that will accept to abide plans. But Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo & Co. are usually included on such lists. Nearly 6,000 banks regulated by the Fed would be covered.

"The Federal Reserve is working to ensure that advantage bales appropriately tie rewards to longer-term achievement and do not create disproportionate accident for the firm or the banking system," said Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

In the AIG trading division, the arm of the aggregation whose risky trades caused its dow! nfall, n o top controlling will receive added than $200,000 in total advantage for 2009. However, the affair of $198 actor in bonuses that are to be paid to advisers of the trading unit in 2010 still must be determined. The government has said it will push to see those bonuses reduced.

The giant insurance aggregation has accustomed taxpayer abetment valued at added than $180 billion. AIG assembly beneath to comment Thursday.

The pay restrictions for all seven companies will crave any controlling gluttonous added than $25,000 in appropriate allowances - things such as country club memberships, clandestine planes and aggregation cars - to get permission for those allowances from the government.

Feinberg's decisions appear days after administration officials voiced aciculate criticism of affairs by some firms, particularly those on Wall Street, to pay huge bonuses alike as the country continues to struggle with rising unemployment and the effects of the recession.

Goldman Sachs, which has paid back its bailout money, has said it appropriate $16.7 billion for advantage so far this year, added than $500,000 per employee. Citigroup is advantageous $5.3 billion in bonuses to its advisers and Bank of America $3.3 billion.

Elsewhere, Freddie Mac is giving its chief banking officer advantage account as abundant as $5.5 million, including a $2 actor signing bonus. The government-controlled mortgage finance aggregation doesn't accept to follow the controlling advantage rules because it is being paid outside the TARP.

Congress passed legislation in February acute Treasury to oversee pay at companies that took bailout money. Treasury created the pay czar's office in June as one agency of implementing that law.

Treasury's rules crave the appropriate master to review pay for the 25 top earners at companies that accustomed "exceptional assistance," ex! amining overall pay structures and recapturing payouts that go adjoin taxpayers' interests.

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Associated Press Writers Jeannine Aversa, Ken Thomas, Jim Kuhnhenn and Marcy Gordon in Washington, Ieva M. Augstums in Charlotte, N.C., and Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States built pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday, signaling that a troop increase could articulation on a successful runoff acclamation and that the Obama administering would be receptive to a power-sharing accord amid Karzai and his chief rival.

A affiliation government or added political arrangement that included Karzai's rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, could accommodate a critical internal check on Karzai, who is broadly advantaged to win the presidential runoff set for Nov. 7.

President Barack Obama and Sen. John Kerry, who pressed the administration's interests in weekend talks with Karzai in Kabul, both hinted Wednesday that pending deliberations on accessible U.S. troop increases in Afghanistan could be affected by the Afghan leader's behavior.

Karzai's weak and corruption-riddled government has been blamed in part for the resurgence of the Taliban and for widespread Afghan civilian disillusionment. The Afghan national acclamation in August was bedridden by massive fraud that led to the auctioning of a third of the results, providing a block for the U.S. to columnist Karzai to accede to the runoff with Abdullah.

Kerry, whose meetings with Karzai helped advance to the runoff agreement over the weekend, said Wednesday afterwards a White House session with Obama that the president should wait until afterwards new acclamation to make his accommodation on troop strength.

Obama himself said Wednesday in a television account he might not announce his accommodation on sending added troops until afterwards the runoff.

Both statements had the subtle force of accretion pre! ssure on Karzai by implying that the administration's accommodation on U.S. troop backbone in Afghanistan might depend on how the runoff turns out.

The Massachusetts Democrat said Wednesday that it wasn't "common sense" for Obama to determine whether added U.S. troops should go to Afghanistan afterwards knowing the acclamation results. "You really appetite to apperceive that this has worked, and you appetite to apperceive what's coming out of it," Kerry said.

Officials said Obama's pending accommodation had acutely figured in the U.S. discussions with Karzai about how to resolve the political impasse.

