Obama says US should not fear China’s rise, points to $45B in new business deals for US firms

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is looking to assure Americans that they should not fear China’s economic rise, using Chinese President Hu Jintao’s high-profile state visit to announce job-creating business deals worth billions of dollars to U.S. companies.

On another big American concern, human rights, Hu conceded that “a lot still needs to be done” to improve China’s record.

The business deals and Hu’s human rights comments were among the highlights of a ceremony-packed day seen as key to building trust between the world’s top two powers.

Five years after his last visit to the White House, one that was marred by protocol blunders, Hu was feted Wednesday with the full pomp of a state visit, including a lavish dinner with some of Washington’s most powerful figures and other luminaries.

The two sides played down differences and stressed areas of cooperation, ranging from a plan to cooperate on nuclear security to an extension of the loan of two Chinese pandas to Washington’s zoo.

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House GOP’s health care repeal is only a first step; what’s the replacement?

WASHINGTON — Now comes the hard part.

One day after voting to repeal President Barack Obama’s landmark expansion of health insurance coverage, House Republicans go to work on replacing it.

Out with mandates, the requirements in the law to carry health insurance coverage. In with special purchasing pools for people whose medical conditions render them uninsurable.

Out with cuts to Medicare Advantage, the private alternative to the traditional health program for seniors and disabled people. In with limits to jury awards in medical malpractice cases and stricter restrictions on taxpayer funding for abortions.

The House will vote Thursday on a measure directing four committees — Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, Education and Workforce, and Judiciary — to work out the Republican vision for health care.

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Tunisian army fires warning shots during protest march in the capital

TUNIS, Tunisia — The Tunisian army has fired warning shots during a protest march in the North African country’s capital.

Protesters were marching toward the headquarters of the longtime ruling party, which was founded by ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Demonstrators have criticized the new unity government announced Monday for being mostly made up of old guard politicians from the ruling party. Members of the government have been trying to distance themselves from Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia on Friday.

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Giffords standing on own feet, headed to Houston for rehab to relearn basic skills

TUCSON, Ariz. — In the latest milestone in Gabrielle Giffords’ recovery from a bullet wound to the brain, the congresswoman stood up and looked out a window even as preparations got under way for a move to Houston, where she’ll undergo extensive mental and physical rehabilitation.

Her swift transition from an intensive care unit to a rehab center is based on the latest research, which shows the sooner rehab starts, the better patients recover.

Giffords’ family hopes to move the Arizona congresswoman on Friday to TIRR Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston, where her husband lives and works as an astronaut.

“I am extremely hopeful at the signs of recovery that my wife has made since the shooting,” Mark Kelly said in a statement released by Giffords’ congressional office. The staff at University Medical Center in Tucson “has stabilized her to the point of being ready to move to the rehabilitation phase.”

Her progress was evident Wednesday as she stood on her feet with assistance from medical staff, hospital spokeswoman Janet Stark said.

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DA: Pa. had ‘utter disregard’ for poor women seeking abortions from deadly Philadelphia doctor

PHILADELPHIA — A doctor accused of running a filthy “abortion mill” for decades in an impoverished Philadelphia neighborhood delivered babies alive, killed them with scissors and allowed a woman who had survived 20 years in a refugee camp to be overmedicated and die at his clinic, prosecutors said.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, was charged Wednesday with eight counts of murder for the deaths of seven babies and one patient. Nine employees also were charged, including four with murder.

Prosecutors described the clinic as a “house of horrors” where Gosnell kept baby body parts on the shelves, allowed a 15-year-old high school student to perform intravenous anesthesia on patients and had his licensed cosmetologist wife do late-term abortions. A family practice physician, Gosnell has no certification in gynecology or obstetrics.

Four months after Karnamaya Mongar reached the United States after spending nearly two decades in camps in Nepal she was dead at Gosnell’s clinic. The 41-year-old mother of three died of cardiac arrest when she was given too much Demerol and other drugs, prosecutors said.

“Pennsylvania is not a third-world country. There were several oversight agencies that stumbled upon and should have shut down Kermit Gosnell long ago. But none of them did, even after Karnamaya Mongar’s death,” city prosecutors charged in a nearly 300-page grand jury report.

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NYC subway bomb plotter waiting in wings as possible witness against father, boyhood friend

NEW YORK — Nearly a year after pleading guilty in a foiled terror plot targeting the New York City subways, al-Qaida associate Najibullah Zazi hasn’t been back in court and probably won’t be until he’s called as a witness — possibly against his own father.

The elder Zazi is charged with hiding evidence in the case against his son in an obstruction of justice case headed toward trial later this year. And as part of a plea deal, the government can require his jailed son to testify at that trial or that of Adis Medunjanin, an alleged accomplice in the plot to blow up the subways with homemade backpack bombs.

Prosecutors have declined to discuss potential witnesses.

But the father’s lawyers say they believe that besides his notorious son, at least three lesser-known members of the Zazi clan in Colorado have betrayed their client, Mohammed Wali Zazi, by secretly becoming government cooperators.

The defense wants to see any agreements promising the three “assistance … in obtaining leniency in any court, or lack of prosecution or arrest, or any other favorable treatment,” the lawyers wrote last week in a letter to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn.