SAN ANTONIO – The warning signs were there. Otty Sanchez, a schizophrenic with a history of hospitalizations, wasn't taking medication and was depressed after her son's birth, the boy's father said. A simple request seemed to set her off, alarming him and his family.

Yet, the 33-year-old woman was staying in a house where she had access to samurai swords. Child welfare officials were never called.

Instead, Sanchez's troubles became apparent to authorities when they found her before dawn Sunday screaming that she had killed her baby. Her 3 1/2-week-old son was dismembered in a scene so gruesome that police were left shaken.

"Maybe we missed" warning signs, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said. "I don't know."

Sanchez was released Tuesday from a hospital where she had been treated for self-inflicted cuts to her torso and an attempt to slice her own throat. The former home health care worker, charged with capital murder, was being held at Bexar County Jail on $1 million bond. Calls to relatives Tuesday were not immediately returned and it was not clear whether Sanchez had an attorney.

Authorities said Sanchez tried killing herself after butchering her newborn son, Scott Wesley Buchholz-Sanchez, with a steak knife and two swords while her sister and two nieces, ages 5 and 7, slept in another room.

Sanchez told police — who described a scene so horrifying that investigators could barely speak to one another — that the devil made her kill, mutilate and eat parts of her only child.

Scott W. Buchholz, the infant's father who met Sanchez six years ago while they were studying to be pharmacists assistants, said he isn't buying it. He said although his girlfriend had postpartum depression and told him a week before the killing that she was schizophrenic, she didn't appear unstable.

He wants prosecutors to pursue the death penalty.

"She killed my son. She should burn in hell," Buchholz, 33, told The Associated Press.

Otty Sanchez's medical history is muddled. A family member said Sanchez had been undergoing psychiatric treatment and that a hospital called looking for her several months ago. Gloria Sanchez, Otty's aunt, said her niece had been "in and out of a psychiatric ward."

In May 2008, Otty Sanchez's mother, Manuela Sanchez, called police after her daughter didn't return from a trip to Austin, saying she was concerned about her daughter's safety. Manuela Sanchez told police she suspected Otty was into drugs and specifically told police she wasn't suffering from any mental issues.

Buchholz, who is himself schizophrenic and takes six anti-psychotic and anti-convulsive medications, said Otty had postpartum depression and had been going to regular counseling sessions after the birth, but refused to take prescription medication for her depression. Still, he said she seemed fine.

"She seemed like a a very caring, loving mother. She held him, she breast fed him. She did everything for him that was nice," he said.

On July 20, Sanchez was taken to the hospital for depression and released less than a day later, Buchholz said. Sanchez told him that she was schizophrenic and was going to live with her parents and sister. Sanchez was arrested at her mother's house, where police found her and the dead infant.

Five days later, on Saturday, Sanchez brought "Baby Scotty" for a visit but stormed out after he asked for a copy of the birth certificate and other documents, Buchholz said. Buchholz called 911 to report that Sanchez stormed out and drove away with the infant without properly restraining him in the car, and deputies investigated it as a disturbance.

The deputy took a report but could do little else, said Bexar County Sheriff Chief Deputy Dale Bennett.

"If this guy had given us an indication that she had postpartum depression, or mental defects she was suffering from, we may have addressed it differently," he said.

Buchholz said he may have told the deputy Sanchez was depressed, but that he wasn't sure.

While schizophrenia generally develops in men in their late teens and early 20s, women tend to develop the illness, marked by abnormal impressions of reality, later in life.

Most new mothers suffer from postpartum blues as hormones shift after a pregnancy and they're fatigued handling a new baby. But as many as one-fifth suffer from the more serious postpartum depression, which includes symptoms like despair and failing to eat or sleep.

Postpartum psychosis is far rarer, affecting only about one woman in 1,000. Women with postpartum psychosis have delusions, frequently involving religious symbols and a desire to harm their newborn, said Richard Pesikoff, a psychiatry professor at the Baylor College of Medicine.

He testified in the second trial of Andrea Yates, the high-profile case of a Houston-area mother found not guilty by reason of insanity after drowning her five children. Similar to Sanchez's claim that the devil told her to kill her son, Yates told authorities Satan was inside of her and she was trying to save her children.

"The most common part of postpartum psychosis is the delusional thinking," said Pesikoff. "Often but not always, it encompasses some type of religious thought. God is telling you to do something. The devil is telling you to do something."

Women with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are at particularly high risk for developing postpartum psychosis.

For women with schizophrenia who are not taking medication, the risk of developing psychosis is 50 percent or higher, said Lucy Puryear, another psychiatrist who was involved in the Yates case.

If a mother is diagnosed with psychosis, she should immediately be hospitalized and separated from the child, Puryear said.

Some psychiatrists will tell women with schizophrenia not to have children because of the high risks, but she said with medication and treatment, "it's possible to have a child and have a good outcome."

While Sanchez could face trial, other similar cases — including that of Yates and Dena Schlosser, a Plano woman who said she sliced off her baby's arms because she wanted to give the baby to God — have ended with juries finding the women not guilty by reason of insanity.

HONOLULU – State officials in Hawaii on Monday said they have once again checked and confirmed that President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen, and therefore meets a key constitutional requirement for being president.

