Violence spreads in Borneo as five Malaysian police killed - Reuters

1 of 2. Noraziah Noor (seated L) and Nurunisa Abu Bakar (2nd R), the wives of Inspector Zulkifli Mamat and Corporal Sabarudin Daud respectively, who are the members of the Malaysian Police 69th Commando Battalion killed on Friday in the standoff between Malaysian security forces and armed followers of the Sultanate of Sulu, recite a prayer as they wait for the arrival of their bodies at an airport in Subang, outside Kuala Lumpur March 2, 2013. A standoff between Malaysian security forces and armed Filipinos ended in violence on Friday, with at least two police officers killed amid conflicting reports of casualties as Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak declared his patience had run out. Malaysian state news agency Bernama said that two police commandos had been killed in a mortar attack and two wounded after security forces tried to force out the group of at least 100 Filipinos who have been holed up in eastern Sabah state for more than two weeks.

Credit: Reuters/Bazuki Muhammad

LAHAD DATU, Malaysia | Sun Mar 3, 2013 3:02am EST

LAHAD DATU, Malaysia (Reuters) - Gunmen have killed five policemen in Malaysia's Sabah state where members of an armed faction from the Philippines have been facing off with security forces as they stake an ancient claim to the remote corner of Borneo island.

Police on Friday tried to end the standoff with scores of followers of the sultan of Sulu, a south Philippine region, who occupied a Sabah village in February to press their claim. Two policemen and 12 followers of the sultan were killed.

The killing of the five policemen late on Saturday, in an ambush on police hunting followers of the sultan, will reinforce fears that insecurity is spreading in a region rich in resources that has been of increasing interest to investors.

Malaysia's inspector general of police, Ismail Omar, tried to ease any worries on Sunday, saying the situation was under control.

"I don't want speculation that Sabah is in crisis," Ismail told a news conference in the town of Lahad Datu. "We have our security forces at three places to respond."

The confrontation had threatened to reignite tension between the Philippines and Malaysia. Ties have been periodically frayed by security and migration problems along their sea border.

Economic interests are also at risk.

Oil majors like ConocoPhillips and Shell have poured in large sums to develop oil and gas fields in Sabah. Chinese companies have been investing in hydro-power and coal mining.

Much of Borneo's forest has been cleared, to the horror of indigenous people and environmentalists, and replanted with palm oil. Tens of thousands of migrants have come to Sabah from the Philippines to clear the timber and work the plantations.

For generations Borneo, one of the worlds' biggest islands, was a forbidding expanse of jungle, thinly populated by head-hunting tribesmen, and claimed by Muslim sultans and later European colonialists based in coastal trading towns.

"DRASTIC ACTION"

Colonial Britain and the Netherlands carved up the island in the nineteenth century and Malaysia and Indonesia took their shares upon independence. Britain agreed to independence for the tiny oil-rich sultanate of Brunei on Borneo's west coast.

But under a pre-colonial pact between sultans, Sulu, in what would later become the Philippines, was awarded control of the northern corner of Borneo, in what would later become Malaysia.

A British trading company agreed during colonial times to pay Sulu a nominal lease for Sabah - it now amounts to 5,300 ringgit ($1,700) a year - and the claim of the ancient Sulu sultanate on Sabah was all but forgotten, until February.

Then, about 150 followers of the Sulu sultanate, which has no power but commands respect in the southern Philippines, sailed in and occupied a Sabah village, staking their claim and demanding a renegotiation of Sabah's lease.

Malaysia has said the demands will not be met and has sent in the security forces. Both Malaysia and the Philippines have called on the gunmen to give up and go home.

An increasingly exasperated Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, who faces an election in weeks, has promised "drastic action" if the group does not leave.

The trouble looks to be at least partly the result of efforts to forge peace in the southern Philippines, in particular a peace deal signed between the Philippine government and Muslim rebels last October to end a 40 year conflict.

Jamalul Kiram, a former sultan of Sulu and brother of the man Philippine provincial authorities regard as sultan, said the peace deal had handed control of much of Sulu to Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels, ignoring the sultanate.

The sultan loyalists had gone to Malaysia to revive their claim to Sabah as a protest in response to what they saw as the unfair peace deal, he said.

