WASHINGTON – Deterred by immigration laws and the lackluster economy, the population growth of Hispanics and Asians in the U.S. has slowed unexpectedly, causing the government to push back estimates on when minorities will become the majority by as much as a decade.

Census data released Thursday showed that the nation’s overall minority population continues to rise steadily, adding 2.3 percent in 2008 to 104.6 million, or 34 percent of the total population. But the slowdown among Hispanics and Asians continues to shift conventional notions on when the tipping point in U.S. diversity will come – estimated to occur more than three decades from now.

According to the latest data, the percentage growth of Hispanics slowed from 4.0 percent in 2001 to 3.2 percent last year. Their slowed population growth would have been greater if it weren’t for their high fertility – nearly 10 births for every death.

Asian population increases slowed from 3.7 percent in 2001 to about 2.5 percent. Hispanics and Asians still are the two fastest-growing minority groups, making up about 15 percent and 4.4 percent of the U.S. population, respectively.

Thirty-six states had lower Hispanic growth in 2008 compared with the year before. The declines were in places where the housing bubble burst, such as Nevada and Arizona, which lost construction jobs that tend to attract immigrants.

Arizona’s total population grew by 2.3 percent from 2007 to 2008, slightly below its 2.6 percent average growth rate for the eight preceding years.

Hispanics grew by 4 percent statewide from 2007 to 2008 compared to an average 4.6 percent growth rate for prior years and Asians grew by 4.8 percent during the same time frame compared to an average rate of 5.7 percent for the 2000 to 2007 years.

Trend also seen in Southeast

Other decreases were seen in new immigrant destinations in the Southeast, previously seen as offering good manufacturing jobs in lower-cost cities compared to the pricier Northeast. In contrast, cities in California, Illinois and New Jersey showed gains.

In Arkansas, manufacturing and poultry companies have cut hours and workers, leaving a growing number of Hispanics unable to cover their mortgage payments, said Maribel Tapia, a housing counselor in Fayetteville, Ark. Fathers are moving out of state, where other relatives have lines on menial jobs that support the families they leave behind, she said.

Police in northwest Arkansas created an immigration task force with the help of U.S. immigration agents.

“I don’t think it’s more likely they’re going back to Mexico or El Salvador or wherever they’re from,” she said. “They’re just calling different family members in different states and asking around about work. They just pack up and move.”

The political effects can be high. Minorities turned out in record numbers in November to vote, largely for Democrat Barack Obama for president, and Hispanic groups are expected to flex their growing clout in future elections as they push immigration reform.

More than a dozen states also stand to gain or lose House seats after the 2010 census depending on last-minute shifts in population.

“Not just whites are staying put, but minorities are staying put and immigrants are staying put,” said Mark Mather, associate vice president of the nonprofit Population Reference Bureau, citing in part a declining economy that has locked the U.S. population largely in place.

“I was surprised the drop in Hispanic growth rates wasn’t bigger given the decline in immigration,” he said. “Government policy will certainly have a major effect on future race and ethnic composition if Congress takes some action on immigration reform.”

The Census Bureau projected last August that white children will become the minority in 2023 and the overall white population will follow in 2042. The agency now says it will recalculate those figures, typically updated every three to four years, because they don’t fully take into account anti-immigration policies after the September 2001 terror attacks and the current economic recession.

The new projections, expected to be released later this year, could delay the tipping point for minorities by 10 years, given the current low rates of immigration, David Waddington, the Census Bureau’s chief of projections, said in a telephone interview.

“Policies changed,” he said, in explaining why the scientific estimates were no longer valid.

Blacks, who comprise about 12.2 percent of the population, have increased at a rate of about 1 percent each year. Whites, with a median age of 41, have increased very little in recent years because of low birth rates and an aging boomer population.

The migration shift could continue for a while, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, citing the bursting of an unprecedented housing bubble in 2005-2006 that is helping reshape the economy.

“What this means is that the idea of creating new Asian and Hispanic enclaves in different parts of the United States will undergo a bit of a wall,” said Frey. “Those staying in these enclaves will be competing for jobs with long-term residents, while others will return to social support systems in major gateways.”

Six U.S. counties saw their minority populations become the majority, including Orange County, Fla., the nation’s 35th most populous county that is home to Orlando. Webster County in Georgia had a majority of minority groups in 2007 but reverted back to a white majority in 2008.

In all, about 309 of the nation’s 3,142 counties, or 1 in 10, have minority populations greater than 50 percent. Other counties that become majority-minority in 2008 were Stanislaus in California; Finney in Kansas; Warren in Mississippi; and Edwards and Schleicher counties in Texas.

Other findings:

• There are 48 majority Hispanic counties nationally; the top 10 were all in Texas. The gateway cities of Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston and Chicago had the greatest number of Hispanics.

• Seventy-seven counties are majority-black; all were in the South. Atlanta edged past Chicago in the number of blacks, ranking second after New York City. They were followed by Washington and Philadelphia.

• Honolulu County, Hawaii, was the only majority Asian county in the nation. New York City had the highest population of Asians, surpassing Los Angeles. Asians also numbered the most in San Francisco; San Jose, Calif.; and Chicago.

