When the earthquake in Haiti rocked the world, people from across the globe stepped in to help.
Intermountain Healthcare Regional Vice President David Clark recently came to BYU to describe the aftermath of this earthquake and give updates on relief efforts.

“The U.S. has carried a lot of the load there early on,” Clark said. “Many other countries have responded quickly, too.  We’ve had a unified objective.”

Clark, who stays in close contact with several volunteers in Haiti, said recent estimates claim 200,000 people are dead and more than 1 million are homeless as a result of the earthquake. He also recounted stories of people putting a bar of soap in their pillowcases before they went to sleep at night so when the wind blew they would smell the clean scent of the soap and not the odor of dead bodies.

A California man is facing several years in prison after authorities say he threw a Molotov cocktail at a tattoo parlor after employees refused to draw on his chest an offensive image of President Barack Obama.

Monterey County prosecutors say Nathan Augustine of Pacific Grove pleaded no contest to arson Wednesday in connection with the July incident at Creative Visions tattoo parlor in Monterey.

Deputy District Attorney Douglas Matheson says the 36-year-old Augustine also pleaded no contest to a similar incident days later at a restaurant.

After being turned down by employees at the parlor for a tattoo of a swastika and an image of Obama overlaid with crosshairs, Matheson says Augustine later returned and threw the device.

Matheson says Augustine will be sentenced to seven years in prison for both attacks. Sentencing is scheduled for March 12.
 

Repealing the ban that will allow gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military has caused much controversy since President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last week.

“This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. It’s the right thing to do,” Obama said.

 Many disagree on the issue and feel repealing the law will be a disadvantage for gays and lesbians serving in the military.

“The vast majority of military aren’t sweet and gentle. I’m afraid the person would be ridiculed a lot,” said Gary Spencer, a retired Air Force officer.

On Tuesday night, Congress held a hearing, televised on CSPAN,  for the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, where many senators also expressed their opinion on the issue.

 WASHINGTON — Al-Qaida can be expected to attempt an attack on the United States in the next three to six months, senior U.S. intelligence officials told Congress on Tuesday.

The terrorist organization is deploying operatives to the United States to carry out new attacks from inside the country, including “clean” recruits with a negligible trail of terrorist contacts, CIA Director Leon Panetta said. The chilling warning comes as Christmas Day airline attack suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutullab is cooperating with federal investigators, a federal law enforcement official said on Tuesday.

Salt Lake City may be facing its chance to shine as the location for the 2012 GOP National Convention.

The rumored top three cities are Tampa Bay, Fla., Phoenix and Salt Lake City. Only one will receive the honor of hosting the convention in August 2012.

“We feel very good in our bid,” Shawn Stinson, director of communications for the Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau, told The Daily Universe. “But it will all be left up to the committee.”

Salt Lake is a strong contender for the location because it has proved itself capable of handling large crowds in the past, namely the 2002 Olympics. Bursting hotels and busy hubs of transportation are well-maintained by the organizational efforts of the SLCVB. Even with the crowds and the money that will need to be invested if the convention is held in Utah, the state will still benefit from holding the convention.

Spelling out painful priorities, President Barack Obama urged Congress on Monday to quickly approve a huge new shot of spending for recession relief and job creation, part of a record $3.8 trillion budget that would boost the deficit beyond any in the nation's history while only slowly beginning to put Americans back to work.

If Congress goes along with Obama's election-year plan, the nation would still end the year with unemployment pushing double digits at 9.8 percent and this year's pool of government red ink deepening to $1.56 trillion under the administration's accounting.

The spending blueprint for next year calls for tax cuts for workers and business and more aid for cash-starved state governments as well as the unemployed. The jobs initiative largely mirrors last year's stimulus bill, but is about one-third its size. The president is asking for nearly $300 billion for recession relief and job stimulus.

WASHINGTON — Bush administration lawyers who drafted legal theories that led to waterboarding and other harsh treatment of terrorism suspects showed poor judgment but won't face sanctions for professional misconduct, according to a published report.

A forthcoming government ethics report initially concluded the two key authors of the so-called torture memos, Jay Bybee and John Yoo, who were officials in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration, had violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted the memos that allowed the use of harsh interrogation tactics.

But a senior Justice Department official, David Margolis, later softened the department's finding to say the authors simply showed poor judgment, Newsweek reported.