Rupert Murdoch's mother Elisabeth dies at age 103

SYDNEY (AP) — Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, a prominent Australian philanthropist and mother of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has died at age 103.

News Ltd., the Australian media company headed by her son, confirmed her death.

She died peacefully on Wednesday surrounded by family members in her garden estate outside Melbourne. She had been hospitalized in September after a bad fall in which she broke her leg.

"We have lost the most wonderful mother but we are all grateful to have had her love and wisdom for so many years," Rupert Murdoch said in a family statement.

Rupert, 81, has said that his mother's long life was evidence that he would be able to continue leading News Corp., the global media company which he founded, for many years.

Dame Elisabeth was a patron of the arts and contributed to an estimated 100 charities annually.

"Probably the most useful contribution one can make is to forget oneself and care for others," she once said.

She was the wife of Sir Keith Murdoch, a hotshot journalist and newspaper publisher, and the mother of his four children — Rupert Murdoch, Anne Kantor, Janet Calvert-Jones, and Helen Handbury, who died in 2004.

Murdoch's philanthropic roots began during her childhood, when she started knitting woolen tops for babies at a children's hospital and volunteering at a kindergarten. As a teen, she volunteered for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

In 1927, Keith Murdoch — one of Melbourne's most coveted bachelors — spotted a photo of Elisabeth in a society magazine. At 18, she was 23 years his junior, but he was intent on meeting her. They were introduced at a dance and she later said she fell instantly in love.

Her family and friends were initially panicked over the age difference, but she ignored their warnings and married him the following year. The two were married for 24 years, before Keith died in 1952.

By then, philanthropy had become the main focus of her life. She spent more than three decades on the board of Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital. Queen Elizabeth II made her a dame in 1963 in recognition of her service to the community.

Murdoch was open about the advantages wealth had granted her, particularly the opportunity to help others.

"Wealth can be very misused, but generally speaking it's a tremendous tool in here in helping community," she told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in 2008.

"People say to me sometimes, 'You must be very proud of Rupert,' and I know what they mean. They think he's made a lot of money and I say, 'I am very proud of him because he's a good father and a good son.' And that's what I'm proud of. Not so proud of his wealth."

She has 77 direct descendants, including 50 great-grandchildren and six great-great-grandchildren.

Her family said arrangements for a memorial service were still being decided, but that the funeral was expected to be private.

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Michael Strahan makes his Broadway debut in 'Elf'

NEW YORK (AP) — Michael Strahan has tackled something few football stars have attempted — Broadway.

The gap-toothed co-host of "Live with Kelly and Michael" made three short appearances at Wednesday's matinee of "Elf" and said he has new respect for Broadway performers.

"I was surprised at how nervous you get and the adrenaline and that feedback from the audience — it really was an amazing thing," the former football player said after the show. "To see these performers who do it every day — eight or nine times a week — is really amazing. I take my hat off to them."

Fans can see a behind-the-scenes recap on Thursday's TV show.

The musical is adapted from the Will Ferrell film from 2003 about Buddy, a human raised in the North Pole who travels to New York in search of his parents.

Strahan thought making his Broadway debut would be fun and represented a new experience for a guy who holds the single season sack record. He found himself more nervous than he has been for high-stakes football games or live TV.

"It's a little nerve-wracking because so many people depend on you, you want to get your line across and you have to play to the crowd. It's a lot more intricate with everyone hitting their marks. You don't want to be the guy that messes everyone up," he said.

Strahan, 41, played both a police officer and a Salvation Army Santa in the first act and later came on as himself in a scene with the real Santa in the second act. As he waited in the wings of the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, he saw the toll the musical takes on its dancers.

"Some of these performers are breathing as if they just went into a football game and played a 12-play drive," he joked. "I was tired walking up and down from my dressing room."

Strahan rehearsed for an hour in the morning with stage managers and associate director Casey Hushion. At 1 p.m., some in the cast came in early to work with him, including Jordan Gelber, who plays Buddy, and Beth Leavel, who plays Buddy's stepmother.

