U.S. debt panel meets for first time, vow compromise (Reuters)

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Current, former first ladies due at Ford funeral (AP)

By LINDA DEUTSCH AND JEFF WILSON, Associated Press Linda Deutsch And Jeff Wilson, Associated Press – 34?mins?ago

PALM DESERT, Calif. – Michelle Obama and three former first ladies were among dignitaries heading to California to pay tribute to Betty Ford at a funeral focusing on her twin passions: politics and her world famous Betty Ford Center for substance abuse and alcohol treatment.

Ford, who died at the age of 93 on Friday, had mapped out plans for Tuesday's ceremony at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, including who would deliver her eulogies.

She chose former first lady Rosalynn Carter and journalist Cokie Roberts as speakers along with a former director of the Betty Ford Center.

Mrs. Obama, Nancy Reagan and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also planned to be there. And the former first lady of California, Maria Shriver, also planned to attend.

A spokesman for former President George W. Bush said he will be attending the California service and will convey condolences on behalf of his wife, Laura, who can't attend. Former President Bill Clinton canceled plans to attend to mechanical problems with a plane he was to fly on.

A second funeral will be held Thursday in Grand Rapids, Mich., where Gerald Ford is buried at his presidential museum. Former first lady Barbara Bush is expected to attend that event.

Before the scheduled late-morning arrival of the casket at St. Margaret's, Palm Desert residents took advantage of the pre-dawn cool to walk dogs, jog and reflect on Betty Ford's life.

"I don't know where a lot of people would be if it weren't for her," said Randy Gaynor, 47, a recovering alcoholic. "There's been a lot of first ladies and they did a lot of things, but this will be long remembered after she's gone."

Media satellite trucks lined a street near the church and TV cameras crowded big-rig flatbed trucks across the street.

A program prepared for the service featured a picture of Ford, the Emily Dickinson poem "If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking," and the words, "The family thanks you for your support," followed by the signatures Mike, Jack, Steve and Susan, Ford's four children.

Jack and Michael Ford were to read passages from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

Speakers were expected to discuss politics, the White House and Ford's impact on substance and alcohol abuse treatment.

Roberts said Ford asked her to give a eulogy five years ago and specified it should be about the power of friendship to mend political differences even in these hyper-partisan times.

Roberts, a commentator on National Public Radio and member of a noted political family, said Ford asked her to talk about a time in Washington when Democrats and Republicans could be friends and partisan politics did not paralyze government.

It was that way, Roberts said, when her father, Democratic Congressman Hale Boggs, was House majority leader and Republican Gerald R. Ford was House minority leader. She said they could argue about issues but get together as friends afterward. The two families became close as did the Ford and Carter families, despite Jimmy Carter defeating Ford in the 1976 presidential election.

Carter spoke at Gerald Ford's funeral in 2007. The two families were so close that before his death, Ford asked the Carters to join his wife aboard Air Force One, which flew his body to its final resting place in Grand Rapids.

"Mrs. Ford was very clear about what she wanted me to say," Roberts said. "She wanted me to talk about Washington the way it used to be. She knew there were people back then who were wildly partisan, but not as many as today.

"They were friends and that was what made government possible," said Roberts, adding that the topic seems particularly appropriate this week when the two parties are divided over dealing with the national debt ceiling.

Roberts said she expects Rosalynn Carter to talk about life in the White House and the important role of first ladies in "greasing the wheels" for their husbands' accomplishments by forging bipartisan friendships.

Former Betty Ford Center official Geoffrey Mason will also speak. Mason, a former member of the center's board of directors, is expected to extoll Ford's vision and determination in building a substance abuse and alcohol treatment center after her own recovery.

Following the funeral, members of the public were to be invited to file past her casket and sign a guest book until midnight.

On Wednesday, her body will be flown to Grand Rapids where another church service Thursday will feature remarks by Lynne Cheney, wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and historian Richard Norton Smith.

Later Thursday, her body will be interred at the presidential museum along with her husband on the day that would have been Gerald Ford's 98th birthday.

___

Associated Press writer Beth Fouhy contributed to this report.

