On the morning of Sept. 3, the first day the Pentagon said they could, Alicia Butler and her spouse, Judith Chedville, who is a Texas Army National Guard officer, went to Austin’s Camp Mabry so Ms. Butler could get a military spouse identification card and register for the same federal marriage benefits provided to wives and husbands of heterosexual service members.
Read the whole story at The New York Times
UNIONTOWN, Pa. -- Penn State could soon be paying out millions of dollars to victims of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky after disclosing Friday it had tentative agreements with some of the young men who say he sexually abused them.
The school does not plan to comment on specifics until the deals are made final, which could happen in the coming weeks. University president Rodney Erickson called getting approval for settlement offers "another important step toward the resolution of claims from Sandusky's victims."
"As we have previously said, the university intends to deal with these individuals in a fair and expeditious manner, with due regard to their privacy," Erickson said in a statement issued after the university's Board of Trustees approved a settlement resolution.
Sandusky, 69, was convicted a year ago of 45 counts of child sexual abuse, including violent attacks on boys inside school facilities. He is serving a 30- to 60-year prison term and maintains he was wrongfully convicted. He is pursuing appeals.
More than 30 claimants have come forward with sexual abuse allegations involving the longtime assistant to late coach Joe Paterno. The deals will be limited to a range of dollar values and subject to final approval by a committee empowered by the board to handle the claims. A university spokesman said the school plans to release the total amount it pays to settle lawsuit but will not provide amounts for individual cases.
Sandusky's arrest in November 2011 touched off a massive scandal that led to the dismissal of Paterno, then Division I football's winningest coach, along with criminal charges against other high-ranking school officials and ultimately NCAA sanctions that included stripping Paterno of 111 victories.
Board chairman Keith Masser said it was part of getting past the scandal and the collateral damage it has done to the university.
"We're just chipping away at getting these issues behind us," Masser said.
Legal experts say the "value" of a child sexual abuse claims depends on several factors, including the victim's age and the nature and frequency of the abuse. Many details about the Sandusky abuse claims have not been made public, but other molestation cases suggest Penn State may have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, up to several million, to reach settlements.
Ira Lubert, the trustee who chairs the Committee on Legal and Compliance, told the board that "tentative settlements have been reached on a number of existing claims" without detailing how many have settled, how many remain and how much money – individually or in the aggregate – might be involved.
Lubert said his committee was empowered to authorize the settlements itself, but thought it was important that the trustees approved the move in a public meeting. The trustees voted unanimously to make the settlement offers.
The committee was briefed in detail on the proposed settlements during a June 25 executive session and another such meeting Friday morning, before the trustees met publicly at Penn State-Fayette, a satellite campus near Uniontown, about 40 miles south of Pittsburgh.
Harrisburg attorney Chuck Schmidt said his client was one who expects to finish a deal based on terms provided by the university over the past week. He said only confidentiality provisions remain to be ironed out.
"We have an offer, and we have, basically, an agreement with the client to accept the offer," Schmidt said.
Schmidt's client, who filed a lawsuit that has been on hold, was not among those who testified at Sandusky's trial.
The firm of Feinberg Rozen LLP has been helping the university reach the settlements. It brokered mass litigation settlements stemming from incidents as varied as the September 11 terrorist attacks to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the Virginia Tech shooting massacre.
Friday marked one year since the release of a university-funded report about its handling of the Sandusky scandal that was highly critical of the actions by Paterno, former president Graham Spanier and former administrators Tim Curley and Gary Schultz.
Spanier, Curley and Schultz await a July 29 preliminary hearing on criminal charges over an alleged cover up of complaints about Sandusky. All three men deny the allegations.
Spanier remains a faculty member on leave, while athletic director Curley and vice president Schultz have retired. Paterno died last year of lung cancer.
___
Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pa.
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MADRID - The Government of Spain said that a joint investigation by French and Spanish police has broken a gang that allegedly was Chinese smuggling in Europe and United States citizens.
The Ministry of the Interior said on Saturday that 75 people have been detained, 51 in Spain and 24 in France, including two suspected heads based in Barcelona from the Organization in Europe.