They hoped to stem a recent surge in the number of inquiries about Obama's birthplace.

"I ... have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen," Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said in a brief statement. "I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago."

So-called "birthers" — who claim Obama is ineligible to be president because, they argue, he was actually born outside the United States — have grown more vocal recently on blogs and television news shows.

Fukino issued a similar press release Oct. 31, but was prompted to speak out again because of the renewed attention on Obama's beginnings. Hawaii's Health Department has been flooded in recent weeks with questions from individuals and several national TV news networks asking for proof that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii.

"They just keep asking over and over and over again," Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo said.

The Constitution states that a person must be a "natural-born citizen" to be eligible for the presidency. Birthers contend that Obama's birth certificate is a fake, and many say he was actually born in Kenya, his father's homeland. They've challenged his citizenship in court.

One widely circulated YouTube clip of a town hall meeting showed a Republican congressman getting booed for saying Obama is a citizen. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh and CNN's Lou Dobbs have also raised the issue, and 10 Republican members of Congress co-sponsored a bill that would require future presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate.

However, it appears Congress has moved on and has accepted Obama's island birthplace. The U.S. House on Monday unanimously approved a resolution recognizing and celebrating the 50th anniversary of Hawaii becoming the 50th state. A clause was included that reads: "Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961."

State law bars the release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest.

However, Obama's birth certificate along with birth notices from the two Honolulu newspapers were brought forward even before he took office. But that's done nothing to shake the belief by many Obama critics that the president was born abroad.

MOSCOW – An interview U.S. Vice President Joe Biden gave to an American newspaper was front-page news Monday in Moscow, where his characterization of Russia as a weakened nation hit a raw nerve.

Biden said Russia's economic difficulties are likely to make the Kremlin more willing to cooperate with the United States on a range of national security issues.

"I think we vastly underestimate the hand that we hold," he said in an interview to The Wall Street Journal published Saturday.

Biden's comments appeared to catch the Kremlin by surprise, coming less than three weeks after President Barack Obama said on a visit to Moscow that the U.S. wants to see a "strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia."

"It raises the question: Who is shaping U.S. foreign policy? The president or members of his team, even the most respected ones?" said Kremlin foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Monday downplayed suggestions that Biden was setting a different U.S. policy from that laid out by the president.

When asked whether Obama thought Biden had gone too far in his remarks, Gibbs said the president stated his views on Russia during his recent visit and the vice president agrees with those views.

Gibbs said both leaders believe Russia will do its part to improve relations with the U.S.

Most Russian newspapers put Biden's interview on their front pages Monday, with headlines casting doubt on Washington's commitment to forge a more constructive relationship with Moscow.

"Joe Biden unexpectedly returned to the rhetoric of the previous Bush administration," the newspaper Kommersant wrote.

Moskovsky Komsomolets said Biden, with his "boorish openness," showed what the Obama administration really thinks about Russia. "We should respond to the Yankees in the same way," the newspaper wrote. "Any other language, unfortunately or fortunately, they do not understand."

The papers jumped on Biden's comments about Russia's demographic and economic problems.

"They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they're in a situation where the world is changing before them and they're clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable," Biden said in the interview.

Some newspapers and commentators noted that Russians say the same things about themselves. The question, they said, was why Biden made the comments so quickly after this month's summit by Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev, and after Biden's own trip last week to Ukraine and Georgia, former Soviet republics whose growing ties to the West are deeply resented in Moscow.

Sergei Rogov, director of the government-funded USA and Canada Institute, was quoted in Kommersant as saying the interview was aimed in part at addressing criticism in the U.S. that the Obama administration was too soft on Russia.

Some commentators said it was wrong to see Biden as diverging from the policy set by Obama, as suggested by Prikhodko.

Biden was most likely expressing Washington's "Plan B," said Vladimir Milov, a former deputy energy minister who now heads his own think tank. If the Kremlin proves unwilling to compromise, the United States was likely to reduce relations to a minimum and push Moscow to the periphery of world politics, Milov wrote in the online Gazeta.ru.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an apparent effort Sunday to reassure Moscow, saying on NBC "Meet the Press" that the administration considers Russia to be a "great power."

"Every country faces challenges," she said. "We have our challenges, Russia has their challenges. There are certain issues that Russia has to deal with on its own."

___

Associated Press writer Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.

Proponents of marijuana legalization have advanced plenty of arguments in support of their drug of choice - that marijuana is less dangerous than legal substances like cigarettes and alcohol; that pot has legitimate medical uses; that the money spent prosecuting marijuana offenses would be better used on more pressing public concerns.

While 13 states permit the limited sale of marijuana for medical use, and polls show a steady increase in the number of Americans who favor legalization, federal law still bans the cultivation, sale, or possession of marijuana. In fact, the feds still classify marijuana as a Schedule I drug, one that has no "currently accepted medical use" in the United States.

But supporters of legalization may have been handed their most convincing argument yet: the bummer economy. Advocates argue that if state or local governments could collect a tax on even a fraction of pot sales, it would help rescue cash-strapped communities. Not surprisingly, the idea is getting traction in California, home to both the nation"s largest supply of domestically grown marijuana (worth a estimated $14 billion a year) and to the country"s biggest state budget deficit (more than $26 billion).

On Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California legislative leaders a tentative budget agreement to plug the state's deficit, but it would involve making sweeping cuts in education and health services, as well as taking billions from county governments. Democratic state assemblyman Tom Ammiano has introduced legislation that would let California regulate and tax the sale of marijuana. The state's proposed $50 an ounce pot tax would bring in about $1.3 billion a year in additional revenue. Ammiano"s bill was shelved this session but he expects to introduce a revised bill early next year.

If the state legislature doesn"t act, perhaps California voters will. One group is preparing to place a statewide initiative for the November 2010 ballot that would regulate and tax the sale of marijuana for Californians 21 years of age and older. Tellingly, the group spearheading the measure calls itself TaxCannabis2010.org, stressing the revenue advantages of marijuana legalization. The group hopes to collect the required 650,000 voter signatures by January to place the measure on the November 2010 ballot.

"There"s no doubt that the ground is shifting on marijuana," says Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes alternatives to the war on drugs. "The discussion about regulating and taxing marijuana now has an air of legitimacy to it that it didn"t quite have before. And the economy has given the issue a real turbo charge."

The legalization effort is getting serious consideration from surprising quarters. In May, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger publicly called for a large-scale study to determine whether to legalize and tax marijuana.

"I think it"s time for a debate," the governor said at a news conference. "I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs."

In California, medical marijuana sales are already taxed, and some communities are looking for ways to get a bigger slice of the pot pie. Residents Oakland are currently voting in a mail-in special election that includes a measure which would make the city the first in the country to establish a new tax rate for medical marijuana businesses. If the measure passes, Oakland marijuana dispensaries, which are now charged at the general tax rate of $1.20 per $1,000 in receipts, would see that rate raised to $18 per $1,000.

A Field Poll conducted in California this spring showed 56% of the state"s registered voters in support of legalizing and taxing marijuana as a way of offsetting some of the budget deficit. Several national polls have shown that more than 45% of American adults are open to legalizing pot, about double the support a decade ago.

Even the most ardent marijuana advocates aren"t expecting nationwide legalization anytime soon. Instead, any action is likely to come on the state and local level. For now, all eyes are on cash-strapped California, where high taxes could take on an entirely new meaning.

Finally, we’re starting to see him sweat. 

President Barack Obama made his personal icy cool the trademark of his campaign, the tenor of his White House and the hallmark of an early run of successes at home and abroad. But as the glamour wears off and a long, frustrating summer wears on, he is being forced to improvise — stooping to respond to political foes and adjusting his tactics and demeanor for the trench warfare of a legislative agenda. 

The root of the change is one that faces every president: Economic and international realities that resist political charm. Iran and North Korea have shown no interest in the president’s outstretched hand. The http://www.politico.com/new...>economy has delivered a double-whammy, with rising unemployment stirring voters’ concerns while sluggish growth deprives the government of tax revenues Obama would like to spend on new programs.
Health care reform, which once appeared flush with momentum from earlier congressional victories, is now on a slog through no less than five committees, which include Democrats who either aren’t sold on Obama’s expansive vision or can’t figure out how to convince voters to pay for it.

“This is when it gets harder,” the president told supporters June 30.

And so it has. 

In turn, Obama has adjusted, deviating from the playbook on every front.

The cool president has turned hot on the stump, stripping to shirtsleeves to lambaste doubters in New Jersey Thursday. He departed from his prepared remarks last week to accept a Republican challenge to take personal ownership of the economy: “That’s fine. Give it to me,” he said. 

Even Obama's scripted speeches are deliberately more forceful, aggressive and direct in taking on critics, aides say. Friday remarks at the White House had a trash-talk edge – count me out and you’ll be sorry. 

Obama’s political operation has dispensed with its post-inauguration cocktails for Republicans – or more often, ignoring them outright — in favor of the old politics of engage, attack and cajole. Obama’s even engaging in a little http://www.politico.com/blo...>Democrat-on-Democrat politics, as his ex-campaign arm is beaming TV ads into the home states of moderate fence-sitters on health care. 

The tightly programmed White House also is champing at the bit, kicking off what officials say will be a relentless three-week push on health care, starting with the hastily scheduled Friday address. But its first event might have backfired a bit. Its main consequence was proving that the magnetism of http://www.politico.com/new...>Obama’s personal appearances has worn off, as it drew little media attention and a dismissive tweet from the key Senate Republican, Chuck Grassley of Iowa: “Waste of time.” 

The sum has been a new sense of uncertainty and strain, and a growing murmur among Democrats in Washington nervous about the White House’s tactics, and a rising tide of concern in the states as local Democratic parties eye midterm elections that are traditionally a challenge for a new president.
“That honeymoon period is over, “ said Chris Redfern, the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. “Now they’re having to push back, and push back hard.” 

White House officials and allies brush off any notion that this new sense of unease is meaningful. The only true test, they say, will be results. Obama still might win major health care reform legislation this year that could be the most important new government program in decades. He has a fighting chance to pass regulations on greenhouse gases, in the form of a “cap and trade” mechanism, through the Senate. And Obama continues to press hard, if with no clear progress, for a breakthrough in the Middle East.

“It’s the third quarter, he’s down by a point, and he’s got his best player on the bench – what really is going to be important is the fall,” said James Carville, the veteran Democratic observer.

