QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Has it really been 12 years? Or 12 days? Sometimes it feels the same.”
Michael Fox, an attendee of a New York memorial service, addressing his brother, Jeffrey, who died in the Sept.11, 2001, terrorist attacks Article, 1A
NYC mayoral-race vote favors de Blasio
NEW YORK - New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio won the most votes in the Democratic mayoral primary, after campaigning against the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics and what he said were Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s policies favoring the rich.
Whether he is the outright winner or must face the second-place finisher, former city Comptroller William Thompson, in an Oct. 1 runoff won’t be known until next week, said Valerie Vazquez, a spokesman for the board of elections. The agency’s staff will collect votes from malfunctioning lever machines starting Friday and begin counting at least 19,000 paper absentee ballots and affidavit votes Monday.
De Blasio, elected four years ago to the citywide watchdog post, had 40.3 percent of the unofficial voting-machine tally with 99 percent of precincts reporting. Thompson finished second, with 26.2 percent.
A total above 40 percent would allow de Blasio to avoid a runoff. Thompson didn’t concede and said he’d fight on.
The Democratic winner will face Republican Joseph Lhota, who served eight years as a top aide to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in the Nov. 5 general election. Lhota, former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, won 52.5 percent against two rivals, supermarket billionaire John Catsimatidis and George McDonald, founder of the nonprofit Doe Fund.
Experts unsure meth-cases dip is trend
ST. LOUIS - Methamphetamine lab seizures and arrests declined nationwide in 2012, but experts say they don’t yet know why, and some states are already reporting increases this year.
The Drug Enforcement Administration provided statistics Wednesday showing 12,694 methamphetamine lab cases in 2012, down 5.5 percent from 13,390 in 2011. It was the second-straight year of decline, but experts said it could just be a blip and it’s too early to tell if there’s a trend to explain the drop. The nation had 15,196 methamphetamine lab cases in 2010.
Missouri, the leader in methamphetamine lab cases every year except one since 2003, again topped the list with 1,960 in 2012. One Missouri county alone - Jefferson County, near St. Louis - had 346 cases.
Missouri and three other middle-America states combined for nearly half of all methamphetamine lab cases.
Tennessee was second with 1,701, followed by Indiana (1,697) and Kentucky (1,000).
Part of N.D. abortion-law suit dropped
BISMARCK, N.D. - A federal judge has dismissed part of a lawsuit challenging a new North Dakota law that blocks abortions performed on the basis of a baby’s gender or genetic defect, such as Down syndrome.
The state’s sole abortion clinic in Fargo, backed by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, filed the lawsuit in June. That suit also challenges another new measure that bans abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected. The ban was temporarily blocked in July.
The measures are among four that Republican Gov.
Jack Dalrymple signed into law this year with overwhelming support by the state’s Republican-led Legislature.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland granted the Red River Women’s Clinic request to drop the gender and genetic defects part of the lawsuit Monday. The clinic has said the ban doesn’t affect it because it doesn’t perform abortions for those reasons.
Navy sexual-assault reports up by 50%
NORFOLK, Va. - The number of sexual assaults reported to the Navy has grown by about 50 percent in the past year, which Navy officials said Wednesday is a sign that a growing number of sailors feel more comfortable reporting assaults and believe something will be done about them when they do.
The Navy said it is on pace to end fiscal 2013 later this month with about 1,100 reports of sexual assault. That’s up from the 726 sexual assaults reported in the previous fiscal year.
Rear Adm. Sean Buck, the Navy’s top sexual-assault prevention and response officer, told reporters at Naval Station Norfolk that the increase was something Navy officials had expected as they ramped up efforts to let sailors know that sexual assaults are being treated seriously.
They also noted that there are plenty of resources available to victims.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 09/12/2013