Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, left, accompanied by new Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Craig Fugate, gestures during a news conference at FEMA headquarters in Washington, Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — A long-delayed requirement for Americans traveling to Mexico or Canada to have a passport will take effect June 1 as promised with no further postponements, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday.

The Department of Homeland Security has handed out more than 6 million information sheets to people crossing the borders and has run TV ads reminding Americans that it will no longer be possible to cross the borders and re-enter the U.S. without a U.S. passport or special U.S. passport card.

Americans have become accustomed to crossing the borders by car or on foot without having to show anything more than a driver’s license.

“These are real borders, the law is the law, and this is not going to be postponed any more,” Napolitano said at a breakfast meeting with reporters.

The passport requirement, part of an anti-terrorism measure known as the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, had originally been scheduled to take effect last summer during the Bush administration. It was delayed largely by northern border lawmakers in Congress, who feared it would disrupt commerce and tourism between the U.S. and Canada.

Napolitano said federal border officials are ready to implement the new requirements, and she said she is confident the program will go well, without big backups at the borders.

“If you’d have asked me four months ago if we were ready, I’d have said I don’t know,” the former Arizona governor said. “But the department has done everything humanly possible to give this thing a smooth landing.”

Napolitano said she knows some Americans will be caught by surprise on June 1st, and some have procrastinated too long getting their passports.

“We’ll work with them at the border,” she said.

Under the new requirements, Americans must have a traditional U.S. passport book or a less-expensive passport card to re-enter the country by land or sea after traveling to Mexico, Canada, Bermuda or the Caribbean region.

Americans traveling by plane to and from those countries must have a passport book. A passport card will not be accepted.

The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was created after Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, requiring all travelers to the U.S. to carry a passport as proof of citizenship.

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On the Web

www.dhs.gov, Department of Homeland Security, search for “Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative”

This Feb 18, 1969 file photo shows Dutch photographer Hugh Van Es in a Macao cafe. Van Es, a photojournalist who covered the Vietnam War and recorded the most famous image of the fall of Saigon in 1975 – a group of people scaling a ladder to a CIA helicopter on a rooftop, died Friday morning. He was 67.

HONG KONG – Hugh Van Es, a Dutch photojournalist who covered the Vietnam War and recorded the most famous image of the fall of Saigon in 1975 — a group of people scaling a ladder to a CIA helicopter on a rooftop — died Friday morning in Hong Kong, his wife said. He was 67 years old.

Van Es died in Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong, where he had lived for more than 35 years. He suffered a brain hemorrhage last week and never regained consciousness, his wife Annie said. Hospital officials declined to comment.

Slender, tough-talking and always ready with a quip, Van Es was considered by colleagues to be fearless and resourceful. He remained a towering figure after the war in journalism circles in Asia, including his adopted home in Hong Kong.

“Obviously he will be always remembered as one of the great witnesses of one of the great dramas in the second half of the 20th century,” said Ernst Herb, president of Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondent Club.

“He really captured the spirit of foreign reporting. He was quite an inspiration,” Herb said.

He arrived in Hong Kong as a freelancer in 1967, joined the South China Morning Post as chief photographer, and got a chance the following year to go to Vietnam as a soundman for NBC News, which he took. After a brief stint, he joined The Associated Press photo staff in Saigon from 1969-72 and then covered the last three years of the war from 1972-75 for United Press International.

His photo of a wounded soldier with a tiny cross gleaming against his dark silhouette, taken 40 years ago this month, became the best-known picture from the May 1969 battle of Hamburger Hill.

And his shot of the helicopter escape from a Saigon rooftop on April 29, 1975 became a stunning metaphor for the desperate U.S. withdrawal and its overall policy failure in Vietnam.

As North Vietnamese forces neared the city, upwards of 1,000 Vietnamese joined American military and civilians fleeing the country, mostly by helicopters from the U.S. Embassy roof.

A few blocks distant, others climbed a ladder on the roof of an apartment building that housed CIA officials and families, hoping to escape aboard a helicopter owned by Air America, the CIA-run airline.

From his vantage point on a balcony at the UPI bureau several blocks away, Van Es recorded the scene with a 300-mm lens — the longest one he had.

It was clear, Van Es said later, that not all the approximately 30 people on the roof would be able to escape, and the UH-1 Huey took off overloaded with about a dozen.

The photo earned Van Es considerable fame, but in later years he told friends he spent a great deal of time explaining that it was not a photo of the embassy roof, as was widely assumed.

The image gained even greater iconic status after the musical Miss Saigon featured the final Americans evacuating from the city from the Embassy roof by helicopter. Van Es was upset about the play’s use of the image that he so famously captured, and believed he was ripped off. He had long considered legal action but decided against it.

Born in Hilversum, the Netherlands, Hubert Van Es learned English from hanging out as a kid with soldiers during World War II.

He said he decided to become a photographer after going to a photo exhibit at a local museum when he was 13 years old and seeing the work of legendary war photographer Robert Capa.

After graduating from college, he started working as a photographer in 1959 with the Nederlands Foto Persbureau in Amsterdam, but Asia became his home.

When the Vietnam war ended in 1975, van Es returned to Hong Kong where he freelanced for major American and European newspapers and magazines and shot still photos for many Hollywood movies on locations across Asia.

Van Es, who served as president of the Hong Kong FCC in the early 1980s, was often found holding court at the club, his firsthand accounts and opinions sought out by reporters new and old.

“His presence there is really memorable,” Herb said.

He covered the Moro rebellion in the Philippines and was among the horde of journalists who flew into Kabul to cover the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. CBS cameraman Derek Williams got through immigration but everyone else was stopped and held in the transit lounge.

“As they were then being shepherded back to the plane,” Williams recalled, “Hugh saw an open door to his left, and just made a break for it with only his camera bag. He ran through the terminal and jumped into a taxi to try to get to the Intercontinental Hotel.”

Afghan police arrested van Es, but the plane had taken off so they took him to the hotel. Williams said he and van Es spent three days in Kabul before being expelled. Van Es’ still photos, for Time magazine, were the first to capture Soviet tanks rolling into Afghanistan.

He and his wife, Annie, whom he met in Hong Kong, were married for 39 years. He is survived by Annie and a sister in Holland.

This is a May 19, 1969 file photo taken by then AP photographer Hugh Van Es showing a wounded U.S. paratrooper grimacing in pain while waiting for medical evacuation at base camp in the A Shau Valley near the Laos border in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea said Friday that it wants to meet with North Korea early next week to discuss a South Korean worker detained in the North and a joint industrial project that has been troubled by tensions between the sides.