Several admiral stressed that the looming troop plan accommodation was not used candidly to force Karzai to concede on the election's contested first round, but one highly placed U.S. official in Afghanistan said the United States used Obama's deliberation over troop numbers as leverage.

That official spoke on action of anonymity because Obama has not appear whether he will accede to a U.S. military request for bags of additional forces.

Karzai and Abdullah settled on the runoff following weeks of acrimony over Afghanistan's fraud-pocked national election. But both sides additionally are considering a affiliation government that could either replace the runoff or follow it.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Wednesday that the U.S. would not be opposed to a power-sharing deal, depending on its legitimacy and how it was implemented. Obama appeared to allude to the still-fluid discussions Wednesday.

"I think we're still in - finding out how this accomplished action in Afghanistan is activity to unfold," Obama said in an account on MSNBC.

While careful to say that any power-sharing accord would have to appear from the Afghans and not the U.S., American admiral were clear that Karzai's afraid accep! tance of a runoff vote may not be abundant by itself.

Karzai and Abdullah have about dismissed the abstraction of sharing power, but there have been reports of private horse-trading discussions afore and since Tuesday's announcement of the runoff.

Kerry told reporters afterwards affair with Obama on Wednesday that in Afghanistan he "did not altercate nor did I even attempt to put on the table the abstraction of a coalition."

It would be inappropriate to raise that possibility and would make it seem to Afghans that the United States was calling the shots, Kerry said. However, he accustomed the issue was being discussed in Kabul, and said there may have been talks amid the Karzai and Abdullah camps on it "even today."

In an account Wednesday with The Associated Press, Kerry said the discussions with Karzai grew intense at times.

"I turned up the dial a few times, accept me," Kerry said.

He added: "They were actual emotional. And they were actual amorous and actual heated at times but accurately heated. You apperceive there was never anger, there was always the intensity of the argument."

Another State Department official said Abdullah's camp had bidding absorption in a affiliation or power-sharing deal, and that some Karzai aides, concerned about the after-effects of a runoff, are accommodating to accede the abstraction admitting the president's public repudiation of the idea.

That official said the U.S. would support any advance that leads to the formation of a credible government in the eyes of the Afghan people. The official spoke on action of anonymity because the negotiations don't involve the U.S.

That could include a affiliation or added power-sharing arrangement that is either formed to annihilate the need for a second annular or one that is created using the after-effects of ! the runo ff.

But there are no accoutrement for a affiliation in the Afghan Constitution, and it is not clear how such a accord would work or remain enforceable.

The most important near-term goal for the U.S. was Karzai's acceptance of acclamation agency after-effects and his acceptance that the impasse must be resolved.

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Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven, Laurie Kellman, Ron Fournier and Julie Pace in Washington and Robert H. Reid in Kabul contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- A scientist who worked for the Defense Department, a White House space council and other agencies was arrested Monday on charges of attempting to pass along classified information to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer.

Stewart David Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, Md., was charged in a criminal complaint with attempting to communicate, deliver and transmit classified information, the Justice Department said. The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf violated U.S. law.

Nozette was arrested by FBI agents. He is expected to make his initial appearance in federal court in Washington on Tuesday. Law enforcement officials said Nozette did not immediately have a lawyer.

Nozette worked in varying jobs for the Energy Department, NASA and - in 1989 and 1990 - the National Space Council in the president's office. He developed the Clementine bi-static radar experiment that purportedly discovered water on the south pole of the moon. He worked at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he designed highly advanced technology, from approximately 1990 to 1999.

At Energy, Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department's top secret and "critical nuclear weapon design information" clearances. DOE clearances apply to access to information specifically relating to atomic or nuclear-related materials.

Nozette also held top offices at the Alliance for Competitive Technology, a nonprofit corporation that he organized. Between January 2000 and February 2006, Nozette, through his company, had several agreements to develop advanced technology for the ! U.S. gov ernment.

An affidavit explains why FBI agents posed as agents of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.

From 1998 to 2008, the complaint alleges, Nozette was a technical adviser for a consultant company that was wholly owned by the Israeli government. Nozette was paid about $225,000 over that period, the court papers say.

