A Third Fleet public affairs statement says the collision between the assault ship USS Essex and the oiler USNS Yukon occurred at midmorning Wednesday approximately 120 miles off Southern California.

The Navy says an apparent steering malfunction occurred as Essex approached the Yukon for replenishment while under way.

Neither ships’ fuel tanks or systems were compromised, but the Navy says a full assessment of any damage is continuing.

The Essex is due to return to San Diego on Thursday after 12 years based in Sasebo, Japan.

Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved

The threats, posted during the late evening hours Tuesday on FaceBook, were reported to police by the parent of a friend of the arrested subject.

The 16 year-old was taken into custody at Tantasqua Regional High School, by Sturbridge Police and later transported to Dudley Juvenile Court. The threats were reportedly due to conflicts the subject was having with other students at the school. The school administration was notified of this incident by police.

Police Chief Thomas Ford told ABC40 News, “Police and School officials took immediate action upon learning about the posts.  A parent informed us of them.  We feel that at no time were the students or faculty in any danger today.”

He was charged with violating Chapter 269, sec 14 of Mass General Laws concerning “making firearm threats toward a school.”

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB) — Wednesday, the City of Springfield announced an interfaith prayer service to commemorate the one year anniversary of the June 1st tornado.

Clergy from different churches in the Valley will be on hand to offer prayers and testimonies of faith.

“We want to continue to offer prayers and inspiration to the leaders who are leading in the efforts of hte rebuilding of springfield. Especially the mayor of springfield and those surrounding communities, it’s important that we come together and do this,” says Timothy Paul from the Council of Churches of Greater Springfield.

The prayer meeting will start at 4:00 p.m. on June 1st  at the First Church of Christ, in Court Square, in Springfield.

At 4:37 p.m. bells will chime, marking the time the tornado touched down.

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(File Photo Courtesy: John Suchocki / The Republican)

MassDOT spokesperson Mike Verseckes officials say that Davitt Bridge, which connects Route 116 over the Chicopee River, is now slated to close Monday, May 21.

The closure will remain in effect until around August 2014.

The project will include demoliting the existing bridge, including repairing and removing substantial portions of the concrete abutments and piers.

As part of the work, an entirely new bridge will be built in place of the old structure.

Verseckes adds that a temporary foot bridge has been built to help pedestrians cross the span while the bridge is closed.

In this undated photo supplied by the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s office, Armando Rodriguez is seen wearing a protective mask. Prosecutors say 34-year-old Armando Rodriguez, a tuberculosis patient, has been arrested for refusing to take his medication and missing doctor appointments, and is endangering public health by not treating the airborne disease. (AP Photo/San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office)

In this undated photo supplied by the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s office, Armando Rodriguez is seen wearing a protective mask. Prosecutors say 34-year-old Armando Rodriguez, a tuberculosis patient, has been arrested for refusing to take his medication and missing doctor appointments, and is endangering public health by not treating the airborne disease. (AP Photo/San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office)

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Authorities in California took the unusual step of jailing and charging a tuberculosis patient who they say refused to take medication to keep his disease from becoming contagious.

Health officials said Armando Rodriguez, 34, of Stockton has active pulmonary tuberculosis, which can include coughing up blood or sputum and can spread through the air.

“He is noncompliant with his tuberculosis treatment and because of this there is a danger that he may become contagious and/or develop multidrug resistant tuberculosis,” Ginger Wick, nursing director for San Joaquin County, said in a letter requesting a warrant for Rodriguez’s arrest.

Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that usually attacks the lungs.

Rodriguez was arrested Tuesday and is expected to be arraigned Thursday on two counts of refusing to comply with a tuberculosis order to be at home at certain times and make appointments to take his medication.

He will likely be appointed a public defender.

The county has had more than 30 tuberculosis prosecutions since 1984, prosecutor Stephen Taylor said. It also has prosecuted a woman accused of knowingly giving syphilis to her sex partners and refusing treatment.

Taylor said San Joaquin County is more aggressive than other jurisdictions in prosecuting tuberculosis patients to get them to take their medication.

The criminal prosecutions are an extension of the practice of medicine, he said.

“The criminal cases we’re dealing with generally involve drug users who are harder to treat and manage because the TB medicines conflict with street drugs,” he said. “We have to throw these people in jail and treat them as in-patients. They don’t cooperate as out-patients.”

Rodriguez was discharged in March from San Joaquin General Hospital with four medications for active tuberculosis and agreed to take the drugs under observation by a county health official on weekdays and on his own on weekends, authorities said.

He failed to self-administer the drugs on one day, telling a nurse he had gone on an alcohol binge and taken methamphetamine and didn’t want to hurt his liver, Wick said in her letter.

He allegedly refused to take the drugs on another day and then was not at home on three occasions and missed an appointment.

Each charge against Ramirez carries a maximum penalty of a year behind bars. In her letter, Wick said Rodriguez would need nine months of treatment.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A small study raises more concern about the long-term consequences of brain injuries suffered by thousands of soldiers — suggesting they may be at risk of developing the same degenerative brain disease as some retired football players.

Autopsies of four young veterans found the earliest signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in their brain tissue, Boston researchers reported Wednesday.

They compared the brain tissue of some of the youngest athletes ever found with signs of early CTE, in their teens and 20s, and concluded the abnormalities were nearly identical.

“It’s very distinctive,” said Dr. Lee Goldstein of Boston University, who led the study with Dr. Ann McKee of the VA New England Healthcare System. “You don’t see this in normal individuals.”

The research suggests that the cause of the injury, whether a blast or repeated blows, doesn’t matter — it can trigger the same disease-causing process, said McKee, who has long studied the athlete connection.

Further experiments with mice showed that a single blast, equivalent to a roadside bomb, was enough to start the damage — offering a model to help scientists better understand these wounds and perhaps how to treat them, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

CTE is a progressive disease linked to multiple concussions. It has made headlines in recent years with the deaths of some former professional athletes, and lawsuits filed against the National Football League by others worried about the still unclear toll of a sport that can bring repeated blows to the head. Symptoms include memory problems, behavior changes including aggression, and eventually dementia. For now, only an autopsy confirms a diagnosis.

Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, is a signature injury of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of them closed-head injuries caused by being near an explosion. While many recover fine, others have some lasting cognitive or psychiatric symptoms — and traditional medical exams can’t see the damage, making it incredibly difficult to diagnose what’s wrong. Additionally, scientists have long warned that many of those veterans may be at risk of long-term problems such as Alzheimer’s-like dementia.

