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Tuesday, March 9, 2010 – Daily News – 5B LEGAL NOTICE Publish: February 27, 2010 & March 9, 2010 WORLD BRIEFING Obama appeals for health bill GLENSIDE, Pa. (AP) — Stirring memories of his cam- paign for the White House, President Barack Obama made a spirited, shirt-sleeved appeal for passage of long-stalled health care changes Monday as Democratic congressional leaders worked behind the scenes on legislation they hope can quickly gain passage. ''Let's seize reform. It's within our grasp,'' the presi- dent implored his audience at Arcadia University, the first outside-the-Beltway appear- ance since he vowed last week to do everything in his power to push his health care plan into law. The president's pitch was part denunciation of insurance companies — ''they continue to ration care on the basis of who's sick and who's healthy,'' he said — and part criticism of his Republican critics. ''You had 10 years. What happened? What were you doing?'' he taunted members of a party that held the White House for eight years and control of Con- gress for a dozen. The outcome could affect almost every American, changing the ways they receive and pay for health care — and extending coverage to tens of millions more people — if the legislation gains final approval. ''I'm kind of fired up,'' Obama said at the beginning of his remarks, a variation on his oft-stated 2008 refrain, ''Fired up. Ready to go.'' And he included an appeal to his audi- ence — many of whom were students — to help in the same ways they might in a cam- paign. ''So I need you to knock on doors. Talk to your neigh- bors. Pick up the phone,'' he urged them. Haitian judge frees US Baptist missionary PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — One of two U.S. Bap- tist missionaries still held on kidnapping charges in Haiti was released Monday, but the group's leader remained in custody. Charisa Coulter was taken from her jail cell to the airport by U.S. Embassy staff more than a month after she and nine other Americans were arrested for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti after the earth- quake. Coulter, wearing a red tank top and sunglasses, declined comment as she quickly got into an SUV that took her to the airport. Defense attorney Louis Ricardo Chachoute said she was released because there was no evidence to support the charges of kidnapping and criminal association. He pre- dicted Laura Silsby, the leader of the Idaho-based missionary group, would be released soon as well. Hundreds slaughtered in Nigeria DOGO NAHAWA, Nigeria (AP) — The killers showed no mercy: They didn't spare women and children, or even a 4-day-old baby, from their machetes. On Monday, Niger- ian women wailed in the streets as a dump truck carried dozens of bodies past burned- out homes toward a mass grave. Rubber-gloved workers pulled ever-smaller bodies from the dump truck and tossed them into the mass grave. A crowd began singing a hymn with the refrain, ''Jesus said I am the way to heaven.'' As the grave filled, the grieving crowd sang: ''Jesus, show me the way.'' At least 200 people, most of them Christians, were slaugh- tered on Sunday, according to residents, aid groups and jour- nalists. The local government gave a figure more than twice that amount, but offered no casualty list or other informa- tion to substantiate it. An Associated Press reporter counted 61 corpses, 32 of them children, being buried in the mass grave in the village of Dogo Nahawa on Monday. Other victims would be buried elsewhere. At a local morgue the bodies of children, including a diaper-clad tod- dler, were tangled together. One appeared to have been scalped. Others had severed hands and feet. The horrific violence comes after sectarian killings in this region in January left more than 300 dead, most of them Muslim. Some victims were shoved into sewer pits and communal wells. Earthquake kills 51 in eastern Turkey OKCULAR, Turkey (AP) — Hundreds of earthquake survivors huddled in aid tents and around bonfires Monday in eastern Turkey, seeking relief from the winter cold after a strong temblor knocked down stone and mud-brick houses in five villages, killing 51 people. The damage appeared worst in the Kurdish village of Okcu- lar, which was almost razed. At least 15 of the village's 900 residents were killed, the Elazig governor's office said, and the air was thick with dust from crumpled homes and barns. The pre-dawn earthquake caught many residents as they slept, shaking the area's poorly made buildings into piles of rubble. Panicked survivors fled into the narrow streets of this village perched on a hill in front of