Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/63614
WORLD BRIEFING Boehner berates Obama's college visits WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker John Boehner accused Presi- dent Barack Obama on Thursday of conduct ''beneath the dignity of the White House.'' The top House Democrat said Boehner considers the health of women ''a luxu- ry.'' In a measure of the sharp elbows both parties are throwing this election year, note that those words were exchanged over legislation whose basic purpose they say they agree on: preventing interest rates on millions of federal student loans from doubling to 6.8 per- cent this summer. favors from strippers at a club in San Salvador and took prostitutes to their hotel rooms ahead of Obama's visit to the city in March 2011. information and visual imagery of the Supreme Court than it does of the White House and Congress. An anti-court strategy by Prostitution is legal in both Colombia and El Sal- vador. Separately, The Wash- ington Post this week cited unnamed ''confidants'' of the Secret Service officers implicated in Colombia saying senior managers had tolerated similar behavior during previous official trips. The Post described a visit to Buenos Aires in 2009 by former President Bill Clinton, whose protec- tive detail it said included agents and uniformed offi- cers. During that trip, the Post said, members of the detail went out for a late night of partying at strip clubs. Their chief remaining dispute is how to pay for the $5.9 billion cost of keeping those rates low. When it comes to that, each side has in effect taken a political hostage: House Republicans would cut spending from Obama's prized health care overhaul law, Senate Democrats would boost payroll taxes on owners of some private corpora- tions and House Democ- rats would erase federal subsidies to oil and gas companies. Thursday's partisan blasts were the latest, vivid example of how lawmakers are missing no chances this election season to portray them- selves as seriously addressing voters' con- cerns about the economy and other issues while accusing the other side of blatantly playing politi- cal games. fied Thursday, a day before the House was set to vote on a GOP-written bill that would keep cur- rent 3.4 percent interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans intact for another year. The mea- sure would be paid for by carving money out of a preventive health fund established by Obama's health care overhaul law — a measure most Democrats consider a prized accomplishment worth fighting for. Secret Service investigating reports of agents using prostitutes Supreme Court stirs race with its review of health care, Obama ''will fire up his base, but I doubt it will make any bigger impact on swing voters,'' said Repub- lican consultant John Fee- hery. on other trips WASHINGTON (AP) — Expanding the prostitu- tion investigation, the Secret Service acknowledged Thursday it is checking whether its employees hired strippers and prostitutes in advance of President Barack Obama's visit last year to El Salvador. The rhetoric intensi- immigration WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court, suddenly at the heart of presidential politics, is preparing what could be blockbuster rulings on health care and immigration shortly before the fall elec- tion. The disclosure came not long after the Homeland Security secretary assured skeptical senators that the recent prostitution scandal in Colombia appeared to be an isolated incident. A spokesman for the Secret Service, Edwin Donovan, said the agency was investigating allega- tions raised in news reports about unprofessional behavior that have emerged in the aftermath of the Colombia incident. The lat- est, by Seattle television sta- tion KIRO-TV (http://bit.ly/IeN6bv), quot- ed anonymous sources as saying that Secret Service employees received sexual FRIDAY SPECIALS WHOLE TRI-TIPS Celebrating our 9 yr Anniversary WHOLE RACK OF SPARE RIBS $ starting at $ 1ST COME 1ST 2 Bud's BBQ 528-0799 Only good through April 30, 2012 OR RESERVE 22825 Antelope Blvd • Red Bluff SERVED 15 20 ALL NEW FACILITY Your One Stop Convenience Store ONE STOP 714 Walnut St., Red Bluff 5am to 11pm The court, sometimes an afterthought in presidential elections, is throwing a new element of uncertainty into the campaign taking shape between President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney. 'crucify' HOUSTON (AP) — A top administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protec- tion Agency has apologized for using the word ''cruci- fy'' two years ago when describing the agency's enforcement policies, and for saying it makes exam- ples of bad players in the oil and gas industry. EPA Region 6 adminis- trator Al Armendariz, who oversees Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and New Mexico, issued a writ- ten apology Wednesday after video surfaced of him at a meeting in May 2010 in the tiny town of Dish. The video shows Armendariz answering a question about the agency's enforcement policies. He tells the audience he is going to share an analogy with them that he believes may be ''crude.'' In the Middle Ages, he told the crowd, the Romans would enter a troublesome village, ''take the first five guys they saw and crucify them.'' Then the town would be ''really easy to manage for the next few years,'' he said. The EPA also makes EPAofficial apologizes for use of Sharply divided between four conservatives, four lib- erals and one conservative- leaning swing justice, the court already is viewed as being nearly as partisan as Congress. Within weeks it will rule on the contentious 2010 Democratic-crafted health care overhaul and a Republican-backed Arizona law that's seen as a model for cracking down on illegal immigrants. Obama sometimes seems to be running against the court, or at least its con- servative Whether that will sway vot- ers in November is unclear. The public receives far less members. ''examples of people who are not complying with the law, you make examples out of them, use it as a deterrent method,'' Armendariz con- tinued. ''Companies that are smart see that and they don't want to play that, and Friday, April 27, 2012 – Daily News 7A they decide at that point that it's time to clean up.'' To some Republicans and conservatives, the com- ments justified their long- standing allegation that the EPA under President Barack Obama has stepped up enforcement to a point where it is harming the economy and the energy industry. The agency has become a popular target on the campaign trail, and Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has in the past called for EPA chief Lisa P. Jackson to be fired. Taylor warning LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands (AP) — For- mer Liberian President Charles Taylor became the first head of state since World War II to be convict- ed by an international war crimes court, a historic ver- dict that sends a message that tyrants worldwide will be tracked down and brought to justice. The warlord-turned- president was found guilty on Thursday of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for arm- ing Sierra Leone rebels in exchange for ''blood dia- monds'' mined by slave laborers and smuggled across the border. conviction sends victims and carving their groups' initials into oppo- nents and even children they kidnapped, drugged and turned into killers. The rebels developed gruesome terms for the mutilations that became their chilling trademark: They would offer their victims the choice of ''long sleeves'' or ''short sleeves'' — having their hands hacked off or their arms sliced off above the elbow. The 64-year-old Taylor will be sentenced next month after a hearing. to addicts WEST BRIDGEWA- TER, Mass. (AP) — Steve Wohlen lay on his front lawn, blue, unconscious and barely breathing, overdos- ing on heroin. Heroin- overdose antidote is being issued Judges at the Special Court for Sierra Leone said Taylor played a crucial role in allowing the rebels to continue a bloody rampage during that West African nation's 11-year civil war, which ended in 2002 with more than 50,000 dead. Ten years after the war ended, Sierra Leone is still strug- gling to rebuild. The rebels gained inter- national notoriety for hack- ing off the limbs of their His mother ran outside, frantically assembling a pen-like canister. Her heart pounding, she dropped to her knees and used the device to deliver two squirts up her son's nostrils. Within minutes, his eyes opened, color returned to his face, and he sat up — brought back from a poten- tially lethal overdose by a drug commonly known by its old brand name, Narcan. The drug, widely sold under its generic name, naloxone, counteracts the effects of heroin, OxyCon- tin and other powerful painkillers and has been routinely used by ambu- lance crews and emergency rooms in the U.S. for decades. But in the past few years, public health officials across the nation have been distributing it free to addicts and their loved ones, as well as to some police and fire- fighters.