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Key health care senators have industry ties
By LARRY MARGASAK and SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON – Influential senators working to overhaul the nation's health care system have investments and family ties with some of the biggest names in the industry. The wife of Sen. Chris Dodd, the lawmaker in charge of writing the Senate's bill, sits on the boards of four health care companies.
Members of both parties have industry connections, including Democrats Jay Rockefeller and Tom Harkin, in addition to Dodd, and Republicans Tom Coburn, |
Republicans hammer Democrats on Guantanamo
By Jeremy Pelofsky – Fri Jun 12, 2:22 pm ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican U.S. lawmakers are digging in their heels over President Barack Obama's plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for foreign terrorism suspects, demanding details of his efforts, limits on detainee movements and thorough risk assessments.
Republicans in Congress have sought to amend legislation to seek more details about Obama's plan for closing the facility at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, which they say is an ideal and safe place for the trials and detention of terrorism suspects.
Cessna Aircraft to slash additional 1,300 jobs
NEW YORK (AFP) – Embattled US corporate jet builder Cessna Aircraft said Friday it plans to cut an additional 1,300 jobs to adjust production to match a meltdown in orders amid the global economic downturn.
The new job cuts will bring the total number of payrolls eliminated since November to 8,200, about half the prior workforce, said the company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Textron Inc.
Ousted AmeriCorps watchdog defends waste probe
By ANN SANNER and PETE YOST, Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON – An inspector general fired by President Barack Obama said Friday he acted "with the highest integrity" in investigating AmeriCorps and other government-funded national service programs. Gerald Walpin said in an interview with The Associated Press that he reported facts and conclusions "in an honest and full way" while serving as inspector general at the Corporation for National and Community Service.
Swine flu vaccine ready for tests after pandemic declared
by Andre Lehmann Andre Lehmann – 31 mins ago
GENEVA (AFP) – A Swiss pharmaceutical giant said Friday it has a swine flu vaccine ready for trial as governments stepped up precautions to counter the newly-declared influenza pandemic.
DC Holocaust museum reopens after fatal shooting
By GILLIAN GAYNAIR, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – Hundreds of visitors streamed into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as it opened Friday for the first time since a security guard was shot to death by a man authorities identified as a rifle-toting 88-year-old white supremacist. The museum, which was closed Thursday for a day of mourning, opened shortly after 10 a.m. Officials said the crowds seemed to be about the same size as usual this time of year.
Mortgage Rates Head for 6 percent: 5 Reasons They Might Retreat
By Luke Mullins – Fri Jun 12, 9:59 am ET
Only a couple of months ago, exceptionally low mortgage rates were one of the few optimistic landmarks in an otherwise bleak economic outlook. After the Federal Reserve unveiled a series of initiatives beginning last fall--such as purchasing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities and long-term treasury bonds--mortgage rates plunged to all-time lows. In early April, with 30-year fixed mortgage rates dropping to less than 5 percent, President Barack Obama beseeched homeowners everywhere to capitalize on the development by refinancing their mortgages. "The main message we want to send today is there are 7 to 9 million people across the country who right now could be taking advantage of lower mortgage rates," the president said, according to the Associated Press. "That is money in their pocket."
Rubble from 2007 bridge collapse rusting in park
By PATRICK CONDON, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jun 12, 4:45 pm ET
MINNEAPOLIS – Nearly two years after the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River, much of its twisted steel remnants sit rusting on a long swath of a leafy park just a half-mile from where the span fell.
It's a somber reminder of an accident that killed 13 people and unnerved the nation. City officials say the shuttered park is costing them money and they want the grim wreckage cleared away to reclaim the scenic riverside spot. State officials are willing to remove it, but lingering lawsuits connected to the collapse have prevented that.
Drilling might be culprit behind Texas earthquakes
By JEFF CARLTON, Associated Press Writer Writer – June 12,2009 2 hrs 33 mins ago
CLEBURNE, Texas – The earth moved here on June 2. It was the first recorded earthquake in this Texas town's 140-year history — but not the last. There have been four small earthquakes since, none with a magnitude greater than 2.8. The most recent ones came Tuesday night, just as the City Council was meeting in an emergency session to discuss what to do about the ground moving.
Appeals court says no to George W. Bush deposition
By JEFF CARLTON, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 55 mins ago
DALLAS – A Texas appeals court on Friday overturned a ruling that would have put former President George W. Bush under oath in a dispute involving his presidential library.