“If he gets what’s perceived to be some kind of a major health care thing, gets the climate bill through, if the economy recovers, then we’ll all say he had a hell of a summer. Conversely, if the thing falls apart, we’ll say that by July the 19th we could tell the thing was going bad.”

White House Deputy Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer dismissed the suggestion that Obama should be expected to succeed effortlessly – or that he’s on a path toward failure on any of these varied fronts. 

“Obama and his team have been down this road dozens of times and been declared dead many times and always succeeded,” he said. “No one gets rich betting against Barack Obama.”

The most visible aspect of the White House’s new feistiness is an increasing willingness to engage Republican legislators whose criticisms Obama earlier had been happier to overlook. Relentless criticism of the stimulus package from a House Republican leader, http://topics.politico.com/...>Eric Cantor of Virginia, drew a furious barrage from the Democratic National Committee and a visit from no smaller figure than the Vice President of the United States. Rank and file Republicans who criticize the stimulus have also suddenly found themselves under a concerted DNC assault that asks if they’d prefer the federal funding left their districts out. And criticism from Sen Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) drew letters from no fewer than four Cabinet secretaries to his state’s governor, asking if she would prefer they withheld stimulus money.

That pushback has been urged, and welcomed, by state leaders like Redfern and Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer.

“The DNC has been and we were quickly able to rebut and demonstrate all the money that is being spent in their respective districts,” said Brewer of two GOP congressmen attacking the stimulus. “They’ve backed off.”

Still, many Democrats say the Republican attacks on spending are taking their toll.

"The rhetoric is so empty, but it is fairly consistent and I think it’s had an impact on those in middle," said Ohio's Redfern.

But when the White House pushback focused not on Republicans but Democrats on health-care – in the form of Organizing for America ads running in the home states of moderate senators -- some in the party called foul, including Senate Majority Leader http://topics.politico.com/...>Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

The vote last month in the House on the American Clean Energy Security Act showed a willingness to get White House hands dirty in a different way.

Wrangling votes for the “cap and trade” legislation in the House, Obama backed off a campaign promise to auction off all “allowances” – permits to release a set amount of greenhouse gases. Instead of selling them to raise money for other environmental initiatives, the White House allowed congressional Democratic leaders to trade them for votes, assigning allowances to the refinery-heavy district of, for instance, Texas Rep. Gene Green in exchange for his support.

The battle over http://www.politico.com/new...>health care, the centerpiece of the President’s summer, has also hardened into a fairly conventional Washington fight, a new president’s sweeping agenda colliding with congressional caution. Obscure Washington figures like Congressional Budget Office chief Doug Elmendorf and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) have shown the ability to pose a real threat to the White House juggernaut. And some of the White House’s close allies have grown jittery about what they say is a strategy to spend the three weeks leading up to the Senate’s August recess – the insecure deadline for health care votes in both houses – with a series of events aimed at building public pressure on Congress.

“They’re great at campaigns, but legislative battles are different,” said a senior Democrat close to the White House. “It’s not about persuading 51 percent of the American people – it’s about seven senators.” 

In another mark of Obama's constant adjustments, his latest http://www.politico.com/new...>remarks didn't mention the August deadline.

White House allies acknowledge the new strains, but say the hard work will pay off.

“A lot of the hard stuff he’s doing now will pay dividends,” said John Del Cecato, a former Obama campaign aide.

Meanwhile, admiration of Obama’s personal qualities has been tempered, even among sympathetic observers, with anxiety for where his agenda will stand at summer’s end.

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart noted recently that Obama told a Pakistani interviewer that he is an accomplished chef of Pakistani cuisines and reads the great Urdu poets.

“Mr. President,” Stewart said, “while I am impressed with your Renaissance Man-level of knowledge in a plethora of subjects, may I humbly say: That’s great. Just fix the economy!”

UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. imposed new sanctions Thursday against five North Korean officials, four companies and a state agency, and banned imports of two weapons-making materials, in a rare unified push by the world's powers to thwart Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

The sanctions, which take immediate effect and are to be carried out by all of the U.N.'s 192 member nations, include travel bans and a freeze on the financial assets against the officials, companies and state agency. Nations also were instructed to refrain from supplying North Korea with certain types of graphite and para-aramid fiber — two of the materials used in ballistic missile parts.

"It is of course significant that we have also put individuals on the list, as this is the first time. This shows that the sanctions are going on a higher level at this moment," said Fazli Corman, Turkey's deputy U.N. ambassador, who chairs the panel.

The newest sanctions were approved against:

_The General Bureau of Atomic Energy in Pyongyang, the chief agency directing the North's nuclear program. That includes the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center and its plutonium production research reactor, as well as its fuel fabrication and reprocessing facilities.

_Three Pyongyang-based companies — Namchongang Trading Corp., Korea Hyoksin Trading Corp., and Korean Tangun Trading Corp. — and one Iranian-based company, Hong Kong Electronics.

_Yun Ho-Jin, director of Namchongang Trading Corp.; Ri Je-Son, director of the General Bureau of Atomic Energy; Hwang Sok-Hwa, chief of the bureau's scientific guidance; Ri Hong-Sop, former director of Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center; and Han Yu-Ro, director of Korea Ryongaksan General Trading Corp.

