Dog Supplements

The dog (Canis lupus familiaris, pronounced /ˈkeɪ.nis ˈluːpəs fʌˈmɪliɛəris/) is a domesticated subspecies of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The domestic dog has been one of the most widely kept working and companion animals in human history. The domestication of the gray wolf took place in a handful of events roughly 15,000 years ago in central Asia. The dog quickly became ubiquitous across culture in all parts of the world, and was extremely valuable to early human settlements. For instance, it is believed that the successful emigration across the Bering Strait might not have been possible without sled dogs. As a result of the domestication process, the dog developed a sophisticated intelligence that includes unparalleled social cognition and a simple theory of mind[citation needed] that is important to their interaction with humans. These social skills have helped the dog to perform in myriad roles, such as hunting, herding, protection, and, more recently, assisting handicapped individuals. Currently, there are estimated to be 400 million dogs in the world.

Over the 15,000 year span that the dog had been domesticated, it diverged into only a handful of landraces, groups of similar animals whose morphology and behavior have been shaped by environmental factors and functional roles. As the modern understanding of genetics developed, humans began to intentionally breed dogs for a wide range of specific traits. Through this process, the dog has developed into hundreds of varied breeds, and shows more behavioral and morphological variation than any other land mammal. For example, height measured to the withers ranges from a few inches in the Chihuahua to a few feet in the Irish Wolfhound; color varies from white through grays (usually called "blue'") to black, and browns from light (tan) to dark ("red" or "chocolate") in a wide variation of patterns; coats can be short or long, coarse-haired to wool-like, straight, curly, or smooth. It is common for most breeds to shed this coat, but non-shedding breeds are also popular.

CONAKRY, Guinea – Guinea's military junta has suspended negotiations with the opposition on the country's political crisis until the return of its wounded leader, a junta spokesman said Wednesday.
Minister of Communications Idrissa Cherif said that the talks meant to find a solution to the country's political stalemate have not been canceled, but will be put on hold for the foreseeable future.
Discussions were underway in neighboring Burkina Faso and mediated by that country's president following the massacre in September that human rights groups say killed at least 157 people.
"We cannot continue when our boss is not here ... The negotiations have been suspended," Cherif said. Asked when Capt. Moussa "Dadis" Camara will return to Guinea, he said: "I do not know when the president will come back. It's up to his doctors."
Camara who grabbed power in an army-led coup a year ago suffered a bullet wound to his head last week when his top aide opened fire on him during a heated argument. He was rushed to a military hospital in Morocco for emergency surgery Friday, where the state of his health has since remained a mystery. Junta officials have insisted that he is doing well and is conscious and talking, but diplomats briefed on the matter have repeatedly said that the military strongman was seriously wounded and is unlikely to return anytime soon.
The suspension of the high-level talks is another indication that the country's leader is unlikely to be making a quick recovery. The talks mediated by Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore were meant to find a solution to the country's political impasse following the Sept. 28 massacre by military at a pro-democracy rally.
Camara, who suspended the country's constitution when he grabbed power last year, had promised to organize elections within one year in which neither he nor any other member of the 32-person junta would be allowed to run. He broke his promise just a few months later.
When thousands of opposition supporters gathered inside the national stadium in September to demand his departure, the presidential guard opened fire. Dozens of women were brutally raped on the stadium grass, including with bayonets, knives and rifle barrels. Rape victims have testified before a U.N. commission that they saw top junta leaders walking past them as they were being assaulted and did nothing to stop the soldiers.
The shocking brutality prompted the African and the European Unions to impose sanctions, including an arms embargo and a travel ban on top members of the junta. Compaore offered to mediate between the military and civilian leaders in the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou. The next meeting between the two sides was supposed to be around Dec. 17.
The suspension could indicate that the military government is leaderless, in contradiction to what the junta had earlier been saying. Cherif insisted that the president was talking and had met members of his cabinet in his hospital room in Morocco.
Diplomats in touch with medical officials in Morocco have said that Camara's room inside the Mohammed V Hospital in Rabat is off limits to anyone other than his doctors and his nurse, and possibly his wife and children.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Clay Aiken received a lot of votes as an "American Idol" contestant and eventual runner-up. Now, it's his lone vote that's drawing attention in North Carolina.
The Wake County Board of Elections scheduled a meeting Wednesday to examine a complaint questioning Aiken's voter registration in the county. It's unclear if he'll attend.
Wake Republican Party Chairman Claude Pope filed the complaint last month, after Aiken called candidates for the county school board "selfish idiots." Records show Aiken voted this fall in his hometown of Raleigh. He now has a house in nearby Chatham County.
Pope said he wants Aiken's registration canceled if he no longer lives in the county.
Board director Cherie (sherry) Poucher said the board will decide if there's enough evidence for a full-blown investigation.

