Obama signs jobless-aid bill

Obama signs jobless-aid bill

WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama signed an $18 billion bill to restore unemployment benefits for people who have been out of a job for months and resume full Medicare payments to doctors threatened by a 21 percent cut.

Obama signed the measure Thursday night, after the House cleared the bill by a 289-112 tally taken just two hours after it emerged from the Senate on a 59-38 vote.

Judge: Prayer day is unconstitutional

MADISON, Wis.

A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional Thursday, saying the day amounts to a call for religious action.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb wrote that the government can no more enact laws supporting a day of prayer than it can encourage citizens to fast during Ramadan, attend a synagogue or practice magic.

Congress established the day in 1952 and in 1988 set the first Thursday in May as the day for presidents to issue proclamations asking Americans to pray. The Freedom From Religion Foundation filed a lawsuit against the federal government in 2008, arguing the day violated the separation of church and state.

Deposed leader leaves Kyrgyzstan

OSH, Kyrgyzstan

The deposed president of Kyrgyzstan left the country Thursday for neighboring Kazakhstan, allaying fears of a civil war in the Central Asian nation, which hosts a key U.S. military base supporting the war in Afghanistan.

The presidents of the United States, Russia and Kazakhstan helped arrange for Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to leave the country, Kazakhstan said in its rotating role as the chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

UN: Failed security led to Bhutto’s death

UNITED NATIONS

A U.N. commission said Thursday that the assassination of Pakistan’s former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, could have been prevented and blamed all levels of government for failing to provide adequate security. It also accused intelligence agencies and other officials of severely hampering the investigation into her murder.

Bhutto was killed in a Dec. 27, 2007, gun and suicide-bomb attack as she was leaving a rally in Rawalpindi, where she was campaigning to return her Pakistan People’s Party to power in parliamentary elections.

Britons watch 1st televised debate

LONDON

British voters fixed their eyes on television screens across the country for the first U.S.-style political debate Thursday — a historic event billed as an exciting prelude to one of the closest elections in years.

But a life-sapping format of 76 rules sterilized many of the exchanges — there were no real gaffes, no visible beads of sweat and no bloodletting.

Initial polls handed a surprising victory to the third-place Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg.

Man delivers obit, then hangs himself

PLACERVILLE, Calif.

An ailing Northern California man delivered his own obituary to a newspaper then hanged himself from a nearby bridge.

El Dorado County sheriff’s Lt. Bryan Golmitz says the body of 64-year-old Allan Leo Peters II was found Wednesday hanging by a yellow rope from an old bridge.

The Mountain Democrat newspaper published part of his suicide note with his obituary.

The man wrote he’d been struggling with emphysema. He wrote, “Yes, I have hanged myself (At least I hope I did).”

The suicide note included a $90 money order, the cost of publishing an obituary.

Associated Press