LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Our constitutional tradition stands against the idea that we need Oceania’s Ministry of Truth.”
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a ruling in which the court struck down the Stolen Valor Act, comparing the law against lying about receiving military medals to George Orwell’s novel 1984 Article, this page
California’s tax-reliant budget signed
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed a new budget Wednesday for California that relies heavily on voters approving his proposed tax increases in November.
Democrats passed 21 budget-implementing bills on a majority vote intended to satisfy the governor’s demand for deeper cuts to close a $15.7 billion deficit, and Brown signed the main bill in the courtyard of his Capitol office just hours before a midnight deadline.
The spending plan for the fiscal year starting Sunday includes welfare and social service cuts. It also assumes voters will approve Brown’s tax increase on the November ballot.
If voters reject the tax initiative, automatic cuts will be triggered, including three weeks less of public school for the next two years.
Brown believes the tax initiative will raise $8.5 billion in the new fiscal year by increasing the sales tax by a quarter percent cent to 7.5 percent for four years and boosting the income tax on people who make more than $250,000 a year for seven years.
3rd clean-energy firm goes bankrupt
WASHINGTON - A Colorado-based solar-panel maker that received a $400 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration said Thursday that it will file for bankruptcy, the latest setback for an industry battered by the recession and stiff competition from companies in China.
Abound Solar of Loveland, Colo., said it will suspend operations next week, after talks with potential buyers broke down. The company received about $70 million from the Energy Department before officials froze its credit line last year.
Abound is the third clean-energy company to seek bankruptcy protection after receiving a loan from the Energy Department under the economic stimulus law. California solar panel maker Solyndra and Beacon Power, a Massachusetts energy-storage firm, declared bankruptcy last year. Solyndra received a $528 million federal loan, while Beacon Power got a $43 million loan guarantee.
Abound said about 125 workers will be laid off.
Saturn moon shows signs of ocean
LOS ANGELES - Scientists reported Thursday on the strongest sign yet that Saturn’s giant moon may have a salty ocean beneath its chilly surface.
If confirmed, it would catapult Titan into an elite class of solar-system moons harboring water, an essential ingredient for life.
Titan boasts methane-filled seas at the poles and a possible lake near the equator. And it’s long been speculated that Titan contains a hidden liquid layer, based on mathematical modeling and electric field measurements made by the Huygens spacecraft that landed on the surface in 2005.
The finding by an international team of researchers was released online Thursday by the journal Science. The scientists pored over data from the orbiting Cassini spacecraft, which flew by Titan half a dozen times between 2006 and last year and took gravity measurements for a glimpse of its interior.
They found Titan got squeezed and stretched depending on its orbit around Saturn, suggesting the presence of a buried ocean. If Titan were solid rock and ice, such deformations would not occur.
Posthumous citizenship ruled out
CLEVELAND - A federal appeals court Thursday rejected a request to restore the U.S. citizenship of a recently deceased Ohio autoworker convicted of Nazi war crimes.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that John Demjanjuk cannot regain his citizenship posthumously. The court ruling said in its ruling that his death made the case moot.
Demjanjuk died March 17 in Germany at age 91. His defense attorneys had asked the appeals court to restore the former suburban Cleveland resident’s citizenship, saying the American government withheld potentially helpful material.
The defense team had asked in its filing in April that the court either restore the citizenship or order a hearing on the case.
“Nothing in Demjanjuk’s current appeal warrants relief,” the appeals court said in a two-page opinion.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 06/29/2012