Boy Scouts leaders make announcement on gay ban

Updated at 1:08 p.m. ET

IRVING, Texas The Boy Scouts of America said Wednesday it needed more time before deciding whether to move away from its divisive policy of excluding gays as scouts or adult leaders. A decision was pushed back to the group's annual meeting in May.

The scouting organization last week said it was considering allowing troops to decide whether to allow gay membership. It would be the latest step in the national debate over gay rights in the U.S., where some states allow gay marriage and the Supreme Court in March will consider questions over married gay couples' equal rights to federal benefits.

"After careful consideration and extensive dialogue within the Scouting family, along with comments from those outside the organization, the volunteer officers of the Boy Scouts of America's National Executive Board concluded that due to the complexity of this issue, the organization needs time for a more deliberate review of its membership policy," Deron Smith, the BSA director of public relations, said in a statement.

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Obama on women in combat, gay Boy Scouts

President Barack Obama - Scouting's honorary president - has spoken in favor of admitting gay scouts.

"My attitude is that gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does in every institution and walk of life," said Mr. Obama, who as U.S. president is the honorary president of BSA, in a Sunday interview with CBS News.

Others, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, an Eagle Scout, opposed it. Concerns have been raised about addressing issues related to sexuality among groups of boys, some of whom haven't reached puberty.

The author of the book "On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For," Perry said in a speech Saturday that "to have popular culture impact 100 years of their standards is inappropriate."

Under intense pressure from both sides, the BSA board met behind closed doors Wednesday. It became clear that the proposed change would be unacceptable to large numbers of Scouting families and advocacy groups on the left and right.

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Boy Scouts to vote on ending ban on gays

Gay-rights supporters said no Scout units should be allowed to exclude gays, while some conservatives, including religious leaders whose churches sponsor troops, warned of mass defections if the ban was eased.

About 70 percent of all Scout units are sponsored by religious denominations, including many by conservative faiths that have supported the ban, such as the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Mormons' Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Michael Purdy, a Mormon church spokesman, said the BSA "acted wisely in delaying its decision until all voices can be heard on this important moral issue."

Shortly after the delay was announced, conservative supporters of the ban held a rally and prayer vigil Wednesday at the headquarters, carrying signs reading, "Don't Invite Sin Into the Camp," and "The only voice that matters is God!"

Early reaction to the delay from gay-rights supporters was harshly critical of the BSA.

"A Scout is supposed to be brave, and the Boy Scouts failed to be brave today," said Jennifer Tyrrell, a mother ousted from her post as a Cub Scout volunteer because she's a lesbian.

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FBI Releases Alaska Serial Killer's Handwritten Notes

Serial killer Israel Keyes' blood smeared suicide letter, obtained by ABCNews.com, is a creepy ode to murder in which he clearly enjoys killing his victims and expresses his disgust with peoples' everyday lives.

"You may have been free, you loved loving your lie, fate had its own scheme, crushed like a bug you still die," Keyes wrote.

At another point he writes about the "nervous laugh as it burst like a pulse of blood from your throat. There will be no more laughter here."

The arrest of Keyes, 34, on March 12, 2012 for the murder of Alaskan barista Samantha Koenig ended more than a decade of traveling around the country to find victims to kill or to prepare for future crimes by burying murder kits of weapons, cash and tools to dispose of bodies. Since March he had been slowly telling police about his hidden life and how he operated. But the tale abruptly ended when Keyes committed suicide in his jail cell on Dec. 1.

Police are now left trying to fill in the details of his vicious life. Police believe he killed between 8 and 12 people, including Koenig, but only three victims have been definitively tied to Keyes so far.

The FBI released Keyes' four-page document today describing it as "a combination of pencil and ink on yellow legal pad." The pages were discovered under Keyes' body, "illegible and covered in blood," the FBI said.

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Serial Killer Sexually Assaulted, Dismembered Alaska Barista Watch Video

Click here to see the original letter.

The papers were sent to an FBI laboratory in Virginia for processing and the FBI was able to restore the notes to a mostly legible condition for review and analysis.

