WASHINGTON |
Sun Jul 10, 2011 8:24pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, trailing in public opinion polls, criticized Republican rival Michele Bachmann on Sunday for a “non-existent” record in the Congress.

Pawlenty, a former governor of Minnesota, is competing for the same conservative voters as Bachmann in the early voting state of Iowa.

Bachmann, also from Minnesota and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, is running neck-and-neck in Iowa with front-runner Mitt Romney while Pawlenty had only 6 percent support among Republican voters in a recent poll by the Des Moines Register.

“Well, I like Congresswoman Bachmann. I’ve campaigned for her. I respect her, but her record of accomplishment in Congress is non-existent. It’s non-existent,” Pawlenty told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Bachmann has gained traction with a fiery speaking style that is altogether different from Pawlenty’s laid-back manner.

“We’re not looking for folks who just have speech capabilities, we’re looking for people who can lead a large enterprise in a public setting and drive it to conclusion,” Pawlenty said, touting his own experience as a two-term governor of Minnesota.

In response to Pawlenty’s comments, Bachmann said people could count on her as a fighter. She also defended her records while taking a jab at Pawlenty.

“I have fought the cap-and-trade agenda, rather than implement it, and I will work to end cap-and-trade as president of the United States,” she said in a statement. “I stood up against President Obama’s support of the $700 billion bailout rather than defend it.”

Pawlenty once supported a cap-and-trade system on greenhouse gas emissions but has since changed his stance, saying it was a mistake. He also backed the Bush administration’s bailout of the U.S. financial industry.

In the NBC interview, Pawlenty also raised questions about Romney, saying the healthcare plan he developed for Massachusetts served as a model for President Barack Obama’s overhaul that Republicans want to repeal.

“I don’t think we can have a nominee that was involved in the development and construction of Obamacare and then continues to defend it,” he said.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Vicki Allen)

By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON |
Sat Jul 9, 2011 9:06am EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As a freshman senator, Republican Pat Toomey punches above his weight in the high-stakes fight over increasing the U.S. debt limit.

To cheers and jeers, Toomey — a Tea Party favorite and Wall Street veteran — dismisses as an exaggeration worries about a short-term debt default and wants the Constitution changed to require a balanced federal budget.

Toomey’s stance has won over enough Republicans — some 20 in the Senate and more than 100 in the House of Representatives — to create a potential bloc able to sway talks this weekend between President Barack Obama and leaders in Congress.

“Those numbers lurk like a black cloud over negotiations,” Ethan Siegal of the Washington Exchange, a private firm that tracks Congress and the White House for investors, said of the bloc that includes many Tea Party movement-backed Republicans who have resisted compromise on the debt ceiling.

Obama and congressional leaders ordered staff to work through the weekend toward a possible agreement to trim the massive U.S. deficit, raise the U.S. debt limit and avoid default by an August 2 deadline.

With the White House warning of dire economic consequences of a default, the president and congressional leaders are to meet on Sunday to discuss progress.

Toomey will not be in the room, but his views will be.

“When Toomey speaks, people listen,” a senior Republican aide said.

“He’s a well-regarded member of the new class of freshmen senators,” the aide added, citing his background as a bond trader and small businessman who served in the House and headed Club for Growth, an influential conservative group, before being elected to the Senate last year.

He’s introduced legislation backed by 20 of his 46 fellow Senate Republicans that demands there be no increase in the debt limit unless Congress passes a long-shot amendment to the Constitution to require a balanced federal budget. To become law, it would have to be approved by two-thirds majority votes in the House and Senate, then ratified by three-quarters of the 50 states.

CREATED A STIR

Early this year, he created a stir by accusing Obama of trying to frighten Congress into raising the debt limit by overstating the threat of U.S. default.

Then, he went a step further by offering legislation — denounced by critics as unworkable but backed by 22 Senate Republicans and 101 House Republicans — aimed at shielding against default by ordering the Treasury Department to prioritize debt service over other payments if the debt limit is not raised.

“I’m just trying to shed some light on the situation that we face and engage everybody in an honest discussion,” said Toomey, 49, a self-described “boring wonkish kind of guy.”

While the two measures have helped shape the debate, neither has received the support of Republican leadership and both have drawn fire.

A simple majority is needed to pass most bills in the House, which is now controlled by Republicans, 240-192. Sixty votes are generally needed in the Senate, which is held by Democrats, 53-47.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons calls Toomey’s suggestion that the U.S. avoid default by not paying other federal bills “ludicrous, irresponsible.”

“The idea that we would only spend money on servicing our debt and then not pay other things — well what is that we would suddenly stop doing, paying Social Security benefits, paying Medicare, paying our troops?” Coons said.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says even delays in non-debt payments would rattle investors and undermine the economy.

Toomey brushes off such criticism and says his approach would calm edgy but savvy financial markets.

“As a former government bond trader and someone who stays in touch with the market, I can promise you the bond market knows the difference between some kind of payment obligations and defaulting on our debt,” Toomey said.

With Democrats and Republicans voicing concerns about a possible deal, which could include cuts in entitlement programs and comprehensive tax reform, Toomey says lawmakers must get it right.

“The debt ceiling debate is our best chance, if not the only remaining one, for this Congress to show the American people that we will stop the overspending and skyrocketing debt,” Toomey said. “We have high hurdles to clear.”

(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan and Tim Reid; editing by Vicki Allen)

By Jim Leckrone

COLUMBUS, Ohio |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 6:39pm EDT

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) – A federal judge on Friday delayed the execution of an Ohio man convicted of killing two people, finding that the state enforces some execution policies in an inconsistent way.

“Ohio pays lip service to standards it then often ignores without valid reasons, sometimes with no physical ramification and sometimes with what has been described as messy if not botched executions,” wrote U.S. District Judge Gregory L. Frost.

Kenneth W. Smith, 45, was scheduled to die July 19. He was convicted along with his brother Randy Smith of murdering Lewis Ray and his wife Ruth Ray in their Hamilton, Ohio home as part of a 1995 robbery.

Smith and other inmates argued to Foster that Ohio does not always have the required number of medical team members present for an execution and does not always properly document the preparation of drugs.

Frost’s ruling does not conclusively hold that Ohio’s method of execution is unconstitutional. But it acts as a stay on executions until a trial on the issue, which is scheduled for late October, said Gregory W. Meyers, an Ohio public defender

“The arbitrary and rather cavalier manner in which they depart from protocol is denying inmates’ rights,” said Meyers. He expects the government to appeal.

Lisa Hackley, a spokeswoman for the Ohio attorney general’s office, said its attorneys are reviewing the judge’s order. Ohio has executed four people so far in 2011, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

“The task of implementing court-ordered capital punishment sentences is a difficult one,” said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. “However, we are confident our team consistently carries out that responsibility in a professional, humane, dignified manner.”

(Writing by Mary Wisniewski; Reporting by Jim Leckrone in Columbus; Editing by Greg McCune)

By Rick Wilson

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 12:40pm EDT

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich (Reuters) – A man who killed seven people in a bloody rampage was targeted ex-girlfriends and their families, including his own daughter, police said on Friday.

“I don’t think there’s any question in my mind this was premeditated,” said Grand Rapids Police Chief Kevin Belk. “He was hunting these people down.”

After the killings, the suspect, Rodrick Shonte Dantzler, engaged in a gun battle with police in downtown Grand Rapids and a high speed chase before taking three people hostage. All three hostages were released safely. Dantzler killed himself with a shot to the head during hostage negotiations with police.

The dead included Jennifer Marie Heeren, 29, an ex-girlfriend of Dantzler; Kamrie Deann Heeren-Dantzler, 12, daughter of Jennifer and Rodrick; Rebecca Lynn Heeren, 52, mother of Jennifer; Thomas Heeren, 51, father of Jennifer, all shot at a house on Brynell Court in Grand Rapids.

Also killed were Kimberlee Ann Emkens, age unknown, an ex-girlfriend of Dantzler; her sister Amanda Renee Emkens, 27; and Marissa Lynn Emkens, 10, daughter of Amanda; all shot in the same house on Plainfield Avenue.

Belk said police were confident that Dantzler was the suspect in all seven murders and had acted alone.

Police were looking for Dantzler Thursday afternoon, but the chase did not begin until a third ex-girlfriend called to say he was pursuing her in his car. Dantzler shot her in the arm while she was in her car, outside of the Grand Rapids police station. Police pursued his fleeing vehicle.

The police manhunt of Dantzler included helicopters, state police and sheriff’s deputies. Besides the third ex-girlfriend, another bystander was wounded. The wounds were not life-threatening.

At one point, the suspect drove the wrong way on Interstate 96, ran off the road into a ditch, slammed into a stand of trees, and then fled on foot into a neighborhood in northeast Grand Rapids where he pressed his way into a house and took the hostages, Belk said.

Shots were fired as he entered the house, but the house occupants were not injured, Belk told reporters. He released a 53-year-old woman who lived at the house. But a man and woman remained held and were in a tight confined area at the back of the house during the hostage situation, he said.

Police believe the hostages were strangers to Dantzler.

Mike Shutich, 58, a friend of the Emkens family, described it as “close-knit.” Patricia Emkens, the mother of Kimberlee and Amanda Emkens and the grandmother of Marissa, discovered their bodies when she returned home from work, Shutich said.

Kimberlee Emkens had previously lived with Dantzler but had gone back to live with her mother because of physical abuse, Shutich said.

“He was not a very nice man,” said Shutich. “He didn’t take well to women. He was knocking Kimmy around, which is why she came home. He always had a gun on him. Why I don’t know.”

Shutich said that Patricia Emkens is “all about her kids.”

“Her daughters, her granddaughter were everything to her,” Shutich said. “I’m afraid this is going to crush her.”

A makeshift memorial was on the Emkens’ front porch Friday, with candles and a teddy bear with a note praying that “God be with you in this terrible time of tragedy.” The two-story house is part of a modest, working-class neighborhood with well-kept homes.

Mayor George Heartwell described the saga as “a rolling rampage” that included gun battles with police in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids which left a squad car shot up.

Police cordoned off several blocks of the neighborhood surrounding the house where he was barricaded.

Police said Dantzler, who has a criminal record, was using alcohol and cocaine after the killings. It was not known if he was also using them before. The weapon was a 40-caliber semi-automatic pistol. Belk said Dantzler had a large amount of ammunition with him, with more than one magazine.

(Writing by Mary Wisniewski; Reporting by Rick Wilson; Editing by Greg McCune)

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 6:50pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Three accused Somali pirates were charged in a U.S. court on Friday with the murder, kidnapping and hostage-taking of two American couples in February and could face the death penalty if convicted.

A federal grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia, handed up the indictment against Ahmed Muse Salad, Abukar Osman Beyle and Shani Nurani Shiekh Abrar over the pirating of a yacht off the coast of Somalia in February and the murder of the four Americans on board.

The three Somalis were among 14 men brought to the United States and charged in March with piracy, conspiracy and other offenses. The other 11 defendants all pleaded guilty.

The new, more serious charges against the three defendants were contained in a superseding indictment. Twenty-two of the 26 counts carry a possible death sentence.

The four slain Americans were Jean and Scott Adam of California and Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle from Seattle.

“Today’s superseding indictment charges three men from Somalia with brutally murdering four American citizens held hostage for ransom,” U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride said in a statement.

According to the indictment, the three defendants and others, armed with firearms and a rocket-propelled grenade, boarded the yacht, the S/V Quest, on February 18.

As they sailed toward Somalia, the three defendants and their co-conspirators took turns standing armed guard over the hostages, according to the 33-page indictment.

Beginning February 20, the U.S. Navy and the FBI began negotiating with the pirates to try to secure the release of the hostages.

One defendant, Abrar, fired a shot over the head of Scott Adam and instructed Adam to tell the Navy that if the U.S. warship came any closer, the pirates would kill the hostages, according to the indictment.

The three defendants and other co-conspirators were accused of intentionally shooting and killing the hostages on February 22, without provocation, before the four Americans could be rescued by the U.S. military.