A senior Malaysian defense official said the gunmen in Sabah had links with a Philippine rebel faction leader called Nor Misuari, who also saw no benefit from the pace deal.

"He will surely stir up more trouble," said the Malaysian official, who declined to be identified.

(Reporting by Niluksi Koswanage in KUALA LUMPUR; Additional reporting by Manuel Mogato in MANILA; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Budget cuts' impact may be hard to see right away - Barre Montpelier Times Argus

WASHINGTON — Seventeen months after President Barack Obama signed doomsday budget legislation that was never intended to become law, the sweeping spending reductions in the measure have been imposed.

Late Friday night, Obama formally triggered spending cuts that will reach across the breadth of the federal government after he failed to persuade congressional Republicans to replace them with a mix of cuts and tax increases.

In a 70-page report to Congress accompanying the order and detailing the reductions — agency by agency and program by program — Jeffrey D. Zients, Obama's budget director, called them "deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments and core government functions."

But even as the cuts become official, some of the immediate impact is difficult to see.

The process of trimming government budgets is slow and cumbersome, involving lengthy notifications to unions about temporary furloughs, reductions in overtime pay and cuts in grant financing to state and local programs. Less federal money will, over time, mean fewer government contracts with private companies. Reduced overtime for airport security checkpoint officers will make lines longer, eventually.

And so as the first weekend began for the new, slimmer government, little of that is evident yet.

Letters to governors, informing them of the smaller grants are beginning to go out, officials said. Shaun Donovan, the secretary of housing and urban development, wrote to Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio: "You can expect reductions totaling approximately $35 million," helpfully putting the amount in a bold type.

The Air Force Thunderbirds — the elite team of F-16 pilots who perform tricks at air shows — announced on its website that all of its shows have been canceled starting April 1. The last show will be in Titusville, Fla., on March 23.

Still, it will take some time, officials acknowledged, before the cuts begin to make life more difficult for teachers, defense contractors, Head Start students, border patrol agents or others who rely on the largess of the federal government.

On Friday, Obama used janitors and security guards as examples of federal employees whose pay will be cut because of the reductions. "They've got to figure out how to manage that," he said.

In fact, as pointed out by The Washington Post's Fact Checker, Capitol officials emailed the building's staff to say that the president's comment was not true. The Capitol's sergeant-at-arms, who is in charge of the building's officers, said that, "None of my employees will have their pay cut nor will they face furloughs."

In his weekly address on Saturday morning, the president acknowledged that the reductions would not affect everyone equally.

"While not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away, the pain will be real," Obama said. "Many middle-class families will have their lives disrupted in a significant way."

And heading into the weekend, some officials seemed eager to offer reassurance that government would continue to function despite the deep cuts.

While Leon E. Panetta, who just left the job of defense secretary, had thundered about the critical risk to national security — and lamented what he viewed as a shift of Washington's political class away from good governance — his successor, Chuck Hagel, spoke in more conciliatory terms.

To be sure, Hagel listed the specific risks to national security that could arrive with the cuts, also called the sequester. But even as he noted that the United States "has the best fighting force, the most capable fighting force, the most powerful fighting force in the world," he pledged that he and the Joint Chiefs of Staff "will manage these issues."

"These are adjustments," Hagel said of the cuts to be imposed by the cuts. "We anticipated these kinds of realities, and we will do what we need to do to assure the capabilities of our forces."

Obama has signaled that he remains eager to replace across-the-board cuts with deficit reduction that consists of more targeted reductions and increased revenue from closing tax loopholes. An email sent late Friday to supporters from his former campaign operation had the subject line "Devastating."

"Congress can stop all of this right away — and pursue a balanced approach to deficit reduction," wrote Jon Carson, the president of Organizing for Action, the political operation created to advance the president's agenda. "That's what the vast majority of Americans want."

But Obama, too, said in his address on Saturday that it was time to move on to other topics.

"I'm going to push through this paralysis and keep fighting for the real challenges facing middle-class families," he said, citing efforts to increase the minimum wage, provide money for more preschool for children and pass an immigration overhaul.

In the Republican radio response, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state, the chairwoman of the Republican conference, also called the cuts "devastating" to America, but said that Republicans in the House would not yield on the issue of taxes.

