VA nomination on track


VA nomination on track

RALEIGH, N.C. — Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina has agreed to allow the nomination of injured Iraq veteran Tammy Duckworth to proceed for a top post in the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“I will support her,” Burr told a group of editors and reporters Wednesday at The News & Observer, a McClatchy newspaper.

Burr, the ranking Republican on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, held up Duckworth’s nomination last week because he had questions about a confidential financial questionnaire she had filled out.

The move angered some veterans groups because Duckworth is a National Guard major who lost both her legs when the helicopter she was piloting was attacked in Iraq.

President Barack Obama nominated her to be an assistant secretary of veterans affairs. She ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2006 and is now the head of veterans affairs for the state of Illinois.

Baghdad bombing kills 7

BAGHDAD — A bomb left in a plastic bag exploded Wednesday near Baghdad’s most important Shiite shrine, killing seven people and wounding 23, police said.

The blast occurred in the same neighborhood where an infant was rescued from a burning car the day before after an explosion killed his mother. The man who rescued the infant said the baby boy was handed over Wednesday to the boy’s uncle.

Wednesday’s attack was part of a wave of violence that hit Iraq this week, primarily in Shiite areas of Baghdad.

The uptick coincided with a five-hour visit Tuesday by President Barack Obama, who told U.S. troops that “there is still a lot of work to do” in Iraq.

Burials begin in Italy

L’AQUILA, Italy — Bells tolled in hilltowns across central Italy on Wednesday as the first funerals got under way for victims of the country’s devastating earthquake. The Vatican granted a dispensation so a funeral Mass for most of the 272 dead could be celebrated on Good Friday.

As more bodies were pulled from the rubble, some of the 28,000 homeless spent another day lining up for food and water at some of the 20 tent camps that have sprouted up around this quake-devastated city.

Pope Benedict XVI said he would visit the area soon.

Rescue efforts continued for the 15 people still missing.

Congress and gay marriage

WASHINGTON — The next battleground over gay marriage could be the U.S. Capitol.

A preliminary vote by the District of Columbia city council to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere puts the issue on a path to Congress, which has final say over D.C.’s laws. That may force lawmakers to take up the politically dicey debate after years of letting it play out in the states.

The council’s unanimous vote Tuesday came the same day Vermont became the fourth state to legalize gay marriage and the first to do so with a legislature’s vote.

Court rulings led to same-sex marriages in the three other states where it’s legal: Connecticut, Massachusetts and Iowa.

Posthumous citizenship

WASHINGTON — New York’s senators say they plan to ask Congress to grant citizenship posthumously to victims of Friday’s shooting in Binghamton, N.Y.

Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand say that under legislation they are proposing, the honorary citizenship would be backdated so the victims would be considered citizens at the time of death.

They note in a statement that many of the 13 victims were striving to become citizens and studying English when they were killed by the gunman.

Judge OKs apartheid trials

NEW YORK — A New York judge says lawsuits by apartheid victims accusing automakers and IBM of supporting racial segregation in South Africa can go to trial.

Judge Shira Scheindlin has dismissed defense arguments that allowing the lawsuits might affect relations between the United States and South Africa.

Wednesday’s ruling comes in federal cases from 2002 and 2003 on behalf of victims of apartheid in the 1970s and ’80s.

The defendants are IBM Corp., German automaker Daimler AG, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and Rheinmetall Group AG, Swiss parent of an armaments maker.

Plaintiffs allege the automakers supplied military vehicles that let securities forces suppress black South Africans. IBM is accused of providing equipment used to track dissidents.

Defense lawyers say corporations shouldn’t be penalized because they were encouraged to do business in South Africa during apartheid.

Combined dispatches

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