Florida Sentinel Bulletin

President Barack Obama declared Monday night that the U.S. military action in Libya had “stopped (Moammar) Gadhafi’s deadly advance,” fulfilling what he said was a U.S. responsibility not to “turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries.”

“It may not happen overnight, as a badly weakened Gadhafi tries desperately to hang on to power,” the president said. “But it should be clear to those around Gadhafi and to every Libyan that history is not on Gadhafi’s side.”

In a nationally televised address from the National Defense University in Washington, Obama sought to convince a skeptical Congress and a doubting nation that he was doing the right thing by intervening militarily in a third Muslim nation. He did that by casting the conflict as a moral response to oppression by Libya’s leader, whom he called “a tyrant.”

In leading a Western coalition “to stop the killing,” Obama said, the U.S. prevented “a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”

The administration has struggled to make clear what it hopes to achieve in Libya, where U.S. forces were sent March 19 while Obama was out of the country on a South American tour.

In a Gallup poll released last week, 47 percent of respondents said they backed the campaign, the lowest level of support ever recorded in a poll taken at the beginning of a U.S. military action.

The campaign has also run into stiff resistance from members of both parties in Congress, who have complained that Obama did not consult them ahead of time. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, accused Obama of having committed “an impeachable offense.”

Obama acknowledged that “Americans continue to have questions about our efforts in Libya.” To allay those concerns, he stressed that enforcing reform in Libya “will be a task for the international community and, more importantly, a task for the Libyan people themselves.”

The U.S. role will be “limited,” he said, promising that he would not send ground troops into the country.

Obama said the U.S. was just one part of a broad international coalition that had no choice but to act after Gadhafi rejected its ultimatum to “stop his campaign of killing or face the consequences.”

The military action will be turned over to NATO leadership Wednesday, he said, and “the United States will play a supporting role” — mainly intelligence, logistical support and search-and-rescue operations.

“Because of this transition to a broader, NATO-based coalition, the risk and cost of this operation to our military and to American taxpayers will be reduced significantly,” he said.
Libya not a template, administration says.

Before the speech, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Denis McDonough, told reporters that Americans should not be worried that the intervention in Libya could open the door to further U.S. action in the Muslim world, where U.S. forces are already on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“It’s not an international thing,” McDonough said, insisting, like Obama, that the Libyan action was unique.

“We don’t get very hung up on this question of precedent, because we don’t make decisions about questions like intervention based on consistency or precedent. We base them on how we can best advance our interests in the region,” he said.

Obama echoed that assessment, saying the U.S. was simply playing its “unique role as an anchor of global security and advocate for human freedom.”

“It is true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs,” he said. But “that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what’s right. In this particular country — Libya — at this particular moment, we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale.

“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and, more profoundly, our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are.”

No Targeting Of Gadhafi
But Obama said that was as far as the U.S. was willing to go, cautioning that “broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.”

“If we tried to overthrow Gadhafi by force, our coalition would splinter,” he predicted. “We would likely have to put U.S. troops on the ground or risk killing many civilians from the air.

“To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq,” he said — a road that took eight years to travel. “That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.”

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., criticized Obama for promising Gadhafi that he wouldn’t be overthrown by force, saying in an interview on CNN that “Gadhafi must have been somewhat comforted by that.”

Other members of Congress also had reservations.

“Tonight’s speech left many questions unanswered,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, a member of the Armed Services Committee, who said Obama “has yet to clearly define the scope of our mission, the metrics for success and our ultimate goal.”

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, also complained that Obama gave “few new answers.”

“Nine days into this military intervention, Americans still have no answer to the fundamental question: What does success in Libya look like?” Boehner said.

Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he, too, “had some concerns with the level of communication between the administration, Congress and the American people.” But he welcomed Obama’s explanation of his “rationale for leading an international effort to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Libya.”

“While the administration could have done a better job of working with Congress in the days prior to taking action, it is clear that U.S. leadership prevented this humanitarian crisis from getting worse and saved thousands of lives,” Smith said. “As a nation, that is something we should be proud of.”