Wednesday’s study, while very small, sheds important light on how damaging those TBIs can be even if the person walks away from the blast.

The four young veterans, ages 22 to 45, lived for a year or longer after their military TBIs, but complained of problems with memory, irritability, sleep and other issues before dying of suicide or other causes. Goldstein and McKee found their brains contained broken axons, the nerve fibers that act as the brain’s telephone system.

More surprising: Abnormal tangles of a brain protein named tau are a hallmark of early CTE, and researchers found that tau buildup in the brains of the veterans’ and the young athletes, three of them who played high school or college football and the fourth a professional wrestler. They didn’t see it in the brains of four other young men who hadn’t experienced concussions before death.

Three of the veterans had been exposed to blasts, while one had a different kind of concussion while deployed — and all had had at least one pre-military concussion, from football, wrecks or fights.

While that begs the question of whether the blast was to blame, Goldstein said the mouse study shows a single explosion could trigger that kind of damage. Wind from a simulated blast whipped the animals’ heads like a bobble-head doll, severely shaking the brain, he explained. They experienced broken axons and blood vessels, inflammation and problems with learning and memory — and two weeks later, were forming abnormal tau.

When the animals’ heads were immobilized, they escaped that damage, Goldstein said.

He said helmets may be crucial in protecting the skulls of soldiers and athletes, but they cannot protect the brain from that kind of rattling injury and might even worsen it by increasing the load on the neck.

Specialists not connected to Wednesday’s study caution that far more research is needed on the possible link between this brain degeneration and TBIs, especially in veterans.

Still, “they are very important findings,” said TBI researcher Dr. Amy Wagner of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

For abnormalities to begin so soon after injury triggers questions about how resilient different people are, she said: Who’s more likely to recover? How many blows are too many? What other factors could make this slow-moving disease eventually worsen?

A key next step will be for brain banks, which store donated brain tissue for research, to look more closely for CTE so scientists can learn how often it occurs and in whom, said neuroscientist Dr. Sam Gandy of New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He predicts that people who carry genes linked to Alzheimer’s disease would be more prone to lasting damage from TBI. In an editorial in the same journal on Wednesday, he suggested studying if gene testing of would-be high school athletes or military recruits might one day help persuade the most vulnerable to avoid those occupations.

McKee said her lab so far has found evidence of CTE in more than 65 athletes and veterans, ranging from the early abnormalities to profound degeneration. She now is researching how to diagnose CTE before death, perhaps with brain scans or by measuring tau in spinal fluid.

“This work raises a number of questions for researchers to explore in further studies. In particular, the animal model developed by the researchers will enable a better understanding of the brain pathology involved in blast injuries and ideally lead to new therapies to help service members and veterans with TBIs,” Dr. Joel Kupersmith, research chief at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said in a statement.

Associated Press

“Whole grain bread, fat free milk, increasing our consumption of fruits and vegetables, lower fat, lower salt intake,” said Joanne Lennon, Director of Food Services in Chicopee.

September is the deadline for all public schools in the U.S. to meet the  guidelines of the federal Healthier, Hunger- Free Kids Act of 2010. It aims to increase nutrition, eliminate child hunger and child obesity.

Understanding kids are picky eaters, Lennon said Chicopee schools began introducing better foods slowly over the last couple of years.

“You can’t just throw hamburger or whole grain at them and expect them to eat it right away,” said Lennon. “So, all these changes have been implemented slowly so they can get used to these new food items.”

The act also encourages schools to buy local produce. Lennon said she’s ordered everything from potatoes to asparagus  to strawberries from local farms.  She’s hoping families see the increase in school lunch prices as an investment that goes beyond nutrition .

“It’s a win-win situation because it helps our local farmer,” said Lennon. “It helps our local economy. And less pollution because the trick isn’t driving from california all the way to the east coast. So, the product’s fresher and it’s got a better taste and the students can tell the difference.”

And now Billy Bob Thornton is the author of, ‘The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts’.  I spoke with the Oscar winning actor Wednesday afternoon about opening up about dealing with OCD and dyslexia and feeling insecure. He hopes it will help others and says, “Yes, absolutely, you always hope that. If you’re able to put your own sort of problems out there if it can help someone else it’s always a great thing and there are a lot of people with those type of things.”

His ex-wife, Angelina Jolie wrote the forward to his book. He talks more about his book and his life Wednesday on Nightline at 11:30 pm, on abc40.

FILE – In this May 8, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Washington. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FILE – In this May 8, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Washington. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FILE -In this March 26, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Seoul, South Korea. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

FILE – In this May 15, 2012 file photo, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, talks to new French President Francois Hollande in Berlin. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

FILE – In this May 10, 2012 file photo, British Prime Minister David Cameron is seen in London. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Carl Court, File)

FILE – In this May 1, 2012 file photo, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda speaks in Washington. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Buy AP Photo Reprints

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than two dozen world leaders will join President Barack Obama in an extraordinary weekend of back-to-back summits to tackle Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

The Group of Eight economic summit and the national security-focused NATO meeting will be infused with politics from every angle. For Obama, the summits are a unique election-year opportunity to show leadership on the world stage without having to leave the U.S.

But with some new faces around the conference tables, Obama and the other leaders will be confronted by the stark reminder of the political turmoil from Asia to Europe that cost several of their old counterparts their jobs.

Since late 2011, public frustration with Europe’s debt crisis has led to the ouster of leaders in Italy, Spain, Greece and most recently, France. Two other members of the G-8, Britain and Japan, have had leadership shake-ups since Obama took office.

Obama is fighting for his own job in a campaign expected to hinge on the economy. He has had the good fortune of being able to hold both summits this year in the U.S., allowing him to tailor the meetings around his election-year messages of expanding the economy, creating jobs and ending the war

The summit locations rotate annually for each organization.

Leaders from the world’s eight leading industrialized nations arrive in the Washington area on Friday for meetings at Camp David, the wooded presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. Immediately following the G-8 summit, Obama and most of the other leaders will fly to Chicago Saturday evening to join other heads of state from NATO.

Obama originally planned both meetings for Chicago, his hometown. But the White House abruptly scraped those plans in March, announcing with little explanation that the G-8 would shift to Camp David.

It was an unexpected move from Obama, who rarely spends time at Camp David and has never hosted a world leader there, unlike many of his predecessors. The White House said that location would lend itself to more intimate talks. It also will keep them far from the protests that usually flare on the summit fringes.