"Spending is the problem, which means cutting spending is the solution," she said. "It's that simple."

In fact, nothing about the sequestration law is simple. And the 70-page report on its implementation proves that point. The report calculates how much each program will lose, "as required by sections 251A(7)(A) and 253(f)(2) of BBEDCA." Those numbers are detailed in page after page of complex tables.

In his letter, Zients called the law establishing the cuts "a blunt and indiscriminate instrument. It was never intended to be implemented and does not represent a responsible way for our nation to achieve deficit reduction."

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Rescuers end effort to find body of man swallowed by Fla. sinkhole; home to be ... - Fox News

SEFFNER, Fla. –  Crews planned to begin demolishing a Florida home Sunday that is perched over a huge sinkhole, deeming it too dangerous to keep searching for the man swallowed into the earth from his bedroom.

The search for Jeff Bush, 37, was called off Saturday. The 20-foot-wide opening of the sinkhole is almost completely covered by the house and rescuers feared it would collapse on them. Two neighboring homes were evacuated as a precaution.

Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill said heavy equipment would be brought in to begin the demolition Sunday morning.

"At this point it's really not possible to recover the body," Merrill said, later adding "we're dealing with a very unusual sinkhole."

Jessica Damico, spokeswoman for Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, said the demolition equipment would be placed on what they believe is solid ground and reach onto the property to pull apart the house. The crew will try pulling part of the house away from the sinkhole intact so some of the residents' keepsakes can be retrieved.

Bush was in his bedroom Thursday night in Seffner — a suburb of 8,000 people 15 miles east of downtown Tampa — when the ground opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five others in the house escape unharmed as the earth crumbled.

On Saturday, the normally quiet neighborhood of concrete block homes painted in Florida pastels was jammed with cars. Engineers, reporters, and curious onlookers came to the scene.

At the home next door to the Bushes, a family cried and organized boxes. Testing determined that their house and another had been compromised by the sinkhole. The families were allowed to go inside for about a half-hour to gather belongings.

Sisters Soliris and Elbairis Gonzalez, who live on the same street as the Bushes, said neighbors were worried for their safety.

"I've had nightmares," Soliris Gonzalez, 31, said. "In my dreams, I keep checking for cracks in the house."

They said the family has discussed where to go if forced to evacuate, and they've taken their important documents to a storage unit.

"The rest of it, this is material stuff, as long as our family is fine," Soliris Gonzalez said.

"You never know underneath the ground what's happening," added Elbairis Gonzalez, 30.

Experts say thousands of sinkholes form yearly in Florida because of the state's unique geography, though most are small and deaths rarely occur.

"There's hardly a place in Florida that's immune to sinkholes," said Sandy Nettles, who owns a geology consulting company in the Tampa area. "There's no way of ever predicting where a sinkhole is going to occur."

Most sinkholes are small, like one found Saturday morning in Largo, 35 miles away from Seffner. The Largo sinkhole, about 10 feet long and several feet wide, is in a mall parking lot.

The state sits on limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water, with a layer of clay on top. The clay is thicker in some locations — including the area where Bush became a victim — making them even more prone to sinkholes.

Jonathan Arthur, the state geologist and director of the Florida Geological Survey, said other states sit atop limestone in a similar way, but Florida has added factors such as extreme weather, development, aquifer pumping and construction.

"The conditions under which a sinkhole will form can be very rapid, or they can form slowly over time," he said.

But it remained unclear Saturday what, if anything, had caused the Seffner sinkhole.

"The condition that caused that sinkhole could have started a million years ago," Nettles said.

Jeremy Bush, who tried to rescue his brother, lay flowers near the house Saturday morning and wept.

He said someone came to his home a couple of months ago to check for sinkholes and other issues, apparently for insurance purposes, but found nothing wrong. State law requires home insurers to provide coverage against sinkholes.

"And a couple of months later, my brother dies. In a sinkhole," Bush said Friday.

___

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Islamist militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar 'killed in Mali' - BBC News

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Kerry presses Egypt president, military on reform - Houston Chronicle

CAIRO (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was wrapping up a visit to deeply divided Egypt on Sunday with an appeal for unity and reform to the country's president and military chief.

