QUOTE OF THE DAY
“They’re planning for all options. They have to.”
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who said President Barack Obama’s administration is considering its options to withdraw some or all U.S. forces from Afghanistan as time runs out for a new security agreement Article, this page
Navy suspects 30 as nuke-teacher cheats
WASHINGTON - The Navy is investigating 30 or more senior sailors in connection with purported cheating on written tests designed to qualify them as instructors at a school that trains younger sailors to operate naval nuclear-power reactors, officials said Tuesday.
The reactors at Charleston, S.C., are of the kind used in propulsion systems for Navy submarines and aircraft carriers.
The purported misbehavior is unrelated to Navy nuclear weapons carried aboard Trident submarines, according to Adm. John Richardson, the director of the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program. He said it came to light Monday when a senior enlisted sailor at the Charleston training site reported the cheating to higher authorities. Richardson said the unidentified sailor “recognized that this was wrong” and chose to report it.
Pressed to say how many sailors were implicated in the investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Richardson said a “ballpark figure” was something in the neighborhood of 12 to 20. But a short time later, another Navy official said the number was approximately 30 but could change as the investigation unfolds. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
Utah: Same-sex union ban protects kids
Utah, fighting to preserve its law prohibiting same-sex marriage, argued that it’s obligated to defend future generations of children whose well-being is threatened by the dissolution of the heterosexual model of marriage.
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes and Gov. Gary Herbert, both Republicans, on Tuesday asked the U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver to throw out a ruling by a federal judge in Salt Lake City that the U.S. Constitution guarantees marriage rights to same-sex couples.
Utah has a duty to defend “all of Utah’s children - both now and in future generations,” according to the filing. In its constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, Utah voters “reaffirmed among other things their firm belief - also supported by sound social science - that moms and dads are different, not interchangeable, and that the diversity of having both a mom and a dad is the ideal parenting environment.”
Gay marriage is legal in 17 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in June to overturn part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and leave standing an order ending California’s ban on same-sex marriage. The court didn’t say whether state laws should be struck down, leaving lower courts to grapple with that issue.
Firms give $750 million for schools’ Net
ADELPHI, Md. - President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced $750 million in commitments from U.S. companies to begin wiring more classrooms with high-speed Internet.
Apple is pledging $100 million in iPads, computers and other tools. AT&T and Sprint are contributing free Internet service through their wireless networks. Verizon is pitching in up to $100 million in cash and in-kind contributions. And Microsoft is making its Windows software available at discounted prices and offering 12 million free copies of Microsoft Office software.
“In a country where we expect free Wi-Fi with our coffee, we should definitely demand it in our schools,” Obama said at a middle school in Adelphi, Md.
Beyond the promise of millions in donated hardware and software, the Federal Communications Commission also is setting aside $2 billion from service fees to connect 15,000 schools and 20 million students to high-speed Internet over two years.
GIs tied to Guard-recruiting kickbacks
WASHINGTON - Hundreds of soldiers and others are under criminal investigation in what the military describes as a widespread scheme to take fraudulent payments and kickbacks from a National Guard recruiting program. The fraud cost the U.S. at least $29 million and possibly tens of millions dollars more, officials said Tuesday.
Two Army generals revealed to a Senate panel on Tuesday new details of an ongoing investigation into a recruiting program put in place in 2005 to boost flagging enlistment during a crucial period of the Iraq war.
As many as 200 officers, including two generals, are suspected of participating in schemes to take advantage of a referral program that paid out cash bonuses ranging from $2,000 to $7,500 per recruit. Military recruiters purportedly coerced recruiting assistants eligible for the payments into splitting their bonuses.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 02/05/2014