Scientists in Germany and their colleagues had 50 men look at 30 pictures of erotic female nudes. These photos were computer-modified so their faces subtly resembled either the volunteer in question or another volunteer. All the men in question were white, clean-shaven heterosexual university students of normal weight without facial tattoos or piercings, and none of the men recognized the erotica had been computer-modified or resembled them.

Before the volunteers looked at the nude pictures, they put their hands in either comfortable body-temperature water or painfully cold water. Tests of heart rate and blood pressure, as well as of saliva to check for the stress hormone cortisol, all confirmed the cold water stressed the men while the warm water did not.

When the volunteers looked at the erotica, relaxed men found nudes whose faces resembled them more pleasant. Stress, on the other hand, made the men reverse their preferences.Humans of both sexes usually prefer mates that resemble themselves, with previous studies suggesting people find mates with faces that resembled theirs more trustworthy, and that men looked for trustworthiness in long-term relationships. Other past research found men look for mates who look like mom, while women prefer men who look like dad.

However, stress could alter mating preferences, according to past research in mice and flies and, now, in humans as well. When times are dangerous, the researchers conjectured men might not want women too similar to them, as inbreeding might lead to offspring not genetically diverse enough to deal with the varying circumstances that a risky and stressful environment might impose on them.

“Chronic stress is an important issue in today’s society,” said researcher Johanna Lass-Hennemann, a psychobiologist now at the University of Saarland in Germany. “In future studies, I would like to investigate the effects of chronic stress on our mating preferences and to do this in men and women.”

The scientists detailed their findings online March 10 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“I would see myself, and my body didn’t match who I was,” said the 28-year-old wedding pianist, who went by William before receiving a sex change under Cuba’s universal health care system.

Gonzalez is living proof of a small but remarkable transformation for the rugged revolution of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and a band of ever-macho, bearded rebels, who long punished gays and transsexuals — but now are paying for sex changes.

Standing six feet (183 centimeters) tall, with shoulder-length blond hair, heavy makeup and an ID card still bearing a man’s name, Gonzalez underwent the procedure in 2008. She was one of eight Cubans to do so through a program begun in 1988 — then suspended for two decades, after many complained the communist government had better ways to spend its scarce resources.

The operations have begun anew under President Raul Castro’s daughter Mariela, Cuba’s top gay-rights activist, and 22 more transsexuals are waiting to have it performed.

Mariela Castro says the government is moving cautiously, doing only a few per year.

“There has been a lot of resistance because homophobia remains strong in our culture,” she said at a recent conference on sexuality.

In the 1960s, Cuba was ferociously anti-gay, firing homosexuals from state jobs, imprisoning them or sending them to work camps. Many fled into exile. Transsexuals, though not gay, were considered the same.

While gay jokes remain as common as shots of strong espresso in Cuba, government media campaigns now discourage homophobia. Hundreds of gay Cubans marched down Havana’s spiffy “La Rampa” boulevard last spring, just a year after authorities had forbidden a gay-pride parade.

“I’d like to think that discrimination against homosexuals is a problem that is being overcome,” former President Fidel Castro said during a series of interviews with French journalist Ignacio Ramonet between 2003 and 2005. “Old prejudices and narrow-mindedness will increasingly be things of the past.”

Mariela Castro has seen to it that the state formally recognizes transsexuals. A state-trained kindergarten teacher with a degree in sexuality, she runs the National Sexual Education Center. It spent years lobbying communist officials, who finally agreed to lift bans on sex changes in 2008 — though the resolution was never made public to avoid unwanted attention.

“These processes of negotiation are sometimes done very quietly,” Mariela Castro said, “so as not to stir up ghosts.”

She now says that financial concerns in the past were simply used to hide prejudices.

That’s not unusual, said Denise Leclair, executive director of the Washington-based International Foundation for Gender Education.

“In many countries people complain bitterly. It’s primarily driven by religious beliefs,” Leclair said.

Religious objections weren’t a problem in Cuba, which was officially atheist for decades. Instead, many Cubans claimed their country was too poor to pay for the procedure, writing letters to the editor in the Communist Party newspaper Granma after the first successful Cuban surgery was announced in 1988.

Leclair said a male-to-female change can cost $10,000 to $25,000 in the U.S., or up to four times higher than that, depending on all the procedures performed. About a dozen American doctors do between 1,000 and 2,000 such operations a year, she said.

Canada, Britain, France and Brazil offer government-financed sex changes, among other countries.

San Francisco began paying for sex changes for city and county employees in 2001, and Fort Worth, Texas, is considered following suit. Some large employers, including IBM and the University of California, negotiated contracts with their private insurers to cover the procedure known medically as “sexual reassignment surgery,” and other insurance companies have begun covering at least part of the treatments.

Still, Leclair said most of the largest U.S. insurers don’t cover the surgery.

Cuba won’t say how much its sex change costs, but doctors earn state salaries worth an average of about $20 per month.

Cuban doctors received training from visiting Belgians on how to do the surgeries, and doctors from both countries were present during the procedures.

Despite a global recession that has hit Cuba especially hard, prompting Raul Castro to announce unspecified cuts in health-care spending, his daughter says the state can’t afford not to perform the surgeries.

Gonzalez said opponents “don’t know what a person who is transsexual suffers. It’s a prison you can’t get out of.”

Gonzalez knew she was different almost from birth. By 4, she was already so partial to girl’s clothing and toys that her parents put her in therapy. The government formally designated her transsexual in 2000. Six years later, Mariela Castro won approval to restart the procedures, and Gonzalez was among the first recipients.

Gonzalez refused to say the exact date of the operation or how she was chosen. Her procedure took eight hours.

Leclair said 40 percent of transsexuals become suicidal. But Gonzalez says her boyfriend of seven years kept her from getting depressed.

“He always saw the woman in me and accepted me how I was,” she said, “but we couldn’t have sex in a complete way until now.”

Gonzalez can’t get married, however, as she is still waiting for permission to change the name on her government ID card. Until then, she also cannot work in another wedding venue, though she would like to, or go back to school because her name no longer fits the woman she has become.

It’s a problem that Cuban Olivia Lam knows all too well. She was born Alfonso Manuel but has been waiting for sex-change surgery for two years.

While her name has not been changed, authorities allowed her to take a new picture for her ID card — one where she is dressed as a woman.

“The picture is me, even if the name is not,” said Lam, a gregarious 43-year-old who waves her arms when she talks, making her ever-present hoop earrings dance on her earlobes.

Both women say they think the delay in getting ID cards is because of the slow Cuban bureaucracy and not any kind of government resistance.

Lam, who works as a hairdresser out of her two-room apartment, first began cross-dressing at 21. Though she has been formally classified as transsexual since 2008, she has no way of knowing when — or if — approval for sex-change surgery will come.

And though the government now accepts her, Lam acknowledged that getting her own family to has not been easy.

“I don’t think any parent wants their son to be different,” she said, “but they understand that you’re not like this because you want to be.”

At age 55, men have an average of 15 years of sexual activity ahead of them, while women average just 10, according to a new survey of middle-age and older Americans.

“Overall, men were more likely than women to be sexually active, to report a good quality sex life, and to be interested and thinking about sex on a regular basis,” lead researcher Stacy Tessler Lindau, director of the Program in Integrative Sexual Medicine at the University of Chicago, told LiveScience.

Sex and Gender Gap

Few studies have examined the connection between sexual health and aging. To do so, Lindau and her team used data from two nationally representative surveys of 3,000 25- to 74-year-olds and another 3,000 57- to 86-year-olds. The respondents answered questions about their general health as well as their sexual activity, sexual satisfaction and desire.

Much of the news was good. In middle age, two-thirds of women and men report good quality sex. The researchers also found people in good or excellent health were almost twice as likely to be interested in sex compared with those in poor or fair health. Good or excellent health at age 55 added five to seven years to men’s sexual life expectancy and three to six years to women’s.

But the study also uncovered a sexual gender gap. For 30-year-old men, they can expect 35 years more of sexual activity and 45 years more of life. Thirty-year-old women can expect 31 more years of sexual activity, but 50 more years of life. That means men will spend 78 percent of life after 30 having sex, compared with just 61 percent for women.

The gap increases with age. At 75 and older, 40 percent of men were sexually active compared with just 17 percent of women. The disparity is driven largely by the fact that women tend to outlive their male partners, Lindau said. In women and men with partners, the gap disappears.

More Sex Questions

Other findings open up new questions. Among women in late life who were having sex, only half called the sex good. In comparison, almost two-thirds of men aged 75 and up found their sex lives satisfying. That finding troubles Lindau.

“Only half of the women in this age group who are sexually active say that they have a good sex life,” she said. “Why is this, and what can be done to maximize not just sexual function, but quality of sex life?”

Part of the answer may be pharmacological. Men who responded to the sexual health questions in 2005 and 2006 reported a significantly increased interest in sex compared with men who took the survey 10 years earlier. Women didn’t show a change. That might not be a coincidence, Lindau said.

“Over time, we’ve seen the introduction of really effective treatments for male erectile dysfunction, which is one of the most common problems for men as they get older,” she said. “For women we haven’t seen the same.”

The study gives researchers a new understanding of who might benefit from policies to address later-life sexual health, Lindau said.

But, she said, there are still huge gaps in that understanding. Because almost all of the survey respondents identified as heterosexual, researchers know almost nothing about the sexual health of older gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals. Those populations are particularly vulnerable, Lindau said, because they may keep problems from their doctors for fear of discrimination or judgment.

“We really need that data,” Lindau said.

The study was published online March 9 by the British Medical Journal.

Jerry Dincin says that the Final Exit Network is “glad it’s moving along” and that they have been preparing for the trial for more than a year.

He became the group’s leader after then-president Ted Goodwin and three other members were arrested in Georgia in February 2009. The four members and the group itself were indicted Tuesday by a Forsyth County grand jury.

Dincin says the group has not been involved in any suicides since it was charged but that it plans to put up billboards this year in California and New Jersey.

They will read: “Good Life. Good Death. Your Choice.”

Kelly Bottom told The Advocate-Messenger that she also picked up her other son from school and stopped in at the baby’s grandmother’s house to show her the infant before going to the hospital Thursday.

The newspaper reported the mother and baby were discharged from the hospital Monday after checking in Thursday night.

Bottom said the baby, named Brian Keith Sims, weighed 6 lbs., 15 oz. at birth.

Panera announced Wednesday it will be the first nationwide chain to voluntarily post calorie information at all of its company-owned restaurants. The move is notable in an industry that had historically opposed requirements that chain operations post calorie counts.

But the landscape is changing as local laws mandating nutritional disclosure become more common and Congress considers a nationwide mandate. This is only one in a wave of changes consumers can expect to see on chain restaurant menus in coming years.

Panera officials said the possibility of wider mandates played a role in the move. But they also were pleased with how their customers reacted at Paneras that already advertise the fact that the chain’s Asian sesame chicken salad has 410 calories, compared to the 680 in the Napa almond chicken salad sandwich on sesame semolina.

“It puts everything out in the open, obviously,” said Scott Davis, the company’s chief concept officer. “So when you look at making a choice between a soup with 100 calories and a sandwich with 300 or 400 calories, it puts it pretty clearly what’s in your best interest.”

Calorie counts will be posted by March 24 at all 585 company-owned stores, including Saint Louis Bread Co. and Paradise Bakery & Cafe stores. Panera expects its franchisees to eventually follow suit, which would cover all 1,380 stores.

That schedule puts Panera ahead of Yum Brands Inc. — parent of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver’s and A&W All-American Food — which committed in 2008 to place calorie counts on menu boards at corporate-owned restaurants nationwide by Jan. 1, 2011. Yum senior vice president Jonathan Blum said they are testing their menu boards and are on target to make good on the commitment at more than 3,200 restaurants.

Panera and Yum, like most national chains, already have been forced to display nutritional information in some cities as local disclosure laws kick in.

New York City health officials looking for a new way to fight obesity began requiring chain restaurants to post calorie counts for the likes of burgers, pizza and doughnuts in 2008. Similar laws have since been approved in more than a dozen places, including Philadelphia and California. Congress is considering a national measure as part of health care reform.

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said it’s great for chains to voluntarily provide calorie counts to customers. But she added that given recent trends, they’re “just getting ahead of the curve.”

Anti-obesity advocates like Wootan believe the laws encourage healthier eating in restaurants. For instance, a menu board noting that a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese at McDonald’s has 740 calories might inspire diners to choose a less fattening burger.

There’s some evidence to back this up. Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business found that calorie postings in New York City Starbucks led to a 6 percent reduction in calories per transaction. New York City Department of Health’s researchers last year found customers cutting calories in items at nine of 13 chains in the city, including McDonald’s, KFC, Au Bon Pain and Starbucks.

Panera’s Davis said buying patterns haven’t changed much in the 147 outlets that already post calorie counts. But he said it seems to have inspired more customers to go for the “You Pick Two” option, which offers the choice of two items among a soup, a half sandwich and a half salad.

“The people who are really tuned into it, they love it,” he said. “… The people who don’t want to know about it, they don’t even see it.”

Restaurants have sometimes balked at the patchwork of differing local laws, and an industry group unsuccessfully sued over the New York City law. The nationwide calorie disclosure mandate for chain restaurants included in the proposed health care reform bill before Congress has drawn mixed reviews in the industry.

The National Restaurant Association supports the federal measure while the National Council of Chain Restaurants is officially neutral. Council vice president Scott Vinson said there are fairness concerns about a law that would exempt independent restaurants but cover competing chain restaurants, even if they’re owned by a franchisee.

Yum supports the bill, though Blum said they’d like it to cover all restaurants “for the sake of the consumer.”

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters announced misdemeanor charges Wednesday against Pamela Hartley and Donna Scott. Allegations surfaced in December involving Springfield Township Covenant Apostolic Church Day Care in suburban Cincinnati.

A news release from Deters’ office says the women are accused of giving children melatonin to make them sleepy at nap time.

“This is highly inappropriate and dangerous,” Dr. Manny Alvarez, managing editor of health at FoxNews.com said. “Young children already make large quantities of natural melatonin, and to supplement it could potentially create an overdose situation. It is unanimously accepted that children should not be given any kind of pharmaceutical aid to help with sleep and we should instead be implementing natural ways of organizing their sleep habits.”

Alvarez said potential side effects of taking melatonin supplements include depression, irritability and even anxiety.

Melatonin is a hormone produced in the brain by the pineal gland and helps control your natural sleep-wake cycle, the Mayo Clinic said on its Web site. Natural levels of melatonin in the blood are the highest before bedtime. However, there is little evidence that taking melatonin supplements will help you fall as faster or help you stay asleep longer, according to the Web site.

In addition, the studies involving melatonin supplements in children are limited and safety of the product has not been established. Before starting any supplement regimen, you should always consult with your physician first.

Hartley and Scott are charged with three counts of misrepresentation by a child care provider and three counts of child endangering.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Lock up your lox, smoked fish are under assault!

A group of ultra-orthodox rabbis from New York have declared several types of fish, including wild salmon, unfit to be called kosher because they can contain tiny parasitic worms that can escape the organs of the fish and find their way into the meat.

In the organization’s opinion, observant Jews can no longer safely eat many versions of salted and smoked delicacies like lox, nova and sable, traditional favorites during the upcoming Passover season.

The critter in question, the Anisakis, is a tiny worm that can cause serious intestinal problems in humans if ingested alive. But freezing or cooking the host fish usually kills it, rendering the food it has infested harmless.

However, Jewish teachings prohibit the consumption of visible parasites, whether they are alive or dead, particularly ones that enter the meat after the host animal has died — though the interpretation of the rules is continually open to debate.

Jack Lebewohl of 2nd Avenue Deli, one of the top kosher restaurants in New York City, discounts the recommendation, saying “there are special laws that deal with this, and all of the mainstream rabbis say it’s kosher, there are no problems.”

Rabbi Moshe Elefant of the Union of Orthodox Congregations of America, the world’s largest kosher certifier, says his organization has examined the situation and has determined that everything is fine, but that “we appreciate people coming up with new issues and making sure that the food we eat is really kosher.”

Along with salmon from the Pacific Northwest, the rabbis of Chevra Mehadrin have issued a list of over a dozen fish that are susceptible to Anisakis infestation, declaring them unfit to eat. These include certain kinds of cod, halibut, and several other breeds.

Asked how he expects the rabbis’ pronouncement to affect business, Lebewohl laughed.

“Zero,” he said. “I’m not even going to say one percent. Zero.”

WASHINGTON — Toyota, dogged by millions of recalls and claims that it still has not fixed its safety problems, took its strongest step yet Monday to silence critics who blame faulty electronics for runaway cars and trucks.

Toyota assembled a group of experts to refute studies by an Illinois professor who revved Toyota engines simply by short-circuiting the wiring. Toyota’s experts say the experiments were done under conditions that would never happen on the road.

The automaker maintained its assertion that simpler mechanical flaws, not electronics, were to blame.

“There isn’t a ghost issue out there,” Kristen Tabar, an electronics general manager with Toyota’s technical center, told a news conference at the company’s North American headquarters in Torrance, California.

Meeting with reporters, Toyota addressed the work of David W. Gilbert, an automotive technology professor at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, whose work has been the basis of doubts about Toyota’s mechanical fixes.

At least one outside expert said that even if Toyota’s criticisms are accurate, the professor’s work shows the systems that allow brakes to override stuck gas pedals can be compromised.

Toyota is mounting a public campaign to reassure its drivers about their safety and defending itself against critics who question the fix for 8 million recalled cars and trucks. Regulators have linked 52 deaths to crashes allegedly caused by the accelerator problems.

The company’s fix addresses gas pedal parts and floor mats that can cause the accelerator to become stuck in the depressed position. More than 60 Toyota owners who have had their cars repaired have complained the problem has persisted.

Toyota dealers have fixed more than 1 million vehicles. But the government has warned that if the remedy provided by Toyota does not properly address the problem, federal regulators could order the company to come up with another solution.

Gilbert told a congressional hearing Feb. 23 that he recreated sudden acceleration in a Toyota Tundra by short-circuiting the electronics behind the gas pedal — without triggering any trouble codes in the truck’s computer.

The trouble codes send the car’s computer into a fail-safe mode that allows the brake to override the gas. Gilbert called his findings a “startling discovery.”

House lawmakers seized on the testimony as evidence Toyota engineers missed a potential problem with the electronics that could have caused the unwanted acceleration.

But Monday, Chris Gerdes, director of Stanford University’s Center for Automotive Research, and a consulting firm, Exponent Inc., rejected the professor’s findings.

Toyota’s assembled experts said the professor’s experiments could not be recreated on the actual road. For example, they said, Gilbert had shaved away insulation on wiring and connected wires that would not normally touch each other.

“There is no evidence that I’ve seen to indicate that this situation is happening at all in the real world,” Gerdes said. He added that the professor’s work “could result in misguided policy and unwarranted fear.”

To prove their point, Toyota officials revved the engines of cars made by competitors, including a Subaru Forester and a Ford Fusion, by connecting a circuit rigged up to the wiring of the gas pedals.

Toyota supports other research programs at Stanford’s engineering school and is an affiliate of the Center for Automotive Research, but Gerdes said he came to his conclusions “with complete independence.”

Gilbert did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Exponent has conducted work for companies that are being sued and once determined that secondhand tobacco smoke was not cancerous. It was also hired by the U.S. government to investigate the Columbia space shuttle disaster.

Exponent officials said they were conducting an extensive study of Toyota electronics but they had not yet found any problems with the electronic throttle controls.

Toyota has been steadfast in saying the problem is strictly mechanical. Company president Akio Toyoda assured Congress two weeks ago that Toyota research had not found a link between the reports of runaway acceleration and electronics.

Instead, the company is shortening gas pedals to prevent them from becoming lodged under floor mats and inserting metal pieces the size of a stamp to keep gas pedals from sticking in the depressed position.

An outside expert, Raj Rajkumar, an electrical and computer-engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who studies auto electronics, said Gilbert’s work raises doubts about the fail-safe systems.

“Pretty much anybody who works on electronic-based vehicle systems understands that things can go wrong,” he said.

He said a number of factors could cause vehicle electronics to malfunction, including software coding errors, electrical interference and static electricity. He said technology wasn’t available to prove that a system as complex as Toyota’s electronic throttle control will always behave correctly.