But U.S. and other diplomats said a major reason for the switch was to appear welcoming to Vladimir Putin, who recently reclaimed the presidency in Russia. Putin planned to skip NATO because of his staunch opposition to the alliance’s planned missile defense shield, and separating the two meetings was seen as a way to give Putin cover to slip away less awkwardly.

Ultimately those efforts were in vain. In a diplomatic snub, Putin told Obama last week that he was skipping the G-8 as well in order to stay in Russia and focus on forming his government. Russia’s former president and current prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, will attend the G-8 sessions, which also include the U.S., Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.

The G-8 talks are expected to be dominated by the eurozone crisis, though Obama administration officials are keeping expectations for tangible agreements low. While the health of the U.S. economy is closely linked to Europe’s stability, Obama has made clear that he has no appetite for ponying up American money to help bail out the continent.

Instead, Obama will largely play the role of facilitator, urging European leaders to balance calls for austerity, largely driven by Germany, with a growth agenda.

“This is really for Europe to sort out,” said Heather Conley, a Europe expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We are sitting on the bleachers a bit. And we are going to have to watch how this plays out with the frustration in recognizing that it will have a profound impact for the global economy and for the U.S. economy.”

Obama will have a new ally in his calls for a growth agenda in Europe, new French President Francois Hollande. But administration officials say Obama plans to caution Hollande, France’s first socialist president in 17 years, that Europe cannot abandon budget-cutting entirely.

Obama will host Hollande at the White House for a meeting Friday before the G-8 summit begins.

Hollande will be in the spotlight as the weekend of summitry moves to Chicago, where NATO will firm up plans for how the alliance will finish its shift from a combat role in Afghanistan to an advisory role next year. The alliance will also reaffirm its commitment to fully ending the combat mission in Afghanistan by 2015.

Hollande campaigned on pledge to speed up the withdrawal of France’s 3,400 troops from Afghanistan and pull them out by the end of the year. But he recently acknowledged that a fast-track pullout might force the French to leave behind some military gear, and some U.S. officials believe he is likely to try to find some wiggle room, perhaps by leaving some forces in Afghanistan in an advisory role.

The NATO-backed plan for drawing down in Afghanistan is an important part of Obama’s campaign message about the increasingly unpopular war. But Obama is not expected to announce the next steps in the U.S. withdrawal plan from Afghanistan during the summit.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will be in Chicago, and NATO also has extended an invitation to Pakistan, which has a vital role in ensuring stability in the region after the U.S. and other foreign forces draw down. The invitation to President Asif Ali Zardari was a signal of rapprochement between the U.S. and Pakistan and a sign that Islamabad is ready to reopen its western border to U.S. and NATO military supplies heading to Afghanistan.

The NATO meeting also will showcase the effort to get firm financial commitments from inside and outside the alliance for support for Afghan forces. NATO argues that even the projected bill of about $4 billion annually is cheaper than the cost of war. But it is not clear that several European governments have the budget or the will to keep paying. The U.S. expects to pay much of the total, but U.S. officials say Washington cannot do it alone.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC.

Associated Press

FILE – In this May 8, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Washington. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FILE – In this May 8, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Washington. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FILE -In this March 26, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Seoul, South Korea. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

FILE – In this May 15, 2012 file photo, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, talks to new French President Francois Hollande in Berlin. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

FILE – In this May 10, 2012 file photo, British Prime Minister David Cameron is seen in London. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Carl Court, File)

FILE – In this May 1, 2012 file photo, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda speaks in Washington. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Buy AP Photo Reprints

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than two dozen world leaders will join President Barack Obama in an extraordinary weekend of back-to-back summits to tackle Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

The Group of Eight economic summit and the national security-focused NATO meeting will be infused with politics from every angle. For Obama, the summits are a unique election-year opportunity to show leadership on the world stage without having to leave the U.S.

But with some new faces around the conference tables, Obama and the other leaders will be confronted by the stark reminder of the political turmoil from Asia to Europe that cost several of their old counterparts their jobs.

Since late 2011, public frustration with Europe’s debt crisis has led to the ouster of leaders in Italy, Spain, Greece and most recently, France. Two other members of the G-8, Britain and Japan, have had leadership shake-ups since Obama took office.

Obama is fighting for his own job in a campaign expected to hinge on the economy. He has had the good fortune of being able to hold both summits this year in the U.S., allowing him to tailor the meetings around his election-year messages of expanding the economy, creating jobs and ending the war

The summit locations rotate annually for each organization.

Leaders from the world’s eight leading industrialized nations arrive in the Washington area on Friday for meetings at Camp David, the wooded presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. Immediately following the G-8 summit, Obama and most of the other leaders will fly to Chicago Saturday evening to join other heads of state from NATO.

Obama originally planned both meetings for Chicago, his hometown. But the White House abruptly scraped those plans in March, announcing with little explanation that the G-8 would shift to Camp David.

It was an unexpected move from Obama, who rarely spends time at Camp David and has never hosted a world leader there, unlike many of his predecessors. The White House said that location would lend itself to more intimate talks. It also will keep them far from the protests that usually flare on the summit fringes.

But U.S. and other diplomats said a major reason for the switch was to appear welcoming to Vladimir Putin, who recently reclaimed the presidency in Russia. Putin planned to skip NATO because of his staunch opposition to the alliance’s planned missile defense shield, and separating the two meetings was seen as a way to give Putin cover to slip away less awkwardly.

Ultimately those efforts were in vain. In a diplomatic snub, Putin told Obama last week that he was skipping the G-8 as well in order to stay in Russia and focus on forming his government. Russia’s former president and current prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, will attend the G-8 sessions, which also include the U.S., Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.

The G-8 talks are expected to be dominated by the eurozone crisis, though Obama administration officials are keeping expectations for tangible agreements low. While the health of the U.S. economy is closely linked to Europe’s stability, Obama has made clear that he has no appetite for ponying up American money to help bail out the continent.

Instead, Obama will largely play the role of facilitator, urging European leaders to balance calls for austerity, largely driven by Germany, with a growth agenda.

“This is really for Europe to sort out,” said Heather Conley, a Europe expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We are sitting on the bleachers a bit. And we are going to have to watch how this plays out with the frustration in recognizing that it will have a profound impact for the global economy and for the U.S. economy.”

Obama will have a new ally in his calls for a growth agenda in Europe, new French President Francois Hollande. But administration officials say Obama plans to caution Hollande, France’s first socialist president in 17 years, that Europe cannot abandon budget-cutting entirely.

Obama will host Hollande at the White House for a meeting Friday before the G-8 summit begins.