• California, the nation’s most populous state, also had the most number of whites. Maine and Vermont had the highest share of whites at 95 percent each.

In Nashville, Tenn., Maria Lopez, a 49-year-old Mexican immigrant, said business is down 80 percent at the restaurant she runs, and 10 to 15 people come in a day asking for jobs, mostly Hispanics.

Lopez said she had to cut back on the amount of money she was sending back home to her family in Mexico. Although she’s been in the U.S. for 13 years, she is thinking about returning to Mexico.

“I am just making enough to pay the lease and the bills,” Lopez said through a translator. “If things continue like that, I will leave.”

The 2008 census estimates used local records of births and deaths, tax records of people moving within the U.S., and census statistics on immigrants.

The figures for “white” refer to those whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity. Since the government considers “Hispanic” an ethnicity, people of Hispanic descent can be of any race.

Accused of breaking detention terms

Myanmar activists shout slogans during a rally demanding the immediate release of their pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi near the Myanmar Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday. Suu Kyi was charged Thursday with violating terms of her house arrest in a bizarre case involving an American man who swam across a lake to sneak into her home, her lawyer said.

YANGON — Myanmar’s Nobel Prize-winning pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi faced new charges Thursday less than two weeks before her house arrest was due to end after an American man swam across a lake to enter her home, her lawyer said.

Supporters accused the military government of using the incident to keep her in detention ahead of general elections scheduled for next year.

Suu Kyi, whose detention was set to end May 27, could face a prison term of up to five years if convicted, said lawyer Hla Myo Myint. The trial is scheduled to start Monday at a special court at Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison, where she was arraigned Thursday.

She is accused of breaking the terms of her detention by harboring the visitor for two days, even though another of Suu Kyi’s lawyers said she told the man to leave her home.

“Everyone is very angry with this wretched American. He is the cause of all these problems,” lawyer Kyi Win told reporters. “He’s a fool.”

The junta appears eager to ensure that general elections scheduled for next year are carried out without any significant opposition from pro-democracy groups that say the balloting will merely perpetuate military rule under a democratic guise.

Human rights groups said they feared the trial would be used to justify another extension of Suu Kyi’s yearslong detention despite international demands for her release. The 63-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate has already spent more than 13 of the last 19 years — including the past six — in detention without trial for her nonviolent promotion of democracy in Myanmar, also called Burma.

The motives of the American, John William Yettaw, 53, remained unclear. State television on Thursday said he had served two years in the military and listed his occupation as “student, clinical psychology, Forest Institution.”

“I know that John is harmless and not politically motivated in any way,” his stepson, Paul Nedrow, wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “He did not want to cause Suu Kyi any trouble.”

Nedrow said he was concerned over his stepfather’s health because he was a diabetic and the ailment “could cause him to become disoriented and confused and be unable to make wise choices for himself.”

A pro-government Myanmar Web site earlier said that after arriving at Suu Kyi’s house, Yettaw told her two female assistants — a mother and daughter who are her sole allowed companions — that he was tired and hungry after the swim and has diabetes.

It said the two women, supporters of Suu Kyi’s party, gave him food.

In the past Myanmar’s junta — which regards Suu Kyi as the biggest threat to its rule — has found reasons to extend her periods of house arrest, bending the letter of the law.

“The Burmese regime is clearly intent on finding any pretext, no matter how tenuous, to extend her unlawful detention. The real injustice, the real illegality, is that she is still detained in the first place,” said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who wrote a chapter about her in his book “Courage.”

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith described Suu Kyi’s arrest as “gravely concerning” and urged her immediate release.

Yettaw, who was arrested last week, was charged at Thursday’s hearing with illegally entering a restricted zone, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, and breaking immigration laws, which is punishable by up to one year in jail, said Hla Myo Myint.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Mei said Yettaw had no legal representation at his arraignment but that the embassy was trying to find him an English-speaking lawyer.

The National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, which describes itself as the country’s government-in-exile, said the junta was using the incident to extend Suu Kyi’s detention.

“It is nothing more than a political ploy to hoodwink the international community so that it can keep (Suu Kyi) under lock and key while the military maneuvers its way to election victory on 2010,” the group’s prime minister, Sein Win, said in a statement.

Suu Kyi has recently been ill, suffering from dehydration and low blood pressure. Her condition improved this week after a visit by a doctor who administered an intravenous drip, said Nyan Win, the spokesman for her National League for Democracy party, who is also part of a team of three lawyers hoping to represent her.

“Please tell them (reporters) I am well,” Kyi Win quoted Suu Kyi as saying. But he added: “I am very concerned about Suu Kyi’s health, even though she said she is well.”

The USA is developing a stark generation gap between aging white Baby Boomers and a young, growing minority population, according to U.S. Census data released today.

The minority population increased 2.3 percent to 104.6 million from mid-2007 to July 1, 2008, or just over one-third of the total population, the Census Bureau reported.

Hispanics had the highest growth rate – 3.2 percent – during the 12 months.

