Month: July 2014

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pressure is on Congress to act in the next two weeks on several problems, from keeping highway projects on track and easing wait time for veterans seeking health care to the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

By Ian Simpson WASHINGTON (Reuters) – On Christmas Eve 1910, future U.S. President Warren Harding wrote his mistress Carrie Phillips a letter that began: “There are no words, at my command, sufficient to say the full extent of my love for you … mad, tender, devoted, ardent, eager, passion-wild.” Harding praises Phillips’ “matchless embrace” and adds: “To have and to hold you, in happiness to you, exclusively, in satisfying and satisfied love, would be the triumph of living and loving.” The message is among about 1,000 pages of sometimes steamy love letters between Harding and Phillips that the Library of Congress will put online on July 29 after a 50-year court seal expires. “In looking at this collection, it’s astonishing the amount of misinformation about him, in fact, about everybody connected with him,” the library’s Manuscript Division chief, James Hutson, told the audience, which included Harding relatives.

By Kanupriya Kapoor and Randy Fabi JAKARTA (Reuters) – After winning Indonesia’s closest ever presidential election, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo now faces what could be his toughest battle yet – winning over his own party. To do that, he must deal with Puan Maharani, the politically ambitious daughter of former president Megawati Sukarnoputri and a powerful figure in the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P) that her mother heads and which propelled Jokowi into the presidential palace. For some, there is a risk of a power struggle among the rank-and-file of Indonesia’s most popular party that could muddle Jokowi’s agenda in parliament, where Puan is party leader. “Puan does have followers … of course, they are threatened by somebody like Jokowi.” Puan is heir to a political dynasty that goes back to her grandfather and founding president, Sukarno.