_Two types of goods used in ballistic missile parts by North Korea — a graphite designed or specified for use in electrical discharge machining; and a para-aramid fiber, filament and tape, which is a Kevlar-like material.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said the United States was pleased with the list, which required unanimous approval among the 15 nations that make up a sanctions panel of the U.N.'s powerhouse Security Council. China, North Korea's biggest ally and trading partner, went along with most of the U.S. recommendations.

The U.S. has launched what it calls a major effort to ensure that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, which along with a previous resolution in 2006 serves to authorize the latest sanctions, is implemented effectively.

"These new designations — five individuals, five entities and two goods — strengthen the sanctions regime against North Korea and will serve to constrain North Korea from engaging in transactions or activities that could fund its WMD or proliferation activities," Rice said.

The sanctions panel, which said it plans to add still more names and entities, has been focused on three areas: sensitive dual-use goods, ballistic missile-related items and nuclear-related items.

Pak Tok-hun, deputy chief of North Korea's U.N. mission in New York, told South Korea's Yonhap news agency that the sanctions were "unfair" but said they will not harm his country.

Pak said North Korea "will not accept Security Council resolutions against the North and any sanctions under the resolutions," adding, "Sanctions will not resolve any problems."

A U.S. expert on North Korean sanctions said the latest measures — putting the U.N. seal of approval on measures the U.S. already has prepared to undertake — are "a modest first step" that might scare off some of North Korea's weapons-buying customers.

"We're now into a game of Whack-A-Mole," said Marcus Noland, an economist at Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, referring to the game in which moles keeping popping up from their holes randomly.

"What's going to happen is that the North Koreans are going to try to reconstitute their entities and form new shell companies, new front companies, to continue these activities," he said. "If there's really going to be comprehensive efforts on this, they're going to have to go after the financial intermediaries, some of which are in China, and after the customers."

North Korea has not indicated how it might react to the sanctions panel's latest decisions.

But on June 13, North Korea's Foreign Ministry threatened to take "countermeasures" including accelerating plutonium reprocessing and starting up uranium enrichment, which would give the regime a second way to make atomic bombs.

North Korea warned that any attempted blockade of its ships would be considered "an act of war" that would draw "a decisive military response." It also has threatened a "thousand-fold" military retaliation against the U.S. and its allies if provoked.

Security Council Resolution 1874, approved on June 12, responded to the North's underground nuclear test blast on May 25. It called for clamping down on alleged trading of banned arms and weapons-related material and stepped-up inspections of suspect shipments by sea and air.

Since then, the council also has condemned and expressed "grave concern" over North Korea's recent firing of seven ballistic missiles on U.S. Independence Day. The missile launches off the nation's east coast defied three previous council resolutions and further aggravated tensions already high after North Korea's May 25 test blast.

Japan, which lives in constant fear of a nuclear-armed North Korea, asked all Southeast Asian nations, except junta-ruled Myanmar to enforce the U.N.'s North Korea resolutions.

A North Korean ship, the first to be monitored under the June 12 resolution, turned back before reaching port, possibly in Myanmar, with its suspected illicit cargo of weapons.

WASHINGTON – NASA could put a man on the moon but didn't have the sense to keep the original video of the live TV transmission.

In an embarrassing acknowledgment, the space agency said Thursday that it must have erased the Apollo 11 moon footage years ago so that it could reuse the videotape.

But now Hollywood is coming to the rescue.

The studio wizards who restored "Casablanca" are digitally sharpening and cleaning up the ghostly, grainy footage of the moon landing, making it even better than what TV viewers saw on July 20, 1969. They are doing it by working from four copies that NASA scrounged from around the world.

"There's nothing being created; there's nothing being manufactured," said NASA senior engineer Dick Nafzger, who is in charge of the project. "You can now see the detail that's coming out."

The first batch of restored footage was released just in time for the 40th anniversary of the "one giant leap for mankind," and some of the details seem new because of their sharpness. Originally, astronaut Neil Armstrong's face visor was too fuzzy to be seen clearly. The upgraded video of Earth's first moonwalker shows the visor and a reflection in it.

The $230,000 refurbishing effort is only three weeks into a monthslong project, and only 40 percent of the work has been done. But it does show improvements in four snippets: Armstrong walking down the ladder; Buzz Aldrin following him; the two astronauts reading a plaque they left on the moon; and the planting of the flag on the lunar surface.

Nafzger said a huge search that began three years ago for the old moon tapes led to the "inescapable conclusion" that 45 tapes of Apollo 11 video were erased and reused. His report on that will come out in a few weeks.

The original videos beamed to Earth were stored on giant reels of tape that each contained 15 minutes of video, along with other data from the moon. In the 1970s and '80s, NASA had a shortage of the tapes, so it erased about 200,000 of them and reused them.

How did NASA end up looking like a bumbling husband taping over his wedding video with the Super Bowl?

Nafzger, who was in charge of the live TV recordings back in the Apollo years, said they were mostly thought of as data tapes. It wasn't his job to preserve history, he said, just to make sure the footage worked. In retrospect, he said he wished NASA hadn't reused the tapes.

Outside historians were aghast.