The professor wasn’t trying to prove that his test was a real-world scenario, said Keith Armstrong, a British electronic engineer and consultant who advises companies on electromagnetic interference. Instead Gilbert demonstrated that fail-safe systems may not kick in if faulty signals are sent to the throttle, Armstrong said after reviewing Exponent’s report on Gilbert’s tests.

Congress has more questions. The House Oversight Committee wants to look at a 2006 memo from company employees to Toyota senior management that raised concerns the automaker was taking shortcuts on safety.

In the memo, first reported Monday by the Los Angeles Times, the employees said they were concerned the processes used to build safe cars might be “ultimately ignored.”

The employees warned that if Toyota failed to act, it could “become a great problem that involves the company’s survival.”

Toyota executives also plan to address recall issues at the company’s annual suppliers meeting in Kentucky on Tuesday.

EL CAJON, California — A California highway police officer helped slow a runaway Toyota Prius from 94 mph to a safe stop on Monday after the car’s accelerator became stuck on a freeway near San Diego, authorities said.

Prius driver James Sikes said that the incident Monday occurred just two weeks after he had taken the vehicle in to an El Cajon dealership for repairs after receiving a recall notice, but he was turned away.

“I gave them my recall notice and they handed it back and said I’m not on the recall list,” Sikes said.

Sikes’ 2008 Prius was not covered by the accelerator recall – only the floor mat recall, ABC News reported. His Prius model allegedly has a different accelerator than the ones with “sticky” pedals. Sikes said there didn’t appear to be anything wrong with his floor mat, ABC reported.

In a statement, Toyota said it has dispatched a field technical specialist to San Diego to investigate the incident.

Toyota has recalled some 8.5 million vehicles worldwide — more than 6 million in the United States — since last fall because of acceleration problems in multiple models and braking issues in the Prius.

On Monday, Sikes called 911 about 1:30 p.m. after accelerating to pass another vehicle on Interstate 8 near La Posta and finding that he could not control his car, the California Highway Patrol said.

“I pushed the gas pedal to pass a car and it did something kind of funny … it jumped and it just stuck there,” the 61-year-old driver said at a news conference.

“As it was going, I was trying the brakes … it wasn’t stopping, it wasn’t doing anything and it just kept speeding up,” Sikes said, adding he could smell the brakes burning he was pressing the pedal so hard.

A patrol car pulled alongside the Prius and officers told Sikes over a loudspeaker to push the brake pedal to the floor and apply the emergency brake.

“They also got it going on a steep upgrade,” said Officer Jesse Udovich. “Between those three things, they got it to slow down.”

After the car decelerated to about 50 mph, Sikes turned off the engine and coasted to a halt.

The officer then maneuvered his car in front of the Prius as a precautionary block, Udovich said.

Toyota owners have complained of their vehicles speeding out of control despite efforts to slow down, sometimes resulting in deadly crashes. The government has received complaints of 34 deaths linked to sudden acceleration of Toyota vehicles since 2000.

One of the crashes claimed the life of a CHP officer in August.

Off-duty CHP Officer Mark Saylor was killed along with his wife, her brother and the couple’s daughter after their Lexus’ accelerator got stuck in La Mesa.

The Toyota-manufactured loaner vehicle slammed into a sport utility vehicle at about 100 mph, careened off the freeway, hit an embankment, overturned and burst into flames.

Click here for more on this story from Fox5SanDiego.com.

MIAMI — Toyota owners claiming that massive safety recalls are causing the value of their vehicles to plummet have filed at least 89 class-action lawsuits that could cost the Japanese auto giant $3 billion or more, according to an Associated Press review of cases, legal precedent and interviews with experts.

Those estimates do not include potential payouts for wrongful death and injury lawsuits, which could reach in the tens of millions each. Still, the sheer volume of cases involving U.S. Toyota owners claiming lost value — 6 million or more — could prove far more costly, adding up to losses in the billions for the automaker.

Such class-action lawsuits “are more scary for Toyota than the cases where people actually got injured,” said Tom Baker, a University of Pennsylvania law professor. “A super-big injury case would be $20 million. But you could have millions of individual car owners who could (each) be owed $1,000. If I were Toyota, I’d be more worried about those cases.”

As Toyota continues to deal with the recalls and wavering public confidence in its vehicle safety, its biggest financial fight may be in the courtroom. A key decision could come at a March 25 hearing in San Diego, where a panel of federal judges will consider whether to consolidate the mushrooming cases into a single jurisdiction.

After that, a judge will decide whether all claims filed by Toyota owners nationwide can be combined in a single legal action — known as “certifying a class” — and whether the claims have enough merit to move toward either trial or settlement.

Toyota owners suing the company contend their vehicles have dropped in value because of the recalls and that Toyota knew all along about safety problems but concealed them from buyers. They point to evidence such as Kelley Blue Book’s decision this month to lower the resale value of recalled Toyotas an average of 3.5 percent, ranging from $300 less for a Corolla to $750 less for a Sequoia.

The lawsuits started appearing on state and federal dockets last fall, when Toyota began recalling some 8 million vehicles worldwide because of persistent complaints about sudden unintended acceleration. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that 52 people have died in accelerator-related crashes.

The AP conducted an extensive review of federal court filings and uncovered a total of 89 class-action lawsuits filed nationwide as of Monday. Toyota attorneys said last week in a court filing that the company is aware of 82 such cases.

One leading attorney in the class-action effort, Northeastern University law professor Tim Howard, said the number of owners claiming economic damages because of the recalls could reach 6 million. If each were awarded $500 — likely a conservative estimate — Toyota would have to fork over $3 billion in economic loss damages alone.

This does not include possible payouts in wrongful death or injury cases as well as lawsuits filed by shareholders claiming losses from share prices that have tumbled more than 16 percent since January.

Corporations often settle big cases rather than risk an even bigger damage award at a trial.

Automakers in the past have been forced to pay vehicle owners for lost value because of safety problems. Ford, for example, agreed in 2008 to compensate 800,000 Explorer owners who sued because of rollover dangers. That settlement provided owners only with vouchers of between $300 and $500 to buy new Ford products.

In that case, the lawyers received about $25 million in fees and costs, and the Toyota case could result in a similar windfall for attorneys. A study by the Federal Judicial Center concluded attorneys in class-action lawsuits typically get fees between 27 percent and 30 percent of what they recover in damages — which could reach $1 billion in a $3 billion settlement.

Toyota could end up facing an even bigger payoff if a judge decides attorneys’ fees should be added to any plaintiffs’ award.

The San Diego hearing will be conducted before the seven-member Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, which decides whether similar lawsuits filed in multiple federal districts should be centralized in one location for pretrial motions, hearings and the like. A federal judge would be chosen to determine whether the Toyota cases should be certified as a class action and make other key rulings, such as deciding on a likely Toyota motion to dismiss.

Under federal law, a class action must have 100 or more plaintiffs, damages sought must exceed $5 million and the judge must be persuaded the claims are identical or very similar. If a class is not certified, each lawsuit would have to be pursued on its own.

Toyota has so far recalled 5.6 million vehicles in the U.S. because of problems caused by what it says are accelerator pedals that become sticky or get trapped under floor mats. Another 437,000 Prius models have been recalled worldwide for what Toyota says is an antilock-braking glitch.

The vast majority of lawsuits claiming economic loss stem from the accelerator problems, and many contend the company’s effort to fix floor mats or accelerator pedals are insufficient. Dozens of lawsuits claim Toyota has ignored problems with its electronic throttle system.

Separately, NHTSA is looking into claims from more than 60 Toyota owners that their vehicles continue to surge forward unexpectedly despite having their vehicles repaired.

Toyota has denied that its electronic throttle is to blame and has been focused on dealing with the recalls — a strategy that could affect the outcome of the lawsuits.

“Toyota’s strategy (should be) to fix them, fix them immediately and at no cost, and do it as quickly and effectively as you can so after the dust settles, your car’s value won’t have depreciated much,” said Edward C. Martin, a law professor at Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala.

“We do not believe that electronics are at the root of this issue,” Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said Monday.

In some of the lawsuits, Toyota owners seek additional damages because they’re afraid to drive what they call “defective and dangerous” cars, while still others claim insurance premiums will likely go up.

“My wife has been worried about it for a while. She’s eight months pregnant and she’s terrified to drive the car now,” said Jerry Borbon, a Miami lawyer who is still driving his 2008 Toyota Prius and is a plaintiff in a potential class-action lawsuit.

“We thought about trying to get rid of it, but we’re stuck with it,” he said, adding Toyota’s damaged reputation has made it hard to sell the vehicle. “I don’t feel secure in the car and I don’t want my wife driving it.”

“There are a lot of unknowns and the big questions are what did Toyota know when,” said Catherine Sharkey, a professor at the New York University School of Law. “If it turns out that Toyota had knowledge of these defects and did not act soon enough, then the best strategy is settlement.”

In a sign of the widespread impact of the recalls, a Los Angeles federal judge who has been assigned many of the potential Toyota class-action cases is concerned his ownership of a Toyota might force him off the cases.

U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz put a one-paragraph statement into the dockets of more than two dozen cases:

“The court owns a 2000 Toyota Avalon SLX. In addition, the adult son of the court who has not lived in the court’s home for many years owns a 2005 Prius.”

Matz’s statement also asks whether he or his son could be considered plaintiffs if the cases are certified as class actions. If so, the judge would not be able to preside over the cases because of a possible conflict of interest.

EL CAJON, Calif. — The government sent investigators Tuesday to examine a Prius that sped out of control on a California highway, and Toyota said it wanted to interview the driver as the besieged automaker dealt with a high-profile new headache that raised questions about the safety of its beloved hybrid.

A day after state troopers helped the car slow to a stop and its driver to emerge unharmed, Toyota could shed no new light on what might have gone wrong. The Prius is not part of Toyota’s vast recall of gas pedals that can become stuck, but it is covered by an earlier recall of floor mats that can catch the accelerator.

The highway incident happened at the worst possible time for Toyota — just hours after it invited reporters Monday to hear experts insist that electronic flaws could not cause cars to speed out of control under real driving conditions.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent two investigators to examine the car, a government spokeswoman said. Toyota Motor Corp. spokesman Brian Lyons said the automaker is sending three of its own technicians to investigate.

Another Toyota spokesman, John Hanson, said the company wanted to talk to the driver, James Sikes.

His car, a 2008 model, was covered by the floor mat recall, but the driver in Monday’s incident said the pedal jammed and was not trapped under the mat.

Sikes told authorities he was driving on Interstate 8 outside San Diego when the accelerator became stuck. He said the car reached 94 mph (150 kph) before a trooper, calling out instructions from a megaphone, helped him slow down and turn off the engine.

A pair of emergency calls spanning 23 minutes recounted the harrowing experience. In the audio released Tuesday, Sikes sounds panicked at times as he tells a dispatcher about a stuck accelerator. The dispatcher, Leighann Parks, repeatedly tells Sikes to throw the car into neutral and turn off the ignition. Sikes often didn’t respond to her instructions.

“My car can’t slow down,” Sikes tells her. At one point, Parks asks if he had put the car into neutral, and Sikes responds, “I’m trying to control the car!”

Sikes, 61, was identified in a 2006 newspaper story as a real estate executive and longtime lottery player who won $55,000 and was selected to appear on a California Lottery TV game show.

He appeared at a news conference quickly after the highway incident Monday and also spoke to reporters Tuesday at his Toyota dealership, where his car was towed.

Sikes said he called emergency services at about 1:30 p.m. Monday after accelerating to pass another car.

“I pushed the gas pedal to pass a car and it did something kind of funny. … It jumped and it just stuck there,” he said.

Sikes said he tried to pull on the gas pedal but it didn’t “move at all.” He said he nearly hit the back of a truck and was traveling so fast he couldn’t read the numbers on highway call boxes.

A patrol car driven by CHP Officer Todd Neibert pulled alongside the Prius, and the officer told Sikes over a loudspeaker to push the brake pedal to the floor and apply the emergency brake.

The braking, coupled with a steep incline on the freeway, slowed the car to about 50 mph (80 kph). Sikes said he then shut off the engine and the car coasted to a stop. Neibert then moved his car in front of the Prius to block it.

“It started to slow down, it was still revving up, but it was slowing down,” Sikes said Tuesday. “I hit the button to turn the car off at about 55 mph. It did shut down.”

Neibert said he considered deploying a spike strip as a last resort and was glad Sikes was able to stop the car before a steep downhill that was approaching.

“He was visibly shaken, he seemed in shock,” Neibert said. “The brakes were definitely down to hardly any material.”

The CHP held the car overnight, and it was towed to the dealership Tuesday, CHP Officer Brian Pennings said.

“There’s no collision, so our investigation’s done,” Pennings said. “There’s no crime. … We’re just glad it ended safely.”

Toyota has watched its reputation for quality crumble because of recalls tied to risks that cars can accelerate uncontrollably or can’t brake properly. The company is defending itself against suggestions that bad electronics are to blame for the problem — not simpler mechanical flaws, as Toyota maintains.

The runaway Prius only makes Toyota’s image problem worse, said Larry L. Smith, president of the Institute for Crisis Management in Kentucky — even if video only showed the aftermath, with the Prius resting behind the patrol car.

“People are going to see this video and assume they’ve seen the car out of control,” he said. “They really haven’t seen the car out of control. It doesn’t matter if they think they did. It’s planted in their heads. That part of the damage is done.”

The Sikes family received a recall notice and took the Prius to Toyota of El Cajon about two weeks ago, but the dealership refused to examine the car, saying it was not on the recall list, said Sikes’ wife, Patty.

The dealership declined to comment and referred requests for comment to Toyota’s corporate representatives.

Hanson said Toyota first sends a preliminary notice to owners saying their vehicles are subject to a recall. A second notice comes later detailing how and where the vehicle can be fixed.

“I believe what could have happened is Mr. Sikes could have received his preliminary notification which says, ‘Hello, your car is going to be recalled, and we will notify you when to bring it in.”‘

A deadly crash last year about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from where Sikes’ Prius started speeding first sparked scrutiny into Toyota cars and trucks.

CHP Officer Mark Saylor, his wife, her brother and the couple’s daughter died after the accelerator in their Lexus became trapped by a wrong-size floor mat on a highway in La Mesa. The loaner car hit a sport utility vehicle and burst into flames.

Since then, Toyota has recalled some 8.5 million vehicles worldwide — more than 6 million in the United States — because of acceleration problems in multiple models and braking issues in the Prius. Regulators have linked 52 deaths to crashes allegedly caused by accelerator problems. Still, there have been more than 60 reports of sudden acceleration in cars that have been fixed under the recall.

John Heywood, director of the Sloan Automotive Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said it was difficult glean any larger insight into Toyota’s problems based on a single incident.

“They’re not happening all the time they’re happening rarely, so sorting out what the cause is a very challenging task,” he said.

“Avatar” lost out with the big awards at Sunday’s Oscars – but filmmaker James Cameron is crying all the way to the bank: His big, splashy, 3-D monster has earned $2.6 billion worldwide. And after last weekend, Tim Burton was sobbing alongside him: His 3-D fantasy “Alice in Wonderland” had already taken in $201.3 million in worldwide box office.

There’s no denying that 3-D is the wave of the future. But does that mean flat movies are about to become a thing of the past?

Hold your horses, says Bobby Jaffe, senior executive at Legend 3D, which worked on “Wonderland.”

“For some filmmakers, this is going to be the greatest thing they’ve ever seen. But for some, it’s just not that important,” he says. “If you’re a 2-D filmmaker, all this means is you have a new tool in your toolbox to access your audience, and tell your story.”

Post production consultant Alasdair MacCuish agrees. “The future of 2-D hasn’t changed at all. 3-D is an additional revenue stream for the studios, rather than a replacement one. For the overwhelming majority of films being made, 2-D isn’t going anywhere.”

No surprise that 3-D is having a resurgence now; the technology initially reared its head in the 1950’s as a way to pull audiences away from their TV sets and back into theaters.

That’s what’s happening today, says Fordham University film and media professor Dr. Paul Levinson.

“Over the last few years, society shifted to where people watch movies on small screens – in your living room, on a computer, on a cell phone,” he says. “The motion picture industry is feeling the pressure to lure people out of their homes, so they’re doing something different.”

But back then, 3-D quickly became just a gimmick.

“You think back to the films from that time period and you don’t think of the aspect ratio – you think about whether it was a good film,” says Bradley Rust Gray, writer/director/producer of the upcoming (2-D) feature “The Exploding Girl.”

And mostly, those films weren’t very memorable. Today, the opposite is true.

But there are still major hurdles to overcome before 3-D even considers threatening the flat-screen paradigm, say experts.

“It’s not like the shift to sound or color was,” says Levinson. “When you think about films like romantic comedies or serious talking drama movies – which are very successful – 3-D isn’t a factor in those movies. But for a sci-fi movie or high action thriller, 3-D plays an essential role.”

Smaller filmmakers and distributors don’t seem worried. Notes Jonathan Sehring, president of IFC Films, “Look, this is not the end of 2-D. ‘The White Ribbon’ was shot in black and white this year – and it was up for an Oscar. It’s great for the studio system and for moviegoers and filmmakers, but not a real concern in the independent community.”

Logistics are also a problem. Right now, fewer than 9 percent of U.S. screens are equipped to play 3-D movies, and the costs for changing equipment are high. Notes MacCuish, “A lot of [theatrical exhibitors] are still hurting for paying for 2-D digital equipment in the first place – so expect the uptake at non-multiplexes to be very slow.”

Jaffe points out that there’s a bottleneck on his end, too: He turns down two 3-D movie conversions for every one job he can take, and “there are only a couple of companies in the world who can convert those movies. We are growing rapidly, but it’s a matter of hiring artists and getting them trained.”

Which makes a perfect storm for 3-D advocates: For several years, studios didn’t want to make too many 3-D films if they didn’t have places to show them, while theaters didn’t want to change their equipment until it could be proved that 3-D wasn’t just another fad.

Now, says Steve Polsky, president and COO of Flixster, audiences are breaking that deadlock. “This has really reinvigorated the idea of going to movies as an event. People don’t just say, ‘I saw “Avatar,”‘ they say, ‘I saw “Avatar” in IMAX 3-D! There is definitely an uplift in excitement about 3-D.”

At least for some. No matter what changes have been made in the technology or quality of filmmaking, one constant from the 1950s still seems to ensure some viewers will always watch 2-D films: 3-D makes them sick.

“In the 1950s, 3-D could induce nausea, fatigue, blurred vision, headaches and vomiting,” says MacCuish. “The new picture clarity has reduced that, but it’s still an unnatural process for us to sit through. Our eyes and brain don’t work that way!”

The memorial montage at the 82nd annual Academy Awards has caused quite a stir for the absence of Farrah Fawcett from the tribute. Following a tribute to director John Hughes, the following deceased stars were honored by the Academy:

- Patrick Swayze

- Monte Hale

- Jean Simmons

- Tullio Pinelli

-Eric Rohmer

-Ken Annakin

-David Carradine

-Gareth Wigan

-Daniel Melnick

-Howard Zieff

-Dom DeLuise

-Army Archerd

-Ron Silver

-Brittany Murphy

-Lou Jacobi

-Simon Channing-Williams

-Betsy Blair

-Joseph Wiseman

-Jack Cardiff

-Kathryn Grayson

-Arthur Canton

-Nat Boxer

-Millard Kaufman

-Roy E. Disney

-Larry Gelbart

-Horton Foote

-Robert Woodruff Anderson

-Budd Schulberg

-Michael Jackson

-Natasha Richardson

-Jennifer Jones

-David Brown

-Karl Malden

Lindsay Lohan is suing New York financial company E-Trade, insisting that a boyfriend-stealing, “milkaholic” baby used in its latest commercial is modeled after her, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

The star is demanding $100 million for her pain and suffering caused by the ad tot – also called Lindsay – in a lawsuit filed Monday in Nassau County Supreme Court, N.Y.

The commercial, which debuted during the Super Bowl this year and is part of a series starring babies who play the stock market, features a boy apologizing to his girlfriend via video chat for not calling her the night before.

“And that milkaholic Lindsay wasn’t over?” the baby girl asks him suspiciously.

“Lindsay?” the boy replies, just before a baby girl sticks her head into the frame and slurs, “Milk-a-what?”

Lohan’s lawyer, Stephanie Ovadia, said the actress holds the same single name recognition as Oprah or Madonna.

“Many celebrities are known by one name only, and E-Trade is using that knowledge to profit,” Ovadia said.

