First Lady Praises 'Powerful' Jackie Robinson Movie

First lady Michelle Obama paid tribute to baseball legend Jackie Robinson today as she hailed the new movie "42," which chronicles his career and the racial discrimination he endured.

Obama said she and the president were "visibly, physically moved" by the "wonderful" movie and the Robinsons' story. It was a "truly powerful" experience, she said.

"You're left just asking yourselves, how on earth did they live through that? How did they do it? How did they endure the taunts and the bigotry for all of that time?" she said.

The first lady's comments came at a White House workshop for high school and college students. After screening the movie, the students were able to question Robinson's widow, Rachel, and members of the cast, including Chadwick Boseman, who plays Robinson in the film, and Harrison Ford, who plays Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey.

"Jackie and Rachel Robinson's story reminds us how much hard work it takes to move a country forward. It reminds us how much struggle is required to make real progress and change," the first lady said. "But it also reminds us how far we have to go, how much more work we have to do."

The president will host a private screening this evening for cast and crew members at the White House. The movie opens in theaters nationwide April 12.

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A powerful voice pays off for Maryland during federal budget cuts

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Many members of Congress looked pretty helpless this week as they fought to save cherished programs in their states from across-the-board budget cuts.

But after Congress wrapped up work on a bill to fund the government through September, some members looked less helpless than others. Among them was Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat from Maryland.

Neither Mikulski nor Congress as a whole saved any agency from the $85 billion in cuts known as the "sequestration." But thanks to the committee she leads, some programs based in Maryland emerged better off this week than they were the week before:

* The government's Agricultural Research Service, based in Beltsville, Maryland, got a billion dollars for agricultural research.

* The Coast Guard yard where ships are maintained in Curtis Bay, Maryland, just outside Baltimore; 600 military and civilian workers will be funded for the rest of this fiscal year thanks to $18.5 million allocated to it in the funding bill.

* The National Institutes of Health, the famed medical research facility based in Bethesda, Maryland, which got about $71 million more this year than the previous year.

* The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which got an increase of $43 million for labs and technical research, among other things. NIST is headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

* The Food and Drug Administration, in Rockville, Maryland, which got a total of $2.5 billion, about the same as last year.

* NASA, the space program, funded at $17.5 billion, with a big slice of it going to the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Beltsville, Maryland.

While they got funding from the committee, the agencies were still trying to figure out the precise gains in their budgets.

Asked about her results by Reuters, she said through a spokeswoman: "The good news is that Congress came together...preventing a (government) shutdown," Mikulski said. "In Maryland, that means NIH, NSA, FDA, NIST, Social Security and the other critical agencies are open and continuing their missions protecting national and community security and meeting compelling human needs."

While not a "redo" of the across-the-board sequestration - the total spending for the government is largely unchanged - the bill to fund the government (and prevent a shutdown) was a chance to do some rearranging, and the Appropriations Committee did.

These are not "earmarks" - the special gifts from members to specific projects often shrouded in secrecy. The programs Mikulski's committee aided benefit Americans well beyond the borders of Maryland and the extra money they got was appropriated in full public view.

Other members had success too. Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri and Democratic Senators Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Christopher Coons of Delaware introduced the amendment that gave some relief to meat inspectors, who were going to be furloughed en masse due to the sequestration. All represent states with beef or poultry industries.

Many more failed, like Senator Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, who delayed Senate action on the continuing budget resolution in an unsuccessful effort to preserve air control towers operated by contract at small airports.

And Mikulski is not running away from her success. On the contrary, she issued press releases and statements.

"Mikulski Fights to Protect Jobs at U.S. Coast Guard Yard at Curtis Bay," said one.

"The Coast Guard Yard at Curtis Bay employs more than 600 military and civilian personnel," it said. "These federal funds will ensure that the Coast Guard can continue to do the work that is so crucial to America's homeland security and the economic security of Maryland."

Mikulski's state stands to lose a lot more than many others so she had more to protect. Maryland is where the federal money is.

Federal funds flow heavily to states like Maryland and Virginia because that is where many of the federal agencies are located, just outside of the nation's capital.

These have been tough times for federal workers in states like Maryland, where they have endured back-to-back years of pay freezes and the threat of temporary layoffs as they get caught in the crossfire of Washington's budget wars.

"It's a case of where it's maybe not as bad as under earmarks," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. Nonetheless, powerful members of Congress still have an outsized say over spending, Ellis said.

(Editing by Fred Barbash, Mary Milliken and Lisa Shumaker)

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Head of Mexico's powerful teachers' union arrested

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The head of Mexico's powerful teachers' union was arrested at an airport outside Mexico City Tuesday for alleged embezzlement, with federal officials accusing her using union funds to pay for plastic surgery, rent a private plane and even pay her bill at Neiman Marcus.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said that Elba Esther Gordillo, who has led the 1.5 million-member National Union of Education Workers for 23 years, was detained in Toluca on charges that she embezzled about 2 billion pesos (about $160 million) from union funds.

Gordillo's arrest marks the downfall of a colorful woman long seen as a kingmaker and power-behind-the-scenes in Mexican politics. It comes a day after President Enrique Pena Nieto signed Mexico's most sweeping education reform in seven decades into law, seeking to change a system dominated by Gordillo in which teaching positions could be sold or inherited.

"We are looking at a case in which the funds of education workers have been illegally misused, for the benefit of several people, among them Elba Esther Gordillo," Murillo Karam said.

Prosecutors say the funds were drained from union accounts and later channeled through accounts in Switzerland and Lichtenstein. They said they had detected a whopping $2.7 million in purchases at Neiman Marcus using those funds, as well as $17,000 in U.S. plastic surgery bills and the purchase of a million-dollar home in San Diego.

"Between 2008 and 2012, there was systematic embezzlement of union accounts," Murillo Karam said.

Gordillo made little attempt to hide her extravagant, opulent lifestyle with designer clothing and accessories, a habit that drew heated criticism in a country where public

The overhaul of Mexico's education system was Pena Nieto's first major proposal since taking office Dec. 1 and was considered a political blow to Gordillo.

The plan moves much of the control of the education system to the federal government from the teachers' union. Gordillo was elected to another six-year term as union leader in October. She was the only candidate and there was not a single dissenting vote.

For years, she has beaten back attacks from union dissidents, political foes and journalists who have seen her as a symbol of Mexico's corrupt, old-style politics. Rivals have accused her of corruption, misuse of union funds and even a murder, but prosecutors who investigated never brought a charge against her.

She was expelled from Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party in 2006 for supporting other parties' candidates and the formation of her own New Alliance party.

Gordillo's arrest recalled the 1989 arrest of another once-feared union boss, Joaquin Hernandez Galicia, known as "La Quina." The longtime head of Mexico's powerful oil workers union, Hernandez Galicia was arrested during the first months of the new administration of then-President Carlos Salinas.

Like Gordillo, Hernandez Galicia's power was believed to represent a challenge to the president, and his arrest was interpreted as an assertion of the president's authority. He was freed from prison after Salinas de Gortari left office.

In 1988, he criticized Salinas' presidential candidacy and threatened an oil workers' strike if Salinas privatized any part of the government oil monopoly, Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. On Jan. 10, 1989, — about a month after Salinas took office — soldiers used a bazooka to blow down the door of Hernandez' home in the Gulf Coast city of Ciudad Madero.

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