Dems try to cut costs to health overhaul
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama, worried about growing resistance to his health care plan, exhorted Congress not to "lose heart" Friday and urged deeper cost cuts to calm concern over the huge expense of covering millions of uninsured Americans.
"What we want to do is force the Congress to make sure that they are acting" on recommendations to hold down Medicare and Medicaid spending, the president said, rather than allowing reports to sit unused on a shelf.
Aiming to rally lawmakers, he spoke from the White House near the end of a week of tumult for the legislation atop his domestic agenda.
"Now, I realize that the last few miles of any race are the hardest to run, but I have to say now is not the time to slow down, and now is certainly not the time to lose heart," he declared.
A few hours earlier, two House committees approved their portions of the sweeping health care bill over Republican objections.
Criticism leads to more clashes in Iran
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - In a sign of endurance for Iran's protest movement, demonstrators clashed with police Friday as one of the nation's most powerful clerics challenged the supreme leader during Muslim prayers, saying country was in crisis in the wake of a disputed election.
The turnout of tens of thousands of worshippers for former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's sermon at Tehran University and the battles with police outside represented the biggest opposition show of strength in weeks. It was a clear sign of the movement's endurance despite fierce government suppression and arrests of hundreds since the disputed June 12 presidential election.
Outside the university, protests grew from several hundred before the sermon to thousands afterward as worshippers joined in, chanting, "death to the dictator," a reference to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Protesters were confronted by riot police and a menacing line of pro-government Basiji militiamen on motorcycles, who charged with batons.