WASHINGTON -- The hunt is over for the missing file from now-Chief Justice John Roberts' work on affirmative action during the Reagan administration: The National Archives says it can't find the file or determine if it was "taken intentionally, unintentionally or lost" after a nine-month investigation.

Archives officials' assurances to the contrary, the 64-page inhouse report said procedures weren't followed when Bush White House staffers were allowed to bring in personal belongings and were left alone for as long as 30 minutes when they ran pre-nomination checks on Mr. Roberts.

The White House has denied any role in the file's disappearance.

Young worries

Young voters born under the sign of Reagan are as concerned as their elders with political Washington's performance on jobs, the economy, education, gas prices and the Iraq war. Republican pollster Ed Goeas and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake report that 63 percent of voters 18 to 30 think the country's on the wrong track, and 73 percent of them plan to vote.

World Trade Center steel to float

Work is now about half done on the new Navy warship USS New York, which will be constructed using 24 tons of steel salvaged from the World Trade Center site after the 9/11 attacks. The amphibious transport ship, which survived Hurricane Katrina in an Avondale, La., shipyard, is being built by Northrop Grumman. Some workers have postponed their retirement to participate in the historic project.

The View from Baghdad via Germany, South Korea

"Baghdad ER," the HBO documentary about a U.S. combat hospital in Iraq, is too graphic to be shown on the military's American Forces Network, the Pentagon has decided. But at least some GIs will have the chance to see it because HBO is sending complimentary DVDs of the film to Army hospitals in Germany and South Korea.

Save me, save my pets

Congress is close to making it easier for people to bring pets with them when they evacuate in an emergency. The House has OK'd a measure that requires state and local disaster aid personnel to make plans so dogs, cats and other household pets and service animals can accompany their humans. The Senate is taking up the bill soon.

New phishing tales:

"Nigerian scam" letters, which offer to share a fortune if you just send money, get exported to Iraq. The Stars and Stripes newspaper reports that e-mails purporting to be from "Sgt. 1st Class Frank V. Edwards" ask recipients to send cash to free $10 million seized in Tikrit.

Phony phone calls threaten prosecution and seek personal data for allegedly not obeying a jury summons. Summonses and other jury correspondence come by mail, not phone, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts says in warning against this identity-theft scam.

Really big fish

Speaking of fish, President Bush has rushed two political appointments to an obscure international commission that sets fishing limits on salmon and steelhead trout. The White House has announced the re-appointment of Alan Austerman of Alaska and the appointment of Gary Thomas Smith of Washington state to serve on the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, both for four-year terms. The commission -- founded in 1992 with representatives from Canada, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States -- must decide the increasingly contentious issue of harvesting limits for anadromous fish, which spawn in freshwater.

Let's review

AWOL on the Constitution?

"If your six kids were 21, it would be a landslide," President Bush, addressing U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis, of Kentucky, at a fund-raiser for the freshman Republican and father of six. Never mind that the 26th Amendment, ratified July 1, 1971, lowered the U.S. voting age to 18.