Newspapers were trumpeting the arrest of four comrades who had helped him hijack a plane. He needed to get out of France, and fast.

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George Wright called together his secret network of friends – French radicals and an American sympathizer. They hatched a plan: Wright would slip quietly into Portugal by train and move on to one of its former African colonies, where Marxism and hostility to the West meant he would probably be safe.

The plan worked for decades. Then, in September, thanks to a fingerprint from his past, it all came crashing down.

The tale of Wright’s life on the run spans 41 years and three continents. It starts in New Jersey with a prison break, moves to Algeria on the hijacked plane, to Paris where he lived underground, to Lisbon where he fell in love, to the tiny West African nation of Guinea-Bissau – and finally to an idyllic Portuguese seaside village, where he built a life as a respected family man.

It was there that he was arrested in September. But on Thursday, Wright made another dramatic escape: A Portuguese court denied a U.S. request for extradition, saying Wright is now Portuguese and the statute of limitations on his crimes has expired.

At a press conference after he was freed from house arrest, Wright declared himself “very happy, morally and spiritually.” He said that he is now a changed man, and that he had committed the hijacking “to fight for black rights.”

The story of Wright’s decades on the run was pieced together through documents and interviews with 32 people who knew him, including his Portuguese wife, a Black Panthers sympathizer who helped him in Paris, former U.S. Embassy officials in Guinea Bissau, and the pilot of the plane he hijacked at the start of his fugitive life.

Wright’s odyssey has its roots in the fall of 1962, when he and three associates were accused of committing multiple armed robberies in two New Jersey towns and then holding up the Collingwood Park Esso gas station in Wall Township, according to court records.

The gang shot and killed gas station owner and World War II veteran Walter Patterson in a robbery that netted $70. Wright, then 19, and his accomplices were indicted a month later.

Police said Wright and 22-year-old Walter McGhee each fired shots during the holdup, and an autopsy showed Patterson died from McGhee’s bullet, according to a 1963 Associated Press article. Wright maintains he never killed anyone, saying he never even opened fire.

Wright and McGhee pleaded not guilty, but later changed their pleas to “no defense,” meaning they did not admit guilt but did not contest the charges. Wright said he entered the plea only to avoid the death penalty or a life sentence.

McGhee was sentenced to life in prison with hard labor and Wright to up to 30 years. After rejecting Wright’s appeal for a trial, a judge sent him to the New Jersey State Prison.

Wright was eventually moved to a minimum security prison dairy farm. There he met George Brown, a former forklift operator serving time for armed robbery.

On Aug. 22, 1970, the two waited until guards made their bed checks, then simply walked out of the prison, which had no outer walls, and stole a car. Wright’s Portuguese wife, Maria do Rosario Valente, says he told her they hotwired the warden’s car to make their getaway.

The two resurfaced two years later in dramatic fashion – as members of the underground Black Liberation Army militant group.

Wright, dressed as a priest, boarded a Detroit-to-Miami passenger flight, along with Brown, another man, two women and three small children. The group was armed with three handguns and took over the plane above Savannah, Georgia, with Wright holding a cocked revolver against the neck of a flight attendant, according to the pilot, retired Delta Air Lines Capt. William May.

After landing, the hijackers demanded $1 million to release the passengers, insisting that agents deliver the cash from the tarmac naked as proof they weren’t armed. May said he convinced Wright – who did most of the talking and appeared to be the leader – that the agents should be allowed to wear bathing suits.

Wright got angry during the negotiations, blurting out at about 12:30 p.m.: “If that money’s not here by 2 o’clock, that’s when I’m going to start throwing dead bodies out the door.”

The money was already en route from a bank to the airport. When it arrived, Delta ramp supervisor Bernard Cooper and an FBI agent put on swimming suits bought hastily near the airport; Cooper’s was two sizes too small.

They headed to the plane with a suitcase stuffed with the money. An emergency rope was dropped from the jet, the suitcase was pulled inside and the passengers were set free.

The hijackers embarked on their trans-Atlantic getaway, smoking pot in the first class section, where “they were like kids, counting the money and frolicking about,” May says.

They first forced the pilot to fly to Boston so an international navigator – also dressed in a bathing suit – could board the plane and guide it to Algeria, where they wanted political asylum. In the air, they crowed that they were leaving decadent America, escaping the ghettoes and heading to their homeland.

The hijackers chose Algeria because former Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver was there at the time, say May and George Pumphrey, a former Black Panther sympathizer now living in Germany.

Algeria gave the ransom money and the plane back to the United States, but let Wright and his group stay, with their movements restricted to the capital, Algiers. They moved on to Paris by early 1973 and got to know Pumphrey, who was living there.

Helped by French sympathizers, Wright got a job as an electrician’s assistant, took French classes and used the alias “Alvin” with his comrades. French police rounded them up in May 1976, but Wright wasn’t caught in the dragnet and contacted Pumphrey for help in fleeing France.

The French radicals provided Wright money for the train journey to Portugal. It was the best escape route, Pumphrey says, because from there Wright could try to get to Angola, Guinea-Bissau or Mozambique – all recently liberated Portuguese colonies that would probably welcome Wright and refuse to extradite him if asked.

Wright met his future wife on New Year’s Eve, 1978, as the two waited to get into a nightclub near Lisbon. She liked speaking English, and they shared musical tastes, including the blues. She says all she knew about him back then was that “he seemed to know his way around” Portugal, had spent time in France, and was living with a friend in Lisbon and taking Portuguese classes.

Valente says her husband never told her about the hijacking or the robbery that put him in jail until after his arrest in Portugal, a claim that Wright’s boss for nearly four years in Guinea-Bissau says stretches belief. He did tell her he had once escaped from jail, but she thought he was joking.

He told her he wanted to head to Africa to explore his racial heritage, inspired by the 1977 television series “Roots,” about an African sent as a slave to the United States and his descendants.

Guinea-Bissau tightly controlled foreigner entries, but Wright got a letter of safe passage from a high-ranking Portuguese military official, his wife says.

Valente, the daughter of a retired senior Portuguese army officer, says she did not know the name of the official who helped her husband and would not provide information on how to contact her father, who is now elderly and in poor health.

While Valente insists she knew nothing about her husband’s past when he went to Guinea-Bissau, she is sure that the African nation’s rulers were aware of it because they decided to give him political asylum.

Wright left first for Guinea Bissau in 1980, where a new identity of Jose Luis Jorge dos Santos awaited him, arranged by now-deceased Vasco Cabral, a hero of the nation’s struggle against Portuguese colonial rule, his wife says.

Valente followed later. She got a job teaching elementary school in the capital, Bissau, while he worked as a government-employed basketball coach and physical education teacher.

“He was there not under false pretenses. Everyone knew his past. They gave him political asylum, a job, somewhere to live, so he wasn’t hiding,” she says, while maintaining she herself was ignorant of his criminal past at the time. Wright has also said he never told her about his past.

The two were close friends with members of the nation’s Marxist political elite, and Valente soon parlayed her knowledge of English into translation jobs for the U.S. Embassy.

Bissau had a population of only about 250,000 at the time, and the American expatriate community was tiny in the hardship post, where electricity and water service were sporadic and finding decent food was a challenge.

Nine U.S. diplomats and embassy workers who served in Bissau in the 1980s and early 1990s say Wright lived openly using his own name – but told The Associated Press they knew nothing about his past.

Among them was John Blacken, a former U.S. ambassador who still lives in Guinea-Bissau; he says he was never informed about Wright’s past in any cables from Washington.

Wright visited the embassy when his wife was working there. But officials in Washington did not typically send embassies messages about fugitives wanted in the United States, unless there was information indicating they were in the country, says one diplomat who served at the embassy. And Wright never drew attention to himself through a request for a new passport, social security card or other embassy services.

The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because he still works for the government and was not authorized to speak about Wright.

Wright also helped an American company to build more housing at the American ambassador’s residency compound, according to his wife and Edmee Pastore, the embassy’s administrative officer in the early 1990s.

The company had hired local construction workers, but the owner didn’t speak Portuguese, Pastore recalls.

“Along comes George Wright,” she says. “He had learned enough Portuguese to help these men do the work they were going to do. The upshot was these houses finally got built, and people moved in.”

It was Wright’s connections in Bissau along with his language skills that prompted Hannes Stegemann to hire him as logistics coordinator for a Belgian nonprofit group running a fisheries project.

Wright told Stegemann and others about his conviction, his jail escape and the hijacking – and was so open about his past that Stegemann finds it difficult to believe U.S. officials in Guinea-Bissau and his own wife didn’t know about it.

In Guinea-Bissau’s circle of political powerbrokers, Wright was seen as a revolutionary, Stegemann says.

Among Wright’s close friends was Bissau Mayor Manuel Saturnino da Costa, a chess partner who lived two doors down from his home, say Stegemann and Wright’s wife. But Da Costa, reached in Bissau by telephone, denied he knew Wright, even as “Jack the American” – the way many locals referred to him.

Wright and Valente didn’t wed until 1990 in a civil ceremony in Bissau, but Valente says in Guinea-Bissau people are considered married when they live together.

The couple had a son, Marco, in 1986 and a daughter, Sara, in 1991.

Married to Valente and armed with his new identity as a citizen of Guinea-Bissau, Wright obtained Portuguese citizenship. The couple moved to Portugal in 1993 for a better education and safer environment for their children, Valente said.

They set up home in Almocageme, a place of whitewashed walls and terra-cotta roofs near a stunning beach, less than an hour’s drive from Lisbon.

Townspeople interviewed by AP describe Wright as an affable family man and regular churchgoer. Wright, who lived from odd jobs including decorative painting, helped at charity events and played basketball with emigre friends from Guinea-Bissau.

Wright didn’t reveal his past in Portugal, even with his closest friends. Andre Cameron, an American musician who has known Wright for two decades, said he was “in shock” after Wright was detained.

Wright’s peaceful life ended abruptly when Portuguese police turned up at his small, two-storey house at the end of a quiet cobblestone street in late September.

The FBI said he was detained after they provided Portuguese authorities with a fingerprint that matched Wright’s from the country’s national database of fingerprints, but have declined to say what prompted them to look for Wright in Portugal.

Wright’s sister came from the United States to visit her brother at least three times over the years, raising speculation among Wright’s friends in Portugal that the two were in regular contact and that authorities picked up on it.

Valente says Wright’s two children learned about his past after his arrest; they cried for their entire first 45-minute visit with him. Two weeks after Wright’s capture, he was released on house arrest with an electronic monitoring system while the judge considered the U.S. extradition request.

Despite the denial of the request Thursday, American authorities have said they will keep fighting to get Wright to serve the rest of a 15- to 30-year murder sentence in New Jersey. But for now, Wright, who also suffers from glaucoma, high blood pressure and chest pains, is free. He said Thursday that he had wanted to tell his family his story for years, but “I had a weight on my shoulders and I didn’t want to transfer it onto them.”

His freedom will not go down well with Ann Patterson, the New Jersey gas station victim’s 63-year-old daughter. She says she wants justice.

“This man has lived a 50-year lie,” she says.

LOS ANGELES  — Nicki Minaj might need to change her hair color to gold.

The pink-loving hip-hop diva picked up two trophies Sunday at the American Music Awards. Minaj kicked off the fan-favorite ceremony by sporting a pair of speakers on her much-talked about posterior. She was later honored as favorite rap/hip-hop artist, besting a group that included mentor Lil Wayne, and won favorite rap/hip-hop album for “Pink Friday.”

“There’s so much love in this room,” beamed the pink-haired Minaj.

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Adele had been the leading nominee with four awards, but didn’t have much of a presence at the show: She was absent from the ceremony because she is recovering from recent throat surgery. She won an award for favorite pop/rock female artist. The award, like several others, were announced backstage.

Other winners included Maroon 5 as favorite pop-rock band/duo/group, Taylor Swift as favorite country female artist, Lady Antebellum as favorite country band/duo/group, Beyonce as favorite soul/R&B female artist, Rihanna for favorite soul/R&B album for “Loud” and Hot Chelle Rae as new artist of the year.

The ceremony inside the Nokia Theatre in an unusually rainy Los Angeles was dripping with 17 musical performances.

Justin Bieber got in the holiday spirit among a forest of neon lights with “Under the Mistletoe,” and Kelly Clarkson, wearing a glittery red gown with her hair swept to the side, delivered a swinging rendition of her hit “Mr. Know It All” as back-up dancers dressed as 1930s-era photographers snapped the first-ever “American Idol” champion.

Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony shared custody of rapper Pitbull, who joined the former couple in a pair of separate performances. Lopez performed essentially a live version of a car commercial starring the “Idol” judge set to “Papi” — she even had the car on stage. She then launched into her hit “On the Floor.” Pitbull later returned to the stage and joined Anthony for “Rain Over Me.”

Lopez expressed surprise when she won favorite Latin music artist, and touched on the highs and lows of her year.

“It’s been up and down and just exciting and overwhelming and so many things,” Lopez said.

There were several other collaborations, too. Christina Aguilera joined Maroon 5 for their duet “Moves Like Jagger,” and then Maroon 5 lead singer Adam Levine teamed with Gym Class Heroes for their hit “Stereo Hearts.”

Several artists delivered stripped-down performances: The Band Perry crooned an emotional “If I Die Young,” a pink-haired Katy Perry accompanied herself on guitar for “The One That Got Away” and a platinum-blonde Chris Brown simply sang “All Back” before being joined by a troop of helmet-clad back-up dancers for a flashy interpretation of “Say It With Me.”

He’s out of a job, and his name has been scraped off the Big Ten title trophy. He’s been taken to task by everyone from the president of the United States to his good friend, Bobby Bowden. Flaws in his program, once barely whispered about, are now an open topic. Although Penn State says it isn’t touching Paterno’s statue outside Beaver Stadium, the fact that someone even asked indicates how far his stock has fallen.

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The admirable graduation rates, the players who were as good off the field as they were on, the financial support for Penn State that had nothing to do with football – all of it has been undone by the one thing Paterno did not do. Go to the police with an abuse allegation.

“This is a scandal large enough that this is going to hang on his legacy,” said Frank Fitzpatrick, a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist and author of two books on Paterno and Penn State, including the new biography, “Pride of the Lions.”

“It’s incredibly sad, I think. That’s not to excuse what he did or say he doesn’t deserve it,” Fitzpatrick added. “It’s still sad for a guy who, I think, really did try. … To see it all end so unceremoniously and so ugly, it’s just hard to take.”

The tumult isn’t over, either. Penn State said Friday that the NCAA will examine the school’s handling of the child sex-abuse scandal involving former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, invoking that dreaded question of “institutional control.”

Later that day, Paterno’s son Scott announced that his father is being treated for lung cancer. The cancer, diagnosed during a follow-up visit last weekend for a bronchial illness, is treatable, and Scott Paterno said doctors are “optimistic he will make a full recovery.”

