The nation in brief

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Our highest priority is making sure that everyone who wants to enroll to have health-care coverage by Jan. 1 is able to do so, particularly since consumers had a hard time accessing healthcare.gov in October and November.”

Julie Bataille, a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services spokesman Article, 1A

Stay denied again in Utah same-sex unions

SALT LAKE CITY - A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that gay marriages can continue in Utah, denying a request from the state to halt same-sex weddings, which have been occurring at a rapid rate since last week.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ rejection of Utah’s request for an emergency stay marks yet another legal setback for the state. The same federal judge who ruled that Utah’s same-sex marriage ban violates gay couples’ rights previously denied the state’s request to halt the marriages.

The appeals court said in its short ruling that a decision to put gay marriage on hold was not warranted. However, it said it put the case on the fast track for a full appeal of the ruling.

Utah’s last chance to temporarily stop the marriages would be taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. That’s what the Utah attorney general’s office is prepared to do, said spokesman Ryan Bruckman.

More than 700 gay couples have obtained marriage licenses since Friday, with most of the activity in Salt Lake City.

Diplomat’s lawyer: Agent misread form

NEW YORK - A lawyer for an Indian diplomat whose arrest and strip-search in New York City drew angry responses from officials in India accused U.S. authorities Tuesday of bungling the investigation.

Attorney Daniel Arshack said the agent who drew up charges against his client made a key error in reading a form submitted on behalf of a domestic worker for Devyani Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general in New York. She was arrested two weeks ago and charged with submitting false documents to obtain a work visa for her New York City housekeeper.

Arshack said in an email that the error was in “erroneously and disastrously” mistaking Khobragade’s listed base salary of $4,500 per month for what she intended to pay her housekeeper.

The lawyer said Khobragade’s salary needed to be listed on the form so that U.S. embassy officials in India would know that Khobragade had sufficient income to be able to pay her housekeeper $1,560 per month, or $9.75 per hour for a 40-hour workweek. In court documents, authorities claim she paid her housekeeper about $3.31 per hour.

Arshack said it became apparent as he and others reviewed the forms that the information had been misunderstood.

Prosecutors declined to comment on Arshack’s claims.

Kin get time to appeal girl’s death order

OAKLAND, Calif. - A judge on Tuesday ordered that a 13-year-old Northern California girl who was declared brain dead after suffering complications after a tonsillectomy be taken off life support.

But Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo gave Jahi McMath’s family until 5 p.m. Dec. 30 to file an appeal. She will stay on life support until then.

Grillo issued the order after a Stanford doctor testified that Jahi is brain dead. Dr. Paul Graham Fisher’s evaluation was the second to reach that conclusion.

Children’s Hospital of Oakland, where Jahi is hospitalized, has asked that the girl be taken off life support after doctors there also concluded she was brain dead.

The family’s attorney, Christopher Dolan, said he would file an emergency appeal to keep Jahi on life support if the trial judge orders her removal from the ventilator.

Dolan also wants a third evaluation done by Dr. Paul Byrne, a pediatric professor at the University of Toledo and co-editor of the book Beyond Brain Death, which presents a variety of arguments against using brain-based criteria for declaring a person dead.

The hospital’s attorney objected to Byrne, saying he is not a pediatric neurologist.

Therapy for vets aids sex-abused teens

CHICAGO - A new study has presented the first evidence that the same kind of “exposure” therapy that helps combat veterans who are haunted by flashbacks and nightmares also works for sexually abused teens with similar symptoms.

Exposure therapy involves having patients repeatedly tell their awful stories, and then visit safe places that remind them of the trauma, or take part in safe activities they’d avoided because of painful reminders.

After exposure therapy, 83 percent of sexually abused teens no longer had a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. They fared much better than girls who got only supportive counseling - 54 percent in that group no longer had the disorder after treatment.

Girls who got exposure therapy also had much better scores on measures of depression and daily functioning than girls who got conventional counseling.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 12/25/2013