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Afghan insurgent attacks dip for first time: Petraeus (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) – Insurgent attacks against Afghan and NATO forces in Afghanistan have started to decline on an annual basis for the first time in up to five years, defying predictions by intelligence analysts, General David Petraeus said on Saturday.

The number of insurgent attacks is one of the key measures used by the military to assess the success or failure of the nearly decade-old war in Afghanistan, the focus of a massive U.S. troop buildup which will start to come home this month.

Petraeus, who is due to step down as the top commander in Afghanistan in mid-July, said the number of attacks declined in May and June by "a few percent," compared to the same months in 2010. July is trending in the same direction, he said.

That compares to intelligence estimates that had predicted insurgent attacks to spike up by 18 to 30 percent this year over last Year.

"Obviously it is what we have wanted to see -- rather than the year-on-year-on-year increase that has taken place for some four or five years," Petraeus told reporters, in what was expected to be his last media briefing before he steps down.

Petraeus is due to take over as CIA director in September.

Asked whether he believed that the declining violence was a sign of the success of the "surge" of more than 30,000 forces that President Barack Obama ordered into Afghanistan in 2009, Petraeus was hesitant.

"I'm not making that pronouncement," Petraeus said. "Again, it is an important development but we need to see if it is sustained our not."

Obama is withdrawing the first 10,000 of the nearly 100,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan this year, followed by another 23,000 by the end of next summer.

The drawdown is faster than the one that Petraeus had originally recommended but he has since voiced his support for the strategy and said he intends to carry it out.

Still, Petraeus suggested that the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan would be able to keep up the pressure on militants, taking away their strongholds.

Usually, that process causes a spike in violence, he said, adding that although there had been no rise in overall incidents this year, the insurgents were still a dangerous enemy.

"Typically when you have a lot more friendly forces, and when you go on the offensive, violence goes up because you have to fight back," Petraeus said.

"And they're fighting back, don't get me wrong," Petraeus said, acknowledging, for example, heavy use of homemade bombs -- the number one killer of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

(Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison)

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Former first lady Betty Ford dies, age 93 (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Betty Ford, the wife of the late President Gerald Ford, who overcame alcohol and prescription drug addictions and helped found a rehabilitation clinic that bears her name, died on Friday at the age of 93.

"I was deeply saddened this afternoon when I heard of Betty Ford's death," another former first lady, Nancy Reagan, said in a statement confirming Ford's death.

Ford once was dubbed the "fighting first lady" by Time magazine because of her outspoken political views, which often differed from those of her husband's Republican Party.

She strongly supported women's rights while her husband was president from 1974 to 1977, working the phones in a vain attempt to get states to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, which sought to give women and men equality under law.

Ford's candor was surprising for the time. She took a tolerant stance on abortion and admitted without shame that some of her children had tried marijuana. Nor was she alarmed by the prospect of her daughter having premarital sex.

Ford also was an early campaigner against breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy in 1974, less than two months after her husband succeeded the disgraced Richard Nixon as president.

Her frank discussions about her disease helped raise awareness about breast cancer and she eventually took the same approach toward her alcoholism, which she battled even as first lady.

Ford's problems with chemical dependency may have begun in 1964, when doctors prescribed her painkillers for a pinched nerve. She developed an addiction to prescription drugs and also became dependent on alcohol during the 1960s.

The Betty Ford Center in California came into being in 1982 after Ford was treated for her addictions at the U.S. Naval Hospital at Long Beach, and saw the need for treatment that emphasized the special needs of women.

"She has been an inspiration to so many through her efforts to educate women about breast cancer and her wonderful work at the Betty Ford Center," Nancy Reagan, the wife of the late President Ronald Reagan, said in the statement.

"She was Jerry Ford's strength through some very difficult days in our country's history and I admired her courage in facing and sharing her personal struggles with all of us."

PRAISE FROM OBAMA, GEORGE W. BUSH

President Barack Obama praised Ford's courage and compassion.

"As our nation's first lady, she was a powerful advocate for women's health and women's rights," he said in a statement. "After leaving the White House, Mrs. Ford helped reduce the social stigma surrounding addiction and inspired thousands to seek much-needed treatment."

