2 Weather stymies shuttle landing again, re-try Sunday
By Irene Klotz, Reuters
Sat May 23, 11:31 am ET
| CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Rainstorms and clouds over Florida forced the space shuttle Atlantis to cancel its attempted homecoming for a second day on Saturday, and NASA said it would try to bring it back to Earth on Sunday.
Atlantis' seven crew members, winding up a 12-day servicing mission that repaired and upgraded the Hubble Space Telescope, had already been obliged to stay in orbit for an extra day on Friday as the volatile weather shut off the landing site.
Downpours and dark clouds rolling in over the Kennedy Space Center in Florida again on Saturday, leading NASA flight directors to decide to hold off the landing until Sunday, when it was hoped weather conditions would improve. |
3 Pakistani troops fight Taliban in Swat's main town
By Zeeshan Haider, Reuters
Sat May 23, 12:06 pm ET
| ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Street fighting erupted in the main town of Pakistan's Swat valley on Saturday as security forces mounted a new phase of their offensive against Taliban militants, the military said.
The battle for control of Mingora is crucial to the success of the offensive launched this month to regain control of the Swat valley and stem a spreading Taliban insurgency.
"Street fighting has begun in Mingora," military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told a news conference. |
4 India's finance minister Mukherjee vows to protect economy
By Surojit Gupta and Rajkumar Ray, Reuters
Sat May 23, 10:41 am ET
| NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's new finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Saturday he would take steps to protect the economy from the adverse impacts of the global slump and promised to return the country to a high growth path.
Growth is expected to slow to less than 7 percent in the year to April 2009 from rates of 9 percent or more in the previous three years. It is seen slowing further to about 6 percent in 2009/10.
"Major economic issues have to be addressed, and various efforts will be made to insulate the economy from the adverse impact of the financial meltdown," Mukherjee told reporters outside his house after he was appointed finance minister. |
5 Obama signs sweeping credit card reform bill
By John Poirier, Reuters
Fri May 22, 6:04 pm ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law on Friday sweeping reforms that restrict credit card interest rates and fees, marking a victory for Democrats trying to help recession-weary consumers and a setback for banks seeking to retain sorely-needed revenues.
The law is expected to hurt profits of major card issuers such as Citigroup Inc, Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Capital One Financial Corp. Banks say the changes may cut the flow of credit to consumers because it will make it more difficult for issuers to set rates based on the risk their customers pose.
"With this bill we are putting in place some common sense reforms designed to protect consumers," Obama said at a signing ceremony at the White House. |
6 U.S. appeals court agrees tobacco companies lied
By Diane Bartz, Reuters
Fri May 22, 4:53 pm ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cigarette companies systematically lied for decades to hide the dangers of smoking, a U.S. appeals court said on Friday as it upheld a trial judge's racketeering verdict.
But in a blow to anti-smoking groups, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia also upheld U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler's 2006 rejection of plans to force the companies to fund smoking cessation programs, which could have cost them billions of dollars.
The appeals court's three-judge panel ruled that the companies, including Altria Group Inc and its Philip Morris USA unit, violated federal anti-racketeering laws by conspiring to lie about the dangers of smoking. |
7 U.S., in fresh overture, proposes Cuba migration talks
By Susan Cornwell and Arshad Mohammed, Reuters
Fri May 22, 8:35 pm ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Friday it had offered to resume talks with Cuba about Cuban migration to the United States, a fresh sign of U.S. President Barack Obama's effort to engage the communist state.
The talks, last held in 2003 and suspended by Washington in 2004, cover a mid-1990s agreement that aimed to prevent an exodus of Cuban refugees to the United States such as the 1980 Mariel boatlift and another wave of boat people in 1994.
"We have offered to resume the talks," State Department spokeswoman Heide Bronke said, saying the offer was made at a meeting with Cuban diplomats in Washington at 4:30 p.m. EDT on Friday. |
8 Suu Kyi pleads not guilty in U.S. intruder case
By Aung Hla Tun, Reuters
Fri May 22, 2:51 pm ET
| YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi pleaded not guilty on Friday after a prison court formally charged the Nobel laureate for allowing an univited American intruder inside her home.
The court's decision to proceed with the trial of Suu Kyi, her two female housemates and the U.S. man after five days of hearings had been widely expected, analysts said.
