Geithner: Obama won’t ask me to stay

Geithner: Obama won’t ask me to stay

WASHINGTON

Timothy Geithner said Wednesday that he doesn’t expect to serve a second term as Treasury secretary. He said he doesn’t think President Barack Obama would ask him to remain if Obama won re-election.

“He’s not going to ask me to stay on, I’m pretty confident,” Geithner said in a Bloomberg Television interview.

Geithner is the only remaining top official on Obama’s original economics team.

Egyptians mark 1 year since uprising

CAIRO

Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians thronged major squares across Egypt on Wednesday to mark the first anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, in rallies that turned into a show of strength by secular groups in their competition with the country’s powerful Islamists over demands for an end to military rule.

Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the 18 days of protests against Mubarak, was transformed into the focal point of the rivalry between revolutionary activists who want to show they still can mobilize the street and the Muslim Brotherhood, who emerged as Egypt’s dominant political force after a landslide victory in parliament elections.

Obama, Romney, Gingrich campaign

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.

On a day that combined two campaigns into one, President Barack Obama on Wednesday challenged Republicans to raise taxes on the rich as GOP rivals Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich swiped at him on the economy and criticized each other over immigration.

With less than a week to go before Tuesday’s Florida Republican presidential primary, the polls suggested a tight race, although Romney and his allies seized a staggering advantage in the television-ad wars. They have reported spending $14 million combined on commercials, many of them critical of Gingrich, and a total at least seven times bigger that the investment made by the former House speaker and an organization supporting him.

Airline removes prayer cards

SEATTLE

Alaska Airlines is ending decades of giving passengers prayer cards with their meals, saying Wednesday the decision was made out of respect for all passengers.

Airline spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said the airline heard from customers who preferred not to mix religion with transportation. The decision reflects respect for the diverse religious beliefs and cultural attitudes of Alaska Airlines’ customers and employees, the company said in announcing the change.

The cards began as a marketing ploy 30 years ago to differentiate the regional airline from its competitors. The company admits the idea was borrowed from another airline.

CDC: Affliction is all in people’s minds

ATLANTA

Imagine having the feeling that tiny bugs are crawling on your body, that you have oozing sores and mysterious fibers sprouting from your skin. Sound like a horror movie? Well, at one point several years ago, government doctors were getting up to 20 calls a day from people saying they had such symptoms.

In 2008, federal health officials began to study people saying they were affected by this freakish condition called Morgellons.

The study cost nearly $600,000. Its long-awaited results, released Wednesday, conclude that Morgellons exists only in the patients’ minds.

“We found no infectious cause,” said Mark Eberhard, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who was part of the 15-member study team.

Associated Press