An arraignment for the three has been set for July 20.

Pirates operating off the coast of Somalia have hijacked vessels in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, making tens of millions of dollars in ransoms by seizing ships, including oil tankers, and hostages.

(Editing by Christopher Wilson)

KANSAS CITY, Mo |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 9:04pm EDT

KANSAS CITY, Mo (Reuters) – The death toll from a devastating tornado in Joplin, Missouri, in May has risen to 159, the city said on Friday.

Janice McKee, the latest victim, died of injuries sustained in the tornado, Lynn Onstot, public information officer for the city, said in a statement.

The tornado, which cut a six-mile swath through Joplin and destroyed 6,000 homes and many other buildings in the city, was the deadliest in the United States in more than 60 years.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

By Laura Zuckerman

BILLINGS, Montana |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 9:12pm EDT

BILLINGS, Montana (Reuters) – Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer continued on Friday to press Exxon Mobil over an oil spill into the Yellowstone River and threatened to take the company to court as clean-up continued a week after the leak.

Schweitzer has been increasingly critical of Exxon in the days since one of its pipelines burst on July 1, spilling what the company estimates was up to 42,000 gallons of oil into the river.

“We’re going to hold them liable in court,” Schweitzer told reporters following a public meeting in Billings, the Big Sky state’s largest city.

Exxon, which said it was committed to a safe, effective clean-up operation, promised to “stay and make this right for the people of Montana,” spokesman Pius Rolheiser said in an emailed statement.

Montana formally opened a state office in Billings on Friday to address residents’ health and environmental concerns in the aftermath of the spill, a day after Schweitzer withdrew the state from a joint command team over what he said was the company’s failure to provide information.

The Democratic governor has sent a letter to Exxon asking the oil giant to spell out the chemical characteristics of crude that flowed through the pipeline, which was buried in the Yellowstone River streambed.

Schweitzer, a trained soil scientist, urged Montana residents to document damage and collect soil and water samples in containers that officials have provided them.

The governor has also warned Exxon not to work on the damaged pipeline without oversight by Montana and federal environmental officers. He has demanded the company preserve all documents related to the rupture and has asked federal regulators for the pipeline’s safety records.

Exxon has brought hundreds of high-paying jobs to several Montana communities, including Billings, where oil from the now ruptured Silvertip pipeline was refined.

Schweitzer’s apparent frustration with Exxon came to a head amid complaints from Montana residents that calls to Exxon’s hotline went unreturned for days.

EXXON STOPPED PUMPS WITHIN MINUTES

Exxon has apologized for the spill that dumped toxic substances into a river prized for near pristine waters, wildlife habitat and world-class fisheries.

The company said it shut down pumps on the pipeline to stop the oil flow within six minutes of discovering that something was wrong.

High and turbulent waters have made it difficult for boats to navigate the Yellowstone, hampering clean-up efforts and a probe of what caused the pipeline to rupture just west of Billings.

Schweitzer has pledged the state’s new office dealing with the spill would respond to each inquiry within 24 hours.

“This is your office, five days a week, eight hours a day until this mess is cleaned up,” he told a gathering of about 150 people, including residents who say oil fumes caused them respiratory distress, fainting and other health problems.

“Montana is responsible for managing that river. There are damages and no one from Exxon has sidled up and offered us a check,” Schweitzer said.

Federal officials said shoreline contamination along the Yellowstone — the longest free-flowing river in the lower 48 states — has been observed over an area stretching at least 240 miles downstream from the spill site.

Gary Hammond, supervisor of the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks regional office in Billings, said scientists believe chemical exposure of river- and wetland-dependent animals and fish may prove devastating for years to come.

“This is a long-term problem,” he told Reuters.

In a press conference Friday, National Wildlife Federation’s senior scientist Doug Inkley said only 10 to 15 percent of oil spilled is ever recovered.

“Unfortunately, I am a veteran of previous oil spills and I am personally dismayed about what I’m seeing with this oil spill,” Inkley said.

(Additional reporting by Molly O’Toole, editing by Alex Dobuzinskis, Cynthia Johnston and Bernard Orr)

OMAHA, Neb |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 9:07pm EDT

OMAHA, Neb (Reuters) – Federal and Missouri state officials were closely watching efforts to reinforce a Missouri River levee near Waverly where water was flowing across the top and could threaten a highway, authorities said on Friday.

The overtopping of the Belcher-Lozier levee in three or four spots could flood Highway 65 in Carroll County, Missouri, if it is not contained, state transportation officials said.

“We are in a heightened watch mode there,” said Richard Bennett, a state transportation department traffic engineer.

Flooding along the Missouri River this year from a deep melting snowpack and heavy rains has forced federal officials to release record amounts of water to relieve pressure on six reservoirs from Montana through South Dakota.

As a result, levees have been strained for hundreds of miles and residents forced to shore up protections and evacuate homes. Missouri alone has 61 road closures due to flooding.

Aerial reconnaissance on Thursday night confirmed that water had begun to run over the top of the levee, said Josh Marx, a member of the emergency management branch for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Kansas City District.

The area of concern on the levee is about five miles southeast of Norborne, Missouri, and six to eight miles west of the highway, officials said.

Historically, when river flooding has inundated the highway in that area, water has covered several miles of road potentially up to several feet deep, Bennett said.

The district that is monitoring the levee told the Army Corps of Engineers it would place sandbags at the places where water is running over the top, Marx added.

There is “a slight overtopping, maybe about a foot of water going over the top at probably three or four locations,” Marx said. “It doesn’t appear there is an overtopping breach that is forming at this time.”

The Army Corps of Engineers plans to have started a gradual reduction in water releases from most of the dams by mid July. However, it has not yet announced plans for reducing flows from the Gavins Point Dam on the South Dakota-Nebraska border.

Water flows freely from the Gavins Point dam for more than 800 miles to the Mississippi River near St. Louis, making those release rates critical to residents downstream.

(Reporting by Michael Avok in Omaha and David Bailey in Minneapolis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO, Fla |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 7:04pm EDT

ORLANDO, Fla (Reuters) – Casey Anthony, the Florida woman acquitted this week of killing her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in 2008, has rejected a visit from her mother scheduled for Friday evening, a jail official told Reuters.

Cindy Anthony, a familiar fixture throughout Casey’s trial, scheduled a visit at the jail with Casey for 7 p.m. on Friday.

“This morning under policy, Casey was told of the visit and she has declined the visit so it will not occur,” said jail spokesman Allen Moore.

Moore said Cindy would be notified of her daughter’s decision.

Mark Lippman, the lawyer for Casey’s parents, told Reuters during the trial that Casey had cut off communication with Cindy and George Anthony.

Casey Anthony is scheduled to be released from jail on July 17, just over three years after she first told anyone that Caylee had been missing for a month.

Casey, 25, was convicted of lying to detectives and sentenced on Thursday to the maximum four years in jail for sending investigators on a wild goose chase after claiming a nanny had kidnapped her daughter.

But due to credit for the time she served awaiting trial and good behavior while in jail, Casey will be let out in little more than a week.

Her imminent release raises questions about where she will live.

During the trial, defense lawyers accused George Anthony of sexually abusing Casey and helping to cover up Caylee’s death. But no evidence of sexual abuse was presented, and George denied the allegations under oath.

After the verdict, George and Cindy Anthony described Casey’s defense strategy as “baseless” but said the jury made a fair decision.

Moore said the jail has no need to know where Casey will live, and she was not sentenced to probation so she will not have to provide an address to the probation office.

Casey will be only the second inmate in the past 15 years to not walk out the front door of the jail lobby after being released from custody, Moore said. The jail has planned a secret exit for her protection.

The only other inmate who got such special handling was Noelle Bush, daughter of then-Governor Jeb Bush and niece of then-President George W. Bush. Moore said the Secret Service was concerned Noelle, who was arrested on drug-related charges, could be targeted by terrorists.

“Lisa Nowak, she walked out the front entrance,” Moore said, referring to the former NASA astronaut who drove from Houston to Orlando to attack a romantic rival.

“And we’ve had local politicians, police chiefs and all sorts of people, and they’re all required to walk out the front entrance,” Moore said.

(Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Greg McCune)

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 5:50pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Space shuttle Atlantis rocketed off its seaside launch pad on Friday, rising atop a tower of smoke and flames as it left Earth on the final flight of the U.S. space shuttle program.

After a 30-year history that has cost nearly $200 billion and claimed the lives of 14 astronauts, the shuttles are being retired to make way for a new generation of spacecraft that President Barack Obama says will put U.S. astronauts on an asteroid and then on to Mars.

“Today’s launch may mark the final flight of the space shuttle but it propels us into the next era of our never-ending adventure to push the very frontiers of exploration and discovery in space,” Obama said in a statement from the White House.

About 1 million sightseers witnessed the liftoff. They had lined causeways and beaches around the Kennedy Space Center in central Florida, angling for a last glimpse of the pioneering ship that has defined the U.S. space program for the past three decades as it soared through the skies.

“Good luck to you and your crew on this final flight of this true American icon,” shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach radioed to the crew minutes before takeoff.

Cloudy skies had threatened to delay Atlantis’ launch on a planned 12-day mission to the International Space Station but conditions cleared in time for the blastoff.

However, 31 seconds before the scheduled 11:26 a.m./1526 GMT launch, computers detected a problem with the retraction of equipment used to vent gases from the fuel tank and stopped the countdown. Engineers verified the equipment’s position and the shuttle lifted off three minutes later.

“The shuttle is always going to be a reflection of what a great nation can do when it dares to be bold and commits to follow through,” said Atlantis commander Chris Ferguson.

The shuttle’s cargo of tonnes of food and equipment is intended to bridge the gap until newly hired commercial freighters are ready to begin deliveries to the station.

Atlantis and its four-member veteran crew are scheduled to arrive at the station, a recently completed orbital research outpost, on Sunday.

HIGH COSTS

NASA is ending the shuttle program primarily due to high operating costs. Its legacy includes launching and servicing the Hubble Space Telescope and dispatching dozens of planetary probes and Earth-orbiting satellites but also a troubled safety record.

In 1986, seven astronauts died aboard shuttle Challenger when a rocket booster seal failed shortly after launch. Seven more died aboard Columbia, destroyed due to heat shield failure in 2003 as it returned to Earth.

The shuttle fleet’s crowning achievement was building the recently completed space station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations that orbits 230 miles above Earth.

The focus of the U.S. human spaceflight program for the next decade shifts to the space station itself, a complex the size of a five-bedroom house that has the potential for breakthrough research in medicine and technology.

NASA will rely on Russia to fly its astronauts to the station, at a cost of more than $50 million a seat, until commercial firms are ready to take over crew ferry flights.

Among the companies interested in the work is Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which already has a NASA contract to fly cargo to the station.

The company, owned by Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, successfully tested its Dragon capsule in orbit last December and hopes to make it all the way to the station during a second test flight later this year.

The other freighter, being developed by Orbital Sciences Corp, has yet to debut.

NASA also is backing space taxi development work by Boeing Sierra Nevada Corp and Blue Origin, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The U.S. space agency also plans to use the $4 billion or so it has been spending each year to maintain and operate its three space shuttles to develop new spacecraft that can travel beyond the station’s near-Earth orbit, where the shuttles cannot go.

Atlantis is scheduled to spend about a week at the space station, transferring more than 5 tonnes of food, clothing, science experiments and other gear to the station and packing up old equipment to be returned to Earth.

Upon Atlantis’ return, about 3,200 space shuttle contractor employees will be laid off. Most work at the spaceport in Florida.

“We’re going to be going through a tough time. Change is hard,” said Kennedy Space Center director Bob Cabana.

(Editing by Tom Brown and Bill Trott)

By David Bailey

MINNEAPOLIS |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 5:05pm EDT

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) – Minnesota entered its second week of a government shutdown on Friday with no new top level budget talks scheduled among political leaders, and some experts said the impasse could last a month or more.