Although immigration has slowed, higher birth rates among Hispanics make them the fastest growing group. Births, rather than immigration, accounted for about two-thirds of the 1.47 million increase in the Hispanic population in 2008, according to Kenneth Johnson, demographer at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute. In addition, Hispanics are younger, on average, than the overall population. Births among Hispanics outpaced deaths by nearly 10 to one.

Forty-seven percent of children under 5 are minorities, as are 43 percent of young people under age 20.

“It’s a cumulative effect of immigration,” says Jeffrey Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center. “We’ve built up a population of Hispanics, and increasingly they’re native born.”

As the median age among non-Hispanic whites increases – it’s 41.1 compared with 27.7 for Hispanics – so will the racial and ethnic generation gap, demographers say.

“A lot of these Boomers are going to be relying on this younger generation to take care of them in a lot of ways,” says Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau. “In another generation, this is going to be our workforce that is supporting Social Security.”

Orange County, Fla., home of Walt Disney World, is one of six U.S. counties where the population became majority-minority in 2008: more than half the population are in groups other than non-Hispanic whites.

That’s “not a surprise” to Orange County Mayor Richard Crotty, who says the county has always been “a snapshot of what America looks like.” Nearly 10 percent of the nation’s 3,142 counties have a minority population above 50 percent.

The demographic shift is most dramatic among “kids under 20,” Mather says. “They really are the groups that are driving these changes.”

Contributing: Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY

By Paul Overberg, Martha T. Moore

WASHINGTON – New jobless claims rose more than expected last week due partly to an increase in layoffs by the automobile industry, while the number of people continuing to receive unemployment benefits set a record for the 15th straight week

The Labor Department said Thursday the number of new claims rose to a seasonally adjusted 637,000, from a revised 605,000 the previous week. That’s above analysts’ expectations of 610,000.

The increase comes after initial claims dropped in four of the previous five weeks, which raised hopes that the wave of layoffs announced earlier this year has crested and that the recession was nearing a bottom.

A department analyst said most of the increase was due to auto layoffs. Economists estimate Chrysler LLC has laid off 27,000 workers in the wake of its April 30 bankruptcy filing. General Motors Corp. has said it will temporarily shut 13 factories beginning later this month through July, potentially affecting 25,000 workers.

Still, many economists expect the downward trend in jobless claims to return once the impact of the auto industry’s job cuts has passed.

Also Thursday, the department said wholesale prices climbed 0.3 percent last month, larger than the 0.1 percent gain economists had expected. The biggest jump in food costs in more than a year offset a second monthly decline in the price of energy products.

Even with the larger-than-expected gain last month, wholesale prices over the past year have fallen 3.7 percent, the biggest 12-month decline since 1950. While falling prices can raise fears about deflation, economists believe the efforts by the Federal Reserve to combat the recession will prevent a dangerous bout of falling prices.

In another sign of labor market weakness, the tally of people continuing to receive benefits increased to 6.56 million from 6.36 million, setting a record for the 15th straight week and worse than analysts expected. The continuing claims data lags initial claims by one week.

The large number of people on the jobless benefit rolls is a sign that unemployed workers are having difficulty finding new positions.

Economists are closely watching the health of the labor market. If layoffs continue at a rapid pace, consumers could cut back further on spending and prolong the recession.

New applications for jobless benefits have declined since reaching 674,000 in late March, the highest level in the current recession. But claims remain elevated. Weekly initial claims were 375,000 a year ago.

The four-week average of claims, which smooths out volatility, rose to 630,500, after falling for four straight weeks. Still, the average remains nearly 30,000 below its high in early April, a drop that economists at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have said indicates that the economic downturn is bottoming out.

There have been other signs the pace of job cuts is moderating, though still brutal. Employers eliminated 539,000 jobs in April, the fewest in six months and below the average of 700,000 in the first quarter of this year.

Still, more than 5.7 million jobs have been lost since the recession began in December 2007. The jobless rate rose to 8.9 percent in April, the Labor Department said last week. Many economists expect unemployment to hit 10 percent by year’s end.

More job cuts have been announced recently. Steel giant ArcelorMittal said Wednesday it will eliminate nearly 1,000 positions at an Indiana steel plant in July, while DuPont said last week it will cut 2,000 jobs.

Among the states, Illinois reported the largest increase in initial claims, which it attributed to layoffs in the construction and manufacturing industries. The next biggest increases were in Kansas, Puerto Rico, Indiana and Ohio.

New York reported the largest drop in claims of 13,386, which it said was due to fewer layoffs in the transportation and service industries. The next largest drops were in Michigan, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Connecticut. The state data is for the week ending May 2, one week behind the initial claims data.

A study released Wednesday says that 28 percent of deployed service members were unable to vote in the November elections because their absentee ballots were uncounted or never collected.

That finding, based on data gathered by the Congressional Research Service from seven states with high populations of military voters, is worse than in the 2000 presidential election, despite a massive effort to improve the absentee voting process, said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who requested the study.

“This is unacceptable and something we should not allow to continue,” Schumer said.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said he expects Congress to do something tangible because voting laws are not working.