Former President George W. Bush described her as a valued friend who "made countless contributions to our country."

Ford remained an active chairman of the center's board of directors for decades and also worked to help handicapped children, the arts and the fights against AIDS and arthritis.

For most of her adult life, Ford was best known as the wife of Rep. Gerald Ford, a Michigan Republican, and the mother of four children. The couple had planned to retire from Congress in 1973 when Nixon, already under fire in the Watergate scandal, chose Ford to serve as vice president after the resignation of Spiro Agnew.

Ford became president after Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, but he was defeated when he ran for the presidency in 1976 by Democrat Jimmy Carter. Betty delivered her husband's concession speech because he had lost his voice on the campaign trail.

Born April 8, 1918, in Chicago, Elizabeth Bloomer was raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She wanted to be a dancer and studied under Martha Graham and modeled in New York before returning to Grand Rapids and marrying a furniture salesman. They divorced after five years and she married Ford in 1948.

In her later years, Betty Ford slipped from the public eye but returned when her husband of 58 years died in 2006. Her stately demeanor in time of grief brought her to the attention of a whole new generation that possibly knew her name only from the famous clinic.

(Reporting by Bob Tourtellotte and Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Christopher Wilson and Bill Trott)

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Obama tweets for the first time, tweaks Republicans (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama took to Twitter on Wednesday to press his economic agenda, using the popular social media site to tweak Republicans and advocate for a deal to reduce the deficit.

In a "town hall" style meeting that lasted about an hour, the president fielded questions posted by users of the Twitter site and sent his first live tweet from a laptop in the White House East Room -- making what he called presidential history.

Sitting on a tall stool with a screen that showed tweeted questions nearby, Obama responded aloud before an audience of 140 invited guests who came to the White House for the event.

That number was a nod to a key part of "tweeting."

Twitter users send short, 140-character messages through the Internet about issues large and small.

The White House has tried using Twitter and other new media outlets to reach American voters, sometimes making announcements that way instead of through more traditional journalistic venues. The White House's @whitehouse account has some 2.25 million followers.

Obama, who is not known for brevity, touched on topics ranging from the weak housing market to NASA to the debate about the U.S. debt ceiling.

He did not stick to concise answers and did not send further tweets himself.

"One last point -- I know Twitter, I'm supposed to be short," he said while answering a question about education, drawing some laughter.

Another funny moment came when Republican John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives, managed to get in a question through a Twitter message of his own.

"After embarking on a record ... spending binge that left us deeper in debt, where are the jobs?" read the moderator, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, from Boehner's tweet.

The tweet had some typos, however.

"First of all, John obviously needs to work on his typing skills," Obama joked.

"Obviously John's the speaker of the House. He's a Republican. And so, this is a slightly skewed question."

Obama went on to say that the United States had not seen fast enough job growth relative to U.S. needs.

HOUSING WOES

Asked by one Twitter user what mistakes he had made in office, Obama singled out the moribund housing market.

"The continuing decline in the housing market is something that hasn't bottomed out as quickly as we expected," he said.

"We've had to revamp our housing program several times to try to help people stay in their homes and try to start lifting home values up."

Obama is locked in a dispute with congressional Republicans about how to reduce the U.S. deficit and raise the debt ceiling, and he used many of his answers during the town hall to press his case for ending tax loopholes while reducing spending.

He said the country could face a second recession or worse if Congress did not raise the borrowing limit and suggested Republicans were using the debate like a gun to the head of the American people to support tax breaks corporate jet owners and the wealthiest Americans.

The Twitter town hall came after hackers took control of a FoxNews.com Twitter account on Monday, sending six false tweets saying Obama had been shot dead and prompting an investigation by the Secret Service.

Obama was at home at the White House on Monday, celebrating the July 4 holiday with his family.

The White House has declined comment on the hacking event.

(additional reporting by Laura MacInnis and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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How first 24 hours shaped Japan's nuclear crisis (AP)

By ERIC TALMADGE and MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Eric Talmadge And Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press – 1?hr?47?mins?ago

FUKUSHIMA, Japan – When Unit 2 began to shake, Hiroyuki Kohno's first hunch was that something was wrong with the turbines. He paused for a moment, then went back to logging the day's radioactivity readings.