A three-judge panel of the 5th District Court of Appeals ruled that Bush does not have to submit to a deposition from a former condo owner suing Southern Methodist University, the future site of the presidential library.
Rep. Patrick Kennedy again receiving treatment
By ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press Writer – 25 mins ago
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who has struggled with depression, alcoholism and addiction for much of his life, said Friday that he has checked into a medical facility for treatment. The Rhode Island Democrat, who sought treatment three years ago after an early morning car crash near the U.S. Capitol, said in a statement that his recovery is a "lifelong process" and that he will do whatever it takes to preserve his health.
Bush celebrates 85th by skydiving over Maine
By DAVID SHARP, Associated Press Writer Writer – 46 mins ago
KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine – Former President George H.W. Bush marked his 85th birthday on Friday the same way he did his 75th and 80th birthdays: He leaped from a plane and zoomed downward at more than 100 mph in freefall before parachuting safely to a spot near his oceanfront home.
Bush made the tandem jump from 10,500 feet with Sgt. 1st Class Mike Elliott of the Army's Golden Knights, who guided them to a gentle landing on the lawn of St. Ann's Church.
Fallen Pa. trooper remembered as hero, joker
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press Writer June 12, 2009
YATESVILLE, Pa. – Joshua Miller was a highly committed member of the state police — a trooper's trooper obsessed with physical fitness and taking drunken drivers off the road.
But the 34-year-old Marine veteran had another side, his square-jawed intensity betrayed by glints of the mischievous schoolboy he once was. He told tall tales about his prowess as a hunter, ribbed colleagues mercilessly, sponged food. He grinned ear-to-ear whenever he spoke about his three daughters. He was so in love with his wife that he once left her a piece of tape with an imprint of his lips — a kiss.
Mount McKinley climbers fall to their deaths
By RACHEL D'ORO, Associated Press Writer - June 12, 2009
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Two experienced climbers fell more than 2,000 feet to their deaths on Alaska's Mount McKinley, raising this year's death toll on the mountain to four, officials said Friday.
John Mislow, 39, and Andrew Swanson, 36, were roped together when they fell Thursday afternoon along Messner Couloir, a steep, hourglass-shaped snow gully on the 20,320-foot mountain, North America's tallest peak. National Park Service rangers used a helicopter to recover their bodies Thursday evening.
Gorilla injures 1 during brief escape at SC zoo
By PETE IACOBELLI, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jun 12, 5:51 pm ET
COLUMBIA, S.C. – A 390-pound gorilla grabbed some low-hanging bamboo to scale a wall at a South Carolina zoo Friday, escaping his enclosure and tackling a worker before returning to his pen about five minutes later.
The gorilla at Riverbanks Zoo and Gardens ran into a pizza-stand employee who curled up and played dead to try to avoid further injuries, officials said. The man, who works for Aramark Corp., was taken to a hospital and released a short time later with cuts and bruises.
Police: NY family arrested, kept kids in squalor
By FRANK ELTMAN, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jun 12, 7:10 pm ET
MASTIC BEACH, N.Y. – Five family members kept seven children and more than a dozen animals in a Long Island house that reeked of urine and was littered with rotting food and animal feces, authorities said Friday.
Deputy Inspector Mark Griffiths of the Suffolk County police said a foul odor greeted police officers when they arrived at the home in a working-class Long Island community Thursday afternoon, after being contacted by Social Services officials.
Nevada students find naked man tied to a rock
AP-ZEPHYR COVE, Nev. – A 53-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of being naked near a high school on Lake Tahoe's east shore. The naked man was arrested Monday after three Whittell High School students reported spotting him tied to a rock and lying face down behind the school. When the students asked if he needed to be untied, the man answered no.
NH Man blames infant son for hit-and-run accident
AP-PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – Police in Portsmouth, N.H., said a man has been charged with lying about his involved in a hit-and-run accident by telling them his son was driving the vehicle. Problem is, the man's son is an infant
Moles, not magic, make worm 'grunting' work
By BRENDAN FARRINGTON, Associated Press Writer Press Writer – Fri Jun 12:10 ET
TATE'S HELL, Fla. – Gary Revell gets up every morning before sunrise, heads into the woods and grunts. Not because it's so early. It's the term for coaxing worms from the ground by the hundreds to be scooped up and plopped in a tin can until he can sell them for fishing bait.