Even before the news about Paterno’s health, those who admired him had started to view the 84-year-old coach as a tragic figure.

“This is difficult for everybody who knows Joe or anybody who cares about Joe,” former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne, a close friend of Paterno’s, said last week. “I feel bad about him and his family. I feel bad about the people who were victimized – very bad about them.”

It’s been two weeks since Sandusky, Paterno’s one-time heir apparent, was accused of sexually abusing eight boys in a 15-year span, setting off a child sex-abuse scandal that stunned Penn State and forever altered the image of major college football’s winningest coach.

Paterno is not the target of any criminal investigation. But Penn State’s board of trustees fired him Nov. 9 because it felt the coach did not go far enough in alerting authorities after then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary told Paterno he witnessed an alleged assault in March 2002.

McQueary, now Penn State’s wide receivers coach, told a grand jury he saw Sandusky raping a boy of about 10 in the showers at the Penn State football building. McQueary went to Paterno, though it is not clear if he described the alleged attack in as graphic detail as he did to the grand jury. Paterno then told athletic director Tim Curley and university vice president Gary Schultz, whose responsibilities included oversight of the campus police.

No one called police.

“Did he make a mistake? Sure, he made a mistake,” former Ohio State coach John Cooper said. “And is he paying the price. Absolutely and rightfully so. … But I’m not going to forget all the good things he did.”

But public opinion quickly turned against the man who for so long had been the moral compass of college athletics, the one person who could always be counted on to do the right thing in a business where so many others have gone wrong.

A day after Paterno was fired, two Pennsylvania senators announced they were rescinding their support for Paterno’s nomination for the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Big Ten announced Monday it was renaming its trophy for the conference title game, saying it would be “inappropriate” to keep Paterno’s name on it.

“The trophy and its namesake are intended to be celebratory and aspirational, not controversial,” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said.

Much of the anger stems from disillusionment, said psychologist Stan Teitelbaum, author of “Sports Heroes, Fallen Idols.”

Society has a need for heroes, Teitelbaum said, and Paterno fit the bill perfectly with his “Success with Honor” philosophy. He steered Penn State clear of the tawdry scandals that sullied the reputations of high-profile programs such as Ohio State, USC and Miami, and demanded that his players conduct themselves with high character and morals.

He prized education – his name is on a library at Penn State, not an athletic facility – and Penn State could talk about “student-athletes” without drawing snickers. The Nittany Lions had 47 academic All-Americans under Paterno, a national-best 15 in the past five years alone. Penn State’s graduation rate consistently ranks among the best in the Big Ten; in 2010, its 84 percent rate trailed only Northwestern’s 95.

When Paterno was revealed as flawed – as human – people who had invested so much faith in him felt betrayed, Teitelbaum said.

“Joe Paterno was perceived as a very benign father figure. Father figures are supposed to protect us from the dangers of the world,” Teitelbaum said. “As more and more things came out, people became more and more disappointed and disappointment turns to anger. He was supposed to have spared us.”

There is an element of schadenfreude in Paterno’s humbling, too.

Paterno was proud of being able to claim the moral high ground and made no attempt to hide it. He once said he wouldn’t retire because he didn’t want to leave coaching to the Jackie Sherrills and Barry Switzers of the world.

Switzer won three national titles at Oklahoma, but his Sooners were college football’s renegades. Oklahoma was slapped with three years’ probation for major recruiting violations, and five players were arrested on felony charges before Switzer stepped down in June 1989. Sherrill had brushes with the NCAA at both Texas A&M and Mississippi State.

“There were a lot of people who felt Joe was sanctimonious and holier than thou and pious when there wasn’t any reason to be,” Fitzpatrick said. “In that sense, that attitude set him up for a fall like this. People aren’t cheerful that Joe’s going through something like this but some are thinking, `See, I told you. Even at mighty blessed Penn State.’

“But I don’t think anyone expected it going wrong to this extent.”

He mostly just announced them.

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Obama expanded the U.S. military presence in southeast Asia, sent tough signals to China in its backyard, ordered his top diplomat on a breakthrough mission to Myanmar and presided over the jobs-creating sale of Boeing planes to an Indonesian airline company.

It was a trip on his terms, unlike the dynamic he has with the U.S. Congress.

Obama might as well have borrowed his mantra of “We Can’t Wait” – a slogan from his re-election campaign – and applied it to his foreign agenda.

Still, Obama returns home without any firm commitments from Russia or China over stiffer penalties against Iran over its disputed nuclear program. Obama insisted that the three countries were unified on preventing a nuclear-armed Iran and he said in general terms that they would figure out the next steps together.

The president has few lasting images to show from the nine-day trip, which was ending Sunday with his return to the White House. One was the scene aboard a docked aircraft carrier in San Diego, where Obama saluted veterans and watched a college basketball game.

But much of his time was spent in summit ballrooms, without defining moments of diplomacy or much engagement with local citizens.

Far from Washington, Obama had few domestic distractions on his nine-day trip. That allowed him to stay on his message of trade, security and human rights.

The region was eager for America’s presence and influence, often as a counter to China’s might. So Obama held more sway and ran into less visible pushback, except for bristling from the Chinese. The White House was careful not to promise too much from this trip all along, making its goals all that much more possible to achieve.

This was not, for example, the Middle East, where Obama’s many attempts to pull the Israelis and Palestinians back together have left him little to show.

It did not hurt that Obama had home-field advantage for about half the time he was away.

The United States hosted the yearly Asia-Pacific economic forum for the first in about 20 years. For the site, Obama chose Hawaii, the American foothold in the Pacific and his birthplace.

When he made time to squeeze in a political fundraiser outside Honolulu, Obama saw longtime friends and acknowledged the bias for “the hometown kid.”

In Hawaii and across Australia and Indonesia, the goal was to show a deep U.S. commitment to the fastest growing part of the world. It is a message with major implications. For example, which region may suffer from coming U.S. defense cuts (not Asia) and how the Obama administration sees a way out of economic stagnation (definitely Asia).

Getting the relevance of that message through to voters at home was another matter.

Obama had stretches without much news and competed for media coverage with the Penn State child sex abuse scandal and the politics of the 2012 election.

To the degree Americans saw Obama on the world stage, he looked comfortable and confident. That was surely a picture the White House enjoyed. Compare that with Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry’s “oops” debate moment when he forgot that the Energy Department was one of the agencies he wanted to eliminate or Herman Cain’s bungling of a basic question about Libya in a videotaped interview.

Right before this trip came Obama’s visit to France for a meeting of the world’s major economies. There, Europe was the driver and Obama seemed secondary.

Not the next trip.

In Hawaii, Obama announced at least a framework of a deal for a new Pacific trade zone with eight other countries. Then Japan, Canada and Mexico showed interest.

Asked often about China, he offered familiar assurances that the U.S. wants to China to grow without containment, but he did so while admonishing the rising Asian giant.

Obama sent a message to China about its military buildup, following earlier signals from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. When Obama said the United States is a Pacific power, China was listening. That was especially true when Obama ordered Marines to start setting up a hub of operation in Australia.

As the president put it: “We will preserve our unique ability to project power and deter threats to peace.”

That declaration came after he had already challenged China to show more maturity in its economic relations with other nations.

“That requires them to take responsibility, to understand that their role is different now than it might have been 20 years ago or 30 years ago, where if they were breaking some rules, it didn’t really matter, it did not have a significant impact,” Obama said. “Now they’ve grown up, and so they’re going to have to help manage this process in a responsible way.”

By the final stretch in Indonesia, where Obama joined East Asian leaders to talk about matters of disaster responses and security on the open sea, he had one more move to make.

He announced that he was sending Clinton to Myanmar to take stock of a fledgling reform movement after years of brutal repression. The U.S. had not made such an overture to Myanmar, also known as Burma, in decades, and Obama didn’t need any legislative approval to seize what he called an historic opportunity.

“Millions of people may get the chance to live with a greater measure of freedom, prosperity, and dignity. And that possibility is too important to ignore,” he said.

In other words, he won’t wait.

Hazzard’s family said he had been recuperating for a long time from complications following heart surgery. The school said Hazzard died at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center.

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He had a stroke in March 1996 and made a strong recovery, but became less publicly active. He made occasional appearances at UCLA games in recent years.

Hazzard was co-captain of the 1964 national title team that went 30-0 under coach John Wooden. He averaged a career-high 18.6 points as a senior playmaking guard. He was chosen college basketball’s player of the year, having averaged 19.8 points in the NCAA tournament, where he was selected as the most valuable player.

As a junior, Hazzard led the Bruins with a 16.3 scoring average and they won 20 games for the first time since 1957. In his sophomore season, he averaged 13.2 points and the Bruins reached the Final Four for the first time in school history, losing by two points to eventual national champion Cincinnati in the semifinals.

Hazzard transferred to UCLA after spending one season at Santa Monica College.

In 1996, UCLA retired his No. 42 jersey.

“Walt was one of the pillars of UCLA’s first championship team in men’s basketball,” current coach Ben Howland said. “He was a great player and an outstanding coach at UCLA. He is a huge part of the Bruin legacy, and he left life-long memories for the Bruin faithful.”

Hazzard helped the U.S. win a gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and played 10 years in the NBA, including a stint with the Los Angeles Lakers, who made him the No. 1 overall pick.

Hazzard averaged 12.6 points and 4.9 assists during his career with the Lakers, Seattle, Atlanta, Buffalo and Golden State. He ranked among the league’s top 10 in assists during six of his seasons. In 1968, he averaged 23.9 points and 6.2 assists, culminating in an appearance in the All-Star game.

During his four years as UCLA coach, the Bruins had a 77-47 record. In 1985, he led them to the school’s first NIT championship. In 1987, UCLA won the Pac-10 title and the league’s first postseason tournament with future NBA star Reggie Miller in the lineup. They finished with a 25-7 mark, losing in the second round of the NCAA tournament, with Hazzard selected league coach of the year.

“Thoughts and prayers go out to the Hazzard family on your loss,” Miller tweeted Friday night. “Coach Hazzard was not only a STUD point guard at UCLA under Coach Wooden…But a great Coach as well. He helped shaped me into the ball player I was, thanks so much Coach..”

The Bruins slumped to a 16-14 record the following year, and Hazzard was replaced by Jim Harrick for the 1988-89 season.

“This is a sad day for the UCLA basketball family,” Bruins athletic director Dan Guerrero said.

“Walt was the catalyst for Coach John Wooden’s first championship team and played the game with a style that excited Bruin basketball fans everywhere. He contributed to his alma mater in numerous ways, including as a student-athlete, coach and honored alum, and he will be greatly missed by all of us knew him.”

Before taking over at his alma mater, Hazzard coached two seasons each at Compton College near Los Angeles and Chapman College in Orange County.

In 1994, Hazzard re-joined the Lakers as a West Coast advance scout. After his stroke, he served as a special consultant to the team for another 15 years.

Lakers owner Jerry Buss said, “Walt was a man of extremely high character.”

Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak said, “Not only was Walt an outstanding player, but his knowledge of the game was extremely valuable to our front office as well over the past 17 years. In the years since his stroke, he has been an inspiration to many of us with his perseverance and his passion for the game.”

Hazzard, a native of Wilmington, Del., starred at Philadelphia’s Overbrook High, where Wilt Chamberlain had played years earlier. During his three-year varsity basketball career, Hazzard led the school to an 89-3 record and two city titles. He also played baseball and ran track, and was student body president.

Hazzard is survived by wife Jaleesa, a Bruins song girl during the 1964 NCAA title season, and sons Yakub, Jalal, Khalil and Rasheed. During his NBA career, Hazzard converted to Islam and changed his name to Mahdi Abdul-Rahman. He felt the change was poorly received and cost him professional opportunities so he returned to using his given name professionally while remaining a devout Muslim.

A spokesman for the Libyan fighters who captured him said Seif al-Islam, who has been charged by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, was detained about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of the town of Obari with two aides as he was trying to flee to neighboring Niger. But the country’s acting justice minister later said the convoy’s destination was not confirmed.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo told The Associated Press that he will travel to Libya next week for talks with the country’s transitional government on where the trial will take place. Ocampo said that while national governments have the first right to try their own citizens for war crimes, he wants to make sure Seif al-Islam has a fair trial.

“The good news is that Seif al-Islam is arrested, he is alive, and now he will face justice,” Ocampo said in an interview in The Hague. “Where and how, we will discuss it.”

Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, at 39 the oldest of seven children of Moammar and Safiya Gadhafi, had long drawn Western favor in by touting himself as a liberalizing reformer in the autocratic regime but then staunchly backed his father in his brutal crackdown on rebels in the regime’s final days.

He had gone underground after Tripoli fell to revolutionary forces and issued audio recordings to try to rally support for his father.

His capture just over a month after his father was killed leaves only former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi wanted by the ICC, which indicted the three men for in June for unleashing a campaign of murder and torture to suppress the uprising against the Gadhafi regime that broke out in mid-February.

“This is the day of victory, this is the day of liberation, finally the son of the tyrant has been captured,” said Mohammed Ali, an engineer, as he celebrated on Tripoli’s Martyrs’ Square. “Now we are free, now we are free, God is Great.”

Libyan state TV posted a photograph purportedly of Seif al-Islam in custody. He is sitting by a bed and holding up three bandaged fingers as a guard looks on, although it could not independently be confirmed where or when the picture was taken or how he was injured.

The murky circumstances surrounding the deaths of Gadhafi and another son Muatassim, and the decision to lay their bodies out for public viewing drew widespread criticism and raised questions about the commitment of Libya’s new rulers to respecting human rights.

Marek Marczynski of Amnesty International urged the governing National Transitional Council to transfer Seif al-Islam to the ICC base in the Netherlands as soon as possible.

“The ICC has an arrest warrant out for him and that is the correct thing to do. He must be brought before a judge as soon as possible,” he said. “It matters for the victims. What they need to see is true justice. They need to know the truth about what happened.”

Interim Justice Minister Mohammed al-Alagi told The Associated Press that Seif al-Islam was detained deep in Libya’s desert Friday night by revolutionary forces from the mountain town of Zintan who had been tracking him for days.

Seif al-Islam was being held in Zintan but would be transported to Tripoli soon, according to al-Alagi.

A spokesman for the Zintan brigades, Bashir al-Tlayeb, who first announced the capture at a press conference in Tripoli, said the NTC, which took over governing the country after Gadhafi was ousted, would decide where Seif al-Islam would be tried.

“Seif al-Islam was caught with two aides who were trying to smuggle him into Niger,” al-Tlayeb said, adding that he had no information about al-Senoussi’s whereabouts.

The justice minister, however, said Seif al-Islam was captured closer to the Algerian border and the convoy’s destination was not known.