It was unclear if the North would agree to the offer. Pyongyang did not accept an earlier proposal to discuss the industrial zone due to differences over whether the detained worker should be on the agenda.

The Unification Ministry said it sent a new proposal for a meeting next week. “We hope the North will accept our proposal,” ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon said.

South Korea says the detained worker is its top priority in such talks, but the North says any meeting should focus only on its industrial zone in Kaesong where more than 100 South Korean companies run factories, according to Seoul officials.

North Korea detained the Seoul worker at the zone on March 30 for allegedly denouncing Pyongyang’s political system.

Relations between the two Koreas have significantly deteriorated since Seoul’s conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in February last year. Since then, reconciliation talks have been cut off and all key joint projects — except the factory park — have been suspended.

Pyongyang also has ratcheted up tension in its standoff with foreign governments over its nuclear programs. The regime has quit nuclear disarmament talks, expelled all inspectors and threatened to conduct nuclear and missile tests.

The two Koreas had their first government-level talks under Lee last month, but the meeting produced little progress, with the North refusing to free the detained worker while demanding that Seoul pay more for using North Korean workers and the land in Kaesong.

North Korea later proposed that a follow-up meeting be held earlier this week, but the South requested in a counterproposal that they meet on Friday. The North did not accept the proposal due to its opposition to Seoul’s demand that the issue of the detained worker should be on the agenda, officials said.

Last weekend, the North’s committee handling ties with the South said that the country would not even consider talking with South Korea, lashing out at Seoul for criticizing the isolated country’s human rights record.

North Korea has also been holding two American journalists since March 17. Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore’s San Francisco-based Current TV media venture, were detained while reporting on North Korean refugees living in China.

Pyongyang said Thursday that it will put the reporters on trial on June 4.

VIENNA – Roxana Saberi, the American journalist freed after about four months in an Iranian prison on spying charges left the country, flying to the Austrian capital with her parents and a friend early Friday.

After landing at the airport, Saberi said she planned to spend a few days in Vienna to recover from her ordeal.

“I came to Vienna because I heard it was a calm and relaxing place,” Saberi said. “I know you have many questions but I need some more time to think about what happened to me over the past couple of days.”

Her father, Reza Saberi, said they were staying with a friend in Austria.

Saberi, poised and smiling, thanked all those who supported her during her ordeal — including Austria’s ambassador to Iran and his family.

“Both journalists and non-journalists around the world, I’ve been hearing, supported me very much and it was very moving for me to hear this,” Saberi said.

Saberi, referring to several statements made about her case over the past few days, stressed she was the only one who knew what really happened.

“Nobody knows about it as well as I do and I will talk about it more in the future, I hope, but I am not prepared at this time,” she said.

The 32-year-old journalist, who grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and moved to Iran six years ago, was arrested in late January and was convicted of spying for the United States in a brief, closed-door trial that her Iranian-born father said lasted only 15 minutes.

She was freed on Monday and reunited with her parents, who had come to Iran to seek her release, after an appeals court reduced her sentence to a two-year suspended sentence.

The United States had said the charges against Saberi were baseless and repeatedly demanded her release. The case against her had become an obstacle to President Barack Obama’s attempts at dialogue with the top U.S. adversary in the Middle East.

At one point, Saberi held a hunger strike to protest her imprisonment, but she ended it after two weeks when her parents, visiting her in prison, asked her to stop because her health was weakening.

Saberi had worked as a freelance journalist for several organizations, including National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corp.

After her arrest, Iranian authorities initially accused her of working without press credentials, but later leveled the far more serious charge of spying. Iran released few details about the allegations that she passed intelligence to the U.S.

KABUL – Insurgents attacked a prison in eastern Afghanistan before dawn Friday, sparking a gunbattle with guards during which one prisoner was killed and another escaped, police said.

Meanwhile, NATO forces said one of its service members was killed Thursday by a bomb strike in southern Afghanistan. The international force did not provide further details or the nationality of the victim, under its policy of waiting for national authorities to announce deaths.

Prisons, along with police stations and other government buildings, have been repeated sites of Taliban attacks as the extremist religious group has stepped up its battle against the Afghan authorities in the past three years.

The militants did not manage to break into the prison in eastern Laghman province on Friday, but a group of more than a dozen prisoners charged an interior gate, breaking through to the outer wall, said provincial Police Chief Gen. Abdul Karim.

One prisoner managed to get away by jumping over the wall, while police shot another one dead as he attempted to flee, Karim said. Both of the men had been imprisoned for criminal offenses and were not known to have Taliban connections, he said.

Police captured one of the attackers and wounded some others, he said. No police or guards were injured.

Last summer, Taliban fighters attacked the prison in southern Kandahar province in a multi-pronged assault that included a suicide truck bomb, a suicide bomber on foot and gunmen freeing the prisoners. About 870 prisoners escaped, including roughly 400 jailed insurgents. The government has since worked to improve security at prisons across the country.

This week, President Barack Obama put his stamp on the bloody eight-year conflict by replacing the general in charge of the effort and installing a new ambassador. The Obama administration hopes the leadership shake-up — along with an additional 21,000 troops deploying this summer — will help reverse the militants’ momentum.

Obama plan’s start slow; foreclosure alternatives added

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Thursday outlined an expansion of its housing rescue plan that will help homeowners who face foreclosure because they are ineligible for current assistance programs.

Officials also provided a report card of sorts on how the home-loan modification and refinancing efforts are going since the housing rescue plan was announced in February.

The expanded program includes:

• Foreclosure alternatives. Homeowners unable to qualify for a modification will see a more streamlined process for pursuing short sales and deeds-in-lieu of foreclosures, which transfer a home back to the lender. The goal is to help homeowners avoid a foreclosure that could lead to a severe hit on their credit scores.

A short sale occurs when a home is sold for less than the remaining mortgage, but lenders agree to consider the debt paid.

• Protections for homeowners whose home value has fallen. Under a $10 billion program, new incentives will be provided to lenders to help them make modifications in regions where home prices have had steep drops.

The Obama administration has said it expects up to 9 million homeowners to get help through mortgage refinancing and loan modifications.

But the complexity of the program has made for a slow start and done little to dampen foreclosures, which have risen as banks ended temporary moratoriums on foreclosures.

