In brief: Airman discharged under ‘don’t ask’
WASHINGTON – The Air Force has discharged an airman under the law banning gays from serving openly in the military, the first firing since President Barack Obama signed legislation aimed at ending the ban.
The ban, laid out in the 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, is just months from being lifted.
The service member was discharged April 29, Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician said late Thursday.
“The airman in the case asked to be separated expeditiously,” Vician said, adding that he didn’t know other details of the case, nor the gender of the service member. The Air Force uses the term “airman” for both men and women.
The firing is also the first since Defense Secretary Robert Gates in October made it harder to throw someone out of the military for being openly gay.
Unabomber items sell for $190,000
SAN FRANCISCO –
An unusual online auction of Ted Kaczynski’s personal items that ended Thursday garnered about $190,000 for his victims and their family members. They want the so-called Unabomber to pay for the 16 explosions he set off that killed three and injured 23 others across the country.
Kaczynski’s personal journals fetched $40,676; the iconic hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses depicted in police sketch artist renderings accounted for $20,025; and his handwritten “manifesto” sold for $20,053. Other popular items included $22,003 for the Smith Corona typewriter used to write manifestos sent to newspapers and later seized from the cabin and $17,780 for his autobiography.
The auction was a culmination of a seven-year legal battle designed to block Kaczynski from regaining ownership of the property seized from his remote Montana cabin during a 1996 raid.
U.N.: AIDS, HIV efforts paying off
UNITED NATIONS – The last decade has seen a nearly 25 percent decline in new HIV infections, a reduction in AIDS-related deaths, and “unprecedented advances” in access to treatment, prevention services and care, the United Nations AIDS agency said in a report released Thursday.
The report said more than 34 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2010 – including 2.6 million who became newly infected with the virus that causes AIDS in 2009.
UNAIDS released the 139-page document ahead of Sunday’s 30th anniversary of the first official report of what would become the HIV epidemic by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.