"It's surprising to me that NASA didn't have the common sense to save perhaps the most important historical footage of the 20th century," said Rice University historian and author Douglas Brinkley. He noted that NASA saved all sorts of data and artifacts from Apollo 11, and it is "mind-boggling that the tapes just disappeared."

The remastered copies may look good, but "when dealing with historical film footage, you always want the original to study," Brinkley said.

Smithsonian Institution space curator Roger Launius, a former NASA chief historian, said the loss of the original video "doesn't surprise me that much."

"It was a mistake, no doubt about that," Launius said. "This is a problem inside the entire federal government. ... They don't think that preservation is all that important."

Launius said federal warehouses where historical artifacts are saved are "kind of like the last scene of `Raiders of the Lost Ark.' It just goes away in this place with other big boxes."

The company that restored all the Indiana Jones movies, including "Raiders," is the one bailing out NASA.

Lowry Digital of Burbank, Calif., noted that "Casablanca" had a pixel count 10 times higher than the moon video, meaning the Apollo 11 footage was fuzzier than that vintage movie and more of a challenge in one sense.

Of all the video the company has dealt with, "this is by far and away the lowest quality," said Lowry president Mike Inchalik.

Nafzger praised Lowry for restoring "crispness" to the Apollo video. Historian Launius wasn't as blown away.

"It's certainly a little better than the original," Launius said. "It's not a lot better."

The Apollo 11 video remains in black and white. Inchalik said he would never consider colorizing it, as has been done to black-and-white classic films. And the moon is mostly gray anyway.

The restoration used four video sources: CBS News originals; kinescopes from the National Archives; a video from Australia that received the transmission of the original moon video; and camera shots of a TV monitor.

Both Nafzger and Inchalik acknowledged that digitally remastering the video could further encourage conspiracy theorists who believe NASA faked the entire moon landing on a Hollywood set. But they said they enhanced the video as conservatively as possible.

Besides, Inchalik said that if there had been a conspiracy to fake a moon landing, NASA surely would have created higher-quality film.

Back in 1969, nearly 40 percent of the picture quality was lost converting from one video format used on the moon — called slow scan — to something that could be played on TVs on Earth, Nafzger said.

NASA did not lose other Apollo missions' videos because they weren't stored on the type of tape that needed to be reused, Nafzger said.

As part of the moon landing's 40th anniversary, the space agency has been trotting out archival material. NASA has a Web site with audio from private conversations in the lunar module and command capsule. The agency is also webcasting radio from Apollo 11 as if the mission were taking place today.

The video restoration project did not involve improving the sound. Inchalik said he listened to Armstrong's famous first words from the surface of the moon, trying to hear if he said "one small step for man" or "one small step for A man," but couldn't tell.

Through a letter read at a news conference Thursday, Armstrong had the last word about the video from the moon: "I was just amazed that there was any picture at all."

WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats praised Sonia Sotomayor as a Hispanic pioneer well qualified for the Supreme Court on Monday, but Republicans questioned her impartiality and President Barack Obama's views as well at the start of confirmation hearings.

Despite Republican misgivings, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Sotomayor, "Unless you have a complete meltdown, you're going to get confirmed.

"And I don't think you will" have a meltdown, he added quickly as Sotomayor sat listening, her face in a half-smile.

Graham spoke after Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, praised Sotomayor in remarks that opened the proceedings in a packed Senate hearing room. "She's been a judge for all Americans. She'll be a justice for all Americans," he said.

Leahy likened Sotomayor to other judicial pioneers, citing Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice on the high court, as well as Louis Brandeis, the first Jew, and Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman.

"Let no one demean this extraordinary woman," Leahy said in a warning to committee Republicans to tread lightly in the days ahead.

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican, vowed a "respectful tone" and "maybe some disagreements" when lawmakers begin questioning Sotomayor on Tuesday.

Moments later, he took aim at Sotomayor's 2001 statement that her standing as a "wise Latina woman" would sometimes allow her to reach a better decision than a white male.

"I will not vote for, and no senator should vote for an individual nominated by any president who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their own personal background, gender, prejudices or sympathies to sway their decision," he said.

"Call it empathy, call it prejudice or call it sympathy, but whatever it is, it's not law," Sessions said. "In truth, it's more akin to politics, and politics has no place in the courtroom."

That was a reference to Obama's declaration — made before he named Sotomayor — that he wanted a person of empathy on the high court.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., made a spirited rebuttal later in the morning. "The empathy that President Obama saw in you has a constitutionally proper place" in the judiciary," he said.

Obama named Sotomayor, 55 and a child of the South Bronx, to replace retiring Justice David Souter.

While Souter was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, he became a reliable member of the court's liberal faction.

If confirmed, Sotomayor is not expected to alter the court's balance on controversial issues such as abortion and affirmative action.

Sotomayor, who has served 17 years as a federal judge, including 11 on the appeals court, listened silently from her seat at the witness table a few feet away as the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee made introductory remarks.

Her turn to speak came next, to be followed by two or three days of questioning from the panel that will cast the first votes on her appointment.

Leahy and Sessions escorted Sotomayor to her seat before the hearing began into the first Supreme Court nominee by a Democratic president in 15 years.

Outside, a small group of anti-abortion protesters opposed to her confirmation unfurled a banner that said, "Senators: Stop the Slaughter! Filibuster Sotomayor." It was unclear whether Sotomayor saw them.