"The FBI concluded there was no hidden code or message in the writings," the FBI said in a news release today. "Further, it was determined that the writings do not offer any investigative clues or leads as to the identity of other possible victims."

The FBI said it would not offer any commentary as the meaning of the writings, but the chillingly morbid writings speak for themselves.

Keyes seems to refer to his victim as a "pretty captive butterfly." He describes what appears to be the victim's final moments:

"Now that I have you held tight I will tell you a story, speak soft in your ear so you know that it's true. You're my love at first sight and though you're scared to be near me, my words penetrate your thoughts now in an intimate prelude.

"I looked in your eyes, they were so dark, warm and trusting, as though you had not a worry or care. The more guiless the game the better potential to fill up those pools with your fear.

"Your face framed in dark curls like a portrait, the sun shone through highlights of red. What color I wonder, and how straight will it turn plastered back with the sweat of your blood.

"Your wet lips were a promise of a secret unspoken, nervous laugh as it burst like a pulse of blood from your throat. There will be no more laughter here."

Keyes also criticized elements of daily life including waiting to die in retirement homes, watching reality television shows, vanity and going to a mindless job.

"Land of the free, land of the lie, land of scheme Americanize!" he wrote twice as a refrain. "Consume what you don't need, stars you idolize, pursue what you admit is a dream, then it's American die."

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Tunisian leader to form new government after activist shot

TUNIS (Reuters) - The killing of an outspoken critic of Tunisia's Islamist-led government on Wednesday sparked street protests by thousands who fear religious radicals are stifling freedoms won two years ago in the first of the Arab Spring uprisings.

Chokri Belaid was shot at close range as he left for work by a gunmen who fled on the back of a motorcycle; crowds poured on to the streets of Tunis and other cities, attacking offices of the main ruling party Ennahda, and by the end of the day the Islamist prime minister promised a national unity government.

There was no immediate local reaction to the plan by Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali of Ennahda to dissolve his coalition and bring in a wider range of political groups. After dark, hundreds of demonstrators were still fighting running battles with police in the capital, throwing rocks amid volleys of teargas.

Jebali, whose party has dismissed any suggestion it might be behind the assassination, said he would shortly announce the formation of a new government of non-partisan technocrats.

World powers, alarmed in recent months at the extent of radical Islamist influence and the bitterness of the political stalemate, urged Tunisians to reject violence and see through the move to democracy they began two years ago, when the Jasmine Revolution ended decades of dictatorship and inspired fellow Arabs in Egypt and across North Africa and the Middle East.

As in Egypt, the rise to power of political Islam through the ballot box has prompted a backlash among less organized, more secular minded political movements in Tunisia. Belaid, a 48-year-old left-wing lawyer who made a name challenging the old regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, led a party with little electoral support but his vocal opinions had a wide audience.

The day before his death he was publicly lambasting a "climate of systematic violence". He had blamed tolerance shown by Ennahda and its two, smaller secularist allies in the coalition government toward hardline Salafists for allowing the spread of groups hostile to international culture.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Writing by Alison Williams and Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Football: Singapore lose to Jordan in opening 2015 Asian Cup qualifier

SINGAPORE: Singapore's quest to reach the 2015 Asian Cup got off on a disappointing note with a 4-0 defeat against Jordan in Amman on Wednesday.

Two goals from Ahmad Hayel in the 54th and 73rd minutes, and one each from Abdallah Deeb (18th) and Khalil Zaid Baniateyah (52nd) gave Jordan the win over the reigning Southeast Asian champions at the Amman International Stadium.

The win puts Jordan on top of Group A in the qualifiers, with Oman second after beating Syria 1-0 thanks to a 39th minute winner from Abdulaziz Al-Muqbali.

Singapore's next match is against Oman at the Jalan Besar Stadium on August 14.

Sixteen teams will qualify for the 2015 Asian Cup, to be staged in Australia from January 8 to 31 that year.