The audience was quiet when Strahan first appeared as an officer with another cop after Buddy gets kicked out of Macy's. But the seven-time Pro-Bowler and Super Bowl winner flashed his trademark smile and they went wild. More applause greeted him after he played a Salvation Army Santa as he and Buddy wrestled over the kettle bells.

In the second act, he waited to ask Santa for a present. Santa asked him his name, the newly minted actor said "Michael Strahan" and he then asked for a red Schwinn bicycle with a bell shaped like Miss Piggy. The crowd cheered when Strahan identified himself and he got another wide round of applause at the curtain call, where the cast gave him flowers.

Strahan was named in September as Kelly Ripa's permanent co-host aboard the morning show "Live with Kelly and Michael." A former defensive star who spent 15 years in the NFL, he is also a host of "Fox NFL Sunday."

He follows in the footsteps of Joe Namath, a quarterback nicknamed "Broadway Joe" who made an appearance on Broadway in 1983 as a replacement in a revival of "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial."

Strahan would not rule out a return to the stage. "I will take it off my bucket list, but if the opportunity came across again, I might just take it up and do it again," he said. "I had a great time."

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Online:

http://www.elfmusical.com

http://dadt.com/live

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Study could spur wider use of prenatal gene tests

A new study sets the stage for wider use of gene testing in early pregnancy. Scanning the genes of a fetus reveals far more about potential health risks than current prenatal testing does, say researchers who compared both methods in thousands of pregnancies nationwide.

A surprisingly high number — 6 percent — of certain fetuses declared normal by conventional testing were found to have genetic abnormalities by gene scans, the study found. The gene flaws can cause anything from minor defects such as a club foot to more serious ones such as mental retardation, heart problems and fatal diseases.

"This isn't done just so people can terminate pregnancies," because many choose to continue them even if a problem is found, said Dr. Ronald Wapner, reproductive genetics chief at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. "We're better able to give lots and lots of women more information about what's causing the problem and what the prognosis is and what special care their child might need."

He led the federally funded study, published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

A second study in the journal found that gene testing could reveal the cause of most stillbirths, many of which remain a mystery now. That gives key information to couples agonizing over whether to try again.

The prenatal study of 4,400 women has long been awaited in the field, and could make gene testing a standard of care in cases where initial screening with an ultrasound exam suggests a structural defect in how the baby is developing, said Dr. Susan Klugman, director of reproductive genetics at New York's Montefiore Medical Center, which enrolled 300 women into the study.

"We can never guarantee the perfect baby but if they want everything done, this is a test that can tell a lot more," she said.

Many pregnant women are offered screening with an ultrasound exam or a blood test that can flag some common abnormalities such as Down syndrome, but these are not conclusive.

The next step is diagnostic testing on cells from the fetus obtained through amniocentesis, which is like a needle biopsy through the belly, or chorionic villus sampling, which snips a bit of the placenta. Doctors look at the sample under a microscope for breaks or extra copies of chromosomes that cause a dozen or so abnormalities.

The new study compared this eyeball method to scanning with gene chips that can spot hundreds of abnormalities and far smaller defects than what can be seen with a microscope. This costs $1,200 to $1,800 versus $600 to $1,000 for the visual exam.

In the study, both methods were used on fetal samples from 4,400 women around the country. Half of the moms were at higher risk because they were over 35. One-fifth had screening tests suggesting Down syndrome. One-fourth had ultrasounds suggesting structural abnormalities. Others sought screening for other reasons.

"Some did it for anxiety — they just wanted more information about their child," Wapner said.

Of women whose ultrasounds showed a possible structural defect but whose fetuses were called normal by the visual chromosome exam, gene testing found problems in 6 percent — one out of 17.

"That's a lot. That's huge," Klugman said.

Gene tests also found abnormalities in nearly 2 percent of cases where the mom was older or ultrasounds suggested a problem other than a structural defect.

Dr. Lorraine Dugoff, a University of Pennsylvania high-risk pregnancy specialist, wrote in an editorial in the journal that gene testing should become the standard of care when a structural problem is suggested by ultrasound. But its value may be incremental in other cases and offset by the 1.5 percent of cases where a gene abnormality of unknown significance is found.