A day after warning the country's bickering politicians that they must overcome differences to get Egypt's faltering economy back on track and maintain its leadership role in the volatile Middle East, Kerry was bringing a similar message to President Mohammed Morsi and his defense minister and intelligence chief. The U.S. is deeply concerned that continued instability in Egypt will have broader consequences in a region already rocked by unrest.

U.S. officials said Kerry will raise Egypt's key regional role with Morsi and his top security aides, stress the importance of upholding its peace agreement with Israel, cracking down on weapons smuggling to extremists in the Gaza Strip and policing the increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula while continuing to play a positive role in Syria's civil war. Yet, with parliamentary elections approaching, his call for harmonizing domestic Egyptian politics is just as important, they said.

Liberal and secular opponents of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood say they will boycott upcoming elections, and violent clashes between protesters and security forces have created an environment of insecurity, complicating Egyptian efforts to secure vital international aid.

In meetings with Egypt's foreign minister and opposition politicians on Saturday, Kerry said reaching agreement on economic reforms to seal $4.8 billion in International Monetary Fund loans was particularly critical. Closing the IMF deal also will unlock significant U.S. assistance promised by President Barack Obama last year.

But the impact of his message of unity to the opposition was likely blunted as only six of the 11 guests invited by the U.S. Embassy turned up and three of those six said they still intended to boycott the April parliamentary election, according to participants.

Kerry said that the U.S. would not pick sides in Egypt, and he appealed to all sides to come together around human rights, freedom and speech and religious tolerance. Equally essential, he said, is uniting to undertake the reforms necessary to qualify for the IMF package. Those include increasing tax collections and curbing energy subsidies.

However, while expressing sympathy with the passion he heard from the opposition, Kerry suggested U.S. frustration with their tactics even as he maintained that "we're not here to interfere, but to listen."

"The best way to ensure human rights and strong political checks and balances ... is through the broadest possible political and economic participation," Kerry said after meeting Egyptian Foreign Minister Kamel Amr. "We believe that being active, engaging in peaceful participation is essential to building strong communities and healthy democracies."

In an apparent nod to the current stalemate in Washington over the U.S. federal budget, Kerry acknowledged that compromise is difficult yet imperative.

"I say with both humility and with a great deal of respect that getting there requires a genuine give-and-take among Egypt's political leaders and civil society groups just as we are continuing to struggle with that in our own country," he said. 'There must be a willingness on all sides to make meaningful compromises on the issues that matter most to all of the Egyptian people."

The opposition accuses Morsi and the Brotherhood of following in the footsteps of toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, failing to carry out reforms and trying to install a more religiously conservative system.

Morsi's administration and the Brotherhood say their foes, who have trailed significantly behind Islamists in all elections since the uprising against Mubarak, are running away from the challenge of the ballot box and are trying to overturn democratic gains.

Egypt's polarization was underscored as Kerry arrived from Turkey on Saturday on the sixth of nine stops in his first official overseas visit as secretary of state. Activists in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura said a 35-year-old protester was killed when an armored police vehicle crushed him to death during anti-Morsi protests Saturday. And, in the restive Suez Canal city of Port Said, a police vehicle ran over five people after marching protesters refused to allow the car through.

Months of such turmoil have scared away tourists and foreign investors, eroding Egypt's foreign reserves by nearly two-thirds of what it was before the uprising. Those reserves, which stand at less than $14 billion, are needed to pay for subsidies that millions of poor Egyptians rely on for survival.

"It is paramount, essential, urgent that the Egyptian economy gets stronger, gets back on its feet and it's very clear that there is a circle of connections in how that can happen," Kerry told business leaders shortly after his arrival. "To attract capital, to bring money back here, to give business the confidence to move forward, there has to be sense of security, there has to be a sense of political and economic viability."

After concluding his meetings in Egypt on Sunday, Kerry will head to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, where his focus is expected to be the crisis in Syria that dominated his earlier stops in Britain, Germany, France and Turkey, along with concerns about Iran's nuclear program and growing Iranian assertiveness in the Persian Gulf. Kerry is set to return to Washington on Wednesday.