The White House said it was aware of the reports but had no immediate comment.

The International Criminal Court had earlier said that it was in indirect negotiations with a son of the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi about his possible surrender for trial.

ICC prosecutor Ocampo said jurisdiction should not be hard to determine.

“The rules are, primacy for the national authorities, depending on if they have a case,” he said.

But he added that judges at the ICC would have to formally approve a transfer of venue, under international law.

Libya’s Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam said the NTC had not taken an official position yet, but in his personal view, Seif al-Islam “is an outlaw and should be tried in front of the Libyan Court, by Libyan people and by Libyan justice.”

The international community said the treatment of Seif al-Islam would be an important test for the role of rule of law in post-Gadhafi and key to reconciliation efforts, regardless of where he is tried.

“The Libyan authorities should now ensure that Seif al-Islam is brought to justice in accordance with the principles of due process and in full cooperation with the International Criminal Court,” the European Union said in a statement.

The traditional Friday call to prayer echoed off the cold stone of government buildings as people, bundled in winter clothes, knelt in prayer on a blue tarp.

“We are unapologetically Muslim and uncompromisingly American,” imam Talib Abdur-Rashid told the crowd of about 500 gathered in Foley Square, not far from City Hall and local courthouses.

To Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, he added, “We want for you to respect us and we will respect you.”

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An Associated Press investigation revealed widespread NYPD spying programs that documented every aspect of Muslim life in New York. Police infiltrated mosques and student groups. Plainclothes officers catalogued Middle Eastern restaurants. Analysts built databases on Arab cab drivers and monitored Muslims who changed their names.

“Had this been happening to any other religious group, all of America would be outraged,” said Daoud Ibraheem, 73, a retired graphic artist from Brooklyn.

Many of these programs were built with the help of the CIA as part of an unusually close collaboration that is now the subject of an internal CIA investigation.

“There’s a wrong that we have all been made aware of,” said Abdur-Rashid, of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood.

He said it was no secret that police have been watching mosques. But the news that the NYPDwas monitoring everything from Islamic schools to restaurants was unacceptable.

“We’re peaceful people,” said Dalia Nazzal, 18, a freshman at the City University of New York, the target of police infiltration. “We don’t deserve to be under surveillance.”

Mohamed Mahmoud, 40, the owner of a Brooklyn printing shop, said he knew several people who had been approached by NYPD officers trying to recruit them as informants. Documents obtained by the AP also show that police monitored even those Muslims who decried terrorism and partnered with the government to prevent violence.

“They think that all Muslims are criminals, and it’s not right,” Mahmoud said.

At an unrelated news conference, Kelly told reporters that he “categorically denied” the idea that the NYPD was spying. He said his officers only follow leads and do not simply trawl neighborhoods.

“We do what we believe necessary to protect this city, pursuant to the law,” Kelly said. “We have a battery of very experienced, well-trained lawyers that advise us on all of our tactics and operations.”

A dozen or so uniformed police officers monitored the protest, watching in small clusters from around the perimeter. There were no clashes between protesters and police.

The protest was joined by about 50 members of the Occupy Wall Street movement, who marched to Foley Square chanting “Surveillance is violence, we won’t remain silent!”

Following the prayer, protesters were scheduled to march to police headquarters, calling for an end to the surveillance.

Protesters carried signs that said “NYPD Watches Us. Who Watches NYPD?” and “NYPD/CIA: Hands Off Our People.”

“We extend our heartfelt condolences at this difficult time. He will be remembered for his infectious optimism and many contributions to American music. Please know that you and your family will be in our thoughts and prayers,” read the Obama note, according to the Rev. Al Sharpton, who quoted from it during the service.

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Xea Myers, Heavy D’s 11-year-old daughter, also spoke briefly, telling the audience that her father was “still here, not in the flesh, but in the spirit.”

Grace Baptist Church was filled to capacity for the two-and-half-hour service, which was also streamed live on the Web. It was so crowded, an overflow area was set up. Among those in attendance were Usher, Queen Latifah, Don King, Q-Tip, John Legend and Rosie Perez.

“Silently he’s been influential in a lot of our careers,” Usher said after the service. “His love still lives on.”

A large photo of Heavy D sat next to his closed casket.

Heavy D died last week in Los Angeles at the age of 44. His family said the death was due to complications from pneumonia.

The self-proclaimed “Overweight Lover” was born in Jamaica but reared in Mount Vernon, which he dubbed “Money Earnin’ Mount Vernon.” It was also the home of Sean “Diddy” Combs. Diddy talked about how Heavy D helped give him his start in the music industry, and how their decades-long friendship continued up until Heavy D’s death.

“He became my friend. He became my brother, and I’m not talking about friend-brother like we cavalierly use the word, I’m talking about a real friend, a real brother,” Diddy said. “Somebody I shared my dreams and my secrets with, somebody that’s been there for me at my lowest point, my darkest hour when nobody wanted to be beside me.”

But he also told jokes as he recounted his “bromance” with the rapper, including a recent visit to Miami that was supposed to last for three days, but “turned into three weeks.” He added that Heavy D got to know his chef “very well.”

Sharpton also drew laughter when he noted that James Brown “made us black and proud; (Heavy D) made us fat and proud.”

But singer Johnny Gill was tearful when he approached the altar, saying: “Just want to say to Heavy: job well done.” He later gave a powerful rendition the gospel hit “Never Would Have Made It.” Heavy D’s nieces were also teary-eyed as they sang the gospel standard “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” Yolanda Adams and Anthony Hamilton also performed.

Heavy D, whose real name was Dwight Myers, was influential in the development of rap as it grew into a phenomenon in the late 1980s and 1990s. His hits included “Now That We’ve Found Love” and “Nuttin’ But Love”; much of his music marked the “New Jack Swing” era in urban music, and he stood out from the pack with his rhymes, typified by a positive vibe and a lightheartedness that endeared him to so many.

Salt, of Salt-N-Pepa, recalled touring with Heavy D & the Boyz, and said the rapper always told her: “I love you.”

“He was a life-long buddy to me,” she said after the service. “Just now I realized how many lives he touched.”

A fund has been set up to financially aid Heavy D’s daughter; details were available on the website rememberheavyd.com.

Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights, and Miami U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer said the probe will focus on whether there was a “pattern or practice” within the Miami Police Department that led to violations of constitutional rights. The investigation is not criminal in nature.

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The shootings in inner-city Miami, from July 2010 to February 2011, sparked outrage in the Africa-American community and led to protests at City Hall. The NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union, among others, demanded a federal investigation.

The former police chief, Miguel Exposito, defended the shootings as justified and said they resulted from confrontations caused by more aggressive police tactics in high-crime areas plagued by gangs.

Exposito was fired in September for disobeying orders from the city manager. The current interim chief, Manuel Orosa, welcomes the investigation and has already ordered a top-to-bottom review of all practices within the department, said his spokesman, Maj. Delrish Moss.

“The more people looking at what we do, the more it makes us more capable of serving the community,” Moss said.

The question of whether the shootings were justified has been under review for months by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.

Earlier this decade, the Justice Department launched a broad investigation into Miami Police Department tactics after several controversial police shootings. But that probe in 2003 reached no conclusion about whether department policies caused civil rights violations.

An additional round of ammunition was also found on the exterior of the White House. The bullets were found Tuesday.

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The discovery follows reports of gunfire near the White House on Friday. Witnesses heard shots and saw two speeding vehicles in the area. An AK-47 rifle was also recovered.

The Secret Service said it has not conclusively connected Friday’s incident with the bullets found on the White House grounds.

U.S. Park Police have an arrest warrant out for Oscar Ortega-Hernandez, who is believed to be connected to the earlier incident. He is described as a 21-year-old Hispanic man, 5 feet 11 inches tall, 160 pounds, with a medium build, brown eyes and black hair.

The decision to hear arguments in the spring sets up an election-year showdown over the White House’s main domestic- policy achievement. And it allows plenty of time for a decision in late June, just over four months before Election Day.

The justices announced they will hear an extraordinary 5 1/2 hours of arguments from lawyers on the constitutionality of the individual mandate — requiring the purchase of health insurance — and three related questions. The central provision in question is the requirement that individuals buy health insurance starting in 2014 or pay a penalty.

In the modern era, the last time the court allotted anywhere near this much time for arguments was in 2003, for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform.

That case consumed four hours. But this argument may spread over two days, as the justices rarely hear more than two or three hours of arguments a day.

A White House spokesman said, “We are pleased that the court has agreed to hear this case.”

“We know the Affordable Care Act is constitutional and are confident the Supreme Court will agree,” said White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer.

About 70 people were arrested, including some who chained themselves together, while officers cleared the park so that sanitation crews could clean it.

Protesters at the two-month-old encampment were told they come back after the cleaning, but under new tougher rules, including no tents, sleeping bags or tarps, which would effectively put an end to the encampment if enforced.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement Tuesday that the evacuation was conducted in the middle of the night “to reduce the risk of confrontation in the park, and to minimize disruption to the surrounding neighborhood.”

He said after the cleaning, protesters would be allowed to return but “must follow all park rules.”

“The law that created Zuccotti Park required that it be open for the public to enjoy for passive recreation 24 hours a day,” Bloomberg said. “Ever since the occupation began, that law has not been complied with, as the park has been taken over by protesters, making it unavailable to anyone else.”

Concerns about health and safety issues at Occupy Wall Street camps around the country have intensified, and protesters have been ordered to take down their shelters, adhere to curfews and relocate so that parks can be cleaned.

At about 1 a.m. Tuesday, New York City police handed out notices from Brookfield Office Properties, owner of Zuccotti Park, and the city saying that the park had to be cleared because it had become unsanitary and hazardous. Protesters were told they could return in several hours, but without sleeping bags, tarps or tents.

Hundreds of former Zuccotti Park residents and their supporters were marching along Lower Manhattan before dawn Tuesday and threatened to block Broadway during the morning rush hour.

Others gathered near Foley Square, just blocks from Zuccotti Park, where they can’t get arrested.

Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York Police Department, said the park had been cleared by 4:30 a.m. and that about 70 people who’d been inside it had been arrested, including a group who chained themselves together. One person was taken to a local hospital for evaluation because of breathing problems.

Police in riot gear filled the streets, car lights flashing and sirens blaring. Protesters, some of whom shouted angrily at police, began marching to two locations in Lower Manhattan where they planned to hold rallies.

Some protesters refused to leave the park, but many left peacefully.

Ben Hamilton, 29, said he was arrested “and I was just trying to get away” from the fray.

Rabbi Chaim Gruber, an Occupy Wall Street member, said police officers were clearing the streets near Zuccotti Park.

“The police are forming a human shield, and are pushing everyone away,” he said.

Hundreds of police officers surrounded the park in riot gear with plastic shields across their faces, holding plastic shields and batons which were used on some cases on protesters.

Police also came armed with klieg lights, which they used to flood the park, and bull horns to announce that everyone had to clear out.

Jake Rozak, another protester, said police “had their pepper spray out and were ready to use it.”

Notices given to the protesters said the park “poses an increasing health and fire safety hazard to those camped in the park, the city’s first responders and the surrounding community.”

It said that tents, sleeping bags and other items had to be removed because “the storage of these materials at this location is not allowed.” Anything left behind would be taken away, the notices said, giving an address at a sanitation department building where items could be picked up.

Alex Hall, 21, of Brooklyn, said police walked into the park “stepping on tents and ripping them out.”

Before dawn, sanitation plows and trucks were lined up on Broadway ready to roll into the park and remove what was left of the debris.

On Monday, a small group of demonstrators, including local residents and merchants, protested at City Hall. In recent weeks, they have urged the mayor to clear out the park because of its negative impact on the neighborhood and small businesses.

Occupy encampments have come under fire around the country as local officials and residents have complained about possible health hazards and ongoing inhabitation of parks and other public spaces.

Anti-Wall Street activists intend to converge at the University of California, Berkeley on Tuesday for a day of protests and another attempt to set up an Occupy Cal camp, less than a week after police arrested dozens of protesters who tried to pitch tents on campus.

The Berkeley protesters will be joined by Occupy Oakland activists who said they would march to the UC campus in the afternoon. Police cleared the tent city in front of Oakland City Hall before dawn Monday and arrested more than 50 people amid complaints about safety, sanitation and drug use.

LaBelle’s publicists and lawyer didn’t immediately respond to Kevin and Roseanna Monk’s lawsuit.

The couple live in a Manhattan building where the Grammy Award-winning singer stayed for a time while appearing in the Broadway musical “Fela!” last year, said the Monks’ lawyer, Samuel L. Davis.

He said LaBelle chastised Roseanna Monk for letting the toddler take some steps away from the mother as she grappled with some luggage and a car seat in the building’s lobby on the afternoon of Nov. 11, 2010. After Monk scooped up the child and told LaBelle it was none of her business, the singer threw water on them from a bottle she was carrying and then launched into an obscenity-filled tirade, he said.

When the child started wailing, Roseanna Monk made a remark to LaBelle, and the singer charged at her and tried to hit her, Davis said.

The Monks filed a complaint with police; no arrests were made.

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, comes five months after a U.S. Military Academy cadet sued LaBelle over a Houston airport scuffle with her bodyguards. He said they attacked him for no reason in March 2010. She countersued the cadet, saying he tried to get into her limousine and was drunk and using racial slurs, which he denied.

Davis said Roseanna Monk had asked LaBelle for an apology and a donation to a children’s cancer charity but was rebuffed. The Monks feel “someone’s got to teach her even a diva can’t attack and frighten and assault regular people in the building,” their lawyer said.

LaBelle’s singing career has spanned more than four decades, two Grammys and several hits, including the 1974 disco smash “Lady Marmalade.”

“We’re prepared to file this antitrust action against the NBA,” union executive director Billy Hunter said. “That’s the best situation where players can get their due process.”

He said players were not prepared to accept the NBA Commissioner David Stern‘s ultimatum, saying they thought it was “extremely unfair.”

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Stern had urged players to take the deal on the table, saying it’s the best the NBA can offer and warned that decertification is not a winning strategy.

“This is the best decision for the players,” union president Derek Fisher said. “I want to reiterate that point, that a lot of individual players have a lot of things personally at stake in terms of their careers and where they stand. And right now they feel it’s important — we all feel it’s important to all our players, not just the ones in this room, but our entire group — that we not only try to get a deal done for today but for the body of NBA players that will come into this league over the next decade and beyond.”

Fisher, flanked at a press conference by dozens of players including Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony, said the decision was unanimous.

Hunter said the NBPA was in the process of converting to a trade association and that all players will be represented in a class-action suit against the NBA by attorneys Jeffrey Kessler and David Boies — who were on opposite sides of the NFL labor dispute, Kessler working for the players, Boiesfor the league.