He pounds a two-foot wooden "stob" or stake into the earth and rubs it with a 10-pound piece of flat iron. The vibration or "grunting" causes worms to panic, and they wriggle from the ground. For years it was just a guess why.
Vanderbilt University biological sciences professor Ken Catania wanted to expand on a theory put forth by Charles Darwin that worms may sense moles are pursuing them if the ground trembles.
Teen describes beatings by captors in Calif. home
By JASON DEAREN, Associated Press Writer June 12, 2009
STOCKTON, Calif. – A teenager who ran from a Northern California home wearing a shackle on his ankle endured frequent beatings, sometimes in front of other children, that worsened over the year he spent there, according to grand jury testimony made public Friday.
The 970-page transcript includes testimony from the teen, the alleged abusers' children, social workers, police officers and about three dozen other people who had knowledge of the events.
NATO backs U.S. shake-up in Afghan command
By David Brunnstrom – Fri Jun 12, 10:51 am ET
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO on Friday backed a U.S. shake-up of military command in Afghanistan, as well as plans to step up training of Afghan forces, and Washington said it saw the chance of turning the tide in the war within a year.
The United States has named U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal to overall command of U.S., NATO and allies forces in Afghanistan, with a deputy to run day-to-day military operations and another to oversee training. |
China sub collides with array towed by U.S. ship: report
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Chinese submarine accidentally collided with an underwater sonar array being towed by a U.S. military ship, CNN reported on Friday, quoting an unnamed military official.
The incident occurred on Thursday near Subic Bay off the coast of the Philippines, according to the CNN report.
The destroyer USS John S. McCain was towing the array, deployed to track underwater sounds.
"The John S. McCain did have a problem with its towed array sonar. It was damaged" on Thurs
U.N. widens sanctions on North Korea; China joins in
By Louis Charbonneau and Claudia Parsons - June 12,2009
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council on Friday unanimously approved wider sanctions against North Korea over its May 25 nuclear test, a move close ally China said showed firm opposition to Pyongyang's atomic ambitions.
The sanctions resolution banned all weapons exports from North Korea and most arms imports into the reclusive communist state. It authorized U.N. member states to inspect North Korean sea, air and land cargo, requiring them to seize and destroy any goods transported in violation of the sanctions.
Top Sunni lawmaker killed outside Baghdad mosque
By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer Kim Gamel, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jun 12, 5:02 pm ET
BAGHDAD – The moderate leader of the largest Sunni bloc in parliament was assassinated Friday after delivering a sermon at a Baghdad mosque, a killing that could set back efforts to reconcile differences between the two Muslim sects before national elections.
Harith al-Obeidi, 47, was an outspoken advocate for prisoners' rights, one of the most divisive issues in relations between the disaffected Sunni minority and the Shiite-led government.
Ahmadinejad has strong early lead in Iran vote: poll chief
by Siavosh Ghazi and Farhad Pouladi - June12,2009
TEHRAN (AFP) – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has taken a strong early lead in his bid for a second term as Iran's president, chalking up 69 percent of the vote after 19 percent of ballots were counted in Friday's election, the elections chief said.
Ahmadinejad received 3,462,548 votes, compared to 1,425,678 for his closest challenger, former premier Mir Hossein Mousavi, said Kamran Daneshjoo, chairman of the electoral commission at the interior ministry.
That gave Ahmadinejad 69.04 percent of the vote and Mousavi 28.42 percent in the massively supported elections which saw long queues at polling stations from early morning and forced continual extensions of the cut-off time.
Pakistan's Zardari vows to fight Taliban to the end
By Zeeshan Haider – Fri Jun 12, 4:19 pm ET
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said on Saturday the Taliban wanted to take over the country and vowed to fight against militancy "to the end."
Militants have launched a wave of bomb attacks in recent days in response to an army offensive in the Swat region, to the northwest of the capital, Islamabad.
Obama gives Tsvangirai words of support, no money
By Ross Colvin Ross Colvin – 1 hr 58 mins ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama gave tentative backing to Zimbabwe's fragile national unity government on Friday, but the country's prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, left a White House meeting largely empty-handed.
Obama promised $73 million in new aid that a White House official said later would go toward fighting HIV-AIDS and promoting good governance in the poverty-stricken southern African nation. Significantly, the money will not go to the government but will be channeled through aid agencies.