Suu Kyi faces up to five years in jail if found guilty of breaking the terms of her house arrest by allowing the American, John Yettaw, to stay in her home for two days in early May. |
9 From pot to "pole" tax: U.S. states seek economic help
By Lisa Lambert, Reuters
Fri May 22, 2:46 pm ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - From legalizing marijuana and then taxing it, to increasing death certificate fees and charging gentlemen's club patrons an extra $5 at the door, cash-strapped U.S. states and cities are rooting around for revenue in some unconventional places.
But even those able to scrounge up funds from untapped sources will likely still need federal help or traditional tax increases to recover from a 17-month recession that has dried up revenue, drained spending capabilities and nearly obliterated the usual last resort of borrowing.
Sin seems most ripe for the taxing in a list of proposed revenue moves compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures last month. |
10 Ex-SKorean leader Roh leaps to death over scandal
By JEAN H. LEE, Associated Press Writer
1 hr 13 mins ago
| SEOUL, South Korea - Former President Roh Moo-hyun, embroiled in a penetrating corruption investigation, leaped to his death Saturday - a shocking end for a man whose rags-to-riches rise took him from rural poverty to Seoul's presidential Blue House. He was 62.
Roh, a self-taught lawyer who never attended college and didn't have the elite background typical of Seoul politicians, had prided himself on being a "clean" leader immune to South Korea's traditional web of corruption.
Allegations that Roh, president from 2003-08, accepted $6 million in bribes from a businessman while in office weighed heavily on the ex-leader, who appeared emotionally wrought last month as he prepared to face prosecutors. |
11 Obama sees court pick as smart with common touch
By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer
1 hr 17 mins ago
| WASHINGTON - On the verge of choosing his first Supreme Court nominee, President Barack Obama has already provided a profile of the person he is likely to pick: an intellectual heavyweight with a "common touch," someone whose brand of justice means seeing life from the perspective of the powerless.
Obama is expected to announce his nominee this week, as early as Tuesday. His words, his young presidency and his own life experience reveal what the nation should expect - and help explain how the president is making a decision that will endure long after he leaves office.
"You have to have not only the intellect to be able to effectively apply the law to cases before you," Obama said in an interview carried Saturday on C-SPAN television. "But you have to be able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes and get a sense of how the law might work or not work in practical day-to-day living." |
12 Don't call ex-Vice President Cheney a has-been
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
2 hrs 33 mins ago
| WASHINGTON - Dick Cheney refuses to be a has-been.
The former vice president's voice appears to carry even more weight than it did in the waning days of the Bush administration.
Some people want him to be quiet and disappear. Others are cheering the public relations tour that Cheney began halfway through President Barack Obama's first 100 days, defending the Bush administration's harsh interrogation tactics and other anti-terrorism policies.
Vice presidents typically fade away quietly.
Not Cheney. |
13 Senate vote not last word on Guantanamo
By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent
Sat May 23, 12:18 pm ET
| WASHINGTON - With President Barack Obama showing the way, some Senate Democrats are signaling a willingness to permit transferring suspected terrorists from Guantanamo to U.S. prisons despite a high-profile vote to the contrary.
Most notably among them is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who spent the week sending out confusing signals on just where he stood.
"We are wanting and willing to work with" the president to come up with a solution to the detainee controversy, the Nevada Democrat said Thursday - a statement that conspicuously left open the possibility that some detainees would eventually be incarcerated in U.S. prisons. |
14 California faces its day of fiscal reckoning
By JULIET WILLIAMS, Associated Press Writer
Sat May 23, 2:20 am ET
| SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The day of reckoning that California has been warned about for years has arrived. The longest recession in generations and the defeat this week of a package of budget-balancing ballot measures are expected to lead to state spending cuts so deep and so painful that they could rewrite the social contract between California and its citizens. They could also force a fundamental rethinking of the proper role of government in the Golden State.
"The voters are getting what they asked for, but I'm not sure at the end of the day they're going to like what they asked for," said Jim Earp, executive director of the California Alliance for Jobs, which represents the hard-hit construction industry. "I think we've crossed a threshold in many ways."
California is looking at a budget deficit projected at more than $24 billion when the new fiscal year starts in July. That is more than one-quarter of the state's general fund. |
15 Slayings dashed dreams of rural Iraqi family
By BRETT BARROUQUERE, Associated Press Writer
1 hr 4 mins ago
| PADUCAH, Ky. - The beautiful, dark-haired girl in the photograph stands near a wall in pre-invasion Iraq. What is unseen and now lost, her family says, is her dream of moving to the big city and getting married.
"Abeer was a strong woman," said her aunt, Ameena Hamza Rashid al-Janabi. "She was very proud to be young."