“We think that we’ve got a stellar team,” said Hunter, who added that Kessler and Boies may file their suit as early as later Monday and likely “sometime within the next two days.”

Hunter said the NBPA’s “notice of disclaimer” was filed with Stern’s office about an hour before the news conference announcing the move.

Over the weekend, Stern said he would not cancel the season this week.

Regardless, damage has already been done, in many ways.

Financially, both sides have lost hundreds of millions because of the games missed and the countless more that will be wiped out before play resumes. Team employees are losing money, and in some cases, jobs. And both the NBA and NBPA eventually must regain the loyalty of an angered fan base that wonders how the league reached this low point after such a strong 2010-11 season.

The proposal rejected by the players called for a 50-50 division of basketball-related income and proposed a 72-game season beginning Dec. 15.

On Sunday, the league made a very public push on the positives of the deal — hosting a 90-minute twitter chat to answer questions from players and fans, posting a YouTube video to explain the key points and sending a memo from Stern to players urging them to “study our proposal carefully, and to accept it as a fair compromise of the issues between us.”

In the memo, posted on the league’s website, Stern highlighted points of the deal and asked players to focus on the compromises the league made during negotiations, such as dropping its demands for a hard salary cap, non-guaranteed contracts and salary rollbacks.

Union officials repeatedly have said the system issues are perhaps more important to them than the split of basketball-related income, but owners say they need fundamental changes in both to allow for a chance to profit and to ensure more competitive balance throughout the league.

The previous CBA expired at the end of the day June 30. Despite a series of meetings in June, there was never much hope of a deal before that deadline, with owners wanting significant changes after saying they lost $300 million last season and hundreds of millions more in each year of the old agreement, which was ratified in 2005.

Owners wanted to keep more of the league’s nearly $4 billion in basketball revenues to themselves after guaranteeing 57 percent to the players under the old deal. And they sought a system where even the smallest-market clubs could compete, believing the current system would always favor the teams who could spend the most.

The NBA’s last work stoppage reduced the 1998-99 season to 50 games. Monday marked the 137th day of the lockout; the NFL lockout lasted 136 days.

“SPDC (Shell Petroleum Development Company) contained a spill in Adibawa delivery line which was reported yesterday (Saturday),” Shell’s Nigerian joint venture said in a statememt.

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“We had dispatched our spill containment team to the site as soon as we received the reports and the personnel succeeded in containing the leak,” it said.

Shell, which announced a production cut from the same facility last week, said it was investigating the incident to determine the cause and impact.

“The delivery line is part of the Okordia-Rumuekpe line, which SPDC shut down following a leak on November 8 and subsequent fire incident,” it said, blaming last week’s incident on sabotage.

“A joint investigation visit found that the spill was caused by hacksaw cuts,” it said, adding that there had been several hacksaw cuts on the Adibawa delivery line this year.

But Environmental Rights Action (ERA)/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (FoEN), which visited the site, ruled out sabotage in a statement Sunday.

“Anybody who visits this spill site can attest to the fact that this is a case of equipment failure,” the environmental group said.

“From experience gained in the field, this is one of the most obvious cases that points to that fact: no signs of any clearing around the spill site, no signs of any digging,” it said.

“This is the 12th oil spill that has occurred between August and November 2011 in Ikarama community environment,” ERA said, adding that Shell should visit the area, clean up the spill and compensate the affected residents.

“Adequate compensation should be paid for damages to crops, impacted farmlands and general damages incurred by the victims of this latest spill,” it said.

Oil spills occur regularly in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, and are often caused by oil thieves seeking to steal crude for sale on the lucrative black market.

“We consider it a top priority,” Obama said of the region where his administration is pouring in time and political capital to expand exports and business ties.

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The president spoke as he dove into a day of summit diplomacy, proudly using his home state of Hawaii as the American foothold to the Pacific. He gathered with leaders of 20 other nations of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, whose nations span from Chile to China and account for roughly half the world’s trade and economic output.

In the midst of a hard re-election bid, Obama kept his message on jobs, even as he privately lobbied for help on containing the Iranian nuclear threat.

He was to cap the summit with a solo news conference in which topics on and off his scripted agenda were likely to emerge.

Born in Hawaii, Obama reveled in having the world stage on his home turf, while back east the Republicans seeking to oust him from the White House assailed his foreign policy record.

Obama used his moment to signal to business executives and Asian leaders that the United States has shifted from a post-9/11 war focus to re-engagement all across the Pacific.

“We represent close to 3 billion people, from different continents and cultures,” Obama told his APEC partners on Saturday, ahead of some luau entertainment. “Our citizens have sent us here with a common task: to bring our economies closer together, to cooperate, to create jobs and prosperity that our people deserve so that they can provide for their families.”

The president is on a 9-day venture away from Washington’s daily political gridlock. He will visit Australia and Indonesia before returning to the White House on Nov. 20.

Obama met Sunday with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper after a joint meeting of those two leaders and Mexican President Felipe Calderon had to be canceled because of a helicopter crash that killed Mexico’s top cabinet secretary. Handlers for Obama and Harper tried to make the most of the moment for the cameras, staging not one but two photo ops of Obama and Harper, first laughing while seated at a patio table, then strolling with their suit coats slung over their shoulders.

On Saturday, largely a day of sideline meetings here, Obama prodded the skeptical leaders of Russia and China for support in dialing back Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but without winning endorsement from either man. Neither Russian President Dmitry Medvedev nor Chinese President Hu Jintao publicly echoed Obama’s push for solidarity over Iran.

Obama did announce the broad outlines of an agreement to create a transpacific trade zone encompassing the United States and eight other nations before going into meetings with Hu and Medvedev where he raised a new report from the U.N. atomic agency. The report asserted in the strongest terms to date that Iran is conducting secret work to develop nuclear arms.

Russia and China remain a roadblock to the United States in its push to tighten international sanctions on Iran. Both are veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council and have shown no sign the new report will change their stand.

Alongside Medvedev, Obama said the two “reaffirmed our intention to work to shape a common response” on Iran.

Shortly after, Obama joined Hu, in a run of back-to-back diplomacy with the heads of two countries that have complicated and at times divisive relations with the United States, occasional partners in joint international endeavors, but also frequent rivals or adversaries on more difficult issues, especially those with strategic implications.

Obama said that he and the Chinese leader want to ensure that Iran abides by “international rules and norms.”

Obama’s comments were broad enough to portray a united front without yielding any clear indication of progress.

Medvedev, for his part, was largely silent on Iran during his remarks, merely acknowledging that the subject was discussed. Hu did not mention Iran at all.

White House aides insisted later that Russia and China remain unified with the United States and other allies in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and that Obama, Hu and Medvedev had agreed to work on the next steps. Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said the new allegations about Iran’s programs demand an international response.

“I think the Russians and the Chinese understand that,” he said. “We’re going to be working with them to formulate that response.”

As the president held forth on the world stage, Republicans vying to compete against Obama for the presidency unleashed withering criticism in a debate in South Carolina. It was a rare moment in which foreign policy garnered attention in a campaign dominated by the flagging U.S. economy.

“If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” said Romney, a former Massachusetts governor.

Iran has insisted its nuclear work is in the peaceful pursuit of energy and research, not weaponry.

On the Pacific trade pact, Obama said details must still be worked out, but said the goal was to complete the deal by next year.

The eight countries joining the U.S. in the zone would be Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Obama also spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda about Japan’s interest in joining the trade bloc.

In remarks at Arlington National Cemetery, he called it “a time when America needs all hands on deck.”

“The tide of war is receding,” Obama said. “My fellow Americans, our troops are coming home.”

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He spoke on a chilly autumn morning to an audience of veterans and dignitaries in the cemetery’s amphitheater shortly after placing a floral wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

Following the ceremony, Obama left the White House for a flight to San Diego to join in a holiday basketball game aboard an aircraft carrier — the start of a nine-day trip that includes an Asia-Pacific summit in Hawaii and stops in Australia and Indonesia.

Obama used his Arlington speech to mark the coming transition from a nation fighting multiple wars in the aftermath of Sept. 11 to one where reviving a struggling economy is the overriding focus.

Last month, Obama announced plans to withdraw the last U.S. troops from Iraq. Between that and Obama’s commencement of a drawdown in Afghanistan, he said, for many military families, “this holiday season will be a season of homecomings.”

And he urged Americans to greet the returning vets with jobs and offers of help. “Let us welcome them home as what they are: an integral, essential part of our American family,” Obama said.

Obama spoke a day after the Senate passed his proposal to give companies tax credits for hiring jobless veterans. “Our economy needs their talents and specialized skills,” he said.

Earlier, with the aid of an honor guard, Obama placed the wreath on a pedestal in front of the marble tomb, then stood with a hand over his heart as a bugler played “Taps.” A bell tolled and flags fluttered.

First lady Michelle Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki and other dignitaries watched from the side.

Obama’s aircraft carrier visit is to the USS Carl Vinson, docked in San Diego. The first-ever Carrier Classic basketball game pits Michigan State against No. 1 North Carolina on board the ship. The ship is the same one from which Osama bin-Laden’s remains were buried at sea following the raid in Pakistan that killed al-Qaida’s top leader.

In an essay in Friday’s San Diego Union-Tribune, Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill wrote that “because of the incredible courage of the 9-11 generation, the tide of war is receding and America is more secure than a decade ago.”

“But as our service members return, many are discovering a new battlefield as they leave the military and search for civilian employment opportunities,” they wrote.

Their article also made a pitch for the veterans’ assistance the Senate approved on a 95-0 vote. The bill, expected to clear the House next week, also includes more counseling and job training for unemployed veterans and service members about to leave the military.

“We’re taking steps to make the job search easier for veterans,” the Bidens wrote.

On Thursday, Mrs. Obama announced that private companies have made new commitments to hire 100,000 veterans and military spouses by 2014 as part of her Joining Forces initiative. That comes on top of the 16,000 veterans hired since the program was announced last April, and another 25,000 in hiring commitments announced earlier.

Unemployment is particularly high among veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Labor Department estimates that 12.1 percent of veterans who served in the military since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were unemployed in October. That compares with the national rate of 9 percent.

Among veterans under the age of 24, the jobless rate was closer to 22 percent.

Friday marked the 11th day of the 11th month of 2011. Around the world, people celebrated the triple convergence of 11s with a splash.

Some 1,000 ethnic Chinese couples exchanged vows across Malaysia on a date viewed as auspicious and romantic. In China, a special “1111″ train started at 11:11 a.m. on the No. 11 line in Shanghai.

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“The numbers rhyme with one husband, one wife and one soul in Chinese and signifies a marriage that would last a lifetime,” said nurse Pua Kim Giok, 25, who tied the knot with engineer Lee Chin Siong, 27. They were among 460 couples who got married at the popular Thean Hou Temple in Kuala Lumpur.

Not everyone was smiling, however.

Egypt’s antiquities authority closed the largest of the Great Pyramid of Giza following rumors that groups would try to hold spiritual ceremonies on the site at 11:11.

The authority’s head Mustafa Amin said in a statement Friday that the pyramid of Khufu, also known as Cheops, would be closed until Saturday morning for “necessary maintenance.”

The closure followed a string of unconfirmed reports in local media that unknown groups would try to hold “Jewish” or “Masonic” rites on the site.

Amin said all reports of planned ceremonies at the site were “completely lacking in truth.” The rest of the complex, which includes two other large pyramids, numerous tombs and the Sphinx, and is one of Egypt’s biggest tourist attractions, remained open Friday, though security appeared to be heavier than usual.

In the U.S., the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, N.J., was planning drawings every 11 minutes for up to $1,111.

In Las Vegas, Clark County Clerk Diana Alba got ready for an onslaught of weddings. She was expecting the number of couples to surpass the crowd on 08/08/08 and equal the throng on 10/10/10. It may not, however, reach the turnout seen on July 7, 2007 – a date that consists of three lucky sevens.

“That was like the granddaddy of all dates,” Alba said.

Bryan Savage of Oklahoma City was among those tying the knot on 11-11. He said the number 11 is meaningful to him and his fiancee, Tara Melton, because his birthday is in November and they met in November.

“It’s just kind of cool and we didn’t really want Valentine’s Day or a holiday, but we just wanted something memorable,” he said.

Plus, he said, it will be easier to remember his anniversary.

In Des Moines, Iowa, Dr. Ross Valone, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will refund any fees he collects from delivering babies Friday. In Bellevue, Wash., Jason Brown will open his new grocery store at 11:11 a.m.

Vikki MacKinnon, a numerologist in Calgary, Ontario, said she expected the day to be a “cosmic wake-up call.”

“Eleven is a number of illumination and enlightenment, a number of insight, blinding flashes of the obvious, and a number of transformation,” she said.

The Chinese have always had a fascination with number sequences.

And in a country where ages of first marriages are creeping upward, the 11/11/11 date represents six “bare sticks,” a term for bachelors in Chinese.

And there are now more of them, with housing prices, focus on jobs and growing independence of young women meaning people are getting married later.

“It’s just difficult for men to afford the housing prices nowadays, and traditionally in China that is the responsibility of the man his family. I feel a lot of pressure from this,” said Zheng An, a 26-year-old employee at a solar company in Shanghai.

The president is hosting a veterans breakfast Friday at the White House, then laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns before speaking at a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. Soon after, Obama flies to California to take part in the first-ever Carrier Classic, basketball game between Michigan State and No. 1 North Carolina aboard the USS Carl Vinson.

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The Veterans Day observances come a day after the Senate approved Obama’s call for a tax credit for those who hire jobless veterans. In a written statement, he said the vote is a fitting way to help honor those who’ve served their country.

“That’s 100,000 veterans and spouses who will have the security of a paycheck and good career,” Mrs. Obama said in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “That’s thousands of families that can rest just a little bit easier every night.”

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The first lady and the vice president’s wife, Jill Biden, launched their Joining Forces initiative in April to try to motivate citizens, businesses, nonprofits and community groups to do more to support military families.

It has resulted in the hiring of 16,000 veterans and spouses, and pledges to hire an additional 25,000.

Thursday’s announcement of 100,000 additional job commitments for military families includes plans to hire at least 5,000 wounded veterans.

At the same time, the first lady announced an online Veterans Job Bank tool to help veterans and spouses search for jobs with military-friendly employers. The tool has identified 550,000 job postings.

Mrs. Obama said the new efforts are “part of a wave of support forming that stretches across this country.”

She spoke at a conference on hiring veterans that was organized by the Chamber.

The group has had a prickly relationship with the Obama White House, differing over policies on job creation, taxes and regulation. The first lady got a polite but reserved reception from the audience in the partially filled auditorium.

