CAMP VICTORY, Iraq — Stephen Colbert left no doubt about his solidarity with American troops when he taped the first of four Comedy Central shows he’ll produce in Iraq this week.

Stephen Colbert high-fives a serviceman after submitting to a military-style haircut in Iraq on Sunday.

Colbert, wearing a business suit made of the same camouflaged material used for soldiers’ desert uniforms, submitted to a regulation military haircut as hundreds of U.S. troops cheered wildly Sunday.

The comedian, who satirizes conservative TV pundits on his “Colbert Report,” began his “Operation Iraqi Stephen: Going Commando” USO tour Sunday in the Baghdad headquarters of the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq.

“It must be nice in Iraq, because some of you keep coming back again and again,” Colbert said, joking about the multiple tour many troops have had in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. Some troops had accumulated enough frequent flyer miles to earn them a free ticket to Afghanistan, he joked.

Colbert told his guest, Gen. Ray Odierno, he felt “a little intimidated” by him, not because he was he top U.S. commander in Iraq, but because it felt like he was “interviewing Shrek.” Odierno is an imposing bald figure at 6-feet, 5-inches tall.

Odierno said the military is “not yet ready to declare victory” in Iraq and that there was a little more work to be done for long-term stability.

“I, Stephen Colbert, by the power invested in me by basic cable, officially declare we won the Iraq war,” Colbert said, as his audience broke out into applause.

The interview was interrupted when President Obama appeared on large television screens. The commander-in-chief told his general it was time to “cut that man’s hair.”

With white electric hair clippers in his hand, Ordierno stood up and began shaving Colbert’s trademark thick dark hair. The troops stood and cheered as a female member of Colbert’s staff finished the job.

After the haircut, Colbert ran through the audience, high-fiving the troops as he showed off his new military look.

One Army major said that “shaving of the hair is an amazing show of support” that was “very touching.”

Former Republican presidential nominee John McCain also made a pre-taped appearance on the show, jokingly reminding the troops to “take time to clean your muskets.”

Lt. Col. Debra Shoemaker, a native of Colbert’s hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, said the show was a “nice break” from the monotony of service in Iraq.

USO Senior Vice President John Hanson said the shows are an important diversion for the troops.

Colbert’s USO tour is unusual because it’s the first time a show taped in a combat zone has been edited and aired so quickly. The Sunday show will be televised on the Comedy Central network Monday night.

Sixteen bodies have been recovered from last week’s crash of an Air France jetliner in the Atlantic Ocean, Brazil’s military announced Monday.

Recovery efforts have found several items confirmed to have come from Air France Flight 447.

The Brazilian navy and air force said they have found nine bodies in the wide search area around where the Airbus A330-200 went down. The crew of a French vessel taking part in the search has found seven bodies, military officials told reporters Sunday evening.

Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic early June 1. The jet was en route to Paris, France, from the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro with 228 passengers and crew aboard.

The bodies were found floating about 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) from the Brazilian coast. Items found in the same area Saturday were confirmed to have come from the jet, including pieces of the aircraft’s wing section, luggage and a leather briefcase containing an airplane ticket with a reservation code for the doomed flight, Brazilian air force spokesman Jorge Amaral told CNN.

The exact location of the crash has not been determined, since ocean currents probably caused the bodies and debris to drift in the days since the crash. And two key pieces of evidence — the flight data and cockpit voice recorders — remain missing, and could lie on the ocean floor. Map of Flight 447’s flight path »

The part of the ocean where the debris and bodies have been found ranges between 6,000 and 8,000 meters (about 19,700 to 26,250 feet) deep. The search area covers 124,300 square kilometers (77,220 square miles), an area nearly as big as the country of Romania. 

Twelve Brazilian and two French aircraft were participating, along with five Brazilian ships and one French frigate. And in Washington, a U.S. defense official told CNN that the U.S. Navy will contribute two high-tech acoustic devices to listen for emergency beacons still operating in deep water.

The “towed pinger locators,” which help search for emergency beacons on downed aircraft to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet, will be placed aboard two French tugs that are part of the search efforts, the official said.