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Assad: Will Not Step Down - Voice of America

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says he is ready to negotiate with the opposition, but will absolutely not step down as the country's leader.

In a rare interview, Mr. Assad told Britain's Sunday Times that any notion his continued role as president is linked to the nearly two-year conflict that has torn the country apart is "absurd." He said "other recent precedents in Libya, Yemen and Egypt bear witness to this."

The president said in the Times videotaped interview conducted last week at his residence in Damascus that he is ready to negotiate with anyone who surrenders their weapons, making a distinction between "political entities" and "armed terrorists."

The Syrian leader accused Britain of wanting to escalate the violence in the country because it wants to supply military equipment to the rebels. He said, how can anyone "expect to ask Britain to play a role while it is determined to militarize the problem?"

Mr. Assad said of Britain, "we don't expect an arsonist to be a firefighter."

The president's offer of dialogue with the opposition follows a recent announcement by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi that the U.N. is willing to broker peace talks between Syria's government and the opposition.

In another development, Amnesty International said Saturday Syrian warplanes dropped cluster bombs in the northern town of Aleppo earlier in the week, killing 19 people and wounding more than 60 others.

An Amnesty official on the scene reported that nine Soviet-made cluster bombs, each carrying up to 150 cluster sub-munitions, were dropped on a heavily populated area.

Cluster bombs can potentially kill many civilians. Syria is among the countries that have not signed a 2010 U.N. treaty banning their use.

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Obama: I can't do 'Jedi mind meld' - Politico (blog)

President Barack Obama, seeking to illustrate Friday that he has done all he can to avert sequester cuts, invoked a few memorable analogies.

First there was one from the movie "Star Wars" -- although he mixed up his space dramas a bit.

"I know that this has been some of the conventional wisdom that's been floating around Washington: That somehow, even though most people agree that I'm being reasonable, that most people agree that I'm presenting a fair deal --  the fact that they don't take it, means that I should somehow do a Jedi mindmeld with these folks and convince them to do what's right," he said. "Well, they're elected. We have a constitutional system of government."

The "mind meld" actually comes from "Star Trek," while Jedis are from "Star Wars" and what they did was a "mind trick."

(PHOTOS: Sequestration: Final day)

Then there was the "secret sauce."

"Ultimately, it's a choice they make. And this idea that somehow there's a secret formula or secret sauce to get Speaker Boehner or Mitch McConnell to say, 'You know what, Mr. President, You're right. We should close tax loopholes for the well-off and well-connected in exchange for some serious entitlement reform and spending cuts to programs we don't need.'

"You know, I think if there was a secret way to do that, I would have tried it, I would have done it."

(PHOTOS: How sequestration could affect you)

Read more about: Sequestration

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Samsung's $1B Bill in Apple Case Reduced by $450M - ABC News

A federal judge on Friday slashed nearly half of the $1 billion damage award a jury ordered Samsung Electronics to pay Apple Inc. after a high-profile trial over the rights to the design and technology running some of the world's most popular smartphones and tablet computers.

U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh lowered the damages awarded to Apple Inc. by $450.5 million for 14 Samsung products including some products in its hot-selling Galaxy lineup, saying jurors had not properly followed her instruction in calculating some of the damages.

She also concluded that mistakes had been made in determining when Apple had first notified Samsung about the alleged violations of patents for its trend-setting iPhone and IPad.

Koh ordered a new trial to recalculate damages for those products.

"We are pleased that the court decided to strike $450,514,650 from the jury's award," Samsung spokeswoman Lauren Restuccia said. "Samsung intends to seek further review as to the remaining award."

Apple declined to comment on the Koh's ruling.

The ruling reduced Samsung Electronics' bill to just under $599 million. The judge said the tab will probably increase after the appeals of both companies are resolved.

Apple is seeking more damages and Samsung a complete dismissal of the case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the Washington, D.C.-based court that handles all patent appeals. The new trial to recalculate the damages could also increase the award.