A New York City child welfare supervisor charged in connection with the death of a starved and beaten 4-year-old girl says she told her superiors the caseworker couldn’t handle his workload.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Chereece Bell says she had asked her bosses to transfer caseworker Damon Adams out of her Brooklyn unit three months before Marchella Brett-Pierce died. Adams is also charged in connection with the girl’s September death.

Bell and Adams each face charges of criminally negligent homicide, marking the first time in New York that welfare workers have been charged in connection with the death of a child.

Bell says she and her bosses also discussed taking Adams‘ cases away from him but that didn’t happen.

Adams’ lawyer tells the Journal he can’t confirm that.

The Administration for Children’s Services workers pleaded not guilty last week to criminally negligent homicide and other charges.

The Journal says the agency declined to comment. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said last week he had “100 percent confidence” in the city’s child welfare commissioner.

The mother of the 4-year-old child, who authorities said was starved, beaten and tied to her bed, was indicted last year on murder and other charges. Marchella’s grandmother was indicted last week along with the welfare workers. She was charged with manslaughter.

Marchella weighed just 18 pounds when she died Sept. 2. The child was born with underdeveloped lungs, had serious trouble breathing and had a breathing tube in her throat, authorities said. She had been hospitalized in the months before her death.

ACS last year admitted failures in the case, and described Marchella’s home care as “grossly inadequate” in a report following her death last year. The caseworker and worker are no longer employed there.

If convicted, Adams faces up to seven years in prison and Bell faces up to four years.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier is being discharged from a hospital in the country’s capital.

Two SUVs and a police escort were waiting outside the hospital Tuesday to take the ex-strongman known as “Baby Doc” home. Family friend Enzo Alcindor says Duvalier is heading to the villa where he is under house arrest.

Alcindor says he does not have any information about Duvalier’s health.

Duvalier was admitted to the hospital Wednesday night after complaining of chest pains.

The 59-year-old former dictator returned to Haiti in January after 25 years in exile. He is now under investigation on a long list of charges including corruption and violations of human rights during his rule of the impoverished country.

Pictured: Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s supporters help him negotiate an uneven path during a visit to his mother’s hometown and grave site in Leogane, Haiti.

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA  — Nelson Mandela’s foundation is reaching out to the young, networked and socially conscious, bringing teens to a news conference Monday to announce it was launching a Twitter account.

Thando Sithebe, a 17-year-old Soweto high school student, called Mandela a “father to everyone” and said he would use his own Twitter and Facebook accounts — and MXit and The Grid as well — to urge his friends to mark Mandela Day, an international day devoted to public service that falls on Mandela’s July 18 birthday.

Mandela, who turns 93 this year, has largely retired from public life.

The Nobel peace laureate spent 27 years in prison for fighting apartheid in South Africa. He became South Africa’s first black president in 1994 and is celebrated for his efforts to overcome racial divisions that have lingered since the end of white rule.

His foundation oversees development and aid work and houses documents by and about Mandela. It is known on Twitter as CentreOfMemory — spokesman Sello Hatang said names more directly associated with Mandela had already been taken by other organizations.

The foundation also has a Facebook page under its full name, the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Earlier this month, Google gave the foundation $1.25 million it will use to scan more than 10,000 of Mandela’s personal records. The database will be accessible for free to any Internet user.

While foundation officials have embraced the Internet as a way to spread Mandela’s message, they have reason to be wary of social network platforms. Moments before going live on Twitter and Facebook during Monday’s news conference, organizers said they had to take down nude photos posted by a prankster.

And Hatang referred ruefully to false rumors of Mandela’s death spread on Twitter earlier this year.

“We hope that it will be used for good,” Hatang said as he launched the foundation’s Twitter account.

The young people gathered for the launch at the foundation’s Johannesburg offices appeared ready to take up the challenge Mandela set out when he laid the foundation for Mandela Day on his 90th birthday.

The theme of a London concert in his honor that year was “it’s in our hands.” Achmat Dangor, chief executive of the Mandela Foundation, recalled Mandela doing some editing when he made remarks that day.