He expected it to pass. Until the shakes became jolts.

As sirens wailed, he ran to an open space, away from the walls, and raced down a long corridor with two colleagues. Parts of the ceiling fell around them. Outside, he found more pandemonium.

"People were shouting about a tsunami," he said. "At that point, I really thought I might die."

___

EDITOR'S NOTE: It was an ordinary Friday afternoon, and then the shaking began — harbinger of a nuclear nightmare that rages on, three months later. A moment-by-moment account of the crucial first 24 hours after an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.

___

Breathless, Kohno climbed a small hill and turned to look back. Black plumes rose from the reactor units. The emergency generators, burning diesel, had kicked in.

He saw the wave. It crashed over the plant's seawall, stopping only when it reached the foot of the slope about 500 yards (460 meters) from where he stood.

Kohno watched, stunned.

Unit 2, one of six reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power station, is ordinary by nuclear standards: a drab labyrinth of switches and valves, ladders and bulkheads, meters and gauges. That's how Kohno, a veteran radioactivity specialist, knew it.

Now, nothing about what he saw was normal.

Kohno kept moving.

The events of the next 24 hours brought the promise of nuclear power into question, both in Japan and around the world.

Through interviews with dozens of officials, workers and experts, and hundreds of pages of newly released documents, The Associated Press found the early response to the crisis was marked by confusion, inadequate preparation, a lack of forthrightness with the public and a reluctance to make quick decisions. These problems set the tone for the troubled recovery effort since.

___

On March 11, Prime Minister Naoto Kan was taking a beating in an Upper House committee meeting over whether he had taken campaign money from a foreign national, which is illegal in Japan.

The questioning stopped suddenly when the entire parliament building, a sprawling structure in the center of Tokyo, started to rock. It was 2:46 p.m. All eyes rose to the huge crystal chandeliers above, clinking and shaking violently.

"Everyone, please stay in a safe position," committee chairman Yosuke Tsuruho said, grasping the armrests of his upholstered velvet chair. "Please duck under your desk."

Within four minutes, a crisis headquarters was up and running across the street in the prime minister's office. Kan rushed there as soon as the shaking subsided. At 3:37 p.m. he convened a roundtable of his top advisers.

Soon after the tsunami hit, Kan's task force was deluged by reports of massive damage up and down the coast, aerial photos and video showing entire villages gone.

Kan, who majored in applied physics in college, was among the first whose attention went to the 40-year-old nuclear plant, according to Kenichi Shimomura, a senior aide who was with him. The prime minister demanded an assessment.

The plant's operator was in disarray. Phone calls to the utility, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, went unanswered, and what little information trickled out was conflicting. In those critical first hours, the government was flying blind.

TEPCO President Masataka Shimizu, who was traveling, boarded a military airlift from Nagoya after he heard the news. But the flight was turned around. The Defense Ministry bumped him to free up its planes for the emergency response.

Kan quietly repeated to himself what was by now in the back of everyone's mind: "This is going to be a disaster."

___

On that day, Team A, a crew of 13, including a trainee, was overseeing Units 1 and 2 in one control room. In another, a crew of nine was responsible for Units 3 and 4 . The latter, along with Units 5 and 6, was offline for maintenance.

The first news was good.

All three working reactors automatically came to an emergency shutdown when the shaking began. Within one minute, all control rods were inserted properly into the cores, stopping the nuclear reactions.

What came next changed everything.

The first wave hit the plant at 3:27 p.m. At 13 feet, it was easily blocked by the plant's breakwater, which stands 33 feet above sea level.

But the one that struck eight minutes later was off the scale.

It flowed up and over the barrier, washed over a 33-foot (10-meter) water tank and tossed passenger cars this way and that. Watermarks suggest the wave may have been as high as 50 feet (15 meters).

Team A watched, horrified, as the plant deteriorated by the minute. A detailed operator's log, along with a handwritten timeline on the control room whiteboard, showed how quickly the units failed.

