U.S. hits debt ceiling

The U.S. government hit the debt ceiling on Monday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress.
Geithner said he would have to suspend investments in federal retirement funds until Aug. 2 in order to create room for the government to continue borrowing in the debt markets.
The funds will be made whole once the debt limit is increased, Geithner said. "Federal retirees and employees will be unaffected by these actions."
He went on to urge Congress once again to raise the country's legal borrowing limit soon "to protect the full faith and credit of the United States and avoid catastrophic economic consequences for citizens."
Congress, meanwhile, is not showing any signs of budging. Many Republicans and some Democrats say they won't raise it unless Congress and President Obama agree to significant spending cuts and other ways to curb debt.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/16/news/economy/debt_ceiling_deadline/index.htm?hpt=T2

Bin Laden was communicating with other terrorists, U.S. official says

Data and documents taken from the compound show that messages from Osama bin Laden did make it out of the compound to other members of al Qaeda, a U.S. official says.
"There are strong indications there is back and forth with other terrorists," the official said.
U.S. officials have said they view the raided compound as the al Qaeda leader's "command and control center" but had not explained before why they believed that to be the case.

people shot and killed in riverwalk

Riverside police are trying to determine why a man with a gun shot two people to death in an upscale neighborhood and then was himself shot by a police officer.
The double-homicide took place this evening in the 11500 block of Trailway Drive in the Riverwalk area of western Riverside, said Riverside police Lt. Guy Toussaint.
Officers received reports of shots fired just before 6 p.m., Toussaint said. When officers arrived minutes later, "an officer-involved shooting occurred, and the suspect was shot," he said. The suspect was taken to a hospital. Toussaint said he expected his condition was serious.
"We don't know what caused the shooting," he said, adding that such an occurrence "would be out of place for a neighborhood like this, out of place for the Riverwalk area. These are very nice homes, this is a very nice neighborhood."
Toussaint said investigators were still trying to determine if the shooter had any relationship to his victims. It was not clear if any of them were residents of the area.
"We're going to be here for many hours," he said of the investigation.

U.S. was prepared to fight Pakistani forces, officials say

The Obama administration had "very detailed contingency plans" for military action against Pakistani forces if they had tried to stop the U.S. attack on Osama bin Laden's compound, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the plan.
Their names are not disclosed because of the sensitive intelligence information involved.

Army Corps battles rising Mississippi from Memphis to New Orleans

Waging war against historic flooding in eight Midwestern and Southern states, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened a spillway north of New Orleans on Monday in an effort to calm the rising Mississippi River.

Bin Laden's death ushers in whirlwind week as clues emerge

he curtain is just beginning to rise on the scope and power of the world's most-wanted terrorist one week after U.S. Navy SEALs killed him during a daring nighttime raid.

Phone call tipped off U.S. to bin Laden compound, source says

A single phone call by Osama bin Laden's trusted courier tipped off U.S. officials to his Pakistan compound, ultimately leading to last week's raid that killed the al Qaeda leader, a senior Pakistani intelligence official told CNN Saturday.