Hollande will be in the spotlight as the weekend of summitry moves to Chicago, where NATO will firm up plans for how the alliance will finish its shift from a combat role in Afghanistan to an advisory role next year. The alliance will also reaffirm its commitment to fully ending the combat mission in Afghanistan by 2015.

Hollande campaigned on pledge to speed up the withdrawal of France’s 3,400 troops from Afghanistan and pull them out by the end of the year. But he recently acknowledged that a fast-track pullout might force the French to leave behind some military gear, and some U.S. officials believe he is likely to try to find some wiggle room, perhaps by leaving some forces in Afghanistan in an advisory role.

The NATO-backed plan for drawing down in Afghanistan is an important part of Obama’s campaign message about the increasingly unpopular war. But Obama is not expected to announce the next steps in the U.S. withdrawal plan from Afghanistan during the summit.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will be in Chicago, and NATO also has extended an invitation to Pakistan, which has a vital role in ensuring stability in the region after the U.S. and other foreign forces draw down. The invitation to President Asif Ali Zardari was a signal of rapprochement between the U.S. and Pakistan and a sign that Islamabad is ready to reopen its western border to U.S. and NATO military supplies heading to Afghanistan.

The NATO meeting also will showcase the effort to get firm financial commitments from inside and outside the alliance for support for Afghan forces. NATO argues that even the projected bill of about $4 billion annually is cheaper than the cost of war. But it is not clear that several European governments have the budget or the will to keep paying. The U.S. expects to pay much of the total, but U.S. officials say Washington cannot do it alone.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC.

Associated Press

FILE – In this May 8, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Washington. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FILE – In this May 8, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Washington. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FILE -In this March 26, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Seoul, South Korea. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

FILE – In this May 15, 2012 file photo, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, talks to new French President Francois Hollande in Berlin. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

FILE – In this May 10, 2012 file photo, British Prime Minister David Cameron is seen in London. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Carl Court, File)

FILE – In this May 1, 2012 file photo, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda speaks in Washington. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Buy AP Photo Reprints

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than two dozen world leaders will join President Barack Obama in an extraordinary weekend of back-to-back summits to tackle Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

The Group of Eight economic summit and the national security-focused NATO meeting will be infused with politics from every angle. For Obama, the summits are a unique election-year opportunity to show leadership on the world stage without having to leave the U.S.

But with some new faces around the conference tables, Obama and the other leaders will be confronted by the stark reminder of the political turmoil from Asia to Europe that cost several of their old counterparts their jobs.

Since late 2011, public frustration with Europe’s debt crisis has led to the ouster of leaders in Italy, Spain, Greece and most recently, France. Two other members of the G-8, Britain and Japan, have had leadership shake-ups since Obama took office.

Obama is fighting for his own job in a campaign expected to hinge on the economy. He has had the good fortune of being able to hold both summits this year in the U.S., allowing him to tailor the meetings around his election-year messages of expanding the economy, creating jobs and ending the war

The summit locations rotate annually for each organization.

Leaders from the world’s eight leading industrialized nations arrive in the Washington area on Friday for meetings at Camp David, the wooded presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. Immediately following the G-8 summit, Obama and most of the other leaders will fly to Chicago Saturday evening to join other heads of state from NATO.

Obama originally planned both meetings for Chicago, his hometown. But the White House abruptly scraped those plans in March, announcing with little explanation that the G-8 would shift to Camp David.

It was an unexpected move from Obama, who rarely spends time at Camp David and has never hosted a world leader there, unlike many of his predecessors. The White House said that location would lend itself to more intimate talks. It also will keep them far from the protests that usually flare on the summit fringes.

But U.S. and other diplomats said a major reason for the switch was to appear welcoming to Vladimir Putin, who recently reclaimed the presidency in Russia. Putin planned to skip NATO because of his staunch opposition to the alliance’s planned missile defense shield, and separating the two meetings was seen as a way to give Putin cover to slip away less awkwardly.

Ultimately those efforts were in vain. In a diplomatic snub, Putin told Obama last week that he was skipping the G-8 as well in order to stay in Russia and focus on forming his government. Russia’s former president and current prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, will attend the G-8 sessions, which also include the U.S., Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.

The G-8 talks are expected to be dominated by the eurozone crisis, though Obama administration officials are keeping expectations for tangible agreements low. While the health of the U.S. economy is closely linked to Europe’s stability, Obama has made clear that he has no appetite for ponying up American money to help bail out the continent.

Instead, Obama will largely play the role of facilitator, urging European leaders to balance calls for austerity, largely driven by Germany, with a growth agenda.

“This is really for Europe to sort out,” said Heather Conley, a Europe expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We are sitting on the bleachers a bit. And we are going to have to watch how this plays out with the frustration in recognizing that it will have a profound impact for the global economy and for the U.S. economy.”

Obama will have a new ally in his calls for a growth agenda in Europe, new French President Francois Hollande. But administration officials say Obama plans to caution Hollande, France’s first socialist president in 17 years, that Europe cannot abandon budget-cutting entirely.

Obama will host Hollande at the White House for a meeting Friday before the G-8 summit begins.

Hollande will be in the spotlight as the weekend of summitry moves to Chicago, where NATO will firm up plans for how the alliance will finish its shift from a combat role in Afghanistan to an advisory role next year. The alliance will also reaffirm its commitment to fully ending the combat mission in Afghanistan by 2015.

Hollande campaigned on pledge to speed up the withdrawal of France’s 3,400 troops from Afghanistan and pull them out by the end of the year. But he recently acknowledged that a fast-track pullout might force the French to leave behind some military gear, and some U.S. officials believe he is likely to try to find some wiggle room, perhaps by leaving some forces in Afghanistan in an advisory role.

The NATO-backed plan for drawing down in Afghanistan is an important part of Obama’s campaign message about the increasingly unpopular war. But Obama is not expected to announce the next steps in the U.S. withdrawal plan from Afghanistan during the summit.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will be in Chicago, and NATO also has extended an invitation to Pakistan, which has a vital role in ensuring stability in the region after the U.S. and other foreign forces draw down. The invitation to President Asif Ali Zardari was a signal of rapprochement between the U.S. and Pakistan and a sign that Islamabad is ready to reopen its western border to U.S. and NATO military supplies heading to Afghanistan.

The NATO meeting also will showcase the effort to get firm financial commitments from inside and outside the alliance for support for Afghan forces. NATO argues that even the projected bill of about $4 billion annually is cheaper than the cost of war. But it is not clear that several European governments have the budget or the will to keep paying. The U.S. expects to pay much of the total, but U.S. officials say Washington cannot do it alone.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC.