Group A:
Oman 1 Syria 0
Jordan 4 Singapore 0

Group B:
Iran 5 Lebanon 0
Thailand 1 Kuwait 3

Group C:
Iraq 1 Indonesia 0
Saudi Arabia 2 China 1

Group D:
Yemen 0 Bahrain 2
Qatar 2 Malaysia 0

Group E:
Uzbekistan 0 Hong Kong 0
Vietnam 1 UAE 2

- TODAY

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This may be the single dumbest anti-Google screed ever

Last month, John R. MacArthur fired off what may be the single dumbest old media-blame-new media anti-Google screed ever to post in the pages of the Providence Journal. In case you missed that gem, MacArthur, the publisher of Harper's Magazine, remedied that situation by reposting his piece on the publication's website. I'll confess to being a Harper's fanboy, someone who has read the magazine starting back in the day when it was edited by the brilliant Lewis H. Lapham. It's been a staple of American intellectual life since its start in the mid-19th century. All the more remarkable, then, to read MacArthur decry what he calls "Google's systematic campaign to steal everything that isn't welded to the floor by copyright -- while playing nice with its idiotic slogan 'Don't be evil.'"

Larry Page and Sergey Brin as 21st century incarnations of Butch Cassidy and Sundance. Do tell.

This for-profit theft is committed in the pious guise of universal access to "free information," as if Google were just a bigger version of your neighborhood public library. Acceptance of such a fairy tale lets parasitic search engines assert that they are "web neutral," just disinterested parties whose glorious mission is to educate and uplift.

....

Publishers and writers are belatedly recognizing the self-defeating nature of their own free-content platforms, as advertising is dispersed through the Internet in more and more fractionalized and lower-cost quantities. But these authentic content producers have been largely complicit in their own decline by aiding and abetting the childish belief that search engines are intended to educate (as opposed to making money for their owners) and that education via the Internet can bypass the necessary struggle of reading, analyzing, and connecting texts, in depth and over time.

"We'll do it for you," say Larry, Sergey, and Eric, and it will all be free! Now Larry, Sergey, and Eric are billionaires, while the average writer and teacher can barely make ends meet.

So while Google's getting ever richer, teachers and "the average writer" are fated to hang out with the bums on the Bowery. MacArthur then flags the inevitable spillover effect from his insalubrious condition: the increasing "infantilization of the American public, hooked more than ever on superficial, unchecked information sometimes rewritten from more reliable, though uncredited sources. It's no coincidence that Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yelp sound like toddler gibberish from the Teletubbies."

Teletubbies!

Actually, when he speaks on conference calls Sergey more reminds me of Kermit the Frog than a Teletubby. But this essay is one non sequitur followed by another as MacArthur seeks to establish a nexus between the dumbing down of America and Google's increasing domination of the media landscape. Apparently, Google plays favorites, giving priority to "free content" sites over those with paywalls. That might have something to do with the way Internet crawling works. As Techdirt's Tim Cushing notes, if Google can't crawl it, it won't appear.

Where does all this point? MacArthur suggests that the cyber downtrodden may finally get so fed up that they could even take to the barricades in a Jean Valjean moment:

This unending assault of babble potentially could lead to revolutionary conditions in which the new writer-teacher proletariat rises up to overthrow the Internet oligarchy and the politicians and government agencies who protect it.

That fits with the rest of an absurd indictment of the Internet. I doubt this will be the last jeremiad you hear as more media organizations fade away as readers go elsewhere. But while honest men and women can disagree honestly about the extent of the"infantilization of the American public" or the dumbing down of the culture, it's embarrassingly wrong to blame Google for the popularity of "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo," without first knowing the basics about Internet search and the link culture.

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Ireland admits involvement in Catholic laundry slavery

DUBLIN Ireland has admitted some responsibility for workhouses run by Catholic nuns that once kept thousands of women and teenage girls against their will in unpaid, forced labor.

The apology comes after an expert panel found that Ireland should be legally responsible for the defunct Magdalene Laundries because authorities committed about one-quarter of the 10,012 women to the workhouses from 1922 to 1996, often in response to school truancy or homelessness.

