Obama pitches health-care overhaul

Obama pitches health-care overhaul

ANNANDALE, Va. — President Barack Obama wanted to put a human face on his plans to overhaul health care, and a Virginia supporter did just that Wednesday.

Fighting back tears, Debby Smith, 53, told Obama of her kidney cancer and her inability to obtain health insurance or hold a job. The president hugged her and called her “exhibit A” in an unsustainable system that is too expensive and complex for millions of Americans.

Smith, of Appalachia, Va., is a volunteer for Organizing for America, Obama’s political operation within the Democratic National Committee. .

The health-care changes that Obama called for Wednesday would reshape the nation’s medical landscape. He says he wants to cover nearly 50 million uninsured Americans, to persuade doctors to stress quality over quantity of care, to squeeze billions of dollars from spending.

Teen clung to wreckage of jet crash 13 hours

MORONI, Comoros — The lone survivor of a Yemeni jetliner crash, who clung to wreckage for 13 hours before being rescued, lay in a hospital bed with a broken collarbone Wednesday, asking for little — except for a chance to see her mother.

But relatives said 14-year-old Bahia Bakari was too traumatized to be told her mother was feared dead, along with 151 others on board the Yemenia airways flight.

“I have told her that her mother is in the next room,” the girl’s uncle, Joseph Yousouf, told The Associated Press outside a hospital in this former French colony, where the jetliner was attempting to land in fierce winds before dawn Tuesday when it slammed into the Indian Ocean.

“They were coming to Comoros for vacation,” Yousouf said of Bahia, who lived with her parents and three younger siblings outside Paris. “She was going to be staying with her grandmother.”

Major military operation under way in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — Thousands of U.S. Marines and hundreds of Afghan troops moved into Taliban-infested villages of southern Afghanistan with armor and helicopters today in the first major operation under President Barack Obama’s strategy to stabilize the country.

The offensive in the once-forgotten war was launched shortly after 1 a.m. today local time in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold in the southern part of the country and the world’s largest opium poppy producing area.

The goal is to clear insurgents from the hotly contested Helmand River Valley before the nation’s Aug. 20 presidential election.

Hondurans demonstrate for president’s return

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Thousands of Hondurans demonstrated Wednesday for the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya, who vowed to fly home this weekend despite a warrant for his arrest. Thousands more rallied in favor of the military-backed government.

Newly appointed President Roberto Micheletti said it would take a foreign invasion to put Zelaya back in power and said he was sending a delegation to Washington in an attempt to reverse the country’s increasing international isolation, though his own foreign minister later denied that.

France, Spain, Italy, Chile and Colombia joined other nations Wednesday in recalling their ambassadors. The Pentagon suspended joint U.S.-Honduran military operations and the World Bank said it was freezing loans. Honduras’ three neighbors have suspended cross-border trade.

US Airways passenger undresses in his seat

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A cross-country US Airways flight was diverted to Albuquerque after a male passenger removed his clothing mid-flight.

Dan Jiron, a spokesman for the Albuquerque airport, said 50-year-old Keith Wright of New York disrobed Tuesday while sitting in his seat in the back of the aircraft. He said Wright was unresponsive when a flight attendant asked him repeatedly to get dressed and refused to be covered with a blanket.

Associated Press