In those cases, "a lot of couples might not be happy that they ordered that test" because it can't give a clear answer, she said.

Ana Zeletz, a former pediatric nurse from Hoboken, N.J., had one of those results during the study. An ultrasound suggested possible Down syndrome; gene testing ruled that out but showed an abnormality that could indicate kidney problems — or nothing.

"They give you this list of all the things that could possibly be wrong," Zeletz said. Her daughter, Jillian, now 2, had some urinary and kidney abnormalities that seem to have resolved, and has low muscle tone that caused her to start walking later than usual.

"I am very glad about it," she said of the testing, because she knows to watch her daughter for possible complications like gout. Without the testing, "we wouldn't know anything, we wouldn't know to watch for things that might come up," she said.

The other study involved 532 stillbirths — deaths of a fetus in the womb before delivery. Gene testing revealed the cause in 87 percent of cases versus 70 percent of cases analyzed by the visual chromosome inspection method. It also gave more information on specific genetic abnormalities that couples could use to estimate the odds that future pregnancies would bring those risks.

The study was led by Dr. Uma Reddy of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

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Online:

Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Obama, Boehner talk fiscal cliff on phone

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time in days, President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner spoke by phone Wednesday about the "fiscal cliff" that threatens to knock the economy into recession, raising the prospect of fresh negotiations to prevent tax increases and spending cuts set to kick in with the new year.

Officials provided no details of the conversation, which came on the same day the president, hewing to a hard line, publicly warned congressional Republicans not to inject the threat of a government default into the already complex issue.

"It's not a game I will play," Obama told a group of business leaders as Republicans struggled to find their footing in talks with a recently re-elected president and unified congressional Democrats.

Among the Republicans, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma became the latest to break ranks and say he could support Obama's demand for an increase in tax rates at upper incomes as part of a comprehensive plan to cut federal deficits.

Across the Capitol, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Republicans want to "sit down with the president. We want to talk specifics." He noted that the GOP had made a compromise offer earlier in the week and the White House had rejected it.

Officials said after the talk between Obama and Boehner, R-Ohio, there was no immediate plan for a resumption of negotiations to avert the cliff. At the same time, they said that for the first time in a few days, at least one top presidential aide had been in touch with Republicans by email on the subject.

Each side has been declaring that the crisis can be averted if the other will give ground.

"We can probably solve this in about a week, it's not that tough," Obama said in lunchtime remarks to the Business Roundtable.

It has been several days since either the president or congressional Democrats signaled any interest in negotiations that both sides say are essential to a compromise. Presidential aides have even encouraged speculation that Obama is willing to let the economy go over the "fiscal cliff" if necessary and gamble that the public blames Republicans for any fallout.

Eventually, Democrats acknowledge, there will be compromise talks, possibly quite soon, toward an agreement that raises revenues, reins in Medicare and other government benefit programs, and perhaps raises the government's $16.4 trillion borrowing limit.

For now, the demonstration of presidential inflexibility appears designed to show that, unlike two years ago, Obama will refuse to sign legislation extending top-rate tax cuts and also to allow public and private pressure to build on the Republican leadership.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner underscored the president's determination when he told CNBC the administration was "absolutely" prepared to have the economy go over the so-called cliff if its terms aren't met. "The size of the problem is so large that it can't be solved without rates going up," he said.

So far, the GOP has offered to support non-specified increases to raise tax revenues by $800 billion over a decade but has rejected Obama's demand to let the top income tax rate rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent.

To buttress their case, Republican officials in Congress pointed to numerous proposals that Obama has previously advanced that could generate the same amount of revenue he is seeking — without raising rates. The list includes limiting the tax deductions taken by upper-income taxpayers, raising taxes on the oil and gas industry and curbing or eliminating the deductibility of tax-exempt bonds.

Separately, in a bit of political theater, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell urged Democrats to allow a vote on Obama's current plan, which calls for a $1.6 trillion tax increase over a decade, in an attempt to show it lacks support.

