Lieberman: Postpone most health-care reforms

Lieberman: Postpone most health-care reforms

WASHINGTON — An independent senator counted on by Democrats in the health care debate showed signs of wavering Sunday when he urged President Barack Obama to postpone many of his initiatives because of the economic downturn.

“I’m afraid we’ve got to think about putting a lot of that off until the economy’s out of recession,” said Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman. “There’s no reason we have to do it all now, but we do have to get started. And I think the place to start is cost-health delivery reform and insurance-market reforms.”

Scotland’s leaders defend release of dying bomber

LONDON — Scotland’s government defended itself Sunday against unrelenting criticism from the U.S. over the decision to free the Pan Am Flight 103 bomber on compassionate grounds.

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan convicted of killing 270 people in the 1988 airline bombing, was released Thursday because he is terminally ill with prostate cancer. He has returned to his native Libya to die.

His release was met with outrage by families of the U.S. victims of the bombing and criticized by President Barack Obama as “highly objectionable.”

FBI director Robert Mueller said in a letter to Scotland’s government that al-Megrahi’s release would give comfort to terrorists all over the world. Speaking Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that releasing the bomber was “obviously a political decision.”

But Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond told BBC Radio that it was wrong to assume that all those affected by the bombing were opposed to al-Megrahi’s release.

Insurance adjusters sift through burned Ky. prison

BURGIN, Ky. — Officials said Sunday that investigators and insurance adjusters have started probing what’s left of a Kentucky prison in the wake of a fiery riot that injured 16 people and forced 700 inmates to be relocated.

The damage assessment could take several days, and a probe into what prompted Friday night’s melee would likely start later in the week, Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet spokeswoman Jennifer Brislin said.

Prisoners started some of the fires in trash cans, and flames eventually spread, shooting into the air during the riot. Several buildings were seriously damaged at the Northpoint Training Center, a medium-security facility about 30 miles south of Lexington.

Officers in riot gear rushed in with tear gas, and all the inmates were subdued within two hours, authorities said. They were kept in the prison yard and authorities surrounded the facility so no one could escape.

3 cars hit small plane that landed on freeway

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Authorities say a small airplane was struck by three vehicles just after it made an emergency landing on a California freeway.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor says the Piper PA-24 Comanche with two people on board was bound for Santa Barbara Airport Sunday when the pilot told air traffic controllers he had no fuel remaining and landed on the southbound side of U.S. Highway 101, about one mile northeast of the airport.

California Highway Patrol Officer James Richards says three cars were unable to avoid the plane and crashed into it. He says the occupants of the plane and the cars were not injured.

Richards says traffic briefly backed up for miles while crews shut down the freeway to remove the plane.

Wyo. wind-farm debate tests property values

GLENROCK, Wyo. — Richard Grant Jr.’s family has ranched Wyoming’s rugged granite-and-grass hills for generations, their 123-year-old ranch dotted with reminders of their long history — an historic schoolhouse, an old red barn and the parcels of land sold away during hard times.

But it wasn’t until a few years ago that a radical prospect blew in with the stiff winds that sweep the ridge tops of the northern Laramie Range: wind turbines.

Grant welcomes the chance to get into wind energy development and generate some income. His courting of wind developers however has put him at odds with some of his neighbors, who consider a large-scale wind farm to be the industrialization of their backyards in the sparsely populated region.

Associated Press