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NATIONAL
Air Force general calls sex assaults a 'cancer' Pelosi says she backs 49ers Court nixes Facebook ban
WASHINGTON -- Likening sexual assault in the Air Force's ranks to a cancer, the service's top officer resolved Wednesday to tackle the problem by screening personnel more carefully and putting an end to bad behaviors like binge drinking that can lead to misconduct.
But Gen. Mark Welsh, the Air Force chief of staff, underscored the challenge by telling a House oversight committee that the service recorded a disturbing number of reports of sexual assault last year even as it worked to curb misconduct in the wake of a sex scandal at its training headquarters in Texas.
Dozens of young female recruits and airmen at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio were victimized by their instructors who sexually harassed, improperly touched or raped them.
Most difficult, Welsh said, is transforming a culture in which victims are often reluctant to report what happened because of guilt, shame or fear they won't be believed.
WASHINGTON -- For politicians, you gotta go with the people who sent you there.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi says she'll be rooting for San Francisco, the city she has represented in Congress for the past quarter-century, over Baltimore, the city where she was born and raised, when it comes to the Super Bowl.
Pelosi says her late father, as mayor of Baltimore, built Baltimore Memorial Stadium and that she has long been a fan of Baltimore sports teams.
Pelosi puts it this way: "I'm rooting for the 49ers. ... I'm not rooting against Baltimore."
INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indiana law that bans registered sex offenders from using Facebook and other social networking sites that can be accessed by children is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The 7th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Chicago overturned a federal judge's decision upholding the law, saying the state was justified in trying to protect children but that the "blanket ban" went too far.
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