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White House both at home and abroad.
• Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff announced Tuesday that she was putting off a state visit to the U.S. next month to protest an American spy program that has aggressively targeted her nation's government and private citizens alike.
• Rousseff's decision deepened the global fallout for Obama from revelations about National Security Agency surveillance programs, which have also angered many Americans. The announcement also came amid criticism of Obama's public shifting over the threat of U.S. military action against Syria.
• Some foreign policy analysts say such issues raise questions about Obama's standing around the world.
• "The real issue becomes, How does this affect American influence in the world?" said Carl Meacham, director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Is American influence knocked down a few notches as a result of this?" He called Rousseff's action "almost unheard of."
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AP sources: House GOP leaders may try to link 'Obamacare' attack to must-pass spending bill
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Moving on to Plan B, House GOP leaders appear likely to give tea party lawmakers a chance to use a routine temporary government funding bill to try to muscle the Democratic-controlled Senate into derailing President Barack Obama's health care law.
• It's a strategy fraught with political risk for Republicans, who could find themselves bearing the blame for any partial government shutdown that results from an impasse with the Senate.
• The Senate seems poised to reject the GOP move, strip the "defund Obamacare" idea from the legislation and send a straightforward stopgap spending bill right back into the laps of House conservatives frustrated by their inability to unravel the health care bill.
• GOP aides said the latest strategy was to be presented to rank-and-file Republicans at a closed-door meeting Wednesday. They required anonymity to discuss the strategy because it had not been announced.
• It's a reversal from an earlier strategy, rejected last week by angry conservatives, that would have sent the measure to the Senate as two bills to ensure that the Democratic-controlled chamber would be able to ship the spending measure straight to the White House and more easily avert a government shutdown after the Sept. 30 (Continued on page 34)
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