"To those residents who went through the Magdalene Laundries in a variety of ways, 26 percent of the time from state involvement, I am sorry for those people that they lived in that kind of environment," said Prime Minister Enda Kenny on behalf of the Irish government, according to Reuters.

Survivors said they were unsatisfied with the prime minister's response. Steven O'Riordan, spokesperson for Magdalene Survivors Together, told Irish paper The Journal the apology was a "cop out."

Ireland stigmatized those that had been committed as "fallen" women - prostitutes - but most were simply unwed mothers or their daughters.

The report found that 15 percent lived in the workhouses for more than five years, and police caught and returned women who fled. They endured 12-hour work days of washing and ironing.

The state apology could pave the way for payments to survivors.

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Rescued Ala. Boy Watching Cartoons in Hospital

The 5-year-old held hostage in a nearly week-long standoff in Alabama is cheerfully watching Spongebob and posting sticky notes on everyone around him at the hospital as organizers plan a birthday party for him so big it may take place at a high school football stadium.

The boy, identified only as Ethan, is apparently unharmed but is at the hospital for numerous evaluations, authorities said today.

Ethan was rescued by the FBI Monday after they rushed the underground bunker where suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, was holding him. Dykes was killed in the raid and the boy was taken away from the bunker in an ambulance.

Ethan's thrilled relatives told "Good Morning America" today that he seemed "normal as a child could be" after what he went through and has been happily playing with his toy dinosaur.

"He's happy to be home," Ethan's great uncle Berlin Enfinger told "GMA." "He's very excited and he looks good."

Click here for a psychological look at what's next for Ethan.

Ethan is "running around the hospital room, putting sticky notes on everyone that was in there, eating a turkey sandwich and watching Spongebob," Dale County Schools Superintendent Donny Bynum said at a news conference today.

Ala. Hostage Standoff Over: Kidnapper Dead, Child Safe Watch Video

Alabama Hostage Standoff: Jimmy Lee Dykes Dead Watch Video

Ethan is expected to be released from the hospital later today and head home where he will be greeted by birthday cards from his friends at school. Ethan will celebrate his 6th birthday Wednesday.

When asked about a birthday party for Ethan, Bynum said, "We are still in the planning stages. Our time frame is that we are waiting for Ethan, waiting on that process, but we are going to have it at a school facility, most likely the football stadium at Dale County High School."

He said many "tears of celebration" were shed Monday night when Ethan was reunited with his family.

"If I could, I would do cartwheels all the way down the road," Ethan's aunt Debra Cook told "GMA." "I was ecstatic. Everything just seemed like it was so much clearer. You know, we had all been walking around in a fog and everyone was just excited. There's no words to put how we felt and how relieved we were."

Cook said that Ethan has not yet told them anything about what happened in the bunker and they know very little about Dykes.

What the family does know is that they are overjoyed to have their "little buddy" back.

"He's a special child, 90 miles per hour all the time," Cook said. "[He's] a very, very loving child. When he walks in the room, he just lights it up."

Dykes allegedly shot and killed bus driver Albert Poland Jr., 66, before taking Ethan hostage.

Authorities said today they have not yet spoken to Poland's family since Ethan's rescue, but were planning on visiting them today.

"We know that Ms. Poland is aware and she is celebrating today with us and we did talk to Mr. Poland's son who lives in Hickory, North Carolina," Bynum said. "He called last night and made the comment, 'My dad's last child is home.' So it goes to show what kind of people they are."

A new school bus and new driver were back today on the route where Poland was killed and Ethan was kidnapped.

Officials have remained tight-lipped about the raid, citing the ongoing investigation.

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Iran's Ahmadinejad kissed and scolded in Egypt

CAIRO (Reuters) - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was both kissed and scolded on Tuesday when he began the first visit to Egypt by an Iranian president since Tehran's 1979 Islamic revolution.

The trip was meant to underline a thaw in relations since Egyptians elected an Islamist head of state, President Mohamed Mursi, last June. But it also highlighted deep theological and geopolitical differences.