“It’s been slow. The foreclosure problem is not going away,” said Mark Zandi, with Moody’s Economy.com.

WASHINGTON – Former White House aide Karl Rove faced questions Friday from a special prosecutor weighing whether to bring criminal charges against Bush administration officials for the politically charged firing of U.S. attorneys.

Rove met with prosecutor Nora Dannehy at the office of his lawyer, Robert Luskin. Rove did not speak to reporters as he entered the downtown Washington law office and neither did investigators who arrived about a half hour later.

Rove has said he will cooperate with the investigation, which is being conducted to determine whether Bush administration officials or congressional Republicans should face criminal charges in the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.

Rove and other Republican officials refused to be interviewed in an earlier Justice Department inquiry, which concluded that despite Bush administration denials, political considerations played a part in the firings of as many as four prosecutors.

U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president, but cannot be fired for improper reasons. Bush administration officials at first claimed the attorneys were let go because of poor performance.

The internal Justice Department investigation recommended a criminal inquiry, saying the lack of cooperation by Rove and other senior administration officials left gaps in their findings that should be investigated further. Then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey responded by naming Dannehy, the acting U.S. attorney in Connecticut, as special prosecutor in September.

Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers also have agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee under oath about the firings in closed depositions. As president, Bush had fought attempts to force them to testify.

In July, U.S. District Judge John Bates rejected Bush’s contention that senior White House advisers were immune from the committee’s subpoenas, siding with Congress’ power to investigate the executive branch. The Bush administration had appealed the decision. The agreement for Rove and Miers to testify ended the lawsuit.

Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.

Dem denies ’02 knowledge of waterboarding

WASHINGTON – Congressional Republicans are rushing to defend the CIA after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the spy agency of misleading her and other lawmakers about its use of waterboarding during the Bush administration.

The issue of what did the speaker know about the interrogation method — and when did she know it — has deepened the fault lines between the two political parties. Pelosi was unequivocal about a CIA briefing she received in the fall of 2002.

“We were told that waterboarding was not being used,” the speaker said Thursday. “That’s the only mention, that they were not using it. And we now know that earlier they were.” She suggested the CIA release the briefing material.

Pelosi vehemently disputed Republican charges that she was complicit in the use of waterboarding, and she suggested the GOP was trying to shift the focus of public attention away from the Bush administration’s use of techniques that she and President Barack Obama have described as torture.

On Friday, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee contradicted Pelosi’s claims and questioned her criticism of the nation’s spy operations.

“I think it’s a tragedy that we are seeing this massive attack on our intelligence community,” Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show.

Bond said he reviewed the CIA’s material and it was clear that Pelosi had been informed about the enhanced interrogation method, although Bond said he was not with Pelosi when the spy agency briefed her.

The CIA was widely criticized for its intelligence gathering prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and faced questions about its information on suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the start of the war in March 2003. The weapons were never found.

CIA spokesman George Little said it is not the policy of the agency to mislead Congress, although he refused to answer directly questions about Pelosi’s accusation.

Pelosi has been the target of a campaign orchestrated in recent days by the House Republican leadership, which is eager to assign Democrats partial responsibility for the use of waterboarding — a kind of simulated drowning — in the Bush administration.

GOP officials secured the release of an unclassified chart by the CIA that describes a total of 40 briefings for lawmakers over a period of several years. Pelosi’s name appears once, as having attended a session on Sept. 4, 2002, when she was the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Former Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., who at the time was the chairman of the committee and later became CIA director, also was present.

The notation says the briefing was on “enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah … and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.”

Little, responding to Pelosi for the CIA, said the chart “is true to the language in the agency’s records.” But he did not say whether the information was accurate.

Instead, he pointed to a recent letter from CIA Director Leon Panetta to lawmakers saying it would be up to Congress to determine whether notes made by agency personnel at the time they briefed lawmakers were accurate.

Coincidentally, Pelosi spoke as the CIA rejected former Vice President Dick Cheney’s request to release secret memos judging whether waterboarding and other harsh techniques had succeeded in securing valuable intelligence information.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the request was turned down because the documents are the subject of pending litigation, which makes them not subject to declassification.

WASHINGTON – Despite Democrats’ rising anxiety about Afghanistan, the House on Thursday easily passed a $96.7 billion measure filling President Obama’s request for war spending and foreign aid efforts there and in Iraq.

Some 51 Democrats broke with Obama, who is sending thousands more troops into Afghanistan, but all but a handful of Republicans stood behind the president to produce a 368-60 tally. Republicans supported the measure even though majority Democrats added almost $12 billion to Obama’s $85 billion request.

The measure would boost total funding provided by Congress for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars above $900 billion.

Across Capitol Hill, a key Senate committee approved a companion $91.3 billion bill that sticks closely to Obama’s war request – including $50 million for the Pentagon to begin the promised closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The issue of closing Guantanamo is addressed in the House measure as well – not with funding but with a promise that detainees from the prison will not be released on U.S. soil. A new provision, however, anticipates some of the 241 detainees at Guantanamo will be transferred to the United States to stand trial or serve their sentences.

A separate conflict over the war-funding measure concerns whether it should provide a $108 billion U.S. contribution to the International Monetary Fund as part of an expanded $500 billion IMF loan fund, a cornerstone of last month’s Group of 20 nations summit in London to assist poor countries struggling through the global economic downturn.

Obama officially requested the IMF funding late Tuesday, and the request was immediately incorporated into the Senate version by Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. The IMF funds would cost U.S. taxpayers about $5 billion since the government is issued interest-bearing assets in return for the contribution.

House Republicans oppose adding the IMF funds to the war-funding measure, and their votes will be needed to pass the final House-Senate compromise bill, given the opposition of anti-war Democrats.

As for the military spending, during the Bush administration many Democrats stressed their opposition to the war in Iraq while supporting efforts against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But an increasing number of party liberals are skeptical of success in Afghanistan.

Chief among them is Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., author of the House legislation as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. But for now he’s giving Obama a chance to demonstrate greater progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“This is a bill that I have very little confidence in,” Obey said. “I think we have a responsibility to give a new president – who did not get us into this mess – the best possible opportunity to get out of it.”

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., is opposing the infusion of war funds. He’s not impressed with Obama’s plans on Afghanistan.

“Sometimes great presidents make mistakes, and sometimes great presidents make even great mistakes. I hope that doesn’t happen here,” McGovern said. “As the mission has grown bigger, the policy has grown even more vague.”