The seven states in the study were California, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and West Virginia.

Combined, they account for 43.5 percent of the active-duty military population.

MANADO, Indonesia – Rising sea levels, warming waters and spiraling acidity caused by global warming are threatening the world’s oceans and the communities they support, governments warned Thursday, as they sought to include protection for the seas in a new U.N. climate treaty.

Not only marine ecosystems, but the lives of tens of millions of people could be affected as they are forced to leave inundated coastal communities and find new jobs, they said.

“We must come to the rescue of the oceans,” Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the opening of high-level government talks at the World Ocean’s Conference in the northern city of Manado.

“We must preserve them as our legacy for our future generations so that they may live free from the shackles of poverty,” he said.

Scientists have long warned that higher temperatures will melt polar ice and cause sea levels to rise, wiping out island communities and destroying coastal ecosystems. Rising emissions of carbon dioxide are also making oceans increasingly acidic, eroding sea shells, bleaching coral and killing other marine life.

But many questions remain about oceans — which can also play an important part in absorbing carbon — partly because the technology to study them is relatively new.

Participants at Thursday’s meeting want negotiators at U.N. climate change talks, scheduled to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December, to discuss the world’s waters including concerns about the affect of greenhouse gas emissions on oceans when replacing the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in recorded remarks Thursday that the world must “do more to protect our oceans and preserve the long-term health of our planet and its people,” noting that the two are closely linked.

The effects of climate change, she said, “can be seen not only in melting glaciers and dying coral reefs, but also in damaged homes, falling wages, rising poverty, diminished opportunities.”

The two-day meeting in Manado, which brings together ministers and high-level officials from more than 80 countries, was preceded by a series of symposiums on science, technology and policy makers. It wraps up Friday.

A similar gathering will be held next week in Washington, D.C., with the focus on the need for improved marine conservation.

“The fact that less than 1 percent of the world’s oceans are covered by marine protected areas is a catastrophe waiting to happen,” Dan Laffoley of the International Union for Conservation of Nature said in a statement.

“Just because these places are under water and not highly visible does not mean they should be ignored,” he said. “It’s time to expand marine protected areas and save our oceans from threats like overfishing and climate change.”

He reverses position because of damage photos might do

WASHINGTON – President Obama will try to block the court-ordered release of photos showing the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, reversing his position and ceding to military concerns the images could stoke anti-American passions overseas.

The White House had said last month it would not oppose an appeals court ruling that set a May 28 deadline for releasing dozens of photos from military investigations of alleged misconduct.

But American commanders in the war zones have expressed concern about damage the photos might do.

When photos emerged in 2004 from the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, showing grinning American soldiers posing with detainees – some of the prisoners naked, some being held on leashes – the pictures caused a huge anti-American backlash around the globe, particularly in the Muslim world.

Obama, explaining his change of heart, said the photos had already served their purpose in investigations of “a small number of individuals.” Those cases were all concluded by 2004, and the president said “the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken.”

“This is not a situation in which the Pentagon has concealed or sought to justify inappropriate action,” Obama said of the photos.

The effort to keep the photos from becoming public represented a sharp reversal from Obama’s repeated pledges for open government.

Obama’s reversal puts him in step with some Republicans. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sent kudos via Twitter. “Strongly agree,” he said.

———

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

• A suicide car bomber killed seven people and wounded 21 others Wednesday outside a U.S. military base in the same part of eastern Afghanistan where militants stormed government buildings a day earlier, police said.

• Ninety-five Afghan children are among the 140 people said to have died in a recent U.S.-Taliban battle in western Afghanistan, a lawmaker involved in the investigation into the deaths said Wednesday. The U.S. military disputed the claim.

• Tempers boiled over Wednesday at a refugee camp in Pakistan when a scuffle broke out as police escorted a truck carrying mattresses and water, but the incident did not last long and there were no reports of injuries.

The Associated Press

KABUL – A suicide bomb attack killed six civilians Wednesday outside a U.S. military base in the same part of eastern Afghanistan where militants tried to storm government buildings the day before, police said.

A vehicle drove up to a gate outside Camp Salerno, on the edge of Khost city, in the early morning and exploded, Khost province police spokesman Wazir Pacha said. Six civilians were killed and 16 others wounded, he said.

U.S. forces confirmed the attack, saying four Afghan security guards were killed in the blast and 12 wounded.

“We don’t know how many local nationals were wounded or killed,” said Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, a U.S. military spokeswoman. There were no casualties among international troops, she said.

The attack comes a day after 11 Taliban suicide bombers struck government buildings in Khost city, sparking running gunbattles with U.S. and Afghan forces that killed 20 people and wounded three Americans.

One proposal: Tax boss-paid health insurance

WASHINGTON – After weeks of discussing ways to provide health care to the uninsured, Congress is beginning the difficult task of finding a way to pay for it.

Lawmakers are considering a broad range of ideas – including a new federal tax on soda – but a key Senate committee focused Tuesday on a proposal to tax health insurance that millions of Americans receive through their employers.