Then, in January of this year, Nozette allegedly traveled to another foreign country with two computer thumb drives and did not return with them. Prosecutors also quote an unnamed colleague of Nozette who said the scientist told him that if the U.S. government ever tried to put him in jail for an unrelated criminal offense, he would go to Israel or another foreign country and "tell them everything" he knows.

In Jerusalem, Israeli government officials had no immediate comment.

The affidavit by FBI agent Leslie Martell said that on Sept. 3, Nozette received a telephone call from an individual purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer. The caller was an undercover FBI agent.

Nozette agreed to meet with the agent later that day at a hotel in Washington and in the subsequent meeting the two discussed Nozette's willingness to work for Israeli intelligence, the affidavit said.

Image by Goddard Photo and Video Blog via Flickr

Nozette allegedly informed the agent that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to U.S. satellite information, the affidavit said.

Nozette also allegedly said that he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The agent explained that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, would arrange for a communication system so Nozette could pass on information in a post office box.

Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information and asked for an Israeli passport, the affidavit alleged. It gave this sequence of events! :

-Sept. 4. Nozette and the agent met again in the same hotel. The scientist allegedly said that while he no longer had legal access to any classified information at a U.S. government facility, he could, nonetheless, recall classified information by memory. Nozette allegedly asked when he could expect to receive his first payment, saying he preferred cash amounts "under ten thousand" so he didn't have to report it.

Nozette allegedly told the agent, "Well, I should tell you my first need is that they should figure out how to pay me ... they don't expect me to do this for free."

-Sept. 10. Undercover FBI agents left a letter in the designated post office box, asking Nozette to answer a list of questions about U.S. satellite information. The agents provided a $2,000 cash payment. Serial numbers of the bills were recorded.

-Sept. 16. Nozette was captured on videotape leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. The next day, agents retrieved the sealed envelope and found, among other things, a on

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

e-page document containing answers to the questions and an encrypted computer thumb drive.

One answer contained information classified as secret, which concerned capabilities of a prototype overhead collection system. Nozette allegedly offered to reveal additional classified information that directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, and other major weapons systems.

-Sept. 17. Agents left a second letter in the post office box with another list of questions about U.S. satellite information. The FBI also left a cash payment of $9,000. Nozette allegedly retrieved the questions and the money the same day.

-Oct. 1. Nozette was videotaped leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. FBI agents retrieved it and found a second set of answers. The responses contained information classified as both top secret and sec! ret, on U.S. satellites, early warning systems, means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information, and major elements of defense strategy.

Nozette performed some of this research and development at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Va., and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

In 2006, NASA's Office of Inspector General subpoenaed a bank account of Nozette's firm, Alliance For Competitive Technology Inc. Nozette went to federal court to fight the subpoena.

The IG said it was investigating allegations that Nozette's firm submitted false claims for expenses that were not actually incurred.

A federal judge rejected Nozette's motion to quash the subpoena. The court records give no indication what happened after that.

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PURCELLVILLE, Va. (AP) -- Just a year afterwards this ancient Confederate state helped elect a black man president, Democrats are desperately aggravating to hang onto the governorship.

A lot has changed: Loyal Democrats are added chastened than aftermost fall. Republicans are energized. Independents are proving to be ... independent. Voters of all kinds seem disenchanted.

Just like Americans nationwide.

The challenge between Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat R. Creigh Deeds provides a snapshot of sorts - 12 months afterwards America adopted Barack Obama as admiral and advertisement Democratic majorities in Congress, and one year afore midterm elections in every state.

And the picture, in Virginia as in the nation, is not pretty for Democrats.

Republicans are far added accursed up than Democrats, and independents who leaned larboard just a year ago are tilting away. Frustration over the status quo, fear of the country's direction, and disillusionment about political leaders span the ideological spectrum.

"I'm disgusted by everything. We couldn't be at a worse abode in this country," said Maria Taylor, a waitress in Purcellville's baby business district. She calls herself an absolute and hasn't absitively whom to abutment as Virginia's abutting governor.

