Scout official resigns over lesbian’s ouster

Scout official resigns over lesbian’s ouster

bridgeport, ohio

A board member for an Ohio regional Boy Scouts group who resigned to protest the removal of a lesbian den mother said he wants the national organization to review its ban on gays.

The Boy Scouts of America’s policy of not allowing gays within its ranks has been debated for more than a decade since being upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. It is facing renewed questioning in eastern Ohio after Jennifer Tyrrell, the mother of a 7-year-old Scout, was thrown out in April.

David Sims resigned from the Ohio River Valley Council’s board Friday after learning of Tyrrell’s story.

Sims achieved Scouting’s highest honor, Eagle Scout, as did his father and grandfather. He said he understands that the ban is legal but thinks it’s time to re-examine the policy.

Found lottery ticket proves unlucky

SEARCY, Ark.

An Arkansas woman who cashed a $1 million lottery ticket may have to give up the winnings to a woman who threw away the ticket after she bought it, according to a judge’s ruling Tuesday.

The judge decided that Sharon Duncan was entitled to the prize money, not Sharon Jones, who claimed the prize money after she took the ticket from a trash can of discarded lottery tickets at a convenience store in Beebe, a city about 40 miles northeast of Little Rock.

Jones’ attorney, James Simpson, said he plans to appeal. Jones had testified that she already spent some of the money on a new truck and cash gifts to her children.

Edwards jurors see video of home

GREENSBORO, N.C.

Jurors for the John Edwards trial saw video on Tuesday afternoon of the house outside Chapel Hill where Edwards’ pregnant mistress, Rielle Hunter, lived for several months while hiding from National Enquirer reporters.

Cheri Young, the wife of Edwards’ political aide Andrew Young, made the video while going through the two-story house in the Governor’s Club, a gated community near Chapel Hill, in September 2008.

By then Edwards had suspended his campaign for president, Hunter had given birth to their child and the National Enquirer had photographed the 2008 Democratic presidential contender at a Beverly Hills hotel where his mistress and their child were waiting.

Young, during her third day on the witness stand in a trial projected to last through May, stated that she videotaped the home and some of Hunter’s belongings to document that Hunter had lived in the home. A year earlier, she and her husband had been part of a scheme to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars through their personal account to help support and hide Edwards’ mistress.

Clinton in China

BEIJING

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived today in Beijing, where a tense human-rights showdown awaits over the fate of a blind Chinese lawyer said to be under U.S. protection after escaping from house arrest.

The issue of Chen Guangcheng’s future threatens to overshadow this year’s round of high-level strategic and economic talks between the world’s two biggest economic powers. Those talks begin Thursday.

Publicly, the U.S. and Chinese governments have said nothing about the Chen case. Neither side wants the biggest human-rights issue between the two since Tiananmen Square to damage a working relationship between the world’s top importer and exporter, and between the world’s biggest military and the fastest developing.

Combined dispatches