Both the House and Senate measures largely follow Obama’s military request for the wars. But the House version adds $11.8 billion, including almost $4 billion for new weapons and military equipment such as cargo planes, mine-resistant vehicles, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Stryker armored vehicles. The measure also adds $2.2 billion to Obama’s request for foreign aid — much of which appears to be designed to get around spending limits for 2010.

The $91.3 billion Senate measure includes Obama’s $1.5 billion emergency request to fight a potential flu pandemic, while the House would add about $500 million to the request – even as the recent swine flu scare appears to be abating.

On Guantanamo, the Senate measure includes $50 million to begin closing the prison but directs that it can’t be used to transfer any of the detainees into the United States. The House bill, which does not include such money, sets a policy forbidding release of Guantanamo detainees within the United States. It would allow them to be shipped to the U.S. to stand trial or to serve their sentences.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday voted unanimously in favor of its version of the spending bill.

Most of that money, about $73 billion, would go to the Defense Department to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the extra 21,000 troops being sent to Afghanistan.

The measure is $1.3 billion more than the president requested.

An internally displaced Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil woman tends to an injured boy at a makeshift hospital in Mullivaikal, Sri Lanka, Wednesday.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Artillery shells tore through a hospital packed with wounded civilians in Sri Lanka’s war zone for a second day Wednesday, killing at least 50 people, setting an ambulance ablaze and forcing the medical staff to huddle in bunkers for safety, doctors said.

Health workers at the makeshift medical facility said they were so overwhelmed by the crush of the wounded and the unrelenting shelling of the area they could do little but give gauze and bandages to the roughly 1,000 patients waiting for treatment.

The strike on the hospital came as the government marched on with its offensive to destroy the reeling Tamil Tiger rebels and end their quarter-century quest for a separate homeland.

There has been a wave of artillery bombardments across the war zone that began over the weekend and has barely let up in five days, health workers said. The weekend attacks alone may have killed as many as 1,000 people, doctors said.

The government says its troops are not responsible for the shelling and that the military has not fired heavy weapons in the area in weeks.

But Human Rights Watch says satellite images and witness testimony contradict that claim and has accused both sides of using the estimated 50,000 civilians packed into the tiny coastal strip controlled by the rebels as “cannon fodder.”

The shelling was so intense Wednesday that a Red Cross ferry waiting off the coast to deliver food aid and evacuate the wounded had to turn back for a second day, the agency said.

Two artillery shells hit the medical facility about 1 p.m., slamming into an administrative office and a ward filled with patients already wounded by previous shell attacks, Dr. V. Shanmugarajah told The Associated Press by telephone.

Dr. Thurairaja Varatharajah, the top health official in the war zone, said the attack killed at least 50 people, including patients, relatives and a health aide, and wounded about 60 others.

Heavy shelling of the war zone continued throughout the day, he said.

“We are unable to treat the people properly because a lot of aides have fled the hospital. We go into bunkers when there is shelling and try to treat them as much as we can when there is a lull,” he said by telephone.

One shell that struck the compound set an ambulance on fire, according to video footage of the aftermath of the attack. Scores of people crowded beneath tarps outside the hospital building waited for care as someone wailed in the background.

More than 1,000 civilians — many with amputations or chest wounds — had been waiting for treatment at the hospital when it was struck, and every 10 minutes or so another one or two died from lack of care, said a third hospital official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the government had not authorized him to speak to the media.

Overwhelmed doctors have been reduced to handing out bandages to the seriously wounded, the official said. More than 100 dead bodies have been left inside the compound because no one will risk burying them amid the constant shelling, he said. The strike was the third to hit the hospital this month.

A Red Cross worker and his mother were also killed in shelling, the third Red Cross staff member killed by shrapnel in the war zone in the past two months, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

“This latest tragic incident shows how dangerous it is for everyone in the area,” said Paul Castella, the head of the Red Cross delegation in Colombo.

Rebel spokesman Seevaratnam Puleedevan said shells also hit a home for mentally handicapped women, killing 38 and wounding more than 40.

Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government has barred journalists and aid workers from the war zone.

The government has come under heavy international criticism for the large civilian toll of its offensive against the rebels, who are cornered in a two square-mile (five square-kilometer) strip of land.

The military said it pressed ahead with its offensive into that strip Wednesday, capturing one of the rebels’ heavy guns and fending off a suicide attack by four rebel boats laden with explosives.

The U.N. Security Council demanded Wednesday that the Tamil Tigers stop fighting and allow tens of thousands of civilians being used as human shields to leave the war zone. It also called on the government to stop firing heavy weapons, help trapped civilians evacuate and allow for the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid.

The council press statement — which is not legally binding — expressed grave concern at the worsening humanitarian crisis.

MEXICO CITY – Swine flu has infected Mexico’s relations with China and other countries that have canceled airline flights and halted some trade. But its most prickly neighbor — the United States — now seems like the country’s most loyal friend.

Mexico is smarting from what it considers discriminatory actions by countries it had considered friendly, insisting the world should be grateful for its open and aggressive efforts to stem the spread of swine flu. The shutdown of public life cost Mexico $2.2 billion in the first 10 days after the epidemic was announced.

The government sent a plane to pick up 70 of its citizens quarantined in China. It rebuked Cuba, Ecuador, Argentina and Peru for banning flights to Mexico, saying they were acting “incongruously with our traditional ties of friendship.”

France tried — and failed — to win a European Union-wide ban on flights to Mexico.

Particularly insulting for Mexico: Haiti rejected a Mexican ship last week carrying 77 tons of much-needed food aid because of swine flu fears.

All of that put the U.S. response in a very favorable light. Neither the United States nor Canada banned flights or restricted trade with Mexico. The three countries are partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

President Obama forcefully rejected the idea of closing the border, despite arguments from conservative talk show hosts that swine flu showed immigration from Mexico was a threat.

The Obama administration cast the decision as a recognition of reality: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said sealing the border would be extremely costly and pointless since the virus was already in the United States. Obama likened the idea to “closing the barn door after the horses are out.”

Even so, it was symbolically significant in Mexico, which protested when the U.S. began building a border fence under former President George W. Bush.

While Obama has also beefed up border security, he has pledged to renew efforts to push through immigration reforms that eluded the Bush administration, including extending a citizenship path for illegal immigrants. His emphasis on open borders during the swine flu outbreak could help set the tone.

