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In a court filing Monday, the attorney general’s office determined that the incident in question occurred around February 9, 2001, rather than in March 2002, which was originally listed in the grand jury report.

Tim Curley, Penn State’s former athletic director, and Gary Schultz, a former university vice president who oversaw campus police, have been charged with perjury and failing to report the incident.

Attorneys for Curley and Schultz said in a statement that “the Commonwealth charged this case before it knew the facts.”

“Now, it is clear that Mike McQueary was wrong in so adamantly insisting that the incident happened the Friday before Spring Break in 2002,” the statement said. “Whether or not Mr. McQueary’s insistence was the result of faulty memory, or questionable credibility, there is no dispute that the statute of limitations has expired on Count Two, and it will be dismissed.”

Mike McQueary, then a graduate assistant, testified that he told university officials that he saw former coach Sandusky possibly sodomizing a boy, saying that what he saw was “extremely sexual in nature.”

Sandusky faces more than 50 counts involving alleged sexual acts with 10 children since 1994.

McQueary, a former Penn State quarterback, testified that he met with Curley and Schultz to inform them about the alleged incident about nine days after first alerting then-head coach Joe Paterno.

Curley, 57, is now on leave, and Schultz, 62, retired in the wake of the allegations. Days after the grand jury presentment came to light, Penn State trustees ousted President Graham Spanier and Paterno amid criticism that they could and should have done more.

Release Date: 04/13/2012Contact Information: Dale Kemery (News Media Only)
kemery.dale@epa.gov
202-564-7839
202-564-4355

WASHINGTON— The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced a proposed rule to require electronic reporting for certain information submitted to the agency under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).The action is an important milestone in the agency’s effort to increase transparency and public access to chemical information in order to help Americans protect their health and environment. Electronic reporting will increase the speed with which EPA can make information publicly available, increase accuracy, and provide the public with quick and easier access to chemical information.

“Administrator Lisa P. Jackson is committed to strengthening EPA’s chemicals management program and increasing the public’s access to chemical information,” said Jim Jones, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “The agency is also committed to reducing reporting burdens and paper-based reporting in favor of electronic reporting. These measures will streamline the reporting process and reduce the administrative costs.”

Today’s proposed rule would require electronic reporting rather than paper-based reporting for various TSCA actions including submission of information relating to chemical testing, health and safety studies, and other information. When final, EPA will only accept data, reports, and other information submitted through EPA’s Central Data Exchange, a centralized portal that enables streamlined, electronic submission of data via the Internet. The agency will be soliciting comments on this proposed rule for 60 days.

Over the coming months, the agency will offer a number of opportunities for potential users to become familiar with the new requirements. These opportunities will include an initial webinar to introduce the web-based electronic reporting tool, follow-up webinars and testing of specific applications, and opportunities for submitters and others to provide feedback to the agency on their experiences using the tool before its release.

For more information on the proposed rule: http://www.epa.gov/oppt/chemtest/pubs/SIGNED_eTSCA_NPRM_FRdocument_2012-03-30.pdf

For more information on OPPT’s increasing transparency efforts: http://www.epa.gov/oppt/existingchemicals/pubs/transparency.html

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When it comes to experimental fine dining, Spain has been ruling the roost. For the past decade, dozens of restaurants in the country have followed in the footsteps of Ferran Adria and his battalion of inspirational chefs, to achieve "best restaurant in the world" status.

Now, I must apologise, because I really, really didn’t want to get Adria’s name into this article about Spanish food so early on.

Adria’s reknown is, I am sure, well deserved — I’ve never been one of the lucky few to get a coveted spot at the now-shuttered El Bulli — but it’s not the only reason to pay attention to Spanish cuisine.

New light on the cuisine

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Editor’s note: Elisabeth Badinter is the author, most recently, of “The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women.” Her three seminal works of feminism — “Mother Love: Myth and Reality — Motherhood in Modern History,” “Dead End Feminism” and “XY: On Masculine Identity” — have been translated into 15 languages. For many years, she taught philosophy at the École Polytechnique in Paris, where she lives.

In the lively debate that has followed the American publication of my book “The Conflict,” much has been said and written about the pros and cons of breastfeeding and mothers staying at home. But this larger issue receives scant attention.

