Government

TOKYO - Amid growing dissatisfaction with the slow pace of recovery, Japan marked the second anniversary Monday of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that left nearly 19,000 people dead or missing and displaced more than 300,000. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that the government intends to make "visible" reconstruction progress and accelerate resettlement of those left homeless by streamlining legal and administrative procedures that many blame for the delays. "I pray that the peaceful lives of those affected can resume as soon as possible," Emperor Akihito said at a somber memorial service at Tokyo's National Theater.

Universal Health Services Inc., a King of Prussia operator of hospitals and behavioral health facilities, said 10 of its locations in Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and Virginia had received subpoenas last month from the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The subpoenas requested documents from January 2008 to the present, UHS said in its annual report filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission last week. The company, which did not respond to a request for comment, said in the filing that it did not know what the government was examining.

IF MOST OF US shrugged when sequestration kicked in on Friday morning, chalk it up to the cry-wolf Congress that already took us to the so-called fiscal cliff before retreating. But this time, it's real, and the random hacking cuts that the government is now forcing on itself - $1.2 trillion over 10 years - is the equivalent of using a chain saw to cure a hangnail rather than a more-thoughtful surgery. The cuts won't be fairly distributed - the chain saw will be lopping limbs from defense, immigration, education, housing, and disaster and emergency relief.

FORT HOOD, Texas - Public schools everywhere will be affected by the government's automatic budget cuts, but few may feel the funding pinch faster than those on and around military bases. School districts with military ties from coast to coast are bracing for increased class sizes and delayed building repairs. Others already have axed sports teams and even eliminated teaching positions, but still may have to tap savings just to make it through year's end. But there's little hope for softening any future financial blows.

MENZNAU, Switzerland - A longtime employee opened fire at a wood-processing company in central Switzerland on Wednesday, leaving three dead, including the assailant, in the country's second multiple-fatality shooting in two months, police said. Seven people were wounded, six seriously, in the shooting at the company Kronospan, in the town of Menznau, Lucerne criminal police chief Daniel Bussmann told reporters. The incident occurred as the parliament prepares to consider tightening some aspects of the country's famously lax gun legislation.

BEIRUT - Rebels backed by captured tanks launched a fresh offensive on a government complex housing a police academy near the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, while the government hit back with air strikes to try to protect the strategic installation, activists said. If rebels capture the complex on the outskirts of Aleppo, it would mark another setback for President Bashar al-Assad. In recent weeks, his regime has lost control of key infrastructure in the northeast including a hydroelectric dam, a major oil field and two army bases along the road linking Aleppo with the airport to its east.

BARBARA TAYLOR woke at 3 a.m. with chest pain and thought it might be indigestion. Then her jaw began to hurt, so she woke her husband, who took her to Doylestown Hospital. Taylor, 61, was having a heart attack, and she went to the hospital that is second-best in the country at keeping such patients alive, according to Medicare data from the federal government. The sooner a doctor performs angioplasty - using a tube called a catheter and a small balloon to open a blocked artery - the better.

WASHINGTON - When Kevin Mandia, a retired military cybercrime investigator, decided to expose China as a primary threat to U.S. computer networks, he did not have to consult with American diplomats in Beijing or declassify tactics to safely disclose government secrets. He pulled together a 76-page report based on seven years of his company's work and produced the most detailed public account yet of how, he says, the Chinese government has been rummaging through the networks of major U.S. companies.

Syrian strike kills dozens BEIRUT, Lebanon - A Syrian missile strike leveled a block of buildings in an impoverished district of Aleppo on Tuesday, killing at least 33 people, almost half of them children, anti-regime activists said. Many were trapped under the rubble of destroyed houses and piles of concrete, and the death toll could rise. The apparent ground-to-ground missile attack struck a quiet area that has been held by anti-regime fighters for many months. In Damascus, the state-run news agency SANA said two mortars exploded near one of President Bashar al-Assad's palaces.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made a surprise return to his homeland on Monday after a 10-week convalescence in Cuba following cancer surgery, a long absence that had raised doubts among his opponents and even some supporters about who was running the oil-rich nation. "We have arrived back in the Venezuelan fatherland," Chavez announced via Twitter after arriving in Caracas. "Thank you, my God! Thank you, my beloved people!" His arrival in Caracas in the predawn hours appeared designed to stanch rising indignation by opposition leaders critical of the secrecy surrounding Chavez's health and suspicious about claims made by high government officials that he has been involved in the day-to-day decisions of state.