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  Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood pauses during daily news briefing at the White House in Washington, Thursday, July, 28, 2011. LaHood urged lawmakers to pass a bill to put the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) back in business. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) WASHINGTON (AP)--On the surface, the partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration is about whether to cut $16 million in air service subsidies, a pretty small amount in this town. Underneath are layers upon layers of political gamesmanship that, at its heart, is about whether Democrats or Republicans get to call the shots in Congress. The immediate price is high. Already, 4,000 FAA employees have been furloughed, more than 200 construction projects have been halted and an estimated 70,000 other private-sector workers affected. Air traffic controllers and safety inspectors remain on the job because the agency still has money from another pool of funds to pay them. The government has been losing about $30 million a day in uncollected airline ticket taxes since the shutdown began on July 23, when FAA's operating authority expired. If it's not resolved until after Congress returns from its August recess in early September, lost revenue will tally about $1.2 billion. The political stakes are even higher. Democrats complain that Republicans, by manufacturing crisis after crisis, are trying to force them to accept painful policies that haven't been negotiated through normal legislative processes. Earlier this year, it was the prospect of a government shutdown over tax breaks for higher-income Americans. More recently it was a potential default on the government's financial obligations. Now it's a continued shutdown of the FAA unless Democrats accept the air service subsidy cuts. "This is becoming a very disturbing pattern: A small, uncompromising group, feeling the righteousness of their cause, hurt tens of thousands of innocent people and takes them hostage until they get their complete way," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said. "These debates should not be determined by which side is willing to take the most casualties."

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  WASHINGTON (AP) A half-century after the advent of the pill, the Obama administration on Monday ushered in a change in women's health care potentially as transformative: coverage of birth control as prevention, with no copays. Services ranging from breast pumps for new mothers to counseling on domestic violence were also included in the broad expansion of women's preventive care under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Since birth control is the most common drug prescribed to women, health plans should make sure it's readily available, said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "Not doing it would be like not covering flu shots," she said. Officials said the women's prevention package will be available Jan. 1, 2013, in most cases, resulting in a slight overall increase in premiums. Tens of millions of women are expected to benefit initially, a number that is likely to grow with time. At first, some plans may be exempt due to an arcane provision of the health care law known as the "grandfather" clause. But those plans could face pressure from their members to include the new coverage. Earlier requirements under the health care law improved preventive coverage generally for people of both sexes. Social and religious and religious conservatives objected to the birth control mandate, saying a conscience exception unveiled by the administration is insufficient. Sebelius acted after a near-unanimous recommendation last month from a panel of experts at the prestigious Institute of Medicine, which advises the government. Panel chairwoman Linda Rosenstock, dean of public health at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that prevention of unintended pregnancies is essential for the psychological, emotional and physical health of women. "Over a span of generations from grandmothers to granddaughters, we have come from birth control being a hope and a wish and almost luck to being recognized as a part of health care that improves women's health," said Cynthia Pearson of the National Women's Health Network, an advocacy group supporting the change. Some public health experts predicted the change will promote the use of costlier long-acting contraceptives, such as hormonal implants. More reliable than the pill, they are gaining popularity in other economically advanced countries.

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  (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) WASHINGTON--President Barack Obama and congressional leaders agreed Sunday to cut federal deficits by trillions of dollars over the next decade while raising the nation's debt limit before Tuesday's deadline. "This compromise does make a serious down payment on the deficit reduction we need and gives each party a strong incentive to get a balanced plan done before the end of the year," Obama said Sunday night. "Most importantly, it will allow us to avoid default and end the crisis Washington imposed on the rest of America." The first part of the agreement could cut nearly $1 trillion in federal spending over the next decade, Obama said, while a special legislative committee will look for more cuts. "Everything will be on the table," he said. Obama spoke as financial markets opened in Asia Japan's Nikkei index had climbed nearly 2 percent within an hour of his remarks and eased fears that the United States would default on its debt and perhaps slip back into recession.

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  House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio takes part in a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 28, 2011, to discuss the debt crisis showdown. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) WASHINGTON--A revolt by conservative House Republicans stalemated efforts by the party's leadership to pass a bill raising the nation's debt ceiling, with Speaker John A. Boehner and his aides calling off a scheduled vote after determining they were on the verge of a humiliating defeat. With just days remaining before the federal government runs out of money to pay its bills, the setback weakened Boehner, R-Ohio, and strengthened the hand of Democratic congressional leaders in final efforts to forge a compromise to avert a threatened economic crisis. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has been holding discussions with Vice President Joe Biden and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Reid is seeking a potential compromise that could win bipartisan backing for bill to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. Reid plans to keep the Senate in session through the weekend as those talks continue, aides said. The setback was the second time this week that conservative opposition forced Boehner to postpone a vote on his debt-ceiling proposal and dramatically illustrated the power of "tea party" conservatives to upend the GOP establishment.