Mursi, a member of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, kissed Ahmadinejad after he landed at Cairo airport and gave him a red carpet reception with military honors. Ahmadinejad beamed as he shook hands with waiting dignitaries.

But the Shi'ite Iranian leader received a stiff rebuke when he met Egypt's leading Sunni Muslim scholar later at Cairo's historic al-Azhar mosque and university.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, head of the 1,000-year-old seat of religious learning, urged Iran to refrain from interfering in Gulf Arab states, to recognize Bahrain as a "sisterly Arab nation" and rejected the extension of Shi'ite Muslim influence in Sunni countries, a statement from al-Azhar said.

Visiting Cairo to attend an Islamic summit that begins on Wednesday, Ahmadinejad told a news conference he hoped his trip would be "a new starting point in relations between us".

However, a senior cleric from the Egyptian seminary, Hassan al-Shafai, who appeared alongside him, said the meeting had degenerated into an exchange of theological differences.

"There ensued some misunderstandings on certain issues that could have an effect on the cultural, political and social climate of both countries," Shafai said.

"The issues were such that the grand sheikh saw that the meeting ... did not serve the desired purpose."

The visit would have been unthinkable during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the military-backed autocrat who preserved Egypt's peace treaty with Israel during his 30 years in power and deepened ties between Cairo and the West.

"The political geography of the region will change if Iran and Egypt take a unified position on the Palestinian question," Ahmadinejad said in an interview with Al Mayadeen, a Beirut-based TV station, on the eve of his trip.

He said he wanted to visit the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory which neighbors Egypt to the east and is run by the Islamist movement Hamas. "If they allow it, I would go to Gaza to visit the people," Ahmadinejad said.

Analysts doubt that the historic changes that brought Mursi to power will result in a full restoration of diplomatic ties between states whose relations were broken off after the conclusion of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

OBSTACLES TO FULL TIES

At the airport the two leaders discussed ways of improving relations and resolving the Syrian crisis "without resorting to military intervention", Egyptian state media reported.

Egypt is concerned by Iran's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is trying to crush an uprising inspired by the revolt that swept Mubarak from power two years ago. Egypt's overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim population is broadly supportive of the uprising against Assad's Alawite-led administration.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr sought to reassure Gulf Arab allies - that are supporting Cairo's battered state finances and are deeply suspicious of Iran - that Egypt would not jeopardize their security.

"The security of the Gulf states is the security of Egypt," he said in remarks reported by the official MENA news agency.

Mursi wants to preserve ties with the United States, the source of $1.3 billion in aid each year to the influential Egyptian military.

"The restoration of full relations with Iran in this period is difficult, despite the warmth in ties ... because of many problems including the Syrian crisis and Cairo's links with the Gulf states, Israel and the United States," said one former Egyptian diplomat.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said he was optimistic that ties could grow closer.

"We are gradually improving. We have to be a little bit patient. I'm very hopeful about the expansion of the bilateral relationship," he told Reuters. Asked where he saw room for closer ties, he said: "Trade and economics."

Egypt and Iran have taken opposite courses since the late 1970s. Egypt, under Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat, concluded a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and became a close ally of the United States and Europe. Iran from 1979 turned into a center of opposition to Western influence in the Middle East.

Symbolically, Iran named a street in Tehran after the Islamist who led the 1981 assassination of Sadat.

Egypt gave asylum and a state funeral to Iran's exiled Shah Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in the 1979 Iranian revolution. He is buried in a mosque beside Cairo's mediaeval Citadel alongside his ex-brother-in-law, Egypt's last king, Farouk.

(Additional reporting by Ayman Samir, Marwa Awad and Alexander Diadosz; Writing by Paul Taylor and Tom Perry; Editing by Andrew Roche and Robin Pomeroy)

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Obama unveils plans to avert budget cuts

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama Tuesday called for a balanced program of stop gap spending reductions and tax reforms to avert punishing multi-billion dollar automatic budget cuts due to kick in on March 1.

