Nation and World

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is on a collision course with Catholic bishops in an intractable dispute over abortion that could blow up the fragile political coalition behind President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

ATLANTA – For the second time in a little more than a year, a glitch at one of the two centers that handle flight plans for the nation’s air travel system set off delays and cancellations for passengers around the country.

WASHINGTON – They call it the “Botax.”

WASHINGTON – Digging in for a long struggle, Republican senators and governors assailed the Democrats’ newly minted health care legislation Thursday as a collection of tax increases, Medicare cuts and heavy new burdens for deficit-ridden states.

CHICAGO (AP) – Oprah Winfrey's iconic television talk show will end in 2011 after 25 seasons on the air, her production company said Thursday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Air travelers nationwide scrambled to revise their plans Thursday after an FAA computer glitch caused widespread cancellations and delays for the second time in 15 months.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Power-hungry TVs will be banned from store shelves in California after state regulators Wednesday adopted a first-in-the-nation mandate to reduce electricity demand.

WASHINGTON – Wo­men should continue getting regular mammograms starting at age 40, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebeli­us said Wed­nesday, moving to douse confusion caused by a task-force recommendation two days earlier.

Weak home building a drag on recovery

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – College students ditched class, employees skipped work and some huddled in the cold overnight just to make sure they get an orange wristband Wednesday that would let them meet Sarah Palin.

ATLANTA – Dear Kellogg: Leggo my Eggo!

ORLANDO, Fla. – A CT scan – a kind of super X-ray – provides a faster, cheaper way to diagnose a heart attack when someone goes to the emergency room with chest pains, a new study suggests.

KABUL – Under intense pressure to fix his corrupt government, Afghan President Hamid Karzai sought to strike a balance in his second inaugural speech Thursday: answer international demands for reform while appeasing his political allies who returned him to power.

Iraq vote faces

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran will not ship its low-enriched uranium out of the country for processing, its foreign minister said Wednesday, once again rejecting a U.N. plan aimed at thwarting any attempt by Tehran to make nuclear weapons.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Space shuttle Atlantis arrived at the International Space Station on Wednesday for a weeklong stay, and the astronauts unloaded a platform full of spare parts needed to keep the outpost running for another decade.

WASHINGTON – More Americans support creation of a new government-run health insurance plan to compete with the private insurance market, a new Associated Press poll finds, but the level of enthusiasm depends on how the question is asked.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Congressional budget crunchers said Thursday the Democrats' latest health care plan would hold down federal red ink for at least 20 years, an assessment that gave supporters hope as the Senate moved gingerly toward a historic debate.

WASHINGTON – From opposite ends of the globe, President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder firmly rejected criticism Wednesday of the planned New York trial of the professed Sept. 11 mastermind and predicted Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be exposed as a murderous coward, convicted and executed.

SEOUL, South Korea – President Obama said Thursday the U.S. has begun talking with allies about fresh punishment against Iran for defying efforts to halt its nuclear weapons pursuits.

WASHINGTON – Americans don’t want to shoulder the cost of President Obama’s health care overhaul themselves. They think the rich should pay for it.

SALT LAKE CITY – Seven years after she was abducted at knifepoint, Elizabeth Smart finally has an apology – and a guilty plea – from one of her kidnappers.

MIAMI – More than 14,700 U.S. taxpayers came forward to disclose billions in offshore bank accounts in 70 countries under a voluntary Internal Revenue Service program allowing most to avoid criminal prosecution as long as they pay what they owe, IRS officials said Tuesday.

ROME – Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, blamed for plunging his people into starvation, used his platform as Tuesday’s opening speaker at the U.N. anti-hunger summit to decry what he called his neocolonialist foes.

ORLANDO, Fla. – For the first time, a miniature heart pump shows the potential to become a widely used, permanent treatment for many older people with severe heart failure. But can we afford it?

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Zacarias Moussaoui was a clown who could not keep his mouth shut, his old al-Qaida boss said, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. But Moussaoui was surprisingly tame when tried for the 9/11 attacks – never turning the courtroom into the circus of anti-U.S. tirades that some fear Mohammed will create at his trial in New York.