“He said, ‘It’s in YOUR hands,'” Dangor said Monday. “He then made a pointed call on the next generation of leaders to take responsibility.”

Sithebe, the 17-year-old who spoke at the Twitter launch, offered a list of suggestions for marking Mandela Day, from spending time with family to feeding the hungry.

Fellow 17-year-old Cassandra Collins said she was determined to do something to make the world better every day.

“We as a nation need to start with ourselves and change ourselves before we can change the world,” she said.

WASHINGTON — Christine Kwapnoski hasn’t done too badly in nearly 25 years in the Wal-Mart family, making more than $60,000 a year in a job she enjoys most days.

But Kwapnoski says she faced obstacles at Wal-Mart-owned Sam’s Club stores in both Missouri and California: Men making more than women and getting promoted faster.

She never heard a supervisor tell a man, as she says one told her, to “doll up” or “blow the cobwebs off” her make-up.

Once she got over the fear that she might be fired, she joined what has turned into the largest job discrimination lawsuit ever.

The 46-year-old single mother of two is one of the named plaintiffs in a suit that will be argued at the Supreme Court on Tuesday. At stake is whether the suit can go forward as a class action that could involve 500,000 to 1.6 million women, according to varying estimates, and potentially could cost the world’s largest retailer billions of dollars.

But the case’s potential importance goes well beyond the Wal-Mart dispute, as evidenced by more than two dozen briefs filed by business interests on Wal-Mart’s side, and civil rights, consumer and union groups on the other.

The question is crucial to the viability of discrimination claims, which become powerful vehicles to force change when they are presented together, instead of individually. Class actions increase pressure on businesses to settle suits because of the cost of defending them and the potential for very large judgments.

Columbia University law professor John Coffee said that the high court could bring a virtual end to employment discrimination class actions filed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, depending on how it decides the Wal-Mart case.

“Litigation brought by individuals under Title VII is just too costly,” Coffee said. “It’s either class action or nothing.”

Illustrating the value of class actions, Brad Seligman, the California-based lawyer who conceived of and filed the suit 10 years ago, said the average salary for a woman at Wal-Mart was $13,000, about $1,100 less than the average for a man, when the case began. “That’s hugely significant if you’re making $13,000 a year, but not enough to hire a lawyer and bring a case.”

The company has fought the suit every step of the way, Seligman said, because it is the “biggest litigation threat Wal-Mart has ever faced.”
A trial judge and the federal appeals court in San Francisco, over a fierce dissent, said the suit could go forward.

But Wal-Mart wants the high court to stop the suit in its tracks. The company argues it includes too many women with too many different positions in its 3,400 stores across the country. Wal-Mart says its policies prohibit discrimination and that most management decisions are made at the store and regional levels, not at its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters.

Theodore J. Boutrous, Wal-Mart’s California-based lawyer, said there is no evidence that women are poorly treated at Wal-Mart. “The evidence is the contrary of that,” Boutrous said.

The company is not conceding that any woman has faced discrimination, but says that if any allegations are proven, they are isolated. “People will make errors,” said Gisel Ruiz, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president for people, as the company calls its human resources unit. “People are people.”

Ruiz paints a very different picture of the opportunities offered women at Wal-Mart. She joined the company straight from college in 1992. “In less than four years, I went from an assistant manager trainee to running my own store,” she said. “I’m one of thousands of women who have had a positive experience at Wal-Mart.”

Kwapnoski, who works at the Sam’s Club in Concord, Calif., is one of two women who continue to work at Wal-Mart while playing a prominent role in the suit.

The other is Betty Dukes, a greeter at the Wal-Mart in Pittsburg, Calif.

“It’s very hard for anyone to understand how difficult that is and what courage that is,” Seligman said of Kwapnoski and Dukes. “They’re Public Enemy No. 1 at Wal-Mart and they are known for their involvement in this lawsuit. Nevertheless, they get and up and go to work every day.”