"15"37' D/G 1B trip," said a scribbled notation indicating the Unit 1 diesel generator went out. It was 3:37 p.m., just two minutes after the second wave had struck.

Then: "SBO." Station Blackout. The power was out.

Four minutes later, at 3:41 p.m., Unit 2 lost power. Minutes after that, key instrument readings stopped.

In the dark, workers found a main power switchboard had been submerged and a main power line brought down by a mudslide. The basement of the Unit 1 turbine building was filled with water. Two workers would later be found drowned in the basement of another turbine room.

Exactly what was happening inside the reactors remained a mystery. At 3:50 p.m., Team A wrote: "Water levels unknown." If not replenished, the water in the core would boil away and the rods would melt.

Two minutes later, Team A added an even more dire note on Unit 2: "ECCS injection not possible." The emergency core cooling system, the last-ditch backup to keep the core from going dry, was down.

It was an hour after the tsunami, and Team A desperately requested emergency power vehicles. By the time they arrived and were hooked up, it would be too late.

___

Outside the control room, about 755 workers, including TEPCO employees and subcontractors, were on the premises.

Yuji Sato was on break in a lounge in a small building about 60 feet (20 meters) from Unit 1, when the quake hit. He had worked all morning on the turbines.

The quake broke the air conditioner and knocked the TV in the lounge off its stand. When the shaking stopped, Sato went outside. Concrete buildings had been heavily damaged, some walls reduced to rubble.

He and about 100 colleagues streamed up the hill behind the reactors. They walked.

"None of us were all that afraid. Japan is a nation of earthquakes. We are used to them," Sato said.

His brother-in-law, pump technician Yuta Tadano, was already up the hill in a second-story office at the time of the quake. A thin young man with pierced ears and long bangs, he worked for subcontractor Tokyo Energy and Systems Inc.

Tadano wanted to go home to check on his wife, Akane, and 4-month-old son, Shoma. His boss said he expected them back at work on Monday. With the utter devastation outside the gate, the normally 20-minute drive home took four hours.

For most of the next two months, no one would be allowed inside the reactor buildings.

Still, dozens of TEPCO workers — later dubbed with some poetic license the "Fukushima 50" — stayed on. Keiichi Kakuta was one. He remained in the plant's radiation-proof Emergency Crisis Headquarters, a big, windowless conference room about 300 yards from the Unit 2 reactor.

Although it meant leaving his family in Tokyo, Kakuta had jumped at the chance for a public affairs job with TEPCO in Fukushima three years ago. He had always admired the company's teamwork and looked forward to a new challenge.

He got the biggest of his life.

___

By late afternoon, Unit 1 was spiraling out of control, with its power and cooling systems down.

The heat from decaying radioactive elements in the fuel rods was growing. As the core overheated, it burned off its coolant water, exposing the 13-foot (4-meter) rods. In turn, steam from the evaporated water was building up inside the containment chamber.

As the heat and pressure rose, the uranium pellets inside the rods melted through their zirconium casings. When the zirconium reached 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit (1,200 Celsius), it reacted with the water, producing hydrogen.

This was obviously going to get worse before it got better.

Yukio Edano, the chief Cabinet spokesman, is the face of Japan's government. At 7:45 p.m., his job was to make an unprecedented statement to the nation — but make it sound routine and reassuring.

"We have declared a nuclear emergency," he said from behind a podium in the press conference room at the prime minister's office. "Let me repeat that there is no radiation leak, nor will there be a leak."

He was wrong. Recently released TEPCO documents reveal that radiation was detected at the plant perimeter at 5:30 p.m., but the utility apparently didn't fax those readings to the government until shortly after 9 p.m.

In the meantime, a two-mile (three-kilometer) evacuation zone around the plant was established. That later would become 6 miles (10 kilometers), then 12 (20). In the end, more than 80,000 people would be forced to flee.

Fukushima Dai-ichi's operators, meanwhile, were faced with a twofold response: Vent and flood. Venting to release pressure and prevent an explosion, flooding to keep things cool.