The majority leader, Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, refused.

The "fiscal cliff," with its year-end deadline, refers to increases that would affect every worker who pays federal income tax, as well as spending cuts that would begin to bite defense and domestic programs alike. Economists in and out of government say the combination carries the risk of a new recession, at a time the economy is still struggling to recover fully from the worst slowdown in decades.

Obama delivered his latest warning at the meeting of the Business Roundtable a few blocks from the White House.

He said he was aware of reports that Republicans may be willing to agree to higher tax rates on the wealthy, then seek to extract spending cuts from the White House in exchange for raising the government's borrowing limit.

"That is a bad strategy for America, it's a bad strategy for your businesses and it's not a game that I will play," Obama said, recalling the "catastrophe that happened in August of 2011."

That was a reference to a partisan standoff that led the Treasury to the brink of the nation's first-ever default and prompted Standard & Poor's to reduce the rating for government bonds.

Avoiding that crisis led directly to the current standoff, since part of the compromise then was to set in motion the spending cuts that Obama and Congress are now trying to avoid.

Coburn, a conservative rebel within the GOP ranks, made it clear months ago he was ready to support higher tax revenue as part of an overall deal to restrain government spending programs.

In an interview on MSNBC, he went one step further.

"I don't really care which way we do it," he said. "Actually, I would rather see the rates go up than do it the other way because it gives us greater chance to reform the tax code and broaden the base in the future."

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., taunted members of the House GOP leadership. They are "like generals, hunkered away in a bunker, who don't realize that their army in the field has already laid down its arms," he said.

A handful of other Republicans in both houses have said in recent days they could support raising the top tax rates. In the House, conservatives say they suspect House Speaker John Boehner let it be known he wouldn't mind the discussion, even though he made a case in a closed-door meeting of the rank and file last week that raising rates would be worse for the economy than raising revenue by closing tax loopholes.

House Republicans opened the week by proposing a deficit reduction plan that includes raising $800 billion in higher revenue and curtailing cost-of-living increases for Social Security and other government benefit programs as part of a plan to cut deficits by $2.2 trillion over a decade.

In addition, they recommended raising the age of eligibility for Medicare beginning in a decade, a step that generates no savings in the next 10 years but makes longer-term changes that would strengthen the program's financial foundation.

The White House ridiculed that plan as "magic beans and fairy dust," saying taxes must rise on families earning $250,000 or more to generate enough revenue to deal with the nation's fiscal crisis.

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Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn and Andrew Taylor contributed to this story.

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Powerful typhoon kills at least 74 in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — At least 43 villagers and soldiers drowned in a southern Philippine town Tuesday when torrents of water dumped by a powerful typhoon cascaded down a mountain, engulfing emergency shelters and an army truck, officials said. The deaths raised the toll from one of the strongest storms to hit the country this year to at least 74.

Gov. Arturo Uy said rain from Typhoon Bopha accumulated atop a mountain and then burst down on Andap village in New Bataan town in hard-hit Compostela Valley province. The victims included villagers who had fled from their homes to a school and village hall, which were then swamped by the flash flood. An army truck carrying soldiers and villagers was washed away, according to Uy and army officials.

"They thought that they were already secure in a safe area, but they didn't know the torrents of water would go their way," Uy told DZBB radio.

He said the confirmed death toll in the town was likely to rise because several other bodies could not immediately be retrieved from floodwaters strewn with huge logs and debris.

Bopha slammed into Davao Oriental province region at dawn, its ferocious winds ripping roofs from homes and its 500-kilometer (310-mile) -wide rain band flooding low-lying farmland.

The storm, packing winds of 140 kilometers (87 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 170 kph (106 mph), toppled trees, triggered landslides and sent flash floods surging across the region's mountains and valleys.

Two entire provinces lost power and more than 100 domestic flights were canceled. About 60,000 people fled to emergency shelters.

Twenty-three people drowned or were pinned by fallen trees or collapsed houses in Davao Oriental province's coastal town of Cateel, which had the most deaths after New Bataan, Davao Oriental Gov. Corazon Malanyaon told the ABS-CBN TV network, citing police reports.

