LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
President Barack Obama,
speaking about how the shooting in Florida of a 17-year-old black youth
named Trayvon Martin had affected him Article, 1AJury right, bereft 2 say of spying case
TRENTON, N.J. - The parents of a Rutgers student who committed suicide days after his roommate used a webcam to see him kissing another man said Friday that a jury got it right last week by convicting their son’s roommate of hate crimes and other offenses.
“They reached their decision based on the facts shown by the evidence,” Tyler Clementi’s father, Joseph Clementi, said in a written statement.
Meanwhile, the other man in the live-streaming video, identified in court only by the initials M.B., said Dharun Ravi deserves prison time for his actions.
“If the judge simply gave him probation, he would feel that this case escaped justice,” Richard Pompelio, a victims’ rights lawyer representing M.B., told The Record of Bergen County.
The jury found that Ravi knowingly and purposefully intimidated Clementi because of his sexual orientation and that Clementi believed he was being targeted out of bias.
Ravi could face up to 10 years in prison when he’s sentenced May 21.
5 deaths possible
murder-suicide
SAN FRANCISCO - The San Francisco medical examiner Friday wheeled out the bodies of five people found dead inside a home in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in what police said was a possible murder-suicide.
A woman with access to the house discovered three of the bodies and called police shortly before 8 a.m., according to police spokesman Cmdr.
Lyn Tomioka.
When officers arrived, they found five dead adults: three women and two men. Tomioka said at least four of the victims were related, and investigators were looking into the identity of the fifth.
At least two of the victims were shot, but investigators were still looking into the cause of death for the others, Tomioka said.
The spokesman stopped short of confirming it was a murder-suicide but said no suspects were being sought outside the home.
Two to end hold on Palestinian aid
WASHINGTON - The Palestinians will receive some of the $147 million in U.S. developmental aid that has been on hold for six months.
Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, said Friday that she was ending her opposition to allowing the money to flow, arguing that peace and stability were critical in the Palestinian territories amid the overall unrest in the Middle East. A spokesman for Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, RFla., chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said she would send a letter to the Obama administration indicating that she was lifting her hold on a part of the aid.
Ros-Lehtinen had said earlier this week that some of the projects “are aimed at addressing humanitarian concerns - funding for water programs, health, food, and support for USAID programming. Congress and the administration can find common ground on these.
However, there are others that Congress finds difficult to justify as advancing U.S.
national security interests or in assisting our ally and friend Israel.”
Last summer, Granger and Ros-Lehtinen had placed a hold on the funds in response to the Palestinians’ push for statehood at the United Nations.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 03/24/2012