“I don’t think you can avoid taking that on,” Gail Wilensky, senior fellow at the health education foundation Project HOPE, told the Senate Finance Committee, which is helping to craft an overhaul of the health care system.

Nearly 164 million people, or 62 percent of the nation’s non-elderly population, receive health insurance through work, according to a joint congressional committee on taxation. Money spent on insurance provided by employers is excluded from an employee’s taxable income. If the exemption was lifted entirely, it could have raised about $226 billion in 2008, the joint committee reports.

During the campaign last year, President Obama opposed taxing employer-based health care benefits, and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs reiterated that opposition Tuesday.

Even so, Senate Democrats are taking a closer look at the idea of at least limiting the tax break. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said the exemption helps the well-off more than the poor, who are less likely to receive health care through work.

Baucus said the idea of repealing the break entirely is “just not going to happen,” but said Congress could cap the amount of benefit made available tax-free. He also said lawmakers may set an income limit so the exemption would not apply to high-paid employees.

Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, also supports the idea of repealing the exemption.

Gerald Shea of the AFL-CIO said limiting the tax break is “a step in the wrong direction” because it could punish employees who negotiated for better health care coverage rather than higher wages. Also, some employees pay more for health care insurance because of factors outside of their control, including the size of their company, he said.

WASHINGTON – Social Security and Medicare are fading even faster under the weight of the recession, heading for insolvency years sooner than previously expected, the government warned Tuesday.

Medicare already is paying out more money than it receives, something that happened for the first time last year. And Social Security will be by 2016, a year sooner than had been projected, the trustees’ annual report said.

Unless changes in Social Security are enacted, the retirement fund will be depleted in 2037, four years sooner than projected last year. The Medicare trust fund is in even worse shape. It is projected to become insolvent in 2017, two years earlier than expected.

More immediately, the trustees do not expect Social Security recipients to get cost-of-living increases in 2010 or 2011, something that hasn’t happened since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975. The Social Security Administration will set next year’s cost-of-living adjustment in October, based on inflation over the previous year.

“We should neither be casual nor hysterical about the revised insolvency dates,” Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue said. “The Social Security system will weather this recession. However, the sooner we get on with the task of reforming the system, the easier it will be to make the tough choices.”

The recession is hurting both funds, which are financed by payroll taxes. The U.S. has lost 5.7 million jobs since the recession began, meaning fewer payroll taxes are flowing into the funds. At the same time, aging baby boomers and rising health care costs are adding to expenditures.

The trust funds – which exist in paper form in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, W.Va. – are bonds that are backed by the government’s “full faith and credit” but not by any actual assets. That money has been spent over the years to fund other parts of government. To redeem the trust fund bonds, the government would have to borrow in public debt markets or raise taxes.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the head of the trustees group, said reducing health care costs is the key to saving Medicare.

“The most effective entitlement reform measure will be a major health reform that helps bring down the growth rate of national health care spending,” Geithner said.

MARDAN, Pakistan – Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis have fled fighting between the army and Taliban militants in a northwestern valley, raising the risk that public support could turn against an offensive Washington sees as a must-win battle.

The U.S. announced $4.9 million worth of aid for the refugees, many of whom arrived Monday in parched camps where children held empty food bowls and men lined up in the baking sun, questioning how they would survive.

“It’s hell for us,” said Zaida Bibi, 20, as she glanced around her new accommodations, a mostly bare tent in the Mardan area, its floor covered by a thin tarpaulin that proved little cushion against the rugged earth.

At least 360,000 Pakistanis displaced by recent fighting have registered in camps and other centers since early May, the U.N. said. That’s on top of some 500,000 people displaced by offensives that date to August 2008 — though it’s unclear how many of those remain refugees.

Most of the newly displaced are expected to stay with relatives or friends. But some 30,000 are settling into U.N. camps, spokeswoman Ariane Rummery said. The agency announced Monday it will airlift 120 tons of relief supplies to help refugees in the region.

The U.N. is working in at least five camps with the new refugees, though the government has established several sites elsewhere. The figures could rise if fighting proceeds.

The military operation is focused in the Swat Valley, a major Taliban stronghold, and surrounding districts. Pakistani warplanes bombed suspected insurgent positions in the area Monday, while the government claimed it had killed up to 700 Taliban in four days of fighting.

Islamabad’s tough military response has earned praise from the U.S., which wants al-Qaida and Taliban militants routed from havens where they can plan attacks on American and NATO forces in nearby Afghanistan.

It has also earned broad support from Pakistanis, including many in the region who fled after enduring Taliban brutality for the past two years.

Still, the newly displaced are desperate for a quick finish to the offensive, and they worry about what will be left of their homes.

Swat, with 1.5 million residents, was once a tourist haven dubbed the “Switzerland of Pakistan” for its Alpine scenery. It lies less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the capital, Islamabad, and not far from the Afghan border.

It’s also near the lawless Pakistani tribal areas, where al-Qaida and the Taliban have strongholds and where the U.S. says al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden may be hiding.

A suspected U.S. missile strike killed at least eight people in the South Waziristan tribal region early Tuesday, Pakistani officials said. The identity of the victims was not immediately clear, said the officials, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly to the media.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the government, which had urged residents to leave the region to avoid casualties, was devoting millions of dollars to help the refugees.

