Poll: President popular, but …
Public approves of Obama, is sour on Afghan war surge
WASHINGTON — Budget deficits are in the stratosphere. Unemployment has hit 10 percent. The health care overhaul is incomplete.
Still, Americans appear to like President Barack Obama and the way he’s doing his job.
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The latest Associated Press-GfK poll shows the president’s popularity holding steady, with 56 percent of those polled approving of the way he’s taking care of the country’s business. His marks for handling the eight-year war in Afghanistan jumped by double digits, with more than half now approving, since he capped a three-month strategy review by announcing a big troop increase.
But despite his prime-time TV speech explaining how he reached his decision to boost U.S. forces in Afghanistan to 100,000, and begin bringing them home in July 2011, there was no change in the public’s resistance to escalation. Just 42 percent favor sending more troops while 56 percent oppose it, essentially unchanged from November.
In some good news for Obama, more people said the country is heading in the right direction, 46 percent compared with just 38 percent last month. And the increase is evident among Republicans, Democrats and independents.
Nonetheless, half the country still says the nation is on the wrong track, and 42 percent don’t approve of how Obama is governing. Congress’ marks remain low, with only one-third of the country approving of how it’s doing and two-thirds disapproving.
The AP-GfK poll was conducted Dec. 10-14 by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media and involved landline and cell phone interviews of 1,001 adults nationwide. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
‘Focus on the people of this country’
HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan — Marine Lance Cpl. Tyler Holley patrols in southern Afghanistan on Thursday as civilians stand nearby. Meanwhile, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited the front lines of the war, part of a tour of small Army and Marine bases by the U.S. military’s top officer. Mullen’s first stop on his tour was an Army forward operating base in Kandahar province. “We can tactically win, but if we’re killing local civilians, we’re going to strategically lose,” he advised the troops. “I hope more than anything you will be able to focus on the people of this country. That’s what this is all about.”
NATION
97,000 prescriptions stop payments to doctor
MIAMI — The federal government has stopped reimbursing a Miami doctor who wrote nearly 97,000 prescriptions for mental health drugs to Medicaid patients over 18 months.
The case of the Florida physician and other cases of high-prescribing doctors prompted Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to call on the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate nationwide.
Grassley’s office said Dr. Fernando Mendez Villamil wrote an average of 153 prescriptions a day for 21 months ending in March 2009.
HHS officials say they were aware of the issue and are working closely with state and U.S. officials. Villamil could not be reached.
ACORN ruling protested
NEW YORK — The government is arguing that a judge should reverse her ruling that its cutoff of ACORN funding was unconstitutional.
The government said in papers filed Thursday in federal court in Brooklyn that an investigative report commissioned by ACORN reinforces Congress’ concern with ACORN’s misuse of federal funds.
The report was released four days before Judge Nina Gershon ruled Dec. 11.
ACORN lawyers say they want Gershon to make sure the government knows that the judge’s ruling applies to a budget bill signed this week.
WORLD
Air France crash may lead to new safety rules
PARIS — New airline safety standards may be required after the crash of Air France Flight 447 cast doubt on the reliability of speed-measuring equipment in difficult, stormy conditions, French aviation investigators said Thursday.
Automatic messages sent by the plane’s computers just before it crashed show it was receiving false speed readings from sensors known as Pitot tubes. Experts have said running into a violent storm at either too slow or too fast a speed at high altitudes could be dangerous.
The French accident investigation agency said the safety standards used to certify plane equipment — particularly Pitot tubes — do not properly reflect high-altitude conditions. The report called for studies of cloud masses and icy conditions that may lead safety officials to modify the criteria.
42 needles in boy’s body
BRASILIA, Brazil — The stepfather of a 2-year-old boy found with 42 needles in his body confessed to jabbing them into the toddler during a month of rituals with a lover who he claimed received instructions through trances, Brazilian police said Thursday.
Roberto Carlos Magalhaes, 30, told detectives the woman went into trances and would “command him to stick the needles in the boy’s body,” a police officer said.
The woman, Angelina Ribeiro dos Santos, had the needles blessed by a woman who practices the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble and convinced Magalhaes that inserting them into the boy would somehow allow them to be together, police said.
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Police, however, believe she was out for revenge on the mother. The two held sessions every few days over a full month in which Magalhaes stuck the needles into the boy several at a time.
A hospital spokeswoman said the boy was in intensive care but was conscious, had undergone X-rays and was receiving antibiotics.
Berlusconi leaves hospital
ROME — Four days after being attacked at a political rally, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi was whisked away from a Milan hospital with his face covered in bandages.
The grim-looking Berlusconi waved weakly as he entered his car Thursday.
Berlusconi said in a statement that he would go on “with more strength and determination than before.
THE NEWSMAKER
Freed after 35 years for crime he didn’t commit
James Bain, 54, used a cell phone for the first time Thursday. Mobile devices didn’t exist in 1974, the year he was sentenced to life in prison for the kidnap and rape of a 9-year-old boy. Neither did the sophisticated DNA tests that exonerated him. Bain served more time than any of the other 246 inmates cleared by DNA evidence nationwide, according to the Florida Innocence Project. Under Florida law, he will receive $1.75 million, or $50,000 for each year in prison.