Less than an hour into the hearing, one anti-abortion protester began shouting inside the room, and was quickly hustled away.

From its opening moments, the hearing was drenched in racial politics.

"The Hispanic element of this hearing is important, but ... this is mostly about liberal and conservative politics more than it is about anything else," said Graham.

In the Senate as a whole, there was no talk of a filibuster, under which Republicans would attempt to block a vote on her nomination. Instead, barring a gaffe of major proportions, as Graham said, Sotomayor seemed on her way to confirmation even before Leahy rapped the opening gavel.

Graham hinted that he would vote to confirm Sotomayor, but he was the only Republican to sound so inclined.

And even he joined other GOP lawmakers in questioning her ability to serve as an impartial justice.

Said Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.: "From what she has said, she appears to believe that her role is not constrained to objectively decide who wins based on the weight of the law but who, in her opinion, should win."

"The factors that will influence her decisions apparently include her gender and Latina heritage and foreign legal concepts that get her creative juices going." he added.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, broadened that line of skepticism to include Obama. He noted that as a senator, the president opposed Janice Rogers Brown, an African-American appointee to the appeals court by President George W. Bush.

"He argued that the test of a qualified judicial nominee is whether she can set aside her personal views" and decide cases on their merits, Hatch said.

He also said Obama noted at the time that while a nominee's gender, race and life story "are important, they cannot distract from the focus on the kind of judge she will be."

Hatch added, "But today, President Obama says that personal empathy is an essential ingredient in judicial decisions."

In the nearly seven weeks since Sotomayor's nomination, critics have labored without much success to exploit weaknesses in her record.

Even as they try, Republican senators also must take care to avoid offending Hispanic voters, the fastest-growing segment of the electorate by attacking Sotomayor too harshly.

Still, Republicans signaled that they will press her to explain past rulings involving discrimination complaints and gun rights, as well as remarks that they say raise doubts about her ability to judge cases fairly.

The most fertile ground for Republican questioning appears to be on race and ethnicity, focused on Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment and a ruling on white firefighters from New Haven, Conn., who won their Supreme Court case last month.

By a 5-4 vote last month, the high court agreed with the firefighters, who claimed they were denied promotions on account of their race after New Haven officials threw out test results because too few minorities did well. The court reversed a decision by a New York appeals court panel that included Sotomayor.

CHICAGO – Proposed limits on Tylenol, a painkiller as common as pain itself, have left many consumers fearful, confused and wondering where to turn for relief. The potential government crackdown on acetaminophen, Tylenol's main ingredient, would affect everyone from occasional pill poppers to chronic pain sufferers who rely on daily doses to make their lives more bearable.

If adopted by the Food and Drug Administration, the changes would lower the maximum over-the-counter Tylenol dose and would ban two narcotic painkillers, Vicodin and Percocet, which also contain acetaminophen.

Yet another painkiller, propoxyphene, was the target of FDA action on Tuesday. Also sold as Darvon and in an acetaminophen combination called Darvocet, it has been linked to accidental overdoses and suicides. The prescription medication will now come with a pamphlet describing the risk.

Sharon Waldrop, a mother of two young boys in Royal Oak, Mich., takes Tylenol regularly for severe muscle pain. She knows about liver damage risks but says she "could not get by" with the proposed lower doses.

Karen Palmer of Cincinnati takes Percocet for debilitating rheumatoid arthritis and says it took five years to find medicine that really helps. "I don't want to have to go through that all over again," said the 46-year-old hotel worker, on disability because of the disease.

Dr. Ronnie Mandal, an internist at Chicago's Swedish Covenant Hospital, says he's gotten calls from worried elderly patients who saw the news on TV last week.

"Most of them are wondering, is it safe for me to use," he said.

For those on Tylenol, the short answer — from Mandal and other physicians — is yes, if used judiciously. Doctors say there's no reason to switch to other pain relievers, which can cause different problems.

But avoiding an acetaminophen overdose requires reading medicine bottles scrupulously and doing a little math because acetaminophen is often a hidden ingredient. Popping a few extra pills or mixing Tylenol with other medicines can quickly add up to too much. So can taking any of these drugs while drinking alcohol, which aggravates effects on the liver.

For users of the proposed banned narcotic drugs, which one liver expert likened to candy mixed with poison, options would be more limited, particularly given other recent clampdowns on narcotic painkillers.

"If these drugs were not available to our patients, there would be a stampede toward the doctor to try to figure out an alternative treatment for them because they're such widely used drugs," said Dr. Gil Fanciullo of the American Pain Society.

The results could be undertreatment of pain, or putting patients on even stronger narcotics. Better labeling of medicines that have acetaminophen is the answer, rather than making them less available, said Fanciullo, a pain management specialist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H.

Dave Duhrkoop, a retired marketing manager in Troutdale, Ore., has taken Vicodin and Percocet for severe back pain. He's now on a different drug but thinks banning the other two would be overkill. It could lead chronic pain sufferers to turn to street drugs "because people don't want to hurt."

According to the FDA, prescription acetaminophen combination drugs were prescribed 200 million times last year. Tylenol's maker says nearly 50 million U.S. adults and children take acetaminophen in any given week.