SYDNEY (AFP) –
Five North Korean artists have been banned from entering Australia for an exhibition of their work, the government said Wednesday, drawing accusations of censorship from the arts community.

The artists and a translator have been refused visas because it is contrary to foreign policy interests and because they are from a studio linked to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.

"The studio reportedly produces almost all of the official artworks in North Korea, including works that clearly constitute propaganda aimed at glorifying and supporting the North Korean regime," a spokesman told AFP.

"To make an exception in this case would have represented a relaxation of Australia's visa ban (on North Korean nationals) and sent an inappropriate message to the North Korean regime."

But the curator of the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Nick Bonner, said denying the artists the right to present their works at the Brisbane exhibition smacked of censorship.

"It's not really, I don't think, the job of any government to override a government art institute on which artists can and can't be chosen," he told AFP.

"And even if it had been propaganda art work, so what?" Bonner said, arguing the artists faced no choice under North Korea's Stalinist regime.

Bonner said the exhibition had allowed the North Korean artists to diversify away from the revolutionary works typically seen in the secretive state.

And he denied that the North Koreans, who are employed by the Mansudae Art Studio in Pyongyang and had submitted a large mosaic and five "very humble" ink drawings for the exhibition, worked exclusively on propaganda.

The Asia Pacific show, which is supported by the state and national governments, opened at the Gallery of Modern Art and Queensland Art Gallery earlier this month.

It features artists from more than 25 countries including Iran, Turkey, Tibet, Cambodia and Myanmar.

SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Josh Chavis scored 18 points and South Carolina Upstate finished with its highest shooting percentage since the 2002-03 season in a 78-56 win over Stetson on Monday night.
The Spartans (1-5, 1-0 Atlantic Sun) shot 61.2 percent from the field (30 of 49), including 66.7 from behind the 3-point arc (8 of 12).
Chavis was 7 of 11 from the field, including 4 of 5 on 3-pointers, and Nick Schneiders was 8 of 13 from the field. Schneiders finished with 17 points.
The Spartans led 56-52 with 9:23 left to play before scoring 20 unanswered points over the next 7:25. Pat Posey put S.C. Upstate ahead 76-52 on two free throws with 1:58 to play.
The Spartans led 38-52 at halftime after shooting 60 percent from the field (15 of 25) and 66.7 percent from 3-point range (6 of 9) in the first half.
Tyshawn Patterson led the Hatters (2-4, 0-1) with 17 points.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
President Barack Obama will issue an executive order Tuesday creating an administration-wide task force to crack down on financial fraud following a rise in mortgage scams and high-profile Wall Street trading scandals, an administration official said.

The order will direct the task force to investigate and prosecute financial crimes connected to the past year's financial crisis and to try to deter future fraud, said the official, who declined to be identified.

The stakes are high for the administration, particularly with a weak economy, anger about huge Wall Street bonuses and outrage that securities regulators missed one of the biggest frauds in U.S. history involving Bernard Madoff, who bilked investors of as much as $65 billion in a decades-long scheme.

The administration has long pledged to become more aggressive in fighting financial crime. The task force is set to be announced at a 12 p.m. EST (1700 GMT) Justice Department news conference that will include Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Attorney General Eric Holder.

The task force will be chaired by Holder and will include the Justice, Treasury and Housing and Urban Development departments and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the official said.

