Senators offer plan to save USPS

Senators offer plan to save USPS

WASHINGTON

Saturday mail delivery would be ended in a year and the Postal Service could start shipping alcoholic beverages under a plan offered Friday by two key senators seeking to turn around the struggling agency’s finances.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Carper, D-Del., and the panel’s ranking Republican, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, said they hope Congress can act quickly to help the agency.

The Postal Service lost $16 billion last year, $11 billion of it in congressionally mandated payments to its health fund for future retirees.

The Senate plan includes changes in how pensions and retiree health-care costs are calculated in an attempt to stabilize the agency’s finances.

Munitions found on N. Korea-bound ship

PANAMA CITY

Crews unloading a North Korean-flagged ship detained in the Panama Canal for carrying undeclared arms from Cuba have found live munitions on board, a Panamanian official said Friday.

Explosive-sniffing dogs found ammunition for grenade launchers and other unidentified types of munitions, said anti-drug prosecutor Javier Caraballo, who did not specify the amount of munitions.

The ship, Chong Chon Gang, was headed from Cuba to North Korea when it was seized in the canal July 15 based on intelligence that it may have been carrying drugs.

The manifest said it was carrying 10,000 tons of sugar, but Cuban military equipment was found beneath the sacks. No drugs have been found so far.

Stomach bug tied to Mexican farm

WASHINGTON

The Food and Drug Administration says an outbreak of stomach illnesses in Iowa and Nebraska is linked to salad mix served at Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants in those states and supplied by a Mexican farm.

The outbreak of cyclospora infections has sickened more than 400 people in 16 states in all. The agency says it is working to determine whether the salad mix is the source of illnesses in the other 14 states.

Federal judge blocks Wis. abortion law

MADISON, Wis.

A federal judge on Friday extended his hold on a portion of a new Wisconsin law that requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, issuing an injunction blocking the mandate for four more months.

U.S. District Judge William Conley’s order stems from a lawsuit Planned Parenthood and Affiliated Medical Services filed in July. The organizations say the law would force a Planned Parenthood clinic in Appleton and an AMS clinic in Milwaukee to close because abortion providers at both facilities lack admitting privileges.

Gay spouses get US visa rights

Spouses in same-sex marriages will be given the same consideration in visa applications as those in heterosexual unions, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Friday.

Kerry made the announcement in the consular section of the U.S. Embassy in London, one of the largest of the 222 U.S. visa centers in the world. The change was prompted by a review of U.S. government policies after the Supreme Court ruled against parts of the Defense of Marriage Act in June.

Combined dispatches