“These people have left their areas to save the country — we appreciate their sacrifices,” Gilani said. “The nation is ready to provide them all required facilities.”

But Pakistani political analyst Mehdi Hasan said the government must act quickly.

“If the disappointment of the people and the resentment of displaced persons increases, then it will be difficult for the government to continue this military action,” he said.

At a Mardan camp where some 12,000 people had already settled, Naheed Amir, a health worker with the aid group Ummah Welfare Trust, said she was seeing more than 300 patients a day with a range of illnesses from diarrhea to eye infections.

Some of the displaced families said they’d had nothing to eat but lentils over the past few days, and that they needed electricity, more water and better relief from the heat.

Many of those who fled went well beyond the northwest, traveling as far as the southern city of Karachi.

The military launched the most recent offensive after the insurgents in Swat used a peace deal to impose their reign in other neighboring areas, including a stretch just 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the capital.

The army says 12,000 to 15,000 troops in Swat face 4,000 to 5,000 militants, including small numbers of foreigners and hardened fighters from the South Waziristan tribal region.

MUNICH – John Demjanjuk, the retired Ohio autoworker deported to Germany, was set to arrive Tuesday to face a warrant accusing him of being a guard at a Nazi death camp where 29,000 Jews and others were killed.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk says he was a Red Army soldier who was captured by the Nazis, spent the rest of the war as their prisoner and never hurt anyone.

There are Nazi-era documents that suggest otherwise — including a photo ID identifying Demjanjuk as a guard at the Sobibor death camp and saying he was trained at an SS facility for Nazi guards at Trawniki. Both sites were in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Still, the key to the 89-year-old Demjanjuk’s fate may not lie with the evidence but rather on a German court’s decision about whether he is medically fit to stand trial. In any case, Demjanjuk, who has been without a country since the U.S. stripped him of his citizenship in 2002, is likely to spend the rest of his life in Germany, either in jail or in a home for the elderly.

One of his German lawyers, Guenter Maull, told AP Television News on Monday that after the plane carrying him from Cleveland, Ohio, to Munich lands, he will be taken to the Stadelheim prison and meet a judge who will read the lengthy arrest warrant.

“As far as I know the warrant is 21 pages long,” Maull said.

Demjanjuk is not expected to say anything.

“On the issues of him saying something or not, I will put pressure on him not to say anything, because we need to talk in peace first and digest everything that is in the arrest warrant,” Maull said.

As for his health, a doctor will examine Demjanjuk and a decision will be taken as to whether he should remain at Stadelheim or be sent to an area hospital.

“If he is sick they first have to try to cure him. If he is incurably sick they have to find a place for him to live,” Maull said, adding that were Demjanjuk to be deemed unfit for trial, it is likely the German government would have to pick up the cost for his care.

Dramatic photos last month showed Demjanjuk (pronounced dem-YAHN’-yuk) wincing in apparent pain as he was removed by immigration agents from his home in Seven Hills, Ohio. However, images taken only days earlier and released by the U.S. government showed him entering his car unaided outside a medical office.

Demjanjuk’s son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said Monday that his father is dying of leukemic bone marrow disease.

“It is not a question if he is sick but how sick he is, there are enough diagnoses confirming his illness, the only question is how fast his sickness is progressing,” Maull told AP Television News.

On Monday evening, Demjanjuk arrived in an ambulance at Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport after spending several hours with U.S. immigration officials at a downtown federal building. He was carried in a wheelchair onto a jet that departed for Germany.

The deportation came four days after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider Demjanjuk’s request to block deportation and about 3 1/2 years after he was last ordered deported.

Earlier Monday, John Demjanjuk Jr. said an appeal in a U.S. court would go ahead even if his father isn’t in the country.

“Given the history of this case and not a shred of evidence that he ever hurt one person let alone murdered anyone anywhere, this is inhuman even if the courts have said it is lawful,” Demjanjuk Jr. said.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, a founder of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Demjanjuk deserves to be punished and that this will probably be the last trial of someone accused of Nazi war crimes.

“His work at the Sobibor death camp was to push men, women and children into the gas chamber,” Hier said in a statement. “He had no mercy, no pity and no remorse for the families whose lives he was destroying.”

The center was established to locate and help bring to justice Nazi war criminals.

Throughout three decades of court action in the U.S. and Israel, Demjanjuk has insisted he was an innocent victim.

Among the documents obtained by the Munich prosecutors is an SS identity card that features a photo of a young, round-faced Demjanjuk along with his height and weight, and says he worked at Sobibor.

German prosecutors also have a transfer roster that lists Demjanjuk by his name and birthday and also says he was at Sobibor, and statements from former guards who remembered him being there.

The case dates to 1977 when the Justice Department moved to revoke Demjanjuk’s U.S. citizenship, alleging he hid his past as a Nazi death camp guard.