The panel's proposals, announced June 30, were prompted by concerns over acetaminophen overdoses, which are the leading cause of liver failure. They sicken more than 50,000 people and cause at least 200 deaths each year nationwide.

Poisoning is not believed to be a risk for long-term users of recommended Tylenol doses, and they do not need liver tests, said Dr. William M. Lee, a liver disease specialist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Liver problems associated with excessive use of Tylenol and other forms of the drug tend to occur suddenly. They typically show up within about three days of taking extra doses, Lee said, and even a few extra pills over a few days can cause problems.

That's why the FDA panel recommended making the current maximum single dose of Tylenol, 1,000 milligrams, available by prescription only. The new maximum single dose would be 650 mgs. The total daily limit would be cut from 4 grams, about 12 regular-strength Tylenol pills, to an unspecified lower dose.

Symptoms of liver problems include nausea, vomiting, upper abdominal pain and jaundice. With immediate treatment, permanent liver damage can be prevented.

The recommendations led Tylenol's manufacturer to run full-page ads in major newspapers Friday declaring the medicine is safe when used as directed. The ads also say never take more than recommend doses, and don't use two products containing acetaminophen at the same time. That includes over-the-counter cold medicines such as Nyquil and Theraflu, and prescription medicines also containing the drug.

The Arthritis Foundation issued a statement supporting the limits, saying that arthritis patients "must be made aware of potential side effects of drugs so they can decide about the level of risk they are willing to accept."

Lee, the Dallas liver specialist, also supports the proposed limits. He provided data on acetaminophen poisoning to the FDA advisory panel.

The full FDA is considering the recommendations, but any final decisions are months away.

The proposed ban on Vicodin and Percocet is justified because they're so easy to abuse, Lee said. The narcotics in these drugs are addictive and can lead users to take increasingly higher doses — but that also means increasingly higher amounts of acetaminophen.

Quoting a colleague, Lee said it makes no sense to combine a highly addictive drug with a "dose-related poison. It's like putting poison and candy together."

Oxycodone, the narcotic in Percocet, can be prescribed separately. But Vicodin's narcotic ingredient is hydrocodone, which isn't available alone.

The risks for liver failure justify the restrictions, Lee said.

Though older now, and a bit infirm, and increasingly consumed with thoughts of passing on to his youngest son the family business (running North Korea into the ground), Kim Jong Il still has a fondness for a decent Fourth of July fireworks show. Pyongyang shot at least seven short-range SCUD missiles in the direction of the Sea of Japan on Saturday morning, in what some analysts termed an act of "defiance" against the United States and its allies in east Asia. But the SCUDS, fired from the eastern coast of North Korea, have limited range, and fell harmlessly into the sea less than 300 miles (480 kilometers) from where they were launched. The exercise drew perfunctory condemnations from the U.S. and some of the North's neighbors. Indeed, "acts of defiance" have become so predictable with Kim that they've come to be business as usual. The chief of the U.S. naval forces, Admiral Gary Roughhead, meeting with Japanese counterparts in Tokyo Saturday morning, blandly observed that American and allied ships in the region were simply "tracking the missiles" and "observing the activities that are going on."

The low-key response was entirely appropriate, given Kim's past behavior on the big U.S. holiday. On July 4 2006, he test fired - unsuccessfully, it turned out - a long-range, multi-stage ballistic missile, in explicit defiance of a U.N. resolution. By comparison, today's exercise felt a bit like a teenager tossing a few M-80s into the water off a dock somewhere. (http://www.time.com/time/ph...>See pictures of North Koreans at the polls.)

The U.S. and the rest of the world know well that the North has a range of missiles. The Obama Administration, in the wake of Kim's recent, relentless belligerence, has made it clear that preventing the proliferation of missiles and other weapons of mass destruction is what drives U.S. policy now. On June 30, the Administration imposed unilateral U.S. sanctions on two North Korean companies engaged in proliferation - sanctions that will "augment efforts to curtail the North Korean regime's ability to develop and sell WMD and missiles," says Bruce Klingner, former North Korea analyst at the CIA, now a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. One of the firms sanctioned, called Hong Kong Electronics and located on Kish Island, Iran, is alleged to have transferred millions of dollars of proliferation-related funds from Iran to North Korean companies already on U.S. and U.N. sanctions lists, according to the Treasury Department. The firm also facilitated the sale of North Korean missiles to Iran, Treasury says. (http://www.time.com/time/ph...>See pictures of Kim Jong Il.)

At the same time, the State Department sanctioned Namchongang Trading Company, based in Pyongyang, for being involved in the purchase of aluminum tubes and other equipment "specifically suitable for a uranium enrichment program since the late 1990s." The State Department believes the company may also have been involved in assisting Syria to build a covert nuclear reactor - one that Israel ultimately destroyed in September 2007.

The sanctions came as the U.S. Navy was tracking - but not boarding - a North Korean freighter as it moved slowly across the ocean, apparently headed toward Burma, and then turned around and appeared to be heading back. East Asian diplomats have said that North Korea and the regime in Burma have recently stepped up military ties. A large North Korean military delegation recently visited the country, "and the suspicion is that it was very much a sales call. Pyongyang is looking for more customers for its missiles and other material." Deterring that kind of proliferation is what will consume the U.S. and its allies, long after Kim's latest holiday fireworks show is over.