Iraqi court lifts ban on Saddam-linked candidates

Iraqi court lifts ban on Saddam-linked candidates

BAGHDAD — An Iraqi appeals court Wednesday set aside a ban on hundreds of candidates for suspected ties to Saddam Hussein’s regime, allowing them to run in next month’s parliamentary election and offering a chance to ease political showdowns that had deeply worried the White House.

The decision could remove — at least temporarily — a major trouble spot in the planning for nationwide voting March 7 to pick lawmakers and the political blocs that will shape the next government in Baghdad.

The blacklist, with more than 450 names, has been widely denounced by Sunni political leaders who view it as a way for the Shiite-led government to undercut Sunni efforts to expand political clout.

Glitches in ‘virtual fence’ place it in jeopardy

PHOENIX — An ambitious, $6.7 billion government project to secure nearly the entire Mexican border with a “virtual fence” of cameras, ground sensors and radar is in jeopardy after a string of technical glitches and delays.

Having spent $672 million so far with little to show for it, Washington has ordered a reassessment of the whole idea. The outlook became gloomier this week when President Barack Obama proposed cutting $189 million from the venture.

Prison rodeo falls victim to Okla. budget problems

McALESTER, Okla. — Cowboys are the latest victims of Oklahoma’s budget woes.

For the first time in nearly 70 years, Oklahoma’s annual prison rodeo has been canceled — hurting business owners, disappointing tourists and stealing the rodeo-riding dreams from penitentiary-bound participants.

Gone is the financial bonanza generated from motel stays, ticket sales and souvenirs.

Up to 15,000 visitors typically pour in — they came from 15 states last year — and foreign documentary film crews and freelance photographers are commonplace as inmates test their skills with amateurs and professionals from beyond the walls.

Government to pay more than half of health care

WASHINGTON — For all the hue and cry over a government takeover of health care, it’s happening anyway.

Federal and state programs will pay slightly more than half the tab for health care purchased in the United States by 2012, says a report by Medicare number crunchers released today.

That’s even if President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul wastes away in congressional limbo. Long in coming, the shift to a health-care sector dominated by government is being speeded up by the deep economic recession and the aging of the baby boomers, millions of whom will soon start signing up for Medicare.

Haitians say they gave away children willingly

CALLEBAS, Haiti — Desperate parents in this struggling village perched above Haiti’s earthquake-flattened capital said they gave their children away willingly, trusting the American missionaries who promised to take them to a better life.

The stories the villagers told The Associated Press on Wednesday contradict claims by the Baptist group’s leader that the children came from orphanages or were handed over by distant relatives. But they also attest to the misery of a nation that was the hemisphere’s poorest even before the Jan. 12 earthquake struck.

The 10 Baptists, most from Idaho, were arrested last week trying to take 33 Haitian children across the border into the Dominican Republic without the required documents, according to Haitian authorities, who have accused them of child trafficking.

The Americans are to appear today before a prosecutor who will decide whether to file charges or release them, Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue told the AP.

Chunk of ice tears through roof of Las Vegas house

LAS VEGAS — A couple was startled when a block of ice that apparently fell from an airplane tore a hole in the roof of their garage and shook their house in a Las Vegas suburb.

Penny and Bill White say the chunk of ice that slammed through the roof of their home in Henderson, Nev., on Tuesday morning likely weighed about 30 or 40 pounds.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor says falling ice from an aircraft descending into McCarran International Airport probably caused the damage. He says he’s heard of only four to six similar cases in his jurisdiction in the last three years.

Associated Press