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“I’m not going to raise the debt limit without a serious conversation about dealing with problems that are driving the debt up.” Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio Article, 1ADalai Lama to talk on ‘secular ethics’

ATLANTA - The Dalai Lama is returning to Emory University as part of a continuing partnership between the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader and the school in Atlanta.

The Dalai Lama, who holds the title of presidential distinguished professor at the private university, will participate in a series of lectures and panel discussions this week.

The focus of his visit this year is promoting “secular ethics,” which is described as a system of shared principles that go beyond religious differences while still respecting and valuing the meaning of religion in people’s lives.

“This visit as a distinguished professor at Emory University is creating a platform for His Holiness to articulate his patient and rational thoughts about what secular ethics looks like, what are its basic foundational principles and how can we go about incorporating that into education,” said Geshe Lobsang Negi, a senior lecturer at Emory and director of the Emory Tibet-Partnership.

Slushy mess mires Black Hills travel

RAPID CITY, S.D. - Residents in the Black Hills were navigating through a sloppy mess Sunday after higher temperatures began melting record-setting snowfall, leaving water standing on plowed roads rather than making its way through drainage systems.

Law enforcement officials shifted their focus to recovery after having caught up with a backlog of emergency calls from a weekend storm that dumped 4 feet of snow near Deadwood and 3.5 feet near Lead. No fatalities were reported as a result of the bad weather.

“We’re even-steven. We don’t have 911 calls holding at this point,” Rapid City-Pennington County emergency manager Dustin Willett said Sunday. “Most of our life-safety missions have been completed and as we start out today, it’s going to move to snow removal, debris removal and power restoration.”

An estimated 5,000 people in the county were still without power, Willett said, down from more than 25,000 in the area on Saturday.

Temperatures rose several degrees Sunday, which led some people to venture out even though many roads had not been plowed.

Storm dissipates, spares coastal town

LAFITTE, La. - After days of lumbering toward the Gulf Coast, the storm system Karen dissipated Sunday as storm preparations in the region were called off or scaled back.

As tides began to recede along coastal Louisiana, crews worked to pick up sandbags and some fishermen took to the water. In Lafitte, the tide had water levels along Bayou Barataria lapping at the edges of piers and sections of the main roadway into the small fishing village prone to flooding.

The community has been swamped with flooding by several storms since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Many are still recovering from Hurricane Isaac last summer. Some are in the process of having their homes razed.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the remnants of Karen were moving eastward off the coast.

Front Section, Pages 3 on 10/07/2013

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