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  In this publicity image released by Universal Pictures, Daniel Craig is shown in a scene from "Cowboys & Aliens." (AP Photo/Universal Pictures, Timothy White) By Colin Covert, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)(MCT)--Action-packed yet curiously lifeless, "Cowboys & Aliens" shoots blanks. This multitasking genre mash-up successfully unites its discordant elements in a coherent dramatic universe. Despite a stellar cast and out-of-this-world production values, however, it's a saddle-weary horse opera and a low-gravity opera. Lacking the high-flying zing of Joss Whedon's space-western TV series "Firefly," the movie is competent but never compelling.

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  An aerial view of Utoya Island, Norway taken Thursday, July 21, 2011. Police say they are sending anti-terror police to a youth camp outside Oslo after reports of a shooting there following the bomb blast at the government headquarters. The news site VG reported that a man dressed in a police uniform opened fire at the camp. It says several people were injured. Oslo police chief Anstein Gjengdal said anti-terror units were being sent to the camp at Utoya, outside the Norwegian capital. He had no other information on that incident, which came hours after a bomb blast outside the government headquarters killed at least seven people and injured 15. (AP Photo/Mapaid, Lasse Tur)

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  In this film publicity image released by Paramount Pictures, Chris Evans is shown in a scene from the film "Captain America: The First Avenger." (AP Photo/Paramount Pictures) By Roger Moore, The Orlando Sentinel--There is so much "business" that the fourth big comic book movie adaptation of the summer has to take care of that frankly, it's astounding that director Joe "Jumanji" Johnston is able to take care of it all, and with style. "Captain America" has to connect this World War II-era hero to modern times. The movie has to tie into all the other Marvel comic book movies that are part of "The Avengers," because as the title implies, the good captain is "The First Avenger." It has to deliver the origin myth how Captain America was born out of a "super soldier" experiment during WWII. The film has to back-engineer its way into the meeting between the Captain (Chris Evans) and the Avenger leader we know as Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and give us a credible version of future Iron Man Tony Stark's inventor dad, Howard Stark. And it has to be fun. It is. The fourth comic book movie of the summer is the best comic book movie of the summer. Johnston has delivered a light, clever and deftly balanced adventure picture with real lump-in-the-throat nostalgia, with Nazis--who make the best villains--and with loving references to "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

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  British Prime Minister David Cameron holds a press conference with South African President Jacob Zuma following their meeting at Union Building in Pretoria, South Africa, Monday July 18, 2011.(AP Photo/Jerome Delay) LONDON (AP)--Prime Minister David Cameron called Monday for an emergency session of Parliament on the phone hacking and police bribery scandal as the spreading crisis forced two of Britain's top police officers to resign in less than 24 hours. Scotland Yard chief Paul Stephenson stepped down Sunday night, followed out the door Monday by Assistant Commissioner John Yates. Yates was the official who decided two years ago not to reopen police inquiries into phone hacking, saying he did not believe there was any new evidence. The high-profile resignations are making it harder for Cameron to contain the intensifying scandal that is threatening his leadership and knocking billions of Rupert Murdoch's global media empire.

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  Defense attorney Pierre Bazile speaks on behalf of Levi Aron, left, at his arraignment before Judge William Miller in Brooklyn criminal court, Thursday, July 14, 2011, in New York. Aron, 35, is charged with luring 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky to his home on Monday, and then smothering him and chopping him up when he learned that a search was under way for the missing child. Detectives found the boy's feet in Aron's freezer. (AP Photo/Louis Lanzano, Pool) NEW YORK (AP)--A man accused of kidnapping, killing and dismembering an 8-year-old boy who asked him for directions was ordered Thursday to undergo a psychological evaluation after his lawyer told a judge that his client might be mentally ill. "He has indicated to me that he hears voices and has had some hallucinations," said the attorney, Pierre Bazile. Levi Aron, 35, pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and kidnapping as prosecutors said he lured Leiby Kletzky to his home Monday after the little boy got lost while walking home from an Orthodox Jewish day camp. Video cameras captured the fateful encounter between the two on a Brooklyn street, while Leiby's mother waited anxiously just a few blocks away. Detectives later found the boy's severed feet, wrapped in plastic, in the man's freezer, as well as a cutting board and three bloody carving knives.

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