APS district gives benefits to same-sex partner
(AP) - The Albuquerque Public School District, which does not provide benefits to same-sex domestic partners of employees, has extended benefits to the partner of one gay employee because of state law.
The case involves special education teacher P.J. Sedillo and his partner of 12 years, Tony Ross. The two got married in Canada in October.
New Mexico law recognizes marriages of people who have a legal marriage certificate from any other city, state or country.
A school district directive requires the district to provide benefits to legally married spouses of employees.
The district's chief of staff, Tom Garrity, said the district is obligated to acknowledge legal marriage certificates.
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Government calls obesity an American epidemic
WASHINGTON (AP) - Americans are sitting around and eating themselves to death, with obesity closing in on tobacco as the nation's No. 1 underlying preventable killer.
The government is offering constructive, even lighthearted, advice to fight what it calls an epidemic of expanding waistlines. Americans will be told in a new ad campaign they can lose midsection "love handles" and double chins one step at a time if they eat less and exercise more.
Bush will answer Sept. 11 investigators' questions
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush will answer privately all questions raised by a federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the White House said Tuesday, softening its insistence that Bush's testimony be limited to an hour.
"Nobody's watching the clock," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.
Still, he said an hour was "a reasonable period of time to set aside for a sitting president of the United States." The White House and the commission are working on a date for the meeting with Bush. The commission urged Bush to meet with all of its members, not just the chairman and vice chairman.
The shift came after presumed Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry accused Bush of stonewalling investigations of the terrorist attacks and U.S. intelligence failures.
Former weapons inspector likens war to witch hunt
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) - Former U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix on Tuesday likened the runup to the war in Iraq to a witch hunt, and argued that the subsequent failure to find weapons of mass destruction would dent the public's faith in the U.S. and British governments.
"The governments were like the witch hunters of past centuries. They were so convinced that there were witches in Iraq that every black cat became proof of it," Blix said in Barcelona where he was honored by the United Nations Association of Spain.
"The tendency was to view any evidence in a more serious light than was the reality. It's clear that the Sept. 11 attack on the United States drove the analysis," he added.
The White House dismissed the criticism.
"Maybe Mr. Blix felt we should trust in the good intentions of Saddam Hussein," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "In a post-Sept. 11 world, the president understood we could not afford to trust in the good intentions of a madman who continued to defy the international community."
