WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The sixth-grade class at St. Paul's Lutheran School in Waverly, Iowa, sent a message this week that was heard in the White House briefing room.
"The White House is our house," the class said in a video posted on Facebook. "Please let us visit."
But their trip to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which had been set for March 16, is off. White House tours will be suspended starting on Saturday due to mandated across-the-board spending cuts known as "sequestration." The move will save the federal government an estimated $74,000 a week.
Many were left holding worthless tour tickets, secured months in advance through members of Congress. There is no rain check for a White House tour.
The children's video caught the attention of White House reporters, and of the top Republican in Congress.
"What is your answer, or the president's answer, to the sixth-graders at St. Paul's Lutheran School?" one reporter asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
"It is extremely unfortunate that we have a situation like the sequester that compels the kinds of tradeoffs and decisions that this represents," said Carney.
He said the Secret Service, which is involved in the tours, offered various options to deal with sequester-related cuts ranging from canceling tours to furloughs and cuts in overtime.
"And in order to allow the Secret Service to best fulfill its core missions, the White House made the decision that we would, unfortunately, have to temporarily suspend these tours," Carney said.
When another White House spokesman was asked whether private donations might put the tours back on track, he said that step might be unfeasible given the technical requirements of the sequester.
The last time the White House closed its doors to school groups was after the September 11, 2001, attacks. The tours resumed the following February, with a suspension in the spring of 2003 during the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The general public was not allowed back into the White House until September 2003.
'A LITTLE BIT HEARTBREAKING'
The decision found little favor with supporters of St. Paul's sixth-graders, who asked Facebook viewers to "like" their video to agitate for putting the tour back on their Washington itinerary.
By late Friday, nearly 1,000 had "liked" the post, nearly 500 had shared it and more than 100 had commented.
House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner boasted that tours of the Capitol would continue.
"Even though our budget's been cut like everyone else's, thanks to proper planning, we're able to avoid furloughs amongst Capitol workers, and tours are going to remain available for all Americans," Boehner told reporters on Thursday.
He called the White House decision "disappointing" and "silly," the result of a failure to find savings in other parts of the budget.
Benno Nelson, a Los Angeles-based film director and self-described "civic nerd" who is planning a family trip to Washington in May, had a one-word response when told of the tour cancellations: "Nooooo!"
"Definitely to get a tour of the White House is something I was really looking forward to, and I planned it in advance and called my congressman. ... To hear that they're not doing that is a little bit heartbreaking," he said.
The recorded White House message for those looking for tour information is as contrite as a recorded message can get:
"Due to staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, we regret to inform you that White House tours will be canceled effective Saturday, March 9, 2013, until further notice. Unfortunately we will not be able to reschedule affected tours. We very much regret having to take this action, particularly during the popular spring touring season."
(Reporting By Deborah Zabarenko, additional reporting by Richard Cowan and David Lawder; Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Xavier Briand)
One of the most ferocious insects you've ever heard of ? it's the size of a quarter and its painful bite has been compared to being knifed ? is set to invade Florida this summer.
The Sunshine State, already home to?man-eating sinkholes, invading?Burmese pythons,?swarming sharks, tropical storms and other disasters, can expect to see an explosion of shaggy-haired gallinippers (Psorophora ciliata), a type of giant mosquito, according to entomologist Phil Kaufman of the University of Florida.
Gallinipper eggs hatch after a rainstorm or flood, and the state saw a big jump in the numbers of gallinippers last summer after Tropical Storm Debby dumped its load on Florida. Eggs laid last year could produce a bumper crop of the blood-sucking bugs this summer if Florida sees a soggy rainy season.
"I wouldn't be surprised, given the numbers we saw last year," Kaufman said in a statement. "When we hit the rainy cycle, we may see that again."
As insects go, gallinippers are particularly formidable. Their eggs lay dormant for years, awaiting the floodwaters that will enable them to hatch. Even in their larval stage, gallinippers are so tough they'll eat tadpoles and other small aquatic prey. [Ouch! Nature's 10 Biggest Pests]
And as adults, the voracious pests feed day and night (unlike everyday mosquitoes, which generally feed only at dawn and dusk). Their bodies are strong enough to bite through clothing, and they're known to go after pets, wild animals and even fish,?MyFoxOrlando.com?reports.