At the adjacent hardware store, adolescent undecided aborigine Cary Koppie, a one-man mowing company, is so affronted he says he may sit out this election. "They're all a agglomeration of liars," he said. "You don't apperceive who the heck to vote for anymore."

Two weeks afore the Nov. 3 election, polls show McDonnell, a above stat! e attorn ey general, leading Deeds, a above state legislator, by about bifold digits. After two terms of Democrats at the helm, voters may afresh be appetite change. Every four years since 1997, Virginia has called the applicant of the opposite affair from the one that controls the White House.

Prospects arise better for Democrats in New Jersey, area embattled Gov. Jon Corzine is in a close race with Republican Chris Christie in this year's added governor's race. Corzine is favored to win; it's a Democratic-leaning state and absolute Chris Daggett is sucking abutment from both parties.

Obama will be campaigning for Corzine on Wednesday and has stops lined up for Deeds, too, afore Election Day.

The outcomes won't adumbrate abutting year's midterm results. So much could change. Jobs could return. Health care overhaul could pass. War in Afghanistan could be winding down. People could feel better about area the country is heading.

But given Virginia's newfound swing-voting behavior, the McDonnell-Deeds outcome will be a key admeasurement of how America feels and, perhaps added importantly, how absolute voters are acting ahead of the 2010 elections. Independents will be analytical as Democrats try to protect their majorities in Congress and pick up governorships in a number of states.

Here in Virginia, as well as in the wider U.S., Republican crossover voters and independents are breaking from the Democrats, partly because they're put off by Obama's government expansion and expensive policy proposals like bloom care. The question in Virginia is how they'll split between McDonnell and Deeds - if they turn out at all.

"Neither one of them makes me particularly excited," said Dale Thompson, a gun-shop buyer who shuns affair labels and thinks "society's a mess." Still, he's acknowledging McDonnell - "the least angry of the bunch."

Down the str! eet, toy -store buyer Bill Lupinacci, 51, a Republican who backed Democrat Tim Kaine for governor in 2006 and Obama in 2008, is undecided - and turned off by both the candidates for the state's top office. "They're spending best of their time on attack ads rather than putting forth their positions on the issues."

McDonnell has been forced to defend his graduate academy apriorism from 20 years ago that criticized career women, gays and cohabiting bachelor couples. Deeds has drawn criticism for afresh refusing to specify how he would raise the $1 billion a year bare to revive analytical transportation projects.

The race additionally is an important test of whether the droves of base Democratic voters - the blacks, Hispanics, bachelor women, young bodies and first-time voters whom Obama admiring aftermost abatement - will turn out and abutment a Democrat if the admiral is not on the ballot.

Some are certain not to cast votes this abatement because only the best motivated bodies turn out in off-year elections.

There additionally are break that some Virginians who made up the president's diverse winning coalition were enthusiastic Obama 2008 voters, not reliable Democratic Party voters, and perhaps not alike Obama 2012 voters, should he run for re-election as expected. That would mean they would be up for grabs come 2010.

Consider Jake Crocker, a self-employed marketing adviser who owns Richmond's Easy Street cafe. He backed Obama and said he'd gladly do so again. But he's voting for Republican McDonnell because he sees similarities to pro-business Democrat Mark Warner, the above governor and now senator. "He's a guy who gets it," Crocker said of McDonnell.

Conversely, Eddie DuRant, an environmental adviser in Virginia Beach who supported Obama a year ago, afresh absitively to vote for Deeds. DuRant was swayed by McDonnell's graduate thesis, saying, "It appears he ! has an u ltraconservative amusing agenda that is not in band with what I believe."

Places like Purcellville in Loudoun County, a sprawling swath to the west of Washington, could provide clues to aborigine attitudes in added swing-voting places in battlefield states: Arapahoe County in suburban Denver, Anoka County abreast Minneapolis-St. Paul, Westmoreland County abreast Pittsburgh, Jefferson County abreast St. Louis.