The announcement comes a week after the Justice Department lost a pivotal criminal fraud case in New York against two managers from Bear Stearns whose hedge funds collapsed at the early stages of the financial crisis. Securities regulators still plan to pursue their own charges against the two men.

A senior Justice Department official said last week that the acquittals of the Bear Stearns managers were not a setback and the government would still pursue such cases.

The administration official said the timing of the announcement of the task force was unrelated to the Bear Stearns case, and rejected any suggestion that it had taken a long time to come up with the task force.

The Bush administration had a similar corporate fraud task force formed after the scandals earlier in the decade like the collapse of Enron Corp, the giant energy trader based in Houston.

(Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai, Editing by Philip Barbara)

MOSCOW – A Russian shipping company says one of its cruise ships carrying over 100 tourists, scientists and journalists is stuck in the ice around Antarctica.
German Kuzin of the Fareastern Shipping Company says the Captain Khlebnikov icebreaker and the tourists onboard aren't in any danger.
He told Russia's Vesti 24 television on Tuesday that the ship is waiting for a stronger wind to try to begin moving again. He said the icebreaker is about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from clear water.
Kuzin said the tourists are using the unplanned stop to tour the surrounding area. Russian news agencies say a BBC camera crew is among the passengers.

HANOI (AFP) –
Tropical storm Mirinae killed four people and left two missing after slamming into coastal Vietnam, the national flood and storm control committee said Tuesday.

Mirinae, which battered the storm-weary Philippines as a typhoon at the weekend, was downgraded to a tropical depression before it hit the communist country Monday.

The storm, which left 19 people dead in the Philippines, killed three in Vietnam's southern Phu Yen province and one in neighbouring Binh Dinh province, the committee said in an online report.

Up to 338 millimetres (13 inches) of rain fell in Vietnam's central regions. The storm damaged or destroyed an estimated 2,600 houses and flooded some 1,800 hectares (4,400 acres) of farmland, the report added.

Vietnam's coastal provinces had evacuated more than 50,000 people before the storm hit Monday night, the report added, but some residents were still trapped by flooding Tuesday.

Vietnam is frequently hit by tropical storms and flooding.

WASHINGTON – The health care bill headed for a vote in the House this week costs $1.2 trillion or more over a decade, according to numerous Democratic officials and figures contained in an analysis by congressional budget experts, far higher than the $900 billion cited by President Barack Obama as a price tag for his reform plan.
While the Congressional Budget Office has put the cost of expanding coverage in the legislation at roughly $1 trillion, Democrats added billions more on higher spending for public health, a reinsurance program to hold down retiree health costs, payments for preventive services and more.
Many of the additions are designed to improve benefits or ease access to coverage in government programs. The officials who provided overall cost estimates did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has referred repeatedly to the bill's net cost of $894 billion over a decade for coverage.
Asked about the higher estimate, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the measure not only insures 36 million more Americans, it provides critical health insurance reform in a way that is fiscally sound.
"It will not add one dime to the deficit. In fact, the CBO said last week that it will reduce the deficit both in the first 10 years and in the second 10 years," Daly said.
Democrats have been intent on passing legislation this year to implement Obama's call for expanded coverage for millions, curbs on industry abuses and provisions to slow the rate of growth of health care costs nationally.
"Now, add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years," the president said in a nationally televised speech in early September.
Whatever the final cost of legislation, the calendar is working increasingly against the White House and Democrats. While a House vote is possible late this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., may not be able to begin debate on the issue until the week before Thanksgiving. Additionally, the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has hinted at efforts to extend the debate for weeks if not months, a timetable that could extend into 2010.
One casualty of the time crunch and threatened Republican delaying tactics may be formal House-Senate negotiations on a final compromise. An alternative is a less formal hurry-up final negotiation involving the White House and senior Democrats.
Pelosi and her lieutenants worked on last-minute changes in the measure to ease concerns among opponents of abortion and a contentious provision relating to illegal immigrants. Conservative Democrats have expressed concern about the cost of the bill, and an evening closed-door meeting gave the leadership its first chance to hear their response.
The bill includes an option for a government-run health plan.
The leadership can afford more than two dozen defections and still be assured of the votes to prevail on the bill, one of the most sweeping measures in recent years.
Republicans put the cost of the bill at nearly $1.3 trillion.
"Our goal is to make it as difficult as possible for" Democrats to pass it, House Republican leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said at a news conference. "We believe it is the wrong prescription."
One day after announcing Republicans would have an alternative measure, Boehner offered few details. He said it would omit one of the central provisions in Democratic bills — a ban on the insurance industry's practice of denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. Instead, he said the Republicans would encourage creation of insurance pools for high-risk individuals and take other steps to ease their access to coverage.
Boehner also said Republicans would propose limits on medical malpractice lawsuits in what he said was an attempt to reduce the cost of coverage.
Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., the third-ranking leader, said that Democrats looked at their bill as a way to advance universal coverage. In contrast, he said, Republicans "believe the real issue back home is cost" of insurance, and said their alternative would be designed to tackle it.