“They’re using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn’t they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody’s talking about it and saying it’s Lindsay Lohan.”

Ovadia said E-Trade violated Lohan’s rights under New York state civil rights law and used her “name and characterization” in business without paying her or getting her approval.

She said that since the spot was seen by hundreds of millions of people watching the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics finals, the firm garnered great profits.

Lohan is owed $50 million in exemplary damages, plus another $50 million in compensatory damages, Ovadia claimed.

The Lohan camp is also seeking an injunction to force the spot off the air, and wants every last copy of the commercial.

Chris Brown, a spokesman for Grey Group, which produced the spot, threw cold milk on the controversy, saying it “just used a popular baby name that happened to be the name of someone on the account team.”

E-Trade could not be reached for comment.

NEW YORK — A television producer admitted Tuesday to trying to shake down David Letterman in a case that bared the late-night icon’s affairs with staffers, avoiding a long prison sentence by pleading guilty in exchange for six months in jail and community service.

Robert “Joe” Halderman, 52, entered the plea in a Manhattan court to attempted grand larceny after being accused of demanding $2 million to keep quiet about the late-night comic’s workplace love life.

Halderman, a producer for CBS’ “48 Hours Mystery,” had mined information from reading his then-girlfriend’s diary entries about her relationship with Letterman, her boss, authorities said.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office said the debt-strapped Halderman threatened to ruin Letterman’s reputation, disguising his demands as a deal for a thinly veiled screenplay about the comedian.

“In September of 2009, I attempted to extort $2 million from David Letterman by threatening to disclose personal and private information about him, whether true or false,” Halderman said in court, reading a prepared statement at first so quickly that Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Charles Solomon asked him to slow down.
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Halderman acknowledged delivering the threat to Letterman’s driver, in the form of a screenplay outline, or “treatment.”

“This so-called treatment was just a thinly veiled threat to ruin Mr. Letterman if he did not pay me a lot of money,” Halderman said, dressed in a gray suit. He subsequently met with Letterman’s lawyer, who eventually gave him a phony $2 million check.

“I knew throughout this time that I was not engaged in a legitimate business transaction with Mr. Letterman and that what I was doing was against New York law,” Halderman said, adding that he realized he had violated the privacy of Letterman and his family.

“I feel great remorse for what I have done,” Halderman said, apologizing to Letterman, the comic’s family, and his own former girlfriend, Stephanie Birkett.

Outside court, Halderman repeated his apologies, declined any interviews and said no more. He remains free on bail until his sentencing, set for May 4. In addition to the jail sentence, he agreed to 1,000 hours of community service; he would have faced up to 15 years in prison if convicted at a trial.

Through his lawyers, Letterman thanked Manhattan prosecutors for pursuing the case.

“When they became involved in this case, I had complete faith that a just and appropriate result was inevitable,” he said in a statement they read outside court.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. noted that Letterman had come to authorities knowing the case could push his private life into public view.

“Mr. Letterman is a public figure, but like all New Yorkers, he has a right to a certain degree of privacy in his public life,” said Vance, who took over the case from predecessor Robert Morgenthau in January.

Halderman’s lawyer, who had raised free-speech and other issues in his attempt to portray the producer’s behavior as a business deal, said Halderman ultimately decided he needed to end the case.

“We had a novel defense here involving complicated legal issues. I was very excited about the defense,” said the lawyer, Gerald Shargel. “But there would be a long road ahead of us, and considering the risks and the rewards and the need for Joe to put this behind him and get on with his life, those needs were paramount.”

Letterman married longtime girlfriend Regina Lasko last year. They began dating in 1986 and have a 6-year-old son.

But will they be too late?

The president, who just two months ago said that jobs creation would be Washington’s No. 1 focus, has set an aggressive schedule for completing work on the bulk of the year-in-the-making health care package — and he may be getting the jump on the raft of Tea Party events set for the coming weeks.

The Tea Party Express, a state-by-state caravan of conservative activists, won’t kick off until March 27. The next major set of rallies is on Tax Day, April 15. A number of Tea Party groups are planning anti-health care bill town hall meetings, but the bulk of them aren’t expected until later in the month.

Meanwhile, the White House has set a March 18 deadline for the House to pass the Senate version of the health care bill and the president is hitting the road to keep the cameras on him during that period. He pressed that deadline at Monday’s rally outside Philadelphia, where he urged the crowd to help “get us over the finish line these next two weeks.” And health care reform supporters staged a demonstration Tuesday in Washington, making noise outside a conference for the insurance industry.
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Tea Party groups have started descending on Washington to visit, and apply pressure to, fence-sitting House Democrats, with plans to stage a Capitol Hill rally two days before Obama’s deadline. Midwestern Tea Party activists and Republican officials will also band together to try to build some counter-momentum when Obama visits St. Louis Wednesday for another rally — but Republicans acknowledge the possibility of being steamrolled.

“It’s very troubling. This hinges on so many things,” said St. Louis Tea Party co-founder Dana Loesch. “We’re just going to watch and kind of hold our breath.”

Obama is putting his back into the latest, and perhaps final, push for a health care package, dusting off his “fired-up” campaign persona as he takes the pitch on the road. Congressional Democrats are pushing back on the deadline for passage, but the White House insists it’s now or never on health care reform. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday that Obama might visit more cities before he leaves for Indonesia later this month.

“The need is great. The opportunity is here. Let’s seize reform. It’s within our grasp!” the president shouted at the end of his speech Monday in Philadelphia, where Tea Party activists protested nearby.

The White House Web site is also part of the president’s campaign, with the official presidential blog sending out “Health Reform by the Numbers” postings — Tuesday’s number factoid was $1,115, or the average monthly premium for employer-sponsored family coverage.

But there’s hope for opponents of the measure in the prospect that no matter the mood of the public, Democratic leaders just might not have the votes in the House.

“They have a lot of serious lifting to do between now and two weeks,” said Steve Taylor, spokesman for Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., who is hosting a town hall meeting outside St. Louis Wednesday morning via video feed with other local Republican officials to blast the Democratic plan. That meeting will be followed by a Tea Party protest downtown across the street from an Obama fundraiser later in the day.

Though Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak, who has threatened to torpedo the bill with some allies over concerns about federal funding of abortion coverage, told The Associated Press Monday he was “more optimistic” than before about a deal, his office urged caution in a statement Tuesday. The statement said Stupak “remains optimistic,” but that he “has not reached an agreement” yet on abortion funding.

And with so many deadlines blown in the course of the health care debate so far, lawmakers aren’t reacting warmly to Obama’s setting of a new one.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., on Tuesday called the March 18 deadline a “steep climb” for the House.

“I don’t want to give dates,” he said. “All I know is deadlines are generally more of a problem than an opportunity.”

The tentative plan is for the House to pass the Senate version and then for the Senate to move a package of changes to bring it more to House Democrats’ liking, possibly using the “reconciliation” process which would allow it to pass with a simple, 51-vote majority. But this, as Baucus noted, has created deep distrust among House Democrats who fear their Senate colleagues will betray them and never follow up with a second bill.

“There’s considerable mistrust,” Baucus said.

“None of us have mentioned the 18th except Gibbs,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said.

Gibbs said Tuesday he thinks the March 18 deadline is still realistic.

The Senate has passed legislation to give months of continued jobless checks to Americans who have been out of work for more than half a year and help the unemployed pay for health insurance.

The jobless aid accompanies a host of other provisions that would affect government health care plans for the elderly and for the poor.

The 62-36 vote Wednesday sends the measure into talks with the House, which passed companion legislation last year but is wary about some Senate provisions included to defray its impact on the deficit.

The bill also extends a variety of tax breaks for businesses and individuals that are popular with senators in both politcal parties.

A federal judge has denied ex-Detroit councilwoman Monica Conyers’ request to withdraw her guilty plea in a corruption case and sentenced her to three years and one month in prison.

As guards cleared the courtroom Wednesday, Conyers yelled that she planned to appeal.

Conyers suggested that she was the victim of “badgering” last summer when she acknowledged a conspiracy to take bribes for her support of a Houston company seeking a sludge contract. U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn says her plea deal was voluntary.

Conyers is the wife of Democratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers. She quit the council in June.

Prosecutors also want the judge to consider allegations that Conyers and an aide collected $69,500 from people seeking help from the city. Her lawyer denies the claims.

The Rhode Island Democrat — at times shouting himself hoarse in support of a measure pushed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, that would end the war — derided the notion that Afghanistan “is a real country.”

Instead, he labeled it a “loose collection of 121 different sovereign tribes, none of [whom] get along with each other.”

But Kennedy blew his stack in response to a Republican lawmaker who said that ending the war would send a message of surrender to the family of a soldier killed in Afghanistan last year.

“Someone — I can’t believe I even heard this — said, ‘Oh, I can’t go to a funeral and tell the parents of someone who just died that they lost their child in vain,’” Kennedy shouted with his eyes closed.

“Somewhere I heard that during the Vietnam War,” he yelled. “So what is it we got to do? We got to double down on a bad policy to protect the honor of those who have already died? I don’t think so.”

“There isn’t a solider in this country who’s laid down their lives for our nation that isn’t a hero. And no one in here disagrees with that. What is shameful is our policy that puts them in harm’s way when they don’t need to be.”
Kennedy is the son of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy. During his career, Kennedy has suffered repeated bouts with substance abuse. He took an extended leave from Congress last spring, spending time at a rehabilitation facility.

Kennedy’s emotional speech Wednesday isn’t the first time he’s ignited fireworks on the House floor.

In his first term, Kennedy waged a legendary verbal scrap on the House floor with Rep. Gerald Solomon, R-N.Y., as lawmakers debated a repeal of the assault weapons ban..

On Wednesday, Kennedy also took aim at the media. Swinging his arm at the press gallery, Kennedy chastised the news media as “despicable” for not covering the day’s debate as heavily as they did the recent troubles of Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., who resigned Monday amid allegations he sexually harassed a male aide.

“There’s two press people in this gallery,” he shouted. “We’re talking about Eric Massa 24-7 on the TV? We’re talking war and peace, $3 billion, a thousand lives — and no press? No press?

“You want to know why the American public is fit? They’re fit because they’re not seeing their Congress do the work that they’re sent to do. It’s because the press — the press of the United States is not covering the most significant issue of national important and that’s the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It’s despicable, the national press corps right now.”

The health care reform bill passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve appears to be dead on arrival in the House, as seven anti-abortion Democrats intend to join the ranks of lawmakers who plan to vote against the legislation, Fox News has confirmed.

Seven new no votes would be enough to kill the Senate bill, and several more fence-sitting lawmakers are under pressure from both sides of the aisle.

Foremost among the seven new no votes is Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., whose anti-abortion amendment to the House version of the legislation got the bill passed in that chamber last year.

But because the Senate and House Democratic leaders weren’t able to agree on joint legislation before losing their supermajority in the Senate this year, they have few options other than getting the House to pass the Senate bill and then making changes to the law through a separate budget reconciliation bill that could pass with simple majorities.

The Senate bill, however, doesn’t contain the same language as the Stupak amendment, which explicitly prohibits federal funding of abortion in any of the reform measures intended to expand health care coverage to millions of uninsured Americans.

The House bill passed by a slim majority last year. In addition to Stupak, Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois has gone on the record as changing his vote to no if asked to pass the Senate bill, which some argue doesn’t do enough to forbid tax-funded abortions. “Protecting the sanctity of life is a matter of principle,” Lipinski said.

Other Democratic representatives who voted yes on the House bill but are on record as opposing the Senate bill are James Oberstar of Minnesota, Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania, Steve Driehaus of Ohio and Marion Berry of Arkansas.

Rep. Joe Donnelly of Indiana is the latest to join them, and Stupak said there may be more.

“Unless the language changes, there’s at least 12 Democrats who have said they could not vote for health care unless we keep the current law, which says no public funding for abortion,” Stupak told Fox News.

Others who are potential new no votes are Reps. Brad Ellsworth Indiana, Jerry Costello of Illinois, Charlie Wilson and Tim Ryan of Ohio, Sanford Bishop of Georgia and Richard Neal of Massachusetts.

The House bill contains a ban on tax-funded abortion, which has been the law of the land for more than 30 years.

The Senate bill is a big change, say critics. It would require women to have a separate private insurance policy if they want abortion coverage, but contains no explicit ban on tax-funded abortion as the House bill does.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Democrats’ lead pro-choice negotiator, is noncommittal about any changes that would be made to the Senate bill.

“They’d like to change it, that may be changed, but it may have to be changed at some future time. That’s been my view but nothing has been resolved,” he said.

The health care legislation passed the House last year on a 220-215 vote. But since then, four “yes” votes from Democrats have departed: Reps. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii and Robert Wexler of Florida resigned. Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania died last month and Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama switched parties and said he will not support the bill.

Former Democratic Rep. Eric Massa of New York, who voted against the legislation last year, resigned this week.

That means passage of the Senate bill now requires a 216-vote threshold.

“I would not vote for it,” Donnelly told the Rochester Sentinel on Tuesday. “From my reading of it, it does permit federal funding for abortion related services, in the Senate bill as it stands today, and so that is a fatal flaw in my opinion.”

An unnamed Democrat told Fox News that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is “smart enough to realize” that without the Stupak Amendment in November, “the bill fails.”

“The debate is just like it was before,” the Democrat said.

Fox News’ Chad Pergram contributed to this report.

Look out, Joe Wilson. The Democratic Party is gunning for your seat.

But the “You lie!”-shouting South Carolina Republican isn’t the only member of Congress with a mark on his back. Two Democratic and Republican campaign groups released their lists Wednesday of the top House seats and incumbents targeted in the November midterm elections.

The parties are looking to prop up a number of new faces in their quest to either retain or seize control of Congress. On the Republican side, the House Conservatives Fund announced endorsements for 10 candidates who will, as part of the deal, receive an extra $5,000 for their campaigns to unseat Democrats.

“This group represents a wake-up call to the liberal Washington establishment,” Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., said in a statement.

On the Democratic side, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced 13 candidates who qualified for its “Red to Blue” program, which offers financial, media and grassroots support to chosen Democrats. According to the DCCC, the program channeled $26 million to candidates two years ago. Of the 13 candidates, seven are running against incumbents.

“These candidates have come out of the gate strong,” DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen said in a statement, adding that the program would give them the “financial and structural edge.”

The following is a list of the top incumbent targets from both parties and the people who are challenging them:

Democratic Incumbents

Connecticut Rep. Chris Murphy (Challenged by state Sen. Sam Caligiuri)

Ohio Rep. Steve Driehaus (Challenged by former Rep. Steve Chabot)

Wisconsin Rep. David Obey (Challenged by “champion lumberjack” and Ashland County District Attorney Sean Duffy)

Maryland Rep. Frank Kratovil (Challenged by state Sen. Andy Harris)

Nevada Rep. Dina Titus (Challenged by businessman Joe Heck)

New Mexico Rep. Harry Teague (Challenged by former Rep. Steve Pearce)

Ohio Rep. John Boccieri (Challenged by businessman Jim Renacci)

Alabama Rep. Bobby Bright (Challenged by Montgomery City Councilwoman Martha Roby)

Idaho Rep. Walt Minnick (Challenged by Iraq war veteran Vaughn Ward)

Republican Incumbents

California Rep. Dan Lungren (Challenged by doctor Ami Bera)

Ohio Rep. Pat Tiberi (Challenged by Franklin County Commissioner Paula Brooks)

Pennsylvania Rep. Charlie Dent (Challenged by Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan)

Washington Rep. Dave Reichert (Challenged by business consultant Suzan DelBene)

South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson (Challenged by Iraq war veteran Rob Miller)

California Rep. Mary Bono (Challenged by Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet)

Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry (Challenged by state Sen. Tom White)

The two political groups also announced support for candidates running for open seats.

Republican farmer and gospel singer Stephen Fincher is running for the Tennessee House seat being vacated by Democratic Rep. John Tanner.

On the Democratic side, Tennessee state Sen. Roy Herron is also running for the seat being vacated by Tanner, and Pennsylvania state Rep. Bryan Lentz is running for the seat being vacated by Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak.

Several Democratic candidates are running for seats being left open by Republicans as well.

Former Delaware Lt. Gov. John Carney is running for the seat being left by Rep. Mike Castle. Polk County elections supervisor Lori Edwards is running for the seat being left by Florida Rep. Adam Putnam. Kansas state Rep. Raj Goyle is running for the seat being left by Rep. Todd Tiahrt. And business consultant Dan Seals is running for the seat being left by Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk.

The House voted down a challenge to President Obama’s conduct of the war in Afghanistan Wednesday, rejecting a measure that would have compelled U.S. armed forces to leave the country within 30 days.

Introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, the measure failed by a vote of 356-65. Five Republicans joined 60 Democrats in voting for the resolution.

Click here to view the roll call.

While Kucinich’s measure was never expected to pass, it nevertheless marked the first legislative challenge to the Afghan war since Obama announced the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops in a speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on December 1. The debate — and an earlier procedural vote, which saw 225 lawmakers vote to allow the measure to proceed to the House floor — also revealed the depth of antiwar sentiment among the president’s liberal allies in Congress.

“Unless this Congress acts to claim its constitutional responsibility, we will stay in Afghanistan for a very, very long time, at great cost to our troops and to our national priorities,” said Kucinich, holding aloft a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution, in preliminary remarks on the House floor. “Or we can set a date — December 31, 2010 — by which we must leave. And this is exactly what the resolution seeks to do.”

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, countered by invoking the memory of Army Specialist Jarrett Griemel, a 20-year-old Texas native and member of the 25th Infantry Division Battalion who died last June from injuries he sustained in Afghanistan.

“He believed in protecting our country,” Poe said of Griemel. “He believed in it so much he was willing to leave his wife and go halfway around the world to fight an enemy on the enemy’s own turf. And he believed it so much he was willing to give his life for the rest of us. So [if] we pass this resolution, what message do we send to Jared’s family or young bride? That his sacrifice just wasn’t enough? That it was all for naught? We don’t quit war because war is hard. War has always been hard.”

Rep. Patrick Kennedy D-R.I., was the most animated lawmaker, at times shouting himself hoarse in support for the Kucinich measure on the House floor.

Some lawmakers crossed party lines to adopt their stance on the Kucinich measure, which had sixteen co-sponsors.

“This war is an illegal war. This war is an amoral war. This war is an unconstitutional war,” said Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. “The consequence of 9/11 will be that we will bog the American people in a no-win war and demoralize the people…The country is totally bankrupt and we’re spending billions of dollars on these useless wars…History shows that all empires end because they expand too far and they bankrupt the country, just as the Soviet system came down. And that’s what bin Laden was hoping for.”

Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, warned his colleagues not to “undermine recent gains” in the war against the terrorist networks. “Have we forgotten what happened to America on 9/11?” Skelton said. “Have we forgotten who did it? Have we forgotten those who protected [al-Aqeda] and gave them a safehaven?” Afghanistan, Skelton said, “is the epicenter of terrorism….After eight long years we have a strategy for success in Afghanistan and we have a president who appointed the right leaders…Success is not guaranteed in this mission. But passing this resolution guarantees failure in Afghanistan and poses a risk — a serious risk — that we will once again face the same situation that existed on September 11, 2001.”

Supporters of the resolution contended the Obama administration lacks a legal basis under the War Powers Act for ongoing military operations in Afghanistan. The 1973 law was enacted in response to repeated escalations of the Vietnam War, by successive White Houses, with limited assent from the Congress. The law requires the president to seek re-authorization from the legislature if he deploys troops for longer than ninety days.

Congress passed a resolution authorizing the use of military force in Afghanistan in 2001, one week after the terrorist attacks of September 11. Advocates of continued U.S. operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the two major terrorist networks active in Afghanistan, contended the 2001 resolution still provides formal authority for Obama to continue the war effort. That effort is now in its ninth year, with an estimated 1,000 American lives lost.

Fox News’ Chad Pergram contributed to this report.

Three years after efforts by Congress to reform the immigration system went down in flames, the issue is slowly re-emerging on the national stage, as two senators from the opposite sides of the political aisle work on crafting another bill.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. are set to appear Thursday at the White House for a meeting with President Obama in which they are expected to seek his guidance on charting a path forward.

The reform effort blew up in 2007 after more than a year of work when Republican critics branded the effort as “amnesty” and the tide of public opinion turned strongly against the bill.