With a Democratic governor and Republican-controlled legislature, party polarization in Minnesota has virtually made compromise a four-letter word. In the meantime, the shutdown — which has furloughed thousands of state workers and closed down revenue-generating operations like the lottery — is seen taking a toll on the state’s economy.

The impasse between Governor Mark Dayton and the Republican legislative leaders echoes similar differences in Washington and in other states and has dragged Minnesota into the national spotlight.

Still, Minnesota is the only state where the government has shut down. Large parts of the government were shuttered when the new fiscal year started July 1 without a budget deal to address a $5 billion deficit.

“I think it is going to go about a month because I don’t see at this point any political forces that are driving them to the bargaining table to compromise,” said David Schultz, a Hamline University professor and expert on Minnesota politics.

After meeting daily up to the end of the last fiscal year, the governor, House Speaker Kurt Zellers and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch did not meet over the Fourth of July holiday weekend and had two short meetings this week.

The government shutdown is much broader in scope than a nine-day partial closing Minnesota endured in 2005 when Tim Pawlenty, now a Republican presidential candidate, was governor.

The impasse may have been all but ensured by the election last November of a Democratic governor and majorities in control of the state Senate and House majorities who believe they were mandated to close the budget gap with new spending or cuts alone respectively.

But Minnesota often has had divided executive and legislative branches that forged compromises, and the roots of the impasse run much deeper and defy easy solutions.

INTRACTABLE POSITIONS

“What we are seeing this year is not just sort of a small bump in the road, it is part of something broader that is going on in Minnesota,” Schultz said. “It is about the fact that for either side, compromise becomes tantamount to capitulation.”

Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota professor and political scientist, said conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans have been worn away by party polarization that has accelerated the last few years. Past Republican leaders would have negotiated a compromise that raised revenue a little and cut spending more, but not now, he said.

“If Amy Koch brings in a compromise that raises revenue, she is going to have a revolt in her caucus,” Jacobs said.

The differences in positions remain stark. Dayton this week proposed increases in income taxes or cigarette taxes along with healthcare surcharges and delayed school aid payments to close a roughly $1.4 billion gap between his budget proposal and the $34.2 billion plan Republicans have proposed.

Republican leaders have said that a tax increase of any kind was off the table. Both sides also have acknowledged they have education and health policy differences to negotiate.

The impasse drove former Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale and former Republican Governor Arne Carlson to form a bipartisan panel to map a third budget plan to try to end the shutdown.

The panel proposed a budget much closer to the governor’s spending plan than to Republicans’ that included a broad income tax increase and increased cigarette and alcohol taxes. It gained no support from Republicans.

Measuring the economic drag from the shutdown can be hard, but Schultz estimated the furlough of 23,000 of some 36,000 state workers and the impact on private vendors would raise the state’s unemployment rate by a full percentage point.

All but critical state services such as prison staffing, police patrols and spending on nursing and veterans homes have been cut back during the shutdown.

Dozens of road construction projects have been halted, state parks closed at night, and the state has suspended its lottery, fee collections for high occupancy vehicle lanes and the tax auditing functions among other services.

“It is going to be a drag on the economy and getting worse as it goes on,” Schultz said. “As the economy still is not great, it certainly doesn’t help the state of Minnesota.”

(Reporting by David Bailey; Editing by Leslie Adler)

By John Rondy

MILWAUKEE |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 5:56pm EDT

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – Republican Governor Scott Walker signed a bill on Friday allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons, leaving Illinois as the lone state with a ban on concealed weapons still in place.

Under the Wisconsin law, gun owners who want to carry concealed weapons will have to get special training and permits. Permits and photo IDs are required when carrying a concealed weapon.

The state Department of Justice will issue permits to state residents 21 and over who get training and clear background checks that show they were not felons or otherwise prohibited from carrying guns.

“By signing concealed carry into law today we are making Wisconsin safer for all responsible, law abiding citizens,” said Walker in a statement.

Twice in recent years the Wisconsin legislature passed a law allowing concealed carry but then Democratic Governor Jim Doyle vetoed it. Doyle left office in January and was succeeded by Republican Walker.

Opponents of concealed carry have said that allowing more freedom for citizens to carry guns in public places will increase violence rather than reduce.

After Walker signed the bill at a ceremony in Wausau, guns will be allowed in most public places except police stations, courts, schools and businesses that post signs. Concealed weapons could also be carried in parks and taverns.

In April, lawmakers in the Illinois state House attempted to pass a measure that would have allowed gun owners to carry them in public, but it fell short of the number needed to pass.

(Writing and reporting by John Rondy; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Greg McCune)

WASHINGTON |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 6:33pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government is working to limit the diplomatic fallout after Texas executed a Mexican national over Washington’s objections that it violated U.S. treaty obligations and put U.S. citizens abroad at risk.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was “quite disappointed” on Thursday after Texas went ahead with the execution by injection of Humberto Leal Garcia, convicted of murdering a 16-year-old girl, despite pleas from the federal government for a last-minute stay, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

“It’s important that our partners overseas know that the U.S. government, the executive branch, was not comfortable with what happened in this case,” Nuland said.

“The secretary is making clear to her counterparts, whether they’re in Mexico or anywhere else, that we seek to remedy this situation and we seek to remedy it as quickly as we possibly can,” Nuland said at a news briefing.

Nuland said the Obama administration would work with Congress to speed passage of legislation that would spell out the rights of foreigners to consular access.

The top U.N. official for human rights, Navi Pillay, issued a statement on Friday saying Leal Garcia’s execution “places the U.S. in breach of international law.”

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a stay of execution despite warnings from the Obama administration that the case violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations because Leal Garcia had not been given appropriate consular access.

In legal briefs, the U.S. government had warned the execution would create an irreparable breach of international law and Mexico’s government said it would seriously jeopardize cross-border cooperation on joint ventures and extraditions.

Leal Garcia, 38, who had lived in the United States since he was an infant, was convicted of raping the girl and bludgeoning her to death with a piece of asphalt in 1994.

While the United States has joined the Vienna Convention, critics have argued that individual U.S. states are not bound by it until Congress passes enabling legislation.

Nuland said the State Department was concerned that the case might impact the welfare of U.S. citizens who run into legal problems overseas.

The State Department says some 5 million U.S. citizens live overseas and many millions more travel regularly outside of the country. About 3,500 Americans were arrested overseas in 2010 and U.S. consular officials conducted more than 9,500 prison visits.

“Frankly, if we don’t protect the rights of non-Americans in the United States we seriously risk reciprocal lack of access to our own citizens overseas,” Nuland said.

“Texas justice is Texas justice. This is simply about ensuring a non-American facing judicial proceedings in the United States has the same rights that we expect an American facing judicial proceedings overseas would have.”

(Editing by Bill Trott)

WASHINGTON |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 6:11pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top U.S. military officer begins a four-day trip to China on Sunday in another sign of warming military ties between the two countries after a break in relations following a $6.3 billion U.S. arms deal with Taiwan.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, was leaving Washington on Friday afternoon for a visit to Beijing at the invitation of his counterpart, General Chen Bingde, chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, who visited Washington earlier this year.

“Admiral Mullen looks forward to continuing the engagement and dialogue that began during General Chen Bingde’s visit to the United States in May,” said Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan.

Mullen had a wide range of meetings scheduled with senior military officials, including visits to PLA military units, Lapan said. He also is scheduled to speak to students at Renmin University in Beijing.

Mullen’s visit to China is the first by a chairman of the Joint Chiefs since his predecessor, General Peter Pace, went there in 2007. Mullen’s last visit to China also was in 2007, when he Chief of Naval Operations.

U.S.-China military ties were severed in January 2010 after President Barack Obama’s administration announced a $6.3 billion arms deal with Taiwan that included Patriot anti-missile systems and Apache attack helicopters.

Military links remained severed through much of the year, even as Mullen and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who resigned last week, called for regular contacts to improve trust and avoid misunderstands that could spin out of control.

U.S. officials have watched with concern as China has displayed a growing military assertiveness and begun developing weapons that could be used to undermine U.S. strengths in the region, from anti-satellite missiles to radar-evading jet fighters.

Military ties between the two countries resumed in late 2010 and have picked up pace since President Hu Jintao visited President Barack Obama in January.

In addition to the Mullen-Chen visits, Gates visited China in January and met with his counterpart, Defense Minister Liang Guanglie, at the annual Shangri-La Security Dialogue in Singapore last month.

(Editing by Christopher Wilson)

NEW YORK |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 7:33pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Though the governors of New York and Connecticut parted company on some of their budget-fixing strategies, both Democrats are still struggling to persuade their unionized workers to accept cuts.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy on Friday both faulted what they see as the unions’ preference for thousands of layoffs over accepting harsh concessions, from wage freezes to benefit changes.

The layoffs planned by the two neighboring states, which compete fiercely for employers, give weight to economists’ forecasts that cash-strapped states, counties, cities and towns are undermining the recovery — already surprisingly soft — by slashing their workforces.

Malloy, who says he tried to make everyone share in the sacrifices needed to balance the budget by cutting spending and raising taxes, including income taxes for the wealthy, told reporters “large scale layoff notices” could go out Tuesday.

About 6,500 positions will be cut to close a $700 million deficit, Malloy said. “I have never hidden my desire not to be having, not be engaged, in large-scale layoffs.”

Connecticut has about 45,000 unionized workers; some of its 5,000 managers also could be laid off, as Malloy also is consolidating agencies.

Asked what services will be cut, Malloy responded: “A little bit of everything…I don’t think there are any areas of government that will be unaffected.” He added he would be “loath” to close beaches and parks, a tack taken by some other states, most notably California, which shut 70 parks.

Malloy showed little interest in reopening the union talks, saying: “Been there; done that.”

Yet Spokesman Matt O’Connor of the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition said Malloy’s negotiator contacted his union counterpart about resuming talks. “We are confident we are going to find a path forward; we’re certainly not giving up when the consequences are so catastrophic,” he said.

Most of Connecticut’s unions accepted Malloy’s deal, though the concessions include fewer sick days. The accord failed because more than one union rejected it. Connecticut’s budget assumes the savings from the layoffs will start on September 1.

Like Malloy, Cuomo’s new budget cut spending though New York’s governor raised no taxes and he got the biggest union to accept his offer though it raised health care premiums. But talks with the second-biggest union, the Public Employee Federation (PEF), have snarled and nearly 800 layoff notices recently were sent to its members.

New York’s governor manages about 132,000 workers.

Cuomo told Talk 1300, an Albany radio show, that PEF’s rejection of his proposal “lacks credibility” because it was accepted by the Civil Service Employees Association.

“That’s the pressure they’re feeling. We don’t want to do any layoffs,” Cuomo said. In spurning his offer, Cuomo said “The union would have to say ‘We would rather do layoffs, and lay off our own members, than agree to a contract.’”

Though Cuomo said both unions were offered the same deal, PEF President Kenneth Brynien said the latest offer had significant differences, especially for health benefits. “It’s disappointing to see the state continuing to use the threat of layoffs to hold hostage our members, their families and the state services on which New Yorkers rely,” he added.

(Reporting by Joan Gralla in New York and Dan Wiessner in Albany; Editing by Andrew Hay)

By David Morgan and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 2:52pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Limiting the tax break for employer-provided health insurance became a bargaining chip on Friday in congressional negotiations to beat an August 2 deadline for averting a U.S. default.

“Limiting the deduction for the higher income brackets is something that is on the table,” Representative Sandy Levin told Reuters. He is the senior Democrat on the tax-writing U.S. House Ways and Means Committee.

The employer-provided healthcare income exclusion cost about $117.3 billion this year. Limiting it could bring in considerably more new government revenues than other, smaller options that have been discussed by negotiators.

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders are trying to craft a deal to cut $4 trillion from budget deficits over 10 years to give lawmakers political cover to raise the government’s debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion.

The employer healthcare tax break allows employees to exclude from their taxable income the value of contributions toward employer-provided health insurance plans.

A cap could be politically feasible because it would not register as a tax increase. The initial pain would be minimal and those affected would be higher-income employees rather than the elderly or the poor, analysts said.