In the United States, where fertility rates remain high, 20% of women are childless, which is twice as many as 30 years ago. There are an estimated 18% in England, 20% in Italy, and between 21% and 26% in Germany. We do not have figures for childless Japanese women, but we do know that Japan has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, along with Germany, where it hovers at 1.3 children.

Although a minority of women choose not to have children, the trend constitutes a genuine revolution, pointing to some unspoken resistance to motherhood. As we know, as soon as women were able to control reproduction, pursue studies, enter the job market and aspire to financial independence, motherhood stopped being an inevitable, self-evident step and became a choice instead. Whether we like it or not, motherhood is now only one important aspect of women’s identity, no longer the key to achieving a sense of self-fulfillment. And the rate at which women are saying no to children — most notably among those with college education — suggests that the choice, for many, threatens the other facets of their identity: their freedom, energy, income and professional accomplishments.

No country can afford to ignore a decline in its birthrate. In the long term, a nation’s pension payments, power and very survival are at stake. To curb the drop in recent decades, some European governments have re-evaluated their family policies. Germany’s example is especially instructive: Although the state’s family policies are now among the most generous in Europe — a parent who stays home with a child receives 67% of his or her current net income for up to 12 months — they have failed to boost the birthrate or reverse the figures for childless women.

Germany’s policies provide considerable financial help, but they essentially encourage mothers (recent figures show that only 15% of fathers take advantage of the leave) to quit the work force. Only an astonishing 14% of German mothers with one child in fact resume full-time work. Thus the family policies end up promoting the role of the father-provider, while mothers in effect feel the need to choose between family and work from the moment the first child is born, an especially risky proposition when one in three marriages ends in divorce.

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In this situation, where a high number of mothers are able to stay at home but the birthrate remains exceptionally low, the message is clear: Women do not want policies that serve only to support mothers in their family life. For women to want children, they require policies that support the full range of their needs and roles and ambitions — maternal, financial, professional.

The varying European experiences show that the highest birthrates exist in the countries with the highest rates of working women. It is, therefore, in society’s interest to support working motherhood, which requires considerable public investment. Generous leave is not, by itself, an incentive. To raise more than one child, a mother must have access to high-quality, full-day child care, but that is still not enough. Income equality, flexible work hours and partners sharing family-related tasks — these are the essential components that will allow women to be mothers without forgoing their other aspirations.

Tellingly, these are the rallying causes of traditional feminism, more pressing and relevant than ever. It turns out that profound feminist reform, in the workplace and in family policies, might just be what is needed to keep the birthrate from free fall.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Elisabeth Badinter.

Story By: by Mark Jenkins

Filmmaker Nadine Labaki plays the lead role of Amale, a widow who organizes women in a Lebanese village to help tamp down flaring sectarian tensions, in her film Where Do We Go Now?

Where Do We Go Now?

Rated PG-13 for thematic drug material, some sensuality and violent images

With: Claude Baz Moussawbaa, Leyla Hakim, Nadine Labaki

In Arabic, Russian, and English with subtitles

Women’s hard-won pragmatism contends with men’s impulsive belligerence in Where Do We Go Now?, the second feature directed by Lebanese actress Nadine Labaki. It’s the sort of well-meaning fable that’s ultimately more admirable than persuasive.

Filmed in three small Lebanese villages, the movie never locates itself in a particular country. But, as in last year’s similarly cautious Incendies, the place must be Lebanon; there are few places in the Middle East where Christians and Muslims mingle the way they do in this story.

Near the movie’s opening, black-clad women march to the local cemetery, chanting, slapping their chests and swaying together, a striking moment that plays like something from an avant-garde production of an ancient Greek tragedy. The mourners are unified in grief until they reach their destination. Then they separate by religion, just the way the burial ground is divided.

The graves are full of young men, the sons and husbands of such women as Amale (played by the director), a Christian widow who runs the local cafe. People of both sects meet at her place, and Amale is trading glances with Rabih (Julian Farhat), a Muslim who’s taking his time painting the interior. In a fantasy sequence, their mutual attraction becomes a song-and-dance routine that’s much less somber than the earlier one.

