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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Several small groups of Secret Service employees separately visited clubs, bars and brothels in Colombia prior to a visit by President Barack Obama last month and engaged in reckless, "morally repugnant" behavior, Sen. Susan Collins says.
• She says the employees' actions during the stunning prostitution scandal could have provided a foreign intelligence service, drug cartels or other criminals with opportunities for blackmail or coercion that could have threatened the president's safety.
• In remarks prepared for the first congressional hearing on the matter Wednesday, Collins, R-Maine, also challenged early assurances that the scandal in Colombia appeared to be an isolated incident. She noted that two participants were Secret Service supervisors -- one with 21 years of service and the other with 22 years -- and both were married. Their involvement "surely sends a message to the rank and file that this kind of activity is tolerated on the road," Collins said.
• "This was not a one-time event," said Collins, the senior Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "The circumstances unfortunately suggest an issue of culture."
• Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the committee's chairman, said, "I want to hear what the Secret Service is doing to encourage people to report egregious behavior when they see it."
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• PARIS (AP) -- The leaders of the 27 countries that make up the European Union are to meet in Brussels Wednesday to try and find a way to keep the debt crisis in Europe from spiraling out of control and promote jobs and growth.
• On Tuesday the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that the 17 countries that use the euro risk falling into a "severe recession." It called on governments and Europe's central bank to act quickly to keep the slowdown from dragging down the global economy.
• The electoral turmoil in Greece threatens to pull apart the eurozone. Borrowing

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