AP

This undated image provided by Samsung on Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013 shows the Samsung GALAXY Note 8 with a stylus. Samsung Electronics is beefing up its tablet range with a competitor to Apple's iPad Mini that sports a pen for writing on the screen. The Korean company announced on Sunday, Feb. 24, 2013 in Barcelona, Spain that the Galaxy Note 8.0 will have an 8-inch screen, putting it very close in size to the Apple's tablet. (AP Photo/Samsung) Close

Still, the ruling was the second significant setback in Koh's courtroom since the headline grabbing verdict was announced.

In December, Koh refused to order a sales ban on the products the jury found infringed Apple's patents. She said Apple failed to prove the purloined technology is what drove consumers to buy a Samsung product instead of an Apple iPhone or iPad. Samsung says that it is continues to sell only three of the two dozen products found to have infringed Apple's patents.

After a three-week trial closely followed in Silicon Valley, the jury decided that Samsung ripped off the trailblazing technology and sleek designs used by Apple to create its revolutionary iPhone and iPad. Jurors ordered Samsung to pay Apple $1.05 billion.

Apple filed another lawsuit last year accusing Samsung's newer line of products of continuing to use technology controlled by Apple. Koh has scheduled trial in that case for early next year. She has implored both companies on several occasions to settle their difference with little success.

Apple filed its patent infringement lawsuit in April 2011 and engaged legions of the country's highest-paid patent lawyers to demand $2.5 billion from its top smartphone competitor. Samsung Electronics Co. fired back with its own lawsuit seeking $399 million.

The jury found that several Samsung products illegally used such Apple creations as the "bounce-back" feature when a user scrolls to an end image, and the ability to zoom text with a tap of a finger.

Samsung has mounted an aggressive post-trial attack on the verdict, raising a number of legal issues that allege the South Korean company was treated unfairly in a federal courtroom a dozen miles from Apple's Cupertino headquarters. Samsung alleges that some of Apple's patents shouldn't have been awarded in the first place and that the jury made mistakes in calculating the damage award.

Samsung has emerged as one of Apple's biggest rivals and has overtaken it as the leading smartphone maker. Samsung's Galaxy line of phones run on Android, a mobile operating system that Google Inc. has given out for free to Samsung and other phone makers.

Apple and Samsung have filed similar lawsuits in eight other countries, including South Korea, Germany, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain, France and Australia.

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Obama Administration Joins Legal Fight Against California Gay Marriage Ban - ABC News

The Department of Justice filed a brief today in the case of a controversial California ballot initiative that defines marriage as between one man and one woman, asking the Supreme Court to affirm a lower court decision that struck down the measure, known as Proposition 8.

The brief marked the first time that the Obama administration has come out in court against Prop 8 and the first time it has argued against state gay marriage ban before the Supreme Court.

The administration's argument also could reverberate beyond California. If the Supreme Court accepts the arguments in the brief, it could lay the groundwork toward undermining laws against gay marriage in several other states.

"The exclusion of gay and lesbian couples from marriage does not substantially further any important governmental interest. Proposition 8 thus violates equal protection," wrote Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. in a "friend of the court" brief filed in favor of gay and lesbian couples challenging Prop 8.

Now that it has filed a Supreme Court amicus brief, the Obama administration most likely will be granted time to actually argue its position in front of the justices. When the government files an amicus brief in an important case, it is normally granted time to argue.

A statement on behalf of ProtectMarriage.com, the proponent of Prop 8, described the Obama administration's decision to weigh in both "unprecedented" and "hardly surprising, but nevertheless disturbing."

"In his first term as president, Obama clearly stated that Americans can choose a special designation of marriage between man and woman, and that supporters of traditional marriage can hold that position without animus," said the statement by Andy Pugno, general counsel for ProtectMarriage.com. "He later remarked that it would be a 'mistake' to make the debate over redefining marriage into a federal issue.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

"Yet today," the statement added, "by stating that the traditional definition of marriage is rooted only in irrational prejudice, the president has impugned the motives and actions of millions of Californians and turned his back on society's long-standing interest in both mothers and fathers raising the next generation."

Thomas Peters, communications director for the National Organization for Marriage, another gay marriage opponent, invoked California's voters in saying the group expected the court to uphold the law.

"NOM expects the Supreme Court to exonerate the votes of over 7 million Californians to protect marriage," said Peters. "The president is clearly fulfilling a campaign promise to wealthy gay marriage donors. There is no right to redefine marriage in our Constitution."