Demjanjuk had been tried in Israel after accusations surfaced that he was the notorious “Ivan the Terrible” at the Treblinka death camp in Poland. He was found guilty in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity, a conviction overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

A U.S. judge revoked his citizenship in 2002 based on U.S. Justice Department evidence showing he concealed his service at Sobibor and other Nazi-run death and forced-labor camps.

An immigration judge ruled in 2005 he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine. Munich prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him in March.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan smiles as he listens to parents and teachers during discussions at Eagle School in Martinsburg, W.Va.

WASHINGTON – President Obama intends to use $5 billion to prod local officials to close failing schools and reopen them with new teachers and principals.

The goal is to turn around 5,000 failing schools in the next five years, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Monday, by beefing up funding for the federal school turnaround program created by the No Child Left Behind law.

Obama doesn’t have authority to close and reopen schools himself. That power rests with local school districts and states. But he has an incentive in the economic stimulus law, which requires states to help failing schools improve.

Duncan said that might mean firing an entire staff and bringing in a new one, replacing a principal or turning a school over to a charter school operator. The point, he said, is to take bold action in persistently low-achieving schools.

“Our students have one chance – one chance – to get a quality education,” Duncan said in a speech Monday to the Brookings Institution think tank.

“If we turn around just the bottom 1 percent, the bottom thousand schools per year for the next five years, we could really move the needle, lift the bottom and change the lives of tens of millions of underserved children,” Duncan said.

In particular, the administration wants to fix middle schools and high schools, focusing on “dropout factories” where 2 in 5 kids don’t make it to graduation.

Duncan, a former Chicago schools chief, has plenty of experience with school turnarounds. Chicago targeted several public schools for turnaround, eight of them last year, while Duncan was still in charge. It’s too soon to know how the eight fared.

What happens to teachers when an entire staff is replaced depends on local contracts with teachers’ unions. In Chicago, some lost their jobs, while some reapplied and were hired.

But in New York, many whose jobs were eliminated by school closings wound up in a reserve pool of about 1,100 teachers who have continued to receive paychecks while working mostly as substitutes.

Looming budget cuts recently prompted New York schools chief Joel Klein to tell principals they must stop hiring from outside and look within the teacher reserve pool.

The administration’s focus on failing schools is part of an effort by Obama to fundamentally change the perception of what works in education. It comes as the administration prepares to rewrite the No Child Left Behind education law championed by former President George W. Bush.

Obama already has channeled an unprecedented amount of money into traditional federal funding for elementary, middle and high schools in his economic stimulus law, doubling the education budget under George W. Bush.

But Obama also plans big boosts for newer and, some argue, untested ideas, plowing more dollars into school turnarounds as well as merit pay for teachers.

“Here’s a chance to do something dramatically different,” Duncan told The Associated Press after his speech. “I don’t want to lose that opportunity.”

Combined with the budget plan released last week, Obama may have as much as $5 billion to facilitate the initiative, which could translate to $1 million for every school targeted for turnaround.

The turnaround program currently receives about $500 million a year. The stimulus legislation boosted funding to $3.5 billion. Obama’s budget would add another $1.5 billion by shifting dollars away from traditionally funded programs.

Yet school districts and education groups are unhappy with the administration’s plan, because it would mean less money for everyone else.

The Title I program, the biggest source of federal dollars for schools, will rise from $13.4 billion this year to $22 billion next year. But funding would drop to just under $13 billion in 2010, a reduction to help pay for the school turnaround fund.

District officials had already planned their budgets and may have to use stimulus dollars to make up the difference, said Mary Kusler, a lobbyist for the American Association of School Administrators.

WASHINGTON – The White House trumpeted the news: health care providers taking a $2 trillion scalpel to their costs and pushing the U.S. toward President Obama’s vision of health coverage for all. But don’t line up yet for those insurance cards.

First, a reality check for the nation’s 50 million uninsured.

Medical providers have a long track record of avoiding fiscal constraints, as witnessed by the government’s efforts to tamp down Medicare costs.

And none of the groups that went to the White House can actually dictate prices to itsr members. Doctors in New York or hospitals in Los Angeles are free to charge what the market can bear.

There’s one more catch: Even if every penny of the promised savings shows up, not all of it would be used to help cover uninsured Americans. Actual savings to the government are all that can be counted as Congress tries to pay for subsidies that will be needed to help make health insurance affordable for everyone.

Costs could still turn out to be the greatest obstacle to Obama’s health care plan.

Outside experts estimate the taxpayers’ tab could total between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Some go as high as $1.7 trillion. Obama’s budget proposal includes a down payment that may cover less than half the bill.

Pledging restraint on costs Monday at the White House were groups representing hospitals, doctors, drug makers, medical device manufacturers and a major health care labor union – a Who’s Who of health care interests. The president posed proudly with them and called it “a watershed event.”

Obama wants to build on the current system in which most people get coverage through private insurers. But he wants to change the rules so the sick can’t be turned down. And he wants to provide subsidies to help low-wage workers and even some in the middle class afford their premiums.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio isn’t impressed. “Today’s announcement promises savings with no concrete plan to achieve them and no enforcement mechanism if they don’t,” he said Monday.