Some towns in the province were so battered that no roofs remained on buildings, Malanyaon said.

The other deaths included three children who were buried by a wall of mud and boulders that plunged down a mountain in Marapat village, also in Compostela Valley. Their bodies were wrapped in blankets by their grieving relatives and placed on a stage in a basketball court.

"The only thing we could do was to save ourselves. It was too late for us to rescue them," said Valentin Pabilana, who survived the landslide.

In Davao Oriental, a poor agricultural and gold-mining province about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) southeast of Manila, an elderly woman was killed when her house was struck by a falling tree, said Benito Ramos, who heads the government's disaster-response agency.

The other victims either drowned or were hit by trees, he said, adding that the death toll was expected to rise.

While some 20 typhoons and storms normally lash the archipelago nation annually, the southern provinces battered by Bopha are unaccustomed to fierce typhoons, which normally hit the northern and central Philippines.

A rare storm last December killed more than 1,200 people and left many more homeless and traumatized, including in Cagayan de Oro city, where church bells pealed relentlessly on Tuesday to warn residents to scramble to safety as a major river started to swell.

Officials were taking no chances this year, and President Benigno Aquino III appealed on national TV on Monday for people in Bopha's path to move to safety and take storm warnings seriously.

In Compostela Valley, authorities halted mining operations and ordered villagers to evacuate to prevent a repeat of deadly losses from landslides and the collapse of mine tunnels in previous storms.

Bopha, a Cambodian word for flower or a girl, is the 16th weather disturbance to hit the Philippines this year. Forecasters say at least one more storm may strike the country before Christmas.

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Associated Press writer Teresa Cerojano contributed to this report.

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32% of Young People Use Social Media in the Bathroom

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Huston's "Infrared" wins Bad Sex fiction prize

LONDON (AP) — It's the prize no author wants to win.

Award-winning novelist Nancy Huston won Britain's Bad Sex in Fiction award Tuesday for her novel "Infrared," whose tale of a photographer who takes pictures of her lovers during sex proved too revealing for the judges.

The choice was announced by "Downton Abbey" actress Samantha Bond during a ceremony at the Naval & Military Club in London.

Judges of the tongue-in-cheek prize — which is run by the Literary Review magazine — said they were struck by a description of "flesh, that archaic kingdom that brings forth tears and terrors, nightmares, babies and bedazzlements," and by a long passage that builds to a climax of "undulating space."

Huston, who lives in Paris, was not on hand to collect her prize. In a statement read by her publicist, the 59-year-old author said she hoped her victory would "incite thousands of British women to take close-up photos of their lovers' bodies in all states of array and disarray."

The Canada-born Huston, who writes in both French and English, is the author of more than a dozen novels, including "Plainsong" and "Fault Lines." She has previously won France's Prix Goncourt prize and was a finalist for Britain's Orange Prize for fiction by women.

She is only the third woman to win the annual Bad Sex prize, founded in 1993 to name and shame authors of "crude, tasteless and ... redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels."

Some critics, however, have praised the sexual passages in "Infrared." Shirley Whiteside in the Independent on Sunday newspaper said there were "none of the lazy cliches of pornography or the purple prose of modern romantic fiction" — though she conceded the book's sex scenes were "more perfunctory than erotic."

Huston beat finalists including previous winner Tom Wolfe — for his passage in "Back to Blood" describing "his big generative jockey" — and Booker Prize-nominated Nicola Barker, whose novel "The Yips" compares a woman to "a plump Bakewell pudding."

Previous recipients of the dubious honor, usually accepted with good grace, include Sebastian Faulks, the late Norman Mailer and the late John Updike, who was awarded a Bad Sex lifetime achievement award in 2008.

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Online: http://www.literaryreview.co.uk

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Study: Drug coverage to vary under health law

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new study says basic prescription drug coverage could vary dramatically from state to state under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

That's because states get to set benefits for private health plans that will be offered starting in 2014 through new insurance exchanges.