snow-covered moun- tains, with some people climb- ing out of windows to escape. ''I tried to get out of the door but it wouldn't open. I came out of the window and started helping my neighbors,'' Ali Riza Ferhat of Okcular told NTV television. ''We removed six bodies.'' The Kandilli seismology center said the 6.0-magnitude quake hit at 4:32 a.m. (0232 GMT, 9 p.m. EST Sunday) near the village of Basyurt in a remote, sparsely populated area of Elazig province. The region is 340 miles (550 kilo- meters) east of Ankara, the capital. Parties predict al-Maliki's coalition will lead vote BAGHDAD (AP) — Early estimates from a range of Iraqi parties on Monday predicted a coalition led by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would take the lead in the par- liamentary election, though official results were not expected for a few days. A win by al-Maliki could signal Iraqis' rejection of the religious parties that have dominated the country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The prime minister has been trying to distance himself from his party's religious roots and portray himself as more of a nationalist. Sunday's voting was the lat- est test of Iraq's fragile democ- racy and will determine whether the country can over- come the deep sectarian divides that have plagued it for the past seven years. Turnout for Iraq's second election for a full parliamen- tary term was 62 percent of about 19 million eligible vot- ers, the election commission said. That is lower than the last full parliamentary election in December 2005, in which roughly 76 percent of eligible voters turned out. Officials attributed the drop to a combination of voter intimidation, more stringent ID requirements at the polls and a drop in voter excitement. A spate of attacks on election day — some directly on voters and polling stations — killed 36 people. Toyota aims to refute critic WASHINGTON (AP) — Toyota, dogged by millions of recalls and claims that it still has not fixed its safety problems, took its strongest step yet Mon- day to silence critics who blame faulty electronics for runaway cars and trucks. Toyota assembled a group of experts to refute studies by an Illinois professor who revved Toyota engines simply by short- circuiting the wiring. Toyota's experts say the experiments were done under conditions that would never happen on the road. The automaker maintained its assertion that simpler mechanical flaws, not electron- ics, were to blame. ''There isn't a ghost issue out there,'' Kristen Tabar, an elec- tronics general manager with Toyota's technical center, told a news conference at the compa- ny's North American headquar- ters in Torrance, Calif. Meeting with reporters, Toy- ota addressed the work of David W. Gilbert, an automotive tech- nology professor at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, whose work has been the basis of doubts about Toyota's mechanical fixes. Oldest person in US dies at 114 WESTMORELAND, N.H. (AP) — Mary Josephine Ray, the New Hampshire woman who was certified as the oldest person living in the United States, has died at age 114 years, 294 days. She died Sunday at a nursing home in Westmoreland but was active until about two weeks before her death, her grand- daughter Katherine Ray said. ''She just enjoyed life. She never thought of dying at all,'' Katherine Ray said. ''She was planning for her birthday party.'' Even with her recent decline, Ray managed an interview with a reporter last week, her grand- daughter said. Ray was the oldest person in the United States and the second- oldest in the world, according to the Gerontology Research Group. She was also recorded as the oldest person ever to live in New Hampshire. Ratings smile on Oscar NEW YORK (AP) — An estimated 41.3 million people saw ''The Hurt Locker'' top the popular ''Avatar'' for best picture in the most-watched Academy Awards telecast since 2005. Oscar viewership was up 14 percent over last year, the Nielsen Co. said Monday, keeping with a trend of bigger audiences for major events on broadcast televi- sion a month after the Super Bowl set the mark for most- watched telecast ever. In true film fashion, the Oscars built to a big climax when the Iraqi war thriller ''The Hurt Locker'' and its director, Kathryn Bigelow, topped ''Avatar,'' directed by her ex-husband James Cameron. Bigelow was the first woman to win the Oscar for best director. The audience was up from the 36.3 million who saw ''Slumdog Millionaire'' win best picture last year and 32 million — Oscar's smallest audience on record — in 2008, Nielsen said. The Oscars had just over 42 million watch in 2005, when ''Million Dollar Baby'' was the big winner.