"It's about 20 times bigger than the sort of typical, Florida mosquito that you find," Anthony Pelaez of Tampa's Museum of Science and Industry told Fox Orlando. "And it's mean, and it goes after people, and it bites, and it hurts."
Pelaez described the gallinipper's bite as so painful it "feels like you're being stabbed."
The term "gallinipper" isn't recognized by most entomologists, but over the past century, the word ? and the insect ? entered popular legend through Southern folktales, minstrel shows and blues songs, according to a report from the?Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences?at the University of Florida.
The earliest description of the pest comes from 1897 by a writer who called the insect "the shyest, slyest, meanest and most venomous of them all." (Gallinipper bites don't actually contain any venom ? they just feel that painful.)
Will insect repellents help to protect people from the dreaded gallinipper? Maybe, Kaufman said, though the pests may be more resistant to bug repellents ? even those containing DEET ? because of their large size.
If there's a silver lining to a possible invasion of gallinippers, it's the fact that their larvae are so ravenous they eat the larvae of other insects, including?mosquitoes, thus reducing the populations of those pests. And they're not known to carry any diseases, though that may be small comfort to beleaguered Floridians.
Email?Marc Lallanilla?or follow him?@MarcLallanilla.?Follow us?on Twitter?@livescience,?Facebook?&?Google+. Original article on?LiveScience.com.
On Saturday the chimney that signals the election of a new pope was installed on the top of the Sistine Chapel. Pope Benedict XVI's personal seal and fisherman's ring were also destroyed as the cardinals prepare for the start of the conclave Tuesday.
By Nicole Winfield,?Associated Press / March 9, 2013
Media films inside the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican March 9. The conclave begins on Tuesday, with the sequestered cardinals using the chimney to tell the outside world whether or not they have chosen a new leader - black smoke signifying no decision and white smoke announcing a new pontiff.
Stefano Rellandini/Reuters
Enlarge
Firefighters on Saturday installed the top of the Sistine Chapel chimney that will signal to the world that a new?pope?has been elected, as the Vatican took measures to definitively end Benedict XVI's pontificate.
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While construction workers prepared the interior of the frescoed Sistine Chapel for Tuesday's start of the conclave, officials elsewhere in the Apostolic Palace destroyed Benedict's fisherman's ring and the personal seals and stamps for official papers.
The act, coupled with Benedict's public resignation and pledge of obedience to the future?pope, is designed to signal a definitive end of his papacy so there is no doubt in the church that a new?pope?is in charge.
The developments all point toward the momentous decision soon to confront the Catholic Church: Tuesday's start of the conclave to elect a new?pope?to lead the world's 1.2 billion Catholics and try to solve the numerous problems facing the church.
The Vatican outlined the timeline for the balloting and confirmed that the bells of St. Peter's Basilica will ring once a?pope?has been elected. But Vatican officials also acknowledged that there is some uncertainty about the whole endeavor, given the difficulties in discerning the color of smoke that will snake out of the Sistine chimney ? black if no?pope?has been elected, white if a victor has emerged.
Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, laughed off concerns, saying that some "suspense" was all part of the beauty of the process.
"We're not going to send out text messages or SMS messages, you'll have to come and see," another Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Thomas Rosica, said.
For the sixth day, cardinals met behind closed doors to discuss the problems of the church and once again they discussed the work of the Holy See's offices "and how to improve it," according to Lombardi.
The Holy See's internal governance has been the major constant in these days of discussion, an indication that the revelations of corruption, political infighting and turf battles exposed by the leaks of papal documents last year are casting a very big shadow over this conclave.
While the cardinals ponder their choices, preparations for the vote continue.
On Saturday, a handful of firefighters climbed onto the Sistine Chapel's roof and installed the top of the chimney. Inside Michelangelo's frescoed masterpiece, construction workers staple-gunned the felt carpeting to the false floor that has been erected over the chapel's stone floor.
The false floor both evens out the steps of the chapel and hides the jamming equipment that has been installed to prevent any cellphone or eavesdropping devices from working. And in fact, on Saturday, cell phones had no reception in the chapel.
