World/Nation Briefs February 5, 2013
President signs bill raising debt ceiling
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama has signed into law a bill raising the government's borrowing limit, averting a default and delaying the next clash over the nation's debt until later this year.
The legislation temporarily suspends the $16.4 trillion limit on federal borrowing. Experts say that will allow the government to borrow about $450 billion to meet interest payments and other obligations.
The Senate gave the bill final approval last week and sent it to Obama, who signed it Monday shortly after returning from Minneapolis.
Democrats and Obama had warned that failure to pass the bill could set off financial panic and threaten the economic recovery.
The bill includes a provision attached by House Republicans that temporarily withholds lawmakers' pay in either chamber that fails to produce a budget plan.
Authorities storm underground bunker in rescue
MIDLAND CITY, Ala. - Authorities stormed an underground bunker Monday in southeastern Alabama, freeing a 5-year-old boy and leaving his captor dead after a week of fruitless negotiations that left authorities convinced the child was in imminent danger.
Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, had taken the child off a school bus after fatally shooting the driver, authorities said. He was known by neighbors for his anti-government rants and for patrolling his property with a gun, ready to shoot trespassers. He had stayed for several days in the tiny bunker before.
"He always said he'd never be taken alive. I knew he'd never come out of there," said an acquaintance, Roger Arnold.
Dykes had been seen with a gun, and officers concluded the boy was in imminent danger, said Steve Richardson of the FBI's office in Mobile. It was not immediately clear how authorities determined the man had a gun, or exactly how Dykes died.
Monday evening, officers were sweeping the property to make sure Dykes had not set up any bombs that could detonate. Full details of the bunker raid had not yet emerged. However, neighbors described hearing what sounded like gunshots around the time officials said they entered the shelter.
Passenger describes terror of fatal bus crash
YUCAIPA, Calif. - The bus full of tired tourists returning to Tijuana, Mexico, was slowly winding its way down a mountain road after a day playing in the snow at the ski resort town of Big Bear when it suddenly picked up speed. The driver shouted to call 911 - the brakes had failed.
As passengers frantically tried to get a cellphone signal, a group of teenage girls shrieked and prayed aloud as others cried and shielded their heads as they careened downhill.
The bus rear-ended a Saturn sedan, swerved, flipped and slid on its side. A Ford pickup in the oncoming lane plowed into it, righting the bus and tossing passengers out shattered windows before it came to a halt.
"Everything happened so fast. When the bus spun everything flew, even the people," said Gerardo Barrientos, who was next to his girlfriend one minute and then scrambling out of the wreckage the next trying to find her and a friend in the highway. Both were injured but alive.
Seven people were killed and about three dozen injured Sunday night in the accident 80 miles east of Los Angeles.
Kerry warns of consequences os 3rd nuclear test
SEOUL, South Korea - New U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his South Korean counterpart have agreed to make sure North Korea is punished if it carries out its threat to conduct a nuclear test. Amid signs that such a test is coming, South Korea's president also speculated that Pyongyang may detonate multiple atomic devices simultaneously.
Under a U.N. Security Council resolution last month condemning a North Korean long-range rocket launch that the U.N. and others call a disguised test of banned missile technology, Pyongyang is subject to new sanctions if it detonates its third nuclear device since 2006.
North Korea announced last month that it will conduct a nuclear test to protest the toughened sanctions over its December launch, which delivered a satellite into orbit.
During a phone conversation between Kerry and South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan, "there was agreement that ... if the DPRK continues its provocative behavior and takes further steps, that there must be further consequences," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Monday. DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
North Korea may simultaneously conduct multiple nuclear tests as it tries to create a warhead small enough to fit atop a long-range missile, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak told the South Korean newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, in an interview published Tuesday. Lee did not say whether his comments were based on intelligence findings.
- The Associated Press