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| Jury selection began in Texas Monday in the first criminal case to go to trial after a polygamous sect was accused of child abuse last year. In April 2008, as the child-abuse accusations came to light, some 450 children were removed from a ranch operated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). It became the largest child-custody case in US history, and it was largely resolved when the Supreme Court of Texas ruled the following month that the children should be reunited with their parents. But criminal investigations of some members of the group – which seeks to live in a closed society – continued. Now, Raymond Jessop is set to stand trial, charged with sexual assault of a child – an underage girl he allegedly married first. If convicted, he could serve 20 years in prison. Eleven other men have been charged with crimes ranging from failure to pearl jewelry report child abuse to bigamy. "These trials may demonstrate a clash between an asserted right to freedom of religion and the necessity of residents to abide by criminal laws," says Jessica Levinson, adjunct professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. The message of these trials, she says, may be: "If you live in our country, you must abide by our criminal laws. Some activities are not made legal simply because one claims he is exercising his religious freedom." For now, however, the immediate question is whether the judge can seat a proper jury in the remote, west Texas town of Eldorado. The court needs to find 14 people in a county of 2,800 who can set aside what they heard about the sect last year in a deluge of media reports. "It's extremely unlikely that we'll have anyone who will say they have not heard about this trial," state District Judge Barbara Walther said at a biwa pearl pretrial hearing, according to the Associated Press. It's not inconceivable that the location of the trial may be shifted. "While judges rarely grant change-of-venue requests, if they cannot find an appropriate jury pool in Eldorado, such a request may be granted," Ms. Levinson says. The accusations against the sect surfaced when a woman in Colorado allegedly called a Texas domestic-abuse hot line in March 2008, feigning to be a teenage girl with a far older husband at the ranch who beat and raped her. Texas officials moved in quickly, taking more than 400 children out of the compound where they lived. The officials also removed hundreds of boxes of photos and documents to build their case. Texas law enforcement has acknowledged that the hot-line information was false, but the caller has not been charged, according to the Associated Press. The state had moved to protect so many children out of concern that the ranch overall had allowed illicit behavior. But the Texas high court reversed the broad action of state officials. Now, judicial proceedings are focused on Mr. Jessop, and his trial will be closely watched, say Levinson and other legal observers. "There is a lot of attention on this trial, and for akoya pearl that reason I believe the prosecutors will dot every 'I' and cross every 'T' in this case," Levinson says. The prosecution has listed 59 potential witnesses. Defense attorneys are likely to zero in on the false report that triggered the initial raid and the ruling by the Supreme Court of Texas. Among the many details that potential jurors already know about are those of sect leader Warren Jeffs, who was captured in 2006 and convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape. Revered as a prophet by FLDS, Mr. Jeffs has been accused in Arizona and Utah of arranging underage marriages with sect girls. He is jailed in Arizona awaiting trial on charges related to underage marriages there. | ||
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| A public option in healthcare may be OK with Senate majority leader Harry Reid. But it has yet to pass muster with a more important audience: the full Senate itself. Senator Reid announced Monday that he will send to the Senate floor a healthcare-reform bill that includes the option government-run insurance plan – though states could opt out if they wished. Yet all indications are that the pearl jewelry Nevada Democrat remains just short of the crucial threshold of 60 votes needed to defeat a likely Republican filibuster. Asked flatly on Monday whether he had those votes in hand, which would enable him to shut off debate and move to a final vote, he punted. “We’ve been working on healthcare, as a Democratic Party – and much of the time we had Republicans helping us – since 1948,” said Reid at a press conference. “We’ve made significant progress these past months.” The reality is that a number of different versions of a public option may come up for a vote during full Senate debate on a healthcare reform bill. Under the version backed Monday by Reid, states would have a year following the 2013 phase-in of the new healthcare plan to decide whether to opt out of the public option. That opt-out clause might soften the opposition to the public option among some conservative Democrats, such as Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. But as it stands now, Reid’s version of the public option likely has lost the vote of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) of Maine. Senator Snowe voted to approve the biwa pearl Senate Finance Committee health reform bill, which did not contain a public option. Instead, it contained a provision, suggested by Snowe, that would trigger a public option if private insurance firms did not hit certain cost-containment goals. “I would not be surprised one bit if Reid has to reverse course over the next few days and reintroduce the plan with a ‘Snowe-trigger’ rather than the ‘Reid opt-out,’ ” says Jordan Sekulow, a political analyst and director of international operations at the American Center for Law and Justice. “Neither liberals nor conservatives seem pleased with Reid’s proposal.” Sen. Tom Harkin (D) of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Health committee, has said that there are 52 firm votes in favor of the public option in the Democratic caucus and five or so opposed. On Monday, Senator Harkin issued a statement praising Reid’s inclusion of the public option. “There is strong support among Senate Democrats and around the country to improve access and affordability and an effective public option can achieve,” said Harkin. Still, 52 Democratic votes will not get a healthcare bill through the full Senate. Reid has to convince all Democrats (and the Senate’s two independents) to vote as one if he is to push through a bill with no GOP votes. That would only be to shut off debate, however. It is possible that some Democrats would vote to end talking and move to a akoya pearl final showdown – and then vote against the legislation itself. “While all the rumblings indicate that Reid is still short two to three votes, the majority leader is betting that moderate Senate Democrats who oppose this version of the public option will still vote to invoke cloture and then later vote against the Senate bill,” says Mr. Sekulow of the ACLJ in an e-mail . | ||