For such an important decision, the Sistine chimney is an awfully simple affair: a century-old cast iron stove where the voting ballot papers are burned, with a copper pipe out the top that snakes up the Sistine's frescoed walls, out the window and onto the chapel roof.
After years of confusion about whether the smoke was black or white, the Vatican in 2005 installed an auxiliary stove where fumigating cases are lit. The smoke from those cases ? black or white ? joins the burned ballot smoke out the chimney.
MILAN (Reuters) - Milan court doctors ruled on Saturday that Silvio Berlusconi was able to attend a tax fraud appeal, rejecting the former prime minister complaint that an eye condition prevented him leaving hospital.
The 76-year-old center-right leader and media mogul faces a spate of trials this month as he fights for his political future following the inconclusive national election.
On Friday a hearing in a trial where he is accused of having sex with an under-age prostitute was postponed after he entered hospital with an eye problem, despite the prosecutor's complaint that the hospitalization was merely a delaying tactic.
However, on Saturday the court in the tax fraud case sent inspectors to examine him in the clinic where he was being treated by his private doctor and they ruled that his problem was not a "legitimate impediment" to him appearing in court.
"It's been rejected, we are carrying on," one of Berlusconi's lawyers told Reuters.
Berlusconi's doctor had said the inflammation in his patient's left eye caused him pain and disturbed vision. But the ruling meant the appeals hearing could go ahead on Saturday with or without the defendant being present.
Berlusconi is appealing against a four-year jail sentence for tax fraud in connection with the purchase of broadcasting rights by his television network Mediaset.
Berlusconi denies all wrongdoing and said on Thursday he was the victim of "judicial persecution ... which re-emerges every time there are politically complex moments in the political life of our country".
He fell short of a victory in last month's election, even though he rallied his supporters and performed better than expected. The vote ended with a hung parliament and Italy's president is still struggling to form a new government.
Berlusconi's People of Liberty party (PDL) has organized a pubic rally on March 23 to protest against prosecutors that Berlusconi calls the "cancer of our democracy".
Under Italian law, Berlusconi will not serve any jail time until the appeals process is exhausted.
In the tax fraud case even if the appeals court upholds his previous 4-year jail sentence it could still be overturned by a higher court. Two appeals are standard procedure in Italy's criminal justice system.
Berlusconi was convicted three times during the 1990s, before being either cleared by higher courts or benefiting from the statute of limitations by which cases expire if a final verdict is not reached within a given time period.
On Thursday, he was sentenced to one year in jail over the publication by his family's newspaper of a transcript of a leaked wiretap connected to a banking scandal in 2006.
In that case, the statute of limitations for the charges expires in September, before the appeals process can be completed, legal sources said.
(Reporting by Stephen Jewkes; Writing by Gavin Jones; Editing by Alison Williams)
The Samsung Galaxy S IV is going to be announced in 10 days and we're pretty excited for it even if we don't know what it's going to look like. We might now. A few leaked images of what's supposed to be the Galaxy S IV have come out and if they're real, the phone looks pretty good. And it won't have a home button. More »
Author: Greg James | Total views: 104 Comments: 0 Word Count: 1082 Date:
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Being an entrepreneur and earning multiple streams of income is a dream that many have, but in reality it does take some initial hard work to achieve this. Earning multiple streams of income is the wave of the future, and here are some tips and advice for you when you are looking for ways in which to do this for yourself.
3: What is Cyber Marketing And Why It Is So Important For The Success Of Your Website
Cyber marketing has now become an indispensable segment of e-commerce as well as the internet and World Wide Web related topics. Cyber marketing simply refers to a technique of attracting potential customers by advertising your products or services through such means as websites, emails, and banners.
4: Article Marketing Strategy: Putting Together a "Class Schedule" For Your Article Topics
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) ? SpaceX says it looks like an engine problem with its orbiting Dragon capsule has been fixed. But the vessel's arrival at the International Space Station with a load of supplies will be delayed.
The private spacecraft ran into trouble with its thrusters shortly after liftoff Friday morning.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk says all four sets of maneuvering thrusters should be working soon. The problem might have been caused by a stuck valve or line blockage.
But the delay means that the unmanned Dragon won't get to the space station on Saturday.
The California-based company has a contract with NASA to make a dozen deliveries to restock the space station. This is the third trip by a Dragon capsule to the station.