Democrats have made elimination of the industry's practice a linchpin of their drive to overhaul the health care system. The industry has said it would not fight the change, and an accompanying restriction on its ability to charge higher premiums for certain groups, as the legislation includes a requirement for individuals to purchase insurance. Lacking that, the industry says millions of relatively healthy individuals would refuse to pay for coverage until they became sick, and the cost of premiums would rise sharply for everyone else.

Republicans oppose any government requirements for individuals to purchase insurance or for businesses to provide coverage.

The Congressional Budget Office is seen by lawmakers as the arbiter of claims about the costs and effects of proposed legislation, and the agency has been under intense pressure in recent weeks to compete assessments on several bills circulating in House and Senate.

In a letter last week, the agency's director, Dr. Douglas Elmendorf, said the net cost of expanding coverage in the House measure was estimated at $894 billion over 10 years, a figure reflecting a gross total of $1 trillion in federal subsidies as well as other spending.

The letter contained no similar assessment for the balance of the legislation and it was not clear when or whether one would be forthcoming.

In a letter last week to Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., on the general subject of health care, Elmendorf cautioned that some provisions in legislation have elements that raise costs and elements that lower costs.

"Tabulating all of the aspects of the proposal that would, in isolation, increase federal outlays would be complicated and would require somewhat arbitrary judgments" about calculating overall costs, Elmendorf said.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's hopes for a fast track to renewed Mideast peace talks were dashed Thursday when his chief diplomat reported few new steps by either Israelis or Palestinians toward negotiations.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with Obama Thursday in the Oval Office to report little to no new progress in a status report he had asked for by mid-October.
Clinton advised the president that challenges remain before peace talks can resume, according to an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely discuss a private conversation with the president.
Clinton reported that Palestinians have strengthened security efforts and reforms of Palestinian institutions, but that more needs to be done to prevent terror and end incitement, meaning they must stop those who carry out or even encourage attacks on Israel.
On the Israeli side, she said they have eased Palestinians' freedom of movement and expressed a willingness to curtail the building of Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas. The administration, however, like the Palestinians, are asking for an end to all new settlement construction — something on which the Israelis are not budging. Clinton said the Israelis also must do more to improve Palestinians' daily lives.
Last month in New York, Obama held a three-way meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, hoping it would prod them to relaunch talks that broke off more than a year ago. In an indication that no progress has been made since, Obama's assessment of the situation at the time was virtually identical to the description in Clinton's report Thursday on what steps the two sides have made and still need to take.
The president walked away from that meeting in September with no more than a handshake between the two Mideast leaders. He tasked George Mitchell, his envoy to the region, to continue meeting with Israeli and Palestinian officials. He also asked Clinton to report back on the status of all sides' efforts in mid-October, in the belief that setting a deadline could spur action.
Mitchell recently wrapped up the latest round of what the official described as "intensive" talks in Washington and in the region with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. He is due to return to the Mideast soon to continue.
Clinton told the president that Israelis must translate their willingness on settlements into "real, meaningful action" — a continuation of particularly strident rhetoric by the Obama administration toward Israel on the emotional issue.
A senior State Department official said Mitchell has made some inroads in getting the two sides to agree on the terms of reference to relaunch the talks, but that they were far from an agreement. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to detail Mitchell's meetings.
Clinton also was expected to discuss the issue with Arab foreign ministers in Morocco early next month.
___
Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

Park Benches

A bench is a piece of furniture, which mostly offers several persons seating. As a rule, benches are made of wood, but one can also find stone benches and benches made of synthetic materials. Many benches have arm rests. In public areas, benches are often donated by persons or associations, which may then be indicated on it, e.g. by a small copper plaque.