Eliminating or capping this tax break was discussed during debate over the 2010 healthcare reform act, but Congress instead put an excise tax on high cost “Cadillac” plans only. It take effects in 2018.

Health experts and economists have long seen reining in the healthcare tax exclusion as a way to control soaring healthcare costs. Advocates say individuals would respond to the higher costs that would result by choosing cheaper insurance plans.

Analysts would expect any change to take effect gradually, probably beginning after the November 2012 elections, with a cap set below the expected rate of rising healthcare costs.

In 2009, 58.5 percent of Americans got health insurance coverage through employers.

Investors may view potentially limiting the tax break as a negative for health insurers because without the incentive, more employers may stop offering coverage.

“The general consensus of non-elected people who pay attention to this is that that’s really the way to go. You’ve got to ease yourself into something like this,” said Joseph Antos, a healthcare policy expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Levin said that removing the break too quickly could upset last year’s landmark health reform law.

“Those provisions are essential to healthcare reform. So you have to be very, very careful,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan and Kevin Drawbaugh, with Lewis Krauskopf in New York; Editing by Howard Goller)

By Andy Sullivan and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 4:47pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Dismal unemployment figures on Friday complicated efforts to avert a looming U.S. debt default, and a top Republican said negotiators were not close to a deal that would ensure continued borrowing.

Tamping down expectations that Democrats and Republicans could reach agreement over the weekend, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said the two sides must overcome serious disagreements on taxes and spending cuts.

“It’s not like there’s some imminent deal about to happen,” Boehner told a news conference. “This is a Rubik’s Cube that we haven’t quite worked out yet.”

Partisan finger-pointing erupted anew after a government report showed the unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent in June, dousing hopes that the economy is picking up steam.

Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, and President Barack Obama, a Democrat seeking reelection in 2012, are trying to craft a sweeping budget deal that would ensure the national debt remains at a sustainable level by cutting $4 trillion from budget deficits over 10 years.

That would give lawmakers political cover to raise the government’s debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion before August 2, when the country is due to run out of borrowing capacity. Failure to act soon, some warn, could push the United States back into recession and send shock waves through the global economy.

Democrats and Republicans remain at odds over what elements should be part of the deal. Democrats are pushing for roughly $1 trillion in new tax revenue, while Republicans want to restructure popular benefit programs.

Negotiators might scale back a tax break for companies that provide health benefits to their workers, Representative Sander Levin, the top Democrat on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, told Reuters. That would dwarf other revenue-generating elements on the table but could prompt more employers to stop offering health coverage.

The uncertainty in the debt-ceiling debate is hurting American companies and the overall economy, Obama said.

“The sooner we get this done, the sooner that the markets know that the debt limit ceiling will have been raised and that we have a serious plan to deal with our debt and deficit, the sooner that we give our businesses the certainty that they will need in order to make additional investments to grow and to hire,” he said at the White House.

MEETING ON SUNDAY

For now, financial markets are showing little concern.

In fact, investors beat a path to the U.S. Treasury’s sale of $28 billion in four-week bills on Wednesday, elbowing each other for the chance to buy debt paying zero interest and maturing on August 4 — two days after the deadline.

Obama, Boehner and other congressional leaders are due to meet at the White House on Sunday at 6 p.m. EDT, with staffers working through the weekend to lay out options.

The session could see some hard bargaining but is not likely to produce a final deal, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

The Republican-led House canceled a planned break during the week of July 18, which could make it easier for Congress to pass a deal by August.

Boehner faces a delicate balancing act. With dozens of conservative House Republicans expected to vote against any compromise, he will likely have to rely on Democratic votes to get a deal passed. That means some revenue increases may have to be part of the package, which could imperil Boehner’s standing among conservative activists.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said she was optimistic a deal can be reached after meeting with Obama on Friday morning, but she insisted that the popular Social Security retirement program should not be part of the deal.

“We are not going to reduce the deficit or subsidize the tax cuts for the rich on the backs of America’s seniors,” Pelosi said.

Prospects probably were not helped by Friday’s disappointing jobs report, which showed employers hired the fewest number of workers in nine months.

Obama is eager to bring the jobless rate down ahead of the November 2012 election, which will largely hinge on how Americans feel about the economy.

Republicans said his policies have made businesses reluctant to hire. A budget deal that includes tax hikes could make things worse, they said.

“It just does not make sense for Americans to suffer under higher taxes in an economy like this,” said Representative Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican.

Democrats fear the sharp spending cuts that Republicans want would further weaken the economy, and they are pushing for new tax cuts and spending measures to boost employment.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro, Caren Bohan, Laura MacInnis and Matt Spetalnick and David Morgan in Washington and Ellen Freilich in New York; Editing by John O’Callaghan)

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 4:45pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Friday’s bleak unemployment report boosts Republicans hoping to oust President Barack Obama from the White House next year, but translating a difficult economy into election results will not be easy.

U.S. jobs growth ground to a near halt in June, frustrating hopes the economy would bounce back quickly from a slowdown and underscoring how difficult the issue will be for Obama in his bid for a second term next year.

“This is Obama’s greatest vulnerability. It’s his losing war, the economy and unemployment,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor at Princeton University.

Mitt Romney, a former governor and wealthy businessman, has in particular made job creation the center of his front-running campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Co-founder of private equity firm Bain Capital, Romney tells voters he helped create tens of thousands of jobs by helping launch successful corporations.

Romney has scored some points against Obama on the issue, giving a speech on the economy last week at a shuttered factory that the Democrat visited in 2009 as a potential symbol of economic renewal.

On Friday he issued a statement accusing Obama and his aides of caring too little about joblessness. “With their cavalier attitude about the economy, the White House has turned the audacity of hope into the audacity of indifference,” Romney said, referring to the title of one of Obama’s books.

“It (the poor jobless report) makes Obama look vulnerable and therefore within the Republican party they get more serious about putting up a serious contender,” said Christopher Arterton, a political scientist at George Washington University who has consulted for Democratic candidates.

“Romney has a flavor of being a serious contender and somewhat more moderate,” he said.

Other prominent Republican candidates, such as U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann who has leaped to second place in recent polls, are better known for conservatism on social issues such as opposition to abortion or gay marriage rights than for business expertise.

REPUBLICANS NEED THEIR OWN PLAN

And Republicans, while freely criticizing Obama, have been criticized in turn for lacking their own job creation plans, and for pushing for big cuts in government services — without tax cuts — during acrimonious budget negotiations.

“Republicans really don’t have their alternative — including Romney — to what the president has done,” Zelizer said.

“Budget cuts are popular, but I don’t think they are enough of an answer,” he said. “People see jobs going to other countries. I don’t see how cutting Social Security is going to solve that problem,” he said of the retirement program.

Democrats have seized on some of Romney’s campaign gaffes, such as telling unemployed workers in Florida that he was also out of work. Romney’s fortune is estimated at $250 million.

They also have hammered Romney for what they say is “flip-flopping” on his view of the economy. For instance he gave apparently contradictory statements in recent days on whether Obama’s policies made the U.S. recession worse.

“Candidate qualities do play a role,” said Richard Eichenberg, a political scientist at Tufts University which is near Boston, noting the former Massachusetts governor’s difficulties connecting with voters.

Romney’s woodenness on the campaign trail and reputation for changing his position on issues hurt his unsuccessful bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

Democrats will also blast Romney’s business record, slamming Bain Capital as a firm that made money for investors by slashing jobs or reducing pay and benefits at companies in which it invested.

“The Democrats will challenge Romney’s credentials as an economic steward, primarily because of his experience as a venture capitalist,” Eichenberg said.

But most experts say it will take an economic rebound for Obama’s 2012 prospects to brighten significantly, and economists said Friday’s report left them little hope for an upturn.

“After kind of moving in the right direction for quite some time, we are no longer moving in the right direction,” said Heather Boushey, an economist at the Center for American Progress, a think tank with close ties to the White House.

“I cannot find anything in today’s report that gives me optimism,” she said.

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Vicki Allen)

LOS ANGELES |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 9:53pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Betty Ford, the wife of the late President Gerald Ford and whose battles with addiction led to the founding of a famed drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic bearing her name, died on Friday. Ford was 93.

“I was deeply saddened this afternoon when I heard of Betty Ford’s death,” former first lady Nancy Reagan said in a statement confirming Ford’s death.

(Reporting by Bob Tourtellotte; Editing by Paul Simao)

By Mary Slosson

PASADENA, Calif |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 11:43pm EDT

PASADENA, Calif (Reuters) – Lawyers for the accused gunman charged with wounding Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in a deadly shooting rampage told a federal appeals court on Thursday that forcing him to take anti-psychotic drugs could cause him irreparable harm.

But 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski expressed skepticism during the hearing, which was held in Pasadena, a few miles from Los Angeles, saying of the defense team’s argument, “I don’t buy it.”

The three-judge panel adjourned after 90 minutes without issuing a ruling and gave no indication how long it would deliberate before deciding whether to lift an earlier court order that temporarily bars prison officials from medicating Jared Loughner against his will.

Loughner did not attend the hearing. He remains held at a hospital for federal prisoners in Missouri after a lower-court judge in May declared him incompetent to stand trial on charges he killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Giffords, at a public event in Tucson, Arizona.

The 22-year-old college dropout, described by his own lawyers as “gravely mentally ill,” has since been undergoing psychiatric evaluation to determine whether his ability to understand court proceedings against him can be restored.

U.S. District Judge Larry Burns denied an emergency petition filed by Loughner’s attorneys in June seeking to bar prison officials from forcibly medicating him. Burns said he would defer to the judgment of doctors treating Loughner.

But the appeals court days ago ordered a halt to the involuntary medication while it reviewed the matter.

Federal prosecutor Christina Canabillis argued on Thursday that doctors were prompted to medicate Loughner against his will due to a number of outbursts in which he threw chairs in his cell and spat at one of his own attorneys. Such behavior clearly poses a danger to the medical personnel trying to determine his competency, she said.

But defense lawyer Reuben Cahn argued that forcing anti-psychotic drugs on Loughner amounted to a “serious invasion on personal liberty” resulting in “irreparable damage.” Prison officials coerced Loughner by threatening to strap him down and inject him if he refused to take pills prescribed by his doctors, Cahn said.

“Nothing can reverse the injury done to him,” Cahn said.

Kozinski expressed doubt about permanent harm, comparing the situation to a person taking pain medication.

Loughner is accused of opening fire on Giffords and a crowd of bystanders outside a Tucson supermarket on January 8. Six victims were killed and 13 were wounded, including Giffords, who is still recovering from a gunshot to the head.

He pleaded not guilty in March to 49 charges stemming from the shooting rampage at the “Congress on Your Corner” event, including multiple counts of first-degree murder.

At the competency hearing in May, Judge Burns cited the conclusions of two medical experts that Loughner suffers from schizophrenia, disordered thinking and delusions.

(Editing by Steve Gorman, Alex Dobuzinskis and Peter Bohan)

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 9:02am EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Four veteran astronauts scrambled aboard space shuttle Atlantis on Friday, hoping the weather would clear for liftoff on the final mission of the U.S. shuttle program.

Launch was targeted for 11:26 a.m. EDT from the Kennedy Space Center. Meteorologists, however, predicted just a 30 percent chance of suitable weather for the flight.

Dense cloud cover or possible rain and thunderstorms could prompt a delay.

Up to 1 million spectators lined beaches and causeways around the shuttle’s central Florida launch pad. If liftoff is delayed, they may have to wait through the weekend for a glimpse of the final shuttle rocket vaulting into orbit.

An abridged crew of four — Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley, flight engineer Rex Walheim and Sandy Magnus — began strapping into reclined seats on Atlantis’ top deck shortly after 8 a.m. EDT.

Typically, two or three other astronauts would be seated in the windowless middeck during launch. But NASA limited the crew to accommodate small Russian Soyuz capsules serving as escape vessels, should Atlantis too damaged during launch or while in orbit to safely return to Earth.

