Nation and World

PORTLAND, Ore. – Kraft Foods Inc. said Wednesday that it will cut the salt in its products that are sold in North America by an average of 10 percent over the next two years to appeal to health-conscious consumers.

WASHINGTON – Companies that hire unemployed workers will get a temporary payroll tax holiday under a bill that easily won congressional approval Wednesday in what Democrats hope is just the first of several election-year measures aimed at boosting hiring.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The $75 million heist at a pharmaceutical warehouse in Connecticut this week was just the most audacious example of a growing phenomenon: Thieves are stealing large quantities of prescription drugs for resale on the black market.

BOISE, Idaho – Idaho took the lead in a growing, nationwide fight against health care overhaul Wednesday when its governor became the first to sign a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if residents are forced to buy health insurance.

WASHINGTON – Companies that hire unemployed workers will get a temporary payroll tax holiday under a bill that easily won congressional approval Wednesday in what Democrats hope is just the first of several election-year measures aimed at boosting hiring.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's much-challenged health care overhaul gained traction Wednesday as a liberal lawmaker became the first to switch his opposition and Catholic nuns declared their support in an unusual public break with the bishops.

WASHINGTON — The United States and Israel stepped back Tuesday from their deepest rift in decades, a dispute over new Jewish homes in a traditionally Arab part of Jerusalem that quickly became a test of U.S . and Israeli commitment to peace talks and one another.

WASHINGTON — Maxi Sopo was having so much fun "living in paradise" in Mexico that he posted about it on Facebook so all his friends could follow his adventures. Others were watching, too: A federal prosecutor in Seattle, where Sopo was wanted on bank fraud charges.

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — Volunteers in North Dakota were in flood-fighting mode again Tuesday filling sandbags while contractors constructed clay levees along the fast-rising Red River to help protect nearby homes from the murky waters.

NEW YORK (AP) — PepsiCo plans to remove sugary drinks from schools worldwide, following the success of programs in the U.S. aimed at cutting down on childhood obesity.

PALM HARBOR, Fla. – Tiger Woods said Tuesday he will return to golf next month at the Masters, ending a four-month hiatus brought on by a sex scandal that shattered his image as the gold standard in sports.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An earthquake east of downtown Los Angeles rippled across Southern California before dawn Tuesday, jolting millions of people awake and putting first-responders on alert.

WASHINGTON – Let the count begin. More than 120 million U.S. census forms begin arriving Monday in mailboxes around the country, in the government's once-a-decade population count that will be used to divvy up congressional seats and more than $400 billion in federal aid. Fast-growing states in the South and the West could stand to lose the most because of lower-than-average mail participation rates in 2000 and higher shares of Hispanics and young adults, who are among the least likely to mail in their forms.

KABUL – The Afghan government was holding secret talks with the Taliban's No. 2 when he was captured in Pakistan, and the arrest infuriated President Hamid Karzai, according to one of Karzai's advisers.

WASHINGTON – House Democrats triggered the countdown Monday for the climactic vote on President Barack Obama's fiercely contested remake of the health care system, even though the legislation remained incomplete and lacked the votes needed to pass.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Police in Ohio have brought more charges against a Walmart shopper accused of punching children in the head for kicks.

LOS ANGELES – Medical marijuana advocates have failed to gather enough signatures for a ballot measure challenging a new Los Angeles law that will shutter hundreds of pot dispensaries.

NORRISTOWN, Pa. – Prosecutors say surveillance video shows a sleep-deprived school bus driver running stop signs before causing a fatal crash last month outside a suburban Philadelphia middle school.

MIAMI – A group of Toyota owners sued the Japanese automaker Monday, demanding a full refund for their recalled cars and seeking a payout that could exceed several billion dollars.

TAJI, Iraq (AP) — The U.S. military handed over control of a prison holding some 2,900 detainees to Iraqi authorities on Monday as the Americans move ahead with preparations for a full withdrawal by the end of 2011.

STRONGSVILLE, Ohio (AP) — With a fresh sense of urgency, President Barack Obama sought to reassure seniors Monday about health care legislation approaching a final vote in Congress, pledging it would make preventive care cost-free and close a gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Suspected drug gangsters chased down and opened fire on two white SUVs carrying families of U.S. consular employees from a children's party, killing three adults and and injuring two children in this violent border city, officials said Monday.

BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand's prime minister, backed by a formidable military force, rejected an ultimatum to dissolve Parliament on Monday as tens of thousands of red-shirted protesters vowed to splatter the seat of government with their own blood if their demands weren't met.

CAIRO (AP) — One of Osama bin Laden's sons has called on Iran's supreme leader to release members of his family believed to be under house arrest there since they fled Afghanistan in 2001, according to a letter posted Monday on the Internet.