Graham, in fact, was booed at a Republican gathering in his state in 2006 for his work on comprehensive reform with Ted Kennedy and John McCain. Sen. McCain is conspicuously absent from the current talks; Graham remains at the table as the lone Republican supporter.

Schumer said comprehensive immigration reform is closer to reality than it appears.

“We only have a couple more things to get done,” he said Wednesday. “They’re hard. One is to get another Republican on the bill; one is to finally deal with the issue — to get business and labor on the same side on future flow on low-wage workers.”

A senior Senate Democratic leadership aide close to the debate said of the White House meeting, “They’re giving the president an update on where they stand, but they’re also reaching out to get support on securing that second Republican and for help in dealing with business and labor.”

Organized labor, in 2006 and 2007, fought any robust guest worker program, also called “future flow,” as Kennedy’s bill sought to create with the support of President George W. Bush.

Though a GOP aide with knowledge of the process told Fox News the effort is far from complete, Schumer maintained, “We’re getting real close. I’m optimistic.”

Immigrant rights groups have pushed to get a bill, even without another Republican joining, but Schumer said Wednesday, that’s not going to happen. “Senator Graham has been very good and generous and courageous in helping us move that bill forward. … He has always said he wants a second Republican.”

Anxious to avoid the explosive failure of the last effort, Schumer said emphatically, “We will not pass an immigration bill unless it’s bipartisan. Everyone agrees with that.”

Schumer said it has been a tough slog to get a second Republican, particularly since pro-reform GOP Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, himself a Cuban immigrant, recently retired. “It’s been difficult finding a second Republican,” he said. “We have four or five prospects we’re working on now. But if we can’t, we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. But we’re not giving up.”

One Republican senator who is thought to be in play is the newest member of the body, moderate Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts. While Brown didn’t slam the door on a compromise, he did not sound anxious to deal with this issue now with the unemployment rate hovering near 10 percent.

Brown told Fox News he has not yet been contacted by either Schumer or Graham, but he is willing to take a look at their bill, even though he suggested now is the time for Congress to focus on jobs, not immigration.

“We’re doing health care, maybe immigration. The thing I haven’t heard enough about is jobs, job creation. It’s nonexistent. I think that’s a mistake.” Brown said, “Right now, people need jobs, period.”

When asked what must be in any immigration reform bill, Brown said, “You need a strong border enforcement. You need a strong E-verification. I…have always felt that part of the problem is that we haven’t provided the proper resources for people to be processed quickly enough. And when you have people waiting in line six, seven, eight, nine years in some instances, it’s a disincentive to (immigrate) legally…In terms of allowing people to step ahead of the people who are trying to do it legally, I have a real problem with that.”

In fact, that very issue is what tripped up the earlier effort, what’s commonly referred to as “the path to legalization.” The Kennedy-McCain bill laid out a series of hurdles for potential citizens to clear, a six-year process in which workers who were in the country illegally could apply for a six-year “conditional non-immigrant visa.” At the end of that period, a visa holder could apply for legal permanent residence if the person paid a $1,000 fine, passed a background check, and demonstrated an effort to learn English and civics.

Critics called this “amnesty,” and at the time, the House, then run by Republicans, passed a narrow, border security-only measure, and left Senate Republicans who might have supported Kennedy-McCain holding the bag. In the end, that handful of Republicans bolted and the bill went down in flames.

It is not likely the crowded Senate calendar can withstand another controversial debate this year, but Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., continues to list it among his top priorities to tackle this year. Though Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, did not sound quite so sure, “Depends on support we get from the other side…I support comprehensive reform, but I’m going to leave that to Chuck.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee has postponed the hearing for a controversial Court of Appeals nominee after the panel received a letter from a home-state prosecutor blasting the candidate as a judicial loose cannon and after Republicans raised concerns about bias in favor of sex offenders.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chatigny gained notoriety in 2005 for his role in trying to fight the execution of convicted serial killer and rapist Michael Ross, also known as The Roadside Strangler, whom Chatigny had described as a victim of his own “sexual sadism.”

His conduct in that case, which included threatening to go after Ross’ attorney’s law license, as well as his ruling in 2001 against sex offender registries created under Megan’s Law, has caused a commotion among Republicans on the judiciary panel.

“I’ve never seen conduct like this,” said a Republican source. “I’m shocked that the White House vetted this guy … and still put him up for a judgeship.”

The nomination is relatively fresh. President Obama submitted his name Feb. 24 for a seat on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, calling him a “first-rate” legal expert and “faithful” public servant.

With the hearing originally set for Wednesday, Republicans led by their ranking member, Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said they wanted more time.

“Senator Sessions and the Judiciary Republicans have asked for a delay in light of the nominee’s extremely lengthy record and the fact that he was brought up so unusually quickly,” Sessions spokesman Stephen Miller said.

Behind the scenes, Republicans are taking a hard look at Chatigny’s role in the Ross proceedings which they say could be disqualifying — particularly on the Court of Appeals, the last line of review before the Supreme Court.

“You’re letting him be the final review for a lot of people, and he’s shown this alarming bias in sex crime cases,” a GOP committee aide said.

Chatigny’s office declined a request for comment. The White House could not be reached.

Chatigny stunned those involved in the serial killer case in early 2005 by pressuring Ross’ attorney on a conference call to challenge his scheduled execution even though Ross had said he did not want to fight.

The judge had raised concerns about whether Ross was mentally unfit and whether prison isolation had led to despair — at the time of the conference call, federal appeals courts had overturned two prior orders from him postponing the execution.

According to a transcript of that Jan. 28 call, the judge threatened to go after the law license of Ross’ attorney, T.R. Paulding.

“So I warn you, Mr. Paulding, between now and whatever happens Sunday night, you better be prepared to live with yourself for the rest of your life,” Chatigny said. “And you better be prepared to deal with me if in the wake of this an investigation is conducted and it turns out that what Lopez says and what this former program director says is true, because I’ll have your law license.”

Ramon Lopez was an inmate who had written a letter to Chatigny saying Ross had been brainwashed by mental health professionals.

Ross was convicted of killing four women but had confessed to killing eight, raping most of them. He was sentenced to death in 1987 and had been on death row nearly two decades when Chatigny engaged in the last-minute battle with others on the case.

On the conference call, the judge repeatedly stuck up for Ross, saying he suffered from “this affliction, this terrible disease” and suggesting Ross “may be the least culpable, the least, of the people on death row.”

“Looking at the record in a light most favorable to Mr. Ross, he never should have been convicted,” Chatigny said. “Or if convicted, he never should have been sentenced to death because his sexual sadism, which was found by every single person who looked at him, is clearly a mitigating factor.”

In the end, the execution was temporarily delayed and ultimately carried out. But in the aftermath, seven prosecutors from Connecticut filed a complaint against the judge with the Judicial Council of the Second Circuit. Among the complaints were that the judge had threatened Paulding and that he had not disclosed that in 1992 he filed an application to file a legal brief in support of Ross’ appeal — though the judge never ended up filing that brief. He was later cleared of misconduct.

This year, in a letter dated March 5 to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sessions, one of those prosecutors wrote that Chatigny’s actions in the run-up to the execution “call into question his suitability” for the Court of Appeals seat.

“Judge Chatigny completely abandoned the role of neutral and detached magistrate and instead became an advocate for the position held by the parties who were seeking to stop the execution of Michael Ross,” wrote Michael O’Hare, an assistant state’s attorney in Connecticut. He described the Jan. 28 conference call as a “tirade” in which the judge was “threatening and intimidating” others.

After receiving the letter, as well as a request from committee Republicans to postpone, Leahy canceled the Wednesday hearing. According to Leahy’s office, the hearing was postponed because of the GOP request and will be held at some point, though it’s not clear when.

A Democratic committee aide said Leahy was “happy to accommodate” the Republicans’ request. The aide did not discuss whether Democrats share the Republicans’ concerns.

“The information related to that case has been in the public domain for quite some time, so it’s not like something that’s been kept from public view. … This is why we have nomination hearings,” the aide said.

A few years before the standoff over the execution, Chatigny had also issued a ruling that Connecticut’s sex offender registry was not constitutional. Though the federal appeals court upheld the ruling, it was later unanimously reversed by the Supreme Court.

The judge does have his supporters. Connecticut Sens. Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman issued a joint statement late last month saying Chatigny had “consistently demonstrated his impressive legal abilities and a profound commitment to the rule of law.”

They called him an “outstanding addition” to the Court of Appeals and pledged to work toward his “swift confirmation” through the Senate.

Looking to challenge a time-honored privilege widely used by both parties when they are in the minority, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Wednesday vowed to remove the filibuster as a weapon to kill legislation by debating it to death.

In a summit with liberal online groups, the Nevada Democrat claimed the procedural maneuver has been “abused,”

“Next Congress, we’re going to take a look at it. We are likely to have to make some changes in it, because the Republicans have abused that just like the spitball was abused in baseball and the four-corner offense was abused in basketball,” Reid told The Huffington Post.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., appearing at the same summit, said his Rules Committee will take action in the coming weeks.

“The rules committee is going to start holding hearings on how to undo the filibuster rule,” he said.

Schumer praised a recent effort by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to force a GOP senator to remain on the floor for hours to object to a jobs bill, calling the effort “very, very good.”

Republicans say Democrats have abused their accounting of GOP filibusters, noting for instance that any objection to Democrats not allowing GOP amendments is counted as a filibuster.

Filibusters are a key tool for the minority party to delay or stop a proposal by keeping the Senate debating an issue. The current rules of the Senate state that senators can speak and debate as long as they want unless 60 senators vote to end the stalling tactic, or “invoke cloture.”

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said that Reid’s statements don’t match his past comments on the tool.

“I can’t tell you how many Democratic leaders, including our present majority leader, has said it’s tyranny if you get rid of the 60-vote rule. The idea of the Senate being a place where we have to form consensus to make major changes in this country, should not be put off lightly,” he said at a press conference on Capitol Hill.

Coburn wears his mantel of “Dr. No” proudly, as he often attempts to block bills that contain earmarks or provisions that increase the deficit. Democrats criticize Coburn, in return, for sometimes supporting measures that are not paid for, like emergency war funding.

Reid said he believed the House and Senate should be different.

Indeed, in the House, there is no filibuster. The House has a Rules Committee that sets the parameters for debate, which gives enormous power to the Majority party in terms of the outcome of most legislation in that chamber.

Coburn disagreed with Reid, arguing that Democrats are asserting that they don’t agree with the country’s founders that the Senate should be different than the House “and that rights of the minority should always be protected.”

A handful of Democrats, led by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, have tried for years to end the filibuster, only to be thwarted by members of their own party.

But Harkin said recently, that would not stop him. He and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., introduced yet another bill that would shrink the time in which a senator can block a bill, eventually subsuming the filibuster. He first introduced the bill in 1995 while he was part of the minority party.

Under Harkin’s legislation, which Reid said would not come up for a vote this year, there would be a series of votes, gradually diminishing to a simple majority. The first vote would have a 60-vote threshold; after two days, it would take 57 votes to secure passage of a measure; then two more days with a 54-vote threshold; and one more day to get the threshold down to 51, or a simple majority.

Even with Reid’s support now, Harkin and his fellow Democrats will need to find 67 votes, the number required to change Senate rules.

And Reid recently acknowledged the futility of any effort this year, “Well, I love Tom Harkin. I’m totally familiar with his idea. It takes 67 votes, and that kind of answers the question.”

WASHINGTON — The House Democratic campaign chairman says the ethics committee has ended an investigation of former Rep. Eric Massa, the New York Democrat who resigned this week over allegations that he harassed male staffers.

Speaking on an ABC News Web cast, Rep. Chris Van Hollen said that when Massa resigned his seat, “the complaints filed with the ethics committee went away.”

But this may not be the end of the matter. Van Hollen says Massa staff members who filed the complaint could still pursue an investigation outside the ethics committee.

Three years after efforts by Congress to reform the immigration system went down in flames, the issue is slowly re-emerging on the national stage, as two senators from the opposite sides of the political aisle work on crafting another bill.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. are set to appear Thursday at the White House for a meeting with President Obama in which they are expected to seek his guidance on charting a path forward.

The reform effort blew up in 2007 after more than a year of work when Republican critics branded the effort as “amnesty” and the tide of public opinion turned strongly against the bill.

Graham, in fact, was booed at a Republican gathering in his state in 2006 for his work on comprehensive reform with Ted Kennedy and John McCain. Sen. McCain is conspicuously absent from the current talks; Graham remains at the table as the lone Republican supporter.

Schumer said comprehensive immigration reform is closer to reality than it appears.

“We only have a couple more things to get done,” he said Wednesday. “They’re hard. One is to get another Republican on the bill; one is to finally deal with the issue — to get business and labor on the same side on future flow on low-wage workers.”

A senior Senate Democratic leadership aide close to the debate said of the White House meeting, “They’re giving the president an update on where they stand, but they’re also reaching out to get support on securing that second Republican and for help in dealing with business and labor.”

Organized labor, in 2006 and 2007, fought any robust guest worker program, also called “future flow,” as Kennedy’s bill sought to create with the support of President George W. Bush.

Though a GOP aide with knowledge of the process told Fox News the effort is far from complete, Schumer maintained, “We’re getting real close. I’m optimistic.”

Immigrant rights groups have pushed to get a bill, even without another Republican joining, but Schumer said Wednesday, that’s not going to happen. “Senator Graham has been very good and generous and courageous in helping us move that bill forward. … He has always said he wants a second Republican.”

Anxious to avoid the explosive failure of the last effort, Schumer said emphatically, “We will not pass an immigration bill unless it’s bipartisan. Everyone agrees with that.”

Schumer said it has been a tough slog to get a second Republican, particularly since pro-reform GOP Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, himself a Cuban immigrant, recently retired. “It’s been difficult finding a second Republican,” he said. “We have four or five prospects we’re working on now. But if we can’t, we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. But we’re not giving up.”

One Republican senator who is thought to be in play is the newest member of the body, moderate Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts. While Brown didn’t slam the door on a compromise, he did not sound anxious to deal with this issue now with the unemployment rate hovering near 10 percent.

Brown told Fox News he has not yet been contacted by either Schumer or Graham, but he is willing to take a look at their bill, even though he suggested now is the time for Congress to focus on jobs, not immigration.

“We’re doing health care, maybe immigration. The thing I haven’t heard enough about is jobs, job creation. It’s nonexistent. I think that’s a mistake.” Brown said, “Right now, people need jobs, period.”

When asked what must be in any immigration reform bill, Brown said, “You need a strong border enforcement. You need a strong E-verification. I…have always felt that part of the problem is that we haven’t provided the proper resources for people to be processed quickly enough. And when you have people waiting in line six, seven, eight, nine years in some instances, it’s a disincentive to (immigrate) legally…In terms of allowing people to step ahead of the people who are trying to do it legally, I have a real problem with that.”

In fact, that very issue is what tripped up the earlier effort, what’s commonly referred to as “the path to legalization.” The Kennedy-McCain bill laid out a series of hurdles for potential citizens to clear, a six-year process in which workers who were in the country illegally could apply for a six-year “conditional non-immigrant visa.” At the end of that period, a visa holder could apply for legal permanent residence if the person paid a $1,000 fine, passed a background check, and demonstrated an effort to learn English and civics.

Critics called this “amnesty,” and at the time, the House, then run by Republicans, passed a narrow, border security-only measure, and left Senate Republicans who might have supported Kennedy-McCain holding the bag. In the end, that handful of Republicans bolted and the bill went down in flames.

It is not likely the crowded Senate calendar can withstand another controversial debate this year, but Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., continues to list it among his top priorities to tackle this year. Though Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, did not sound quite so sure, “Depends on support we get from the other side…I support comprehensive reform, but I’m going to leave that to Chuck.”

As the Arkansas Senate race heats up, Sen. Blanche Lincoln wants to set the record straight on settling health care with a simple majority vote.

“I have put out a statement several weeks ago that I oppose using reconciliation for passing health care, and I still stand by that.”

In recent days, the Democrat senator has been questioned about exactly where she is on the issue, though she says her position has never changed. Reconciliation would allow Democrats to move forward with just 51 votes, rather than 60.

Lincoln’s new primary opponent, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, said the topic of reconciliation is just one of many areas in which he and Lincoln part ways.

“We absolutely disagree on reconciliation,” Halter told Fox News, adding, “I’m in favor of allowing a majority vote to determine health care reform.”

In the high-tech information age, Lincoln knows rumors can spread quickly, and she takes issue with those who would distort her record.

“I get hit from the left because I am a moderate,” she said. “I get hit from the right because I’m not far right and, you know, when you’re in that crosshair it’s a challenging time,”

Lincoln took to Twitter on Tuesday trying to stem the confusion about her position on reconciliation while recognizing the unique challenges of campaigning in the digital age,

“In these kinds of campaigns, particularly in this day and age, [it’s important] that you really do pay attention to what you get out there – and that you use those modes of communication as much as anybody else.”

Halter joins the primary confident that he can derail the incumbent, and said her 15-year record in Washington doesn’t impress voters.

“I think there have been multiple times, unfortunately, where Sen. Lincoln has been in favor of something and then against or against something and then in favor,” Halter says.

The Democratic challenger comes backed by moveon.org, which calls Lincoln “one of the worst Democrats in Washington.” The liberal group has mobilized a grassroots campaign for Halter, which has raised more than $1.2 million in just a few days. Halter said he welcomes support “from across the political spectrum.”

If Lincoln survives the primary, she’s likely to meet up with Rep. John Boozman, R-Ariz., on the November ballot. Boozman, the only Republican in the Arkansas congressional delegation, has doubts that Lincoln’s strategy to campaign as a moderate Democrat will ring true with Arkansas voters. As a college football player, Boozman recalls Arkansas coach Frank Broyles telling him that past performance was indicative of future performance.

“I think when you look at the record versus the rhetoric and, you know, what actually has been done, it doesn’t match up,” Boozman said of Lincoln. That conflict, he added, is “a big concern for the people of Arkansas.”

But Lincoln seemed unruffled.

“I work in a bipartisan way,” she said. ” I stand up for what I believe in and what I think is good for Arkansas.”

Lincoln said that sometimes means breaking the party line, “I don’t hesitate, even if it’s contrary to what my own caucus wants to see or do.”

Obama himself, rallying support outside Washington for the second time this week, shouted to a crowd in Missouri, “The time for talk is over. It’s time to vote.”

At the Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that after days of secretive talks, key Democrats were “pretty close” to accord on additional subsidies to help lower-income families purchase insurance, more aid for states under the Medicaid program for low-income Americans and additional help for seniors who face a coverage gap under current Medicare drug plans.

Pelosi, D-Calif., offered no details, and other officials cautioned that any final deal would hinge on cost estimates under preparation at the Congressional Budget Office. Pelosi said as she left the Capitol late Wednesday that the unresolved issues were mostly “minor, just technical things.” She and other leaders planned to brief rank-and-file lawmakers Thursday morning and Pelosi said she hoped the remaining issues could be largely resolved then.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., said legislation that embodies the agreements among congressional Democrats and the president could move through his panel next week.

At stake is the fate of Obama’s call to expand health care to some 30 million people who lack insurance and to ban insurance company practices such as denial of coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. He also hopes to begin to reduce the rise in the cost of health care nationally.

Almost every American would be affected by the legislation, which would change the ways people receive and pay for health care, from the most routine checkup to the most expensive, lifesaving treatment.

Pelosi made her comments as Obama followed his campaign-reminiscent Pennsylvania trip of Monday with an appearance near St. Louis, pushing hard in the home stretch of the marathon battle to pass his signature domestic legislation.

“The time for talk is over. It’s time to vote. It’s time to vote. Tired of talking about it,” he told the crowd.

With his shirt sleeves rolled up, Obama denounced waste and inefficiency in the government’s health care system, and he announced that he had signed an executive order directing Cabinet secretaries and agency heads to intensify their use of private auditors to root out fraud.

House and Senate Democrats are working on a complex rescue mission for the health care legislation that appeared on the cusp of passage late last year, before Senate Republicans gained the strength to sustain a filibuster that could prevent final passage.

The current hope of the White House and Democratic leaders is for the House to approve last year’s Senate-passed bill, despite serious objections to numerous provisions. Both houses would then pass a second bill immediately, making changes in the first measure before both could take effect. The second bill would be debated under rules that bar a filibuster, meaning it could clear by majority vote and without Democrats needing to amass a 60-vote supermajority that is beyond their reach.

