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Obama: Change healthcare now

WASHINGTON, July 20 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama Monday repeated his call on Congress to enact U.S. healthcare reform, saying if nothing happens now, nothing will change.

"Now, we've talked this problem to death year after year, but unless we act and act now, none of this will change," Obama said after a healthcare roundtable with health industry practitioners and administrators at Children's National Medical Center in Washington.

Changing the U.S. healthcare system will be hard "but we're a country that chooses the harder right over the easier wrong," Obama said. "That's what we have to do this time. ... Let's pass reform by the end of this year."

The president said roundtable participants "spoke about some of the strains on our healthcare system and some of the strains our healthcare system places on parents with sick children."

Yet, even as families are "battered by spiraling healthcare costs, health insurance companies and their executives have reaped windfall profits from a broken system," Obama said.

The reforms his administration seeks would enhance competition, choice and savings, Obama said, as well as provide stability and security to U.S. families and businesses.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Obama's plan "prescribes short-term pain relief" instead addressing long-term reform.

"The Democrat plan does not contain costs," Steele said during a news conference Monday at the National Press Club in Washington. "It shifts them to the taxpayer, to our children and to future generations that will have to cope with this crushing debt by implementing huge premium subsidies and establishing a government-controlled healthcare plan."

U.S., EU apply pressure on Honduras

WASHINGTON, July 20 (UPI) -- The United States and the European Union said Monday they are applying diplomatic and economic pressure on Honduras to resolve its leadership crisis.

The Daily Telegraph reported the European Union told the military-backed de facto Honduran government it was suspending about $90 million in aid to the Central American nation because it has not worked out a solution with ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

"This is a crisis which Honduras can ill afford," EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said after negotiations to resolve the leadership crisis stalled Sunday, with the interim government, led by Roberto Micheletti, rejecting a compromise proposed by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias that would allow Zelaya to serve out his term.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Philip J. Crowley told reporters in Washington that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the first time had called Micheletti directly from India Sunday. Clinton, he said, encouraged Micheletti to focus on the negotiations being facilitated by Arias and reminded him of the potential economic and other consequences for Honduras if they should fail.

"I think it was a very tough phone call. However ... she made clear if the de facto regime needed to be reminded that we seek a restoration of democratic and constitutional order, a peaceful resolution," Crowley said. "We do not think that anybody should take any kind of steps that would add to the risk of violence in Honduras, and that we completely support the ongoing Arias mediation."

The United States, Crowley said, also has told Zelaya to stick with the mediation efforts and that he should not try to return to Honduras because it would escalate the tension and potential for violence.

Crowley said despite the apparent setback in talks, there may have been "greater progress than as at first evident," saying "a foundation was laid" for a possible resolution if talks resume this week, as expected.

Report: Missing GI may be in Pakistan

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 20 (UPI) -- Taliban forces may have spirited a missing U.S. soldier from Afghanistan to neighboring Pakistan, ABC News reported Monday.

The U.S. broadcast network said two people involved in U.S. and Afghan military efforts to locate Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl say moving the GI across the border would complicate efforts to obtain his release.

The 23-year-old soldier from Ketchum, Idaho, is the first U.S. serviceman captured since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan eight years ago. He was taken along with three Afghan soldiers June 30 in Paktika province in southeastern Afghanistan.

ABC reported a person actively involved in the search says a high-level Afghan insurgent commander has claimed responsibility for capturing Bergdahl and has moved him to South Waziristan, Pakistan. U.S. forces are not allowed to operate inside Pakistan except in limited instances.

The insurgent leader, Mullah Sangeen, reportedly wants the United States to stop its aerial attacks on the region in return for Bergdahl's release.

Alaska wildfires burn 1 million acres

FAIRBANKS, Alaska, July 20 (UPI) -- Wildfires have burned more than 1 million acres in Alaska so far this year, making it one of the worst wildfire seasons in 50 years, officials say.

Data from state and national fire agencies indicate this year's wildfire toll puts 2009 among the 15 worst years for fires since the 1950s, the Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner reported Monday.

The latest battle lines were drawn over the weekend near the popular Chitina River recreation area in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, where the Chakina Fire was creating a smoke plume that could be seen for many miles, the newspaper said.

"We're estimating (the plume) is maybe 7,000-plus feet in elevation," said Kathleen Kavalok, a fire information officer with the National Park Service.

She said helicopters were being used to drop water onto the western part of the Chakina Fire while officials were mulling whether to use water-scooping air tankers as well.

The biggest blaze in Interior Alaska, the Daily News-Miner said, was the Minto Flats South Fire near Nenana, Alaska, about 60 miles west of Fairbanks. Other major wildfires were reported near McGrath, Fort Yukon and Circle.