More than a dozen veterans who’ve been hired through Chamber of Commerce hiring fairs for veterans were on hand. They included 33-year-old Dwayne Simmons, who said he had an “interview-to-hire moment” at a hiring fair two weeks ago and is bound for the Sam’s Club manager training program in Tulsa, Okla.

The Purple Heart recipient just wound up 15 years in the Army, including five tours in Iraq.

Brad Cooper, executive director of Joining Forces, said the effort to encourage hiring of veterans and spouses has exceeded expectations. Companies are adjusting their goals upward after meeting initial hiring targets and finding that military families provide skilled and loyal workers.

Some of the jobs for veterans represent net job growth, while others are a result of turnover, he said.

Unemployment is particularly high among veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Labor Department estimates that 12.1 percent of veterans who served in the military since the Sept. 11 attacks were unemployed in October. That compares with the national rate of 9 percent.

Among veterans under the age of 24, the rate was closer to 22 percent.

The latest hiring commitments include plans by the International Franchise Association, which represents 1,100 franchises, to hire 80,000 veterans and spouses by 2014. That number includes 5,000 wounded warriors.

Steve Caldeira, president of the franchise association, said the structured nature of franchises and their need for employees committed to “operational excellence” make them a good fit for those trained in the military. Examples of franchises that have made hiring pledges include the UPS Store, Arby’s, TSS Photography, FASTSIGNS, Mr. Rooter, TeamLogic and Valpak.

Mrs. Obama also announced that the Military Spouse Employment Partnership, which began last summer and is made up of nearly 100 companies and organizations, had committed to hire 20,000 military spouses.

The organization includes companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Home Depot, and franchises such as Data Doctors and Guidant Financial.

Thursday’s 95-0 vote gave lawmakers the opportunity to fly home to holiday events and boast about helping veterans and protecting jobs. But it did little to help close the scorching partisan divide over how to revive the gasping economy, an issue that seems sure to decide next year’s presidential and congressional elections.

“We deal with a lot of contentious issues here, but this should not be one of them,” said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., a leading sponsor of the veterans’ provisions.

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The legislation would award tax credits of up to $9,600 to companies that hire disabled veterans who have been job-hunting for at least half a year and strengthen employment counseling and training programs for vets and troops about to leave the military.

It also would erase a law, yet to take effect, requiring federal, state and local government agencies to withhold 3 percent of their payments to companies with which they conduct business. That law was enacted under President George W. Bush to nudge companies to fully pay their taxes, but lawmakers now say it would fence off money those firms could better use to hire more workers.

The House is expected to approve the bill resoundingly next week, which would send it to Obama.

The president’s signature would make the veterans tax credits the first fragment of his $447 billion jobs package to be enacted. Those tax credits would cost $90 million over the next decade, according to White House estimates. Obama also has supported annulling the withholding requirement on contractors’ payments.

The rest of the president’s jobs plan, which is highlighted by payroll tax cuts and money for infrastructure projects and hiring teachers and police officers, has foundered.

There are about 240,000 unemployed veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, around 12 percent of those who served there, the White House says. A total of 850,000 veterans overall are out of work, and 1 million additional service members are expected to return to civilian life by 2016, according to White House data.

“No veteran who fought for our nation should have to fight for a job when they come home,” Obama said in a written statement after the vote that also called on Congress to approve additional jobs proposals.

That didn’t stop both parties from seeking political advantage in Thursday’s vote.

Knowing they faced certain defeat in the Democratic-led chamber, Republicans nonetheless tried amending the bill with a giant package they said would create jobs by cutting income tax rates, repealing Obama’s health care overhaul and blocking or annulling many labor, energy and environmental regulations. It was rejected by a near party-line 56-40 tally, but it created an opportunity for the GOP to demonstrate its formula for healing the economy.

Before the day’s votes, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sarcastically congratulated Democrats for “doing something we haven’t been doing enough of around here. We’re going to legislate.” He said Democrats usually spend their time “trying to make Republicans look bad.”

At the same time, Obama’s campaign emailed supporters, urging them to pressure lawmakers to vote for the measure.

“Members of Congress will have two clear options to choose from: Do something to create jobs for veterans returning from overseas, or do nothing,” the email said.

Outside groups also vied for attention. The Association of American Railroads said one-fifth of the railway workers hired this year were expected to be veterans, while the trade group Associated Builders and Contractors said repealing the withholding law would remove uncertainty clouding long-term planning by construction companies.

Economists say repealing the withholding requirement would have an imperceptible, if any, impact on jobs.

Conservative Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., voted for the bill but was the only dissenter when the Senate voted to combine the veterans provisions with the withholding language. He said politicians were “pandering” for veterans’ votes by approving tax credits that wouldn’t really persuade companies to hire vets.

Beyond increasing to $9,600 the tax credit for hiring disabled veterans, the bill also would create new tax credits of up to $5,600 for employers hiring veterans who have job hunted at least half a year and $2,400 for those out of work for four weeks or more.

In addition, it would expand education and job training benefits for veterans, improve employment counseling they receive while still in the military and provide an extra year of job services for disabled veterans.

“This bill is a win for the economy and the right thing to do for our veterans,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., a long-time sponsor of tax credits for vets.

Overall, the tax breaks and jobs programs for veterans would cost just over $1 billion, Democratic aides said. It would be paid for by extending a fee the Veterans Affairs Department charges to back home loans.

Annulling the withholding law would cost the government $11.2 billion over the next decade. The legislation makes up the lost revenue by making it harder for some Social Security beneficiaries to qualify for Medicaid, the federal-state health program for low-income people.

The number of people who applied for unemployment benefits last week fell to a seasonally adjusted 390,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s the fewest since April.

The U.S. trade deficit narrowed to $43.1 billion in September, its lowest point of the year, the Commerce Department said. Foreign sales of American-made autos, airplanes and heavy machinery pushed exports to an all-time high.

The data suggest layoffs are easing and the economy grew slightly better over the summer than the government had estimated a month ago.

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Stocks rose in early-morning trading, one day after the market tumbled over concerns that Europe’s debt crisis could worsen.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained more than 46 points.

The reports “are modestly strong relative to expectations – encouraging confidence that the economy is gaining a bit of momentum,” said Pierre Ellis, an analyst at Decision Economics.

Weekly applications for unemployment benefits have declined in three of the past four weeks, the Labor Department said. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, fell to 400,000, also the lowest point since April.

The downward trend in applications suggests businesses are laying off fewer workers. Still, applications need to consistently drop below 375,000 to signal sustained job gains. They haven’t been at that level since February.

“The labor market is still weak and quite stagnant but there are hopeful signs of some modest improvement,” said Steve Wood, chief economist at Insight Economics.

In September, exports increased 1.4 percent to a record $180.4 billion, reflecting a big increase in shipments of U.S. made autos and auto parts, the Commerce Department said. Imports were up a smaller 0.4 percent to $223.5 billion. Oil imports slowed after huge gains earlier in the year.

The deficit has narrowed for the last three months.

Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, said the lower trade deficit in September could boost growth in the July-September quarter to an annual rate of 2.8 percent, up from the government’s initial estimate of 2.5 percent.

Still, Europe’s debt crisis could push that region into a recession next year, which could reduce demand for American exports and slow U.S. growth.

A higher deficit acts as a drag on economic growth because it means fewer jobs for American workers.

The outlook for hiring has been mixed in recent months. The economy added only 80,000 jobs in October, the fewest in four months.

But the government also said last week that employers added more jobs in August and September than it had initially reported, and the unemployment rate dipped to 9 percent.

A separate report this week showed that employers advertised more jobs in September than at any other point in the past three years. That’s a positive sign for future hiring, since most companies typically take one to three months to fill vacant positions.

Still, the unemployment rate has been stuck near 9 percent for more than two years, and the Federal Reserve said last week that it is not expected to fall significantly through the end of next year.

The number of people receiving unemployment aid under regular state programs dropped 92,000 to 3.62 million in the week that ended Oct. 29. That doesn’t include more than 3 million who are receiving extended benefits under an emergency program paid for by the federal government.

All told, more than 6.8 million people received benefits in the week that ended Oct. 22, the last period for which inclusive figures are available.

The justices will examine a pair of cases from the South involving young killers who are serving life sentences for crimes they committed when they were 14.

Both cases were brought by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala. The institute said that life without parole for children so young “is cruel and unusual” and violates the Constitution.

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The group says roughly six dozen people in 18 states are under life sentences and ineligible for parole for crimes they committed at 13 or 14.

Kuntrell Jackson was sentenced to life in prison in Arkansas after the shooting death of a store clerk during an attempted robbery in 1999. Another boy shot the clerk, but because Jackson was present he was convicted of capital murder and aggravated robbery.

Evan Miller was convicted of capital murder during the course of arson. A neighbor, while doing drugs and drinking with Miller and a 16-year-old boy, attacked Miller. Intoxicated, Miller and his friend beat the man and set fire to his home, killing the 52-year-old man. Miller’s friend testified against him, and got life in prison with the possibility of parole.

The high court has moved toward judging juveniles less responsible than adults when considering severe sentences.

The high court ruled out the use of the death penalty for people under 18 in 2005. In May 2010, the court said that teenagers may not be locked up for life without a chance of parole if they haven’t killed anyone. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in both of those decisions.

“The identical analysis which led to the results in those cases logically compels the conclusion that consigning a 14-year-old to die in prison through a life-without-parole sentence categorically violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments,” Miller’s lawyer Bryan Stevenson said in court papers. The Supreme Court should “make that logical conclusion the law of the land.”

The court will hear arguments next year.

The cases are Miller v. Alabama, 10-9646 and Jackson v. Arkansas, 10-9647.

During the 2010-11 school year, 48 percent of students in grades 7-12 experienced some form of sexual harassment in person or electronically via texting, email and social media, according to a major national survey being released Monday by the American Association of University Women.

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The harassers often thought they were being funny, but the consequences for their targets can be wrenching, according to the survey. Nearly a third of the victims said the harassment made them feel sick to their stomach, affected their study habits or fueled reluctance to go to school at all.

“It’s reached a level where it’s almost a normal part of the school day,” said one of the report’s co-authors, AAUW director of research Catherine Hill. “It’s somewhat of a vicious cycle. The kids who are harassers often have been harassed themselves.”

The survey, conducted in May and June, asked 1,002 girls and 963 boys from public and private schools nationwide whether they had experienced any of various forms of sexual harassment. These included having someone make unwelcome sexual comments about them, being called gay or lesbian in a negative way, being touched in an unwelcome sexual way, being shown sexual pictures they didn’t want to see, and being the subject of unwelcome sexual rumors.

The survey quoted one ninth-grade girl as saying she was called a whore “because I have many friends that are boys.” A 12th-grade boy said schoolmates circulated an image showing his face attached to an animal having sex.

In all, 56 percent of the girls and 40 percent of the boys said they had experienced at least one incident of sexual harassment during the school year.

After being harassed, half of the targeted students did nothing about it. Of the rest, some talked to parents or friends, but only 9 percent reported the incident to a teacher, guidance counselor or other adult at school, according to the survey.

Reasons for not reporting included doubts it would have any impact, fears of making the situation worse, and concerns about the staff member’s reaction.

The report comes at a time when the problem of bullying at schools is in the spotlight, in part because of several recent suicides of beleaguered students.

The AAUW report observes that sexual harassment and bullying can sometimes overlap, such as the taunting of youths who are perceived to be gay or lesbian, but it says there are important distinctions. For example, there are some state laws against bullying, but serious sexual harassment – at a level which interferes with a student’s education- is prohibited under the federal gender-equality legislation known as Title IX.

“Too often, the more comfortable term bullying is used to describe sexual harassment, obscuring the role of gender and sex in these incidents,” the report says. “Schools are likely to promote bullying prevention while ignoring or downplaying sexual harassment.”

Fatima Goss Graves, a vice president of the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, said the ultimate goal should be to deter hurtful student interactions however they are defined.

“Schools get too caught up in the label,” she said. “If it’s the sort of conduct that’s interfering with a student’s performance, it ought to be stopped.”

The survey asked students for suggestions on how to reduce sexual harassment at their schools. More than half favored systematic punishments for harassers and said there should be a mechanism for reporting harassment anonymously.

The AAUW report said all schools should create a sexual-harassment policy and make sure it is publicized and enforced. It said schools must ensure that students are educated about what their rights are under Title IX, with special attention paid to encouraging girls to respond assertively to harassment since they are targeted more often than boys.

Niobe Way, a professor of applied psychology at New York University who has studied adolescent relationships, suggested that school anti-harassment policies might have only limited impact without broader cultural changes that break down gender stereotypes.

“You have a culture that doesn’t value boys having close intimate relations and being emotional or empathetic,” she said.

Bill Bond, a former high school principal who is a school safety expert for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said there had been in shift in the nature of sexual harassment among students over recent decades.

Overt attempts to exploit a fellow student sexually have become less common, while there’s more use of sexual remarks to degrade or insult someone, he said.

“Words can cut a kid all the way to the heart,” Bond said. “And when it’s on the computers and cell phones, there’s no escape. It’s absolutely devastating and vicious to a kid.”

The survey was conducted for AAUW by Knowledge Networks, and students answered the questions online, rather than to a person, to maximize the chances that they would answer sensitive questions candidly. Households were provided with equipment and Internet access if needed.

The AAUW said the margin of error for the full sample of the survey was plus or minus 2.2 percent, with a larger margin of error for subgroups.

The survey of 72,561 teens found that American Indian youth had the highest level of drug or alcohol use, with 48 percent reporting they had used the substances in the past year. That was followed by 39 percent of whites, 37 percent of Hispanics, 36 percent mixed-race teens, 32 percent of blacks and 24 percent of Asians, according to the research published today in Archives of General Psychiatry.

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The findings that black teens are less likely to drink or use drugs than whites may refute stereotypes and help programs “focus on the subgroups of adolescents who are at greater risk,” said study author Dan Blazer, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. Overall, 37 percent, or 27,705, of the teens in the study said they used alcohol or drugs in the past year, researchers said.

“This is a very real public health problem and all of us need to be concerned about it,” said Blazer, in a Nov. 4 telephone interview. “We need to be looking for it and we need to be trying to jump in to do what we can to get these kids into treatment and turn them around while they’re still adolescents.”

About 90 percent of all adults with alcohol and drug problems started using before the age of 18 and half started before the age of 15, according to the website of the Partnership at Drugfree.org, a nonprofit that helps parents find information on drug abuse prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery for their children.

National Survey

Researchers used information from the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health from 2005 to 2008, the only survey designed to provide ongoing estimates of substance use in the U.S. The survey asks about use of alcohol and nine drug classes, including marijuana, inhalants, heroin and prescription painkillers. The study included youth ages 12 to 17.