Often benches are simply called after the place they are used, regardless whether this implies a specific design Garden benches are very similar to public park benches set outdoors, but the former offer usually only two or three -, the latter mostly up to five persons sitting places. Picnic tables, or catering buffet tables have long benches as well as a table. These tables may have table legs which are collapsible, in order to expedite transport and storage. Church pews inside places of worship are equipped with an additional kneeling bench.

LOS ANGELES – Larry Birkhead, who gained fame in a custody battle over Anna Nicole Smith's daughter, was due to testify in the preliminary hearing for two doctors and the man who once fought him for custody of little Dannielynn.
Howard K. Stern, the boyfriend-lawyer who claimed he was the baby's father, lost that battle when Birkhead proved by DNA evidence that the little girl was his. Now Stern sits in the defendant's chair before a judge who will decide if he and the two doctors must stand trial in Smith's drug overdose death.
Dr. Khristine Eroshevich, Dr. Sandeep Kapoor and Stern are not charged with killing her but with conspiring to illegally provide her with controlled substances.
In testimony by Smith's former bodyguard, Stern was portrayed as a devoted companion to the celebrity model who went through a "commitment ceremony" with her five months before she died.
Witness Maurice Brighthaupt said he was present at the ceremony on a boat off the Bahamas on Sept. 28, 2006, the same month that Smith gave birth to her baby and saw her only son Daniel die.
"It was a unification through the eyes of God is how they put it," Brighthaupt said.
But Brighthaupt also offered damaging testimony against both Stern and Eroshevich saying he witnessed them injecting Smith with medication. It was the first time he has made such an allegation and Stern's attorney Steve Sadow attacked his account as false. He showed that Brighthaupt had given different stories to cable TV outlets after Smith's death in return for payments of $150,000 for his interviews.
Brighthaupt, who spent two full days on the witness stand, was to wind up his testimony Friday morning before Birkhead was due on the witness stand.
He has not commented on Birkhead's role in Smith's life except to say that he was with Smith in May of 2004 when she met Birkhead at the Kentucky Derby and began dating him.
Sadow indicated outside court he was looking forward to Birkhead's testimony.
"I think Larry's going to do his best to tell the truth," said Sadow. "If he does, he'll be very helpful to Howard."
Under Sadow's cross-examination, Brighthaupt said that many of the things he told his TV interviewers were lies, crafted to protect Smith's reputation. Among them was his statement that he never saw her take illicit drugs and never saw the drug methadone in her house. He also said then that Smith was in control of everything including decisions about her medication. He said now that was a lie.
"I had a lot of time to think about everything I said in the past and I'm trying to rectify everything now," he said.
He also acknowledged he had tried to sell a book on the case but the publisher rejected his manuscript calling it "too boring."
Thursday's court session was marked by Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry's decision to bar the prosecution from inquiring about an alleged sexual relationship between Smith and Eroshevich who had been her longtime psychiatrist and friend.
"This is a preliminary hearing," Perry told the prosecutors. "It's not a trial. It's to determine if there's probable cause for a trial. I'm just not going to turn this into some circus sideshow."
Perry said the issue could be raised again at trial before another judge, who could then rule on its relevance.
Outside court, attorney Adam Braun, who represents Eroshevich, called the sexual allegation a distraction and said the judge made the right call in barring the testimony.

Search warrants executed in the case and released a few weeks ago described photos of Smith and Eroshevich in a bathtub in a sexual situation.

Brighthaupt offered no testimony against Kapoor and said he had not heard of him. Kapoor's lawyer asked him no questions.

___

Associated Press writer Anthony McCartney contributed to this report.

