In the news
Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania became the latest Democrat to announce his support for same-sex marriage, saying: “If two people of the same sex fall in love and want to marry, why would our government stand in the way? ”
Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, has been hospitalized at Ramallah Medical Center in the West Bank with a stomach infection and will be kept overnight for observation, said Health Minister Hani Abdeen.
Pedro Quezada, 44, a New Jersey man who won the March 23 Powerball drawing and claimed a lump-sum payment last week worth $221 million, or about $152 million after taxes, has paid about $30,000 in back child support and told a judge that his three children would be living with him from now on.
Jimmy Carter, the former U.S. president, said his Carter Center will observe elections in Nepal even as opposition parties threaten to disrupt the vote and the government has been unable to set a date.
Brian Deese, who has been deputy director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council and was a main administration figure during auto bailout negotiations in 2009, was nominated as deputy director of the White House budget office.
Terry Sedlacek, who is accused of gunning down a Maryville, Ill., pastor in midsermon in 2009, remains mentally unfit to stand trial after spending more than three years in a mental hospital, Illinois’ 5th District Appellate Court has ruled.
Badam Zari, 40, a housewife, has made history by becoming the first woman to run for Pakistan’s Parliament from the deeply conservative tribal region bordering Afghanistan, and said in an interview, “I am ... hopeful society will support me.”
Mark Hebert, a former Jefferson Parish, La., sheriff ’s deputy charged with stealing Albert Bloch’s debit card and using it, pleaded innocent to charges that he engaged in a scheme to kill Bloch to prevent him from reporting the purported card theft and misuse.
Mark Ojakian, chief of staff for Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, says state police Col. Daniel Stebbins, who revealed at a New Orleans seminar evidence suggesting suspected Newtown elementary school shooter Adam Lanza studied other mass killings, will not be punished.