Previously, the U.S. space agency had a second shuttle prepared for any potential rescue but Atlantis, which will be making the 135th and final flight of the program, has no shuttle backup.

Atlantis, which was set to be retired last year, is laden with food and other supplies critical to the International Space Station, a recently completed orbital research outpost 220 miles above Earth.

COMMERCIAL FIRMS GET READY

NASA added the final flight to buy time in case the commercial delivery firms hired to resupply the station starting next year run into problems with their new rockets.

Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which is owned by Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, successfully tested its Dragon capsule in orbit last December and hopes to make it to the space station in a second test flight later this year.

The other cargo hauler being developed by aerospace company Orbital Sciences Corp, is expected to debut next year.

With the space shuttles retiring, the station and its six-member crew will need regular supply runs from both companies, in addition to deliveries from Russian, European and Japanese spacecraft.

All have just a fraction of the shuttle’s 25,000-tonne lift capacity.

NASA has been steadily building the $100 billion station over the last 11 years. Completing it was the primary reason the United States decided to fix the shuttles and resume flying after the loss of Columbia and her crew in 2003.

With the space station assembly complete, the United States wants to use the $4 billion or so it has spent each year to maintain and operate NASA’s three space shuttles to develop new spacecraft that can travel beyond the station’s near-Earth orbit, where shuttles cannot go.

(Editing by Tom Brown)

By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO, Fla |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 11:38pm EDT

ORLANDO, Fla (Reuters) – A Florida judge on Thursday sentenced Casey Anthony to four years in jail for lying to police after her daughter disappeared, but she will be released from custody on July 17 after getting credit for time served and good behavior.

Anthony, 25, will be let out of jail four days later than was previously announced after her release date was recalculated, court spokeswoman Karen Levey said.

Court officials had earlier said Anthony would be released from jail on July 13, having received credit for the 1,043 days she spent behind bars since her arrest.

Anthony was acquitted on Tuesday of killing her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in 2008 but on Thursday received the toughest possible punishment for providing false information to law enforcement during the investigation.

Each of the four misdemeanor counts Casey Anthony was convicted of carried a maximum of one year in jail. Judge Belvin Perry ordered the one-year terms to run consecutively, and also imposed a $1,000 fine for each count.

Perry said as a result of Casey Anthony’s lies, law enforcement spent “a great deal of time, energy and manpower looking for young Caylee Marie Anthony.”

Casey Anthony did not speak during the sentencing hearing. She wore her long hair loose rather than pulled tightly back as she had during the trial and smiled while she chatted with defense attorneys before the proceedings.

But her face tightened as the judge discussed her lies and handed down the punishment.

The hearing drew Anthony’s fans, critics and a large police presence to the Orlando courthouse where her closely watched trial played out over more than six weeks this summer.

“Boycott any books, movies by Casey,” one protester’s sign read.

“Casey will you marry me,” read a sign held by 20-year-old pizzeria worker Tim Allen.

Reaction to the sentence was mixed. Some people came hoping to witness Anthony walk out of the courthouse a free woman.

“I would like to put my eyes on her,” said Darwin Outsey, a 33-year-old Orlando car detailer who agreed with the murder acquittal but thought Anthony was at least guilty of being an accessory to the killing.

Others criticized the sentence as too lenient.

“She doesn’t deserve to walk free among civilians who care for their children,” said Dobia Wright, 30, an unemployed tree trimmer from Orlando who brought along his 3-year-old son.

Where Anthony will go after her release is a mystery. Her parents, George and Cindy Anthony, left the courtroom after the verdict without speaking to their daughter but were back in the regular seats to hear the sentence on Thursday.

Afterward, their lawyer shook hands with defense attorney Jose Baez but would not comment to Reuters about the family’s plans.

Casey Anthony’s punishment is a far cry from the death penalty prosecutors had planned to seek if jurors found her guilty of first-degree murder.

The prosecution said Casey Anthony smothered Caylee with duct tape on June 16, 2008, drove around for several days with Caylee’s body in her car trunk and then dumped the remains in woods near the Anthony family home.

The defense argued that Caylee died in an accidental drowning in the family’s backyard pool.

Millions of Americans followed the trial and many were stunned, even angered, by the verdict reached by jurors on Tuesday.

The jury also found Casey Anthony not guilty of aggravated child abuse or aggravated manslaughter of a child. Jurors who have spoken out since said they felt there wasn’t enough evidence for a murder conviction, but their decision left them in tears and feeling sick.

(Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Greg McCune)

By Laura L. Myers

SEATTLE |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 1:29am EDT

SEATTLE (Reuters) – A U.S. Army sergeant charged with beating up a fellow soldier and shooting at an unarmed civilian while deployed in Afghanistan pleaded not guilty on Thursday as his court-martial opened near Tacoma, Washington.

Sergeant Darren Jones, 30, of Pomona, California, is one of a dozen soldiers accused in connection with the most far-reaching prosecution of alleged wrongdoing by U.S. military personnel during 10 years of war in Afghanistan.

Five soldiers from the infantry unit formerly known as the 5th Stryker Brigade were charged with murdering unarmed Afghan villagers in cold blood during their deployment in 2010. One of them, Jeremy Morlock, was sentenced in March to 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of murder and agreeing to testify against his co-defendants.

Seven other men, including Jones, were charged with less serious offenses stemming from an investigation that began as an inquiry into drug use by U.S. troops. Five of those cases already have been completed with varying sentences.

Jones was the first to request a five-member military panel to hear evidence against him at court-martial. The proceedings, overseen by military judge Lieutenant Colonel Kwasi Hawks, could last several days, said Major Christopher Ophardt, an Army spokesman at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Jones faces two counts of conspiracy to commit assault, one count of unlawfully striking another soldier, one count of assault with a dangerous weapon and one count of impeding an investigation.

Army prosecutors say Jones opened fire on an unarmed Afghan while on patrol in March 2010 and took part in discussions about how to stage killings of civilians to look like combat casualties.

The Army also says that Jones participated in the May 2010 beating of Private First Class Justin Stoner, whose complaint of widespread hashish use in his platoon led to the Army probe of civilian slayings in southern Afghanistan.

Magazines Der Spiegel of Germany and Rolling Stone have published several photos related to the killings, one showing Morlock crouched grinning over the bloodied corpse of an Afghan teenager, lifting the youth’s head by the hair for the camera.

The existence of such photos, among dozens under a protective seal by Army officials as evidence, has drawn comparisons with pictures of Iraqi prisoners taken by U.S. military personnel at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison that were made public in 2004.

Jones faces a maximum punishment of 22 years in prison if convicted, Ophardt told Reuters.

(Editing by Steve Gorman and Cynthia Johnston)

By Joseph Ax

NEW YORK |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 9:52am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) – By now, anyone following the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case knows plenty about the woman who accused him: her age, origins, work history, relatives and, most recently, a series of lies and misstatements she gave to investigators.

But one detail has remained concealed by major U.S. media: her name.

Citing the unique stigma of rape, American news outlets have for decades refused to identify victims and alleged victims of sexual assault, even as they investigate their backgrounds.

As recent revelations raise doubts about the credibility of Strauss-Kahn’s accuser, and the attempted rape case against the former International Monetary Fund chief appears close to collapse, news organizations have begun to revisit these long-held policies.

“It’s an ethical minefield,” said Adam Penenberg, a journalism professor at New York University. “It puts everybody in an impossible position.”

The woman’s name has already been published by numerous news outlets in Europe and Africa, where accusers’ names are more routinely reported.

An Internet search will reveal it is on hundreds of websites. Some journalism experts say that renders the convention of anonymity increasingly meaningless.

No major U.S. news organization has yet revealed the woman’s name, even as her credibility has been seriously questioned.

“Editors here have discussed the situation as new developments have emerged in this case,” said Phil Corbett, the New York Times’ associate managing editor for standards.

“As of now, the authorities continue to consider the woman to be the victim in an alleged sexual assault, and we have stuck to our normal practice of not identifying her.”

Editors at Reuters debated the issue and decided the woman should remain unidentified, said Jim Gaines, the global head of ethics, standards and innovation.

“It was very brief, because we all know what the rule is,” Gaines said. “It’s hard to anticipate the circumstances under which we would name her, unless she named herself.”

WHEN SHOULD POLICY CHANGE?

Are there circumstances that would justify dropping the policy and identifying the woman?

Several editors said a dismissal of the charges against Strauss-Kahn would probably be insufficient to convince them to use his accuser’s name, unless, for example, authorities seek to charge her with perjury for suspicion of lying under oath.

“I would distinguish between charges being dropped and charges being brought against her,” said Roger Smith, the national editor for the Los Angeles Times.

Corbett said there is no “clear, bright line” that would indicate when to use her name.

Journalists are not legally bound to conceal the identities of sexual assault victims — the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that news outlets may use them if legally obtained. But with rare exceptions, the media have refrained from doing that.

One exception was NBC News’ decision in 1991 to identify the woman who accused a Kennedy family member, William Kennedy Smith, of raping her. That sparked a national conversation about privacy and the media’s responsibility to rape victims.

The prevailing view, then as now, is that sexual assault is uniquely damaging and worthy of an exception.

“The reality is that as journalists, we have a special responsibility to help ensure that women feel safe reporting sexual assault. It’s not like other crimes,” said Bruce Shapiro, head of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University in New York.

FEAR OF SACRIFICING PRIVACY

Some experts say there is also a societal obligation to encourage victims to come forward without fear of sacrificing their privacy.

“What about the next woman, and the one after that?” said Alisa Solomon, a journalism professor at Columbia.

A handful of journalists assert the practice of withholding victims’ names runs counter to journalism’s goal of providing a complete and truthful account.

One dissenter is Geneva Overholser, who as editor of the Des Moines Register won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for public service for a series about a woman’s ordeal as a rape victim.

“We’re setting ourselves up to do something that feels very much like social work, not journalism, and that’s not our role,” said Overholser, now the director of the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California.

To Overholser, the debate in the Strauss-Kahn case only underscores the problem with concealing the name in the first place. By splashing his name and photo across front pages while withholding hers, she said, there is an implicit judgment that one side is wrong and the other is right.

“If anything, it helps continue the stigma,” she said. “We’re signaling to rape victims that they have to go and sit in a dark corner.”

(Reporting by Joseph Ax, editing by Jesse Wegman and Grant McCool)

LONDON |
Fri Jul 8, 2011 7:33am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain, the United States and Canada are increasing travel curbs on members of the Iranian government over Iran’s disputed nuclear program, Britain’s Foreign Office said in a statement.

“The UK is working closely with its partners to prevent a wide range of individuals connected with Iran’s nuclear enrichment and weaponization programs from entering our countries,” Foreign Secretary William Hague said.

“These include scientists, engineers and those procuring components,” he added.

Hague said the measures were being coordinated with partners such as the United States and Canada.

“Iran continues to seek equipment and components from around the world for its illicit nuclear program,” Hague added.

Britain also plans to bar Iranians it believes are guilty of human rights abuses. It said more than 50 individuals would be targeted but it did not plan to name them.

“We are also taking action against more Iranians who have committed serious human rights abuses, including government ministers, members of the judiciary, prison officials and others associated with the Iranian government’s brutal crackdown on its people since the disputed elections of 2009,” he added.

Western powers suspect Iran is seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability, while Tehran says its nuclear program is aimed at generating electricity.

Britain believes there is some evidence that international sanctions have slowed Iran’s nuclear program, but remains concerned about its activities and its support for repression in Syria.

(Reporting by Keith Weir; Editing by Jon Hemming)

By Steve Holland and Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 8:19pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama told top U.S. lawmakers on Thursday he would not sign a short-term extension of the U.S. debt ceiling and said negotiators would work through the weekend on a deal to avoid a debt default.

Trying to break a budget deadlock and allow for an increase in the debt ceiling with an August 2 deadline approaching, Obama and congressional leaders are aiming for more than $2 trillion in budget savings and possibly as much as $4 trillion.