The gang allegedly charged up to 50,000 euros ($66.700) for the transport of Chinese citizens to the U.S., Great Britain, Spain, France, Greece, Italy and Turkey.
Some of the trafficked people ended up in the sex trade, said the Ministry.
European hub of the band was from Barcelona Airport. It supposedly was the city of the Northeast as a stopping point for Chinese while false documents were prepared.
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* New USTR will oversee trade negotiations with the EU, Asia and the Pacific
* Froman also faces challenges in India, China trade
* Senator Warren complains about the secret of the trade negotiations of United States
* Ex-USTR Zoellick: the key question is can Froman close deals (adds more quotes, background, signature)
By Doug Palmer
WASHINGTON, June 19 (Reuters) - the Senate on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to approve the Adviser for International Economic Affairs Michael Froman White House to be the next representative of trade, sending him to the battle of big in Asia and Europe trade negotiations.
Froman, an old friend of President Barack Obama, has already played an important role in the trade policy of the United States in the last four years of his tenure at the White House.
Now moves that work behind the scenes to a prominent role in the Cabinet of Obama, where other large jobs will include manage difficult relationships with China and India and breathing life into moribund world negotiations.
"Mike is smart. Known issues. What is very important, has the confidence of the President, "former representative of Commerce of United States Robert Zoellick, a Republican, said Wednesday in a speech at the Wilson Center, a foreign policy think-tank.
Froman was passed in a vote of 93-4. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat of Massachusetts, was one of the few senators to vote against it, citing what it called a lack of transparency in trade negotiations in the United States, a complaint of many civil society groups have done in the past.
"Many people are deeply interested in the tracking of the trajectory of the trade negotiations, but if they do not have reasonable access to view terms of bargaining agreements, then they cannot have real input," said Warren.
Froman got strong words of support from President of the Committee of finance Senate Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and Senator Orrin Hatch, top of the Republican group.
"I have full confidence in this man's going to be a great leader..." "It is highly qualified, said hatch.
Senate action came few days after Obama and the leaders of the European Union opened talks on what would become the free trade agreement in the world, the society's proposed transatlantic trade and investment pact.
From now you will preside over the first round of such negotiations, for the week of July 8 in Washington.
United States is also negotiating an agreement of free trade with Japan and 10 other countries in the region of Asia and the Pacific, known as the Pact of transpacific partnership expected to finish by the end of this year.
Froman's legacy will rest on if you can bring these two great negotiations for agreements and gain its approval in Congress.
To ensure the Covenant of Asia and the Pacific and win new opportunities for export to American businesses and farmers, Froman has to make politically difficult decisions that would open the U.S. market to more auto, dairy products, sugar and textile imports.
The United States and the European Union want to finish their negotiations in late 2014, requiring compromise on difficult issues such as European restrictions on the importation of modified crops genetically and other barriers to food safety which Washington says they are not based on scientific evidence.
Froman also faces an early test in Congress to get the approval of the authority of trade promotion, a piece of legislation that many of the companions of the Obama Democrats have opposed in the past.
That law, which expired in 2007, allows the White House to trade to submit tenders to the Congress to vote up or down without amendments.
Approval of the Bill would be a strong signal of support from the Congress for Asia and the Pacific and the EU agreements, helping to bring them to an end.
Concern in the Congress for the massive US trade deficit with China, which reached a record $315 billion in 2012, also pressuring Froman to advance on that front.
In addition, many lawmakers are increasingly frustrated with indigenous policies that block imports of United States and override patent protection for valuable pharmaceutical products in the United States.
In December, Froman will head to Bali for the ninth ministerial of the world Organization of trade in the middle of darkness on the continued viability of that body as a negotiating forum.
With the 12-year-old Doha round of world trade in a dead-end negotiations WTO members are struggling to reach an agreement on a small package of trade agreements to demonstrate that they can produce results. (Editing by Doina Chiacu and Bill Trott)
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The mayor of Braddock, Penn. performed his county's first gay wedding Aug. 5 in spite of the statewide ban on same-sex marriage.
