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TAIPEI, Taiwan – Taiwan said Thursday it has agreed to let the Dalai Lama visit the island to comfort survivors of a devastating typhoon, a decision that could anger China.
Beijing considers the Buddhist spiritual leader a "splittist" for promoting autonomy in the Chinese region of Tibet. Allowing him to visit Taiwan could undermine the rapidly improving relations between Beijing and Taipei, rivals which are developing close business ties after decades of enmity.
China claims self-governing Taiwan as part of its territory, though they split amid civil war in 1949.
Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou made the surprise announcement Thursday when he visited a school in Nantou County that was destroyed in mudslides triggered by Typhoon Morakot when it hit Aug. 8-9. The storm claimed 670 lives.
"The Dalai Lama could come to Taiwan to help rest the souls of the dead and also pray for the well-being of the survivors," Ma said.
On Wednesday, leaders of seven municipalities recently hit by Morakot issued a joint statement inviting the Dalai Lama to visit storm victims from Aug. 31 to Sept. 4.
The invitation from the leaders — all from the opposition Democratic Progressive Party_ comes as Ma faces criticism that he botched the government's response to the island's deadliest storm in 50 years.
The Dalai Lama has made three visits to the island over the past 12 years.
On Wednesday, Tenzin Takhla, the spiritual leader's spokesman in Dharmsala, India, home to the Tibetan government-in-exile, said the Dalai Lama has accepted the invitation "in principle."
Last December, Ma nixed plans for a Dalai Lama visit in what was largely seen as a move to placate Beijing. Improving relations between China and Taiwan has been the signature issue of Ma's presidency.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The California Senate, after a highly charged debate, approved a plan Thursday to trim the state's prison population by 27,000 inmates, acting over the objections of Republican lawmakers and law enforcement groups.
The proposal is supported by the Legislature's Democratic majority and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. It would let thousands of inmates be released early from state prison or avoid prison time altogether, and is intended to cut $1.2 billion from corrections spending.
The bill's fate was uncertain late Thursday. The state Assembly delayed meeting for several hours after the legislation squeaked through the Senate, finally scheduling an 8 p.m. session.
While the bill needed only a simple majority to pass, majority Democrats were having difficulty rounding up enough votes. Republicans, the minority party in both houses, oppose an early release program.
The challenge in finding sufficient support was illustrated by the example of three Democratic Assembly members who are planning to run for state attorney general next year. They are reluctant to vote for any bill that might make them appear soft on crime, thus handing an advantage to their opponents.
Republicans offered angry denouncements as the debate unfolded earlier Thursday on the Senate floor. They said provisions to reduce some crimes to misdemeanors, release certain inmates before they have completed their sentences and ease conditions for parole would be a threat to public safety.
Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, said he could guarantee a future ballot initiative to repeal the bill if it becomes law.
"This is such an over-the-top threat to public safety to the people of California, that I guarantee there will be a referendum ... because the people are not going to let this happen to them," he said.
The debate over prison spending and California's chronic inmate overcrowding took on renewed urgency when more than 1,000 inmates rioted Aug. 8 at the California Institution for Men in Southern California. The prison was designed to hold about half as many inmates, although investigators say they don't know if crowding helped spark the racially charged riot.
The measure passed the Senate on a 21-19 vote after a 3 1/2 hour debate. It had just enough votes to pass, with four Democrats and all Republicans opposed.
"This is an opportunity to do better and to begin to change the embarrassing fact that we spend more money on prisons than we do the University of California system," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento.
The bill being considered Thursday was a holdover from the budget-balancing deal lawmakers and Schwarzenegger struck a month ago. They said at the time that cutting $1.2 billion from the corrections budget was part of their plan to close a deficit then estimated at $26 billion, but they did not detail how those cuts would be made.
It's those details lawmakers are now debating during their first week back from summer break.
If also approved by the Assembly, the governor's proposal would release or divert from state prisons 27,000 inmates in the current fiscal year and another 10,000 in the fiscal year that begins next July.
It would do so through a range of measures:
• Inmates with less than 12 months to serve, who are over age 60 or who are medically incapacitated could be released from prison and given home detention with electronic monitoring.
• Sentences for certain property crimes will be lowered to misdemeanors, meaning convicts won't have to spend time in prison. Those include vehicle theft, petty theft with a prior conviction, receiving stolen property and check-kiting, a scam that primarily targets banks with fraudulent deposits.
• Allow more inmates to gain early release by completing educational, vocational or substance abuse rehabilitation programs.