Republicans have vowed to do everything they can to thwart the plan, and to go after Democratic supporters in next fall’s midterm elections. In the Senate, the GOP rank and file issued a letter pledging to strip out any provision that does not adhere scrupulously to complex rules.

In addition, GOP leaders sought to stoke the fears of House Democrats who worried that the Senate would not approve the second bill. Even so, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the second-ranking Senate GOP leader, conceded, “We can’t delay a bill for months. We might delay it for a few hours.”

After meeting with top congressional Democrats and White House aides Wednesday night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters he believes “that health reform is going to be done. We don’t have it all worked out, but we made a lot of progress.” He said “a lot of decisions were made” at the meeting.

Congressional Democrats and the White House are grappling with several issues as they maneuver toward a final vote.

Pelosi and other House Democrats want to include Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s student loan programs in the second, fix-it health care bill. The measure would require the Education Department to originate all student assistance loans, effectively eliminating a role for banks and private lenders.

That idea has run into opposition from several Senate Democrats, and while officials said the controversy was debated in Wednesday night’s closed-door meeting, Pelosi said no decision was made.

Additionally, some House Democrats are hoping to avoid a straightforward vote on the Senate-passed health care bill. Instead, they want a procedural vote that would simply declare the measure to have passed at the moment the Senate cleared the fix-it bill.

Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, said that approach was under discussion. But she said no decision had been made.

To the annoyance of some Democrats, the White House is pushing for a vote by the House before Obama leaves on a foreign trip at the end of next week.

Several officials said one of the thorniest issues to be resolved in the House-Senate negotiations was a demand from a dozen states for additional funds under Medicaid.

These states, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts among them, already provide coverage under the low-income program for the poor that other states do not but would be required to if the legislation passes. The 12 are concerned that they will effectively be penalized for having been more generous than the rest of the country.

The legislation that passed the Senate late last year included a new Medicare payroll tax of 2.3 percent on wages for upper-income Americans. The White House wants to extend the tax to dividends and interest, at a higher rate of 2.9 percent.

Much of the proceeds would offset changes in an excise tax the Senate approved on high-cost insurance plans. Responding to criticism from labor leaders, the White House agreed over the winter to scale it back significantly. Officials said the revised proposal would raise about $120 billion less over a decade than the measure the Senate passed.

Three years after efforts by Congress to reform the immigration system went down in flames, the issue is slowly re-emerging on the national stage, as two senators from the opposite sides of the political aisle work on crafting another bill.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. are set to appear Thursday at the White House for a meeting with President Obama in which they are expected to seek his guidance on charting a path forward.

The reform effort blew up in 2007 after more than a year of work when Republican critics branded the effort as “amnesty” and the tide of public opinion turned strongly against the bill.

Graham, in fact, was booed at a Republican gathering in his state in 2006 for his work on comprehensive reform with Ted Kennedy and John McCain. Sen. McCain is conspicuously absent from the current talks; Graham remains at the table as the lone Republican supporter.

Schumer said comprehensive immigration reform is closer to reality than it appears.

“We only have a couple more things to get done,” he said Wednesday. “They’re hard. One is to get another Republican on the bill; one is to finally deal with the issue — to get business and labor on the same side on future flow on low-wage workers.”

A senior Senate Democratic leadership aide close to the debate said of the White House meeting, “They’re giving the president an update on where they stand, but they’re also reaching out to get support on securing that second Republican and for help in dealing with business and labor.”

Organized labor, in 2006 and 2007, fought any robust guest worker program, also called “future flow,” as Kennedy’s bill sought to create with the support of President George W. Bush.

Though a GOP aide with knowledge of the process told Fox News the effort is far from complete, Schumer maintained, “We’re getting real close. I’m optimistic.”

Immigrant rights groups have pushed to get a bill, even without another Republican joining, but Schumer said Wednesday, that’s not going to happen. “Senator Graham has been very good and generous and courageous in helping us move that bill forward. … He has always said he wants a second Republican.”

Anxious to avoid the explosive failure of the last effort, Schumer said emphatically, “We will not pass an immigration bill unless it’s bipartisan. Everyone agrees with that.”

Schumer said it has been a tough slog to get a second Republican, particularly since pro-reform GOP Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, himself a Cuban immigrant, recently retired. “It’s been difficult finding a second Republican,” he said. “We have four or five prospects we’re working on now. But if we can’t, we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. But we’re not giving up.”

One Republican senator who is thought to be in play is the newest member of the body, moderate Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts. While Brown didn’t slam the door on a compromise, he did not sound anxious to deal with this issue now with the unemployment rate hovering near 10 percent.

Brown told Fox News he has not yet been contacted by either Schumer or Graham, but he is willing to take a look at their bill, even though he suggested now is the time for Congress to focus on jobs, not immigration.

“We’re doing health care, maybe immigration. The thing I haven’t heard enough about is jobs, job creation. It’s nonexistent. I think that’s a mistake.” Brown said, “Right now, people need jobs, period.”

When asked what must be in any immigration reform bill, Brown said, “You need a strong border enforcement. You need a strong E-verification. I…have always felt that part of the problem is that we haven’t provided the proper resources for people to be processed quickly enough. And when you have people waiting in line six, seven, eight, nine years in some instances, it’s a disincentive to (immigrate) legally…In terms of allowing people to step ahead of the people who are trying to do it legally, I have a real problem with that.”

In fact, that very issue is what tripped up the earlier effort, what’s commonly referred to as “the path to legalization.” The Kennedy-McCain bill laid out a series of hurdles for potential citizens to clear, a six-year process in which workers who were in the country illegally could apply for a six-year “conditional non-immigrant visa.” At the end of that period, a visa holder could apply for legal permanent residence if the person paid a $1,000 fine, passed a background check, and demonstrated an effort to learn English and civics.

Critics called this “amnesty,” and at the time, the House, then run by Republicans, passed a narrow, border security-only measure, and left Senate Republicans who might have supported Kennedy-McCain holding the bag. In the end, that handful of Republicans bolted and the bill went down in flames.

It is not likely the crowded Senate calendar can withstand another controversial debate this year, but Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., continues to list it among his top priorities to tackle this year. Though Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, did not sound quite so sure, “Depends on support we get from the other side…I support comprehensive reform, but I’m going to leave that to Chuck.”

Obama himself, rallying support outside Washington for the second time this week, shouted to a crowd in Missouri, “The time for talk is over. It’s time to vote.”

At the Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that after days of secretive talks, key Democrats were “pretty close” to accord on additional subsidies to help lower-income families purchase insurance, more aid for states under the Medicaid program for low-income Americans and additional help for seniors who face a coverage gap under current Medicare drug plans.

Pelosi, D-Calif., offered no details, and other officials cautioned that any final deal would hinge on cost estimates under preparation at the Congressional Budget Office. Pelosi said as she left the Capitol late Wednesday that the unresolved issues were mostly “minor, just technical things.” She and other leaders planned to brief rank-and-file lawmakers Thursday morning and Pelosi said she hoped the remaining issues could be largely resolved then.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., said legislation that embodies the agreements among congressional Democrats and the president could move through his panel next week.

At stake is the fate of Obama’s call to expand health care to some 30 million people who lack insurance and to ban insurance company practices such as denial of coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. He also hopes to begin to reduce the rise in the cost of health care nationally.

Almost every American would be affected by the legislation, which would change the ways people receive and pay for health care, from the most routine checkup to the most expensive, lifesaving treatment.

Pelosi made her comments as Obama followed his campaign-reminiscent Pennsylvania trip of Monday with an appearance near St. Louis, pushing hard in the home stretch of the marathon battle to pass his signature domestic legislation.

“The time for talk is over. It’s time to vote. It’s time to vote. Tired of talking about it,” he told the crowd.

With his shirt sleeves rolled up, Obama denounced waste and inefficiency in the government’s health care system, and he announced that he had signed an executive order directing Cabinet secretaries and agency heads to intensify their use of private auditors to root out fraud.

House and Senate Democrats are working on a complex rescue mission for the health care legislation that appeared on the cusp of passage late last year, before Senate Republicans gained the strength to sustain a filibuster that could prevent final passage.

The current hope of the White House and Democratic leaders is for the House to approve last year’s Senate-passed bill, despite serious objections to numerous provisions. Both houses would then pass a second bill immediately, making changes in the first measure before both could take effect. The second bill would be debated under rules that bar a filibuster, meaning it could clear by majority vote and without Democrats needing to amass a 60-vote supermajority that is beyond their reach.

Republicans have vowed to do everything they can to thwart the plan, and to go after Democratic supporters in next fall’s midterm elections. In the Senate, the GOP rank and file issued a letter pledging to strip out any provision that does not adhere scrupulously to complex rules.

In addition, GOP leaders sought to stoke the fears of House Democrats who worried that the Senate would not approve the second bill. Even so, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the second-ranking Senate GOP leader, conceded, “We can’t delay a bill for months. We might delay it for a few hours.”

After meeting with top congressional Democrats and White House aides Wednesday night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters he believes “that health reform is going to be done. We don’t have it all worked out, but we made a lot of progress.” He said “a lot of decisions were made” at the meeting.

Congressional Democrats and the White House are grappling with several issues as they maneuver toward a final vote.

Pelosi and other House Democrats want to include Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s student loan programs in the second, fix-it health care bill. The measure would require the Education Department to originate all student assistance loans, effectively eliminating a role for banks and private lenders.

That idea has run into opposition from several Senate Democrats, and while officials said the controversy was debated in Wednesday night’s closed-door meeting, Pelosi said no decision was made.

Additionally, some House Democrats are hoping to avoid a straightforward vote on the Senate-passed health care bill. Instead, they want a procedural vote that would simply declare the measure to have passed at the moment the Senate cleared the fix-it bill.

Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, said that approach was under discussion. But she said no decision had been made.

To the annoyance of some Democrats, the White House is pushing for a vote by the House before Obama leaves on a foreign trip at the end of next week.

Several officials said one of the thorniest issues to be resolved in the House-Senate negotiations was a demand from a dozen states for additional funds under Medicaid.

These states, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts among them, already provide coverage under the low-income program for the poor that other states do not but would be required to if the legislation passes. The 12 are concerned that they will effectively be penalized for having been more generous than the rest of the country.

The legislation that passed the Senate late last year included a new Medicare payroll tax of 2.3 percent on wages for upper-income Americans. The White House wants to extend the tax to dividends and interest, at a higher rate of 2.9 percent.

Much of the proceeds would offset changes in an excise tax the Senate approved on high-cost insurance plans. Responding to criticism from labor leaders, the White House agreed over the winter to scale it back significantly. Officials said the revised proposal would raise about $120 billion less over a decade than the measure the Senate passed.

WASHINGTON – The Treasury Department sank billions into auto finance giant GMAC Inc. without an exit strategy or proof the company was viable — a decision that could cost taxpayers $6.3 billion, a new watchdog report says.

The government said the $17.2 billion bailout was a necessary step to save troubled automakers General Motors and Chrysler. GMAC provides critical financing to auto dealers, who borrow to finance their fleets until the cars can be sold to consumers.

Yet GMAC faced far fewer conditions than the bailed-out automakers, the report says. When the automakers were rescued, they were forced into bankruptcy. Shareholders lost their investments, creditors took a hit and executives were forced to detail plans for making the companies viable.

GMAC was treated more like banks that received bailouts without having to explain what they were doing with the money, the report says.

The report is to be released Thursday by the Congressional Oversight Panel overseeing the $700 billion financial bailout that Congress passed in October 2008.

“Treasury missed many opportunities to improve accountability and protect taxpayer money,” panel chair Elizabeth Warren said in a conference call with reporters. She said Treasury didn’t make GMAC show how it would return the taxpayer money, or how the investment would increase credit to consumers.

“These decisions mean that Treasury is now struggling to deal with a GMAC that is not financially rehabilitated, Treasury has no exit strategy and taxpayers are not fully protected,” Warren said.

The Treasury Department responded by reiterating that backing GMAC was necessary to preserve dealer financing for GM. It disputed the report’s core finding, that alternative approaches might have saved taxpayer money and provided better transparency.

“Treasury viewed the course taken as the least costly and least disruptive of all the options available,” Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said in a statement.

The watchdog report, however, calls GMAC’s three-part bailout “one of the more baffling decisions made” to stabilize the financial sector. It says there was no evidence that GMAC’s failure would upend the financial system, or that it was “too big to fail.”

GMAC started as the finance arm of General Motors, providing crucial funding for consumers buying cars and dealers financing wholesale purchases. In recent years, it became a key player in subprime mortgage lending and other risky finance that fueled the financial crisis.

The company began to see major losses in 2007 as the housing market turned south and subprime mortgage investments lost much of their value.

GMAC CEO Michael Carpenter referred to the company’s money-losing mortgage unit as the “millstone around the company’s neck.”

The new report says the bailout effectively saved GMAC’s mortgage arm and other unprofitable businesses. It questions whether the government should have wound down GMAC’s operations that are not related to auto financing, perhaps by orchestrating the same sort of bankruptcy it arranged for GM and Chrysler.

The auto finance arm might have been merged back into GM, said Warren, who also is a bankruptcy expert and a professor at Harvard Law School. She said Treasury did not fully consider that course.

That left Treasury owning 56.3 percent of a company that continues to lose money.

Treasury spokeswoman Reilly described the government as a “reluctant shareholder” in GMAC and said it is managing its investment in the company in “a hands-off commercial manner consistent with the administration’s established principles that guide Treasury’s management of financial interests in private firms.”

The estimate that taxpayers could lose $6.3 billion was released earlier by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, but it was not publicized before Thursday’s report.

The Congressional Oversight Panel is one of three mechanisms Congress built into the $700 billion bailout bill. The fund also is subject to audits by the Government Accountability Office and investigation by a special inspector general.

Besides Warren, the panel includes New York state banking superintendent Richard Neiman, former Securities and Exchange Commissioner Paul Atkins and attorney J. Mark McWatters.

Damon Silvers, a senior official with the labor federation AFL-CIO, is on the panel but recused himself from all consideration of the auto bailouts.

WASHINGTON — Aides to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew of concerns about the behavior of former Rep. Eric Massa months earlier than Pelosi previously acknowledged, a senior Democratic leadership aide said Wednesday.

In October, Massa’s chief of staff told Pelosi’s office the then-congressman was living in a townhouse with some of his congressional aides and that he had used “strong” language that made them feel uncomfortable, the leadership aide said. The Massa aide, Joe Racalto, also voiced concern “about the way Massa runs the office” and added he had asked the congressman to move out of the townhouse, the aide said.

Last week, Mrs. Pelosi indicated her staff had learned of concerns about Massa only in February, when more detailed allegations of sexual harassment were brought to the office of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.).

In what has become an embarrassing distraction for the Democratic majority, Massa resigned from Congress Monday. He initially cited health concerns, before accusing Democratic leaders of pushing him out of Congress for his opposition to the health-care overhaul. He later backed off that assertion. Massa couldn’t be reached for comment on Wednesday.

The House ethics committee had been investigating allegations against Massa of sexual harassment, which congressional officials say involved inappropriate touching of more than one male staffer.

The new details about the involvement of Pelosi’s office will likely fuel questions about when the House leadership learned of the allegations and whether they could have investigated the matter earlier.

Massa’s top aide approached the Speaker’s office in October in part because of publicity created by a story in the Evening Tribune, a local New York newspaper, which noted that Massa lived in a Capitol Hill townhouse with five of his staffers.

Continue reading at The Wall Street Journal

The Interior Ministry announced the construction plans just as Biden was wrapping up a series of warm meetings with Israeli leaders. There was no immediate reaction from the vice president.

Relations between Israel and the Obama administration have been chilly precisely because of the settlement issue.

The U.S., like the Palestinians and the rest of the international community, believes that Israeli settlements built on lands claimed by the Palestinians, including east Jerusalem, undermine peace prospects. President Obama has been more outspoken on the issue than his predecessors.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rebuffed calls from the White House to halt all settlement activity, agreeing only to a limited freeze that does not include east Jerusalem.

Israel captured both areas in the 1967 Mideast war and subsequently annexed east Jerusalem. Israel considers its east Jerusalem neighborhoods to be part of its undivided capital, but the annexation has never been internationally recognized and the neighborhoods are widely seen as settlements.

Interior Ministry spokeswoman Efrat Orbach said the new homes would be built in Ramat Shlomo, an existing neighborhood for ultra-Orthodox Jews. She noted that there is a 60-day appeals period, indicating that the decision could yet be changed.

But Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the move was destroying trust needed to go forward with the new round of indirect peace talks, which the two sides agreed this week would take place under the mediation of U.S. envoy George Mitchell. Peace efforts have been stalled for 14 months, in large part because of Palestinian anger over settlement activity.

“With such an announcement, how can you build trust? This is destroying our efforts to work with Mr. Mitchell,” Erekat said. “It’s a really disastrous situation. I hope that this will be an eye-opener for all in the international community about the need to have the Israeli government stop such futile exercises.”

The announcement threatened to embarrass Biden, whose visit is aimed largely at repairing the relationship with Israel. Biden’s public comments throughout the day had clearly been meant to calm Israeli concerns that Obama has been less friendly to the country than past U.S. leaders.

The move also may have been the result of internal politics. A spokesman for Netanyahu said he was unaware of the announcement, raising the possibility that the Interior Ministry — run by a hardline religious party — had not coordinated the news with the Israeli leader or had even tried to embarrass him.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai’s office issued a statement saying Tuesday’s decision was a procedural step in a long process. “The timing … has no connection to the U.S. vice president’s visit to Israel,” it said.

Earlier in the day, Biden made no mention of the settlement dispute as he assured Israelis they can count on strong U.S. backing as peace efforts finally resume. The resumption of talks, albeit indirect, is the first concrete achievement for Obama in the Israeli-Palestinian arena.

The relationship between the two allies, Biden told reporters as he stood beside Netanyahu, has always been a “centerpiece of American policy.”

“Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel,” Biden said.

“The United States will always stand with those who take risks for peace,” Biden said, telling Netanyahu, “you’re prepared to do that.”

Obama began his term with a push for Mideast peace, prodding Israel to freeze its construction of West Bank settlements that swallow up land the Palestinians want for a future state.

The insistence on a total settlement freeze is seen by many in the region to have backfired. Polls show that Israelis have largely come to see Obama as overly sympathetic to Israel’s enemies, making it difficult for the administration to get Israeli public opinion behind any difficult peace moves.

Biden offered assurances that the U.S. remained committed to Israel’s security. Iran appeared to loom large in Biden’s discussions with Netanyahu. “We are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” he said.

Israel has been pushing for stricter international sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear program, and has refused to rule out a military strike if sanctions fail.

Hundreds of quake survivors sheltered overnight in tents after being left homeless by Monday’s pre-dawn quake, which exposed Turkey’s lag in constructing sturdy homes near the country’s two major fault lines.

Health Minister Recep Akdag said the mud-brick homes typical of Turkey’s impoverished villages “topple down in the slightest of jolts, and those caught beneath die from lack of air.”

“It has been this way for a hundred years, and we have to beat this,” Akdag said.

Slideshow: Turkey Earthquake

The earthquake — which hit at 4:32 a.m. Monday (0232 GMT, 9 p.m. EST Sunday) near the remote village of Basyurt in Elazig province — caught many people in their sleep, shaking the area’s poorly made buildings into piles of rubble. Worst hit appeared to be the Okcular, where 19 of the village’s 900 residents were killed and only a few homes remain standing.

The Kandilli seismology center said there have been more than 100 aftershocks, including one measuring 5.5, since the initial quake, which the U.S. Geological Survey listed as having a magnitude of 5.9.

The region 340 miles (550 kilometers) east of the capital, Ankara, is near the East Anatolian Fault — one of the two major fault lines that cross Turkey.

The other is the North Anatolian Fault, which runs near Turkey’s largest city of Istanbul.

Experts cite a two-thirds chance that a major quake will hit Istanbul within 30 years. Others estimate a 2 percent annual probability of a large temblor in the city that his home to 15 million people, or one-fifth of Turkey’s population.

Despite two massive quakes killing some 18,000 people in northwest Turkey in 1999, seismologists and civil engineers warn that not enough has been done to protect Istanbul in the event of another strong temblor in the region.

Istanbul itself planned to assess the city’s buildings to identify those needing reinforcement or demolition, but experts say the follow-up work has lagged. Part of the problem, some say, is a lack of oversight in construction.