About 37 percent of American Indian teens reported using alcohol in the past year, followed by 35 percent of whites and 32 percent of Hispanics, 31 percent of mixed race, 25 percent of blacks and 19 percent of Asians.

For drug use, about 31 percent of American Indians used in the past year, compared with 23 percent of those who considered themselves mixed race and 20 percent of whites, the research found. About 19 percent of black, 18 percent of Hispanic teens and 12 percent of Asian teens said they used drugs in the past year. Blazer said there was no way to tease out which American Indian teens by tribe were using drugs and alcohol. Use isn’t equal across all tribes, he said.

Public Perception

“What surprised us the most was the relatively lower rate of use among African Americans,” said Blazer. “The public perception is that that’s not the case.”

Prescription painkillers like Purdue Pharma LP’s OxyContin and Abbott Laboratories Vicodin have replaced inhalants as the second most commonly used drug behind marijuana, according to the study.

The research also showed that about 8 percent of teens in the study met the criteria for substance abuse disorder, which means their use escalated, caused legal problems or interfered with other activities.

Teens who used heroin were most likely to develop addiction or abuse, the research found. Marijuana use, which was used twice that of most other drugs in the study, also results in addiction or abuse.

Stopping Addiction

“Experimentation is going to happen. The interesting part of this analysis is where they looked at the people who had used a substance and then who went on to have a problem,” said Elizabeth D’Amico, a psychologist who works primarily on teen substance abuse issues and a senior behavioral scientist at Rand Corp., a policy institute in Santa Monica, California.

“Those are the teens we want to help,” said D’Amico, who was not an author on today’s paper, in a Nov. 4 telephone interview. “Really working with those kids who are already starting to use is where we can put more of our dollars.”

Blazer said more studies are needed to determine which treatments work best for kids who have drug and alcohol problems.

The study was funded by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday.

While people typically accumulate assets as they age, this wealth gap is now more than double what it was in 2005 and nearly five times the 10-to-1 disparity a quarter-century ago, after adjusting for inflation.

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The analysis reflects the impact of the economic downturn, which has hit young adults particularly hard. More are pursuing college or advanced degrees, taking on debt as they wait for the job market to recover. Others are struggling to pay mortgage costs on homes now worth less than when they were bought in the housing boom.

The report, coming out before the Nov. 23 deadline for a special congressional committee to propose $1.2 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years, casts a spotlight on a government safety net that has buoyed older Americans on Social Security and Medicare amid wider cuts to education and other programs, including cash assistance for poor families.

“It makes us wonder whether the extraordinary amount of resources we spend on retirees and their health care should be at least partially reallocated to those who are hurting worse than them,” said Harry Holzer, a labor economist and public policy professor at Georgetown University who called the magnitude of the wealth gap “striking.”

The median net worth of households headed by someone 65 or older was $170,494. That is 42 percent more than in 1984, when the Census Bureau first began measuring wealth broken down by age. The median net worth for the younger-age households was $3,662, down by 68 percent from a quarter-century ago, according to the analysis by the Pew Research Center.

Net worth includes the value of a person’s home, possessions and savings accumulated over the years, including stocks, bank accounts, real estate, cars, boats or other property, minus any debt such as mortgages, college loans and credit card bills. Older Americans tend to hold more net worth because they are more likely to have paid off their mortgages and built up more savings from salary, stocks and other investments over time. The median is the midpoint, and thus refers to a typical household.

The 47-to-1 wealth gap between old and young is believed by demographers to be the highest ever, even predating government records.

In all, 37 percent of younger-age households have a net worth of zero or less, nearly double the share in 1984. But among households headed by a person 65 or older, the percentage in that category has been largely unchanged at 8 percent.

While the wealth gap has been widening gradually due to delayed marriage and increases in single parenting among young adults, the housing bust and recession have made it significantly worse.

For young adults, the main asset is their home. Their housing wealth dropped 31 percent from 1984, the result of increased debt and falling home values. In contrast, Americans 65 or older were more likely to have bought homes long before the housing boom and thus saw a 57 percent gain in housing wealth even after the bust.

Older Americans are staying in jobs longer, while young adults now face the highest unemployment since World War II. As a result, the median income of older-age households since 1967 has grown at four times the rate of those headed by the under-35 age group.

Social Security benefits account for 55 percent of the annual income for older-age households, unchanged since 1984. The retirement benefits, which are indexed for inflation, have been a consistent source of income even as safety-net benefits for other groups such as low-income students have failed to keep up with rising costs or begun to fray. The congressional supercommittee that is proposing budget cuts has been reviewing whether to trim college aid programs, such as by restricting eligibility or charging students interest on loans while they are still in school.

Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty, noted skyrocketing college tuition costs, which come as many strapped state governments cut support for public universities. Federal spending on Pell Grants to low-income students has risen somewhat, but covers a diminishing share of the actual cost of attending college.

“The elderly have a comprehensive safety net that most adults, especially young adults, lack,” Danziger said.

Paul Taylor, director of Pew Social & Demographic Trends and co-author of the analysis, said the report shows that today’s young adults are starting out in life in a very tough economic position. “If this pattern continues, it will call into question one of the most basic tenets of the American Dream – the idea that each generation does better than the one that came before,” he said.

Other findings:

-Households headed by someone under age 35 had their median net worth reduced by 27 percent in 2009 as a result of unsecured liabilities, mostly a combination of credit card debt and student loans. No other age group had anywhere near that level of unsecured liability acting as a drag on net worth; the next closest was the 35-44 age group, at 10 percent.

-Wealth inequality is increasing within all age groups. Among the younger-age households, those living in debt have grown the fastest while the share of households with net worth of at least $250,000 edged up slightly to 2 percent. Among the older-age households, the share of households worth at least $250,000 rose to 20 percent from 8 percent in 1984; those living in debt were largely unchanged at 8 percent.

On Monday, the Census Bureau planned to release new 2010 figures that will show a big increase in poverty for Americans 65 or older due to rising out-of-pocket medical expenses. Currently, about 9 percent of older Americans fall below the poverty line, based on the official definition put out in September, but that number did not factor in everyday costs such as health care and commuting.

The new supplemental figures will show poverty to be higher than previously known for several groups, although they may not fully reflect longer-term changes. For instance, a recent working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that U.S. spending on the safety net from 1984 to 2004 shifted notably toward programs benefiting the near-poor rather than the extreme poor and to the elderly rather than younger adults. That trend, which has continued since 2004, has led to faster increases in poverty over time for some of the underserved groups.

Robert Moffitt, a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University and co-author the paper, cited a series of cuts in government programs since 1984 for the neediest, including welfare payments to single parents and the unemployed under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, while Social Security and Medicare have either been expanded or remained constant.

“Over time, even under a revised poverty measure, the elderly have done better,” he said.

Allred’s client – whom she did not identify – would be the first woman to go public with accusations that Cain has engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior, and the fourth to allege misconduct.

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Cain has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has called the accusations a “smear campaign” in the week since the disclosure that two women reportedly received financial settlements from the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s after accusing Cain, who led the group at the time, of sexually inappropriate behavior while they were employed there.

A third woman told The Associated Press last week that she considered filing a workplace complaint against Cain over what she deemed sexually suggestive remarks and gestures that included a private invitation to his corporate apartment.

A former pollster for the restaurant association has said he witnessed yet another episode involving a fourth woman. It was unclear whether that woman is Allred’s client.

The allegations have rocked Cain’s unorthodox presidential campaign just as he was riding high in public opinion polls two months before the leadoff Iowa presidential caucuses.

As the new accuser surfaced, Cain was in California for what his campaign said were private events and an appearance on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” as he works to stem the fallout of the string of allegations.

In response, Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon assailed Allred, calling her a major donor to Democrats who typically engages in self-promotion. He said the campaign would have more to say on the allegations later Monday.

Last week, Gordon predicted that Cain “could see other baseless allegations made against him as this appalling smear campaign continues.”

Federal Election Commission reports show that Allred gave $1,000 to Hillary Rodham Clinton and $2,300 to Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Allred has represented several high-profile clients, including Amber Frey, a witness against convicted California killer Scott Peterson. Allred also represented a woman whom news reports accused of having an affair with golfer Tiger Woods.

“I consider sexual harassment the No. 1 problem in the workplace,” Allred told the AP in an interview last week. “It denies equal opportunity in the workforce. If (women) don’t protest it, they’ll have to continue to suffer.”

Even then, he said he wasn’t retiring. Writers never retire. But his life after the end of “A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney” was short: He died Friday night, according to CBS, only a month after delivering his 1,097th and final televised commentary.

Rooney had gone to the hospital for an undisclosed surgery, but major complications developed and he never recovered.

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“Andy always said he wanted to work until the day he died, and he managed to do it, save the last few weeks in the hospital,” said his “60 Minutes” colleague, correspondent Steve Kroft.

Rooney talked on “60 Minutes” about what was in the news, and his opinions occasionally got him in trouble. But he was just as likely to discuss the old clothes in his closet, why air travel had become unpleasant and why banks needed to have important-sounding names.

Rooney won one of his four Emmy Awards for a piece on whether there was a real Mrs. Smith who made Mrs. Smith’s Pies. As it turned out, there was no Mrs. Smith.

“I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn’t realize they thought,” Rooney once said. “And they say, `Hey, yeah!’ And they like that.”

Looking for something new to punctuate its weekly broadcast, “60 Minutes” aired its first Rooney commentary on July 2, 1978. He complained about people who keep track of how many people die in car accidents on holiday weekends. In fact, he said, the Fourth of July is “one of the safest weekends of the year to be going someplace.”

More than three decades later, he was railing about how unpleasant air travel had become. “Let’s make a statement to the airlines just to get their attention,” he said. “We’ll pick a week next year and we’ll all agree not to go anywhere for seven days.”

In early 2009, as he was about to turn 90, Rooney looked ahead to President Barack Obama’s upcoming inauguration with a look at past inaugurations. He told viewers that Calvin Coolidge’s 1925 swearing-in was the first to be broadcast on radio, adding, “That may have been the most interesting thing Coolidge ever did.”

“Words cannot adequately express Andy’s contribution to the world of journalism and the impact he made – as a colleague and a friend – upon everybody at CBS,” said Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp. president and CEO.

Jeff Fager, CBS News chairman and “60 Minutes” executive producer, said “it’s hard to imagine not having Andy around. He loved his life and he lived it on his own terms. We will miss him very much.”

For his final essay, Rooney said that he’d live a life luckier than most.

“I wish I could do this forever. I can’t, though,” he said.

He said he probably hadn’t said anything on “60 Minutes” that most of his viewers didn’t already know or hadn’t thought. “That’s what a writer does,” he said. “A writer’s job is to tell the truth.”

True to his occasional crotchety nature, though, he complained about being famous or bothered by fans. His last wish from fans: If you see him in a restaurant, just let him eat his dinner.

Rooney was a freelance writer in 1949 when he encountered CBS radio star Arthur Godfrey in an elevator and – with the bluntness millions of people learned about later – told him his show could use better writing. Godfrey hired him and by 1953, when he moved to TV, Rooney was his only writer.

He wrote for CBS’ Garry Moore during the early 1960s before settling into a partnership with Harry Reasoner at CBS News. Given a challenge to write on any topic, he wrote “An Essay on Doors” in 1964, and continued with contemplations on bridges, chairs and women.

“The best work I ever did,” Rooney said. “But nobody knows I can do it or ever did it. Nobody knows that I’m a writer and producer. They think I’m this guy on television.”

He became such a part of the culture that comic Joe Piscopo satirized Rooney’s squeaky voice with the refrain, “Did you ever wonder …” Rooney never started any of his essays that way. For many years, “60 Minutes” improbably was the most popular program on television and a dose of Rooney was what people came to expect for a knowing smile on the night before they had to go back to work.

Rooney left CBS in 1970 when it refused to air his angry essay about the Vietnam War. He went on TV for the first time, reading the essay on PBS and winning a Writers Guild of America award for it.

He returned to CBS three years later as a writer and producer of specials. Notable among them was the 1975 “Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington,” whose lighthearted but serious look at government won him a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting.

His words sometimes landed Rooney in hot water. CBS suspended him for three months in 1990 for making racist remarks in an interview, which he denied. Rooney, who was arrested in Florida while in the Army in the 1940s for refusing to leave a seat among blacks on a bus, was hurt deeply by the charge of racism.

Gay rights groups were mad, during the AIDS epidemic, when Rooney mentioned homosexual unions in saying “many of the ills which kill us are self-induced.” Indians protested when Rooney suggested Native Americans who made money from casinos weren’t doing enough to help their own people.

The Associated Press learned the danger of getting on Rooney’s cranky side. In 1996, AP Television Writer Frazier Moore wrote a column suggesting it was time for Rooney to retire. On Rooney’s next “60 Minutes” appearance, he invited those who disagreed to make their opinions known. The AP switchboard was flooded by some 7,000 phone calls and countless postcards were sent to the AP mail room.

“Your piece made me mad,” Rooney told Moore two years later. “One of my major shortcomings – I’m vindictive. I don’t know why that is. Even in petty things in my life I tend to strike back. It’s a lot more pleasurable a sensation than feeling threatened.”He was one of television’s few voices to strongly oppose the war in Iraq after the George W. Bush administration launched it in 2002. After the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, he said he was chastened by its quick fall but didn’t regret his “60 Minutes” commentaries.

“I’m in a position of feeling secure enough so that I can say what I think is right and if so many people think it’s wrong that I get fired, well, I’ve got enough to eat,” Rooney said at the time.

Andrew Aitken Rooney was born on Jan. 14, 1919, in Albany, N.Y., and worked as a copy boy on the Albany Knickerbocker News while in high school. College at Colgate University was cut short by World War II, when Rooney worked for Stars and Stripes.

With another former Stars and Stripes staffer, Oram C. Hutton, Rooney wrote four books about the war. They included the 1947 book, “Their Conqueror’s Peace: A Report to the American Stockholders,” documenting offenses against the Germans by occupying forces.

Rooney and his wife, Marguerite, were married for 62 years before she died of heart failure in 2004. They had four children and lived in New York, with homes in Rowayton, Conn., and upstate New York. Daughter Emily Rooney is a former executive producer of ABC’s “World News Tonight.” Brian was a longtime ABC News correspondent, Ellen a photographer and Martha Fishel is chief of the public service division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Services will be private, and it’s anticipated CBS News will hold a public memorial later, Brian Rooney said Saturday.

Their discussions behind closed doors in a downtown Los Angeles courthouse could lead to the conviction or acquittal of Dr. Conrad Murray, whom the panel has heard described alternately as an inept and opportunistic physician or a naive outsider granted access into Jackson’s inner realm.

The seven-man, five-woman panel got the case Thursday after spirited, day-long closing arguments by a prosecutor and defense attorney.

