House GOP lawmakers to meet Obama on borrowing

WASHINGTON – Scores of House Republicans are heading to the White House for a meeting with President Barack Obama to demand trillions of dollars in spending cuts as the price for providing any increase in the government's power to borrow.

Wednesday's meeting comes on the heels of a symbolic and lopsided vote the day before against a GOP proposal to lift the cap on the so-called debt limit by $2.4 trillion. The proposal, intended to prove that a bill to increase the borrowing cap with no spending cuts is dead on arrival, failed badly Tuesday on a 318-97 vote.

Democrats said the lopsided tally was aimed more at giving tea party-backed Republicans an opportunity to broadcast a "nay" vote against the administration's position that any increase in U.S. borrowing authority should be done as a stand-alone measure uncomplicated by difficult spending cuts to programs like Medicare. A more painful vote to raise the debt ceiling looms for Republicans this summer.

In fact, Vice President Joe Biden is leading talks on attaching spending cuts to the debt measure in advance of an Aug. 2 deadline set by the Treasury Department.

Wednesday's meeting seems more of a listening session than earnest negotiations between Obama and the staunch conservatives who have taken back the House.

In Tuesday's vote, House Democrats accused the GOP of political demagoguery, while the Obama administration maneuvered to avoid taking sides — or giving offense to majority Republicans.

The debate was brief, occasionally impassioned and set a standard of sorts for public theater, particularly at a time when private negotiations continue among the administration and key lawmakers on the deficit cuts Republicans have demanded.

The bill "will and must fail," Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, said before the vote, noting that he had helped write the very measure he was criticizing.

"I consider defeating an unconditional increase to be a success, because it sends a clear and critical message that the Congress has finally recognized we must immediately begin to rein in America's affection for deficit spending," he said.

But Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., accused Republicans of a "ploy so egregious that (they) have had to spend the last week pleading with Wall Street not to take it seriously and risk our economic recovery."

He and other Democrats added that Republicans were attempting to draw attention away from their controversial plan to turn Medicare into a program in which seniors purchase private insurance coverage.

Roughly two months remain before the date Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has said the debt limit must be raised. If no action is taken by Aug. 2, he has warned, the government could default on its obligations and risk turmoil that might plunge the nation into another recession or even an economic depression.

First lady dishes on attraction to Barack

While President Obama was delivering a speech to the British Parliament on Wednesday, First Lady Michelle Obama used a visit to a prestigious girls school to give a rare glimpse into her life in the White House.

In prepared remarks followed by a Q&A at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School, she talked about what made her attracted to Obama and how she raises her daughters--as well as Hillary Clinton and whether the U.S. is ready for a woman president:

On whether she knew Obama would be president when she met him: "Absolutely not. No, I'm just kidding.... I knew he was a special person. And it had nothing to do with his education. It had nothing to do with his potential. And I say this to young women: Don't check off—there are a lot of women who have the boxes. Did he go to the right school? What is his income?"It was none of that. It was how he felt about his mother; the love that he felt for his mother; his relationship to women; his work ethic ... he wasn't impressed with himself. And he was funny. And we joked a lot. And he loved his little sister ... he was a community organizer. I really respected that.

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"It was those kind of values that made me think you don't meet people like that often. And when you couple that with talent, and he's cute—you know, I always thought he would be useful. But I had no idea he would be president. I didn't think he was going to be president until the night we were standing on the stage and he actually won. I was like, 'gosh, look, you won.' "

The Obamas' U.K. trip

AP

On what she and Obama tell their daughters to help them achieve their goals: "Read, write, read, read. If the president were here--one of his greatest strengths is reading. That's one of the reasons why he's a good communicator, why he's such a good writer. He's a voracious reader. So we're trying to get our girls, no matter what, to just be--to love reading and to challenge themselves with what they read, and not just read the gossip books but to push themselves beyond and do things that maybe they wouldn't do.

"So I would encourage you all to read, read, read. Just keep reading. And writing is another skill. It's practice. It's practice. The more you write, the better you get. Drafts--our kids are learning the first draft means nothing. You're going to do seven, 10 drafts. That's writing, it's not failure, it's not the teacher not liking you because it's all marked up in red. When you get to be a good writer, you mark your own stuff in red, and you rewrite, and you rewrite, and you rewrite. That's what writing is."

