Flow of children crossing border slows
WASHINGTON -- The flood of children crossing the Mexican border illegally and without their parents has slowed down in recent weeks, two senior Obama administration officials said Friday.
Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas have found fewer than 500 children crossing the border illegally this week, the officials said. Last month, agents arrested as many as 2,000 child aliens per week.
The Obama administration has been struggling to deal with a flood of more than 57,000 children traveling alone since Oct. 1.
The volume of child aliens has significantly taxed resources at the Homeland Security and Health and Human Services departments in recent months and prompted President Barack Obama to ask Congress to approve an emergency $3.7 billion spending bill to deal with the situation he has called an "urgent humanitarian crisis."
School settles sex suit for $1.3 million
STORRS, Conn. -- The University of Connecticut will pay $1.3 million to settle a lawsuit by five women who alleged the school did not take seriously their claims of sexual assaults on campus.
The bulk of the settlement, $900,000, will go to Silvana Moccia, a former university ice hockey player who alleged she was kicked off the team after reporting she had been raped by a male hockey player in August 2011.
The other four women will receive payments ranging from $25,000 to $125,000.
University officials adamantly denied that they have been indifferent to reports of assaults and did not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement. They said the legal fight would be costly and bad for the school's image.
Sexual violence investigations are pending at nearly 70 postsecondary institutions, whose actions, policies and procedures are being questioned.
Iowa court rejects blacks' job-bias suit
IOWA CITY, Iowa -- The Iowa Supreme Court rejected a class-action lawsuit Friday that alleged the Iowa executive branch discriminated against black job applicants, even while finding that blacks face subtle biases that make it harder to land employment.
In agreeing with a lower court decision to dismiss the case, the justices said the class of 5,000 black employees and job applicants failed to prove they suffered systemic discrimination because they did not show that specific hiring practices disadvantaged them.
But all seven recognized the impact of implicit bias, in which individuals subconsciously favor whites over blacks. Meanwhile, three justices said they were concerned that blacks may have been disadvantaged by subjective resume-screening processes that left them less likely to be granted interviews at some agencies.
The plaintiffs argued that state managers had allowed biases to creep into decisions on which candidates to interview and hire.
Police to investigate chokehold death
NEW YORK -- The New York Police Department has launched an internal investigation into the death of a 43-year-old man whose final moments were captured in a video in which he can be heard gasping "I can't breathe" over and over again after an officer is seen placing him in a chokehold, officials said.
The man, Eric Garner, died Thursday afternoon as plainclothes officers tried to take him into custody on a Staten Island street on charges of selling cigarettes, according to an account the police have released. A video, posted on the website of The New York Daily News, shows an argument of mounting intensity as Garner quarrels with a plainclothes officer about whether he would be arrested or not.
Because of the danger they can pose, chokeholds are forbidden by the Patrol Guide, a voluminous book that contains rules for officers.
A Section on 07/19/2014