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A defense attorney for the doctor charged in Michael Jackson’s death told jurors Thursday the singer caused his own death with an overdose of an anesthetic and his physician shouldn’t be convicted of killing the King of Pop.

“If it was anybody else, would this doctor be here today?” defense attorney Ed Chernoff asked during his closing argument at the involuntary manslaughter trial of Dr. Conrad Murray.

Chernoff said prosecutors hadn’t proven that Murray committed a crime by giving Jackson doses of the anesthetic propofol as a sleep aid in the singer’s bedroom.

“They want you to convict Dr. Murray for the actions of Michael Jackson,” Chernoff said.

He urged the jury to closely consider Murray’s lengthy interview with police and said his words show he didn’t give Jackson the deadly dose.

Earlier, during his closing argument, Deputy District Attorney David Walgren projected images of Jackson’s grief-stricken children on a giant screen and told jurors that Murray took away their father.

With Jackson’s mother and siblings watching from the courtroom gallery, Walgren showed a photo of Jackson at his last rehearsal before the picture of the three Jackson children — Prince, Paris and Blanket — at their father’s memorial.

He also reminded jurors of the scene in Jackson’s bedroom when Paris came upon Murray frantically trying to revive her lifeless father and screamed, “Daddy!”

“For Michael Jackson’s children this case goes on forever because they do not have a father,” Walgren said. “They do not have a father because of the actions of Conrad Murray.”

The prosecutor repeatedly called Murray’s treatment of Jackson bizarre and said there was no precedent for the cardiologist giving the singer the powerful anesthetic to help him sleep.

Still, Jackson trusted him and that eventually cost the singer his life, Walgren said.

“Conrad Murray looked out for himself and himself alone,” the prosecutor said.

Murray has pleaded not guilty, with his lawyers arguing that Jackson injected the fatal dose when Murray left the singer’s bedroom on June 25, 2009.

Earlier, Walgren, in a carefully structured argument enhanced by video excerpts of witness testimony, spoke of the special relationship between a doctor and patient and said Murray had corrupted it in the treatment of his famous client.

Murray violated his medical oath to do no harm and “acted so recklessly that it caused the death of Michael Jackson,” the prosecutor said.

Walgren portrayed Murray as a greedy opportunist who was more concerned with earning $150,000 a month as Jackson’s personal physician and traveling to London for his “This Is It” concert than with the welfare of his patient.

He cited evidence showing Murray did not call 911 after finding Jackson unresponsive. Instead he called Jackson’s personal assistant, a decision the prosecutor said was just one of the doctor’s bizarre actions on the day the singer died.

He suggested Murray delayed the call until he could hide medical equipment and bottles that might incriminate him.

“He’s putting Conrad Murray first. He’s intentionally not calling 911. He’s intentionally delaying help that could have saved Michael Jackson’s life,” Walgren said.

“What on Earth could motivate a medical doctor to delay making that all-important call?” he asked. “Self-preservation.”

Evan after paramedics arrived, the doctor made no mention of giving Jackson propofol because of “a consciousness of guilt,” Walgren said.

He ridiculed the defense theory that Jackson injected himself with the fatal dose of propofol and denounced the testimony of defense expert Paul White who blamed Jackson for his own death.

“What you were presented by Dr. White was junk science. It was garbage science,” Walgren said.

Chernoff countered that Dr. Steven Shafer, a propofol expert who testified that evidence showed Murray killed Jackson, was wrong and overstepped his role as a scientist by becoming an advocate for Murray’s conviction.

He said Shafer ignored Murray’s statement to police in which the physician said he gave the singer a small dose of propofol and left the room after the drug should have worn off.

“It doesn’t matter, Dr. Murray did not kill Michael Jackson,” Chernoff said.

The prosecutor played statements of several doctors who testified that they would never have agreed to give Jackson propofol for insomnia in a private home.

“The setting represents an extreme violation of the standard of care,” Walgren said. “No one ever did it until it was done to Michael Jackson. It is gross negligence and it is a cause of Michael Jackson’s death.”

At one point, Walgren suggested Murray was conducting “an obscene experiment” on Jackson.

With only Jackson and Murray present in the singer’s room on the day he died, there will be things that are never be known about his death, Walgren said. But he said it was clear that Murray, untrained in anesthesiology, was incompetent.

“Conrad Murray is criminally liable,” he said. “Justice demands a guilty verdict.”

Supporters of the failed measure said it would have created tens of thousands of construction jobs and lifted the still-struggling economy. But Republicans unanimously opposed it for its tax surcharge on the wealthy and spending totals they said were too high.

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The 51-49 vote fell well short of the 60 votes required under Senate procedures to start work on the bill. Every Republican opposed the president, as did Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska and former Democrat Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who still aligns with the party.

Obama’s loss was anything but a surprise, but the White House and its Democratic allies continue to press popular ideas from Obama’s poll-tested jobs package in what Republicans say is nothing more than a bare-knuckle attempt to gain a political edge by invoking the mantra of jobs but doing little to seek compromise.

“The truth is, Democrats are more interested in building a campaign message than in rebuilding roads and bridges,” said Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “And frankly, the American people deserve a lot better than that.”

“Their goal is to do everything they can to drag down this economy, to do anything they can to focus attention negatively on the President of the United States in hopes that he can get my job, perhaps, and that President Obama will be defeated,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said. “So let’s not talk about campaign speeches here on the Senate floor. Let’s talk about reality.”

After Republicans blocked Obama’s infrastructure plan, the president’s Democratic allies immediately killed a competing GOP infrastructure plan that would have extended existing highway and transit spending programs and paid for the spending with a $40 billion cut in unspent funding for other domestic programs. The White House opposed the measure over its spending cuts and provisions that would block recent clean air rules and make it harder for the administration to issue new rules.

Obama unveiled his $447 billion jobs plan in September and has launched a campaign-style effort – featuring multiple rallies in states crucial to his re-election bid – to try to get it passed. In votes last month, Republicans blocked the entire $447 billion jobs package and a subsequent attempt by Democrats to pass a $35 billion piece of it aimed at preventing layoffs of teachers and firefighters.

Another political flash point is the way Democrats have sought to pay for Obama’s jobs measures – a surcharge on income exceeding $1 million. The idea enjoys wide backing in opinion polls but is stoutly opposed by Republicans, who say it would hit small business owners and therefore threaten job growth.

With the demise of Thursday’s measure, an announcement could come as early as Friday on what’s the next piece of Obama’s jobs agenda to break out for a stand-alone vote. Democratic aides say the next measure would be legislation to provide a $4,800 tax credit for hiring an unemployed veteran and increasing the tax credit for hiring a veteran with a service-related disability to up to $9,600.

Republicans back the idea of the veterans hiring tax credit.

Thursday’s legislation would have provided an immediate $50 billion investment in roads, bridges, airports and transit systems. It also called for a $10 billion bank to leverage private and public capital for longer-term infrastructure projects.

The measure would be financed by a 0.7 percent surcharge on income over $1 million.

After Obama’s full $447 billion jobs bill was filibustered to death last month, the White House immediately announced it would seek votes on component pieces. That’s a way to exert political pressure on Republicans sensitive about their own jobs agenda, which so far has centered on relaxing regulations and boosting offshore oil exploration and drilling.

Obama last week uncorked a “We Can’t Wait” initiative that relies on executive authority rather than legislation from a bitterly divided Congress to help homeowners refinance “underwater” homes and give borrowers relief from their student loans.

Meanwhile, House GOP leaders are casting blame on the Senate for failing to act on 15 “forgotten” jobs bills, including a measure to repeal a law requiring federal, state and many local governments to withhold 3 percent of their payments to contractors until their taxes are paid.

Also Thursday, the House is poised to approve bipartisan legislation to remove a Securities and Exchange Commission ban that prevents small, privately held companies from using advertisements to solicit investors. The SEC ban, says bill sponsor Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., unfairly limits the ability of small companies to raise capital.

“While the president is out doing campaign events all over the country, what he could do is to actually come to Washington and be focused on trying to help pass bills that would create a better environment for job creation and help put the American people back to work,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said.

*Check Out The 30 Companies In Chart Below*

Thirty large and profitable U.S. corporations paid no income taxes in 2008 through 2010, said a study on Thursday that arrives as Congress faces rising demands for tax reform but seems unable or unwilling to act.

Pepco Holdings Inc, a Washington, D.C.-area power company, had the lowest effective tax rate, at negative 57.6 percent, among the 280 Fortune 500 companies studied.

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The statutory U.S. corporate income tax rate is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world; but over the 2008-2010 period, very few of the companies studied paid it, said the report.The average effective tax rate for the companies over the period was 18.5 percent, said Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, both think tanks.

Their report also listed General Electric Co, Paccar Inc, PG&E Corp, Computer Sciences Corp, Boeing Co and NiSource Inc as among the 30 that paid no taxes.

Corporations will say rightly that the loopholes that let them slash their taxes were perfectly legal, the report said.

“But that does not mean that low-tax corporations bear no responsibility … The laws were not enacted in a vacuum; they were adopted in response to relentless corporate lobbying, threats and campaign support,” the report said.

Some of the 30 companies disputed the report’s findings.

A Pepco spokesman said it “pays all its required taxes.”

Boeing paid its taxes “between 2008-2010 … Our effective income tax rate was 26.5 percent, 22.9 percent, 33.6 percent in 2010, 2009, 2008,” said a spokesman for the aerospace group.

PRESSING FOR MORE

As Congress and the Obama administration struggle with a sluggish economy and high deficits, corporations are pressing Capitol Hill for more tax breaks and a lower corporate rate.

Taxes are on the agenda of the congressional “super committee” tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in additional budget savings by November 23, but it is so far deadlocked across a familiar divide — Republicans refusing any tax increases, Democrats defending social programs.

On Tuesday, a panel of budget experts warned super committee members they would fail the country if they did not meet their goal. Financial markets have been waiting for many months for signs that Washington can get its financial house in order, but few have been forthcoming.

The report referred back to the 1986 tax reform pushed through by President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, who approved the largest corporate tax increase in U.S. history, largely by ending tax breaks, while cutting individual tax rates.

“Reagan solved the problem by sweeping away corporate tax loopholes,” said the report, which was coauthored by Citizens for Tax Justice chief Robert McIntyre. His research 25 years ago played a key role in convincing Reagan reform was needed.

The industrial machinery business enjoyed the lowest effective tax rate during the study period, while the highest rate was paid by healthcare companies, the report said.

“Big Business is getting away with taxation murder,” said Frank Knapp, vice chairman of the American Sustainable Business Council, a progressive business coalition.

“They pay little or no taxes on massive U.S. profits and then have the gall to lobby for … a tax holiday to ‘repatriate’ profits they have stashed offshore.”

MANY TAX BREAKS

What are some of the tax breaks that corporations enjoy? One big one is accelerated depreciation that lets them write off equipment faster than it actually wears out. Deductions on executive stock options help. So do tax breaks for research and development and for making products in the United States instead of overseas. Offshore tax shelters play a role, too.

Power group Duke Energy Corp was one of the 30 companies listed as paying no income taxes in 2008-2010.

Chief Executive James Rogers told Reuters that Duke cut its taxes thanks to accelerated depreciation, which he said helped the company build new plants and hire construction workers.

Rogers is a frequent spokesman for a coalition of large multinationals seeking a tax break that would let them bring foreign profits into the United States at a reduced tax rate.

Others among the 30 companies included power producer American Electric Power Co Inc (AEP), chemicals company DuPont and toymaker Mattel Inc.

Like Duke, AEP said it benefited from accelerated depreciation. A Mattel spokesperson said the report’s claims were inconsistent with the company’s public financial filings.

“DuPont complies with all tax laws and regulations in every jurisdiction in which it operates,” said a DuPont spokeswoman.

The average effective corporate tax rate, as calculated by McIntyre’s group, was about 14 percent before the Reagan reforms; afterward it shot up to 26.5 percent in 1988.

As companies found their way around the reforms, the effective rate fell back to about 17 percent by 2002-2003.

Unlike in Reagan’s time, taming corporate tax breaks alone will not solve the deficit problem. Such breaks cost the government about $102 billion in lost revenues in 2011, a year when the federal deficit was an estimated $1.3 trillion.

Corporate loopholes are dwarfed by tax breaks that benefit individuals, such as the mortgage interest tax deduction — a middle class sacred cow, on its own worth $104 billion.

Still, said the report: “If we are going to get our nation’s fiscal house in order, increasing corporate income taxes should play an important role.”

Following is a look at the criminal charge against Dr. Murray and possible outcomes of his trial.

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* Dr. Conrad Murray, 58, is a Grenada born, Nevada-based cardiologist who was hired as Jackson’s personal physician while the singer rehearsed for a series of planned comeback concerts in London.

* Murray has pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter, which is defined as unintentional killing without malice. In California law, it is a charge of gross negligence in the medical care and treatment of Jackson.

* Under California law, the jury has to return a unanimous verdict to convict or acquit Murray. A split decision would mean the judge declares a mistrial, leaving the prosecution to decide whether to retry the defendant.

* In order to convict Murray, the jury must find that his care of Jackson was criminally negligent by giving the singer the powerful anesthetic propofol in a home setting as a sleep aid, failing to monitor him properly with the necessary equipment or bungling attempts to revive him.

* The judge will instruct the jury that Murray could be found responsible for Jackson’s death even if the jury believed the singer injected himself with propofol, if that possibility was foreseeable.

* Murray faces a maximum four year sentence if convicted, with the exact sentence to be decided by the trial judge at a later date. But due to a new California law, thousands of nonviolent felons are being sent to county jails instead of state prisons. Because of overcrowding and budget constraints, such offenders are subject to early release or house arrest. According to some estimates, Murray could end up serving less than half the amount of any sentence.

* Whatever the verdict in the criminal case, Murray is involved in two pending civil lawsuits for the wrongful death of Jackson. One was filed by the singer’s father Joe Jackson against Murray, and the other by his mother Katherine Jackson targeting concert promoter AEG Live and saying the company was ultimately responsible for Murray’s decisions.

* Murray’s license to practice medicine in California was suspended by the trial judge as a condition of his bail. He retains medical licenses in Texas and Nevada. The California Medical Board says a criminal conviction does not result in automatic termination of a medical license and the board would need to investigate on its own before making any decision.

“We go from having a peaceful movement to now just chaos,” said protester Monique Agnew, 40.

The far-flung movement of protesters challenging the world’s economic systems and distribution of wealth has gained momentum in recent weeks, capturing the world’s attention by shutting down one of the nation’s busiest shipping ports toward the end of a daylong “general strike” that prompted solidarity rallies across the U.S.

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About 3,000 people converged on the Port of Oakland, the nation’s fifth-busiest harbor, in a nearly five-hour protest Wednesday, swarming the area and blocking exits and streets with illegally parked vehicles and hastily-erected, chain-link fences.

