The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois • Page 8

7 3 4 2 i Hawaii fish coughs 1 up gold watch ELEELE, Hawaii Hawaii resident Curt Carish boasts a timely fish tale: a 10-inch reef fish he caught by hand in shallow water coughed up a ticking gold watch. Carish says he was enjoying a picnic Wednesday on Port Allen beach when he saw the nenue fish awkwardly swimming close to shore. He says a friend gave him a bamboo stick and told him to get the fish. So he jumped into the waist-high water and hit the nenue until it went limp. He noticed the fish had an abnormally large belly as he tossed it into a cooler.

A friend opened the cooler later to dis -cover a gold watch next to the fish's mouth. v5 W.I 'SY'-- jf; I i 7i Associated PressFRANCOiS MORI A wreath leans on a grave marker in the American Cemetery of Colleville, western France, on Thursday. President Barack Obama will attend the 65th anniversary of D-Day on June 6 in Normandy. Royal D-Day row reveals divide over WWII roles 1 OUR NATION 2 GOP: Health deal tougher now WASHINGTON, D.C. President Barack Obama's hopes for a bipartisan health deal took a hit Thursday as GOP senators protested a letter he wrote declaring support for a public insurance plan.

Such a plan would compete with private insurers and is opposed by nearly all Republicans. Obama long has supported it, but he had avoided going into detail about his health goals, leaving the specifics to Congress and emphasizing hopes for a bipartisan bill. That changed when Obama released a letter Wednesday to two Senate Democrats saying he believed strongly in the need for a new public plan. House panel rejects Obama budget cuts WASHINGTON, D.C. Defying President Barack Obama, lawmakers on Thursday saved a program that helps states with the cost of incarcerating criminal illegal immigrants as the House began the annual process of crafting the legislation to fund the government.

The State Criminal Alien As -sistance Program, a favorite of lawmakers from California and Texas, still wasn't completely spared from budget cuts. A House Appropriations panel decided to allocate $300 million to the program, a $100 million reduction from current levels but still a clear rejection of Obama's plans to eliminate the program. 2 dead, 7 injured in lightning storm LOS ANGELES A woman walking under a tree was struck and killed by lightning, one of thousands of strikes that touched off spot fires and injured seven others as a gusty storm pounded California. Another woman was killed by a falling tree. Authorities said Tina Bond, 40, was killed by a bolt Wednesday afternoon as she walked along a sidewalk in Fontana, in San Bernardino County east of Los Angeles.

Police Sgt. Jeff Decker said the bolt blew out the bottoms of the victim's shoes and hurled some of her clothing 30 feet away. Octuplet mom says she feels guilty LOS ANGELES Octuplets "mother Nadya Suleman says she didn't tell her sperm donor she was having more children after the first six, and fears his resentment for the betrayal. In a video shot in a fondue restaurant and posted to the RadarOnline Web site Thursday, Suleman says she used frozen fertilized embryos left over from her first conceptions to become pregnant with eight additional children. The donor didn't know she had the leftover embryos, she said.

"I went behind his back and used them all," she says. "He didn't want me to. I feel so much guilt for that." a Slaying suspect talks from jail WICHITA, Kan. The man step to pull back from cities by July. Gay penguin pair raisinffcniCK RF.RI.TN A German znn savs a pair of gay male penguins are raising a chick from an egg abandoned by its parents.

Bremerhaven zoo veterinarian Joachim Schoene says the egg was placed in the male penguins' nest after its parents rejected it in late April. The males incubated it for some 30 days before it hatched and have continued to care for it. The chick's gender is not yet known. Schoene said the male birds, named and Vielpunkt, are one of three same -sex pairs among the zoo's 20 Humboldt penguins Homosexual behavior has been documented in many animal species. The zoo said in a statement on its Web site Thursday that "sex and coupling in our world don't always have something to do with reproduction." 5th UK.

minister resigns post LONDON Prime Minister Gordon Brown was dealt a devastating blow to his leadership late Thursday when one of his most ambitious ministers resigned hours after Britain voted in European elections and called on him to step down. Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell became the fifth minister to abandon Brown's Cabinet in recent days. Purnell called on the prime minister to resign for the good of the Labour party in a resignation letter seen by The Associated Press. Purnell was the first of the five ministers to openly criticize Brown and ask him to step down. mm Man in hohonrlino' case still in hospital WINNIPEG, Manitoba A schizophrenic man who beheaded and cannibalized a fellow Greyhound bus passenger will remain in a psychiatric hospital for at least another year.

