World/Nation 11/12/2013
• Relief operations pick up pace in Philippines
TACLOBAN, Philippines - Relief operations in this typhoon-devastated region of the Philippines picked up pace early Wednesday, but the minimal amounts of water, food and medical supplies reaching the hardest-hit areas were causing increasingly desperate survivors to take matters into their own hands.
In the first reported deaths as a result of looting, eight people were crushed to death when a wall collapsed as they and thousands of others stormed a rice warehouse on Leyte Island, the worst-hit region by Friday's storm, said National Food Authority spokesman Rex Estoperez.
The looters in Alangalang municipality Tuesday carted away as much as 100,000 sacks of rice, he said.
Since the storm, people have broken into homes, malls and garages, where they have stripped the shelves of food, water and other goods. Authorities have struggled to stop the looting. There have been unconfirmed reports of armed gangs involved in some instances.
The incident shows the urgency in getting food and water distributed to the disaster zone.
• Bill Clinton has suggestions for Obamacare
WASHINGTON - Adding pressure to fix the administration's problem-plagued health care program, former President Bill Clinton says President Barack Obama should find a way to let people keep their health coverage, even if it means changing the law.
Clinton says Obama should "honor the commitment that the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got."
The former president, a Democrat who has helped Obama promote the 3-year-old health law, becomes the latest in Obama's party to urge the president to live up to a promise he made repeatedly, declaring that the if Americans liked their health care coverage, they would be able to keep it under the new law.
Instead, millions of Americans have started receiving insurance cancellation letters. That, coupled with the troubled launch of the health care law's enrollment website, has prompted Republican critics and frustrated Democrats to seek corrections in the law.
House Republicans have drafted legislation to give consumers the opportunity to keep their coverage. Ten Senate Democrats are pushing for an unspecified extension of the sign-up period and in a private White House meeting last week several pressed Obama to do so. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., has proposed legislation that would require insurance companies to reinstate the canceled policies.
• Senate GOP blocks Obama judgeship pick
WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans blocked another of President Barack Obama's picks for one of the nation's top courts on Tuesday, the latest skirmish in a nominations battle that has intensified partisan tensions in the chamber.
The vote derailed Obama's selection of Georgetown University law professor Cornelia Pillard to fill one of three vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The roll call was 56-41 in favor of ending GOP procedural delays that have blocked Pillard from winning confirmation - four short of the 60 votes Democrats needed.
The D.C. circuit court is considered one of the nation's most powerful because it rules on administration orders and regulations and because some of its judges ultimately become Supreme Court justices. The D.C. circuit's eight current judges are divided evenly between Democratic and Republican nominees.
Democrats used Tuesday's vote to assail Republicans for opposing female nominees to the D.C. circuit. Republicans have blocked votes on two other Obama nominees to the same court this year, attorneys Patricia Millett and Caitlin Halligan.
• Boy who came home for early Christmas dies
TOLEDO, Ohio - A boy whose last wish was to be home for his favorite holiday has died, two weeks after his hometown welcomed him with a Christmas tree outside his window and a motorcycle-riding Santa Claus.
Doctors had told the family of 13-year-old Devin Kohlman that he didn't have long to live, so residents in the city of Port Clinton along Lake Erie spent the past few weeks giving him an early Christmas.
They sang carols outside the family's apartment, piled tons of shaved ice into drifting snow near his window and decorated a park with colorful strings of lights, reindeer cutouts and a red "Merry Christmas, Devin" sign.
Devin, who was diagnosed with brain cancer in the summer of 2012, died Monday afternoon, his family said. Relatives and friends gathered for a vigil after his death while an early-season snow fell over the city.
"He had the gift of being able to see how much everyone loved him," his mother, Alexis Kohlman, said Tuesday.
- The Associated Press