Port officials said they were forced to cease maritime operations, citing concerns for workers’ safety. They said in a statement they hope to resume operations Thursday “and that Port workers will be allowed to get to their jobs without incident. Continued missed shifts represent economic hardship for maritime workers, truckers, and their families, as well as lost jobs and lost tax revenue for our region.”

Supporters in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and elsewhere staged smaller-scale demonstrations; each group saying its protest was a show of support for the Oakland movement, which became a rallying point when an Iraq War veteran was seriously injured in a clash with police last week.

The larger Occupy movement has yet to coalesce into an organized association and until the port shut down had largely been limited scattershot marches, rallies and tent encampments since it began in September.

Organizers in Oakland had viewed the day as a significant victory. Police said that about 7,000 people participated in demonstrations throughout the day that were peaceful except for a few incidents of vandalism.

One of the protest leaders, Boots Riley, touted the day as a success, saying “we put together an ideological principle that the mainstream media wouldn’t talk about two months ago.”

His comments came before a group of demonstrators moved to break into the Travelers Aid building in order to, as some shouting protesters put it, “reclaim the building for the people.”

Riley, whose anti-capitalist views are well-documented, considered the port shut down particularly significant for organizers who targeted it in an effort to stop the “flow of capital.” The port sends goods primarily to Asia, including wine as well as rice, fruits and nuts, and handles imported electronics, apparel and manufacturing equipment, mostly from Asia, as well as cars and parts from Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai. An accounting of the financial toll from the shutdown was not immediately available.

The potential for the chaos that ultimately erupted was not something Riley wanted to even consider.

“If they do that after all this …” He paused, then added, “They’re smarter than that.”

But the peace that abided throughout the day, did not last into the night.

Occupy protesters voicing anger over a budget trim that forced the closure of a homeless aid program converged on the empty building where it had been housed. They blocked off city streets with Dumpsters and other large trash bins, starting bonfires that leapt 15-feet in the air.

City officials released a statement describing the spasm of unrest.

“Oakland Police responded to a late night call that protesters had broken into and occupied a downtown building and set several simultaneous fires,” the statement read. “The protesters began hurling rocks, explosives, bottles, and flaming objects at responding officers. Several private and municipal buildings sustained heavy vandalism. Dozens of protesters wielding shields were surrounded and arrested.”

Protesters reported running from several rounds of tear gas and bright flashes and deafening pops that some thought were caused by “flash bang” grenades. Fire crews arrived and suppressed the flames.

Meanwhile, protesters and police faced off for the rest of the night in an uneasy standoff.

In Philadelphia, protesters were arrested earlier Wednesday as they held a sit-in at the headquarters of cable giant Comcast

In New York, about 100 military veterans marched in uniform and stopped in front of the New York Stock Exchange, standing in loose formation as police officers on scooters separated them from the entrance. On the other side was a lineup of NYPD horses carrying officers with nightsticks.

“We are marching to express support for our brother, (Iraq war veteran) Scott Olsen, who was injured in Oakland,” said Jerry Bordeleau, a former Army specialist who served in Iraq through 2009.

The veterans were also angry that returned from war to find few job prospects.

“Wall Street corporations have played a big role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Bordeleau, now a college student. He said private contractors have reaped big profits in those countries.

In Boston, college students and union workers marched on Bank of America offices, the Harvard Club and the Statehouse to protest the nation’s burgeoning student debt crisis.

They say total outstanding student loans exceed credit card debt, increase by $1 million every six minutes and will reach $1 trillion this year, potentially undermining the economy.

“There are so many students that are trying to get jobs and go on with their lives,” said Sarvenaz Asasy of Boston, who joined the march after recently graduating with a master’s degree and $60,000 in loan debt. “They’ve educated themselves and there are no jobs and we’re paying tons of student loans. For what?”

And among the other protests in Oakland, parents and their kids, some in strollers, joined in by forming a “children’s brigade.”

“There’s absolutely something wrong with the system,” said Jessica Medina, a single mother who attends school part time and works at an Oakland cafe. “We need to change that.”

Even God wants to see the unemployed put back to work, he said.

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Obama said the nation’s aging transportation network costs U.S. businesses and families about $130 billion a year. Failing to upgrade the network could cost the U.S. hundreds of billions dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs by the end of the decade, he said.

The Senate planned to vote Thursday on whether to take up the measure — $50 billion for road, bridge and other repairs and $10 billion to attract private money to help finance such projects.

Like his jobs proposals, this piece is expected to be unanimously opposed by Republicans and a few Democrats who object to any new spending and to the president’s plan for a new tax on the wealthy to help pay for it.

Obama said the public is on his side and that lawmakers will have to answer to their constituents if they don’t pass it.

“There’s no good reason to oppose this bill. Not one,” he said at the foot of the Key Bridge, which connects the District of Columbia and Arlington, Va.

The government has identified the bridge as in need of the type of crucial repair and maintenance that Obama says his bill would help finance.

“Members of Congress who do, who vote no, are going to have to explain why to their constituencies,” Obama said. “The American people are with me with this. And it’s time for folks running around spending all their time talking about what’s wrong with America to spend some time rolling up their sleeves to help us make it right.”

He also tried to shame the Republican-controlled House by accusing its leaders of wasting time during a jobs crisis with debates over commemorative baseball coins and reaffirming “In God We Trust” as the country’s motto. The House has refused to consider Obama’s jobs bill.

“That’s not putting people back to work,” Obama said. “I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work. There’s work to be done. There are workers ready to do it. The American people are behind this.”

Obama said the spending on transportation would help get some of the more than 1 million unemployed construction workers back on the job.

A House Republican aide said not even 20 minutes were devoted to the baseball coins and U.S. motto. The aide also noted that more than a dozen House-passed bills to create jobs by reducing regulations and altering tax laws are awaiting action in the Democratic-led Senate.

Republicans also scoff at Obama’s constant calls for his jobs measures to be passed “right now.” In the case of the transportation bill, a recent Congressional Budget Office report determined that more of the $50 billion would be spent in 2017 than in the current budget year.

Obama singled out House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, as well as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the GOP’s point person on the budget.

In one example, he said, “I can’t imagine that Speaker Boehner wants to represent a state where nearly 1 in 4 bridges is classified as substandard. I’m sure that the speaker of the House would want to have bridges and roads in his state that are up to par.”

After the Senate blocked Obama’s larger $447 billion jobs bill last month, the White House announced that it would seek individual votes on the measure’s parts. That helps exert political pressure on Republicans sensitive about their own jobs agenda, which so far has centered on relaxing regulations and on undoing a new rule that requires the government to withhold 3 percent of payments to federal contractors.

Obama and his Democratic allies believe they have a winning issue in repeatedly pressing popular ideas, such as spending on road and bridge repair and to help states and local communities keep teachers and emergency services workers on the job.

Last month, Obama began a new effort to portray himself as acting on the jobs front while lawmakers do nothing. He has announced a series of steps he’s taken, which do not require congressional approval, that are intended to help homeowners, college students with federal loans, veterans, small businesses and others.

Tito and Rebbie Jackson said Tuesday the family was aware of Michael’s drug problem.

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Tito Jackson says his late brother’s security team acted as if he was the U.S. president and kept his family away. He says he got into physical fights with security personnel and was sometimes barred from his brother’s gated property.

The two Jacksons are in London to promote Wednesday’s premiere of a documentary about his life.

Their mother Katherine Jackson canceled her trip to London to attend the final days of the Los Angeles trial of Dr. Conrad Murray, accused of manslaughter in the pop star’s death.

The Labor Department says unemployment rates fell in 280 large metro areas from August to September. They rose in 61 and were unchanged in 31. That’s the most number of cities to see a decline since April.

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Nationwide, employers added a net 103,000 jobs in September. And the unemployment rate was 9.1 percent for the third straight month.

Unlike national and state data, metro unemployment figures aren’t adjusted for seasonal changes. Many of the areas with the sharpest drops in unemployment were cities with large universities. They likely added jobs at the start of the academic year.

U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen said in his opinion that the attorney representing Tamara Greene’s three children failed to prove the city or Kilpatrick interfered with the probe into her slaying.

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Greene, who performed under the name Strawberry, was rumored to have danced in 2002 at a never-proven party at the mayor’s official Manoogian Mansion residence. She was shot multiple times in April 2003 while sitting with a male acquaintance in a car outside her Detroit home. The man was wounded but survived.

Rosen agreed with lawyers for the city and Kilpatrick that there was “no evidentiary basis” for a legal finding that Kilpatrick obstructed or interfered with the investigation into the murder.

Kilpatrick resigned as mayor in 2008 after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice in state court. He served time in a county jail but later spent 14 months in state prison for violating his probation in the earlier case. He was paroled Aug. 2, but faces a federal corruption trial in 2012 on fraud, tax and racketeering conspiracy charges.

Rosen said lawyers for Greene’s family seem to believe that Kilpatrick must have interfered with the murder investigation because he regularly meddled with top police brass when he was mayor. But the judge said past wrongs don’t necessarily fit new cases.

Rosen said there is a “dearth of evidence” connecting Kilpatrick or any of his allies to any interference with the homicide investigation.

Kilpatrick repeatedly has denied interfering with Greene case and that there ever was a party.

“For what it is worth, it seems unlikely that it will ever be established with any degree of certainty whether this rumored party, or something like it, actually took place,” Rosen wrote. “The witness accounts produced by plaintiffs lack specificity, rest to some extent on inadmissible hearsay, and contradict one another in various respects.”

“On the other hand, it seems fairly well documented at this point that Defendant Kilpatrick kept an active social calendar during his days as mayor of Detroit. Nonetheless, whether this particular party occurred at this particular locale at this particular time is likely to remain an unsolved mystery.”

The court gave the Greene family’s attorney, Norman Yatooma, every opportunity to prove his case, said James Thomas, Kilpatrick’s attorney.

“There was not one bit of evidence, after 41 depositions and tens of thousands of pages of discovery,” Thomas said. “There clearly are no facts, and as a result, all these years of speculation, all these years of wondering now come to the culmination that … the decision is there is no case.

“We’re happy that, at least at this stage that it’s over.”

John Schapka, supervising assistant corporation counsel for the city, also said Yatooma lacked evidence to support his claim that Kilpatrick, his aides and others interfered with the Greene probe.

Yatooma, who was on vacation when Rosen released his ruling, said he already is working on an appeal.

“I’m shocked. I’m disappointed. I don’t understand it,” he said. “We weren’t there asking the judge for a check. My young clients lost their mom. Let them go before a jury of other moms and dads and let them decide.”

Occupy Oakland participants, elected officials and business leaders expressed optimism that the widely anticipated “general strike” would be a peaceful and even unifying event for a city that last week became a rallying point after police used tear gas to clear an encampment outside City Hall and then clashed with protesters in the street.

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“We are expecting the marches and demonstrations to remain peaceful, and the police department’s and the city’s role is to facilitate that process,” city spokesman Karen Boyd said. “We have done that many times in the past. We’ve seen many, many instances of peaceful protests, peaceful expressions.”

Along with protesting financial institutions that many within the broader Occupy Wall Street movement blame for high unemployment and the foreclosure crisis, supporters of the Oakland events are convening around grievances such as local school closures, waning union benefits and cuts to social services.

Demonstrators in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia said they planned to hold solidarity actions Wednesday.

The day’s events in Oakland are expected to begin at 9 a.m., when the first of three rallies scheduled by strike organizers is supposed to kick off downtown. The activities are expected to culminate with a march to the Port of Oakland, where local protesters said the goal would be to stop work there in time for the 7 p.m. evening shift.

In between, other demonstrators, some affiliated with established community groups, said they planned to target banks that do not close for the day, convene a dancing flash mob, sponsor music and street parties, march with elderly residents and people with disabilities to the California state office building, hold youth teach-ins and takeover foreclosed homes and vacant city buildings.

Because of the activities’ free-flowing and therefore unpredictable nature, city leaders said they had no idea how many people would take part or how much a disruption they could pose to residents’ and workers’ daily routines. Boyd said the government “will be open for business as usual” and was encouraging businesses to do the same.

But the president of the police officers’ union said he was worried officers were being scapegoated by Mayor Jean Quan and “set to fail” if Wednesday’s actions got unruly. “We’re going to be seen as the establishment, and it’s not fair to the police, it’s not fair to anyone,” Oakland Police Officer’s Association President Sgt. Dom Arotzarena told The Associated Press.

On Oct. 25, police acting at the request of the city’s administrator, who reports to the mayor, were asked to clear the protesters’ camp site during an early morning raid. A confrontation with marchers protesting the raid followed that night, and an Iraq War veteran suffered a fractured skull and brain injury when officers moved in with tear gas, flash grenades and bean bag projectiles.

Quan allowed protesters to reclaim the plaza outside City Hall the next day. At least six dozen tents and a kitchen buzzing with donated food have been erected on the spot since then, while the crackdown has galvanized anti-Wall Street events elsewhere and made politicians in other cities think again about interfering with their local encampments.

Occupy LA, a month-long 475-tent encampment around Los Angeles City Hall, is planning a 5:30 p.m. march and rally through downtown LA’s financial district to express solidarity with the Oakland general strike and to protest police brutality.

“It was obvious to the entire world that the acts perpetrated against Oakland occupation were acts of police brutality,” said Julia Wallace, spokeswoman for the Committee to End Police Brutality at Occupy LA.

In San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday passed a resolution calling on Mayor Ed Lee to allow the Occupy Wall Street protestors to remain in a tent city near the historic ferry terminal, an area frequented by commuters and tourists.

“We need to have a government that is truly accountable to the 99 percent, so I wholeheartedly support the movement,” said Supervisor John Avalos, who drafted the nonbinding resolution that also calls on city police to avoid clashes with the protesters.

Quan said in a statement Tuesday that she was working with interim Police Chief Howard Jordan to ensure that the protesters issues remain “front and center” on Wednesday.

“The pro-99 percent activists – whose cause I support – will have the freedom to get their message across without the conflict that marred last week’s events,” Quan said.

Unions representing city government workers, Oakland’s public school teachers, community college instructors, and University of California, Berkeley teaching assistants all have endorsed the daylong work stoppage and encouraged their members to participate.

“It’s sort of a realization that a lot of people are having that we’ve all been fighting our own issues, but really, it’s all related, it’s all the same issue,” Oakland Education Association Secretary Steve Neat said.

The Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce released an open letter to the mayor Tuesday in which President Joseph Haraburda expressed concern for “the mothers and children, and even grandmothers, who plan to come to Oakland to conduct their regular business” and for business owners who “must face a day of uncertainty” if they do not close for the strike.

“We want to be clear, should Wednesday’s planned protests go awry, someone will need to be held accountable,” Haraburda said.