LONDON – The world is endlessly fascinated with Jack the Ripper — but what about his victims?
On Tuesday an online genealogy company published census information that casts light on the lives of the women murdered by the Victorian serial killer.
The company findmypast.com trawled records of Britain's 1881 census for information on the five women generally accepted as victims of the Ripper: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly.
All were killed between Aug. 31 and Dec. 20, 1888, in London's East End, where they worked as prostitutes. Their bodies were horribly mutilated.
The firm said the census data — available on its site and elsewhere online — provides "a small window onto the past" and dispels an image some people may have of the victims as teenage streetwalkers. Most were formerly married women with children who resorted to prostitution when their lives took a turn for the worse.
There is no record of Nichols or Kelly in the census, taken on April 3, 1881, suggesting they may already have been working the streets at that time.
Stride was recorded as 37 and living with her husband, a carpenter. Eddowes was 38, living with her husband and two children, her occupation listed as "charwoman."
Chapman was 40, married but living with her parents. She later moved out of London to live with her husband, a stud groom.
The women appear to have turned to prostitution after their marriages broke up. According to newspaper reports of the time, none of the victims was living with their husbands at the time of their deaths.
"Some people treat the Jack the Ripper story as a bit of a game," said Alex Werner, a Museum of London historian who curated a recent Jack the Ripper exhibition. "It wasn't a game. It was against real people in the East End, people who had fallen on really hard times, who had gravitated to the East End as a place where they could earn some kind of living as a prostitute."
Newspaper accounts at the time, which helped the Ripper's fame spread, touched on the women's fall from respectability.
The Star newspaper's report on Sept. 27, 1888, on the death of Chapman, struck a sympathetic tone, describing how a woman who "had perhaps a happy and innocent girlhood, and was once a wife, had to turn out and seek the sale of her body for the price of a bed."
"A few hours later," the newspaper said, "she was found a corpse."
The murderer's infamy spread quickly around the world. London newspapers reveled in the gore, which was spread across the country and to distant lands by telegraph. The killer was dubbed "Jack the Ripper" after a man using that pseudonym claimed responsibility in letters to the media and police.
No one was ever prosecuted for the murders, helping to fuel speculation about his identity that continues to this day. Among the suspects identified at various times are Francis Tumblety, an American quack doctor; Sir William Gull, physician to Queen Victoria; Victoria's grandson, Prince Albert Victor; and the artist Walter Sickert.
Andrew Cook, author of the recent book "Jack the Ripper," thinks the Ripper has always been a media creation. He argues that the crime could not have been committed by a single person.
Cook said the Ripper myth has been constructed from "layer upon layer of sediment, nonsense and crazy theories."
"It has become an industry," he said. "What really was a terrible scenario of events has almost become over-commercialized."

Werner doubts we will ever know the Ripper's true identity.

"My feeling is we'll never know for certain," said Werner. "We are too far away now to make sense of the different candidates."

___

On the Net:

Historical census records: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/census

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama, citing new government data showing that nearly half of all Americans live without health insurance in a 10-year period, says the situation will only worsen without the overhaul legislation he wants Congress to send him.
Obama was testing his message — that losing health insurance can happen to anyone — at a rally Saturday in Minneapolis. A new Treasury Department analysis found that 48 percent of all Americans under age 65 go without health coverage at some point in a 10-year period. The data came from a study that tracked the insurance status of a sample of Americans from 1997-2006.
The report also found that more than half, or 57 percent, of people under age 21 will find themselves without insurance at some point during a span of 10 years and that more than one-third of Americans will be without coverage for a year or more.
"I refuse to allow that future to happen," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet message. "In the United States of America, no one should have to worry that they'll go without health insurance — not for one year, not for one month, not for one day.
"And once I sign my health reform plan into law, they won't," he added.
In the Republican address, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said Obama has paid lip service to bipartisanship, rejected ideas that would bring the parties together around overhauling the system and ignored the American people's wishes. He criticized the cost and its long-term effect on the budget deficit, saying one of the House bills works out to $2.4 trillion over 10 years, beginning in 2013.
Obama puts the cost of his plan at $900 billion over the period.
"President Obama should work with Republicans on a bottom-up solution that the American people can support," Cornyn said.
The Minneapolis rally set for the Target Center is the latest move in the "full-court press" Obama promised as he seeks to overhaul a costly health care system he says will bankrupt the country and leave millions more people without needed coverage if left unchanged.
He followed Wednesday night's nationally televised health care speech with a day of events at the White House, including more remarks on health care, a Cabinet meeting dominated by the topic and a meeting with moderate Senate Democrats.
On Friday, he sat down with CBS' "60 Minutes" for an interview to be broadcast Sunday.
He continues the health care focus next week, speaking Tuesday in Pittsburgh at the AFL-CIO convention, where the need for health care overhaul will be an overriding theme, and holding another rally Thursday in College Park, Md., a Washington suburb.
In his televised speech to the nation, Obama spelled out what he'd like to see in the health overhaul bill he wants: coverage expanded to most of the nearly 50 million uninsured, new requirements for people to get insurance, new prohibitions against insurance company practices like denying coverage because of a pre-existing condition and creation of a new marketplace, or exchange, where consumers could shop for coverage.
___
Associated Press writer Martiga Lohn in St. Paul, Minn., contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
Obama address: http://www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: http://www.youtube.com/user/gopweeklyaddress

