LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“There’s more water that anybody, no matter how old they are, has ever remembered seeing. It’s not just people on the river, it’s neighborhoods, it’s places that have never been flooded.”
Alan Brock,
Wakulla County, Fla., commission chairman, on the aftermath of Tropical Storm Debby Article, this page
Vote on Holder a go, Boehner says
WASHINGTON - Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday that the House will move forward with a contempt-of-Congress vote today against Attorney General Eric Holder over the botched gun-tracking operation known as Fast and Furious.
The White House said Republicans are seeking to score political points.
The Ohio Republican told reporters Wednesday that lastminute talks with the White House about releasing documents had failed to avert the vote. President Barack Obama has asserted executive privilege to keep the documents secret, but Republicans say there’s no basis for that.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that the public would view the vote as “political theater” and “gamesmanship.”
Carney said the Justice Department and the White House on Tuesday had shown House Republicans a representative sample of the documents they were seeking. He said the administration’s offer would have provided “unprecedented access” to internal communications about how it responded to congressional inquiries into the Fast and Furious program.
Only ‘pot’ in face chewer’s system
MIAMI - Only marijuana was found in the system of a Florida man shot while chewing another man’s face, according to a medical examiner’s report released Wednesday.
The active components of marijuana were identified in the system of Rudy Eugene, according to toxicology results released by the Miami-Dade County medical examiner. The laboratory tested for but did not detect any other street drugs, alcohol or prescription drugs, or any adulterants found in street drugs in Eugene, 31.
The department ruled out the most common components found in the street drugs known as bath salts. An outside forensic toxicology lab, which took a second look at the results, also confirmed the absence of bath salts, synthetic marijuana and LSD.
The results were released weeks after a Miami police union official had speculated that because Eugene’s behavior had been so bizarre he was probably under the influence of bath salts.
Messages left with the medical examiner’s office for comment were not immediately returned.
It’s not clear what led to the May 26 attack on Ronald Poppo, a 65-year-old homeless man who remains hospitalized.
$2.5 million settles GIBill.com case
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - A California-based company accused of preying on veterans for their education benefits agreed Wednesday to pay $2.5 million to 20 states, including Arkansas, and turn over its website - GIBill.com - to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The consumer-protection settlement between the states and QuinStreet Inc. was filed Wednesday in a Frankfort, Ky., court and announced by Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway.
Besides Kentucky and Arkansas, the other states involved in the settlement are Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.
The agreement comes against a backdrop in which military veterans are a lucrative market for colleges.
The newly expanded Post 9/11 GI Bill will pay colleges of all types around $9 billion this year to educate nearly 600,000 veterans.
Rare stolen atlas returned to Sweden
NEW YORK - A rare atlas stolen a decade ago from the Royal Library of Sweden by one of its chief librarians was recovered in New York and returned to its rightful owner.
Swedish and U.S. authorities showed off the 415-year-old Wytfliet Atlas at a news conference Wednesday. The book, created by Cornelius van Wytfliet and containing the earliest maps of the Americas, had been in the Royal Library collection for more than 300 years before it was stolen. There are only eight other copies worldwide, according to the library.
The atlas was one of 56 rare books stolen by Anders Burius, the chief of the Royal Library’s manuscript department, and the first of his haul to be located.
Burius stole the books between 1995 and 2004, nearly the entire time of his employment there, and later committed suicide, said Steven Feldman of the New York firm of Herrick, Feinstein LLP, representing the library.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 06/28/2012