WASHINGTON – Worried that the Army might have missed red flags about the alleged shooter in the Fort Hood massacre, the Pentagon likely will launch an inquiry into how all the military services keep watch on other volatile soldiers hidden in their ranks, officials said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON – Eight years after the 9/11 attacks brought a new focus on security at airplane maintenance facilities, and six years after Congress first required action, the government hasn’t tightened its vigilance.

WASHINGTON – The Senate is a resolutely superlative place, so it was resolved that the august body today will open its session by saluting Sen. Robert C. Byrd, Congress’ longest-serving member.

WASHINGTON – Democrats on Tuesday crushed a Senate filibuster against a controversial appeals court nominee, demonstrating to Republicans they can’t stop President Obama from turning the federal judiciary to the left.

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s Kurds threatened Tuesday to boycott national elections, days after the country’s Sunni vice president threatened to veto the newly passed election law needed to hold the January vote.

BEIJING – President Obama, with China’s leader at his side, lifted his sights Tuesday for a broad accord at next month’s climate conference that he said would lead to immediate action and “rally the world” toward a solution on global warming.

DALLAS (AP) – It could cost you even more to travel next spring and summer.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon will investigate its procedures in light of the Fort Hood shooting rampage, looking at how all the military services keep a watch on potential problems in their ranks, officials said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON – It’s the cost, Mr. President.

WASHINGTON – More than 15 million taxpayers might owe the government $250 or more because of how the IRS last spring set up President Obama’s tax break that was designed to help consumers spend the U.S. economy out of recession.

WASHINGTON – More than one in seven American households struggled to put enough food on the table in 2008, the highest rate since the Agriculture Department began tracking food security levels in 1995.

NEW YORK – Hot sauce and a comb were all an al-Qaida suspect in New York needed to nearly kill one of his guards nine years ago. The bloody episode suggests that security worries in bringing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 suspects to trial here could be just as big inside the courthouse as outside.

WASHINGTON – Some employers are pressuring workers not to report illnesses and injuries, just one problem that has led to widespread under reporting of workplace safety issues, congressional investigators report.

NEW YORK – Most women don’t need a mammogram in their 40s and should get one every two years starting at 50, a government task force said Monday. It’s a major reversal that conflicts with the American Cancer Society’s long-standing position.

VIENNA – Iranian construction of a previously secret uranium enrichment site is at an advanced stage, with high-tech equipment already in place at the fortified facility ahead of its 2011 startup, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report Monday.

WASHINGTON – Improved retail sales gave Wall Street a boost Monday but provided little hope for a robust holiday shopping season that might invigorate the economic recovery.

WASHINGTON – The Postal Service reported a loss of $3.8 billion last year, despite a reduction of 40,000 full-time positions and other cost-cutting measures.

Shuttle Atlantis lifts off on supply mission

WASHINGTON – The last great archives of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency soon might be available to researchers and the public – 14 boxes of handwritten notes, gifts and correspondence, including a letter from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini congratulating him on his 1933 inauguration.

BEIJING – President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao emerged from hours of intense talks today determined to marshal their combined clout on crucial issues but still showing divisions over economic, security and human rights issues that long have bedeviled the two powers.

CANBERRA, Australia – When John Hennessey was 10 years old, he was sent from a war-weary Britain to an orphanage in Australia, where he was told food was plentiful and children rode kangaroos to school.

WASHINGTON – Apparently, no one told Son­ia Sotomayor that Supreme Court justices are supposed to be circumspect, emerging from their marble palace mainly to dispense legal wisdom to law schools, judges’ conferences and lawyers’ meetings.

TAGAB VALLEY, Afghanistan – Rockets slammed into a market northeast of Kabul on Monday, killing 12 civilians but missing their presumed target: a meeting between France’s top general in Afghanistan and dozens of tribal elders and senior local officials.

THOMSON, Ill. (AP) — Federal officials are at a prison in northwest Illinois that the government might buy to house Guantanamo Bay detainees.