World/Nation Briefs June 6, 2012

Bill Clinton says to renew all expiring tax cuts

WASHINGTON - Former President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that broad tax cuts that expire in January should be temporarily renewed, including for the wealthiest Americans, to give lawmakers time to reach a deal on a longer-term extension that should exclude the rich.

Clinton's comments were in contrast to President Barack Obama, whose re-election he is supporting. Obama has opposed renewing the tax reductions for people earning more than $250,000 a year, saying they must contribute to the effort to control rampant federal deficits.

Reductions in income tax rates and other levies first enacted under President George W. Bush expire in January, at the same time that $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts begin to take effect. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and others have warned that letting both events occur would suck so much money out of the economy that it could spark a renewed recession next year.

Romney's private email may have been hacked

WASHINGTON - Authorities are investigating whether Mitt Romney's private email account was hacked, his presidential campaign said Tuesday.

The website Gawker reported Tuesday that an anonymous hacker had signed into Romney's personal Hotmail account. Gawker reported that the hacker guessed the answer to a security question about Romney's favorite pet in order to gain access to the account and change the password. The anonymous hacker told the website that Romney's account on DropBox, a file sharing service, also was compromised.

Romney's campaign said that "proper authorities are investigating this crime." Campaign spokeswoman Gail Gitcho refused to comment further and would not say who was investigating. She also would not say whether Romney still uses the Hotmail account.

Romney isn't the first politician to face security problems with a private email account. Just weeks before the 2008 presidential election, a Tennessee college student accessed the private emails of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

Doctor's report on dying Lincoln found from 1865

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - The first doctor to reach President Abraham Lincoln after he was shot in a Washington theater rushed to his ceremonial box and found him paralyzed, comatose and leaning against his wife. Dr. Charles Leale ordered brandy and water to be brought immediately.

Leale's long-lost report of efforts to help the mortally wounded president, written just hours after his death, was discovered in a box at the National Archives late last month.

The Army surgeon, who sat 40 feet from Lincoln at Ford's Theater that night in April 1865, saw assassin John Wilkes Booth jump to the stage, brandishing a dagger. Thinking Lincoln had been stabbed, Leale pushed his way to the victim but found a different injury.

"I commenced to examine his head (as no wound near the shoulder was found) and soon passed my fingers over a large firm clot of blood situated about one inch below the superior curved line of the occipital bone," Leale reported. "The coagula I easily removed and passed the little finger of my left hand through the perfectly smooth opening made by the ball."

The historians who discovered the report believe it was filed, packed in a box, stored at the archives and not seen for 147 years.

- The Associated Press