Kwapnoski didn’t want to discuss any issues she faces at work as a result of the suit.

She said she has seen some changes at Wal-Mart since the suit was filed in 2001. The company now posts all its openings electronically. “It does give people a better idea of what’s out there, but they still can be very easily passed over.” she said. “But before you didn’t even know the position was open.”

The suit, citing what are now dated figures from 2001, contends that women are grossly underrepresented among managers, holding just 14 percent of store manager positions compared with more than 80 percent of lower-ranking supervisory jobs that are paid by the hour. Wal-Mart responds that women in its retail stores made up two-thirds of all employees and two-thirds of all managers in 2001.

Kwapnoski said she and a lot of women were promoted into management just after the suit was filed, although she has had only a couple of pay increases in the nine years since. She is the assistant manager in her store’s groceries and produce sections.

Now, she said, promotions are back to the way they were before, favoring men over women.

She said she’s hoping the long-running court fight will force Wal-Mart to recognize that, stories like Ruiz’s aside, women are not valued as much as men are and that her bosses will begin to “make sure that good men and good women are being promoted, not just men.”

Pictured: In this Sept. 24, 2003 photo, Betty Dukes, right, lead plaintiff in a potential class-action suit against Wal-Mart, poses with fellow a plaintiff shortly before a hearing in San Francisco.

MORENO VALLEY, CA — Authorities have arrested another suspect in the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in a Riverside County, Calif., park bathroom.

County sheriff’s Cpl. Courtney Donowho says 19-year-old Michael Sykes of Moreno Valley was arrested Monday morning but she has no other details.

Sykes is the eighth person arrested in connection with the March 10 attack on the girl at Victoriano Park in Moreno Valley.

Six boys, all over 14, were arrested shortly after the rape. Their names have not been released because they are minors but authorities have said they are gang members.

An older girl who knew the victim also was arrested. Authorities have said they believe she lured the girl into the bathroom so the boys could attack her.

GEORGIA — Anaiah Rucker pushed her little sister out of the path of a vehicle that was about to hit her 5-year-old sister Camry as they crossed the street headed to the school bus stop last month in Madison, Georgia.

The mother of the girls, Andrea Taylor watched from the porch screaming as her nine-year-old took the hit, which resulted in Anaiah losing a leg and a kidney.

However, Anaiah say she doesn’t deserve to be called a hero.

She said her sister “was too young to be hit like this, and if she got hit she wouldn’t hardly be alive. She would be probably gone forever.”

The rainy conditions caused the girls to cover their faces and as a result they did not see the truck headed towards them. The driver was not charged.

Bus driver Loretta Berryman instantly pulled over to perform CPR on young Anaiah saving her life.

LONDON — A British judge sentenced a notorious serial rapist to at least 27 years in prison Friday for a spate of attacks on elderly people that lasted almost two decades.

Delroy Grant — dubbed the “Night Stalker” — was convicted of attacks on 18 elderly men and women between 1992 and 2009 following a lengthy investigation. Police say the number of Grant’s victims is thought to be substantially more than that.

Judge Peter Rook said he considered giving Grant a life sentence — meaning he could never be released — and noted the crimes were so serious they were not covered by normal sentencing guidelines.

“Your offending is in a league of its own,” he said at Woolwich Crown Court after hearing statements from Grant’s victims and their families.

The attacker broke into homes, cut phone lines and crept into the bedrooms of his elderly victims during ordeals that lasted for hours. The victims were mostly elderly women; many were blind, deaf or had diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. Some said the masked man woke them up by shining a flashlight in their faces.

KENTUCKY — Campus police at the University of Kentucky are investigating two incidents in which a sign was hung that used a racial slur to refer to President Barack Obama.

Police spokesman Jay Blanton says a professor found the first one on March 15 hanging on a door to the UK School of Law and turned it in.

A law student found another sign Thursday on a bus shelter.

Blanton says campus police could charge whoever posted the signs with third-degree criminal mischief. He says it’s not clear whether anyone from the school is involved, but campus police are investigating because the first sign was on university property.