The study out Tuesday from the market analysis firm Avalere Health found that some states will require coverage of virtually all FDA-approved drugs, while others will only require coverage of about half of medications.

Consumers will still have access to essential medications, but some may not have as much choice.

Connecticut, Virginia and Arizona will be among the states with the most generous coverage, while California, Minnesota and North Carolina will be among states with the most limited.

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Online:

Avalere Health: http://tinyurl.com/d3b3hfv

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GOP leaders pluck conservative lawmakers, reveal growing divide

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker John Boehner's decision to take plum committee assignments away from four conservative Republican lawmakers after they bucked party leaders on key votes isn't going over well with advocacy groups that viewed them as role models.

Reps. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Justin Amash of Michigan will lose their seats on the House Budget Committee chaired by Rep. Paul Ryan next year. And Reps. Walter Jones of North Carolina and David Schweikert of Arizona are losing their seats on the House Financial Services Committee.

The move is underscoring a divide in the Republican Party between tea party-supported conservatives and the House GOP leadership.

"This is a clear attempt on the part of Republican leadership to punish those in Washington who vote the way they promised their constituents they would — on principle — instead of mindlessly rubber-stamping trillion dollar deficits and the bankrupting of America," said Matt Kibbe, president of the tea party group FreedomWorks.

Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, would only say Tuesday that the party's steering committee chaired by the speaker made the decision "based on a range of factors."

Groups aligned with the tea party movement were generally big supporters of Huelskamp, Amash and Schweikert. Jones is viewed more as a conservative maverick than a tea party Republican. He has frequently siding against GOP leaders on a range of issues over the years. For example, he voted against the GOP budget because he opposed the changes proposed for Medicare.

Schweikert said it was made clear to him "I should vote for the team more."

"Look, we're walking into the 113th Congress with a smaller majority," Schweikert said. "I would have though the fixation would have been family unity. This isn't the way you start a family meeting."

"The GOP leadership might think they have silenced conservatives, but removing me and others from key committees only confirms our conservative convictions," Huelskamp said in a statement Tuesday. "This is clearly a vindictive move and a sure sign that the GOP establishment cannot handle disagreement."

All four lawmakers had voted against the summer 2011 deal negotiated between Republican leaders and President Barack Obama for extending the government's ability to borrow money in exchange for $1 trillion in spending cuts and the promise of another $1 trillion in reduced deficits. Three of the four, the exception being Schweikert, voted against the Ryan-written GOP budget blueprint that the House passed last March.

Their removal from key committees with jurisdiction over the two issues was viewed by some as a signal to other Republican lawmakers to look favorably on whatever final deal Boehner and Obama put together to avert a "fiscal cliff" combination of automatic tax increases and spending cuts in January.

"It's sending a clear message to get behind the leadership no matter what the policy is, and that is contrary to what the Republicans supposedly stand for," Freedomworks' Kibbe said.

"If it was intended to be a signal, it's going to be a weak signal because the majority of conservatives are going to do what they think is right based on principle," Jones, the North Carolina congressman, said.

Amash said he has not been told specifically why he was removed, only that it was not based on his votes and that he should go talk to leadership. He said he voted with the Budget Committee's leadership 95 percent of the time. He said the move is likely to make him more independent in the future.

"Being nice to leadership and playing well with them doesn't pay off," Amash said. "They expect a near total agreement with their approach."

The changes in committee assignments could bring about more discipline from the GOP on high-priority issues next Congress, but conservatives were taking the news as an attack on their priorities.

"As the sun rises this morning we can look at John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy and know the opposition is not just across the aisle, but in charge of our own side in the House of Representatives," Erick Erickson wrote on the conservative website, RedState. "All the time and energy I would otherwise have to spend to convince conservatives that these gentlemen would be a problem for the GOP has been spared. They've proven it themselves."

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China moves to right wrongs in city Bo once ruled

BEIJING (AP) — With China's new leaders freshly installed in power, authorities are turning their attention to tying up loose ends in the sprawling, scandal-ridden city once ruled by populist politician Bo Xilai before his downfall buffeted the leadership transition.