Calling Pennsylvania's Defense of Marriage Act "a fundamentally unjust piece of legislation," Braddock Mayor John Fetterman said he was happy to marry John Kandray and Bill Gray, who have been together for 11 years and had obtained a marriage license in Montgomery County, CBS Pittsburgh is reporting.
The ceremony took place around 9:30 p.m. on Monday in front of the couple's family and friends, who had gathered at Fetterman's home.
“We pay the same taxes, we do everything the same, but we don’t have the same rights,” Kandray is quoted as saying. “It felt like, you know what, let’s stand up for ourselves and do this."
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania officials have filed a lawsuit alleging that D. Bruce Hanes, the register of wills in Montgomery County, violated state laws when he began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples last month, the Associated Press reported.
"I decided to come down on the right side of history and the law," Hanes said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. More than 60 marriage licenses have reportedly been issued to same-sex couples by Montgomery County so far.
Berlin - the President Barack Obama refuses to describe the type of military aid that United States will give Syrian rebels as well as praise a decision by world leaders at a Summit that ended only to seek a negotiated peace.
Obama says while the leaders could not agree on which should go the Syrian President Bashar Assad, he has decided that it is not possible that Assad regain legitimacy.
Obama spoke at a Conference of press together with German Chancellor Angela Merkel (AHN '-GEH - lah MEHR'-kuhl).
Obama, the President Russian Vladimir Putin and other leaders of the industrial economies group of eight meeting in Northern Ireland this week tried to reduce the marked differences between Russia, a key support for Assad and other Western leaders.
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Tokyo--United States military helicopter crashed on Monday in a US base in the southern island of Okinawa, and four members of the crew are believed to have survived, said that Japanese and U.S. officials.
The rescue helicopter HH-60, which belongs to Air Base Okinawa Kadena, was on a training mission without specifying when it crashed at Camp Hansen, a United States air force statement said.
Television images showed smoke rising from a place in the forest with a mutilated object that appeared to be part of the helicopter in flames.
The United States statement said that the cause of the accident was not known and does not elaborate on the condition of the four crew members aboard.
However, the Minister of defence Itsunori Onodera told reporters, quoting information received, that expulsion three crew members of the helicopter and the fourth apparently was wounded and transferred to hospital.
Onodera said that the accident was "regrettable" and that it was the United States to provide information promptly, conduct a thorough investigation and take preventive measures.
Okinawa prefectural police said there were no reports of injury or damage outside the base.
The clash comes amid strong domestic opposition to the US Marine Corps additional deployment of 12 MV-22 Osprey transport aircraft on the island. Approximately half of the 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan are based on Okinawa under a Pact of security of Japan and United States.
Military sentiment on the island is a long-standing problem, and many residents have complained about accidents, noise, and base-related crime.
Local media said that the accident revived memories of the accident in 2004, when a CH-53 helicopters from Marine Corps Air Station Futenma crashed into a University near the building, causing an uproar although there are civilians wounded and the crew survived.
"We knew that it was going to happen sooner or later," said the Mayor of Kadena Hiroshi Toyama, referring to the clash on Monday.
On 12 March 2004, acting attorney general James B. Comey and officials of the Department of Justice was on the verge of resignation on orders of electronic surveillance, which believed that it is illegal.
Read the full story in The Washington Post
The fact that women’s wages lag behind men’s is nothing new, but a new report is showing that the minimum wage may have something to do with it.
According to a study by the National Women’s Law Center, the average gender wage gap in states with minimum wages above the federally mandated $7.25 per hour is smaller than the pay gap in states where the minimum wage meets the $7.25 criteria. Of the ten states with the widest wage gaps in 2011, only two had minimum wages above $7.25 per hour. All of the states with the narrowest wage gaps had minimum wages above the federally mandated level.
“The gap in wages has moved at a snail’s pace—shrinking only 18 cents in five decades and remaining stagnant for the last decade,” said NWLC Co-President Marcia D. Greenberger. “And for women of color, the wage gap is even worse. Equal pay is not an abstract principle for women and their families.”
