Obama pushes for immigration deal

Obama pushes for immigration deal

WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama says he’s looking for immigration reform to be completed within six months.

Obama said a deal certainly should be attainable this year, but he wants one even sooner. He said that politics, not technical issues, are standing in the way.

“I can guarantee that I will put everything I have behind it,” Obama said in an interview with Telemundo, one of two he conducted Wednesday with Spanish-language television networks.

A group of senators, both Democrats and Republicans, has agreed on a framework for comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country. In the Republican-controlled House, another group of lawmakers is working on its own proposal.

Girl shot by Taliban faces final surgery

LONDON

A Pakistani girl whose defiance of the Taliban turned her into an international icon is headed toward recovery once she undergoes a final surgery to reconstruct her skull, doctors said Wednesday.

Dr. Dave Rosser of Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital said that 15-year-old Malala Yousufzai needs the operation to replace the bone shattered when a Taliban gunman, angered at her objection to the group’s restrictions on girls’ education, sent a bullet through her skull. Rosser said that Malala had made a “remarkable recovery.”

Quake shakes Chile

SANTIAGO, Chile

A magnitude-6.8 earthquake shook offices, toppled supermarket shelves and broke windows Wednesday in north-central Chile, where people fled some buildings in panic.

A 50-year-old woman in the city of Copiapo died of a heart attack, said Atacama Regional Gov. Rafael Prohens, who attributed her death to fear during the quake. Authorities said that damage was limited and discounted the possibility of a tsunami.

The U.S. Geological Survey originally reported the quake at 6.7, but later revised it upward. It struck at 4:15 p.m. and was centered 27 miles north of Vallenar, Chile.

LA archdiocese to reveal names in files

LOS ANGELES

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles soon will reveal 30,000 pages of confidential personnel files without blacking out the names of the church leaders who knew about sexual abuse by priests and made key decisions on how to handle it, an archdiocese attorney said Wednesday.

The names of any bishops, vicars for clergy and supervisory parish priests will be included in all the documents, and they will be turned over to lawyers for abuse victims soon, said archdiocese attorney Michael Hennigan.

S. Korea: Satellite working normally

SEOUL, South Korea

A South Korean satellite was working normally and transmitting data on its orbit, officials said today, a day after a launch that marked an advance in the country’s space program at a time of high tensions over archrival North Korea’s recent threat to test a third nuclear device.

The South Korean rocket blasted off from a launch pad Wednesday in the southwestern coastal village of Goheung. Science officials told cheering spectators minutes later that the rocket delivered an observational satellite into orbit.

Associated Press