Recovery of bodies and debris is significant not only for families, but also for crash investigators, said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“Even if they don’t find anything else, they can get some very important clues from the pieces that they do find and from the human remains,” she told CNN on Saturday.

She said investigators would be able to tell if there was an explosion from possible residue on the bodies or other items. Or, if water is found in the lungs of victims, investigators would know the plane went down intact, she said.

Investigators in Paris said Saturday that the Air France flight sent out 24 automated error messages about four minutes before it crashed. The messages suggest the plane may have been flying too fast or too slow through severe thunderstorms it encountered before the crash, officials said.

Schiavo said four minutes “was a very long time” for automated signals to be sent from the plane.

Investigators also reported that the airline had failed to replace a part as recommended by the manufacturer, Airbus.

Airbus had advised airlines to update equipment that monitors speed, known as Pitot tubes. The recommendation was a result of technological developments and improvements, an Airbus spokesman told CNN. The change was not mandatory, and the spokesman would not comment on Air France’s failure to follow the advice.

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Monday that he expected his economic stimulus package to save or create an additional 600,000 jobs this summer — including 125,000 for teenagers — as the federal government spends billions to expand care at health centers, spruce up national parks, hire teachers and improve military facilities.

President Obama discussed economic issues with members of his cabinet at the White House Monday.

The latest on President Obama, the new administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. 

Confronted with rising unemployment and skepticism from Republicans who question whether his recovery package is doing any good, Mr. Obama made the announcement at the outset of a Cabinet meeting. During the meeting, Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., outlined what the administration is calling a “Roadmap to Recovery” — 10 major initiatives that, Mr. Biden said, would “build momentum and accelerate job growth” over the next 100 days.

“Now I know that there are some who, despite all evidence to the contrary, still don’t believe in the necessity and promise of the recovery act,” Mr. Obama said. “I would suggest to them that they talk to the companies who, because of this plan, scrapped the idea of laying off employees and in fact decided to hire employees. Tell that to the Americans who receive that unexpected call saying, ‘Come back to work.’ ”

Last week, the Department of Labor reported that the national unemployment rate reached 9.4 percent in May, the highest in more than 25 years. Even as the president tried to talk up the jobs created by the stimulus bill, his advisers have been trying to tamp down expectations that the unemployment figures would decline again anytime soon.

“The president was very clear when he enacted the stimulus that it was going to take some time to work through the system and that unemployment was going to go up and go up for some time,” Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, said Sunday on the CBS program Face the Nation. Another top economic adviser to Mr. Obama, Austan Goolsbee, predicted “a rough patch.”

The 600,000 figure is based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs. Two independent economists described the figures as plausible, but the announcement sparked an immediate debate in Washington between backers and opponents of the recovery plan. Opponents, like Representative John Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, are citing the unemployment figures as evidence, Mr. Boehner said, that the administration’s “rosy predictions” are inaccurate.

In preparing his report to the president, Mr. Biden said he had asked Cabinet secretaries to give him a list of projects “that they were absolutely certain they could get up and running in the second hundred days” after the enactment of the $787 billion stimulus bill on Feb. 17.

That list includes a range of efforts. The Department of Health and Human Services says the states will give money to either build or expand 1,129 health centers to provide service to approximately 300,000 additional patients. The Department of Agriculture will start 200 new waste and water systems in rural America; the Department of Justice will hire or keep approximately 5,000 law enforcement officers on the job; and the Department of Veterans Affairs will begin improvements at 90 veterans’ medical centers across 38 states, the administration says.

Monday was not the first time the administration has used the 600,000 estimate; the figure was contained in a report issued last month by Vice President Biden. But by talking up the stimulus — and identifying specific projects that are expected to get underway this summer — Mr. Obama may be trying to use his presidential platform to prod states into spending the federal dollars at a critical period, when the weather is more conducive to construction projects in the Northeast and teenagers are free to work, giving a temporary boost to the job market.

“The economy is at a very key juncture,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at MoodysEconomy.com. “We are right at a turning point from recession to recovery. If they can juice things up just even a bit, that may make a big difference.”