In the past two weeks, authorities in Chongqing released a village official who had been sent to a labor camp for criticizing Bo. A lawyer disbarred after being convicted of having one of his clients lie in court has filed a petition for wrongful imprisonment. Meanwhile, a newspaper reported that hundreds of police officers who had been dismissed, demoted or otherwise punished were being quietly reinstated.

While the acts are being done piecemeal — the authoritarian government dislikes setting precedents — they show the leadership's determination to quietly redress excesses of Bo's four years in power in the southwestern metropolis.

Many in Chongqing are breathing easier too after Bo's rocky reign, which won praise for an organized crime crackdown and promotion of communist culture and then widespread scorn as his career unraveled in seamy accusations of murder and corruption.

"I feel that this redress is necessary," Wang Kang, an outspoken scholar in Chongqing, said in a phone interview. "This was a burden that was left in Chongqing. This burden must be removed so that Chongqing can breathe a sigh of relief."

Chongqing, a breathtaking city of skyscrapers hugging steep hills along the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, has been portrayed as rife with cover-ups, power abuse and corruption under Bo and his police chief, Wang Lijun, in court documents. Since their removal, Bo's wife has been sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering a British businessman and Wang given 15 years for corruption and covering up the murder. Bo awaits trial after the Communist Party purged him for obstruction of justice, corruption and sexual liaisons with numerous women.

The scandal exacerbated already divisive politicking for spots in the new Communist leadership, which culminated at a party congress last month. A new party secretary was chosen for Chongqing, a former agriculture minister known as a consensus-builder. In widely quoted remarks just days into his post, Sun Zhengcai said he was "resolutely opposed to the vulgar, extravagant, degenerate and depraved way of life."

Bo brooked no dissent when in charge. He and Wang used the anti-gang crusade not only to go after organized crime but, according to victims, to cashier critics in the bureaucracy, jail rivals and pressure businessmen into steering deals toward Bo's supporters. A campaign to sing revolutionary songs also intimidated critics, reminding many of the radical excesses of Mao Zedong's rule when he was worshipped as a god.

"Wang Lijun was a law unto himself. If he didn't like the way you looked he would arrest you on the spot," Li Zhuang, the disbarred lawyer, said in remarks posted on the website of the state-run Global Times.

Li, a defense attorney known for his toughness, was jailed for 1 ½ years after his mafia boss client claimed Li told him to say police tortured him. Li's prosecution marked a turning point when many educated Chinese began to suspect that Bo's anti-mafia efforts had gone too far.

Li submitted a petition to Chongqing court authorities demanding a thorough investigation of his case. Last week, officials from the court and city prosecutor's office met with him for informal discussions about his petition, Li said in a phone interview.

Ren Jianyu, an official in a village on Chongqing's outskirts, criticized the Maoist revival campaign on the Internet and then was sentenced without trial to two years in a labor camp. Among the 1,000 other inmates in the labor camp were about a half-dozen like him, in for political crimes.

But then late last month, 15 months into his sentence, Ren was released; no reason given.

"Now that we are no longer living under such a state of high pressure, for us who have been attacked and persecuted, things are comparatively better," Ren said. He has filed an appeal against his sentence to clear his name.

Meanwhile, the Southern Weekend newspaper reported that police in Chongqing were quietly rehabilitating and making restitution to around 900 police officers in Chongqing who had been fired, demoted or otherwise unjustly treated. Li, the former attorney, said Wang wanted to make sure only officers he could trust remained in the force and so purged anyone suspect.

A Chongqing police spokesman who would only give his surname, Deng, said police have been handling such appeals on the basis of "seeking truth from facts."

"Mistakes must be corrected," said Deng, who refused to provide any other details and repeatedly hung up when further questions were asked.

How far authorities will go to redress the wrongs of the Bo period remain to be seen. In the past, the government has been reluctant to offer wholesale amnesties. Although the crime of counter-revolution was dropped from the criminal code in the '90s, those serving time did not receive a blanket release.

Ren, the former village official, said he would only believe real change had come if his appeal against his sentence was successful.

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