But venting would release radioactivity into the air. And flooding with seawater would ruin the equipment because of the salt.

Around 9 p.m., less than six hours after the tsunami, officials at the prime minister's office started to press TEPCO to vent. TEPCO hesitated.

Fukushima Dai-ichi was the utility's golden goose. Designed primarily by General Electric, it went online in 1971 and had kept the lights shining in Tokyo ever since. Unlike newer facilities, it was paid for, and it was generating profits with each megawatt it produced.

TEPCO knew that venting radioactivity would cast doubt on the safety of the nuclear industry around the nation, and the world. But the options were dwindling.

The outage of primary and backup power — a scenario that exceeded planners' precautions — was severely hampering operations.

The first emergency power vehicle sent by TEPCO got stuck in the chaotic post-tsunami traffic. A backup truck from another power company arrived at 11 p.m., but the cable it brought was too short to hook up.

At 3:05 a.m., Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda trotted out TEPCO executive Akio Komori for a public announcement of the plan to vent the Unit 1 containment vessel. Seven minutes later, Edano took to the podium, this time to warn the public that the action would entail the release of radioactive isotopes. Again, he urged calm.

For those who knew what was happening, the urgency was mounting. The containment chamber around the core was bulging with pressure twice as high as its maximum operational limit and nearly matching the company's required venting standard.

"We kept telling TEPCO to do it quickly, asking how come it wasn't happening," Edano recalled later.

Nearly four hours after the initial announcement, an exasperated Kaieda ordered TEPCO to vent. It was 6:50 a.m.

Surging radiation forced workers to abort their attempt to open the valves manually. Then they tried to open them remotely and repeatedly failed, probably because of the power outage but possibly also a design flaw. The equipment had never been used in a real-world crisis.

Unit 1 was a ticking time bomb.

___

As the night wore on, the prime minister decided he had to go to Fukushima himself, at first light. His helicopter landed at 7:11 a.m. on March 12. Like everyone else in the entourage, Kan wore a blue-gray work uniform and had a dosimeter hanging around his neck.

His aide, Shimomura, a former TV journalist, was assigned to chronicle the event. He started filming as the group boarded a minibus bound for the emergency crisis headquarters.

It looked normal enough from the outside. Inside, though, was a madhouse. Dozens of workers raced back and forth, trying not to step on about 20 others either slumped to the floor or sleeping in blankets in the hallway.

Shimomura turned off the camera. This scene would not reassure the nation, or the world.

Escorted by TEPCO officials, Kan strode past men so preoccupied or tired that they didn't even acknowledge the presence of their country's leader.

Kan, known for his short temper, fired questions at plant executives and pointed at diagrams of the reactors on a sheet of paper in front of them. He yelled at TEPCO Vice President Sakae Muto and plant chief Masao Yoshida, his onsite escorts, demanding to know why the venting and seawater injection were not happening.

The discussions lasted only half an hour. At 8 a.m., Kan was on his way back to Tokyo.

By then, TEPCO would later acknowledge, the core at Unit 1 had mostly melted, and units 2 and 3 were not far behind.

At 2:30 p.m., workers burst into applause. Vapor was rising from the Unit 1 stack and containment vessel pressures fell — confirmation that the venting was working. But within half an hour, they ran out of fresh water.

This was what TEPCO had dreaded.

Fukushima Dai-ichi was built right next to the biggest source of water on the planet — the Pacific Ocean. Pumping water out of the ocean is an absolute last resort, however. The reactors would never be usable again.

Yet again, TEPCO officials waffled. At 3:36 p.m., almost 24 hours to the minute after the second tsunami hit, the hydrogen inside Unit 1 combined with oxygen already there and exploded, in a fiery blast that blew off the roof and sent a plume of contaminated smoke and debris into the sky.

The decision to use seawater was unavoidable.

Blasts at units 2, 3 and 4 would follow in the coming days. TEPCO's primary task, and for months or even years, is still to repair the damage from the explosions.

Japan's nuclear nightmare had begun.