The Obama administration says 150,000 jobs were either saved or created during the first 100 days after the bill was signed. Republicans are questioning those figures, as well as the ones Mr. Obama cited on Monday.

“The Obama administration is continuing to fabricate job creation projections related to the stimulus,” Tony Fratto, who served as deputy press secretary to former President George W. Bush, said in an e-mail statement. “The Bureau of Labor Statistics — the only government agency counting jobs — cannot tell you how many Americans are working today. They cannot tell you how many Americans were working a month ago. And they cannot even tell you how many Americans — within 50,000 — who were at work when the stimulus was passed by Congress.”

Mr. Zandi agreed that it is “very difficult to measure” the effects of the stimulus so far. But both he and Chris Varvares, president of Macroeconomic Advisers in St. Louis, another economic forecasting firm, described the numbers as plausible.

Mr. Varvares’ own estimates have been more conservative than the administration’s; while the White House has predicted the stimulus bill would save or create 3.5 million new jobs, an analysis Mr. Varvares produced when the bill was signed in February put the figure at 2.6 million.

“I wouldn’t want to say it sounds right until I’ve had an opportunity to crunch the numbers in the same way that they’ve crunched them,” Mr. Varvares said of the 600,000 estimate. “But is it plausible? Yes.”

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed with the Obama administration and refused to review Pentagon policy barring gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

The court said it will not hear an appeal from former Army Capt. James Pietrangelo II, who was dismissed under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The federal appeals court in Boston earlier threw out a lawsuit filed by Pietrangelo and 11 other veterans. He was the only member of that group who asked the high court to rule that the Clinton-era policy is unconstitutional.

“I think this decision is an absolute travesty of justice and I think every judge on this court should be ashamed of themselves,” said Pietrangelo, who served six years in the Army, seven years in the Vermont National Guard and fought in Iraq in 1991. “It’s nothing short of rubber stamping legalized discrimination, the same way Nazi Germany legalized discrimination against Jews.

“The Supreme Court is not infallible, they get things wrong, and they got it wrong this time,” he said.

During last year’s campaign, President Barack Obama indicated he supported the eventual repeal of the policy, but he has made no specific move to do so since taking office in January. Meanwhile, the White House has said it won’t stop gays and lesbians from being dismissed from the military.

In court papers, the administration said the appeals court ruled correctly in this case when it found that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion.”

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman referred requests for comment to the Justice Department, but said the military policy “implements the law.”

“The law requires the (Defense) Department to separate from the armed services members who engage in or attempt to engage in homosexual acts; state they are homosexual or bisexual; or marry or attempt to marry a person of the same biological sex,” Whitman said in a statement.

A legal advocacy group vowed to press ahead with efforts to reverse the policy despite the legal setback.

“We don’t see that at all as bad news for repeal,” said Kevin Nix, spokesman for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. “What happened today puts the ball back into the court of Congress and the White House to repeal the law, and that’s where we think it should be right now.”

Nix said there are no objective studies showing unit cohesion, morale and order are harmed by openly gay people.

“There are people out there and still serving, and the unit is not crumbling beneath their feet,” he said, adding that attitudes among troops and society are far different than they were in the 1990s when the policy was instituted.

“Times have changed … fast forward 16 years,” Nix said. “The service members in Iraq and Afghanistan — their attitudes toward gay people are very different than some retired generals in their 50s and 60s who served in the 20th Century. It’s a different world.”

Opposition to gay marriages, for example, has eased nationwide and six states have legalized same-sex unions. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont and Iowa allow gay marriage, though opponents hope to overturn Maine’s law with a public vote.

Polls show younger Americans are far are more tolerant of gay marriage than are older generations.

Pietrangelo, who was in the Vermont National Guard at the time of his discharge in 2004, said politicization of the issue is the only option left.

“We need political agitation, we need to make it a civil rights issue,” he said. “Gay America needs to wake up and realize we have no options other than to march on Washington D.C. until America feels enough shame to change something.

