Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/25330
Thursday, February 17, 2011 – Daily News – 3B Budget victory for Obama and GOP newcomers WASHINGTON (AP) — Determined to reduce deficits, impatient House Republican freshmen made common cause with President Barack Obama on Wednesday, scoring their biggest victory to date in a vote to cancel $450 million for an alternative engine for the Penta- gon’s next-generation war- plane. ‘‘Right here, right now was a surefire way to reduce spend- ing,’’ declared Rep. Tom Rooney of Florida, a second- term lawmaker whose sum- mons to cut money from the F- 35 fighter jet was answered by 47 Republican newcomers. Speaker John Boehner and other House GOP leaders back the funding. The incursion into the defense budget occurred as the Republican-controlled House debated legislation to cut feder- al spending by more than $61 billion through the end of the current fiscal year. Nearly all of the reductions are aimed at domestic programs, ranging from education aid to nutrition, environmental protection and farm programs. Obama has threatened a veto if the measure reaches his desk, but he and the GOP newcomers were on the same side when it came to the engine for the F-35, the costliest weapons program in U.S. history. The House vote was 238-198. Two successive presidents as well as the Pentagon brass have tried to scrap funding for the alternative engine, arguing it is a waste of money. In a measure of his opposition, Defense Sec- retary Robert Gates told a House committee earlier in the day that overall costs could reach $3 billion, and he vowed to ‘‘look at all available legal options to close down this pro- gram’’ if lawmakers fail. GOP leader says changes in anti- union bill will not be major MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Republican leader in the Wis- consin Senate says the GOP plans no major changes in Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to strip collective bargaining rights from nearly all public employ- ees. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said Wednes- day that some changes would be made to the bill, but the core parts of Walker’s plan would remain, including the provision affecting collective bargaining and another one requiring employees to make larger con- tributions to their pensions and health insurance. Walker and party leaders have expressed confidence the bill would pass, even as more than 10,000 protesters flooded the Capitol over the past two days to try to stop the bill. WORLD BRIEFING West Palm Beach police father doused him with a chem- ical. couldn’t say what kind of chemical was found that shut down the highway. Borders’ bankruptcy filing result of failing to keep up with habits NEW YORK (AP) — Bor- Bahrain protests boost challenges for regime MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — The swelling protests against Bahrain’s rulers gained momen- tum Wednesday with huge crowds calling for a sweeping political overhaul and the king- dom’s stunned leaders appear- ing to shift tactics after attempts to crush the uprising stoked rage on the streets and sharp criticism from Western allies. The widening challenges to the Arab world’s political order — emboldened by the downfall of old-guard regimes in Tunisia and Egypt — also flared in Libya for the first time, with riot police battling protesters marching against the 42-year rule of Moammar Gadhafi. In Yemen, the embattled president flooded the ancient capital of Sanaa with security forces to try to stamp out demonstrations that began near- ly a week ago. They turned deadly Wednesday in the south- ern port of Aden, with two peo- ple killed in clashes with police. ‘‘It’s clear now that no Arab leader can truly feel comfort- able,’’ said Ali Fakhro, a politi- cal analyst and commentator in Bahrain. ‘‘Those days have been swept away.’’ It’s also taken a big swipe at Western policy assumptions. Police shut down stretch of highway where boy was found WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Police say they are shutting down a stretch of I-95 because they found a potential- ly dangerous chemical at the scene where an injured boy was discovered in a toxic truck with his twin sister’s deteriorated body. Authorities say they’re shut- ting down northbound lanes of I-95 in West Palm Beach around the area where a 10- year-old’s body was discovered in her father’s pesticide truck. Police say the brother was critically injured when his ders was slow to get the mes- sage as the big-box retailer lost book, music and video sales to the Internet and other competi- tion. The result: It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Wednesday, and will close near- ly a third of its stores. Less nimble than rival Barnes & Noble, Borders now begins what analysts expect will be a quickly resolved strug- gle for the survival of its remaining stores. It’s the latest cautionary tale about the dan- gers retailers face when they fail to keep up with swiftly changing technology and con- sumer habits. ‘‘It’s almost a case of hit- and-run,’’ said Al Greco, mar- keting professor at Fordham University. ‘‘They were cross- ing the street and they didn’t pay attention, and that tractor trailer (of technology) hit them.’’ Borders plans to close about 200 of its 642 stores over the next few weeks, from San Fran- cisco to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., costing about 6,000 of the com- pany’s 19,500 employees their jobs. The closures are also a blow to publishers already owed tens of millions of dollars by the company, which stopped paying them in December. Borders said it is losing about $2 million a day at the stores it plans to close, all of them superstores. The company also operates smaller Walden- books and Borders Express stores. Egyptian democracy advocate says decisions lack transparency CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s new military rulers came under criti- cism Wednesday from a leading democracy advocate as well as from youth and women’s groups for what they say is a failure to make decisions open- ly and include a larger segment of society. Five days after ousting Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising, Egyptians continued protests and strikes over a host of griev- ances from paltry wages to toxic waste dumping. They defied the second warning in three days from the ruling Armed Forces Supreme Coun- cil to halt all labor unrest at a time when the economy is stag- gering. Somali pirate sentenced to 33 The caretaker government also gave its first estimate of the death toll in the 18-day democ- racy uprising. Health Minister Ahmed Sameh Farid said at least 365 civilians died accord- ing to a preliminary count that does not include police or pris- oners. Mubarak’s departure set off a chain reaction of revolt around the Middle East, with anti-gov- ernment demonstrations report- ed Wednesday in Libya, Bahrain, Jordan and Yemen. Democracy advocate and Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBa- radei called on the council to include civilians in a transition- al presidential council to be entrusted with setting the course toward democracy. How a single trade illustrates the NYSE’s fight to survive NEW YORK (AP) — While executives were finishing a deal to sell the New York Stock Exchange to a German rival, the NYSE was locked in a separate, smaller battle with three dozen competitors. The prize was the right to deliver shares of Coca- Cola stock to an investor who wanted 400 of them. About 8 billion shares trade every day in the United States, so this sale seems hardly worth mentioning, save for the telling outcome: The NYSE lost. The New York exchange is losing a lot these days. The icon of American capitalism hopes that combining with another exchange will give it heft to reverse its fallen fortunes. But it won’t be easy. Competition is so keen to handle stock orders now that the difference between winning and losing frequently comes down to pennies — in the case of the Coke trade, a few hun- dredths of a penny. For decades, if you wanted to buy Coke stock, your request went to a middleman in a trad- er’s jacket standing on the floor of the NYSE building in lower Manhattan — the shot seen over and over on television when the market has a big day. He would yell and wave his arms until he found someone willing to sell. years in prison NEW YORK (AP) — A Somali pirate who kidnapped and brutalized the captain of a U.S.- flagged merchant ship off the coast of Africa in 2009 was sen- tenced to more than 33 years in prison Wednesday by an emotion- al judge who told him he deserved a stiff punishment for leading a crew of armed bandits bent on committing ‘‘depraved acts.’’ U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska choked up as she read at length from letters written by Capt. Richard Phillips and trau- matized sailors who were aboard the cargo vessel commandeered by Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse. The recent spate of piracy on the Indian Ocean and elsewhere ‘‘is not a Disneyland-esque prob- lem,’’ she quoted Phillips, of Underhill, Vt., as saying. ‘‘These are not Johnny Depps. They threaten seamen’s lives, repeated- ly. ... They deprive us of the rights that they themselves complain about.’’ Another officer from the ship, Colin Wright, appeared in person to urge the judge to impose a lengthy term. He recalled being shot at and held at gunpoint by Muse and three other pirates. ‘‘What happened to us was ter- rible,’’ said Wright, 44, of Galve- ston, Texas. ‘‘I’m not the same person I was and I never will be.’’ Scientists find fingerprints of man-made global warming WASHINGTON (AP) — Extreme rainstorms and snowfalls have grown substantially stronger, two studies suggest, with scien- tists for the first time finding the telltale fingerprints of man-made global warming on downpours that often cause deadly flooding. Two studies in Wednesday’s issue of the journal Nature link heavy rains to increases in green- house gases more than ever before. One group of researchers looked at the strongest rain and snow events of each year from 1951 to 1999 in the Northern Hemisphere and found that the more recent storms were 7 percent wetter. That may not sound like much, but it adds up to be a sub- stantial increase, said the report from a team of researchers from Canada and Scotland. The study didn’t single out spe- cific storms but examined worst- of-each-year events all over the Northern Hemisphere. While the study ended in 1999, the close of the decade when scientists say cli- mate change kicked into a higher gear, the events examined were similar to more recent disasters: deluges that triggered last year’s deadly floods in Pakistan and in Nashville, Tenn., and this winter’s paralyzing blizzards in parts of the United States. The change in severity was most apparent in North America, but that could be because that’s where the most rain gauges are. 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