“It is not small earthquakes that kill people, it is unlicensed constructors and disorderly construction that kill,” the Ankara-based Tum civil engineers federation said in a statement.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed many of the 51 deaths from Monday’s quake on the shoddy mud-brick buildings typical of the eastern region.

He pledged the government housing agency would build quake-proof homes in the area.

“We must ensure building resilience,” Labor Minister Faruk Celik said. “We are living on the earthquake zone, and we don’t know what can happen to us from one day to the next.”

Authorities urged the people in Elazig province not to enter damaged homes that could collapse from aftershocks.

Most of the 51 people killed in Monday’s quake were immediately buried according to Muslim traditions, but a few funerals were put off until Tuesday.

Fifteen of the deaths occurred in Yukari Demirci village, four in Kayalik village, another four in Gocmezler village, and 10 died in hospital in Kovancilar town, officials said.

Survivors crowded around bonfires to keep warm overnight while sheltering in makeshift tents made of plastic sheeting provided by the Turkish Red Crescent. The government said it also sent prefabricated homes and mobile kitchens.

Former President Tassos Papadopoulos’ family said, however, that they had never received a demand for money.

The right-wing Greek Cypriot hard-liner’s body was stolen in December during slow-moving reunification talks with Turkish Cypriot leaders. A lack of clear motive and few clues led to speculation that it could have been politically motivated, but authorities suggested early on that ransom was a more likely scenario.

The robbers removed a heavy marble plaque from on top of Papadopoulos’ grave on the southern outskirts of the Cypriot capital, Nicosia, then dug down to the coffin and removed the body of the former president on Dec. 11, a day before the first anniversary of his death.

The robbers left few leads at the scene. Lime was strewn over the grave in what investigators believe was an attempt to erase any tracks they might have left behind. Investigators sought the help of the FBI and Interpol as well as Greek and Israeli law enforcement authorities.

But there was little progress in the investigation until Monday, when police found the body in another cemetery after being alerted by his family, who had received a telephone tip, police spokesman Michalis Katsounotos said. Family spokesman Chrysis Pantelides said a man speaking broken Greek had called with information about the corpse and instructed them to contact police.

DNA testing early Tuesday confirmed it was Papadopoulos’ body, Katsounotos said.

The former president’s body was found inside another grave and covered with a thin layer of soil, he said, adding it had placed in the grave recently. He gave no further details.

Justice Minister Loucas Louca said during a news conference that Papadopoulos’ family had received a demand for ransom, but that no money had been paid. He didn’t indicate when the demand had been made.

“The conclusion is that ransom was behind the theft and there was no political motive,” Louca told reporters, adding that the family had contacted police.

But two spokesmen for the family told The Associated Press that the family had received no such demand.

“Officials must be very careful when they open their mouths,” said Vassilis Palmas, a family friend and former government spokesman during Papadopulos’ tenure. “The minister said something that is unfounded.”

The call to police was made from a phone booth a few miles (kilometers) away from the cemetery, Katsounotos said, adding that investigators examined the booth for fingerprints and other evidence that could lead to the caller’s identity.

Louca said the investigation was focusing on Cyprus.

Family members, including three of Papadopoulos’ adult children, rushed to the cemetery amid heavy police security after being notified of the corpse’s discovery.

“The discovery of our beloved Tassos’ corpse has put an end to the agony that we have been living through the last three months and has brought back peace and tranquility to our family,” Papadopoulos’ widow Fotini said.

Reading from a prepared statement from the family home in the Nicosia suburb of Deftera, she said: “We hope that the police investigation leads to the capture of the perpetrators as soon as possible.”

Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias said he had spoken with Papadopoulos’ wife and that he feels “satisfaction and relief just as the family does.”

Pantelides said the family would reclaim the corpse for burial after authorities conclude their examinations.

Cyprus was divided into an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south and a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north in 1974, when Turkey invaded after a coup by supporters of uniting the island with Greece.

Papadopoulos was a central figure in Cypriot politics for decades, with a career spanning most of the island’s turbulent history since it gained independence from Britain in 1960.

President from 2003 to 2008, he was considered by many right-wing Greek Cypriots to be a champion of resistance against peace accords weighted against them.

A British-trained lawyer, Papadopoulos was a guerrilla leader for the Greek Cypriot group EOKA, which waged an anti-colonial campaign. Later, at age 26, he was the youngest Cabinet minister in the island’s first post-independence government.

He ushered a divided Cyprus into the European Union in May 2004 after urging Greek Cypriots to reject a U.N.-brokered reunification plan, which he vilified as entrenching the island’s division rather than ending it. Three-quarters of Cypriots rejected it in a referendum; two-thirds of Turkish Cypriots accepted the plan.

The leader was defeated in a February 2008 presidential poll by Dimitris Christofias, former head of the communist-rooted AKEL party.

He died of lung cancer in 2008 at 74.

Wang Cuyun from Hubei Province was struggling with workers trying to tear down her house and was allegedly beaten by a worker wielding a wooden stick.

She was dumped in a drainage ditch that ringed her property and a bulldozer covered her with earth, burying her alive.

Witnesses said three policemen were present to supervise the eviction but did nothing to intervene or protect her.

Her son joined other relatives trying to rescue her. It took more than half an hour to pull her free from the ditch, by which time she was dead.

Wang’s son moved her body to the side of a main road and was joined by thousands of local residents protesting at her death.

One man told Hubei Television that policemen had “stood around acting like it was none of their business.”

Wang’s death is the latest in a long series of assualts, intimidation and violence carried out by property developers in their efforts to obtain valuable land for development.

The 25-year-old stabbed Camille Mathurasingh to death when he saw her on Facebook with a new lover.

Bristol flew 4,000 miles from Trinidad to England to confront the 27-year-old about her new relationship with Besim Haxhia.

He stabbed her 20 times at her home in east London, before cutting himself and crashing her car.

The IT technician, who worked for the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Administration, rejected the charge of murder, claiming he had committed manslaughter through provocation.

Judge Timothy Pontius described Bristol as being “eaten up by jealousy.”

He said: “You attacked her with such repeated savagery and horrifying ferocity that it was your intention to kill her.”

Judge Pontius described Camille Mathurasingh as someone “who would not want in any way to hurt his feelings and was very concerned to let him down gently.”

The couple were together for three years while Mathurasingh was working in Trinidad, and continued their relationship when she returned to the U.K. in 2008.

Bristol was unaware that she had met a new boyfriend but flew to the U.K. after seeing pictures of her with Haxhia on the Internet.

The attack was in the Ali Shir district of Khost province, where the alliance has a base near the Pakistan border, NATO spokeswoman Master Sgt. Sabrina Foster.

Residents in Ali Shir told The Associated Press they heard a large blast from inside the base after dark Tuesday. However, Foster could not confirm reports the attack took place at the base.

NATO later said it was looking into what happened, and declined to immediately release the name or size of its base in the district.

The assault in the east came hours after visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates toured an area of southern Afghanistan where international forces recently drove out Taliban insurgents.

Aiming to show progress in the expanded war against insurgents in south Afghanistan, Gates took a brief, heavily guarded walk Tuesday down a rutted street in Now Zad, retaken only late last year by international forces.

Now Zad was the scene of the first significant military push following President Barack Obama’s announcement in early December that he would add 30,000 troops atop 17,000 reinforcements he had already sent into the flagging war.

With the additional firepower, U.S. Marines moved into Now Zad last December and quickly pushed out Taliban fighters who had seized the town four years ago and forced every civilian to flee.

Anti-terrorist units used information from the CIA, FBI and European intelligence agencies to identify the suspected terrorist cell of three women and four men. They are believed to include Algerian, Libyan, Croatian, U.S. and Palestinian citizens and at least one naturalized Irish citizen.

They were arrested in Cork and Waterford after a four-month international investigation.

The artist, Lars Vilks, has received death threats this year and was forced to go into hiding after his depictions of the Prophet were printed in a Swedish newspaper in 2007.

After the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard was threatened by a Somali axeman in January, Vilks said he had received calls from “a Swedish-speaking Somali” who said: “Now it’s your turn”

Gabriela Shalev told journalists at the U.N. Israel still hopes diplomatic engagement and sanctions will halt Iran’s push to become a nuclear power, but warned: “our intelligence tells us … that Iran is racing towards this kind of nuclear capability, and it’s not a matter of years.”

She pointed out that Iran is already admitting that it’s enriching uranium and that the level of enrichment is higher than needed for civilian use.

Shalev said high-ranking Israeli and U.S. government and military leaders both in Washington and Jerusalem are currently discussing whether a military strike could stop Iran’s nuclear program.

Israel’s chief of staff is visiting Washington, while U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is in Jerusalem.

Shalev said she was encouraged that Biden said Iran poses a threat to the United States.

“I say even more — Iran is a threat to the whole world,” she added.

The United States and key Western powers have circulated proposals for a fourth round of U.N. sanctions to step up pressure on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and start negotiations on its nuclear program.

Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful, aimed solely at producing nuclear energy. But the West’s concerns were heightened by a recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency that said Tehran may be making nuclear bombs.

Shalev said that China and Russia — both veto-wielding members of the Security Council — still believe there’s room for diplomacy.

“They still believe — and I respect it — that you have to exhaust all diplomatic efforts before you have these kind of sanctions that will affect the economy,” she said. “They do not want to inflict any harm on the Iranian people.”

Israel, on the other hand, believes that diplomatic overtures have been exhausted because “the Iranians are mocking them and defying … the formal resolutions of the Security Council,” she said.

Israel would like the council to approve “crippling” sanctions, but Shalev conceded “the chances now seem grim.”

If the council doesn’t act, she said, Israel will urge the United States and the European Union to impose tough measures.

In Washington, the House passed legislation last December that would bar U.S. export of technology to help Iran develop its petroleum capacity, but the Senate has not acted. Congress previously barred American investment in Iran’s energy programs.

Kenneth Katzman, an Iran analyst, told a conference in Washington Tuesday at the Atlantic Council, a prominent think tank, that the mood in Congress appeared to be favorable to imposing U.S. sanctions.

“Congress will work to find every which way to squeeze Iran,” he said.

But Flynt Leverett, a former CIA, State Department and White House official, dismissed U.S. sanctions on Iran as “a policy of feeling good” that would open the door for China and other countries to take up the slack.

The controversial drawing by Swedish artist Lars Vilks was printed in Stockholm papers Dagens Nyheter and Expressen and the Malmo daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet.

Irish authorities had said Tuesday they detained four men and three women suspected of involvement in an alleged plot to kill Vilks.

Sydsvenska Dagbladet said it printed the drawing as part of its news coverage of the alleged plot. Expressen said it printed it for its news value and to take a stance for the freedom of speech.

Dagens Nyheter said in an editorial that “Vilks doesn’t stand alone in this conflict. A threat against him is, in the long term, also a threat against all Swedes.”

Vilks has faced several death threats since the drawing was first printed by a Swedish newspaper in 2007, a year after separate cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper sparked furious protests in Muslim nations. Al Qaeda put a $100,000 bounty on his head.

Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.

Vilks said Wednesday he wasn’t sure whether to take the alleged plot seriously.

“Not until all the cards are on the table. I’m sure they have plans, but the question is how far they can go,” he told The Associated Press by telephone.

Vilks said it was possible he was also being targeted by an American woman accused by U.S. authorities of recruiting jihadist fighters online. Colleen R. LaRose had discussions her alleged plans with at least one of the suspects apprehended in Ireland, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official wasn’t authorized to discuss details of the investigation.

Sweden’s security police, SAPO, declined to comment on whether the cases in Ireland and the U.S. were linked to Vilks.

The attack prompted World Vision, a major international humanitarian group, to suspend its operations in Pakistan. Other aid organizations condemned the violence but said it would not lead them to curtail their own activities.

The assault took place in Ogi, a small town in Mansehra district that was badly hit by the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, which killed about 80,000 people and left 3 million people homeless.

“It was a brutal and senseless attack,” said Dean Owen, World Vision spokesman in Seattle, Washington. “It was completely unexpected, unannounced and unprovoked.”

Extremists have killed other foreign aid group employees in Pakistan and accused such organizations of working against Islam, greatly hampering efforts to raise living standards in the desperately poor region. Many groups have already scaled down operations in the northwest or pulled out altogether.

Wednesday’s attack may have been prompted by World Vision’s religious affiliation. Islamists often target Christian groups, which they accuse of trying to convert Muslims.

World Vision was founded 60 years ago in the U.S. and is one of the world’s largest and most well-funded Christian aid organizations.

The Pakistani government has fought back against militants in the northwest with a series of military operations, and the U.S. has pummeled the insurgents with dozens of drone strikes near the Afghan border, including two Wednesday that killed at least 15 people.

The 10 gunmen who attacked the World Vision office first opened fire and then left a homemade bomb they detonated by remote control, police official Liaquat Shah said.

“They left a locally made pressure cooker bomb that exploded soon after the attackers fled the scene, killing NGO people first by gunfire and then with the blast,” Shah said.

Two of the six dead were women, and another four people were wounded, said local police chief Sajid Khan.

The attack seriously damaged the aid group’s office, leaving the ground strewn with rubble and the concrete walls pockmarked with bullet holes, AP Television News footage showed. A tattered red office chair lay overturned among the debris.

Al Qaeda, the Taliban and allied groups are strong in northwestern Pakistan, but Mansehra has been relatively peaceful and lies outside the tribal belt next to Afghanistan where the militants have their main bases.

Islamist militants see foreign aid groups and local outfits that receive international funds as a challenge to their authority in regions under their influence. The organizations often employ women and support female rights initiatives, further angering the extremists.

Many foreign aid groups set up offices in Mansehra after the 2005 earthquake. In 2008, militants there killed four Pakistanis working for Plan International, a British-based charity that mainly helps children. The attack forced several foreign agencies to scale back assistance to the area.

But aid groups said that Wednesday’s attack would not cause them to suspend their operations.

“I would not feel that it means anything but intensifying our own way of doing things,” said Pepe Salmela, the country director for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which works on community-based health and disaster preparedness programs in Mansehra.

“We have quite a big security team and a security coordinator in Islamabad who went to Mansehra today to study the situation,” said Salmela.

U.N. spokeswoman Ishrat Rizvi also said the attack would not curtail the world body’s activities in Pakistan.

“Any single attack on any implementing partner would not result in the closure of U.N. operations in those areas, but we definitely condemn any such attack,” Rizvi said.

The suspected U.S. missile strikes that occurred Wednesday hit the Mazer Meda Khel area of the North Waziristan tribal region, said local government official Sabir Khan.

In the first attack, drones fired four missiles at a house and a nearby truck, killing six people, said Khan.

As locals were trying to recover the bodies from the attack, drones fired two more missiles at the group and another nearby vehicle, killing nine people, Khan said.

The identities of those killed in the attacks were not known.

The U.S. refuses to discuss publicly the drone program in Pakistan, but officials say privately it has killed several senior Al Qaeda and Taliban commanders.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson faced a furious backlash after he unveiled proposals including compulsory insurance and microchip implants for all pooches.

He aimed to target thugs who increasingly use dogs such as rottweilers or illegally-kept pitbulls as weapons in turf wars. There were also several family tragedies, including the death last year of four-year-old John-Paul Massey, mauled by a pitbull at his grandmother’s house in Liverpool, northen England.

Vicious animals, or “weapon” dogs, could be made subject to orders under which rogue owners would have to muzzle or neuter them — or face having them confiscated.

But law-abiding dog fans said they would have to fork out up to $745 for the insurance, aimed at ensuring compensation was paid to victims of attacks.

And the microchips, which would contain owner data and be used for tracking, could cost another $50. Up to eight millions dogs could be affected.

RSPCA spokesman Rob Harris said the problem of savage dogs should be addressed — but the government plans went too far.

“The announcement is a major step forward,” he said.

“But the insurance scheme risks targeting the law-abiding owner rather than those causing the problems.”

Caroline Davis, editor of Dogs Monthly magazine, said insurance would be costly and would not stop horrific attacks.

“Not everyone will comply with this idea anyway. The only difference will be that law-abiding owners will foot the bill for their uncaring counterparts,” she said.

Davis also expressed concern that the additional cost would be prohibitively expensive for low-income families with dogs, calling the plans “knee-jerk” reactions and “not enforceable.”

But Sam Hallow, whose two-year-old daughter needed 100 stitches after being attacked by a Staffordshire bull terrier, supported the plan.

“I’m all for the new measures. And dog owners having insurance against attacks is the most important of the controls.

“Luckily the dog which attacked Kira was insured, which made everything much less stressful than it could have been. It was hard enough trying to cope with what happened without battling over money as well,” Hallow said.

The rumors first began on Twitter, but have since gathered a head of steam on more mainstream media sites.

Now the country is buzzing with speculation about the possibility of two dangerous liaisons at the heart of the French political system.

The news first broke when it was tweeted that the glamorous Bruni — Sarkozy’s wife of a mere two years — had fallen head over heels in love with the French musician Benjamin Biolay.

The Webzine suchablog.com later suggested Bruni and Biolay had built a love nest together at an apartment in Paris.

But that romantic bombshell was quickly followed by another allegation of equal magnitude, after it was reported that Sarkozy was enjoying a relationship with his dynamic ecology minister, Chantal Jouanno.

Sarkozy has refused to confirm or deny the cyberspace gossip about his alleged lover, who is also a karate champion.

The rumors are now widespread, which many analysts in Paris believe gives them some credibility.

However some corners are suggesting that news of Sarkozy’s affair is simply an attempt by the French president to save face.

Toby Young, in his blog for the Daily Telegraph, believes that the fling with Jouanno was dreamt up by a PR man, especially as the French president was left by his second wife for another man.

He claims: “Sarkozy the swordsman cuts a more appealing figure than Sarkozy the cuckold.”

Sarkozy and Bruni were married in February 2008.

Drivers who were part of Friday’s incident told Russian television that the suspect’s speeding vehicle broke through their blockade on a major Moscow highway, and that no one was injured but cars were damaged.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, under the Prosecutor General’s Office, confirmed that police had formed a “human shield,” and that unspecified action would be taken. The committee could conclude its investigation by asking for criminal charges to be filed.

“We could have been killed,” one driver, Stanislav Sutyagin, said in a video posted on YouTube, adding police had warned that the suspect was armed and dangerous. “What if the criminal stopped? We could have come under fire. … Is it really the case that our lives are worthless in the Russian state?”

“I saw in the mirror that the car was flying toward us,” another driver, Nikolai Koroloyov, told Russian state television. “I leaned to the left … and the car broke through and screeched away.”

Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said in televised comments later Wednesday that “using people in a human shield is unacceptable.” The state news agency RIA Novosti quoted him as saying the drivers’ cars would be fixed and they would receive monetary compensation.

Russian news agencies reported that Moscow police chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev had fired traffic policeman Alexander Kozlov, whose subordinates conducted Friday’s operation.

The incident has drawn loud condemnation from activists at a time when police are rapidly garnering a reputation as a threat rather than protection, despite President Dmitry Medvedev’s reforms.

Medvedev recently pledged to reform the force, promising to cut thousands of jobs at the bloated Interior Ministry while firing a dozen ministry generals nationwide.

On Wednesday, he ordered an investigation into another traffic accident, Russian news agencies reported. In it, a Mercedes carrying the vice president of Russia’s oil company Lukoil collided with a light Citroen, killing two women in the smaller car earlier this month.

The oil company official, Anatoly Barkov, escaped with no significant injuries, and police blamed the victims for the accident.

However, Barkov’s driver has come under suspicion after security camera footage disappeared and witness accounts contradicted official reports. Barkov denies wrongdoing, and he sent condolences to the families of the women killed.

Professor Pat Cantrill, author of the independent report, said that action should have been taken to rescue the women at least a decade earlier once a “substantial picture” of the abuses had been drawn up.

She said a culture of “having a quiet word” had contributed to the failure to intervene, despite seven allegations of incest from members of the family.

Public sector agencies in Sheffield and Lincolnshire today issued an unreserved apology to the women, now adults, for failing to protect them from their father.

“We are genuinely sorry,” said Chris Cook, independent chair of Lincolnshire Safeguarding Children Board. “We should have protected you.”

The 57-year-old man, who cannot be identified to protect his children, received 25 life sentences after his daughters told social workers of their lifelong ordeal in 2008.