Indeed, it’s too early to tell whether the White House meeting will be remembered as a turning point or as a political mirage.

The administration is projecting an image of a new coalition for health care, with Obama and most of the health care industry and consumer interest groups claiming the political center.

Left out, for now, are conservative Republicans, who oppose Obama’s direction but have yet to articulate their own vision, and liberal Democrats who have been hoping to move toward a nationalized system like Medicare for all. As the debate heats up, the voices from both ends of the political divide will get louder – and the pressure on the center will increase.

By joining Obama, providers are acknowledging at least some responsibility for a bloated and dysfunctional system that economists say is unaffordable.

“I think the reason all these groups want to actively participate in the process is they don’t want to see a blunt instrument used to get spending down,” said Mark McClellan, who ran Medicare for President George W. Bush. “This is an opportunity to get everyone behind a better approach to improve the way health care works.”

That’s just what the groups say they want to do. Their proposals include coordinating care for people with chronic illnesses, rewarding quality not quantity, and using technology to root out waste and prevent errors that get patients sicker.

But it’s hard to put numbers next to any of those ideas. For example, what if better care for chronically ill patients turns out to increase costs? None of the groups has set a target for how much its members should have to pony up.

Congress is going to need hard numbers to pass Obama’s plan this year.

Robert Laszewski, a former health insurance executive turned policy consultant, said he’s betting the consensus won’t last.

“When Congress comes up with mechanisms to reduce costs that actually take money out of the hands of doctors, hospitals and insurance companies, that’s when we’re going to find out if things are really different this time,” he said.

Barbara Trump (left) and Arlene Jones process mail with ambiguous addresses at the U.S. Postal Service Glendale Remote Encoding Center in Glendale. The center is one of five in the U.S. devoted to interpreting scrawls and squiggles, blurs, smudges, missing information and otherwise ambiguous addresses.

PHOENIX – Without leaving their cubicles, U.S. Postal Service sleuths in Glendale solve more than a million mail-delivery mysteries daily for post offices nationwide. Their wits and their computers are their only tools.

Sloppy handwriting and incomplete addresses, it turns out, almost succeed where snow, rain, heat and gloom of night fail in staying mail carriers from completing their rounds. But those hard-to-read addresses usually don’t slow carriers because data-conversion operators using their best detecting skills are at work around the clock at the USPS Glendale Remote Encoding Center, save for the 10 hours it’s closed on Sundays.

The Glendale center is one of five in the United States – there were 55 when the postal service opened them in 1995 – devoted to interpreting scrawls and squiggles, blurs, smudges, missing information and otherwise ambiguous addresses.

In other words, the stuff that stumps the postal service’s sophisticated optical character-recognition software.

“This work makes me take a few extra minutes when I address my own envelopes,” says Debra Napier, one of more than 700 data-conversion operators, called keyers for short, employed at the site.

She’s seated in the midst of long rows of cubicles in a room adorned by little more than signs with U.S. cities’ names. Her eyes rarely stray from her computer.

Electronic images of envelopes sitting in 41 mail-processing plants across the U.S. flash onscreen, one after another, calling on her ability to decipher the shaky handwriting of a letter writer with arthritis or to see past the stickers obscuring an address. Twelve years as a teacher prepared her well for this job.

Napier also has learned a thing or two along the way. When addressing Christmas or birthday cards, she painstakingly prints rather than writing in cursive. She uses white envelopes even for Christmas cards, because addresses are hard to read on dark backgrounds. And forget silver ink.

Although most of the mail that keyers puzzle over is hand-addressed, they also see pieces printed with ink cartridges long overdue for replacement or displaying printer-produced addresses haphazardly positioned on envelopes.

In most cases, a machine at a mail-processing plant reads the address on an envelope, sprays on an ink barcode and sends the envelope on its way, keyer Steve Karr says. When the machine fails to read the address, an electronic image of the envelope is sent to a remote encoding center.

In the Glendale facility, the fastest keyers, like Karr, may handle an eye-blurring 900 to 1,000 images in an hour. Keyers succeed with as many as 75 percent of the pieces they process, says Chuck Van Dyke, manager of the Glendale Remote Encoding Center.

Aided by the Postal Service’s more than 2 petabytes of online data (think 4,000 years-plus of songs on your MP3 player), keyers examine the slightest clues – two digits of a ZIP code, a street name without house numbers, the first letter of a state abbreviation – and draw conclusions.

The goal is turning around each piece in no more than 20 minutes, Van Dyke says.

But the process usually is far speedier. Advances in technology have made the postal system’s optical scanning equipment capable of reading 95 percent of handwritten envelopes, up from 2 percent when the centers opened, Van Dyke says.

With demand for their work decreasing, three of the remaining remote encoding centers will be closed, the Glendale facility in May 2010.

Still, even the most advanced optical scanning and the best efforts of data-conversion operators fail at times to divine a letter’s destination. Then, once more, a human must intervene.

A letter addressed “Jane Doe, Second House Around the Corner from the Barber Shop, St. Peter, MN”?

That will go to Minnesota, where a mail carrier in St. Peter knows exactly whose mailbox to tuck the letter into.