Associated Press

FILE – In this May 8, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Washington. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FILE – In this May 8, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Washington. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FILE -In this March 26, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Seoul, South Korea. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

FILE – In this May 15, 2012 file photo, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, talks to new French President Francois Hollande in Berlin. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

FILE – In this May 10, 2012 file photo, British Prime Minister David Cameron is seen in London. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Carl Court, File)

FILE – In this May 1, 2012 file photo, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda speaks in Washington. President Barack Obama will play host this weekend to an extraordinary confluence of international summitry, with world leaders scuttling from the Maryland mountains to downtown Chicago as they grapple for fixes to Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — More than two dozen world leaders will join President Barack Obama in an extraordinary weekend of back-to-back summits to tackle Europe’s mounting economic woes and solidify plans for winding down the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

The Group of Eight economic summit and the national security-focused NATO meeting will be infused with politics from every angle. For Obama, the summits are a unique election-year opportunity to show leadership on the world stage without having to leave the U.S.

But with some new faces around the conference tables, Obama and the other leaders will be confronted by the stark reminder of the political turmoil from Asia to Europe that cost several of their old counterparts their jobs.

Since late 2011, public frustration with Europe’s debt crisis has led to the ouster of leaders in Italy, Spain, Greece and most recently, France. Two other members of the G-8, Britain and Japan, have had leadership shake-ups since Obama took office.

Obama is fighting for his own job in a campaign expected to hinge on the economy. He has had the good fortune of being able to hold both summits this year in the U.S., allowing him to tailor the meetings around his election-year messages of expanding the economy, creating jobs and ending the war

The summit locations rotate annually for each organization.

Leaders from the world’s eight leading industrialized nations arrive in the Washington area on Friday for meetings at Camp David, the wooded presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. Immediately following the G-8 summit, Obama and most of the other leaders will fly to Chicago Saturday evening to join other heads of state from NATO.

Obama originally planned both meetings for Chicago, his hometown. But the White House abruptly scraped those plans in March, announcing with little explanation that the G-8 would shift to Camp David.

It was an unexpected move from Obama, who rarely spends time at Camp David and has never hosted a world leader there, unlike many of his predecessors. The White House said that location would lend itself to more intimate talks. It also will keep them far from the protests that usually flare on the summit fringes.

But U.S. and other diplomats said a major reason for the switch was to appear welcoming to Vladimir Putin, who recently reclaimed the presidency in Russia. Putin planned to skip NATO because of his staunch opposition to the alliance’s planned missile defense shield, and separating the two meetings was seen as a way to give Putin cover to slip away less awkwardly.

Ultimately those efforts were in vain. In a diplomatic snub, Putin told Obama last week that he was skipping the G-8 as well in order to stay in Russia and focus on forming his government. Russia’s former president and current prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, will attend the G-8 sessions, which also include the U.S., Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.

The G-8 talks are expected to be dominated by the eurozone crisis, though Obama administration officials are keeping expectations for tangible agreements low. While the health of the U.S. economy is closely linked to Europe’s stability, Obama has made clear that he has no appetite for ponying up American money to help bail out the continent.

Instead, Obama will largely play the role of facilitator, urging European leaders to balance calls for austerity, largely driven by Germany, with a growth agenda.

“This is really for Europe to sort out,” said Heather Conley, a Europe expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We are sitting on the bleachers a bit. And we are going to have to watch how this plays out with the frustration in recognizing that it will have a profound impact for the global economy and for the U.S. economy.”

Obama will have a new ally in his calls for a growth agenda in Europe, new French President Francois Hollande. But administration officials say Obama plans to caution Hollande, France’s first socialist president in 17 years, that Europe cannot abandon budget-cutting entirely.

Obama will host Hollande at the White House for a meeting Friday before the G-8 summit begins.

Hollande will be in the spotlight as the weekend of summitry moves to Chicago, where NATO will firm up plans for how the alliance will finish its shift from a combat role in Afghanistan to an advisory role next year. The alliance will also reaffirm its commitment to fully ending the combat mission in Afghanistan by 2015.

Hollande campaigned on pledge to speed up the withdrawal of France’s 3,400 troops from Afghanistan and pull them out by the end of the year. But he recently acknowledged that a fast-track pullout might force the French to leave behind some military gear, and some U.S. officials believe he is likely to try to find some wiggle room, perhaps by leaving some forces in Afghanistan in an advisory role.

The NATO-backed plan for drawing down in Afghanistan is an important part of Obama’s campaign message about the increasingly unpopular war. But Obama is not expected to announce the next steps in the U.S. withdrawal plan from Afghanistan during the summit.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will be in Chicago, and NATO also has extended an invitation to Pakistan, which has a vital role in ensuring stability in the region after the U.S. and other foreign forces draw down. The invitation to President Asif Ali Zardari was a signal of rapprochement between the U.S. and Pakistan and a sign that Islamabad is ready to reopen its western border to U.S. and NATO military supplies heading to Afghanistan.

The NATO meeting also will showcase the effort to get firm financial commitments from inside and outside the alliance for support for Afghan forces. NATO argues that even the projected bill of about $4 billion annually is cheaper than the cost of war. But it is not clear that several European governments have the budget or the will to keep paying. The U.S. expects to pay much of the total, but U.S. officials say Washington cannot do it alone.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is challenging a new law that allows the indefinite detention without trial of suspected terrorists, even U.S. citizens seized within the United States.

The unusual coalition of Democrats, libertarians and tea partyers on Wednesday unveiled an amendment to the 2013 defense budget that would end the indefinite detention. The House was scheduled to begin debate on the overall defense spending blueprint late Wednesday and probably will consider the amendment Thursday.

“The president does not need this authority to keep us safe,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters.

Last year, Congress passed a far-reaching defense bill that includes a provision denying suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens seized within the nation’s borders, the right to trial and subjects them to the possibility they would be held indefinitely. It reaffirms the post-Sept. 11 authorization for the use of military force that allows indefinite detention of enemy combatants.

In the months since, lawmakers have faced a backlash over the detention language.

Conservatives fear that it could result in unfettered power for the federal government, allowing it to detain American citizens indefinitely for even a one-time contribution to a humanitarian group that’s later linked to terrorism. They argue that would be a violation of long-held constitutional rights. Several Democrats also have criticized the provision as an example of government overreach and an unnecessary obstacle to the Obama administration’s war against terrorism, creating the unique political coalition of opponents.

