World/Nation 12/04/2013

• Obama declares health care law is working

WASHINGTON - Seeking to regroup from his health care law's disastrous rollout, President Barack Obama on Tuesday insisted that the sweeping overhaul is working and warned Republican critics that he would fight any efforts to strip away its protections.

"We're not repealing it as long as I'm president," Obama said during a health care event at the White House. "If I have to fight another three years to make sure this law works, then that's what I'll do."

Earlier Tuesday, the administration released a 50-state report saying that nearly 1.5 million people were found eligible for Medicaid during October. As website problems depressed sign-ups for subsidized private coverage, that safety-net program for low-income people saw a nearly 16 percent increase in states that have agreed to expand it, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

The White House is trying to cast the health care law in a positive light after the first two months of enrollment for the centerpiece insurance exchanges were marred with technical problems. With the majority of problems with the sign-up website resolved, by the accounting of administration officials, Obama and his team plan to spend much of December trying to remind Americans why the administration fought for the law in the first place.

• Judge clears way for Detroit to confront debt

DETROIT - A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Detroit can use bankruptcy to cut employee pensions and relieve itself of other crushing debts, handing a defeat to the city's unions and retirees and shifting the case into a delicate new phase.

Judge Steven Rhodes, who wondered aloud why the bankruptcy had not happened years ago, said pensions can be altered just like any contract because the Michigan Constitution does not offer bulletproof protection for employee benefits. But he signaled a desire for a measured approach and warned city officials that they must be prepared to defend any deep reductions.

"This once proud and prosperous city can't pay its debts. It's insolvent," Rhodes said in formally granting Detroit the largest public bankruptcy in U.S. history. "At the same time, it also has an opportunity for a fresh start."

The ruling came more than four months after Detroit filed for Chapter 9 protection.

• Man survives 3 days at bottom of Atlantic Ocean

LAGOS, Nigeria - Entombed at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in an upended tugboat for three days, Harrison Odjegba Okene begged God for a miracle.

The Nigerian cook survived by breathing an ever-dwindling supply of oxygen in an air pocket. A video of Okene's rescue in May that was posted on the Internet more than six months later has gone viral this week.

As the temperature dropped to freezing, Okene, dressed only in boxer shorts, recited the last psalm his wife had sent by text message, sometimes called the Prayer for Deliverance: "Oh God, by your name, save me. ... The Lord sustains my life."

To this day, Okene believes his rescue after 72 hours underwater at a depth of 100 feet is a sign of divine deliverance. The other 11 seaman aboard the Jascon 4 died.

Divers sent to the scene were looking only for bodies, according to Tony Walker, project manager for the Dutch company DCN Diving, who were called to the scene because they were working on a neighboring oil field 75 miles away.

• American detained in North Korea supervised hated guerrilla group during war, ex-fighters say

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - An 85-year-old U.S. veteran being held in North Korea spent his war years there in one of the Army's first special forces units, helping a clandestine group of Korean partisans who were fighting and spying well behind enemy lines.

Now South Koreans who served with Merrill Newman, who is beginning his sixth week in detention, say their unit was perhaps the most hated and feared by the North and his association with them may be the reason he's being held.

"Why did he go to North Korea?" asked Park Boo Seo, a former member of unit known in Korea as Kuwol, which is still loathed in Pyongyang and glorified in Seoul for the damage it inflicted on the North during the war. "The North Koreans still gnash their teeth at the Kuwol unit."

Some of those guerrillas, interviewed this week by The Associated Press, remember Newman as a handsome, thin American lieutenant who got them rice, clothes and weapons during the later stages of the 1950-53 war but largely left the fighting to them.

Newman was scheduled to visit South Korea to meet former Kuwol fighters following his North Korea trip. Park said about 30 elderly former guerrillas, some carrying bouquets of flowers, waited in vain for several hours for him at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, on Oct. 27 before news of his detention was released.

• Teens in Asian nations dominate international test; US scores barely budge

WASHINGTON (AP) - American students once again lag behind many of their Asian and European peers on a global exam, a continuing trend that often is blamed on child poverty and a diverse population in U.S. schools.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the results a "picture of educational stagnation" as U.S. students showed little improvement over three years, failing to score in the top 20 on math, reading or science.

Students in Shanghai, China's largest city, had the top scores in all subjects, and Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong students weren't far behind. Even Vietnam, which had its students participate for the first time, had a higher average score in math and science than the United States.

These results again raise the question of whether the United States is consistently outperformed because of the widely varied backgrounds of its students. Some are from low-income households, for example. Others don't have English as their primary language.

But some countries that outperform the United States also experience such challenges.

• Union official says NYC train engineer 'nodded' at controls before deadly wreck at track curve

YONKERS, N.Y. (AP) - An engineer whose speeding commuter train ran off the rails along a curve, killing four people, nodded at the controls just before the wreck, and by the time he caught himself it was too late, a union official said Tuesday.

William Rockefeller "basically nodded," said Anthony Bottalico, leader of the rail employees union, relating what he said the engineer told him.

"He had the equivalent of what we all have when we drive a car," Bottalico said. "That is, you sometimes have a momentary nod or whatever that might be. How long that lasts, I can't answer that."

Rockefeller's lawyer did not return calls. During a late-afternoon news conference, federal investigators said they were still talking to Rockefeller, and they wouldn't comment on his level of alertness around the time of the Sunday morning wreck in the Bronx.

Separately, however, two law enforcement officials said the engineer told police at the scene that his mind was wandering before he realized the train was in trouble and by then it was too late to do anything about it. One of the officials said Rockefeller described himself as being "in a daze" before the wreck.