Democratic National Convention

Negotiators from the city and a police union that picketed the FleetCenter last week, delaying work at the site of next month's Democratic National Convention, went into a mediation session Sunday night. "We're going in there for the long run," said Thomas Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen's Assn., which has been without a contract for nearly two years. "We're going to get this behind us." Mayor Thomas M.

Georgia Sen. Zell Miller, the highest profile Democrat to endorse President Bush for re-election, will speak at the Republican National Convention this summer. According to a congressional aide who spoke on condition of anonymity, Miller will give his address on Wednesday night of the four-day convention in New York that begins Aug. 30. Twelve years ago he delivered the keynote address for Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

Former President Clinton will get the coveted prime-time speaking slot on opening day of the Democratic convention here, while hometown favorite Sen. Edward M. Kennedy will speak during prime time on Day Two. Ben Affleck, Sean Astin, Larry David and two of the Baldwin brothers, Billy and Alec, are set to headline a sizable Hollywood cast who also will be on hand next month, helping John F. Kerry accept his party's nomination for president.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and maverick Sen. John McCain -- three Republicans with proven appeal to swing voters -- topped the line-up of prime-time speakers announced Monday for the GOP's national convention in late August.

Two former presidents, a panoply of party stalwarts and rising stars and Sen. John F. Kerry's fellow Vietnam War veterans will be among those saluting the presumed Democratic presidential nominee at the party's national convention in Boston this month. Speakers during the gathering's opening night July 26 will include former President Carter and former Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic standard-bearer in 2000.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on Wednesday visited the arena where the Democratic National Convention will begin in less than two weeks, and repeated warnings that "Al Qaeda is moving forward with plans to carry out a large-scale attack in the United States aimed to disrupt our democratic process." However, he emphasized, "to date, we have no specific intelligence that tells us the convention itself will be subject to attack."

Maria Shriver, the Democratic wife of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, will return to her roots later this month when she attends the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Spokeswoman Terri Carbaugh said Shriver, a member of the Kennedy family, plans a low-key visit primarily to attend family gatherings and watch her uncle, Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, deliver a prime-time speech to delegates on the second night of the convention.

Sen. John F. Kerry on Thursday asked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to address the Democratic National Convention on its opening night and introduce her husband, former President Clinton, ending an intense lobbying campaign by the New York senator's backers who were angered by her nonspeaking role.

Ronald Reagan's spiritual heirs will fill the halls of the Republican National Convention in late August, but the Democrats have secured his flesh and blood for a prime-time spot at this month's bash in Boston. Ron Reagan, the late president's 46-year-old son, plans to use the global platform of the Democratic National Convention to endorse embryonic stem-cell experiments, an area of research that some think his father would have opposed but which his mother supports.

Sen. John F. Kerry is planning a tour of several battleground states that will start Friday at his birthplace in Colorado and end next week with his nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards, will join him at the start of the tour and then campaign on his own before accepting the vice presidential nomination at the convention July 28. Kerry also will be nominated that night; he will give his acceptance speech July 29.