Stanley Li was found not criminally responsible earlier this year for the July killing of Tim McLean, whom he stabbed dozens of times and dismembered as horrified passengers fled the bus. A judge ruled that he suffered from untreated schizophrenia and did not realize that his actions were wrong. The Manitoba Criminal Review Board ruled Thursday that Li remained too dangerous to be freed. Taliban kill 3 U.S. soldiers 8 KABUL Taliban militants detonated a bomb and opened fire on a vehicle carrying U.S.

soldiers on Thursday, killing three of them, as President Barack Obama said he did not want to keep American troops in Afghanistan longer than necessary. The ambush took place not far from the main U.S. base in Baeram, just north of the caDi-. tal Kabul. It was the third strike by insurgents in the region in less than a week, part of a surge in violence eight years after the U.S invaded to oust the Taliban regime.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT ham Palace said Tuesday that Sarkozy had sent an invitation to the queen's son and heir, Prince Charles a royal compromise that helped soothe ruffled British feathers. Military historian Peter Cad-dick -Adams of Britain's Cran -field University said the spat "says a lot about Britain and France." "There is a concern in Britain that France is keen to diminish the role of the he said. "(And) there is this concern in French minds about their liberation at the hands of their Anglo-Saxon rivals." The French insisted no slight was meant, and said Saturday's ceremony is intended primarily as a U-S. -French event, rather than a full-blown commemoration of the Allied effort like those held on the 50th and 60th anniversaries of D-Day. That has left Britons feeling slighted.

More than 60,0000 British troops landed on June 6, 1944, alongside 73,000 Americans, more than 20,000 Canadians and a small number of Free French commandos. The total includes more than 130,000 soldiers who came ashore at five Normandy beaches and 23,000 airborne troops. Many of the ships and planes that supported the landing force were British, too. Fatality estimates for the Allied forces vary, but range from 2,500 to more than 5,000 dead Mo. man was charged Tuesday with first -degree murder for allegedly killing Tiller with a single gunshot as the doctor handed out programs Sunday while ushering at the Lutheran church he attended in Wichita.

OUR WORLD Contingent ends Iraq deployment BAGHDAD Romania's small military contingent ended its deployment in Iraq on Thursday, reducing the U.S.-led coalition to three countries. i I a LJ i on D-Day. Agnes Poirier, a London-based French political commentator, said the attempt to recast D-Day commemorations as a Franco -American affair "is not only the rewriting of history, it's lunacy." "Many French people are really embarrassed about this," she said. Britain, France and the United States have always seen the war rather differently. In The Guardian newspaper, humorist Simon Hoggart summed up the British view with tongue only slightly in cheek as "the Americans took their own good time to join us (fighting Hitler), but when they did, between us we rescued the useless French.

And are they grateful Don't be silly." Some blame Hollywood for distorting popular perceptions of the war. While 1962 D-Day epic "The Longest Day" had a multinational cast, there are few Brits inSteven Spielberg's 1998 film "Saving Private Ryan" or the 2001 TV series "Band of Brothers," both of which dramatized the Normandy campaign from an American point of view. As far back as 1945, the Errol Flynn film "Operation Burma" which recast the liberation of Burma as an American, rather than British, feat sparked angry demonstrations in Britain. The movie was pulled after only a few days. By Jill Lawless ASSOCIATED PRESS LONDON Who won the war? A diplomatic tiff over Queen Elizabeth IPs omission from the guest list for this week's D-Day commemorations has reopened a divide over who should share credit for the World War II defeat of Nazi Germany.

Britons are grumbling that the nation does not get its due either from its wartime ally, the United States, or from the French whom it helped to liberate. On Saturday, President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are due to stand side by side in Normandy to re -member the Allied landings 65 years ago, when more than 150,000 troops swam, waded and parachuted onto Nazi-occupied French soil, turning the tide of the war. The queen Britain's head of state, the supreme commander of its armed forces and a veteran of the wartime women's Auxiliary Territorial Service won't be there. Prime Minister Gordon Brown was invited to represent the country instead. "Sarkozy hijacks Longest said The Times of London, which ran a slew of letters from outraged Britons.

The Daily Mail said the queen had been "betrayed" by the "sorry shambles" over the event. After (Jays of diplomatic dallying, Bucking accused of killing Kansas abortion provider George Tiller said Thursday from the county jail where he is being held that he's "being treated as a criminal" even though he hasn't been convicted. In a brief telephone conversation with The Associated Press, Scott Roeder also disputed what he called "broad brush" characterizations of him as being anti-government. "I want people to stop and. think: It is not anti govern -ment it is anti corrupt gov -ernment," Roeder told The Associated Press from the Sed-wick County Jail.

The 51-year-old Kansas City, In Iraq's north, another soldier died in combat. The alliance that once included nearly 40 countries has been whittled down as the Americans themselves prepare for a full withdrawal from the country by the end of 2011. Aside from the United States, the remaining troops come from Britain and Australia. The Americans have nearly 140,000 troops left in Iraq, according to the U. military.

President Barack Obama reassured Iraqis in a speech in Cairo on Thursday that the United States would stick to the timeline dictated by a security agreement, with the first.