Cantrill’s review of the case, published Wednesday, disclosed that more than 100 care professionals from 28 agencies were involved with the family in Sheffield and Lincolnshire over a 35-year period from 1973 to 2008.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela said she could not forgive him for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 alongside F.W. De Klerk, according to Tuesday’s Evening Standard, a British newspaper. The white president released Mandela and went on to participate in negotiations that ended apartheid.

“He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside. The economy is very much ‘white.’ It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded,” Madikizela-Mandela was quoted as saying.

The Star newspaper in Johannesburg accused Madikizela-Mandela of unleashing a “rant.”

The governing African National Congress said it would not comment until its leaders could discuss the article with Madikizela-Mandela, who was traveling abroad Wednesday.

Mandela is revered by blacks and whites in South Africa, but is not above criticism. The most common are complaints that he devoted too much time during his 1994-99 presidency to seeking reconciliation with whites and too little to uplifting blacks mired in poverty by apartheid.

Yet Madikizela-Mandela’s comments contrast sharply with those she made only last month at a forum marking the 20th anniversary of his release from prison. She said then that Mandela was loved and recognized around the world for his fearlessness, and that he had emerged from prison still committed to revolution.

The contrast prompted the Johannesburg newspaper The Times to accuse her of having “two faces.”

Mandela accused Madikizela-Mandela, his second wife, of infidelity and the two divorced in 1996, six years after he walked free following 27 years in prison. In recent years, Madikizela-Mandela has often joined Mandela and his third wife, former Mozambican first lady Graca Machel, at family gatherings.

After a series of scandals over violence and fraud, Madikizela-Mandela also has regained prominence in the ANC, where she is embraced in particular by young members impatient with the slow pace of change since apartheid ended in 1994. After internal party voting, she was high on the ANC’s list of candidates in last year’s elections, and sits in parliament.

In the interview, Madikizela-Mandela is quoted as accusing the current ANC leadership of exploiting Mandela’s image while sidelining him as a leader. She also accuses his foundations of using him to raise money.

Mandela is largely retired now, with several foundations led by the Nelson Mandela Foundation carrying out his work. In February, Madikizela-Mandela called the foundations “a lasting tribute to his legacy.”

The Nelson Mandela Foundation did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

The Standard article also quotes Madikizela-Mandela as criticizing South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was an attempt to address the horrors of apartheid without pursuing retribution. In the interview, she calls its leader, Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu, a “cretin.” Tutu, through his office, refused comment Wednesday.

The Evening Standard interview was with Nadira Naipaul, wife of Nobel literature laureate V.S. Naipaul. In the Standard article, Nadira Naipaul said she and her husband were touring Africa when they met Madikizela-Mandela in her mansion in Soweto. They were in South Africa last year.

Madikizela-Mandela’s comments competed for prominence in South African media with reports that the fiery leader of the ANC Youth League had led University of Johannesburg students in the song, “Shoot the boere, they are rapists” at a rally Tuesday.

Boere translates as farmers in Afrikaans, the language of white South African descendants of early Dutch settlers. Afrikaners and others accused Julius Malema of inciting violence against whites.

Ishmael Mnisi, an ANC spokesman, told The Associated Press that the song challenges those who do not want to see change in a society still divided by race. Mnisi said Malema’s singing was not “a call to kill people,” and no disciplinary action against him was planned.

The league’s Arab peace initiative committee on Wednesday called for a meeting of Arab foreign ministers to reconsider their support for the talks they extended on March 3.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to a proposal to resume U.S.-mediated peace negotiations with the Israelis after 14 month hiatus due to the backing from Arab countries.

The committee said Israel’s announcement Tuesday to build 1,600 new housing units showed it was not serious about negotiating.

The committee said if the Israeli moves are not halted immediately the talks would have “no meaning.”

Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon”.

He added: “When one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia.”

He claimed that another example of satanic behavior was the Vatican “cover-up” over the deaths in 1998 of Alois Estermann, the then commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife and Corporal Cedric Tornay, a Swiss Guard, who were all found shot dead. “They covered up everything immediately,” he said. “Here one sees the rot”.

A remarkably swift Vatican investigation concluded that Corporal Tornay had shot the commander and his wife and then turned his gun on himself after being passed over for a medal. However, Tornay’s relatives have challenged this. There have been unconfirmed reports of a homosexual background to the tragedy and the involvement of a fourth person who was never identfied.

But Hickey came away from the phone call hopeful that her son, Shane Bauer, and two other Americans held for nearly eight months in Iran will be home soon.

“The next time I hear his voice I’d like it to be in person,” Hickey, of Minnesota, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The families of Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal also said they received calls Tuesday and all three reported being well. In a statement, the families called the conversations “a tremendous relief.”

Hickey said it was “exciting to hear this voice after not having his condition confirmed for over four months.”

“The first thing he said was: `Mom, this is Shane. I love you, I miss you, I’m strong. How are you?”‘ Hickey said. “I answered: `I’m strong, I’m determined, it’s not going to end until you’re home.”‘

Hickey said Bauer, 27, asked how everyone at home was doing and expressed concern for his two sisters.

“He sounded strong. He was talking very fast,” said Hickey, who said she assumed the call was monitored. “He sounded determined. It was very good to hear that strength in his voice.”

The families say Bauer, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27, were hiking in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region in July when they accidentally crossed the border into Iran.

Hickey said the last time she talked to her son was about a week before he went on his trip. She said it was an “unexpected call but expected.”

The families say Bauer and Fattal are being held in the same prison cell in Tehran. Shourd is alone in another cell.

Fattal’s mother, Laura Fattal, said her husband spoke to their son.

“It was emotional for everyone,” she said, noting that the family hadn’t heard from Josh since a July 27 e-mail. “It was like a thousand pounds lifted off my back. … We were just thrilled.”

Her son said he has been well fed and was getting a chance to exercise, read letters and books sent to him, as well as watch English language television daily, Fattal said. Her son also said he had seen footage of himself and his friends on TV, as well as footage of his mother talking about the case.

Iran says the three are spies. U.S. officials are calling for the hikers’ release.

Speaking to reporters in Washington on Wednesday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley called the phone calls a positive development, but said the U.S. was still seeking consular access to the three through the Swiss Embassy.

Switzerland has represented U.S. consular interests in Iran since Washington and Tehran broke off diplomatic relations following the 1979 Islamic revolution. Crowley said the Swiss haven’t had consular access to the detainees since Oct. 29.

“As we have repeatedly said, we believe that these three American hikers should be released,” Crowley said. He also called for the release of Reza Taghavi and Kian Tajbakhsh, two other American citizens being held in Iran, and he called on the Iranian government to help find Robert Levinson, who went missing in Iran three years ago.

Iran’s top human rights official said in February that Iranian authorities are considering a request by the families of the Americans to visit them in prison. Hickey said the families have not heard yet if they’ll be able to visit the three.

In late December, Iran’s foreign minister said the Americans would be tried in court, but he did not say when that would happen or what they would be charged with, other than to say they had “suspicious aims.”

The boy, identified only as Carlos, told reporters Wednesday he remained calm during the ordeal because his mother used to make him practice dialing 911 in case of emergencies.

VIDEO: Listen to the Boy’s 911 Call

Carlos gave a hug to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s dispatcher Monique Patino, who called the boy “my little hero.”

The assailants invaded Carlos’ home and held his parents at gunpoint Tuesday while he and his 6-year-old sister hid in a locked bathroom. He begged the dispatcher to “bring cops. A lot of them!… And bring soldiers, too.”

The assailants left without stealing anything once they realized the boy had called 911. Police are looking for the suspects.

Miami International Airport spokesman Greg Chin says American Airlines flight 683, bound for Santiago, made its way to the runway at about 11:50 a.m. Wednesday. But after leaving the gate, the pilot soon turned around.

A Miami-Dade Police Department spokeswoman says the passenger was removed from the flight. No further details were immediately available about what the person had done.

Minorities make up nearly half the children born in the U.S., part of a historic trend in which minorities are expected to become the U.S. majority over the next 40 years.

The numbers are growing because immigration to the U.S. has boosted the number of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years. Minorities made up 48 percent of U.S. children born in 2008, the latest census estimates available, compared to 37 percent in 1990.

“Census projections suggest America may become a minority-majority country by the middle of the century. For America’s children, the future is now,” said Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire who researched many of the racial trends in a paper being released Wednesday.

Johnson explained there are now more Hispanic women of prime childbearing age who tend to have more children than women of other races. More white women are waiting until they are older to have children, but it is not yet known whether that will have a noticeable effect on the current trend of increasing minority newborns.

Broken down by race, about 52 percent of babies born in 2008 were white. That’s compared to about 25 percent who were Hispanic, 15 percent black and 4 percent Asian. Another 4 percent were identified by their parents as multiracial.

The numbers highlight the nation’s growing racial and age divide, seen in pockets of communities across the U.S., which could heighten tensions in current policy debates from immigration reform and education to health care and Social Security.

There are also strong implications for the 2010 population count, which begins in earnest next week, when more than 120 million U.S. households receive their census forms in the mail. The Census Bureau is running public service announcements this week to improve its tally of young children, particularly minorities, who are most often missed in the once-a-decade head count. The campaign features Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer, the English- and Spanish-speaking cartoon character who helps “mommy fill out our census form.”

The population figures are used to distribute federal aid and redraw legislative boundaries with racial and ethnic balance, as required by federal law.

“The adults among themselves sometimes forget the census is about everyone, and kids should be counted,” said Census Bureau director Robert Groves. “If we fail to count a newborn that is born this month, that newborn misses all the benefits of the census for 10 years.”

Whites currently make up two-thirds of the total U.S. population, and recent census estimates suggest the number of minorities may not overtake the number of whites until 2050.

Right now, roughly 1 in 10 of the nation’s 3,142 counties already have minority populations greater than 50 percent. But 1 in 4 communities have more minority children than white children or are nearing that point, according to the study, which Johnson co-published.

That is because Hispanic women on average have three children, while other women on average have two. The numbers are 2.99 children for Hispanics, 1.87 for whites, 2.13 for blacks and 2.04 for Asians in the U.S. And the number of white women of prime childbearing age is on the decline, dropping 19 percent from 1990.

For example:

— In Gwinnett County, Ga., an Atlanta suburb, the population has shifted from 16 percent minority in 1990 to 58 percent minority in 2008. The number of blacks and Hispanics nearly doubled, while the number of white young people stayed roughly the same.

— The population of Dakota County, Neb., increased from 15 percent minority in 1990 to 54 percent in 2008, due largely to an influx of Hispanics who came looking for work in meatpacking and other labor.

— In Lake County, Ind., a suburb of Chicago, the minority population grew from 43 percent in 1990 to 53 percent in 2008 as the number of white children declined, the number of blacks stayed stable and the number of Hispanics increased.

The 2008 census estimates used local records of births and deaths, tax records of people moving within the U.S., and census statistics on immigrants. The figures for “white” refer to those whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity.

State officials say they hope to dislodge the boulder Wednesday and then decide when they can reopen some lanes.

The boulder is 20 feet in diameter and 900 feet above the highway. Workers will break it apart with compressor-powered drills hauled to the site by helicopter.

A 17-mile stretch of I-70 has been closed since Monday after the slide rained boulders onto the road and punched gaping holes in an elevated section.

Authorities say a woman commuting to work in northwest Colorado was killed Wednesday when a boulder fell on a car about 60 miles north of the I-70 incident.

Lawyers for the children contended that Huron County children’s services workers should have discovered what was before they did and removed the children.

“There were red flags that should have had the county in their sooner,” said attorney Jack Landskroner.

Instead of filing a lawsuit, attorneys for the children negotiated with the county on the settlement, announced Wednesday.

The children suffered from problems such as fetal alcohol syndrome and ranged in age from 1 to 14 when authorities removed them from their Norwalk home in 2005. Their adoptive parents, Michael and Sharen Gravelle, are serving two-year prison terms for abusing some of the children.

The county has denied blame and said the social workers did nothing improper. A message seeking comment was left Wednesday with the children’s services agency.

County officials, Landskroner said, decided it would be better to settle with the children than spending money fighting a lawsuit in court.

A trustee who will oversee the settlement will determine how much money each child will receive while courts will help determine when they receive the money.

Two of the oldest children filed a separate a lawsuit last year against the Gravelles and caseworkers who arranged the adoptions. The suit said the Gravelles were unfit to be parents and should never have gotten custody of the children.

Landskroner said that all the children who were placed with foster parents are doing well now and that the oldest is now in college.

In interviews with The Associated Press and in dozens of anecdotes compiled in a survey by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance, officers described feeling compelled to use tactics they employed in war zones after they returned to work in the U.S.

One officer said he felt compelled to fire his gun in the air to disperse an unruly crowd in California. Others said they felt they felt wary about being flanked when working crowd control. And others said after seeing the hardships ordinary Afghans and Iraqis lived with, it’s hard to care about complaints over pet droppings.

The report, which was issued late last year, warns that the blurring of the line between combat and confrontations with criminal suspects at home may result in “inappropriate decisions and actions — particularly in the use of … force. This similarity … could result in injury or death to an innocent civilian.”

In two high-profile cases, officers blamed their overzealous use of force on complications from their military service.

Wayne Williamson, an Austin, Texas, police officer who served 18 months in Iraq, was fired in 2008 after he opened fire on a fleeing assault suspect in a crowded parking lot. A dispatcher had reported that the suspect was carrying a knife, but Williamson said he didn’t see a weapon when he fired.

None of the rounds hit their mark, but one struck a minivan with two children inside. They were not injured.

Williamson told investigators he had been having trouble readjusting to some aspects of civilian life and that he had trouble differentiating between Iraq and Austin during the confrontation.

“In Iraq, if a bad buy gets away, he could come back and blow you up or blow up someone who works with you,” Williamson told the AP. “You do everything you can to make sure the bad guy doesn’t get away. … I can’t absolve myself of Iraq. How deeply it affected me, I don’t know … I’m not the same person who left.”

His police chief didn’t buy it, noting in the disciplinary records that Williamson hadn’t previously showed signs of distress.

On Friday, a former sheriff’s sergeant who served in the Gulf War before leaving the Army 17 years ago was sentenced to 18 months in prison for repeatedly punching a handcuffed suspect in the face in the back of his squad car. Scott Krause, 38, has post-traumatic stress disorder and doesn’t remember the incident, which was videotaped, Krause’s psychotherapist told the judge at the sentencing hearing.

Krause’s former boss, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, said Krause never told his colleagues he was struggling.

The survey was based on interviews with 53 law enforcement officers who had returned from serving in the National Guard or reserves, as well as written responses from 340 returned veterans and 112 police chiefs.

Laura Zimmerman, a psychologist who contributed to the study, said the irritability some respondents reported feeling with citizens back home stems from a sense that the stakes have been lowered. Officers have gone from helping build nations to writing speeding tickets, she said.

“They’ve seen bigger problems now. Coming back to policing, the mission doesn’t feel as critical,” she said. “Once you raise the bar, coming back down is just difficult. I think it’s just that feeling of non-purpose here.”

Todd Nehls, the sheriff of Dodge County, Wis., and a colonel in the Wisconsin National Guard, said that after spending a year stationed in Afghanistan, he’s had less patience for small complaints back home. After seeing people go without electricity and walk miles for fresh water, he said, you quickly grow tired of citizens complaining about dogs urinating in their neighbor’s lawn.

Zimmerman said the urban nature of the Iraq war, as compared to the jungle warfare that dominated the Vietnam War, may have made it more difficult for some returning officers to adjust to urban life back home. She said examples like Williamson’s shooting are rare, but that potential is there.

“Now it is easier to muddle the environments,” Zimmerman said.

The study’s authors hope it will help law enforcement agencies develop protocols to help reintegrate the thousands of officers called up since the start of the war in Afghanistan.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs offers no programs specifically for police officers, but many larger law enforcement agencies have started reintegration programs that include visits with psychologists, weapons refresher training and rides with trainers.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which lost 364 of its employees to deployment shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, began requiring returning deputies to go through weapons and driving refresher training and ride-alongs before returning to patrol.

Jung Kim, a pyschologist who interviews every returning deputy as part of the department’s reintegration program, said many report having trouble sleeping, feeling safe on patrol in their squad cars.

“(Overseas) they go over medians and bump cars in front of them to get them out of the way,” Kim said. “Obviously you can’t do that.”

Clarke, the Milwaukee County sheriff, said the squad car beating has led him to look into how other agencies deal with returning veterans. He said it’s important that returning officers find the strength to talk openly about their problems.

“If the person doesn’t develop that courage to say, ‘hey, I need help,’ it’s very difficult to help them before they reach a breaking point,” Clarke said.

A Fulton County judge’s Wednesday order also gives an interim custodian control over The King Center for Nonviolent Change, which has been at the center of a legal feud.

Martin Luther King III, Bernice King and Dexter King had aired their grievances in open court for more than a year. They reached the settlement in October.

Dexter King’s brother and sister sued him in 2008, accusing him of acting improperly as head of their father’s estate, called King Inc. They claimed he shut them out of decisions and refused to hold a shareholders meeting since 2004.

A medical examiner on Wednesday said two lived in Bakersfield, Calif.: 56-year-old Hermalinda Roman De Hernandez and Margarita Roman DeHaro, age unknown.

Margarita Banuelos was 58 and lived in Los Angeles, and Maria Del Refugio Gonzales, age unknown, lived in Van Nuys, Calif.

The only man killed was 85-year-old J. Nicanor Rodarte Hernandez of Temecula, Calif. The lone Mexican resident was 68-year-old Eusevia Valerio Rios of Durango, Mexico.

The bus was headed to Los Angeles from the central Mexican state of Zacatecas on Friday when it hit a pickup on Interstate 10 south of Phoenix and rolled.

Sixteen passengers were also injured.

Jose Luis Nazario filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court, seeking more than $4.5 million in damages.

Nazario’s attorney Joseph Preis claims the city of Riverside violated a federal employment law that prohibits discrimination against veterans.

A phone message left for the Riverside city attorney wasn’t immediately returned.

Nazario was acquitted of voluntary manslaughter in 2008 after authorities alleged he killed or caused others to kill four unarmed detainees in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004.

Nazario was fired by Riverside officials shortly before his arrest in 2007. He claims the city said it would rehire him if he was acquitted.

Speaking on the GOP’s expected strategy against Democrats in elections this fall, Rather said Republicans would describe President Obama as “a nice person … very articulate” but an ineffective leader who “couldn’t sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”

On Wednesday, Rather apologized in an article he posted on HuffingtonPost.com.

“It’s an expression that stretches to my boyhood roots in Southeast Texas, when country highways were lined with stands manned by sellers of all races,” Rather wrote.

“Now of course watermelons have become a stereotype for African Americans and so my analogy entered a charged environment. I’m sorry people took offense.”

Rather’s comment had raised some eyebrows on media blogs, which noted the potential “racial minefield.”

“But anyone who knows me personally or knows my professional career would know that race was not on my mind,” Rather said.

Police allege 55-year-old Charles E. Bentley broke into the First Christian Church on Thursday. After gathering items from around the building, he is believed to have gone to the basement to spend the night.

Police summoned to the church Friday by staff, found Bentley trying to haul away a garbage can filled with food, kitchen utensils, clothes, electronic equipment and a 26-inch flat-screen television.

Police Cmdr. Mike Brennan says Bentley used the electronic equipment to watch pornographic movies that were found on him when he was arrested.

Bentley is being held at the Story County Jail in lieu of $10,000 bond.

DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Dan Coursey said Wednesday releasing the photos of Meredith Emerson to Hustler Magazine would cause “irreparable harm.”

Authorities had already announced they would refuse the porn publication’s request for photos of the 24-year-old, whose decapitated body was found in January 2008 in the north Georgia woods.

But her family filed a lawsuit against the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to obtain a court order barring the photos’ release. Hustler had requested the photos from the bureau.

Postal Service spokeswoman Eva Jackson said Wednesday that Dana Kennette is now in a job that does not deal with the public. Kennette had been delivering mail in the Rancho Bernardo area of San Diego, where he lives.

The Megan’s Law Web site says he was convicted of lewd or lascivious acts on a child under 14. There is no telephone listing for Kennette.

Concern is high in the San Diego area after a sex offender was charged last week with murdering 17-year-old Chelsea King. Police are also investigating the death of 14-year-old Amber Dubois of nearby Escondido, whose remains were found over the weekend.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Greg Palmore says they were arrested Tuesday at Fremont Beef for immigration violations.