Read the whole story at NBC Latino
Syria has been subject to a plentitude of political polemics, but just little scholarly research and analysis. Outlets have been saturated with writings by pundits and policy analysts who are beating the drum for the U.S. to intervene in Syria or pushing the U.S. to take a leadership role as it did in case of Libya. What is intriguing is that the same analysts are the ones who would later, should the U.S. decide to intervene in Syria, condemn the United States for its imperialists and modern colonial tendencies. Alongside the pundits, some politicians like Senator John McCain have also been publicly criticizing the current administration for not leading an active role for regime change in Syria and advocating for the implementation of military tactics such as buffer zones, no-fly-zones, and military deliveries. Yet, here are some arguments for why the United States should refrain from intervening in Syria.
First of all, it is important to address a widely argued sentiment claiming the positive impact that a Syrian intervention will have on the U.S.'s national interests and security. Such sentiment argues that if the United States intervenes either directly or indirectly in Syria and topples the Bath-ruling coalition's status quo, the Islamic Republic of Iran would consequently lose not only its consistent regional ally, but also its bedfellow in the international arena. As a result, this will disrupt Iran's logistical and communicational interactions with Hezbollah and Hamas, which in turn, would ratchet down Iran's regional influence. In addition, the next Syrian government, supposedly to be led by a Sunni-majority, would be more strategically allied with the United States and Arab gulf states (Saudi Arabia primarily) rather than with Iran. Therefore, regional pressure will increase and Iranian leaders will become more likely to appeal to negotiations for its nuclear enrichment program and human rights abuses, or alternatively, be subjected to the same fate as Assad.
Unfortunately, this argument does not stand against history or Iran's regional capabilities. Firstly, the Iranian leadership has a successful track record of emerging as the winner whenever a sovereign state in the Middle East experiences instability, civil war, or foreign intervention. For instance, the protracted civil war in Lebanon created the ripe environment for Iranian leaders to give birth to one of the strongest non-state actors in the region: Hezbollah.
Secondly, after the 2003 U.S. intervention in Iraq, Iranian leaders were able to immediately create a powerful Shiite proxy in Iraq - the Jesih AlMahdi (Mehsi Army) - as well as coordinate with Shiite leaders so as to infiltrate Iraqi governmental affairs. The Iranian leadership and Revolutionary Guard's tactical strategies are characterized not by public, foreign interventions, but clandestine investments in a local, community-based, organized group that empower a proxy capable of fighting not only regional governments but world powers such as the U.S. and her Western allies. When it comes to developing proxies, Iran can be considered as the regional mastermind. By implementing this strategy, Iranian leaders avoid being held legally accountable in the region and in the face of the international community.
If the U.S. were to intervene in Syria and liberate Damascus, Iran will definitely not be the loser. Iran has strong political bonds with the Alawite leaders and community and is capable of creating a proxy as powerful, if not more, than Hezbollah in Syria. The Alawite proxy can instigate considerable amount of tension through the region and can keep Syria destabilized and in a civil war climate indefinitely. The price of oil will inevitably raise as a consequence, which will also serve the interests of the Iranian leaders.
The second argument states that if the U.S. intervenes in Syria, the immediate "democratic" system of governance to follow will be strategically and politically allied with the United States. Those who make this presupposition should pay a closer examination to the socio-political fabric of the Syrian society, the state formation, and the process of democratization in the Middle East. In any case of intervention in Damascus, the immediate creation of a centralized government will be highly unlikely.
Democratization is not a simple process that is achievable overnight. I have several family members who have lost their lives in the battle against the police-state of Syria. Unfortunately, democratization is a messy and bloody process that necessitates sacrifices.
If the U.S. intervenes in Syria, we are more likely to witness one of the greatest regional and international proxy battlegrounds, of our generation, in Damascus since the Vietnam War which would pull Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraq and other powers actively into Damascus in order to preserve their national and geopolitical interests.
Part of this article was published in the Los Angeles Times.
Follow Majid Rafizadeh on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@majidrafizadeh
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