“There was a very explicit recognition that the U.S. and Mexico cannot close their borders,” said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center. “Maybe that tells you that Mexico is really more integrated with its neighbors to the north than the rest of Latin America.”

Mexico took note. The Foreign Relations Department held a special ceremony to thank the U.S. government both for keeping the border open and for providing aid and medical expertise.

“The way in which the border between Mexico and the United States stayed not only open but alive in the past days has been exemplary,” said Carlos Rico, Mexico’s deputy secretary for North American relations. “The open border is something that has not been recognized enough.”

Even members of the opposition leftist Democratic Revolution Party — long known for its nationalistic wariness of the United States — were impressed.

“I thought the reaction and response from the three countries — Mexico, the United States and Canada — was definitely laudable,” said Alfonso Suarez de Real, a lawmaker from the party. “It contrasted with the reaction that other countries have had.”

The experience added momentum to increasingly warming relations, coming on the heels of Obama’s April 16 visit to Mexico and his acknowledgment that Americans share the blame for violence south of border because of drug consumption and gun trafficking. Mexico, for its part, has set aside traditional sovereignty concerns in welcoming increased U.S. border security and even U.S. training for Mexico’s navy.

In contrast, relations with China have been frayed, threatening to undermine trade and investment between the two countries just as it has been picking up, said Hector Cuellar, president of the recently formed Mexico-China Chamber of Commerce.

Prominent Mexican companies have started opening operations in China in the last three years, while Mexican exports to China have jumped ninefold over the past decade to some $2 billion.

But Mexicans were angered when China banned the direct flights that leading Mexican airline Aeromexico started offering in October, and then quarantined Mexican travelers. Mexico canceled its participation at a Shanghai trade fair where it had meant to showcase its pork products — now banned in China and at least four other nations even though health experts say people can’t catch swine flu from meat.

The epidemic also set back Mexico’s efforts to improve ties with Cuba, which soured during the 2000-06 presidency of Vicente Fox, when Mexico voted at the U.N. in favor of monitoring human rights on the communist island.

Fox’s successor, Felipe Calderón, had planned a conciliatory trip to Cuba this year. That’s up in the air after Calderon said he may have to cancel because Cuba grounded flights to and from Mexico.

Mexican officials also didn’t take kindly to Fidel Castro lashing out after Cuba confirmed its first swine flu case, accusing Mexico of waiting to disclose the epidemic until after Obama visited, even though Canadian and U.S. scientists did not identify the virus in Mexican patients until a week later.

In Europe for a summit Tuesday, Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa told Cuba’s foreign relations minister, Bruno Rodriguez, that such remarks “hurt bilateral relations.”

Deputy Health Secretary Mauricio Hernandez said Wednesday that Mexico would support a global compensation fund for countries that suffer from epidemics, and warned that the threat of trade and travel restrictions could provoke governments to hide future outbreaks.

“We were responsible, and we ended up with trade sanctions — we were discriminated against,” Hernandez said at an academic forum on swine flu. “So, the question is: What is the incentive (for countries to be open)?”

Burst of gunfire from U.S. soldier touches varied lives

ABOVE: A family photo shows Pfc. Michael Edward Yates Jr. and his son Kamren. BELOW: Licensed clinical social worker Cmdr. Charles Keith Springle

Keith Springle, who grew up swimming and fishing off the North Carolina coast and seemed destined as a boy to join the Navy, was in Iraq because it was his duty as a military psychologist. Dr. Matthew Houseal, a 54-year-old Army reservist and psychiatrist, was there because he felt he needed to be.

Regardless of how they came to be there, both made it their mission to help their fellow service members cope with the stress of life in the combat zone. Soldiers like the Maryland rebel who liked tinkering with guns and despised “pencil pushers”; or the Peru native who, whether he was walking the streets of New Jersey or the dirt roads of Iraq, was a magnet for candy-seeking kids; or the shy video gamer from Missouri whose refusal to back down probably cost him his life.

Stress brought the five together earlier this week at a Baghdad clinic, the emotionally wounded and the healers. And stress is what killed them.

Authorities say Sgt. John M. Russell, who was nearing the end of his third tour in Iraq, was deeply angry at the military when he walked into the combat stress clinic at Camp Liberty on Monday and opened fire.

Killed were Springle, 52, a Navy commander from Beaufort, N.C.; Houseal of Amarillo, Texas; Army Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos, 25, of Paterson, N.J.; Spc. Jacob D. Barton, 20, of Lenox, Mo.; and Pfc. Michael E. Yates Jr., 19, of Federalsburg, Md., who had met Russell shortly before the shootings.

The paths that brought these six men together traced a grid across the globe, from South America to rural Missouri, from the islands of Alaska to deepest Antarctica, before intersecting so tragically in an Army clinic.

Family and teachers said Jacob Barton was a quiet student who loved graphic novels and science fiction. Growing up with his grandmother in the house, he sometimes had trouble relating to kids his own age.

“His grandmother was foremost on his mind at all times,” said Rod Waldrip, Barton’s high school English teacher at Rolla High School, where Barton graduated last year. “He sometimes wouldn’t do after-school activities because he had to see if she was OK. She was his main concern.”

Rose Coleman said her grandson was adjusting to life in the Army and that he “seemed to like it.”

Although he was reserved, he wasn’t afraid. Waldrip remembers seeing Barton come to the rescue of somebody who was getting bullied.

“He wouldn’t say much unless there was some injustice being done, and then he would speak up.”

Coleman said the Army told the family that Barton died trying to shield another man from the shooting.

“And he tried to talk the guy with the gun to put his gun down,” she said.

Springle knew mental health issues in the past weren’t being addressed and wanted to be proactive in treating the issues faced by soldiers and their families, said Staff Sgt. Robert Mullis of the Boone-based 1451st Transportation Company of the N.C. National Guard, who was part of a civilian outreach program with Springle.

“He saw it as preventive maintenance,” Mullis said of Springle. “They’ve just been through some tough experiences. He was reaching out trying to try and stop a big beast before it got started.”

Springle grew up in the little fishing village of Lewiston, N.C., just east of Beaufort. Cousin Alton Dudley said the pair were a kind of saltwater Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

“It was a carefree life,” said Dudley, a fishing boat captain who was nine years older than Springle. “I am sure that he joined the Navy so that he could be at sea or close to it.”

