World/Nation Briefs October 25, 2011
<p>Brake lights fill the roadway Monday as early morning commuters heading out of the West Seattle neighborhood of Seattle and toward Interstate 5 are forced to bypass the closed Highway 99. The closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, one of the city's main north-south highways, began Friday and will last nine days, prompting worries of 'viadoom' traffic congestion. The work is part of the $3.2 billion project to replace the aging elevated highway with a tunnel under downtown Seattle.</p>
Mortgage relief offered as Obama visits Nevada
LAS VEGAS - President Barack Obama offered mortgage relief on Monday to hundreds of thousands of Americans, his latest attempt to ease the economic and political fallout of a housing crisis that has bedeviled him as he seeks a second term.
"I'm here to say that we can't wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job," the president declared outside a family home in Las Vegas, the epicenter of foreclosures and joblessness. "Where they won't act, I will."
Making a case for his policies and a new effort to circumvent roadblocks put up by Republican lawmakers, Obama also laid out a theme for his re-election, saying that there's "no excuse for all the games and the gridlock that we've been seeing in Washington."
The new rules for federally guaranteed loans represent a recognition that measures the administration has taken so far on housing have not worked as well as expected.
Bodies, survivors pulled fromrubble in Turkey
ERCIS, Turkey - Distraught Turkish families mourned outside a mosque or sought to identify loved ones among rows of bodies Monday as rescue workers scoured debris for survivors after a 7.2-magnitude quake that killed at least 279 people.
Rescue teams with generator-powered floodlights worked into the night in the worst-hit city of Ercis, where running water and electricity were cut by the quake that rocked eastern Turkey on Sunday. Unnerved by over 200 aftershocks, many residents slept outside their homes, making campfires to ward off the cold, as aid organizations rushed to erect tents for the homeless.
Victims were trapped in mounds of concrete, twisted steel and construction debris after over a hundred buildings in two cities and mud-brick homes in nearby villages pancaked or partially collapsed in Sunday's earthquake. About 80 multistory buildings collapsed in Ercis, a city of 75,000 close to the Iranian border that lies in one of Turkey's most earthquake-prone zones.
Libyan leader address worries of 'Islamization'
TRIPOLI, Libya - After giving a speech that emphasized the Islamization of Libya, the head of the transitional government on Monday tried to reassure the Western powers who helped topple Moammar Gadhafi that the country's new leaders are moderate Muslims.
Just as in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, Islamists have emerged from yet another Arab Spring uprising as the most powerful group in the country. How far they will go will be decided at the ballot box - in Tunisia this week, in Egypt in November and in Libya within eight months.
National Transitional Council leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said Sunday that Islamic Sharia law would be the main source of legislation, that laws contradicting its tenets would be nullified, and that polygamy would be legalized.
Bachmann staff bemoans cruelty, dishonesty
CONCORD, N.H. - Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann's former New Hampshire staffers say they were deceived and treated as second-class citizens before they quit in frustration last week.
In a news release, the five former staffers said they hold no ill will toward the Minnesota congresswoman, but they could not continue working for her because her national campaign team had been "rude, unprofessional, dishonest, and at times cruel" to them and "abrasive, discourteous, and dismissive" of the state's voters.
"These are our neighbors and our friends, and some within the national team treated them more as a nuisance than as potential supporters," the group wrote.
Bachmann's spokeswoman did not return a call seeking comment Monday.
Bachmann has visited New Hampshire just twice since announcing her campaign in late June. During her latest trip earlier this month, she blamed her absence on the August debate in Congress over raising the nation's debt limit.
87-year-old man stopped with 104 bricks of cocaine
DETROIT - An 87-year-old Indiana man arrested in Michigan with 104 bricks of cocaine in his pickup truck has told a judge he was forced at "gunpoint" to carry the load.
During a boisterous appearance in court Monday, Leo Sharp had trouble keeping quiet. The Michigan City, Ind., man was released on bond, three days after he was stopped for improper lane use while driving alone on Interstate 94 near Chelsea, 60 miles west of Detroit.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration state troopers with the help of a drug-sniffing dog discovered 104 brick-sized objects of cocaine Friday.
- The Associated Press