Inside the White House Cabinet Room, Obama urged congressional leaders to take a big step toward resolving the country’s debt and deficit woes, a position in which he found agreement from the top U.S. Republican, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, sources said.

In the 90-minute meeting, Obama rejected proposals floated by some Republicans for a six- or eight-month extension of the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, saying he would not sign such legislation. Instead he said he wanted a deal that would last through the November 2012 elections, the sources said.

With both sides still far apart, the meeting dwelt only with the size of a deal, not policy specifics. A Sunday meeting is to tackle the more difficult question of how those savings can be achieved, congressional aides said.

But as Obama strives for a deficit reduction deal that would clear the way for Congress to increase the $14.3 trillion cap on government borrowing by the deadline, he faces a possible rebellion on the left flank of his own party.

The top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, expressed concern that cuts in popular entitlement programs like the Social Security retirement program and the government-run Medicare program for the elderly might be part of the deficit-reduction deal.

Obama is to meet Pelosi at the White House on Friday.

Obama and U.S. lawmakers are aiming for an agreement that will cut government spending, possibly raise taxes, and restore some semblance of order to U.S. fiscal policy. The U.S. deficit is expected to be $1.4 trillion this year.

The U.S. Treasury has warned it will run out of money to pay all of the country’s bills if the debt ceiling is not increased by August 2.

If negotiators fail to reach a budget agreement by then, the government will default, which could push the United States back into recession and cause turmoil in global financial markets.

‘HARD BARGAINING’

In the meeting, Obama outlined three options: the short-term measure he rejected, a second option that would increase the debt ceiling by about $2 trillion and reduce the deficit by the same amount, and a third option of as much as $4 trillion, sources said.

This third option would include all the elements that are the subject of a pitched battle in Washington: Addressing spending in entitlement programs, defense spending and finding new revenues and taxes to lessen the pain of spending cuts.

Briefing reporters after the talks, Obama said both sides still were far apart and that staff negotiators will work through the weekend to find each side’s bottom line.

He said he will have another round of talks with top Democrats and Republicans on Sunday, hoping to begin “the hard bargaining that’s necessary to get a deal done.”

“Everybody acknowledged that there’s going to be pain involved politically on all sides but our biggest obligation is to make sure that we are doing the right thing,” he said.

Pelosi, who was speaker of the House until Democrats lost control of that in elections last November 2, said Democrats feared the poor and elderly would bear the brunt of budget-cutting.

The two sides have discussed changing the way the government measures inflation to restrain the growth of Social Security benefits and tax breaks, an approach that could save roughly $300 billion over 10 years.

“Do not consider Social Security a piggy bank for giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country. We are not going to balance the budget on the backs of seniors, women and people with disabilities,” Pelosi said.

Boehner told Republicans that they should know by the end of the week whether a big agreement is possible. “He said it was maybe 50-50,” said a Republican Party aide.

Normally a routine vote, the debt ceiling has been embroiled in partisan politics, with Republicans seeking to impose deep spending cuts to reduce the budget deficit, which opinion polls show is a major worry for many Americans.

Obama, seeking to avoid angering his liberal base before the 2012 reelection bid, wants tax increases on the wealthy to lessen the pain of spending cuts.

“I want to emphasize that nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to and the parties are still far apart on a wide range of issues,” Obama said.

Boehner said comprehensive tax reform is on the table and that changes are needed in benefit programs for the poor and elderly to ensure their long-term viability.

By Paula Rogo

NEW YORK |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 4:41pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Regardless of the outcome of the sexual assault charges against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the case could discourage victims from coming forward, women’s rights advocates say.

The high-profile case shows why sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes in the United States: the accuser has been called a prostitute in print, intimate details of her past exposed to the world, and her credibility questioned by prosecutors trying to make a case against Strauss-Kahn.

“Unquestionably, it has had a chilling effect on the public consciousness and women in coming forward,” said Sonia Ossorio, executive director of the National Organization for Women in New York City.

“It reinforces what we already know, that the majority of women do not report rapes because the spotlight will be on their personal history and their credibility will be questioned,” she said.

Forty-five percent of sexual assaults in the United States go unreported, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 2009 National Crime Victimization Study — down from 60 percent in 2007.

A New York judge freed Strauss-Kahn from house arrest last week after prosecutors revealed that his accuser, a 32-year-old hotel maid from Guinea, had lied about her background, undermining her credibility as a witness.

Women’s rights advocates worry that the woman’s assertion that she was assaulted has been lost in the politics and legal maneuverings of the case.

“They have insidiously succeeded in shifting the focus from the reported act of sexual violence perpetrated by Strauss-Kahn to Hawa’s character,” said Equality Now, an international women’s rights group, using a pseudonym for the accuser.

If she did fabricate the story, it would be unfortunate because “it would perpetuate the stereotype that victims lie about their assaults,” said Rita Garza of victim’s services agency Safe Horizon.

“The reality is that very few people lie about sexual assault,” Garza said. “It is a low one to three percent.”

MEDIA COVERAGE

Media coverage of the woman has turned especially intense since details of the accusers past misstatements have come out — that she lied about being gang-raped in her application for U.S. asylum and changed details of her story about what happened after her encounter with Strauss-Kahn.

The New York Post reported she worked as a prostitute before and after the Strauss-Kahn encounter on May 14, including while she was living under the protection of the District Attorney’s office.

That prompted a libel suit filed by the woman’s lawyers.

“It’s the irresponsible journalism of the year,” activist Gloria Steinem told Reuters. “Certainly, the example set by the New York Post would be enough to discourage anyone from ever coming forward.”

The Post said it stands by its reporting.

The coverage has also prompted debate over the media portrayal of minority and immigrant women and whether it could further discourage them from reporting sexual assaults.

“Immigrant black women are the least powerful in a society,” Ossorio said. “They are the least likely to be taken seriously.”

The accuser’s admission that she fabricated a story to improve her chances of getting U.S. asylum could expose her to criminal prosecution and possibly deportation, experts said.

“It is already difficult for a victim of a crime to come forward, especially with the added fear of deportation,” said Michele Vigeant of Safe Horizon. “It becomes an added barrier for those seeking service and seeking justice intervention.”

Women are often vulnerable after sex crimes and need to feel confident someone will believe their stories, Vigeant said.

“Even if she has had credibility problems outside of that day, a strong prosecutor would have said we are ready to stand up for her because it was a crime,” said Diane Rosenfeld, a professor at Harvard Law School. “Way too many prosecutors back out of rape cases.”

(Reporting by Paula Rogo; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Paul Simao)

By Dave Warner

PHILADELPHIA |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 9:31pm EDT

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – A legal battle over the fate of 10 double eagle gold coins from the Franklin Roosevelt Administration got underway on Thursday with the government saying the coins, now worth an estimated $75 million, were wrongly taken from a U.S. mint.

Authorities say the coins were improperly removed more than 70 years ago from the U.S. Mint at Philadelphia, only blocks from the courthouse where U.S. District Court Judge Legrome D. Davis was presiding over the case.

“You are going to hear a remarkable and intriguing story about gold coins that were stolen from the U.S. Mint in 1933,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero told the jury in her opening statement.

None of the 445,500 coins, then worth $20 each, ever legally went into circulation, she said. President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order shortly after taking office in March 1933 that prohibited the payout of gold from banks.

Yet 10 coins — called double eagles because the $10 coin was called an eagle — somehow disappeared.

“The only answer is that they were stolen,” Romero said. She pointed a finger at the late Israel Switt, saying the now deceased Philadelphia jeweler was “somehow involved.”

His heirs — his daughter Joan Langbord and her sons Roy and David — are contesting the government position that it is entitled to the coins.

In fact, the government has had possession of the disputed coins since 2004, when Roy Langbord surrendered them to the government.

GOVERNMENT WANTS TO KEEP COINS

The government says it can keep the coins because of a federal provision allowing it to grab property that is “traceable to any offense constituting specified unlawful activity.”

“We will ask you to find that these 10 1933 double eagles are assets that belong to the United States,” Romero said.

The Langbord family, however, says the coins are their rightful property and they want them back. Their attorney, Barry Berke, told the jury the government cannot seize property unless it can prove it was obtained illegally.

“They don’t have evidence, they don’t have facts, to prove what they have to prove,” he said.

The Langbord family alerted authorities after finding the coins in a safe-deposit box in 2003, wrapped in a bag from Philadelphia’s iconic Wannamaker’s department store, which is no longer in business.

“The government only knew about it because our client told them,” he said.

Berke accused the U.S. Attorney’s office of “essentially trying to rewrite history,” by claiming that bookkeeping and procedures in 1933 were tight and accurate.

In fact, he said, nobody at this time knows how the coins left the mint, when they were taken or who may have been responsible.

“We have evidence of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of gold coins leaving the mint after March 6,” he said, referring to the date of Roosevelt’s proclamation on gold.

He said the cashier at the mint, for instance, kept a bag full of the gold coins at his desk, and an assistant U.S. Treasury secretary told the mint it could continue the practice of exchanging gold from citizens for gold from the mint.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Cynthia Johnston)

By Kathy Finn

NEW ORLEANS |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 9:35pm EDT

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – A bystander who witnessed the run-up to a fatal police shooting in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina told a New Orleans court on Thursday that he watched from a motel balcony as a gunman fired a rifle at an unarmed man.

Douglas Bloedorn testified he tried to warn the man to take cover but the gunman, who prosecutors said was a police officer, turned the weapon on Bloedorn.

“Get in your room and get down,” he shouted at Bloedorn, according to testimony. Minutes later, his motel room was filled with police who stayed for 45 minutes. When they left and he stepped out of the motel, the body of a dead man lay near the entrance.

The testimony came during the second week of a federal trial of five New Orleans police officers charged with civil rights violations connected with the shooting deaths of two people, the wounding of four others and obstruction of justice related to a cover-up.

Killed in the shootings were 40-year-old Ronald Madison, who died at the entrance to the Friendly Inn motel, and 17-year-old James Brissette.

Charged are sergeants Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius and Arthur Kaufman, and officers Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso. All face possible life sentences if convicted. Five more have pleaded guilty to their part in the incident.

Defense attorneys have argued the officers were responding to a perceived threat and that it was difficult to be rational in the tragedy and chaos of the storm’s aftermath.

Bloedorn was the latest of several witnesses, including some officers at the scene, who have testified that police fired on unarmed people who did not appear to pose a threat.

TRIED TO WARN MAN

Bloedorn testified that in 2005 he was living in a second-floor room at the Friendly Inn, at the west end of the Danziger Bridge.

On September 4, he heard gunfire coming from the bridge and went to the balcony outside his room where he said he saw a man in dark clothing aim a rifle at an unarmed man who was running through the motel parking lot.

He said the gunman fired once but the man kept running.

Bloedorn said he shouted to the man, “Dude, stop, they’re going to kill you.”

The man apparently escaped alive, according to testimony. The gunman was later identified as a police officer.

In other testimony, one of the police officers who fired his weapon that day said four months passed before anyone asked him for a detailed account of what happened.

Michael Hunter drove the truck that carried about a dozen officers to the Danziger Bridge after they received a report that civilians were firing on police near the bridge.

Hunter said an investigator called together all the officers who had used weapons at the police substation immediately after the shooting, but the discussion was brief.

“There were just three questions: What weapon did you fire, how many times did you fire and who did you fire at,” Hunter said.

He said no one asked whether civilians had fired at police. He said he believed that was because everyone knew the civilians had no guns and understood that the police goal was to justify the shooting.

“At some point Lieutenant (Michael) Lohman turned to somebody to his right and said, ‘We can’t have this looking like a massacre,’” Hunter recalled.

Lohman was among the officers who pleaded guilty for his role in the alleged cover-up. He testified for the prosecution earlier in the trial.

(Editing by Karen Brooks and Cynthia Johnston)

By Jim Brumm

WILMINGTON, North Carolina |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 8:43pm EDT

WILMINGTON, North Carolina (Reuters) – Planned Parenthood asked a federal court on Thursday to block enforcement of part of North Carolina’s budget that bars extending state funds to the women’s health provider because it performs abortions.