Girls Wallpaper's

Osama, son among five killed in raid: US

WASHINGTON: A US operation that killed Osama bin Laden on Sunday also left three other men and a woman dead, including a son of the Al-Qaeda chief, officials said.

"In addition to Osama bin Laden, three adult males were killed in the raid," a US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters.

Two of the men worked as couriers for Bin Laden and the third was believed to be an adult son of Bin Laden, the official said.

"One woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant. Two other women were injured" in the raid that lasted less than 40 minutes, the official added. (AFP)

Massive storms kill at least 178 in South

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The death toll from severe storms that punished five Southern U.S. states jumped to a staggering 178 Thursday after Alabama canvassed its hard-hit counties for a new tally of lives lost.

Alabama's state emergency management agency said it had confirmed 128 deaths, up from at least 61 earlier.

"We expect that toll, unfortunately, to rise," Gov. Robert Bentley told ABC's "Good Morning America."

Mississippi officials reported 32 dead in that state and Tennessee raised its report to six from one. Another 11 have been killed in Georgia and one in Virginia.

The fierce storms Wednesday spawned tornadoes and winds that wiped out homes and businesses, forced a nuclear power plant to use backup generators and prompted the evacuation of a National Weather Service office.

The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said it received 137 tornado reports around the regions, including 66 in Alabama and 38 in Mississippi.

One of the hardest-hit areas was Tuscaloosa, a city of more than 83,000 and home to the University of Alabama. The city's police and other emergency services were devastated, the mayor said, and at least 15 people were killed and about 100 were in a single hospital.

A massive tornado, caught on video by a news camera on a tower, barreled through the city late Wednesday afternoon, leveling it.

By nightfall, the city was dark. Roads were impassable. Signs were blown down in front of restaurants, businesses were unrecognizable and sirens wailed off and on. Debris littered the streets and sidewalks.

College students in a commercial district near campus used flashlights to check out the damage.

At Stephanie's Flowers, owner Bronson Englebert used the headlights from two delivery vans to see what valuables he could remove. He had closed early, which was a good thing. The storm blew out the front of his store, pulled down the ceiling and shattered the windows, leaving only the curtains flapping in the breeze.

"It even blew out the back wall, and I've got bricks on top of two delivery vans now," Englebert said.

A group of students stopped to help Englebert, carrying out items like computers and printers and putting them in his van.

"They've been awfully good to me so far," Englebert said.

The storm system spread destruction from Texas to New York, where dozens of roads were flooded or washed out.

The governors in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia each issued emergency declarations for parts of their states.

President Barack Obama said he had spoken with Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and approved his request for emergency federal assistance, including search and rescue assets. About 1,400 National Guard soldiers were being deployed around the state.

"Our hearts go out to all those who have been affected by this devastation, and we commend the heroic efforts of those who have been working tirelessly to respond to this disaster," Obama said in a statement.

Around Tuscaloosa, traffic was snarled by downed trees and power lines, and some drivers abandoned their cars in medians.

"What we faced today was massive damage on a scale we have not seen in Tuscaloosa in quite some time," Mayor Walter Maddox said.

University officials said there didn't appear to be significant damage on campus, and dozens of students and locals were staying at a 125-bed shelter in the campus recreation center.

Volunteers and staff were providing food and water to people like 29-year-old civil engineering graduate student Kenyona Pierce.

"I really don't know if I have a home to go to," she said.

Storms also struck Birmingham, felling numerous trees that impeded emergency responders and those trying to leave hard-hit areas.

The Browns Ferry nuclear power plant about 30 miles west of Huntsville lost offsite power. The Tennessee Valley Authority-owned plant had to use seven diesel generators to power the plant's three units. The safety systems operated as needed and the emergency event was classified as the lowest of four levels, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

In Huntsville, meteorologists found themselves in the path of severe storms and had to take shelter in a reinforced steel room, turning over monitoring duties to a sister office in Jackson, Miss. Meteorologists saw multiple wall clouds, which sometimes spawn tornadoes, and decided to take cover, but the building wasn't damaged.

"We have to take shelter just like the rest of the people," said meteorologist Chelly Amin, who wasn't at the office at the time but spoke with colleagues about the situation.