• Ease supervision for thousands of parolees, making it more difficult to send them back to prison for violations.

The package also would establish a commission to review California's sentencing guidelines. Opponents fear its primary mission would be to determine whether some sentences could be lessened as a way to take pressure off an overcrowded prison system.

The new guidelines would be due by July 2012. The changes would take effect automatically unless they were rejected by the governor and a majority vote in the Legislature.

Republicans noted that most other states with sentencing commissions require their legislatures to approve the guidelines before they take effect, rather than forcing the legislature to repeal a sentencing change after the fact.

Sen. Gloria Romero, a victim of a violent robbery in 1995, said California should join the federal government and 22 other states that have created sentencing commissions.

"There is a need to bring a smartness. Toughness alone will not bring us out of this prison crisis," said Romero, a Democrat from Los Angeles who has pushed for a sentencing commission for years. "We either do it or the judges will not only do it for us, they'll do it to us."

Schwarzenegger's office said failure of the bill would force California to find other ways to release inmates. A panel of federal judges earlier this summer ordered the state to reduce its inmate population by 40,000 over two years.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
U.S. President Barack Obama stood by proposals to create a government-run health insurance program on Thursday while insisting the move was merely one element of a wider plan to reform the industry.

A debate over the so-called public option has overshadowed Obama's plan to expand health coverage to tens of millions of Americans while reducing costs and making the health insurance sector more competitive.

On Sunday Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the public option was "not the essential element" of the overhaul, sparking furor among supporters and forcing the White House to clarify its message about Obama's chief legislative priority.

"She really didn't misspeak. The surprising thing is she'd been saying this all along," Obama told a radio program on Thursday, referring to Sebelius.

He said he believed the public option was important.

"What we've said is we think that's a good idea, but we haven't said that that's the only aspect of health insurance," Obama said.

"What she essentially said was...all these other insurance reforms are just as important as the public option."

A opinion poll published in The Washington Post on Friday showed a drop in public confidence in the way Obama is handling healthcare.

According to the Washington Post-ABC News poll, disapproval of Obama's handling of healthcare reached 50 percent -- the highest of his presidency -- this month. Forty two percent of those surveyed say they now "strongly disapprove" of the way he is dealing with his top domestic priority, the Post said.

Obama's healthcare plan have been hit from both sides, with liberal members of his own Democratic party pushing for major changes while Republicans and conservative Democrats fret about cost and government involvement.

Critics have seized on the public option idea, saying it would be too expensive in an age of soaring deficits and could amount to a government "take-over" of U.S. healthcare while driving private insurers out of business.

Democratic Party activists meanwhile have been upset by any sign the White House is dropping its support for the public plan, which Obama says could help keep private insurers in check and bring prices down.

TICKED OFF

"I'm getting a little ticked off that it feels like the knees are buckling a little bit," said one caller on the radio program.

"You have an overwhelming majority in both the House and the Senate, and you own the whole shooting match. And...it's very frustrating to watch you try and compromise with a lot of these people who aren't willing to," he said.

Obama, who has pinned considerable political capital on the reform drive, responded by saying: "We are going to get healthcare reform done."

House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said the final bill would not survive in the House without a public option -- reflecting views of liberal Democrats who have mustered vocal support for the public plan idea.

"There is no way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option," she told reporters in California.

She said the president was not backing off the public option either. "No he isn't. He isn't at all," she said.

Several versions of healthcare reform bills are encountering difficulties in the Democratic-controlled Congress. The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the White House and Senate Democratic leaders were mulling breaking healthcare legislation into two parts and passing the most expensive portions without Republican support.

"I think we have to be very careful about splitting it off," Pelosi said, acknowledging, however, that procedural reasons could lead to such a move.

She said whether the legislation ended up as one or two bills, it would have to lower costs and improve care.

(Additional reporting by Deborah Charles)

LANCASTER, Pa. – Police said a 72-year-old pizza shop employee foiled a shotgun-point robbery by throwing a can of beer at the perpetrators. Lancaster police Lt. Todd Umstead said two men with bandanas over their faces attempted to rob Six Packs on Vine at closing time Wednesday. One of the men pointed a shotgun at the employee, who was stocking a cooler.
Umstead said the man threw a 12-ounce can of beer at the robber and both assailants fled the store.
Police said the employee could not tell if the beer struck either of the men but it was enough to chase them off.