Joining Smith at a Capitol Hill news conference was freshman Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a GOP presidential candidate, and Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif.

“I do not believe a republic can exist if you permit a military to arrest American citizens and put them in secret prisons and deny a trial,” Paul said.

The amendment would bar indefinite detention without charge or trial and roll back the military custody requirement. The group has the backing of 40 retired generals and admirals who wrote in a letter that “sound national security policy depends on faithful adherence to the rule of law.”

Smith said the amendment had a “reasonable chance of passage.”

Proponents of the detention provision argue that it is a necessary tool in the fight against terrorism. Since President Barack Obama took office, congressional Republicans and some Democrats have consistently crafted defense bills that restricted transfer of terrorist suspects from the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States and imposed other limits on the handling of detainees.

The White House has threatened a veto of the Armed Services Committee’s defense bill, arguing that the $642 billion measure adds billions of dollars to Obama’s request and limits the military’s ability to execute a new defense strategy.

The White House Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday listed several objections to the spending blueprint, from the overall amount to provisions on gays in the military, nuclear weapons and limits on the use of biofuels.

The bill’s total is $8 billion more than what Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to last summer in a deficit-cutting deal. The bill outlines a base defense budget of $554 billion, including nuclear weapons spending, plus $88 billion for the war in Afghanistan and counterterrorism efforts. Obama had proposed $551 billion, plus $88 billion.

Republicans added several provisions limiting the president’s ability to retire aircraft, ships and a version of the Global Hawk drone. The legislation would restrict the commander in chief’s ability to implement a new treaty with Russia to reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons. The legislation also calls for construction of a new missile defense site on the East Coast even though Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the current array of defense sites is sufficient.

The bill, the administration said, impedes “the ability of the secretary of defense and the secretary of energy to make and implement management decisions that eliminate unnecessary overhead or programs to ensure scarce resources are directed to the highest priorities for the national security.”

The administration said if the cumulative effects of the legislation restrict efforts to carry out the new defense strategy, the president’s senior advisers would recommend a veto.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is challenging a new law that allows the indefinite detention without trial of suspected terrorists, even U.S. citizens seized within the United States.

The unusual coalition of Democrats, libertarians and tea partyers on Wednesday unveiled an amendment to the 2013 defense budget that would end the indefinite detention. The House was scheduled to begin debate on the overall defense spending blueprint late Wednesday and probably will consider the amendment Thursday.

“The president does not need this authority to keep us safe,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters.

Last year, Congress passed a far-reaching defense bill that includes a provision denying suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens seized within the nation’s borders, the right to trial and subjects them to the possibility they would be held indefinitely. It reaffirms the post-Sept. 11 authorization for the use of military force that allows indefinite detention of enemy combatants.

In the months since, lawmakers have faced a backlash over the detention language.

Conservatives fear that it could result in unfettered power for the federal government, allowing it to detain American citizens indefinitely for even a one-time contribution to a humanitarian group that’s later linked to terrorism. They argue that would be a violation of long-held constitutional rights. Several Democrats also have criticized the provision as an example of government overreach and an unnecessary obstacle to the Obama administration’s war against terrorism, creating the unique political coalition of opponents.

Joining Smith at a Capitol Hill news conference was freshman Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a GOP presidential candidate, and Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif.

“I do not believe a republic can exist if you permit a military to arrest American citizens and put them in secret prisons and deny a trial,” Paul said.

The amendment would bar indefinite detention without charge or trial and roll back the military custody requirement. The group has the backing of 40 retired generals and admirals who wrote in a letter that “sound national security policy depends on faithful adherence to the rule of law.”

Smith said the amendment had a “reasonable chance of passage.”

Proponents of the detention provision argue that it is a necessary tool in the fight against terrorism. Since President Barack Obama took office, congressional Republicans and some Democrats have consistently crafted defense bills that restricted transfer of terrorist suspects from the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States and imposed other limits on the handling of detainees.

The White House has threatened a veto of the Armed Services Committee’s defense bill, arguing that the $642 billion measure adds billions of dollars to Obama’s request and limits the military’s ability to execute a new defense strategy.

The White House Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday listed several objections to the spending blueprint, from the overall amount to provisions on gays in the military, nuclear weapons and limits on the use of biofuels.

The bill’s total is $8 billion more than what Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to last summer in a deficit-cutting deal. The bill outlines a base defense budget of $554 billion, including nuclear weapons spending, plus $88 billion for the war in Afghanistan and counterterrorism efforts. Obama had proposed $551 billion, plus $88 billion.

Republicans added several provisions limiting the president’s ability to retire aircraft, ships and a version of the Global Hawk drone. The legislation would restrict the commander in chief’s ability to implement a new treaty with Russia to reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons. The legislation also calls for construction of a new missile defense site on the East Coast even though Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the current array of defense sites is sufficient.

The bill, the administration said, impedes “the ability of the secretary of defense and the secretary of energy to make and implement management decisions that eliminate unnecessary overhead or programs to ensure scarce resources are directed to the highest priorities for the national security.”

The administration said if the cumulative effects of the legislation restrict efforts to carry out the new defense strategy, the president’s senior advisers would recommend a veto.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is challenging a new law that allows the indefinite detention without trial of suspected terrorists, even U.S. citizens seized within the United States.

The unusual coalition of Democrats, libertarians and tea partyers on Wednesday unveiled an amendment to the 2013 defense budget that would end the indefinite detention. The House was scheduled to begin debate on the overall defense spending blueprint late Wednesday and probably will consider the amendment Thursday.

“The president does not need this authority to keep us safe,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters.

Last year, Congress passed a far-reaching defense bill that includes a provision denying suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens seized within the nation’s borders, the right to trial and subjects them to the possibility they would be held indefinitely. It reaffirms the post-Sept. 11 authorization for the use of military force that allows indefinite detention of enemy combatants.

In the months since, lawmakers have faced a backlash over the detention language.

Conservatives fear that it could result in unfettered power for the federal government, allowing it to detain American citizens indefinitely for even a one-time contribution to a humanitarian group that’s later linked to terrorism. They argue that would be a violation of long-held constitutional rights. Several Democrats also have criticized the provision as an example of government overreach and an unnecessary obstacle to the Obama administration’s war against terrorism, creating the unique political coalition of opponents.

Joining Smith at a Capitol Hill news conference was freshman Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a GOP presidential candidate, and Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif.

“I do not believe a republic can exist if you permit a military to arrest American citizens and put them in secret prisons and deny a trial,” Paul said.