In Kemper County, Miss., in the east-central part of the state, sisters Florrie Green and Maxine McDonald, and their sister-in-law Johnnie Green, all died in a mobile home that was destroyed by a storm.

"It's hard. It's been very difficult," said Mary Green, Johnnie Green's daughter-in-law. "They were thrown into those pines over there," she said, pointing to a wooded area. "They had to go look for their bodies."

In Choctaw County, Miss., a Louisiana police officer was killed Wednesday morning when a towering sweetgum tree fell onto his tent as he shielded his young daughter with his body, said Kim Korthuis, a supervisory ranger with the National Park Service. The girl wasn't hurt.

The 9-year-old girl was brought to a motor home about 100 feet away where campsite volunteer Greg Maier was staying with his wife. He went back to check on the father and found him dead.

"She wasn't hurt, just scared and soaking wet," Maier said.

Her father, Lt. Wade Sharp, had been with the Covington Police Department for 19 years.

"He was a hell of an investigator," said Capt. Jack West, his colleague in Louisiana.

In a neighborhood south of Birmingham, Austin Ransdell and a friend had to hike out after the house where he was living was crushed by four trees. No one was hurt.

As he walked away from the wreckage, trees and power lines crisscrossed residential streets, and police cars and utility trucks blocked a main highway.

"The house was destroyed. We couldn't stay in it. Water pipes broke; it was flooding the basement," he said. "We had people coming in telling us another storm was coming in about four or five hours, so we just packed up."

Violent storms wreak havoc across South

BOONE'S CHAPEL, Ala. – The home Willard Hollon had shared with his son and granddaughters is gone now, as is the one where his daughter lived, both twisted from their foundations by a tornado and tossed into the woods nearby. The storms that devastated the Deep South destroyed his family, too: Willard, his son Steve and daughter Cheryl all were killed when the winds roared through.

The storms that smacked the Midwest and South with howling winds and pounding rain left 17 people dead in four states. The system plowed through North Carolina on Saturday, stranding hikers in western part of the state with flooding and possible tornado damage was reported in the central part of the state. In the District of Columbia, officials handed out sandbags to residents to protect against rising water.

In Alabama, Steve Hollon had recently retired from the Air Force and moved into his father's home with his wife and two daughters while they remodeled a home of their own up the road — he had come to this small community about 25 miles from Montgomery to be closer to his dad.

Hymnals still rested on the pews at the nearby Boone's Chapel Baptist Church, even though the walls and roof had blown away. Tammie Silas joined other church members to clean up the debris and came upon two photos of the Hollon family.

"This is all they've got left," Silas said as she clutched the pictures.

Willard Hollon's wife, Sarah, his granddaughters and Steve's wife all survived.

A neighbor, retired Alabama Power employee Don Headley, echoed what others in an area accustomed to nasty weather and the threat of tornadoes had said: When the storm bore down on them, they thought the worst had already ended. He had been on his patio and thought he and his wife were in the clear.

"The rain was just in sheets. There was a big bang. It sounded like something was tearing off my roof. Limbs were rolling off the roof," he said.

The noise ended in less than a minute, and Headley went back out on his patio. Where he had been standing moments earlier a two-inch wide limb was now driven through the patio roof, he said.

Autauga County Chief Deputy Sheriff Joe Sedinger said seven others were hurt in the area, including a firefighter injured during rescue operations. He said the storm hopscotched for several miles, leaving some areas devastated and others untouched.

In Alabama's Washington County, about 50 miles north of Mobile, a mother and her two children were among those killed, said county coroner Rickey Davidson. Jean Box, 38, and her two teenage sons, Shelton and Hunter, died when the storm demolished a double-wide mobile home in the Deer Park community, said Washington County Chief Deputy Terry Beasley.

The woman's husband survived and was in the hospital, he said. Winds had thrown things 100 yards from where the home had stood.

"It was not a pretty sight," Davidson said.

In Marengo County in west-central Alabama, four separate tornadoes hit over the span of about five to six hours, and a man was killed when his mobile home was tossed nearly a quarter of a mile, emergency management director Kevin McKinney said.

Another death was reported in Mississippi's Greene County, said Jeff Rent, a spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. He did not have further details, and the Greene County Sheriff's Office did not immediately return a phone message Saturday.