In a suit filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Greensboro, Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina sought an injunction to halt enforcement of the budget that denies the organization state and federal funds used to subsidize family planning services and provide teen pregnancy prevention programs.

One of two Planned Parenthood affiliates operating in the state, the group received about $212,000 of state and federal funds in the year ended June 30 to fund programs at its clinics in Fayetteville, Chapel Hill and Raleigh.

During the year, the three clinics provided family planning and reproductive health exams to almost 7,000 women, Planned Parenthood said.

Planned Parenthood Health Systems, the other North Carolina affiliate, receives $32,000 of state funds to provide long-acting contraceptives to low-income women such as IUD’s and $60,000 in Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative funding.

Spokeswoman Melissa Reed said they saw 17,407 patients last year, 63 percent of which had no insurance or were on Medicaid.

The two affiliates received $454,241 last year from Medicaid, a program not affected the state budget provision defunding the group, Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina (PPCNC) Field Manager Alison Kiser said in an email.

In the press release announcing the suit, PPCNC chief executive Janet Colm said, “This is the first time in North Carolina’s history that a single health care provider has been carved out in the budget and banned from applying for competitive grants from the state.”

In singling out Planned Parenthood, the suit argues, the North Carolina budget violates federal law and the constitutional rights of Planned Parenthood.

Specifically, the suit asks the court to enjoin Lanier Cansler, Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human services, from enforcing provisions of the state budget defunding Planned Parenthood.

There was no response on Thursday afternoon to requests for comments on the suit from Governor Bev Perdue or the leaders of the General Assembly.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Peter Bohan)

By Laura Zuckerman

BOZEMAN, Mont |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 9:51pm EDT

BOZEMAN, Mont (Reuters) – Montana’s governor withdrew his state on Thursday from participation in the command team directing cleanup of oil spilled from a ruptured Exxon Mobil pipeline, saying citizens “can’t get straight answers” from the company.

In establishing the state’s own incident command center in Billings, just downstream from Friday night’s spill on the Yellowstone River, Governor Brian Schweitzer cited what he characterized as a lack of public transparency by Exxon.

Schweitzer said Exxon was responsible for restricting reporters’ access, and even that of some state environmental officials, in violation of Montana’s open-meetings law. He also said the company has been too slow in responding to citizens’ queries about the spill.

“When Montana citizens call a hotline and Exxon Mobil doesn’t get back to them, that’s unacceptable,” Schweitzer told Reuters by telephone.

A joint unified command organization consisting of the state, Exxon and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was set up after the spill to oversee efforts to assess damage, conduct cleanups and provide information to the public.

Exxon Mobil spokesman Alan Jeffers denied the company had sought to restrict access to unified command meetings or information, saying the EPA was in charge. He said the company was doing its utmost to answer questions from the public.

“We’re doing our best to respond as fast as possible to everybody who has been impacted by this spill,” he told Reuters.

Schweitzer urged land owners and other members of the public affected by the spill to begin documenting damage themselves by taking their own videos, collecting soil samples and pulling together necessary paperwork for making claims.

“Right now, we can’t get straight answers from Exxon engineers. Imagine what we’ll get from their lawyers,” he said.

EXXON SAYS CONTACTED LAND OWNERS

In response to complaints at a public meeting hosted by the EPA near Billings on Wednesday night, Jeffers said Exxon had assigned more employees to its telephone hotline.

He also said the company sent claims adjusters to the public meeting and had contacted every one of the landowners, now numbering about 80, who had called to report oil contamination on their property.

The EPA issued a statement saying the agency was continuing to direct the spill response and “will continue to work hand-in-hand with the state of Montana, other federal agencies, and local government to ensure the spill is cleaned up and the environment restored.”

A 12-inch Exxon pipeline carrying crude oil to refineries in Billings burst on Friday night, dumping up to 1,000 barrels of petroleum into one of America’s most pristine rivers about 150 miles downstream from Yellowstone National Park.

The investigation into the cause of the rupture has focused on the possibility that raging high water from a season of heavy rains and record snowmelt washed away some of the riverbed around the buried pipe, exposing it to debris swept through the channel.

Federal officials said shoreline contamination has been observed over an area stretching at least 240 miles downstream from the spill site.

But dangerous river conditions have so far prevented environmental inspection teams from reaching most of the inlets, back channels and other shoreline areas where much of the oil would likely collect, and where fish would seek refuge from high water, said Robert Gibson, a spokesman for the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

Thu Jul 7, 2011 7:50pm EDT

(Reuters) – Hackers broke into the Washington Post Co’s jobs website in two incidents last month, affecting more than a million user IDs and emails, the company said on its website.

The company said about 1.27 million users’ IDs and email addresses were affected but no passwords or other personal information was accessed.

The company said the jobs accounts of users whose email addresses were accessed remained secure.

This latest breach comes amid a spate of hack attacks against high profile targets including Sony Corp and Citigroup.

Washington Post said it quickly identified the attack and took action to shut it down. It is pursuing the matter with law enforcement and conducting an audit of the security of its jobs site.

(Reporting by Abhishek Takle in Bangalore; Editing by)

By Michael Peltier

TALLAHASSEE, Fla |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 8:03pm EDT

TALLAHASSEE, Fla (Reuters) – Following the highly publicized Casey Anthony verdict, a handful of Florida state lawmakers have proposed that it be a felony if parents do not inform law enforcement of a missing or dead child.

Two days after a jury acquitted the 25-year-old mother in the 2008 death of her two-year-old daughter Caylee, at least one bill was filed in the state legislature to close loopholes critics said resulted in a not guilty verdict.

The seven-week caught national attention and became a cable reality TV must-see.

Republican lawmakers Rep. Jose Diaz of Miami and Scott Plakon of Longwood, on Thursday filed the measure dubbed “Caylee’s Law” that makes it a felony for parents or caregivers who fail to verify the whereabouts and safety of a child up to 12 years of age within 48 hours. The law also requires that a child’s death be reported within two hours.

“While the process that produced the verdict must be respected, the deficiencies in our laws that have become apparent from this case should not be,” Diaz said in a statement Thursday.

The bill also bolsters penalties for anyone who provides false statements to police.

Caylee Anthony was last seen on June 16, 2008, Police did not learn of her disappearance until July 15. The child’s skeletal remains were discovered December 11, 2008.

Prosecutors accused Anthony of using duct tape to suffocate her daughter after using chloroform to render her unconscious. They alleged that she put the child’s body in the trunk of her car for a few days before disposing of it.

Though acquitted of murder, Anthony was convicted on four counts of lying to police, a misdemeanor under Florida law. Jailed since her arrest in late 2008, Anthony was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison but is scheduled to be released Wednesday for time served and good behavior.

The bill would make the crime a second degree felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

“We must provide steeper penalties where a caretaker … intentionally misleads or impedes law enforcement during an investigation involving his or her child,” Plakon said.

On Wednesday, an Oklahoma lawmaker said he planned to introduce a similar law in his state. It would also require parents to swiftly report the death or disappearance of a child.

The chairman of the state Senate Criminal Justice Committee, Greg EversBaker, on Thursday said his committee would spend its first committee meeting in September discussing what the chamber should do in response to the Anthony verdict.

(Reporting by Michael Peltier; Editing by Greg McCune)

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 9:37pm EDT

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich (Reuters) – A man suspected of killing seven people was surrounded by police on Thursday in a house in the western Michigan city after a police chase and was thought to be holding two hostages, authorities said.

The bodies of seven apparent shooting victims were found at two different locations in Grand Rapids on Thursday, setting off a manhunt for suspected gunman Rodrick Dantzler with police helicopters, state police and sheriff’s deputies.

The suspect later invaded a house in northeast Grand Rapids and apparently took two hostages. Police have set up a perimeter and are negotiating with him, Grand Rapids police spokesman Sergeant Jon Wu said.

Wu said the two hostages are believed to be strangers to Dantzler, and Michigan State Police said they have provided a helicopter and are assisting Grand Rapids police.

“They’re obviously trying to resolve the situation as safely as possible without harm to anyone else,” said Michigan State Police Lieutenant Kyle Bowman.

Mayor George Heartwell said Grand Rapids police, Kent County sheriff and Michigan state police were working on the case, including the department’s hostage negotiators.

“This is so uncharacteristic of Grand Rapids. We are all stunned about it,” Heartwell said in a telephone interview.

Earlier, Grand Rapids Police Chief Kevin Belk said the seven bodies were found at two separate locations. Two adult women and a girl were found dead at one location and three women and a man at the second location.

Officers in a police cruiser spotted Dantzler in a Lincoln Town Car within hours of the discovery of the bodies of the victims, and the officers began a pursuit that led through downtown Grand Rapids, Wu said.

Dantzler fired at the officers multiple times and police returned fire, and at one point a bullet struck a woman bystander who was in a car, striking her in the arm, Wu said.

Her wounds are not life-threatening, but the woman was taken to a local hospital, he said.

FBI special agent Sandra Berchtold said the bureau is assisting Grand Rapids Police Department, but she declined to provide more information.

(Writing by David Bailey; Additional Reporting by Rick Wilson and Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Greg McCune)

WASHINGTON |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 1:38pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Congressional leaders are still far apart on a wide range of budget issues but agree on the need to raise the debt ceiling, and will meet again in three days, President Barack Obama said on Thursday.

“I thought it was a very constructive meeting and I will be seeing them back here on Sunday,” Obama told reporters after the Thursday session with top Republicans and Democrats. “A lot of work will be done between now and then.”

Obama said the lawmakers discussed various options for cutting the budget deficit as a prerequisite for raising the $14.3 trillion debt limit, which the Treasury Department says must happen by August 2.

“Everybody acknowledged that we have to get this done before the hard deadline of August 2 to make sure that America does not default for the first time,” the president said.

Democrats and Republicans have been at loggerheads over how to trim the budget deficit, especially on the issue of whether higher taxes for the wealthy should be part of the solution.

Obama suggested some important differences remain.

“I want to emphasize that nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to and the parties are still far apart on a wide range of issues,” he said.

“I will reconvene congressional leaders here on Sunday with the expectation that at that point the parties will at least know where each others’ bottom lines are and will hopefully be in a position to then start engaging in the hard bargaining that’s necessary to get a deal done.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney later said while there was no specific breakthrough in Thursday’s talks, there was an agreement to keep working toward a deal.

(Reporting by Laura MacInnis, Matt Spetalnick and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Eric Walsh)

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 8:54pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A move to stop funding for President Barack Obama’s military intervention in Libya was narrowly defeated in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, underscoring Congress’ unhappiness with the undeclared war.

Both political parties split on the measure, highlighting how tensions over U.S. involvement — in conjunction with NATO — in Libya’s civil war have crossed party lines and created unusual alliances.

Republicans and Democrats argued that President Obama violated the U.S. Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Resolution by failing to secure congressional authorization for U.S. military operations in the north African country.

The House did vote, 225-201, to bar any money in the defense spending bill from being spent on military equipment or training for Libyan rebels. The measure also would have to get Senate approval and be signed by Obama before becoming law.

Representative Tom Cole, who sponsored the measure, called it a “very important moment.”

“It’s extraordinarily important that we stop the erosion of the war-making authority of the Congress of the United States, that we end this ill-advised adventure in Libya and that we reassert the rightful place of this institution in conducting war, authorizing it and funding it,” he said.

Senator John McCain, a fellow Republican, acknowledged frustration over Obama’s lack of consultation with Congress over the conflict but said the vote to bar funding for “freedom fighters in Libya is deeply disturbing.”

“This action sends the wrong message to both (Libyan leader Muammar) Gaddafi and those fighting for freedom and democracy in Libya — especially with Gaddafi is clearly crumbling,” McCain said.

The House, in a 316-111 vote, also approved a measure barring the Pentagon from using funds from the 2012 defense spending bill on anything that violates the War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to seek congressional approval within 60 days of committing U.S. forces to a conflict.