All who knew him talked about Springle’s sense of humor and upbeat attitude. But Springle, whose son and son-in-law have each done a tour in Iraq, took the issue of combat stress very seriously. While deploying to Iraq was his duty, his work on the homefront with the Citizen-Soldier Support Program was a labor of love.

“This was volunteer work,” said Bob Goodale, director of behavioral mental health for the Chapel Hill-based program. “He was doing this because it was the right thing to do: training civilian providers so they were better equipped to serve the families and the service members.”

At 54, Houseal, a major in the Army Reserves, was under no obligation to go to Iraq. But he was already something of an adventurer.

For 11 months in 1991, the University of Michigan graduate served as the physician for about 20 people working at the Amundsen-Scott Station near the South Pole in a climate research project funded by the National Science Foundation, said Mike O’Neill who was the group’s electronics technician.

“He came in at the last minute not knowing anybody,” said O’Neill, who works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Colorado. “That’s one of the reasons I really respected him.”

The Amarillo man had worked for a dozen years at the Texas Panhandle Mental Health and Mental Retardation clinic, said executive director Bud Schertler. He left Texas for Iraq in late January and was assigned to the 55th Medical Company in Indianapolis, which ran the clinic where the shootings occurred.

Bueno-Galdos couldn’t wait to serve his adopted country and did so exceptionally, earning three Army Commendation Medals.

He was 7 when his family emigrated from Mollendo, Peru, for better economic opportunities. The youngest of four children, Chinito – a term of endearment that literally means “little Chinaman” – became a U.S. citizen in high school and joined the Army as soon as he graduated.

Back home in Paterson, he never made a trip to the corner bodega without a group of neighborhood children tailing behind, knowing he would buy them candy or a soda, his family recalled. It was the same in Iraq, where he was on his second tour.

Yates displayed zeal for serving in the Army, but perhaps not the locale where he was serving, as evidenced by his MySpace page.

His profile lists his location as “(expletive), Iraq.”

Yates’ mother, Shawna Machlinski, said her son joined the Army, not out of a sense of duty, but because he didn’t see many other options. Besides, his stepfather and two stepbrothers were all military men.

Yates liked the military, especially going out on what he called “stealth missions.” His problems started when he went back after spending nearly the entire month of April at home. His son, Kamren Mister, celebrated his first birthday on April 7.

But the visit left him anxious. He wasn’t home long enough, but he’d still been away from “my military family” too long. Once back in Iraq, his mother said, he began to think about things he wished he’d done while visiting Maryland.

When the strong emotions began surfacing, she said, he was transferred to headquarters company “so he could stay out of combat.”

“He didn’t like headquarters at all,” said Machlinski. “He said they’re stupid pencil pushers.”

Despite the stigma, Yates volunteered to go to the stress clinic.

“I need help dealing with this,” he told his mom.

Yates had been at the clinic nearly a week when he called home Sunday for Mother’s Day.

Sometime during that time, he bumped into Russell.

Yates told his mother that Russell seemed like a nice enough guy, but after three tours, he clearly hated the Army.

“Man, this guy’s got issues,” she remembers him telling her.

Russell, 44, who was a little more than a month shy of finishing his third tour, told his family that the clinic was hurting him more than helping.

Now, he faces charges of murder and aggravated assault.

The text of President Obama’s speech, as prepared for delivery:

Thank you, President Crow, for that generous introduction, and for your inspired leadership here at ASU. And I want to thank the entire ASU community for the honor of attaching my name to a scholarship program that will help open the doors of higher education to students from every background. That is the core mission of this school; it is a core mission of my presidency; and I hope this program will serve as a model for universities across this country.

Now, before I begin, I’d like to clear the air about that little controversy everyone was talking about a few weeks back. I have to tell you, I really thought it was much ado about nothing, although I think we all learned an important lesson. I learned to never again pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA bracket. And your university President and Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS.

In all seriousness, I come here not to dispute the suggestion that I haven’t yet achieved enough in my life. I come to embrace it; to heartily concur; to affirm that one’s title, even a title like President, says very little about how well one’s life has been led – and that no matter how much you’ve done, or how successful you’ve been, there’s always more to do, more to learn, more to achieve.

And I want to say to you today, graduates, that despite having achieved a remarkable milestone, one that you and your families are rightfully proud of, you too cannot rest on your laurels. Your body of work is yet to come.

Now, some graduating classes have marched into this stadium in easy times – times of peace and stability when we call on our graduates to simply keep things going, and not screw it up. Other classes have received their diplomas in times of trial and upheaval, when the very foundations of our lives have been shaken, the old ideas and institutions have crumbled, and a new generation is called on to remake the world.

It should be clear by now the category into which all of you fall. For we gather here tonight in times of extraordinary difficulty, for the nation and the world. The economy remains in the midst of a historic recession, the result, in part, of greed and irresponsibility that rippled out from Wall Street and Washington, as we spent beyond our means and failed to make hard choices. We are engaged in two wars and a struggle against terrorism. The threats of climate change, nuclear proliferation, and pandemic defy national boundaries and easy solutions.

For many of you, these challenges are felt in more personal terms. Perhaps you’re still looking for a job – or struggling to figure out what career path makes sense in this economy. Maybe you’ve got student loans, or credit card debts, and are wondering how you’ll ever pay them off. Maybe you’ve got a family to raise, and are wondering how you’ll ensure that your kids have the same opportunities you’ve had to get an education and pursue their dreams.

In the face of these challenges, it may be tempting to fall back on the formulas for success that have dominated these recent years. Many of you have been taught to chase after the usual brass rings: being on this “who’s who” list or that top 100 list; how much money you make and how big your corner office is; whether you have a fancy enough title or a nice enough car.

You can take that road – and it may work for some of you. But at this difficult time, let me suggest that such an approach won’t get you where you want to go; that in fact, the elevation of appearance over substance, celebrity over character, short-term gain over lasting achievement is precisely what your generation needs to help end.

I want to highlight two main problems with that old approach. First, it distracts you from what is truly important, and may lead you to compromise your values, principles and commitments. Think about it. It’s in chasing titles and status – in worrying about the next election rather than the national interest and the interests of those they represent – that politicians so often lose their way in Washington. It was in pursuit of gaudy short-term profits, and the bonuses that come with them, that so many folks lost their way on Wall Street.