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| CAIRO – In the desert east of the city, off the highway to the Suez Canal, is the new 260-acre campus of the 90-year-old American University in Cairo (AUC). It opened last fall at a price tag of more than $400 million, a quarter coming from USAID. University administrators and developers hope New Cairo will one day be home to some 2 million people. It’s a model of Cairo’s present and future urbanism, a profitable solution to congestion and overcrowding in one of the world’s largest and most polluted cities. Faculty and administrators are split on the pearl jewelry changes. “We should not immediately approve of this kind of transformation without asking about the wider context of privatization and how a university relates to society,” says Hanan Sebea, an assistant professor of anthropology. In the face of Cairo’s crowded infrastructure, the development answers for years have looked to the possibilities of building elsewhere. AUC is keeping part of biwa pearl its old, eight-acre campus on Tahrir Square. “Central Cairo is overloaded with lots of pressures that are beyond the capabilities of its infrastructure,” says Ashraf Salloum, the university architect who oversaw the large design team behind the campus. “If we want to really help the development of the city, we need to give the city space to breathe.” AUC will be an “anchor for development” in this stretch of desert, he says. But are new, world-class facilities enough, even at the loss of a akoya pearl central urban site? “Space is very symbolic, but it’s not only about infrastructure,” Ms. Sebea says. “Downtown, presence is very important, and it goes beyond fieldwork. It’s accessibility and the interest of the university to interact with society.” | ||
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| The pilots on last week's wayward Northwest Airlines flight have given their official story: They were looking at laptop computers and discussing their employer's work-schedule system. Case closed? Hardly. Not when Flight 188 flew past its Minneapolis destination by 150 miles. Not when traffic controllers had tried numerous times to reach the pearl jewelry pilots, in vain. But at least the flight crew's explanation, reported by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Monday, provides a scrap of information on a mystery that has baffled the public and aviation experts since the incident occurred last Wednesday night. The flight's captain, Timothy Cheney, and first officer, Richard Cole, told investigators that they both had their laptops out while the first officer, who had more experience with scheduling, instructed the captain on monthly flight-crew scheduling – something that has been evolving due to a recent merger of Northwest with Delta. The pilots did not realize their mistake until contacted by a flight attendant, the NTSB said. The board's investigation is continuing. It's possible that this incident will amplify calls for commercial airline flights to have cockpit voice recorders that capture at least two hours of audio – so more independent information is available on what happens in such incidents. Many flights already do that, but the Airbus A-320 plane on last week's Minneapolis flight had an older voice recorder that leaves investigators with only a 30-minute tape. Flight 188 overshot by so much that the final 30 minutes of the flight includes dialogue taped after the flight crew was correcting course. "We need to move to the modern standard of having two hours" of flight time recorded, says David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, which represents airline passengers on issues of safety and service. His organization and others focused on air safety also support the use of video cameras to capture cockpit activities during flights. Pilots unions, however, have traditionally resisted moves that open their workplace to greater scrutiny. Will the Minneapolis overshoot, which ended safely for the biwa pearl 144 passengers on board, bring tighter oversight of flight crews? While it's too soon to know, the incident has garnered national attention. One of the pilots, Mr. Cole, told reporters over the weekend that the flight crew's actions were "innocuous" and didn't threaten passenger safety. On one level, that may be true. The pilots, who had earlier said they were arguing over airline policy, told investigators they were not asleep, fatigued, or arguing. But commercial pilots, with the safety of many people in their hands, aren't supposed to lose contact with traffic controllers for an extended period of time, as this crew did for more than an hour. And Northwest has a policy against using laptops in the cockpit. "It strains credulity that they were so busy on their laptops and talking that they didn't pay attention to their primary duties," Mr. Stempler says. "It's inexcusable," former NTSB Chairman Jim Hall told AP. "I feel sorry for the individuals involved, but this was certainly not an innocuous event. This was a akoya pearl significant breach of aviation safety and aviation security." In addition to radio attempts by air traffic controllers, other pilots in the vicinity tried reaching the plane, and Northwest tried contacting them using a radio text message that chimes. Fighter jets were readied for takeoff to intercept the plane, but did not take off as the crew reestablished radio contact. | ||
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