More than 120 million U.S. census forms begin arriving Monday in mailboxes around the country, in the government's once-a-decade population count that will be used to divvy up congressional seats and more than $400 billion in federal aid.

NEW YORK — Writer-comedian Carol Leifer is the first person to go as NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice " starts a new season.

WASHINGTON — The House's chief Democratic headcounter said Sunday he hadn't rounded up enough votes to pass President Barack Obama's health care overhaul heading into a make-or-break week, even as the White House's top political adviser said he was "absolutely confident" in its prospects.

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.

LONDON — With the West locked in conflicts across the Muslim world, why would anyone throw fuel on the fire? A small group of Europeans have been doing just that — provoking death plots and at least one murder by turning out art that derides the Prophet Muhammad and the Quran in the name of Western values.

ATLANTA — Many people in the U.S. with leaky heart   valves soon might be able to get them fixed without open-heart surgery. A study showed that a tiny clip implanted through an artery was safer and nearly as effective as surgery, doctors reported Sunday.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Three people with ties to the American consulate were killed in a drug-plagued Mexican city, including a U.S. couple shot to death within sight of the border with their baby in their back seat, officials said Sunday.

EGG HARBOR CITY, N.J. – Last month, the Northeast was smothered by blizzards. Now, it's waterlogged by torrential rains.

SAN DIEGO – The mystery surrounding a Toyota Prius whose driver reported a stuck accelerator deepened Sunday as the motorist's attorney dismissed a congressional memo that questions his client's version of events.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says he wants projects helping specific states yanked from the health care bill Congress is writing. Democratic senators, being senators, beg to differ.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Fifteen years after electrifying a U.N. conference in Beijing with a call for women's equality, Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that millions of women and girls around the world are still poor, uneducated and treated as inferior human beings.

BERKELEY, Calif. — The tea   party movement has riled plenty of people, but especially those who drink the stuff. "It's certainly an exciting time to see this kind of fervent activism, but for our industry, it has been very damaging in an overshadowing type of way," said World Tea Expo president George Jage, who recently had to make a change in his Google alert settings.

BAGHDAD – Seizing on an early lead in Iraq's election, the prime minister's political coalition began reaching out to rivals Friday as partial results signaled a tight race that was unlikely to produce a clear-cut winner.

LONDON – Women who took the birth control pill beginning in the late 1960s lived longer than those never on the pill, a new study says.

NEW YORK – Thousands of New York City taxi drivers overcharged passengers by more than $8.3 million over the past two years by setting their meters at a rate that was supposed to be used for trips to the suburbs, the Taxi and Limousine Commission said Friday.

OAKLAND, Calif. – A 19-year-old Oakland woman accused of suffocating her 2-year-old daughter is being held without bail after being charged with murder.

PITTSBORO, North Carolina — A former aide to John Edwards avoided jail again Friday in a dispute over a tape that allegedly shows the past presidential candidate and his lover in a sexual encounter.

SEATTLE – A man wearing what appeared to be a pipe bomb was kicked out of a Seattle homeless shelter Friday morning after claiming to be a vampire, then wandered around before surrendering to police, authorities and witnesses said.

HADDONFIELD, N.J. – An American seized in Yemen in a sweep of suspected al-Qaida members had been a laborer at six U.S. nuclear power plants, and authorities are investigating whether he had access to sensitive information or materials that would be useful to terrorists.

VATICAN CITY – Germany's sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese disclosed that while he was archbishop a suspected pedophile priest was transferred to a job where he later abused children.

LAHORE, Pakistan – Two suicide bombers killed 43 people in near-simultaneous blasts Friday, the fourth major attack in Pakistan this week and a clear sign that militants have the power to strike targets despite months of army offensives and U.S. missile strikes.

HAVANA – A Cuban hunger striker was receiving fluids and medical care in a government hospital Friday, a day after passing out at home, and has refused requests by other dissidents and religious leaders to abandon his protest.

OSLO, Norway– Two years after receiving its first deposits, a "doomsday" seed vault on an Arctic island has amassed half a million seed samples, making it the world's most diverse repository of crop seeds, the vault's operators announced Thursday.

WASHINGTON – Under White House pressure to act swiftly, House and Senate Democratic leaders reached for agreement Friday on President Barack Obama's health care bill, sweetened suddenly by fresh billions for student aid and a sense that breakthroughs are at hand.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Trash and sewage are piling up at the squalid tent camps that hundreds of thousands have called home since Haiti's devastating earthquake — and with torrential rains expected any day, authorities are not even close to providing the shelters they promised.

CHICAGO – Too much cancer screening, too many heart tests, too many cesarean sections. A spate of recent reports suggests that many Americans are being overtreated. Maybe even President Barack Obama, champion of an overhaul and cost-cutting of the health care system.