The leaders we revere, the businesses that last – they are not the result of narrow pursuit of popularity or personal advancement, but of devotion to some bigger purpose – the preservation of the Union or the determination to lift a country out of depression; the creation of a quality product or a commitment to your customers, your workers, your shareholders and your community.

The trappings of success may be a by-product of this larger mission, but they can’t be the central thing. Just ask Bernie Madoff.

The second problem with the old approach is that a relentless focus on the outward markers of success all too often leads to complacency. We too often let them serve as indications that we’re doing well, even though something inside us tells us that we’re not doing our best; that we are shrinking from, rather than rising to, the challenges of the age. And the thing is, in this new, hyper-competitive age, you cannot afford to be complacent.

That is true in whatever profession you choose. Professors might earn the distinction of tenure, but that doesn’t guarantee that they’ll keep putting in the long hours and late nights – and have the passion and drive – to be great educators. It’s true in your personal life as well. Being a parent isn’t just a matter of paying the bills and doing the bare minimum – it’s not bringing a child into the world that matters, but the acts of love and sacrifice it takes to raise that child. It can happen to presidents too: Abraham Lincoln and Millard Fillmore had the very same title, but their tenure in office – and their legacy – could not be more different.

And that’s not just true for individuals – it is also true for this nation. In recent years, in many ways, we’ve become enamored with our own success – lulled into complacency by our own achievements.

We’ve become accustomed to the title of “military super-power,” forgetting the qualities that earned us that title – not just a build-up of arms, or accumulation of victories, but the Marshall Plan, the Peace Corps, our commitment to working with other nations to pursue the ideals of opportunity, equality and freedom that have made us who we are.

We’ve become accustomed to our economic dominance in the world, forgetting that it wasn’t reckless deals and get-rich-quick schemes that got us there; but hard work and smart ideas -quality products and wise investments. So we started taking shortcuts. We started living on credit, instead of building up savings. We saw businesses focus more on rebranding and repackaging than innovating and developing new ideas and products that improve our lives.

All the while, the rest of the world has grown hungrier and more restless – in constant motion to build and discover – not content with where they are right now, determined to strive for more.

So graduates, it is now abundantly clear that we need to start doing things a little differently. In your own lives, you’ll need to continuously adapt to a continuously changing economy: to have more than one job or career over the course of your life; to keep gaining new skills – possibly even new degrees; and to keep taking risks as new opportunities arise.

And as a nation, we’ll need a fundamental change of perspective and attitude. It is clear that we need to build a new foundation – a stronger foundation – for our economy and our prosperity, rethinking how we educate our children, and care for our sick, and treat our environment.

Many of our current challenges are unprecedented. There are no standard remedies, or go-to fixes this time around.

That is why we are going to need your help. We’ll need young people like you to step up. We need your daring and your enthusiasm and your energy.

And let me be clear, when I say “young,” I’m not just referring to the date on your birth certificate. I’m talking about an approach to life – a quality of mind and heart.

A willingness to follow your passions, regardless of whether they lead to fortune and fame. A willingness to question conventional wisdom and rethink the old dogmas. A lack of regard for all the traditional markers of status and prestige – and a commitment instead to doing what is meaningful to you, what helps others, what makes a difference in this world.

That’s the spirit that led a band of patriots not much older than you to take on an empire. It’s what drove young pioneers west, and young women to reach for the ballot; what inspired a 30 year-old escaped slave to run an underground railroad to freedom, and a 26 year-old preacher to lead a bus boycott for justice. It’s what led firefighters and police officers in the prime of their lives up the stairs of those burning towers; and young people across this country to drop what they were doing and come to the aid of a flooded New Orleans. It’s what led two guys in a garage – named Hewlett and Packard – to form a company that would change the way we live and work; and what led scientists in laboratories, and novelists in coffee shops to labor in obscurity until they finally succeeded in changing the way we see the world.

That is the great American story: young people just like you, following their passions, determined to meet the times on their own terms. They weren’t doing it for the money. Their titles weren’t fancy – ex-slave, minister, student, citizen. But they changed the course of history – and so can you.

With a degree from this university, you have everything you need to get started. Did you study business? Why not help our struggling non-profits find better, more effective ways to serve folks in need. Nursing? Understaffed clinics and hospitals across this country are desperate for your help. Education? Teach in a high-need school; give a chance to kids we can’t afford to give up on – prepare them to compete for any job anywhere in the world. Engineering? Help us lead a green revolution, developing new sources of clean energy that will power our economy and preserve our planet.

Or you can make your mark in smaller, more individual ways. That’s what so many of you have already done during your time here at ASU – tutoring children; registering voters; doing your own small part to fight hunger and homelessness, AIDS and cancer. I think one student said it best when she spoke about her senior engineering project building medical devices for people with disabilities in a village in Africa. Her professor showed a video of the folks they’d be helping, and she said, “When we saw the people on the videos, we began to feel a connection to them. It made us want to be successful for them.”

That’s a good motto for all of us – find someone to be successful for. Rise to their hopes and their needs. As you think about life after graduation, as you look in the mirror tonight, you may see somebody with no idea what to do with their life. But a troubled child might look at you and see a mentor. A homebound senior citizen might see a lifeline. The folks at your local homeless shelter might see a friend. None of them care how much money is in your bank account, or whether you’re important at work, or famous around town – they just know that you’re someone who cares, someone who makes a difference in their lives.

That is what building a body of work is all about – it’s about the daily labor, the many individual acts, the choices large and small that add up to a lasting legacy. It’s about not being satisfied with the latest achievement, the latest gold star – because one thing I know about a body of work is that it’s never finished. It’s cumulative; it deepens and expands with each day that you give your best, and give back, and contribute to the life of this nation. You may have set-backs, and you may have failures, but you’re not done – not by a longshot.

Just look to history. Thomas Paine was a failed corset maker, a failed teacher, and a failed tax collector before he made his mark on history with a little book called Common Sense that helped ignite a revolution. Julia Child didn’t publish her first cookbook until she was almost fifty, and Colonel Sanders didn’t open up his first Kentucky Fried Chicken until he was in his sixties. Winston Churchill was dismissed as little more than a has-been, who enjoyed scotch just a bit too much, before he took over as Prime Minister and saw Great Britain through its finest hour. And no one thought a former football player stocking shelves at the local supermarket would return to the game he loved, become a Super Bowl MVP, and then come here to Arizona and lead your Cardinals to their first Super Bowl.

Each of them, at one point in their life, didn’t have any title or much status to speak of. But they had a passion, a commitment to following that passion wherever it would lead, and to working hard every step along the way.

