House vote to delay health reform
WASHINGTON – The Republican-led House voted on Wednesday to delay core provisions of President Barack Obama’s health-care reform law, emboldened by the administration’s concession that requiring companies to provide coverage for their workers next year may be too complicated.
After a day of heated rhetoric, the House voted largely along party lines, 264-161, to delay by one year the so-called employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act. It voted 251-174 to extend a similar grace period to virtually all Americans who will be required to obtain coverage beginning Jan. 1, the linchpin of the law.
The dual political-show votes marked the 38th time the GOP majority has tried to eliminate, defund or scale back the unpopular law since Republicans took control of the House in January 2011. The House legislation stands no chance in the Democratic-run Senate.
The goal of the health care law is to provide coverage to nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance and lower skyrocketing costs. But in the three years since Obama signed his signature law, the public remains highly skeptical and the administration’s abrupt decision earlier this month to delay the employer provision only fueled more doubts.
Study: Police recording license plates by millions
WASHINGTON – You can drive, but you can’t hide.
A rapidly growing network of police cameras is capturing, storing and sharing data on license plates, making it possible to stitch together people’s movements whether they are stuck in a commute, making tracks to the beach or up to no good.
For the first time, the number of license tag captures has reached the millions, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union based on information from hundreds of law enforcement agencies. Departments keep the records for weeks or years, sometimes indefinitely, saying they can be crucial in tracking suspicious cars, aiding drug busts, finding abducted children and more.
Attached to police cars, bridges or buildings – and sometimes merely as an app on a police officer’s smartphone – scanners capture images of passing or parked vehicles and pinpoint their locations, uploading that information into police databases..
Over time, it’s unlikely many vehicles in a covered area escape notice. And with some of the information going into regional databases encompassing multiple jurisdictions, it’s becoming easier to build a record of where someone has been and when, over a large area.
Not guilty plea in Ohio captivity case
CLEVELAND – A man accused of holding three women captive for a decade was scolded repeatedly by a judge to raise his head and open his eyes in a brief court appearance where he pleaded not guilty Wednesday to nearly 1,000 counts of kidnap, rape and other crimes.
For the most part, Ariel Castro, 53, responded to the judge’s questions with one-word answers as he faced charges that included 512 counts of kidnapping and 446 counts of rape.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Pamela Barker repeatedly told him to raise his head and keep his eyes open so “I make sure that you are listening to me and understanding what I’m saying, OK?”
“I’m trying,” said Castro, who in past court appearances had kept his head down and his chin tucked on his chest.
One of his attorneys, Craig Weintraub, declined later to discuss Castro’s courtroom demeanor. “I’m not going to comment on that,” he said.
Rolling Stone cover prompts anger, questions
NEW YORK – Sultry eyes burn into the camera lens from behind tousled curls. A scruff of sexy beard and loose T-shirt are bathed in soft, yellow light.
The close-up of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover of Rolling Stone to hit shelves Friday looks more like a young Bob Dylan or Jim Morrison than the 19-year-old who pleaded not guilty a little more than a week ago in the Boston Marathon bombing, his arm in a cast and his face swollen in court.
Has the magazine, with its roundly condemned cover, offered the world its first rock star of an alleged Islamic terrorist?
The same image of Tsarnaev was widely circulated and used by newspapers and magazines before, but in this context it took on new criticism and accusations that Rolling Stone turned the bombing defendant into something more appealing.
“I can’t think of another instance in which one has glamorized the image of an alleged terrorist. This is the image of a rock star. This is the image of someone who is admired, of someone who has a fan base, of someone we are critiquing as art,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Associated Press