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William, Kate off to Canada, US in first tour (AP)

OTTAWA, Ontario – Prince William and Kate arrive in Canada on Thursday for their first official overseas trip since their wedding, in a visit that is expected to draw record-numbers of star-struck crowds and well-wishers hoping to catch a glimpse of the royal couple.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will celebrate Canada Day in Ottawa, open the Calgary Stampede and go canoeing in the Northwest Territories during their nine day-tour of their future realm before taking off to Los Angeles.

"The response we've gotten is overwhelming," Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore told The Associated Press. "We're already now having to adjust some of our plans from moving the couple in and around the capital here, closing off some streets and moving people around."

The royal couple left London's Heathrow Airport on a Royal Canadian Air Force plane Thursday morning. The duchess wore a navy blue knee-length dress by the French designer Roland Mouret paired with a navy blazer by Toronto-based Smythe les Vestes. William wore his customary dark blue suit with a red tie.

Canada's prime minister has unveiled a personal flag for use during William's visit. It is the first flag to be created by Canada for a member of the royal family since 1962, when the queen adopted a personal flag for her own use in Canada. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the flag was approved by the queen and William.

The young prince plans to demonstrate his skills as a helicopter rescue pilot by taking part in a water landing demonstration, and the couple is scheduled to put on aprons and take part in a cooking workshop in Quebec City.

But the couple won't be welcomed by all. Some anti-royal protests are expected in the French-speaking province of Quebec, with small groups planning protests in Quebec City and Montreal.

Canadian officials have estimated the royal visit will cost the Canadian government about US$1.55 million dollars (CA$1.5 million dollars), not including security.

The prince and Kate jet to Los Angeles on July 8 and will host a gala dinner there the next night to introduce up-and-coming British film talent to Hollywood executives.

The southern California trip includes a $4,000 three-course meal and a charity polo match up close with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as they are formally known. So far, about 1,000 VIP tickets have been sold to the polo match along with about 400 general admission passes, raising nearly $4.4 million for the July 9 event. William plans to play in the match, and his wife will award the trophy to the winning team.

Decades have passed since Canadians abandoned the Union Jack and replaced "God Save the Queen" with "O Canada." Ordinarily, most Canadians are indifferent to the monarchy. However the 85-year-old Queen Elizabeth II — William's grandmother — remains Canada's titular head of state, is portrayed on its coins and stamps and has visited 22 times as queen.

"For a new generation of Canadians it's a new introduction for themselves into the monarchy," Moore said.

Sheri Gray, 50, of Manitouwadge, Ontario said her husband and her altered their travel plans so they could take in the royal visit. They arrived early Thursday morning to set up lawn chairs outside Ottawa's National War Memorial, where William and Kate are due to lay a wreath after arriving from the airport.

"My grandma was a big royal family supporter. I can't wait to see Will and Kate," Gray said. "I really liked Diana. It will be really nice to see her son and his new wife."

Her husband David called it a once in a lifetime opportunity.

"It's the next generation. It's like a breath of fresh air for them after the past they've had with the previous ones," he said.

William and Kate will do a walkabout at the memorial before heading to a reception where William and Harper are scheduled to speak. A barbecue for young people follows that.

This royal couple is expected to draw thousands and more than 1,300 journalists are accredited. William got a reception fit for a rock star the last time he visited Canada as a 15-year-old in 1998. He wowed teenage girls who wolf-whistled him when he visited Vancouver, British Columbia, with his father Prince Charles. William looked aghast at the commotion back then. That trip was the first official foreign visit for him since the death of his mother, Princess Diana, in a car crash in Paris in August 1997.

William will be celebrating Canada's birthday on Friday, the same day his mother would have turned 50.

He is due to say a few words at a number of stops. Kate is not scheduled to speak.

The couple will travel from the sub-Arctic to oil-rich Calgary, Alberta, from busy Montreal to bucolic Prince Edward Island of "Anne of Green Gables" fame. They'll sit around a campfire with young people, dress casual for the Calgary rodeo, join a cookout in Quebec City and hand out flags to newly-minted Canadians at a citizenship ceremony.

Harper is the most pro-monarchy Canadian leader since the 1950s, and his ambition is to foster a national identity that is more conservative and more aware of its historical roots.

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