He said Wednesday that immigration agents performed an “enforcement action” — not a raid — to determine whether Fremont Beef is complying with immigration laws.

He says no further information is available.

A message left by The Associated press for a company spokeswoman was not immediately returned.

Viktor Grigorevich Gebauer, 79, has pleaded not guilty in the death of another Russian-speaking immigrant, Viktor Merezhnikov, 47, whose body was found on a chair in what a prosecutor described as a makeshift waiting room at Gebauer’s home in suburban Gresham.

Chris Ramras, a Multnomah County deputy district attorney, said no motive for the Feb. 18 shooting has been determined.

“We may never know,” Ramras said Wednesday.

He said both men had emigrated from the former Soviet Union, but he did not know where, or whether they were ethnic Russians.

Robert Axford, the court-appointed attorney for Gebauer, declined to comment on Wednesday.

In court documents, Ramras said the victim called his brother, Vladimir Merezhnikov, to say he was being held at gunpoint by Gebauer, who was threatening to kill him.

Vladimir Merezhnikov did not know where Gebauer lived, and he contacted Viktor Merezhnikov’s daughter, Olga, and his wife, Raisa, and they went to the Gebauer home.

They told police that Gebauer opened the door holding a gun and Vladimir Merezhnikov could see his brother slumped in a chair.

Vladimir Merezhnikov said Gebauer threatened to shoot him before closing the door, and the family of the victim called police.

After a Russian-speaking officer arrived, Gebauer emerged and surrendered. The victim was found shot in the abdomen, according to court documents.

Gebauer told police he had never seen Viktor Merezhnikov before the shooting, and claimed the victim tried to rob him using a knife.

But the victim’s wife, Raisa, told police that she and her husband knew Gebauer and had been to his home before. She also said her husband did not own a knife like the one found in his left hand, and that he was right-handed.

Also found in Gebauer’s home were a dental chair and dental equipment.

The Oregon Board of Dentistry had been investigating reports of an unlicensed dentist practicing at the Gebauer address in 2009 who was believed to be the same man who was reported practicing in 2000 in the Salem area.

After the shooting, Gresham police told the board that Gebauer had used other last names similar to the names of the man in the 2000 and 2009 reports.

Patrick Braatz, Board of Dentistry executive director, said Wednesday that unlicensed dentistry is rare in Oregon, with only three cases investigated during his seven years with the board.

Braatz noted that unlicensed dentistry is a misdemeanor, and the board can only report its findings to police and be pursued as a criminal case.

Sgt. Rick Wilson, Gresham police spokesman, said a detective investigated the 2009 report but found little cooperation from the Russian immigrant community.

“He was working it in between felony cases and said he just wasn’t getting anywhere,” Wilson said.

Viktor Grigorevich Gebauer, 79, has pleaded not guilty in the death of another Russian-speaking immigrant, Viktor Merezhnikov, 47, whose body was found on a chair in what a prosecutor described as a makeshift waiting room at Gebauer’s home in suburban Gresham.

Chris Ramras, a Multnomah County deputy district attorney, said no motive for the Feb. 18 shooting has been determined.

“We may never know,” Ramras said Wednesday.

He said both men had emigrated from the former Soviet Union, but he did not know where, or whether they were ethnic Russians.

Robert Axford, the court-appointed attorney for Gebauer, declined to comment on Wednesday.

In court documents, Ramras said the victim called his brother, Vladimir Merezhnikov, to say he was being held at gunpoint by Gebauer, who was threatening to kill him.

Vladimir Merezhnikov did not know where Gebauer lived, and he contacted Viktor Merezhnikov’s daughter, Olga, and his wife, Raisa, and they went to the Gebauer home.

They told police that Gebauer opened the door holding a gun and Vladimir Merezhnikov could see his brother slumped in a chair.

Vladimir Merezhnikov said Gebauer threatened to shoot him before closing the door, and the family of the victim called police.

After a Russian-speaking officer arrived, Gebauer emerged and surrendered. The victim was found shot in the abdomen, according to court documents.

Gebauer told police he had never seen Viktor Merezhnikov before the shooting, and claimed the victim tried to rob him using a knife.

But the victim’s wife, Raisa, told police that she and her husband knew Gebauer and had been to his home before. She also said her husband did not own a knife like the one found in his left hand, and that he was right-handed.

Also found in Gebauer’s home were a dental chair and dental equipment.

The Oregon Board of Dentistry had been investigating reports of an unlicensed dentist practicing at the Gebauer address in 2009 who was believed to be the same man who was reported practicing in 2000 in the Salem area.

After the shooting, Gresham police told the board that Gebauer had used other last names similar to the names of the man in the 2000 and 2009 reports.

Patrick Braatz, Board of Dentistry executive director, said Wednesday that unlicensed dentistry is rare in Oregon, with only three cases investigated during his seven years with the board.

Braatz noted that unlicensed dentistry is a misdemeanor, and the board can only report its findings to police and be pursued as a criminal case.

Sgt. Rick Wilson, Gresham police spokesman, said a detective investigated the 2009 report but found little cooperation from the Russian immigrant community.

“He was working it in between felony cases and said he just wasn’t getting anywhere,” Wilson said.

Sixty-five-year-old Alice Via was arrested Wednesday for investigation of animal cruelty and neglect. She ran what she called the San Diego Boxer Rescue and kept mostly boxers and Chihuahuas.

San Diego County spokesman Dan DeSousa says the dogs were confined in cages stacked two high throughout the 750-square-foot home. He says most of the dogs had injuries to their feet and noses from trying to escape and some also had skin and respiratory problems.

DeSousa says officers were alerted by someone who had gone to look at a dog and observed the conditions inside the two-bedroom home.

He says the dogs will be taken to three county shelters.

An indictment released Wednesday claims 46-year-old Douglas James Duchak of Colorado Springs tried to damage the computer after he was told his job was being eliminated.

Prosecutors say Duchak’s job was to update TSA computers with information from the government’s Terrorist Screening Database and U.S. Marshal’s Service Warrant Information Network.

It’s not clear why Duchak was losing his job or whether the computer was damaged.

He faces two counts of attempting intentionally to damage a protected computer. Each carries a prison term of up to 10 years and a fine of up to $250,000.

A call to Duchak’s home phone wasn’t immediately returned.

Authorities say Freddiericka Terrell was in or near the school’s auditorium when she reportedly showed the gun to a group of students during a JROTC class on Wednesday. Shreveport police spokesman, Sgt. Bill Goodin, says the students reported the alleged incident to the school’s security officer and Terrell was arrested.

Terrell, a junior, was booked into the Shreveport City Jail on one count of carrying a firearm or dangerous weapon on school property. If convicted, she faces up to five years in prison.

In addition, Terrell has been suspended from school, pending a hearing.

They kicked things off by robbing an auto mechanic in their home state of Indiana. His bound and burned body was found stuffed in the trunk of his car. Both were initially charged with murdering him, but only Maxwell was convicted of that charge.

About a month later, the couple robbed and killed an off-duty sheriff’s officer in San Antonio in similar fashion, prosecutors said. His bound, blindfolded body was found behind a strip mall.

The hunt for the couple ended after a shootout with police in San Francisco.

On Thursday, Maxwell was set to be executed in Huntsville for the sheriff’s officer’s murder. The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to review his case after a federal appeals court rejected his attorneys’ attempts to get his sentence overturned by arguing that the jurors were given improper instructions.

Maxwell had no court appeals pending Wednesday and had not requested clemency from the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole. The 31-year-old would be the fourth prisoner executed this year in the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. Two other inmates are set for lethal injection this month.

Prosecutors initially charged Maxwell and McFarland, a former stripper, with killing 45-year-old Robby Bott of Mooresville, Ind., in September 2000 after a night out. Authorities said the couple forced the FedEx mechanic to use his credit card to buy them merchandise, and that Bott had been tied him up, strangled, shot, and stuffed in the trunk of his car before it was set on fire.

The couple, who were known as “Mo” and “Trina,” went to Florida and then to San Antonio, where they spent about two weeks before hightailing to California.

While in Texas, the couple met up with 40-year-old Randy Lopes, an off-duty sergeant with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Department. Authorities said similar to Bott’s slaying, the couple forced Lopes to use his credit card for purchases and his ATM card to withdraw money.

Maxwell told police he lured Lopes by placing a personal ad with a telephone dating service, saying he wanted to meet gay or bisexual men willing to have sex while his wife watched.

At a hearing before his capital murder trial, two Bexar County Jail officers testified Maxwell told them Lopes, who long had worked at the jail, begged for his life before he was shot. According to the testimony, Maxwell said he told Lopes to shut up and said to him: “I am going to kill you anyway.”

Five days after Lopes’ body was found behind a San Antonio strip mall, authorities caught up with the couple in San Francisco. Maxwell was driving Lopes’ stolen Chevy pickup and fled when police pulled him over for running a red light.

The couple were arrested after a shootout and car chase through the city’s downtown.

McFarland was wounded during the chase. Lopes’ credit card, badge and service weapon were recovered from the truck, along with a Chinese-made 9 mm pistol determined to be the gun used to fatally shoot Lopes in the top of the head.

In news reports of the time, the couple were compared to the main characters in the 1994 film “Natural Born Killers,” who go on a murderous road trip.

“I think they were just on a roll,” said Mary Nelda Valadez, a former Bexar County assistant district attorney who helped prosecute Maxwell for Lopes’ murder. “They wanted to have this lifestyle, I guess, wandering their lives together.

“They wanted to be cool, but you’ve still got to eat. You’ve got to do it somehow and robbing people is mostly how they were going to do it,” Valadez said.

Maxwell was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in Lopes’ killing. He also was convicted of murder, felony confinement, arson and theft in Bott’s slaying, and was sentenced to 91 years in prison.

McFarland pleaded guilty to capital murder in Lopes’ slaying and received a life prison sentence. She was initially charged with murder, criminal confinement, arson and theft in Bott’s killing, but pleaded guilty to confinement and arson as part of an agreement with prosecutors and was sentenced to a total of 30 years in prison, said Marion County prosecutors’ office spokesman Mario Massillamany.

Authorities had some 12 hours of video Maxwell made with detectives in which he talked in detail about the spree. Prosecutors said they also had a video Maxwell himself made in a bathroom during the cross-country trip, confessing to the crimes and trying to absolve McFarland.

At least 10 Texas inmates are scheduled for execution in the coming months. Next up is Hank Skinner, 47, who is scheduled to die March 24 for a triple slaying in Pampa on New Year’s Eve in 1993.

National police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri told reporters that the devices were ready to be used, but refused to say whether any explosives had been found in Tuesday’s raid on the internet cafe in Pamulang.

“We found detonators to be used to trigger bombs from a distance,” he said.

Dulmatin, an Al Qaeda-trained bomb specialist with a $US10 million ($10.9 million) bounty on his head, was killed by police in Pamulang, president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said, confirming earlier police reports.

Mr Danuri also said that 28 suspects were arrested and three policemen killed in anti-terror raids conducted by security forces in various parts of Indonesia since February 22.

He said the raids were targeting Jemaah Islamiah, the South-East Asian extremist group inspired by Al Qaeda and blamed for multiple attacks across Indonesia, including the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people.

Mr Danuri said police had seized explosives, nine firearms and tens of thousand of bullets, including those suitable for assault rifles such M-16 and AK-47s, in the raids in Aceh, West Java and Jakarta.

“The series of raids are not over yet … we will continue our efforts to fight all the terrorist activities in Indonesia. We will never stop,” he said.

- AFP

Smith celebrated his selection for the two-Test tour across the Tasman by clouting a typically belligerent unbeaten 72 for New South Wales on the first day of their Sheffield Shield clash with South Australia at the SCG.

The hard-hitting middle-order batsman and emerging leg spinner boosted his first-class run tally for the season to 715 at an average of 79.44.

Chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch said Smith’s inclusion added versatility to the squad as he could bat in the top six and would give captain Ricky Ponting the chance to play two spinners.

He is likely to vie with out-of-form Marcus North for the number six spot in the order, but Smith said he had not had enough time to build up any expectations of his prospects.

Smith, who has played five T20 internationals and a single limited overs international, said he was a little bit surprised by his Test call-up.

“I heard a little bit of talking about being involved in the squad and that sort of thing and to get a chance, it’s something something I’ve always dreamed of doing, playing Test cricket,” Smith told reporters after stumps at the SCG.

“If I get a chance to do that, words probably can’t explain how I’m going to feel, but it’s pretty amazing and I’m really looking forward to it.”

Asked where he had heard talk of hs Test prospects Smith said “just a few of the boys just chirping in occasionally, just little remarks and that sort of thing.”

Although he was informed of his selection on Monday night, Smith said he could not tell anyone till after the squad was announced and it had not proven a distraction while batting.

“I wasn’t thinking about it, just going out and taking each ball as it came. I’m pretty excited now that the day is over and I can get it into me,” Smith said.

He anticipated blending into the Test squad without any problems given his familiarity with several members of the team.

“A lot of the guys in the Twenty20 squad that I’ve played a couple of games with now are involved in the Test squad,” Smith said.

“All the guys are a good bunch and they are always really welcoming to newcomers, so I’m sure I’m not going to have a problem fitting in down there.”

Israel’s announcement coincided with Mr Biden’s arrival and came days after Palestinians agreed to re-enter indirect peace talks with Israel.

The vice-president condemned the decision, saying it undermined the trust needed on both sides. He displayed his anger by turning up 90 minutes late to a dinner with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel’s own defence ministry also blasted the move, saying it would affect peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

Mr Biden has since held talks with Palestinian leaders in the West Bank, who say Israel’s decision is dangerous because it will hinder negotiations.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their capital in a future state.

And that is a perfectly understandable attitude, according to Australia’s most successful female golfer, Karrie Webb, who has three times topped the rankings.

Webb even admitted that there was a period she wished she were number two, rather than number one.

Wright, 30, shot to number 12 last year, a season highlighted by her runner-up finish to Swede Anna Nordqvist in the USLPGA Championship.

As she prepares for the Women’s Australian Open, starting at Commonwealth in Melbourne on Thursday, Wright spoke candidly about her ambitions.

“I think it would be great to be number one but I still haven’t figured out whether I want to be number one,” Wright said.

“I think there’s a lot that goes into it, a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice and I’m at the point where I’m not sure if I want to sacrifice time, friends, travel to be number one.

“(From) top 10 to number one, it’s quite a different mentality… to be honest I think every player thinks ‘do I really want to do this?’

“To be number one consistently, that’s something I’m thinking about now – what level I really want to get to.

“Obviously I want to win tournaments but to get to number one, there’s still a lot of work I need to do.

“It is a bit of a change in lifestyle and commitment, there is a lot more pressure on you and I think at that level that’s what you expect.

“It is not an easy career choice. It’s [also] can I handle that pressure, because it’s very intense.”

Webb admitted she would have dealt with issues differently had she had her time as number one over again, but said she could understand Wright’s point of view.

“I think there’s a lot of girls here whose goal is to make a living playing golf and I think we’re all very lucky that we play a sport where you don’t have to be the best in the world to make a living,” Webb said.

“I can only speak for my own experience but I enjoyed how I played golf when I was number one, but I never really enjoyed the pressures associated with that.

“Lindsey sees what extra commitments there are – not just the work you have to put in to be number one but everything else.

“It is a very big sacrifice, you sacrifice your whole life to get there and I don’t begrudge Lindsey for saying that because there was a time when I felt I’d be perfectly happy to be number two in the world,” she said.

Nordqvist said the world number one had to be better at everything than her rivals.

“There’s a lot of good players out there and in order to be number one you have to outwork everyone, you have to be really on top of it,” Nordqvist said.

“It’s a goal for most players, but you can’t really control it.”

-AAP

North, who made just 8 in the Warriors’ first innings against Queensland at the Gabba on Wednesday, was retained in the Test side despite a very lean summer.

He said he banked on the selectors taking into account his two centuries and a 96 against England last year and also a solid performance in his debut series against South Africa earlier last year which included a ton.

“I was hoping the selectors take in my whole Test career,” North said.

However, his form on home soil this summer has been disappointing and there was possibly enough reason for the selectors to axe the Warriors skipper.

He scored just 207 runs in six Tests on home soil during the summer at an average of 23 and in his seven innings for Western Australia since the Tests ended, he has made just 108 runs at an average of 14.7.

“The fact is the series against Pakistan was not great, it was a lean series for myself and I’ve come back to WA and got a few starts but haven’t really got the score I have been after,” North said.

“It’s nice that they have shown the faith.

“It would be a shame to feel that 13 Test matches over the last year, where I felt I have performed in some big series, kind of ends.

“It’s up to the selectors to pick that first Test match and if I continue to hold my place I will be doing everything I can to score runs and contributing to winning a Test match for Australia.”

Asked whether his technique had changed or if he had identified any reason why he has struggled for runs, North said nothing was obvious.

Although he pointed out that he had been exposed to a new ball too often of late on the fast and bouncy WACA pitch.

“I have looked at [that] pretty thoroughly over the last 12 months and my technique hasn’t changed,” North said.

“You will find, and it’s certainly not an excuse, but going back to the WACA where it’s been hard to get in and make a lot of runs.

“If you look back at the last three games, and batting at three, I have been facing a new ball quite a lot.”

-AAP

The two states have so far been excluded from the tour, which commemorates the 95th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli.

The motion’s co-sponsor, Tasmanian Senator Guy Barnett, says 13 of the 97 Victoria Cross recipients have been from his state, the highest proportion of any state or territory.

Senator Barnett says the Senate motion was opposed by the Upper House’s Labor members.

The Victorian Supreme Court has overturned a ruling that the bullying victim was ineligible for government compensation because the perpetrators were too young to have criminal intent.

The decision makes it clear that the legal immunity child bullies enjoy is not an excuse to disregard a victim’s suffering.

Since she was seven, the girl, now 15, was sworn at, insulted, pinched, scratched, pushed, punched, spat on, threatened and laughed at by a group of girls at her state primary school in regional Victoria.

“I wasn’t wanting to go to school because I was getting put through harassment and bullying,” she said.

“I was getting teased and I was getting hit and bashed and I was scared and ended up getting post traumatic stress out of it. I still have it to this day.”

The girl, who cannot be named, says one of the bullies threatened her life.

“She told me that she would kill me and she’d get her uncles to come and kill me in the night,” she said.

“For me, to overturn a law is pretty good because now others won’t have to go through it and the school can actually realise they’ve got bullies they have to deal with.”

Child psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg says it is a landmark decision.

“This is the first recognition that bullying is in fact a crime and deserving of compensation,” he said.

“I’m going to be very interested to see whether it’s extended to cyber bullying and cyber harassment as well.”

The girl’s lawyer, Alistair Lyall, says the judgment should change the way similar compensation claims are treated.

Mr Lyall says it may also have implications for bullying cases nationwide.

“If there was similar legislation in other states it could well impact on those states,” he said.

Mr Lyall agreed with the suggestion that the decision adds more weight to how a victim felt about the bullying rather than what the perpetrators intended or were capable of.

“Absolutely, because the Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal is the opportunity for society to say to the victims, ‘This isn’t on. We’re sorry for what happened. We’ll try and give you a bit of a helping hand’.”

‘Hollow’ threats

The girl’s parents suffered financially after putting her into an expensive private school to protect her from the bullies.

When their application to the crime assistance tribunal was rejected, they took the case to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).

That tribunal dismissed the threats to the girl’s life from her classmate as “hollow” and without criminal intent.

Alastair Nicholson, the chairman of the National Centre Against Bullying and former chief justice of the Family Court, says VCAT should have given more weight to the victim’s experience.

“I was a bit disappointed in the response of VCAT in particular when it said these were hollow threats and therefore really not very serious,” he said.

“I think we tend to forget that these sort of things are very serious to the recipient of them, and a seven or eight-year-old girl can be quite terrified in those circumstances.”

VCAT also cited Victorian law which deems a child under 10 incapable of committing an offence because they cannot have criminal intent.

Professor Nicholson says that is not relevant to the issue of victim compensation.

“That doesn’t mean that what they’re doing doesn’t amount to a crime, it simply means that they’re immune from any consequences for it,” he said.

“But from the point of view of the victim, it doesn’t matter very much to her whether the people doing it are over or under 10, she’s still suffering.”

The case goes back to VCAT where a compensation amount will be determined.