The amendment would bar indefinite detention without charge or trial and roll back the military custody requirement. The group has the backing of 40 retired generals and admirals who wrote in a letter that “sound national security policy depends on faithful adherence to the rule of law.”

Smith said the amendment had a “reasonable chance of passage.”

Proponents of the detention provision argue that it is a necessary tool in the fight against terrorism. Since President Barack Obama took office, congressional Republicans and some Democrats have consistently crafted defense bills that restricted transfer of terrorist suspects from the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States and imposed other limits on the handling of detainees.

The White House has threatened a veto of the Armed Services Committee’s defense bill, arguing that the $642 billion measure adds billions of dollars to Obama’s request and limits the military’s ability to execute a new defense strategy.

The White House Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday listed several objections to the spending blueprint, from the overall amount to provisions on gays in the military, nuclear weapons and limits on the use of biofuels.

The bill’s total is $8 billion more than what Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to last summer in a deficit-cutting deal. The bill outlines a base defense budget of $554 billion, including nuclear weapons spending, plus $88 billion for the war in Afghanistan and counterterrorism efforts. Obama had proposed $551 billion, plus $88 billion.

Republicans added several provisions limiting the president’s ability to retire aircraft, ships and a version of the Global Hawk drone. The legislation would restrict the commander in chief’s ability to implement a new treaty with Russia to reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons. The legislation also calls for construction of a new missile defense site on the East Coast even though Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the current array of defense sites is sufficient.

The bill, the administration said, impedes “the ability of the secretary of defense and the secretary of energy to make and implement management decisions that eliminate unnecessary overhead or programs to ensure scarce resources are directed to the highest priorities for the national security.”

The administration said if the cumulative effects of the legislation restrict efforts to carry out the new defense strategy, the president’s senior advisers would recommend a veto.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is challenging a new law that allows the indefinite detention without trial of suspected terrorists, even U.S. citizens seized within the United States.

The unusual coalition of Democrats, libertarians and tea partyers on Wednesday unveiled an amendment to the 2013 defense budget that would end the indefinite detention. The House was scheduled to begin debate on the overall defense spending blueprint late Wednesday and probably will consider the amendment Thursday.

“The president does not need this authority to keep us safe,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters.

Last year, Congress passed a far-reaching defense bill that includes a provision denying suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens seized within the nation’s borders, the right to trial and subjects them to the possibility they would be held indefinitely. It reaffirms the post-Sept. 11 authorization for the use of military force that allows indefinite detention of enemy combatants.

In the months since, lawmakers have faced a backlash over the detention language.

Conservatives fear that it could result in unfettered power for the federal government, allowing it to detain American citizens indefinitely for even a one-time contribution to a humanitarian group that’s later linked to terrorism. They argue that would be a violation of long-held constitutional rights. Several Democrats also have criticized the provision as an example of government overreach and an unnecessary obstacle to the Obama administration’s war against terrorism, creating the unique political coalition of opponents.

Joining Smith at a Capitol Hill news conference was freshman Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a GOP presidential candidate, and Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif.

“I do not believe a republic can exist if you permit a military to arrest American citizens and put them in secret prisons and deny a trial,” Paul said.

The amendment would bar indefinite detention without charge or trial and roll back the military custody requirement. The group has the backing of 40 retired generals and admirals who wrote in a letter that “sound national security policy depends on faithful adherence to the rule of law.”

Smith said the amendment had a “reasonable chance of passage.”

Proponents of the detention provision argue that it is a necessary tool in the fight against terrorism. Since President Barack Obama took office, congressional Republicans and some Democrats have consistently crafted defense bills that restricted transfer of terrorist suspects from the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States and imposed other limits on the handling of detainees.

The White House has threatened a veto of the Armed Services Committee’s defense bill, arguing that the $642 billion measure adds billions of dollars to Obama’s request and limits the military’s ability to execute a new defense strategy.

The White House Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday listed several objections to the spending blueprint, from the overall amount to provisions on gays in the military, nuclear weapons and limits on the use of biofuels.

The bill’s total is $8 billion more than what Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to last summer in a deficit-cutting deal. The bill outlines a base defense budget of $554 billion, including nuclear weapons spending, plus $88 billion for the war in Afghanistan and counterterrorism efforts. Obama had proposed $551 billion, plus $88 billion.

Republicans added several provisions limiting the president’s ability to retire aircraft, ships and a version of the Global Hawk drone. The legislation would restrict the commander in chief’s ability to implement a new treaty with Russia to reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons. The legislation also calls for construction of a new missile defense site on the East Coast even though Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the current array of defense sites is sufficient.

The bill, the administration said, impedes “the ability of the secretary of defense and the secretary of energy to make and implement management decisions that eliminate unnecessary overhead or programs to ensure scarce resources are directed to the highest priorities for the national security.”

The administration said if the cumulative effects of the legislation restrict efforts to carry out the new defense strategy, the president’s senior advisers would recommend a veto.

Associated Press

Some of the fictional sites make promises to help consumers with such things as weight loss, debt relief or loan modification, while others promote huge bargains or easy ways to earn money at home.

Anyone who tries to make a purchase on one of the sites is immediately directed to a state educational website that warns consumers about similar online scams.

The fake sites can be accessed through http://topmassachusettsdeals.com .

Undersecretary of Consumer Affairs Barbara Anthony says cyber criminals not only steal from consumers millions of dollars each year, but in many cases their personal information as well.

Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republican Gov. Scott Walker released better 2011 jobs figures on Wednesday in an attempt to rebuff a central argument of those trying to recall him from office that Wisconsin’s economy has suffered under his leadership.

Walker faces a rare recall election June 5 spurred mostly by anger over his successful push to strip most public workers of collective bargaining rights last year, but also by his stewardship of the state economy.

Walker swept to office on the promise to add 250,000 private sector jobs during his first four-year term, and initial figures gleaned from monthly employment surveys suggested Wisconsin actually lost 33,900 jobs last year, which would rank it last among the 50 states.

The initial figures gave Democrats and their candidate, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, powerful ammunition with which to attack Walker’s record. Then on Wednesday, the governor took the unusual step of releasing fourth-quarter data due out in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ June 28 national employment report that show Wisconsin added 23,300 public and private sector jobs last year.

The new numbers are a more accurate reflection of what’s happening, but they still show very slow job growth for the state, said University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Andrew Reschovsky. Since they’re being released early, it’s impossible to tell how Wisconsin compares to other states, he said.