It seems that the remote mountain village was at war with itself not that long ago, but now it’s quiet. Amale and her friends aim to keep it that way, by hiding from the men any information about flaring hostilities elsewhere. Radio and TV reports are unwelcome; newspapers with upsetting reports are burned in the cafe’s oven. Soon enough, though, the word is out, and tensions escalate. Both the church and the mosque, which border each other on the town square, are vandalized.

A bridge to the village was destroyed some time in the past and the town is surrounded by land mines, so the locals don’t usually travel. Provisions are brought by two young men who travel by motor scooter. This link to the outside brings both comedy and tragedy.

After the couriers return with a poster for some touring Ukrainian showgirls, the town’s women pool their money to bring the troupe to town. Although one of the blonde dancers ultimately plays a role in the women’s plan, the Ukrainians’ arrival doesn’t really pay off, in part because the movie fails to suggest a reason why outsiders would involve themselves in a longstanding sectarian feud. Female solidarity, apparently, tops all other motivations.

When a villager is accidentally killed, the women expect the incident to spark a bloodbath, so they throw a party to pacify the menfolk long enough to disarm them. The sudden segue from poignant death to boisterous revelry — another musical number — is typical of the movie, which shifts tone often and awkwardly. Perhaps Labaki was too eager to showcase the score, which was written by her husband, Khaled Mouzanar.

Where Do We Go Now? has been compared to Athenian satirist Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, in which women end war by withholding sex. But the movie’s script — written by Labaki with four collaborators — is not in that classic’s league. The director’s previous film, Caramel, was an ensemble piece set mostly in a Beirut hair salon; it could bounce from subplot to subplot without losing its way. This more earnest scenario requires greater finesse, which the movie doesn’t supply. All it offers is a picturesque location, likable characters and the best of intentions.

A Wisconsin couple who appeared on the reality-TV show The Amazing Race outlasted 10 other couples to claim top honours and a $1 million (Dh3.67 million) grand prize.

On their way to victory, Madison’s Dave and Rachel Brown raced across five continents, nine countries and 22 cities.

The show pits 11 two-person teams against each other in a trek around the world in which they must overcome a series of physical and mental obstacles.

Some of this season’s challenges required strategic thinking and the ability to read terrain, which proved to be an advantage to Army veteran Dave Brown. The former helicopter pilot has a background in military intelligence.

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The decline of linguistic and cultural diversity is linked to the loss of biodiversity, a study has suggested.

The authors said that 70% of the world's languages were found within the planet's biodiversity hotspots.

Data showed that as these important environmental areas were degraded over time, cultures and languages in the area were also being lost.

The results of the study have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"Biologists estimate annual loss of species at 1,000 times or more greater than historic rates, and linguists predict that 50-90% of the world's languages will disappear by the end of the century," the researchers wrote.

Lead author Larry Gorenflo from Penn State University, in the US, said previous studies had identified a geographical connection between the two, but did not offer the level of detail required.

Dr Gorenflo told BBC News that the limitation to the data was that either the languages were listed by country or there was a dot on the map to indicate the location.

"But what you did not know was if the area extended two kilometres or 200 kilometres, so you really did not get a sense of the extent of the language," he explained.

"We used improved language data to really get a more solid sense of how languages and biodiversity co-occurred and an understanding of how geographically extensive the language was."

He said the study achieved this by also looking at smaller areas with high biodiversity, such as national parks or other protected habitats.

"When we did that, not only did we get a sense of co-occurrence at a regional scale, but we also got a sense that co-occurrence was found at a much finer scale," he said.

"We are not quite sure yet why this happens, but in a lot of cases it may well be that biodiversity evolved as part-and-parcel of cultural diversity, and vice versa."

In their paper, the researchers pointed out that, out of the 6,900 or more languages spoken on Earth, more than 4,800 occurred in regions containing high biodiversity.

Dr Gorenflo described these locations as "very important landscapes" which were "getting fewer and fewer" but added that the study's data could help provide long-term security.

"It provides a wonderful opportunity to integrate conservation efforts – you can have people who can get funding for biological conservation, and they can collaborate with people who can get funding for linguistic or cultural conservation," he suggested.

"In the past, it was hard to get biologists to look at people.

"That has really changed dramatically in the past few years. One thing that a lot of biologists and ecologists are now seeing is that people are part of these ecosystems."