SPONSORED BY MEMBERS OF BOTH PARTIES

On a vote of 199-229, the House rejected the proposal to block defense funds in fiscal year 2012, which begins October 1, for U.S. military participation in the NATO-led mission against Gaddafi’s forces.

The failed measure’s sponsors were Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich and Republican Representative Justin Amash.

“We are at war,” Amash argued before the vote. “The Constitution vests Congress with the exclusive power to declare war.”

He said it was embarrassing to hear the Obama administration’s “flimsy” arguments for being involved in Libya but it would be even more embarrassing if Congress did nothing about its constitutional role being ignored. “We must stand up and say stop.”

But Representative Norm Dicks, a Democrat, said it would be wrong to undermine the president, as well as NATO allies involved in the war, by cutting off funds for it. He said the administration estimated the conflict would cost the United States a little more than $1 billion by September 30.

Representative Bill Young, a Republican, said there were no funds in the fiscal 2012 defense spending bill for Libya anyway, because the administration had said that it was taking the money from the “base budget” that had already been appropriated in the current fiscal year.

The House has held several votes on the Libyan operation. Last month it defeated another move to curb the intervention, while also refusing to formally authorize the U.S. participation. The Senate has yet to take any votes on the war, although a resolution to authorize the U.S. role has passed a committee.

The House actions reflect growing war fatigue among lawmakers after almost a decade of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq that have cost more than $1 trillion and have helped fuel a $1.4 trillion budget deficit.

The United States and its NATO allies launched the U.N.-backed mission against Libya more than three months ago, aiming to prevent Gaddafi’s forces from attacking civilians in regions opposed to his rule. The mission now appears to have the unstated goal of driving Gaddafi from power.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Bill Trott)

By David Bailey

MINNEAPOLIS |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 8:45pm EDT

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) – Minnesota’s government shutdown reached a seventh day on Thursday with no end in sight, and a major debt rating agency stripped the state of its AAA bond rating, citing the budget battle as a reason.

Democratic Governor Mark Dayton and Republican legislative leaders met over the education budget, and House Speaker Kurt Zellers and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch called the governor’s latest proposals “incredibly disappointing.”

Minnesota’s state government has been shut down since Friday, when the political adversaries failed to reach a budget deal to address a $5 billion deficit before the new fiscal year began.

No new talks are scheduled between the leaders.

The public positions by Minnesota’s leaders have echoed differences in Washington and several other states. But Minnesota is the only state where the government is shut down.

President Barack Obama’s pronouncement on Thursday that nothing would be done until everything was wrapped up on a deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling was similar to Dayton’s position on Minnesota state budget negotiations.

Before the shutdown began, Dayton and Republican leaders had imposed a “cone of silence” over budget details under negotiation. That has ended since talks resumed on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Dayton released details of two options he proposed to close a roughly $1.4 billion gap between his budget proposal and the $34.2 billion plan Republicans have proposed.

Dayton offered proposals for either a temporary income tax increase on people making more than $1 million per year or a $1 per pack tobacco tax increase, along with healthcare surcharges and a delay in school aid payments.

Republican leaders responded that a tax increase of any kind was off the table. Both sides also have acknowledged they have education and health policy differences to negotiate.

Fitch debt ratings agency mentioned the budget impasse as one reason for slashing the AAA bond rating, which is the highest rating possible.

“The context of budget decisionmaking has become increasingly contentious over time,” the ratings agency said.

Minnesota Management and Budget Commissioner Jim Schowalter said the downgrade would increase state borrowing costs and indirectly impact interest rates for other public entities including cities, counties and schools.

“For years Minnesota has prided itself on having constructive, responsive public solutions but in the eyes of the marketplace, we are slipping,” Schowalter said.

Koch said the downgrade, “along with everything else” should hasten the move to resolve the budget impasse, and renewed a call for a temporary funding bill, saying talks were close on six of the nine remaining budget bills.

“As everything that is going on here in Minnesota, it is incredibly disappointing, it’s incredibly frustrating,” Koch said in a telephone interview. “I think all of this is bad for Minnesota and it is completely unnecessary.”

Also on Thursday, a bipartisan panel formed by former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Republican Governor Arne Carlson released an independent budget plan that much more closely resembled the governor’s proposals than those of Republicans.

The panel recommended a budget of about $35.4 billion with a temporary 4 percent across-the-board income tax increase.

The proposal also included an alcohol tax increase, raising the cigarette tax by more than a $1 per pack to match Wisconsin’s, adding a human services surcharge and delaying school aid payments.

Minnesota’s government shutdown is much broader in scope than a nine-day impasse in 2005 under then-governor and now Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty.

More than 20,000 of Minnesota’s 36,000 state employees have been furloughed in the shutdown, leaving sparse staffing at several departments. Dozens of state funded road construction projects have been suspended as was the state lottery.

In the case of the state Department of Natural Resources, for example, state parks lose $1 million per week in revenue from visitors, and fishing license sales have been suspended, putting pressure on resorts and outfitters as well.

State parks, closed at night during the shutdown, also have reported mostly minor but widespread damage, from graffiti to broken locks and gates.

Prisons, state police patrols and nursing and veterans homes and other critical services have been maintained.

(Reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis, Andy Greder in Pine City, Minnesota, and Andrew Stern in Chicago; Editing by Greg McCune and Richard Chang)

BEIJING |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 7:12pm EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Foreign Ministry warned U.S. officials on Thursday not to meet with visiting exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, saying it hoped Washington “appropriately dealt” with Tibet-related issues.

China reviles the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Dalai Lama, saying he supports the use of violence to establish an independent Tibet. He strongly denies either accusation, insisting he seeks only true autonomy for the remote region.

The Dalai Lama is currently visiting the United States and is due to give a public talk in Washington Saturday.

The U.S. State Department said he met on Wednesday with Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero, but that it remained to be decided whether he would have any meetings at higher levels.

On Thursday, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and other senior U.S. lawmakers also met the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Beijing’s position on the Dalai Lama’s foreign visits was clear.

“We oppose the underhand visits of the Dalai Lama which he uses to engage in activities to split the motherland,” Hong told a regular news briefing.

“At the same time, we also oppose any foreign government or politicians supporting or abetting in such activities by the Dalai Lama,” he added.

“We hope that the United States strictly abide by its promises on the Tibet issue and … cautiously and appropriately deal with relevant issues,” Hong said.

The Dalai Lama met U.S. President Barack Obama last year, drawing strong denunciation from Beijing.

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a statement saying Obama should also meet the Dalai Lama to make it “clear that the U.S. sides with the victims in Tibet, not the perpetrators in Beijing.”

“President Obama has an opportunity to make a strong statement about what we stand for by meeting with the Dalai Lama during his current visit, and I urge him to take it,” said Ros-Lehtinen, a staunch critic of Communist governments.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said China had complained about the Dalai Lama’s meeting with Otero, who is the State Department’s coordinator for Tibet issues.

“The Chinese always make their views known when the Dalai Lama is in Washington,” she said.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard, additional reporting by Andrew Quinn in Washington; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Eric Walsh)

By Dan Wiessner

NEW YORK |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 6:46pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ramped up the pressure on union officials to concede hundreds of millions of dollars in savings on Thursday with the delivery of layoff notices to more than 300 state workers.

The 321 workers receiving the lay notices are members of the Public Employee Federation (PEF), the state’s second-largest public employee union, which publicly rejected some of Cuomo’s proposals earlier this year.

The union is continuing labor talks with the state. The new layoff notices come on top of 450 layoffs announced last week. All the layoffs are scheduled to take effect on July 28.

Cuomo, a Democrat, had threatened 9,800 layoffs unless unions concede $450 million in savings from wages and benefits to help close a $10 billion deficit without new taxes or debt.

Cuomo, like several of his peers, has taken on public unions, using layoffs or wage and benefit cuts, though unions traditionally support Democrats. Unlike Wisconsin and New Jersey, Cuomo has not curbed collective bargaining rights.

New York has 132,000 state workers.

A PEF spokeswoman said Cuomo should hold off on handing out pink slips while negotiations continue.

“We’re not happy that our members and their families are being threatened with losing their job security while we’re still at the table,” spokeswoman Darcy Wells said.

Last month, the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA), the state’s largest public union, reached an tentative accord with the state that includes a three-year wage freeze and higher employee health care contributions. The deal, which must be ratified next month, will shield CSEA members from layoffs.

Cuomo has tried to use the CSEA deal to force a compromise from PEF and other unions, but PEF President Ken Brynien has framed those proposals as painful, long-term solutions to the state’s short-term fiscal problems.

Cuomo’s office did not return requests for comment. In a memo sent to agency heads on Thursday, the director of state operations who leads the labor talks, Howard Glaser, said he was “hopeful” more unions would make the same concessions as CSEA.

“There is no path to fiscal stability in New York that does not address work force spending,” wrote Glaser.

The hardest-hit agency in Thursday’s round of layoffs was the Department of Environmental Conservation, which will lose 43 employees. The agency has already lost hundreds of workers over the last decade, including 139 in December.

Environmental advocates said they were concerned that the cutbacks could affect regulation of hydraulic fracturing, a controversial method of natural-gas drilling that could be allowed in New York as early as next year.

“Without proper staff levels, the regulations are not worth the paper they’re written on,” said Kate Sinding, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

DEC spokeswoman Emily DeSantis said the layoffs would not harm the agency’s ability to regulate hydraulic fracturing.

“Any layoffs required as part of achieving workforce savings will have no impact on the review, monitoring and enforcement of activities associated with hydraulic fracturing. None of the affected individuals are part of DEC’s oil and gas program,” DeSantis said by email.

(Editing by Joan Gralla and Leslie Adler)

By Kim Dixon

WASHINGTON |
Thu Jul 7, 2011 5:03pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Donations to federal political candidates by labor unions are down sharply this year, an analysis found on Thursday, in an ominous sign for the Democratic Party heading into next year’s elections.

Reported contributions by unions’ political committees — traditionally bastions of support for Democrats — were down 40 percent for the first quarter of 2011 compared with two years earlier, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign finance.

Membership in labor unions has been slowly dropping for years, but this year’s decline in donations is more likely due to disenchantment with politicians including President Barack Obama and the stunted U.S. economic recovery.

For the first quarter of this year, union political action committees gave nearly $4.8 million to federal candidates, compared with $8.4 million in the same period in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

“Labor unions have been the foot soldiers of the Democratic Party,” Gary Chaison, a professor of labor studies at Clark University in Massachusetts, said. “But the labor movement is seriously having to rethink its political role this year.”

A lack of focus by their Democratic allies on creating new jobs and failure to deliver legislation strengthening unions has members disillusioned, several experts said.

Just under 12 percent of Americans, or 14.7 million people, belonged to unions in 2010, down from 12.3 percent a year earlier. More than 20 percent of Americans were union members in 1983.

“There is a longer-term trend in place, but it definitely does not explain the sizable drop-off, which may be better explained by the economic downturn and quite possibly the disconnect with the Democratic Party’s lack of focus on jobs,” said Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at George Mason.

Obama “has done a lot for bankers from their perspective,” he said, referring to the bailout of big banks amid the 2007-2009 financial meltdown.

NOT JUST CASH

Obama is not expected to be wanting for cash in his re-election bid, and he is seen meeting or surpassing a $60 million goal for the second quarter alone. That means the impact will likely be felt most in congressional races.

Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said his members are angry that attacks on unions on the state level has been met with silence by federal officials.

“This is about a pattern of disappointment, and it really was brought to a head by what we feel is overall silence from our friends in Congress on these outrageous assaults on our members around this country,” he said.

Unions provide more than just money. They are experts at organization, which can be key in close elections.

“It is not that unions have that many members, but they can get those members to show up at political rallies and drive people to the polls,” Chaison said.

Union contributions topped $64 million during 2010, with 93 percent going to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Interest groups that tend to back Republicans also spend heavily.

During the 2010 elections, among the biggest outside spending groups were the Chamber of Commerce, which spent $33 million and the American Action Network, which spent $26 million, according to report by New York City’s public advocate office. Both groups nearly always back Republicans.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)