However, referring to proponents of the voter-approved measure who are defending it in court, Verrilli wrote, "Petitioners contend that Proposition 8 serves an interest in returning the issue of marriage to the democratic process, but use of a voter initiative to promote democratic self-governance cannot save a law like Proposition 8 that would otherwise violate equal protection."

In Depth: Obama's Prop 8 Decision

The Obama administration brief noted that California extends all of the rights and responsibilities of marriage to gay and lesbians, but forbids them the designation of "marriage."

That circumstance "particularly undermines the justifications for Proposition 8," Verrilli wrote.

While the brief fell short of calling for a fundamental right to marriage under the Constitution, it suggested that if the court were to agree with the administration's position, gay marriage laws in seven other states could be in jeopardy. Those states are Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island.

"The brief pays closest attention to California and the other seven states that grant same-sex couples all the rights and responsibilities of marriage but insist on denying them the favored name," said Jane S. Schacter, a professor at Stanford Law School. "But it advocates that the court adopt a much tougher, more skeptical approach to any state law that denies same-sex couples the right to marry.

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Florida Man Swallowed by Sinkhole: Conditions Too Unstable to Approach - ABC News

A sinkhole that swallowed a Florida man when it collapsed the bedroom portion of his home overnight is "extremely unstable," expected to grow bigger and too dangerous for rescuers to approach, Hillsborough County officials said.

"Until we know where it's safe to bring the equipment, we really are just handicapped and paralyzed and can't really do a whole lot more than sit and wait," Hillsborough County Fire Chief Ron Rogers told reporters this evening. "It's a tough situation; it's even tougher for the family."

The hole that pulled in Jeff Bush, 36, opened up at around 11 p.m. Thursday night in Seffner, Fla., authorities said.

"[Family members] heard a sound that they described as a car crash emanating from the bedroom in the back of the house," Rogers said at an earlier news conference.

The family rushed into the room where Bush was sleeping, according to ABC News' Tampa affiliate WFTS-TV.

"All they could see was part of a mattress sticking out of the hole. Essentially, the floor of the room had opened up," Rogers said.

MORE: How Sinkholes Can Develop

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The hole remained 20 to 30 feet wide this evening, officials said, but it had progressively deepened beyond the 20 feet seen earlier today.

"The soil cannot hold the slope that it is right now," said Larry Madrid, president of Madrid Engineering Group, a sinkhole expert called in by the county.

Engineers feared a further sudden collapse because the house sat on fluid, sandy soil, and they remained uncertain about where the unstable area ended.

"[Another collapse] could happen now, it could happen days from now," Madrid said. "It could happen slowly, it could happen quickly."

The partially collapsed house and two neighboring houses have been evacuated.

"As items fall in from the house, [they] get pulled down in," said Bill Bracken, an engineer working with Hillsborough County Search and Rescue.

"Given the size of the hole, I cannot tell you why [the whole house] hasn't collapsed yet," he said.

The instability meant rescuers were unable to continue searching for Jeff Bush within the house.

"As I told the family earlier, the only thing that would be worse than what they're feeling now for their loss would be to experience additional human loss," Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill said this evening. "That's the dilemma and the dilemma is a very painful dilemma for everyone."

"This is not your typical sinkhole," he added. "This is a chasm that covers a great distance. They still have not been able to find the boundaries of the underground chasm."

After the initial collapse, Jeff Bush's brother Jeremy jumped into the sinkhole and tried to rescue him, only to need rescuing himself.

"I jumped in the hole and was trying to dig him out, but I couldn't find him," Jeremy Bush tearfully told WFTS. "I thought I could hear him hollering for me to help him.

"I didn't see any part of him when I went in there," he said. "All I seen was his bed and I told my father-in-law to grab a shovel so I could start digging, and I just started digging and started digging, and the cops showed up and pulled me out of the hole and said the floor was still falling in."

A first responder "heroically" jumped in and rescued Jeremy Bush, Rogers said.

"I went to the bedroom and saw the sinkhole taking the entire bedroom," Hillsborough County Deputy Douglas Duvall said in a video taken and posted by the sheriff's office online.

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