SAN DIEGO – Yorvit Torrealba hit a three-run double in the ninth inning off closer Heath Bell to lift the Colorado Rockies to a 4-1 win over the San Diego Padres on Friday night.
Torrealba's bases-loaded hit into the left-center field gap allowed the Rockies to pull out a comeback win and stay two games behind the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West. Los Angeles beat the Giants 10-3 at San Francisco.
Colorado had just three hits off five Padres pitchers before they reached Bell, the NL co-leader with 37 saves, for four runs on three hits and two walks.
San Diego was on the verge of handing the Rockies a tough loss in their playoff chase with 20 games left in the season after Jorge De La Rosa walked in the game's only run in the first inning.
But Colorado rebounded for its eighth straight win as the Rockies raised their record to a major-league best 10-1 in September. Colorado stretched its lead in the wild-card race to 5 1/2 games over the Giants.
Bell (5-3), who has four blown saves, gave up a leadoff walk to Todd Helton, who was replaced by Mike McCoy. Brad Hawpe singled with one out before pinch-hitter Jason Giambi walked to load the bases.
Bell struck out pinch hitter Matt Murton before Torrealba drove a ball into the gap to clear the bases. Paul Phillips added an RBI single off Bell.
Rafael Betancourt (3-1) got two outs for the win and Franklin Morales pitched the ninth inning for his sixth save in seven chances.
De La Rosa allowed one run on five hits in seven innings. He walked four and struck out eight to set the club single-season record for strikeouts by a left-hander with 170.
Edward Mujica made his first career start and allowed two hits in four scoreless innings.
The Rockies' only scoring threat before the ninth came in the seventh when they loaded the bases. But Luke Gregerson struck out pinch hitter Ryan Spilborghs.
San Diego loaded the bases in the first inning on David Eckstein's one-out double, a walk to Adrian Gonzalez and Chase Headley's bloop single that hit off the glove of second baseman Clint Barmes in short right field. Barmes had the ball in his glove before it popped out as he hit into sliding right fielder Brad Hawpe.
De La Rosa then walked Salazar on four consecutive pitches to force in a run. De La Rosa got out of the inning by getting Will Venable to ground into a double play.
Mujica's first major league start came after 116 career appearances out of the bullpen. The right-hander drew the start in place of rookie Mat Latos, who has been shut down for the season due to the number of innings he's thrown.
NOTES: Rockies RHP Jose Contreras, who left Thursday's 5-1 win over Cincinnati with right quadriceps strain, will probably not make his next start, Colorado manager Jim Tracy. ... De La Rosa broke the Rockies' single-season strikeout mark by lefties set by Jeff Francis in 2007. ... The Padres will honor the Park View All-Stars, who recently won the Little League World Series, before Saturday's game against the Rockies. Park View, from nearby Chula Vista, will take batting practice with San Diego's last group.
(This version CORRECTS Rockies 4, Padres 1. SUBS 3rd graf to correct Bell's runs and hits.)