Obama said the fragile US economy could not afford the hit from huge cuts to defense and other government programs, known as the sequester, and the jobs of Americans should not be held hostage to partisan wrangling in Washington.

The president said if Congress could not act on a bigger deficit cutting package by March 1, lawmakers should pass a smaller plan of spending cuts and tax reforms to delay the economically damaging impact of the sequester.

"There is no reason that the jobs of thousands of Americans who work in national security or education or clean energy, not to mention the growth of the entire economy, should be put in jeopardy," Obama told reporters.

"Let me repeat, our economy right now is headed in the right direction. It will stay that way as long as there aren't any more self-inflicted wounds coming out of Washington."

The Congressional Budget Office reported Tuesday that if the sequester is put through, the US budget deficit will shrink sharply this year but that also economic growth will be crunched from 2012's 1.9 percent to just 1.4 percent.

"If all of the fiscal tightening still embodied in current law for 2013 was removed, growth in real GDP would be about 1.5 percentage points higher this year than CBO currently projects," the study said.

Obama said his short-term spending would allow the White House and Congress more time to come up with a plan to cut the deficit, which he insists, despite Republican opposition, must include new revenue from higher taxes.

The sequester was agreed by the president and Congress last year to be so punishing that it would force Washington's warring political factions to forge an agreement on deficit cuts.

But no agreement is in sight, and the cuts have already been put off once, by a short-term deal agreed between Obama and Republicans late last year.

House Republican Speaker John Boehner Tuesday blamed Obama for the sequester, which many observers now believe will come into force, despite its punitive impact on defense and social programs and the fragile US economy.

"We believe there is a better way to reduce the deficit, but Americans do not support sacrificing real spending cuts for more tax hikes," Boehner said in a statement.

"The president's sequester should be replaced with spending cuts and reforms that will start us on the path to balancing the budget in 10 years."

Cuts due to come into force in March will slash defense spending by $55 billion and non defense discretionary spending by $27 billion this year, and will have a painful impact on the economy.

The Bipartisan Policy Center has warned that a million jobs will be lost by the end of next year caused by a slowdown brought on by the cuts.

-AFP/ac

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Study: Facebook fatigue -- it's real

It's not just you. Tuning out Facebook for weeks at a time is commonplace, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which found that a majority of current Facebook users have tired to the point of avoiding the social-networking site at one time or another.

Pew used Princeton Survey Research Associates International to conduct telephone interviews with a representative sample of 1,006 adults in the U.S.

The nonprofit research center found that 61 percent of Facebook users have taken extended, weeks-long breaks from the site. Those who have taken Facebook sabbaticals did so for the obvious reasons: 21 percent were too busy, 10 percent lost interest, and 10 percent felt it was a waste of time.

The verbatim comments that Pew recorded sound like overheards at coffee shops across the country. Here are a few:

• "I was tired of stupid comments."


• "[I had] crazy friends. I did not want to be contacted."


• "I took a break when it got boring."


• "It was not getting me anywhere."


• "Too much drama."


• "People were [posting] what they had for dinner."


• "I don't like their privacy policy."


• "It caused problems in my [romantic] relationship."

The study, should you trust the findings, proves that Facebook fatigue is real. We've all been there, apparently.

Moreover, Pew paints Facebook as a place of growing irrelevancy and tedium for an increasing percentage of adults. Family member and friend connections may keep people attached to the site, which means they won't quit Facebook, but they're not visiting as often, nor are they experiencing the same type of enjoyment as they once did.

Forty-two percent of Facebook users ages 18 to 29 and 34 percent of those ages 30 to 49 say that the time they spend on Facebook on a typical day has decreased over the last year. A majority of Facebook users, or 69 percent, say they plan to spend the same amount of time on the site this year, but more than a quarter, or 27 percent, say they will spend less time on Facebook this year.

Pew's most disconcerting finding, at least if you're betting on Facebook's long-term success, confirms what the social network warned its investors last week: the cool kids are so over Facebook. In 2013, 38 percent Facebook users ages 18 to 29 say they expect to spend less time using the site.

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