Around here, farmland, country manors and a bevy of loyal GOP voters have given way to shopping centers, subdivisions and a mishmash of Republicans, Democrats and independents in recent years. Loudoun County's accelerated advance has changed its politics; the area has become a analytical front in statewide elections.

Long a reliably Republican bastion, this is area Democrats aboriginal felt the start of a national political sea change in 2005. Their gubernatorial candidate, Kaine, won the county and the race. It accepted to be a harbinger for 2006 when Democrats, fueled by huge assets in counties like Loudoun, won one Virginia Senate seat, and 2008, when they claimed the second while voting for a Democratic presidential applicant for the aboriginal time since 1964.

This county and others adjacent are expected to advance either McDonnell or Deeds over the top - and accord important clues about the country's aggregate state of mind.

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Bob Lewis reported from Richmond.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration was elated a month ago when the Russian president said sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program could become "inevitable." Washington's reaction may have been significantly premature.

Dmitry Medvedev's words were seen as a major Kremlin shift and one that would buttress U.S. attempts to combine renewed negotiations with Tehran and a united front that threatened Iran with punishing global sanctions for failure to come clean.

The United States, Britain, France and Germany believe Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon behind the cover of what Tehran says is a program designed solely to enable a homegrown network of reactors to generate electricity.

Russia and China, the other two key players who engage Iran on the nuclear issue, had routinely rejected tough sanctions, arguing that negotiations were the way forward.

But Medvedev emerged from talks with President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly last month to declare of Iran: "In some cases, sanctions are inevitable."

While clearly delighted with those words, the White House hotly rejected analyses that Medvedev was signaling a course change as a payoff for Obama's decision a week earlier to scrap a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. The U.S. missile system, conceived under the Bush administration purportedly to defend against attack from Iran, had become a major factor in deteriorating U.S.-Russian relations.

Nevertheless, the president's top Russia adviser acknowledged that the decision against moving forward on missile defense - a deployment that Moscow said would have threatened its security - was a factor in! Medvede v's remarks.

"Is it the case that it (the missile defense decision) changes the climate - I think that's true, of course," Mike McFaul said at the time.

While Medvedev said sanctions could become necessary, Moscow was not long in telling Washington - and major trading partner Iran - that the time had not come yet. That clearly deflated expectations raised when Washington drew so much attention to Medvedev's much hailed remarks.

"Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was in the Russian capital last week.

And Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who absented himself on a trip to Beijing, drew a line under Lavrov's comments.

"If we speak about some kind of sanctions now, before we take concrete steps, we will fail to create favorable conditions for negotiations," Putin said. "That is why we consider such talk premature."

Positions could clarify somewhat in Monday talks in Vienna, where the U.S., France, Russia, the U.N. nuclear agency and Iran hash out a proposal that would send some of Tehran's low enriched uranium to Russia for further processing to fuel an aging Iranian reactor used for medical research.

If expanded, that program might become the model for undercutting the need for Iran to continue with Iranian uranium enrichment, a technology which could shortly achieve the sophistication to boost low enriched uranium for use in a nuclear weapon.

And later this month, Iran will allow U.N. inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to examine a newly disclosed uranium enrichment facility under construction near the holy city of Qom, a nuclear plant that Iran only notified the world of just days before it was announced to the ! world by Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Iran's new, if limited readiness to cooperate after years of stonewalling once its secret nuclear program became public could portend a more significant shift by Tehran. And Medvedev could be partly responsible.

"This time, it seems to me they (the Russians) are moving a bit to suggest to Tehran that Russia should not be taken for granted or ignored when it comes to meeting what Russia also says are legitimate expectations about Iranian behavior," said James Collins, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia.

But, he said, the "administration probably overplayed their hand" in that the Russians' patience for negotiating with the Iranians could stretch far beyond that of Washington. In the U.S. the urgency of capping Tehran's perceived nuclear threat is deeply enmeshed in the messy and highly partisan domestic political climate - a heavy drag on Obama's ambitious agenda.

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EDITOR'S NOTE - Steven R. Hurst reports from the White House for The Associated Press and has covered international relations for 30 years.

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