World/Nation Briefs May 18, 2011

IMF chief under suicide watch

at NYC jail

NEW YORK - A law enforcement official and a union official say International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is under a suicide watch in jail.

Norman Seabrook heads New York City's corrections officer union. He told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Strauss-Kahn was under the watch at Rikers Island.

A law enforcement official confirmed that Strauss-Kahn was placed under watch after undergoing a mental health evaluation. The official spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of prisoners' medical information.

Millions at stake over Mississippi River closure

NEW ORLEANS - The Coast Guard has interrupted shipping along the country's busiest inland waterway over fears that the bulging Mississippi River could strain levees that protect hundreds of thousands from flooding. Already, thousands have sought refuge from floodwaters up and down the river.

The Coast Guard said it closed the Mississippi River at the port in Natchez, Miss., because barge traffic could increase pressure on the levees and because of fears that barges couldn't operate safely in the flooded river. Heavy flooding from Mississippi tributaries has displaced more than 4,000 in the state, about half of them upstream from Natchez in the Vicksburg area.

Repeal of $2B in oil tax breaks likely to fail

WASHINGTON - The Senate is voting on a bill Tuesday that would repeal about $2 billion a year in tax breaks for the five biggest oil companies, a Democratic response to $4-a-gallon gasoline that might fare better when Congress and the White House negotiate a deal later this year to increase the government's ability to borrow.

The bill is expected to be defeated in a procedural vote in the evening. But Democrats hope to build their case to include the measure in a deficit-reduction package being negotiated by key lawmakers and the Obama administration. Lawmakers from both parties are demanding deficit reduction as part of deal to increase the government's ability to borrow and avoid an unprecedented default on U.S. Treasury bonds.

Gingrich works to explain health care policy

ATLANTA - An official presidential candidate for less than a week, Newt Gingrich already finds himself in hot water with conservatives for suggesting he supports health care mandates while at the same time deriding a Republican budget proposal that would replace Medicare with vouchers.

The former House speaker has moved quickly to backtrack, arguing he remains "committed to the complete repeal of Obamacare" and supports state lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of President Barack Obama's signature health care law.

But even as Gingrich distances himself from the law he is not backing away from one of its central tenets: that all Americans have a responsibility to share in the cost of health care.

Schwarzenegger acknowledges fathering child

LOS ANGELES - Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has acknowledged that he fathered a child with a member of his household staff, a revelation that apparently prompted wife Maria Shriver to leave the couple's home before they announced their separation last week.

Shriver separately issued a statement saying it was a "heartbreaking time," and two of their children, Patrick and Katherine, expressed their love for their family in separate Twitter messages.

Schwarzenegger and Shriver jointly announced May 9 that they were splitting up after 25 years of marriage. Yet, Shriver moved out of the family's Brentwood mansion earlier in the year after Schwarzenegger acknowledged the child is his, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

Senator drops out of group seeking cuts

WASHINGTON - A top Republican senator in the bipartisan "Gang of Six" seeking agreement on a plan to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade dropped out of the group on Tuesday, saying that his colleagues weren't willing to cut enough from benefit programs like Medicare.

Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said he doesn't see how the group can reach agreement and that he would stop participating in its discussions.

"It's got to be balanced. And I didn't perceive where we were was balanced," Coburn said.

"I'm not planning on participating at this time," he added. "If things change, I will."

The closely watched group has been working for months on a sweeping plan to wrestle the deficit under control through a mix of new tax revenues and cuts across a wide swath of the federal budget.

- Associated Press

Supporters hoped for a bipartisan deficit-cutting plan that might gain momentum despite the partisanship consuming Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers frustrated with Pakistan after bin Laden takedown, threaten aid

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congressional Republicans and Democrats warned Pakistan on Tuesday that billions of dollars in American aid are at stake if Islamabad doesn't step up its efforts against terrorists, a clear sign of the growing exasperation after the U.S. takedown of Osama bin Laden deep inside Pakistan.

The frustration evident at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing exposed the dilemma for the United States, which needs Pakistan for its supply routes into Afghanistan in the 10th year of the war there and its help in any talks with the Taliban. Still, questions loom about the uneven ally in the aftermath of the May 2 raid in which U.S. SEALs killed bin Laden on an estate near a Pakistani military training academy.

Just back from a weekend trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the committee chairman, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said he told Pakistani leaders about the deep concerns in Congress and the nation about the country's eagerness in the terror fight. The White House signed off on Kerry's trip, which sought to ease tensions with Pakistan.

"I underscored the importance of seizing this moment to firmly reject an anti-American narrative that exploits our differences instead of finding common ground and advancing mutual goals," Kerry said, three hours after landing on U.S. soil.

At the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States remains committed to the people and government of Pakistan as they defend their democracy against extremists.

Analysis: Republican nomination race seems to be more about who isn't running than who is

WASHINGTON (AP) - Huck's out. So is The Donald. Haley pulled the plug a few weeks back, following John Thune and Mike Pence. These days it seems the race for the GOP presidential nomination is more about who isn't running than who is.

Is it the challenge of beating an incumbent president or the state of the Republican Party?

"What if they held an election and no one ran? That's kind of where we are right now," Curt Anderson, a veteran GOP pollster, says with a chuckle.

That's not to say there are no GOP candidates. Republicans who have taken steps toward running include former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who was a serious contender for the nomination in 2008, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is considering a run as well.

But with each I'm-not-running announcement comes a new round of questions within GOP circles: Will New Jersey's Chris Christie and Florida's Jeb Bush stay on the sidelines as they insist? What about Sarah Palin and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels? Is there anyone else who may emerge, say a late entry by Texas Gov. Rick Perry?

Woman's otherworldly photos, video of space shuttle launch from plane turn into an online hit

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Groggy from a late night watching the Yankees, frigid from a chilled airplane cabin, Stefanie Gordon stirred to action after the pilot's announcement. Lifting her iPhone to the plane's window, she captured an otherworldly image that rocketed around the globe as fast as her subject: Space shuttle Endeavour soaring from a bank of clouds, its towering plume of white smoke lighting the azure sky.

She had never imagined the response her airborne image - capturing the last launch of Endeavour and the next-to-last space shuttle flight - would ignite. The images and video have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter alone, landed on network newscasts and been published in newspapers worldwide.

In turn, they've made a photographic celebrity of sorts of the unemployed 33-year-old from Hoboken, N.J.

"It just blew up," she said of the attention.

Gordon caught an early Delta flight from New York to West Palm Beach on Monday to visit her parents and had a whole row to herself, never imagining the history she would record.