And that’s not just how you’ll ensure that your own life is well-lived. It’s how you’ll make a difference in the life of this nation. I talked earlier about the selfishness and irresponsibility on Wall Street and Washington that rippled out and led to the problems we face today. I talked about the focus on outward markers of success that can lead us astray.

But here’s the thing, graduates: it works the other way around too. Acts of sacrifice and decency without regard to what’s in it for you – those also create ripple effects – ones that lift up families and communities; that spread opportunity and boost our economy; that reach folks in the forgotten corners of the world who, in committed young people like you, see the true face of America: our strength, our goodness, the enduring power of our ideals.

I know starting your careers in troubled times is a challenge. But it is also a privilege.

Because it is moments like these that force us to try harder, to dig deeper, to discover gifts we never knew we had – to find the greatness that lies within each of us. So don’t ever shy away from that endeavor. Don’t ever stop adding to your body of work. I can promise that you will be the better for that continued effort, as will this nation that we all love.

Congratulations on your graduation, and Godspeed on the road ahead.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is considering a list of more than six contenders for the Supreme Court that is dominated by women and Hispanics, one that includes judges and leaders from his own administration who have never donned a judicial robe.

Among those under consideration are Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Appeals Court judges Sonia Sotomayor and Diane Pamela Wood. California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno is also under review by Obama.

Sources familiar with Obama’s deliberations confirmed the names to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because no candidates have been revealed by the White House. The confirmation amounts to the first time any name has been directly tied to Obama.

One official cautioned that Obama is considering other people who have not been publicly mentioned. And more names may be added as the administration considers a replacement for retiring Justice David Souter.

The disclosure came as the president met privately at the White House with four leading senators likely to play a key role in confirmation proceedings. Separately, top aides invited the leaders of several liberal-leaning outside groups to a meeting.

Most of the people confirmed as under consideration have been mentioned frequently as potential candidates. Moreno — the sole man on the known group of candidates — is the newest name to emerge.

The president is widely expected to choose a woman for a Supreme Court that has nine members but only one female justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He is also under pressure from some Latino officials to name the nation’s first Hispanic justice. Moreno and Sotomayor are Hispanic.

Obama is likely before month’s end to name a nominee to replace Souter, who is retiring when the court term ends this summer. He is part of the court’s liberal wing, and his replacement by the new Democratic president is not expected to change the high court’s ideological balance.

Obama met Wednesday with senators who will have huge influence over the pace and tone of the confirmation process.

“I don’t envy him the decision, but I think he’s going to make it soon,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said after the private White House session.

Obama met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on Judiciary; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell; and Leahy. Vice President Joe Biden, a former Judiciary Committee chairman and veteran of confirmation hearings, also attended.

The Republican senators underscored that they would not seek a rushed confirmation process, noting that it typically takes 60 days for confirmation once a nominee has been announced. Pressed on a timetable, Leahy told reporters: “We’ll work out a decent schedule. Let’s get the nominee first.”

Obama wants his nominee confirmed before the Senate recess in August, which means he would need to name one soon.

“I think he’s still in the initial evaluation process,” Sessions told reporters later in the day. “That’s pretty clear, I think. He’s not settled on one name.”

The senators who met with Obama said he did not discuss specific names with them.

Moreno was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1998 to serve as a U.S. District Court judge and the Senate unanimously confirmed him. In 2001 he raised a few eyebrows when he gave up his lifetime federal judgeship to accept Democratic Gov. Gray Davis’ nomination to the state’s high court.

Moreno is the only Democrat on the California Supreme Court and is widely regarded as its most liberal voice. Last year he signed on to the court’s 4-3 ruling that legalized gay marriage in the state. Voters later banned gay marriage in a ballot initiative.

The other known candidates under Obama’s review:

• Granholm, a former federal prosecutor and Michigan attorney general. She has been a fierce spokeswoman for her state’s struggling auto industry and was a strong advocate for Obama during his presidential campaign.

• Napolitano, who stepped down as Arizona’s governor to join the administration and was quickly tested as homeland security chief when the swine flu outbreak hit.

• Wood, an appeals court judge who has worked at the State Department, the Justice Department and in private practice. Like Obama, she is a former professor at the University of Chicago.

• Kagan, who stepped down as dean of Harvard Law School to become the nation’s first female solicitor general. Like Obama, she is a graduate of Harvard who later taught of the University of Chicago law school. She clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and worked in the Clinton White House.

• Sotomayor, an appeals court judge and former New York prosecutor and private lawyer. President George H.W. Bush nominated her as a federal judge; Clinton nominated her to the appeals court.

WASHINGTON – Under strong attack from Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA and Bush administration of misleading her about waterboarding detainees in the war on terror and sharply rebutted claims she was complicit in its use.

“To the contrary . . . we were told explicitly that waterboarding was not being used,” she told reporters, referring to a formal CIA briefing she received in the fall of 2002.

Pelosi said she subsequently learned that other lawmakers were told several months later by the CIA about the use of waterboarding.

“I wasn’t briefed, I was informed that somebody else had been briefed about it,” she said.

The House’s top Democrat made her comments at a news conference where she was peppered with questions about her knowledge of a technique she and others have called torture. Republicans have insisted in recent weeks that she and other Democrats knew waterboarding was in use, but made no attempt to protest.

Pelosi renewed her call for a so-called truth commission to investigate the events in the Bush administration that led to the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques. While President Barack Obama has banned waterboarding, calling it torture, he has been notably cool toward an independent inquiry that might distract attention from his domestic agenda.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also has expressed opposition, as have congressional Republicans.

Pelosi was particularly harsh in describing the CIA.

“They mislead us all the time,” she said. And when a reporter asked whether the agency lied, she did not disagree.

She also suggested that the current Republican criticism marked an attempt to divert attention from the Bush administration’s actions.

“They misrepresented every step of the way, and they don’t want that focus on them, so they try to turn the focus on us,” she said.

Pelosi contended that Democrats did what they could to stop the use of waterboarding. The senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, who received the 2003 briefing on the practice, sent the CIA a formal letter of protest, she said.

But Pelosi defended her own lack of action on the issue, saying her focus at the time was on wresting congressional control from Republicans so her party could change course.

“No letter could change the policy. It was clear we had to change the leadership in Congress and in the White House. That was my job – the Congress part,” Pelosi said.