Relatives of the girl, Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, and prosecutors detailed the teen's hopes and life during the civilian trial of former Pfc. Steven Dale Green, 24, in western Kentucky. They showed pictures of the family at home, and relatives recounted their aspirations for a better life. |
16 Iraq slaying verdict highlights combat stress
By KRISTIN M. HALL, Associated Press Writer
Fri May 22, 6:03 pm ET
| PADUCAH, Ky. - There's no question ex-soldier Steven Dale Green raped and killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdered her parents and sister.
Still, jurors in Kentucky couldn't agree this week whether to sentence the 24-year-old to death for heinous crimes he committed while serving in Iraq, indecision that may signal growing public awareness of combat stress and its consequences, experts say.
Jurors declined to talk to reporters, but forms they completed during deliberations indicate some factored in the stress of Green's bloody combat tour, poor mental health treatment in Iraq and weak leadership in his unit. |
17 Small Ohio town rallies to save baseball
By JAMES HANNAH, Associated Press Writer
1 hr 52 mins ago
| GREENFIELD, Ohio - Memorial Day weekend often signals the start of youth baseball, and it almost didn't happen this year in this town of 5,000, where the sputtering auto industry choked off money for recreation.
But residents took a page from their famous son, "Take This Job and Shove It" singer Johnny Paycheck, and went their own way by raising money, fixing up fields, scrounging for equipment and signing up 450 kids to play.
Resident Laura Saylor, whose daughter plays baseball, said the sport is especially important now because a lot of people don't have money. |
18 A town's struggle to survive in hard times
By HELEN O'NEILL, AP Special Correspondent
2 hrs 51 mins ago
| The auto plants and steel mills, once the lifeblood of Warren, are ghosts of their former selves. Plants lie idle, shifts have been cut, and the huge parking lot outside the Lordstown General Motors factory is nearly empty. The Golden Gate restaurant and Mary M's, fixtures for years, are shuttered. Houses are boarded up. Businesses have given up on downtown.
There is a saying among old-timers in this gritty river town: What recession? We've been stuck in one for 30 years. Yet even stubborn Warren, a town with a dwindling population of about 43,000 in northeast Ohio, is being tested like never before. And folks talk of a hopelessness, a weariness of spirit that is pervading every aspect of life.
"It's like lives are being stripped away whole," says Pam Bennett, 55, a retired high school secretary who volunteers at the Warren Family Mission, where hundreds of people flock every week for food and clothes and shelter. Many are families with small children. Many have lost their jobs. And many are coming in for the first time. |
19 Census worker prepares for 6th, and last count
By SOPHIA TAREEN, Associated Press Writer
2 hrs 41 mins ago
| CHICAGO - Stan Moore remembers when the U.S. Census count involved punching paper cards for each household. That was just before the 1960 count, when the nation's population was around 170 million and he was one of the few men of color working for the Census Bureau.
Since those days, Moore has tabulated five population counts with ever-changing technologies, tracked diversifying communities and watched the U.S. population swell to over 300 million.
Now, as the federal agency's longest-serving employee, Moore is gearing up for his sixth and final tally: the 2010 Census. |
20 Obama treaty push hinges on global 'listening' net
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
Sat May 23, 10:29 am ET
| VIENNA - In high-rise offices along the Danube, scientists riveted to computer screens "listen" to sounds no one can hear, "feel" every rumble in the Earth, "sniff" global skies for exotic gases - on alert for signs of a newborn atomic bomb.
Governments over the past decade have quietly built up a $1 billion International Monitoring System to enforce the treaty banning nuclear weapons tests. At more than 200 stations around the world, from deep in the Pacific to high in the Bavarian Alps, they have deployed advanced technologies to detect secret explosions. And they have waited.
Since 1999, when a Republican-led U.S. Senate rejected it, the treaty has languished in a diplomatic limbo, and this unequaled - and growing - system of global sensors has remained in long-running rehearsal. |
21 Amid Times Square chaos, now a pedestrian mall
By SAMANTHA GROSS, Associated Press Writer
Fri May 22, 6:17 pm ET
| NEW YORK - Take a walk through Manhattan and it's clear that pedestrians think they own this city. They dash through red lights on the way to work, meander through traffic-clogged streets and can sometimes bring cars to a standstill with their power in numbers.
Starting on Sunday, pedestrians will really own a piece of the city.
Broadway will be closed to vehicle traffic for five blocks at Times Square, turning part of the "Crossroads of the World" into a pedestrian mall of throbbing lights, animated billboards and towering skyscrapers. The city believes the move will reduce pollution, cut down on pedestrian accidents and actually increase the flow of traffic. |
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