Chavez's expropriation of oil firms could spark labor unrest
By Tyler Bridges | McClatchy Newspapers
CIUDAD OJEDA, Venezuela — Despite the recent sharp rise in oil prices, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez last month expropriated 70 oil service companies in western Venezuela, putting some 10,000 Venezuelans out of work, turning local unions against him and forcing production cuts at important oilfields.
The action has drawn little international attention because Chavez stopped short of nationalizing big U.S.-based multinationals such as Halliburton or Schlumberger that carry out technical and highly skilled work in producing oil. Nor have the owners of the 70 Venezuelan firms — in addition to four foreign- owned firms — protested publicly, fearing that doing so might jeopardize settlement negotiations with the government.
U.S. student at murder trial says police beat her
By Maurizio Troccoli – Fri Jun 12, 12:47 pm ET
PERUGIA, Italy (Reuters) – An American university student on trial for the murder of a fellow British student testified on Friday that police had beaten her and suggested to her what she should say under interrogation.
Amanda Knox, 21, an exchange student from the University of Washington, is on trial along with her Italian boyfriend in connection with the death in November 2007 of Meredith Kercher.
Both women were foreign students at the University of Perugia when Kercher's semi-naked body was found in the apartment she shared with Knox.
Bank worries, shaky recovery cloud G8 finance talks
By Dario Thuburn – Fri Jun 12, 2:00 pm ET
LECCE, Italy (AFP) – Conflicting signs about prospects for a global economic recovery and worries about the health of Europe's banks clouded a meeting of finance ministers from the G8 top world powers on Friday.
"There are relatively small but encouraging signs of a return to stability," Canadian Finance Minister James Flaherty told reporters ahead of the talks in Lecce in southern Italy.
New, superheavy element to enter periodic table
Thu Jun 11, 9:36 am ET
BERLIN (Reuters) – A new, superheavy chemical element numbered 112 will soon be officially included in the periodic table, German researchers said.
A team in the southwest German city of Darmstadt first produced 112 in 1996 by firing charged zinc atoms through a 120-meter-long particle accelerator to hit a lead target.
"The new element is approximately 277 times heavier than hydrogen, making it the heaviest element in the periodic table," the scientists at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research said in a statement late on Wednesday.
Friday marks final signoff for analog TV service
By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer - Fri Jun 12, 2009 6:03PM EDT
TV shows were replaced by the hiss of static in perhaps 1 million U.S. homes Friday as stations ended their analog broadcasts and abandoned the transmission technology in use since the days of Milton Berle, Sid Caesar and Howdy Doody.
The vast majority of households that rely on antennas for their TV signals were prepared for the shutdown, but many people remained vexed by the challenge of setting up digital reception.
CIA adopting Web 2.0 tools despite resistance
By Chris Lefkow -June 12,2009
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The CIA is adopting Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and collaborative wikis, but not without a struggle in an agency with an ingrained culture of secrecy, CIA officers said Friday.
"We're still kind of in this early adoptive stage," said Sean Dennehy, a CIA analyst and self-described "evangelist" for Intellipedia, the US intelligence community's version of the popular user-curated online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
YouTube Won't Watch White House Videos With You
By Chloe Albanesius - PC Magazine - Fri Jun 12, 2009 9:08AM EDT
YouTube has agreed to ditch its monitoring cookies for videos viewed on the official White House Web site, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
"This is a good step and we commend YouTube and the government for taking it," Cindy Cohn, legal director at EFF, wrote in a blog post. "It shows that they recognize that tracking the government videos that Americans view is creepy and wrong. It also shows that Google/YouTube technologists can build and offer clever, useful privacy-protective modifications to their standard software."
Facebook Will Offer 'Vanity URLs' To Users' Sites
Frederick Lane, newsfactor.com – 2 hrs 45 mins ago
At 12:01 EST Friday, a new cyber landrush will get under way, as the social-networking giant Facebook introduces so-called "vanity URLs" to its popular service. On a first-come, first-served basis, Facebook subscribers will be able to choose customized descriptors for their profiles.
According to Facebook designer Blaise Dispersia, the change will mean that instead of having a Facebook URL ending in a randomly assigned number -- such as http://www.facebook.com/... -- users can create a profile link that more clearly indicates their identity -- for example, http://www.facebook.com/...