“What it’s going to take is 30 million gay Americans getting off their butts and standing in front of the White House demanding gay quality,” said Pietrangelo, who has since moved back to his native Ohio.

The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was established in 1993. President Bill Clinton had to abandon efforts to allow gays to serve openly in the armed forces after facing strong resistance from the military and members of Congress.

Last year, the federal appeals court in San Francisco allowed a decorated flight nurse to continue her lawsuit over her dismissal. The court stopped short of declaring the policy unconstitutional, but said that the Air Force must prove that ousting former Maj. Margaret Witt furthered the military’s goals of troop readiness and unit cohesion.

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was the first that evaluated “don’t ask, don’t tell” through the lens of a 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down a Texas ban on sodomy as an unconstitutional intrusion on privacy.

The administration did not appeal that ruling to the Supreme Court and Witt’s lawsuit is ongoing.

The appeals court in Pietrangelo’s case also took the high court decision into account, but concluded that it should defer to Congress’ determination that the policy fosters cohesion in military units.

Two U.S. journalists, who were detained in North Korea while covering the plight of defectors living along the China-North Korea border, have been sentenced to 12 years hard labor in prison, the country’s state-run media said Monday.

Demonstrators in South Korea last week hold pictures of Laura Ling and Euna Lee.

The Central Court of North Korea sentenced Laura Ling and Euna Lee for the “grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing,” the Korean Central News Agency said.

As a result, the court sentenced the women to “12 years of reform through labor.”

A U.S. State Department spokesman, Ian Kelley, said the Swedish ambassador in North Korea confirmed the sentence with North Korean authorities. Sweden represents U.S. interests in North Korea; the United States does not have formal diplomatic relations with North Korea.

“We are deeply concerned by the reported sentencing of the two American citizen journalists by North Korean authorities, and we are engaged through all possible channels to secure their release,” Kelley said in a statement. “We once again urge North Korea to grant the immediate release of the two American citizen journalists on humanitarian grounds.”

White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton said President Obama had been informed of the reports and was deeply concerned.

Ling and Lee were taken into custody March 17. They are reporters for California-based Current TV, a media venture of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

Several senior administration officials said the idea of sending either Gore or New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to Pyongyang on a mission to get the journalists released has been floated to the North Koreans.

No answer has come so far, but the expectation has been that once the trial ended, the North would accept a visit by either Gore or Richardson to secure the journalists’ release.

Richardson served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary during the Clinton administration and has maintained contacts with North Korea. He took several trips there as ambassador, and he has worked for the release of people held by the North Koreans in the past.

Richardson was cautiously optimistic about the case on Monday.

“The sentence was harsh, but the good news in the sentence is it was not for espionage — it was for entering illegally, hostile acts,” he told CNN. 

“The rhetoric of the North Koreans has not been terribly harsh against the two women,” he added.

Both the Obama adminstration and Pyongyang have kept the case separate from the standoff over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, he said.

“That’s an encouraging sign,” he said.

“What needs to happen now is humanitarian negotations for the release of the two women,” he said. “In my past negotiations with the North Koreans, you don’t start negotiating for humanitarian release until after the North Korean legal process is over. It’s over now, so the discussions have to start.”

According to media reports, the trial began Thursday. Much of the time, the only news coming from the secretive and isolated communist nation is relayed through the state media.

The U.S. State Department was informed by the Swedish ambassador to North Korea that no observers were allowed in the courtroom

The State Department was notified the reporters had a defense attorney, but was not given the lawyer’s name.

North Korea had charged the reporters with illegal entry into the country and spying. The Korean Central News Agency did not mention the spying charges on Monday.

The women’s families broke months of silence last week, making public pleas for their release.

“When the girls left the United States, they never intended to cross into North Korean soil. And if they did at any point, we apologize,” Ling’s sister, Lisa, a special correspondent for CNN, said last week.

The Swedish ambassador was allowed to see them three times.

Despite the limited communication, the families said they’d heard enough to know the women were “terrified” and “extremely scared.” iReport: Los Angeles vigil for journalists