White House Mulls End to Spying on Foreign Leaders, Obamacare Loses Cover Girl, Business Lobby Groups Lining Up Against Tea Party: P.M. Links

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  healthcare.gov

  The White House is considering whether to end the practice of spying on friendly foreign leaders, while Spain's public prosecutor has begun a preliminary inquiry into reports of US spying on Spanish citizens.

• The anonymous face of the Obamacare website is no more. The head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, meanwhile, apologized for the botch roll out of the website, promising it was "fixable." The White House admitted some people may not be able to keep their insurance plans; about 2 million people have been affected so far.
• Upset over the partial government shutdown, business lobby groups are apparently lining up to challenge Tea Party candidates in upcoming Republican primaries.
• Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests government employees are 38 percent more likely to be absent from work than their private-sector counterparts.
• The Texas Attorney General is asking a federal appeals court to overrule a judge who deemed Texas' new abortion restrictions, which were supposed to go into effect today, unconstitutional.
• The CEO of Barney's denies any employees were involved in alleged racial profiling incidents at the Manhattan store that also included plainclothes officers of the NYPD. The New York Attorney General is reportedly demanding information from the company, and Macy's, about their policies for stopping, detaining, and questioning customers based on race.
• San Francisco is considering a soda tax.
• The owner of the Washington Redskins will meet with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell about the controversy over the team's name. Daniel Snyder insists he won't change it.
• Two Kenyan soldiers were jailed for looting the Westgate mall in Nairobi during a terrorist attack. A third soldier is under investigation, but authorities deny the looting was "widespread."

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