GOP presses Obama on Medicare issue

GOP presses Obama on Medicare issue

WASHINGTON

Face to face at the White House, GOP leaders complained to President Barack Obama on Wednesday that he had not produced a detailed plan of spending cuts and accused him of playing politics over Medicare as the nation careens toward a debt crisis.

House Speaker John Boehner said he was ready to negotiate personally with Obama if that would hurry things along.

The White House said Obama had in fact led on the issue and made clear that he had no intention of dropping what Democrats believe is a winning political issue: accusing the GOP of trying to destroy the popular health- care program for seniors.

Republicans said their plan would save Medicare, not end it.

‘Octomom’ doctor loses medical license

LOS ANGELES

The state medical board has revoked the license of the fertility doctor who helped “Octomom” Nadya Suleman become the mother of 14 children through repeated in-vitro treatments, according to a decision made public Wednesday.

The Medical Board of California said it was necessary to revoke Dr. Michael Kamrava’s license to protect the public. The revocation takes effect July 1.

The fertility doctor has acknowledged implanting 12 embryos into Suleman, then 33, before the pregnancy that produced her octuplets. It was six times the norm for a woman her age.

No smoking gun in E. coli outbreak

BERLIN

European health officials tracking one of the worst E. coli outbreaks on record might never know where it came from. It’s a sad fact of life in food poisoning cases: There often is no smoking gun.

The germ has sickened more than 1,500 people, mostly in Germany. Most patients who have been interviewed said they ate lettuce, tomatoes or cucumbers, but officials testing produce across the continent have yet to find any vegetables with the particular strain involved.

Germany’s national health agency said Wednesday that more than 1,530 people there had been sickened by a dangerous E. coli germ, including 17 dead and 470 suffering from a kidney- failure complication that previously was considered rare.

Officials: Pakistan, US mending ties

WASHINGTON

The U.S. and Pakistan are building a joint intelligence team to go after top terrorist suspects inside Pakistan, U.S. and Pakistani officials said, a fledgling step to restoring trust blown on both sides by the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces during a secret raid last month.

The move comes after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented the Pakistanis with the U.S. list of most-wanted terrorism targets, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Wednesday.

Rats found on plane

SYDNEY

A flight crew checking the cabin of a Qantas plane before takeoff found rats in a compartment holding medical equipment, grounding the plane for more than a day, a spokeswoman said today.

Crews did a visual check of the plane Tuesday afternoon and found no more rats or any damage. The rodents had been in a cabinet holding a defibrillator. The plane returned to service this morning.

Passengers had not yet boarded the Sydney-to- Brisbane flight and were put on another plane.

Scott Connolly of the Transportation Workers Union told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio today that members have had concerns about hygiene and sanitation on Qantas flights.

A Qantas spokeswoman denied that was the case.

Associated Press