World / Nation Briefs March 22, 2012

Obama, GOP foes seek upper hand on energy

MALJAMAR, N.M. - Wooing a nation of increasingly angry motorists, President Barack Obama and his Republican rivals are all plunging into gas-pump politics, seeking the upper hand as energy becomes a driving issue in the election campaign.

The president is defending his energy agenda this week, traveling Wednesday to a solar panel plant in Nevada and oil and gas fields in New Mexico and the site of a future oil pipeline in Oklahoma that the White House is promising to accelerate. At the same time, GOP opponents from front-runner Mitt Romney on down are vigorously accusing him of stifling domestic production and betting on foolhardy alternative energy methods over traditional oil drilling.

With gasoline reaching $3.86 a gallon in the U.S. and apparently heading higher, the public is impatient for Obama - or someone in his place - to do something about it.

In truth, a president has little direct control over gas prices, which have risen more than 50 cents a gallon since January in response to a standoff over Iran's nuclear program that has threatened to disrupt Middle East oil supplies.

Well aware of Republicans' criticism, Obama's advisers argue that voters take a sophisticated view toward energy and think about it as a problem demanding long-term answers. They know that talk about future solutions may not satisfy people as they endure high prices, but they're betting that voters will side with the candidate they trust the most to deal with the issue - and they're determined that that will be Obama.

Romney gets Jeb Bush endorsement

WASHINGTON - The Republican establishment started to coalesce around Mitt Romney in earnest on Wednesday, with Jeb Bush and other leading Republicans pressuring Rick Santorum to leave the race after a thumping in the Illinois primary.

But, on what should have been a triumphant day, Romney found himself having to defend his conservative credentials anew after one of his own top advisers, Eric Fehrnstrom, remarked that "everything changes" for the fall campaign. "It's almost like an Etch A Sketch," he said. "You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again."

The remark fueled criticism that Romney molds his principles to fit with political goals. Democrats pounced, and by day's end his GOP opponents were waving the draw, shake and erase toys at campaign events in Louisiana.

"The issues I'm running on will be exactly the same," the former Massachusetts governor said in Arbutus, Md., as Republicans and Democrats alike mocked him. "I'm running as a conservative Republican. I was a conservative governor. I will be running as a conservative Republican nominee - hopefully, nominee at that point. The policies and the positions are the same."

It all nearly overshadowed the endorsement from Bush, the son of one president and the brother of another. He had stayed out of the race for months, and some party elders publicly had urged him to become a candidate as Romney struggled to close the deal with the conservative base of the party.

Police use explosions to force surrender

TOULOUSE, France - Riot police set off explosions outside an apartment building early Thursday in an effort to force the surrender of a gunman who boasted of bringing France "to its knees" with an al-Qaida-linked terror spree that killed seven people.

As the standoff dragged into a second day, hundreds of heavily armed police, some in body armor, cordoned off the five-story building in Toulouse where the 24-year-old suspect, Mohamed Merah, had been holed up.

Three explosions were heard and orange flashes lit up the night sky near the building. An Interior Ministry official said the suspect had gone back on a previous decision to turn himself in - and that police blew up the shutters outside the apartment window to pressure him to surrender.

The Toulouse prosecutor, Michel Valet, told The Associated Press: "I cannot confirm that the assault has started. It's not as simple as that. We are waiting."

Authorities said the shooter, a French citizen of Algerian descent, had been to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he claimed to have received training from al-Qaida.

Army examining mental health programs

WASHINGTON - The Army inspector general is conducting a system-wide review of mental health facilities to determine whether psychiatrists overturned diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder to save money, a move that comes as the case of a U.S. soldier suspected of killing 16 Afghan civilians has brought fresh attention to the strains of war.

Army Secretary John McHugh told Congress on Wednesday that the service is trying to determine whether the change in diagnosis was isolated or a common practice. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who pressed McHugh at a committee hearing, said the forensic psychiatry unit at Madigan Army Medical Center on Joint Base Lewis-McChord is being investigated for reversing diagnoses based on the expense of providing care and benefits to members of the military.

"Not only is it damaging for our soldiers, but it also really furthers the stigma for others that are - whether they're deciding to seek help or not today," Murray said.

Since 2007, more than 40 percent of the cases involving candidates for retirement had been overturned, according to statistics cited by Murray. Of the 1,680 patients screened at Madigan, more than 690 had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The psychiatric team reversed more than 290 of those diagnoses.

"The surgeon general (Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho) has asked the inspector general of the Army to go and examine all of the similar facilities and locations," McHugh told Murray and members of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee. "To this point, we don't see any evidence of this being systemic. But as you and I have discussed, we want to make sure that where this was inappropriate, it was an isolated case, and if it were not, to make sure we address it as holistically as we're trying to address it at Madigan."

- The Associated Press