“The real story is the picture of anemic job growth in Wisconsin over 2011, very far from the goal that the governor set,” Reschovsky said. “They tell us the economy, if it is growing, it’s at a slow pace.”

The difference between the new numbers and what is released monthly lies in how the numbers were generated.

The new numbers come from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, produced for inclusion in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ national report to be issued on June 28 — more than three weeks after the recall. Those figures are based on actual job counts reported by 160,000 Wisconsin employers as required by law as part of their tax and unemployment insurance reports.

The numbers that had previously been reported monthly and used by Walker and everyone else as a gauge of how well he was meeting his job-creation promise came from the Current Employment Survey, which surveys about 5,500 employers, or 3.5 percent of Wisconsin businesses.

Wisconsin and every other state rely on the survey for reporting job creation numbers until those figures are updated based on final figures from the quarterly census.

The data released Wednesday by Walker more accurately reflects the job market in Wisconsin and is supported by other positive indicators, including a spike in the amount of tax money collected, said Brian Jacobsen, an economist with Wells Fargo Funds Management in Menomonee Falls.

It doesn’t tend to get as much attention because there’s a six-month lag in what is reported, versus a two-month lag in the monthly data, he said. The monthly information, because it is based on such a small sample of businesses, is “fraught with problems,” Jacobsen said.

Releasing the data now, ahead of when the Bureau of Labor Statistics processes it, is “unconventional and unusual, but it’s not unethical or illegal,” Jacobsen said. While the numbers are preliminary, the bureau typically only makes clerical revisions to the numbers submitted by the states, he said.

Barrett, who will face off with Walker in the upcoming recall vote, said Walker was “cooking the books” and he had no idea whether any of the numbers released Wednesday were accurate.

“He’s clearly scrambling to do everything he can to put himself in a better light,” Barrett said.

Walker held a news conference last summer to tout monthly jobs numbers based on the Current Employment Survey that showed dramatic improvement in Wisconsin. But as the recall has neared, and the jobs numbers showed Wisconsin had the worst record of any state in job creation, he’s looked to distance himself from them.

Walker embraced the new numbers and launched a television ad touting them hours after they became public.

“Mayor Barrett, you said this election is about jobs; I couldn’t agree more,” Walker said in the ad.

Speaking to reporters earlier Wednesday, Walker said the numbers can’t be denied.

“No matter what you feel about the timing, no matter what you feel about the process, the facts are the facts and facts don’t lie,” Walker said after speaking at a meeting of the Independent Business Association of Wisconsin, in Brookfield.

Reggie Newson, the secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development and a Walker appointee, said he did not consult with Walker about releasing the information early and his decision to do so had nothing to do with the pending recall vote.

“We felt the need to share it with the public because employers, job creators and job seekers need to know the truth about the actual job picture in Wisconsin so they can make informed decisions,” Newson said on a conference call.

The latest jobs numbers for the month of April, which are based on the survey Walker is attempting to discredit, are to be released on Thursday. That will be the final such release before the recall.

A new Marquette University Law School poll released Wednesday shows voters believe Walker would do a better job than Barrett in creating jobs, 48 percent to 41 percent. At the same time, 37 percent said they believed the state lost jobs over the past year, compared with 20 percent who believe there have been job gains.

The random telephone poll of 704 registered voters has a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points and was conducted between May 9 and Saturday.

The poll also showed Walker ahead of Barrett 50 percent to 44 percent among 600 likely voters, with a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points on that question.

___

Associated Press writer Dinesh Ramde contributed to this report from Brookfield.

Associated Press

This April 30, 2012 satellite image provided by GeoEye shows the area around the Yongbyon nuclear facility in Yongbyon, North Korea. The U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies said Wednesday May 16, 2012 new satellite imagery shows that North Korea has resumed building work on a reactor after months of inactivity at the site. The GeoEye image shows progress in construction of the containment building for the light-water reactor at the Yongbyon facility, according to the institute, but that the reactor is unlikely to become operational before 2014 or 2015. (AP Photo/GeoEye)

This April 30, 2012 satellite image provided by GeoEye shows the area around the Yongbyon nuclear facility in Yongbyon, North Korea. The U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies said Wednesday May 16, 2012 new satellite imagery shows that North Korea has resumed building work on a reactor after months of inactivity at the site. The GeoEye image shows progress in construction of the containment building for the light-water reactor at the Yongbyon facility, according to the institute, but that the reactor is unlikely to become operational before 2014 or 2015. (AP Photo/GeoEye)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S.-based institute said Wednesday new satellite imagery shows that North Korea has resumed building work on a reactor after months of inactivity.

That indicates the North is pressing on with efforts to expand its nuclear program, the institute says, despite international criticism. North Korea says the reactor is intended to generate electricity but its active pursuit of nuclear weapons raises doubts over its intentions.

The image from a commercial satellite dated April 30 shows progress in construction of the containment building for the light-water reactor at the North’s main nuclear facility at Yongbyon, according to the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

But the institute says the reactor is unlikely to become operational before 2014 or 2015.

Two U.S. academics who visited the site in November 2010 and have studied subsequent satellite imagery, say the reactor appears designed for electricity generation. Other experts fear the reactor could eventually produce plutonium for bombs.

Pyongyang expelled U.N. monitors from its nuclear facilities three years ago, and there is international concern the secretive nation could soon conduct its third nuclear test, after a failed long-range rocket launch last month.

“Regardless of problems with its missiles and uncertainty about another nuclear test, the North is plowing ahead with this reactor, a key part of Pyongyang’s strategy to expand its nuclear weapons arsenal,” said Joel Wit, editor of the institute’s website, 38 North.

In November 2010, North Korea unveiled to the U.S. academics a sophisticated uranium enrichment workshop which the North says would provide fuel for the reactor when it is complete, but its centrifuges might be reconfigured to produce weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, giving it a new source of fissile material for arms. North Korea already has reprocessed spent fuel from an older reactor at Yongbyon to extract plutonium used in its two past nuclear tests.

The institute says after rapid progress in building the new reactor in 2011, satellite images showed work stopped between late December and early February but restarted by late March. The pause may have been due, in part, to the December death of longtime ruler Kim Jong Il, but a more likely explanation was that winter weather was approaching, it says.

The April 30 image shows steel rebar and concrete have been added to the cylindrical portion of the reactor containment building that now appears higher than in previous photos. The domed roof lies on the ground next to the building as in previous photos, with cylindrical sections ready for installation, the institute says.

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Online:

U.S.-Korea Institute: http://38north.org

Associated Press