World/Nation
• White House delays health law mandate again
WASHINGTON - Angling to avoid political peril, the Obama administration Monday granted employers another delay in a heavily criticized requirement that medium-to-larger firms cover their workers or face fines.
In one of several concessions in a complex Treasury Department regulation of more than 200 pages, the administration said companies with 50 to 99 employees will have an additional year to comply with the coverage requirement, until Jan. 1, 2016.
For businesses with 100 or more employees the requirement will still take effect in 2015. But other newly announced provisions, affecting technical issues such as the calculation of working hours, may help some of those firms.
More than 90 percent of companies with 50 or more employees already cover their workers without the government telling them to do so, but the debate has revolved around the potential impact on new and growing firms. Most small businesses have fewer than 50 workers and are exempt from the mandate. However, employer groups were also uneasy with a requirement that defines a full-time worker as someone averaging 30 hours a week.
Republicans trying to take control of the Senate in the November elections have once again made President Barack Obama's health care law their top issue, casting it as job killer. They want to use the employer mandate to build that case, with anecdotes of bosses reluctant to hire a 50th worker, or slashing the hours of low-wage workers who need to pay household bills. Monday's moves by the administration seemed calibrated to reduce that risk.
• Senator presses Pentagon to hand over records
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is coming under pressure to give Congress detailed information on the handling of sex crime cases in the armed forces following an Associated Press investigation that found a pattern of inconsistent judgments and light penalties for sexual assaults at U.S. bases in Japan.
Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who has led efforts in Congress to address military sexual crimes, is pressing the Defense Department to turn over case information from four major U.S. bases: Fort Hood in Texas, Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, the Marine Corps' Camp Pendleton in California, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
Such records would shed more light on how military commanders make decisions about court martials and punishments in sexual assault cases and whether the inconsistent judgments seen in Japan are more widespread.
AP's investigation, which was based on hundreds of internal military documents it first began requesting in 2009, found that what appeared to be strong cases were often reduced to lesser charges. Suspects were unlikely to serve time even when military authorities agreed a crime had been committed. In two rape cases, commanders overruled recommendations to court-martial and dropped the charges instead.
Gillibrand, who leads the Senate Armed Services personnel panel, wrote Monday to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel asking for "all reports and allegations of rape, forcible sodomy, sexual assault, sex in the barracks, adultery and attempts, conspiracies or solicitations to commit these crimes," for the last five years.
• Iraqi militants accidentally set off car bomb
BAGHDAD - An instructor teaching his militant recruits how to make car bombs accidentally set off explosives in his demonstration Monday, killing 21 of them in a huge blast that alerted authorities to the existence of the rural training camp in an orchard north of Baghdad. Nearly two dozen people were arrested, including wounded insurgents trying to hobble away from the scene.
The fatal goof by the al-Qaida breakaway group that dominates the Sunni insurgency in Iraq happened on the same day that the speaker of the Iraqi parliament, a prominent Sunni whom the militants consider a traitor, escaped unhurt from a roadside bomb attack on his motorcade in the northern city of Mosul.
Nevertheless, the events underscored the determination of the insurgents to rebuild and regain the strength they enjoyed in Iraq at the height of the war until U.S.-backed Sunni tribesmen turned against them.
• House GOP may repeal military pension cuts
WASHINGTON - House Republican leaders Monday unveiled a plan to reverse a recently passed cut to military pensions as the price for increasing the government's borrowing cap, but it received a rocky reception from skeptical conservatives.
GOP leaders briefed rank-and-file GOP lawmakers at a meeting in the Capitol on Monday evening in hopes of passing it on Wednesday before departing Washington for a week-long vacation. It's unclear whether the vote would still go forward after it was rejected by many conservatives.
The GOP bill would extend Treasury's borrowing authority for at least another year, repeal the curb passed in December on pension inflation adjustments for military retirees under the age of 62, and extend automatic cuts to Medicare and other programs to 2024, another year than presently scheduled.
The plan may not fly with Democrats. Their votes would be needed to help pass the measure since some Republicans refuse to vote to raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances.
- The Associated Press