Roswell Daily Record
INSIDE NEWS
BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian government forces attacked rebels with helicopter gunships in the heart of Damascus on Tuesday, escalating a campaign to crush their opponents as clashes spread to new areas, illustrating the rebels’ growing reach.
RECESSION LIKELY IF ...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke painted a dark picture of where the U.S. economy is headed if Congress fails to reach agreement soon to avert a budget crisis. “It would probably knock the recovery back into a recession and cost a lot of jobs, - PAGE A5
THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
Syria clashes spread to new areas
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Cracks of gunfire and explosions echoed inside the capital for a third day, including a firefight near the country’s parliament, in an unprecedented challenge to government rule in President Bashar Assad’s
July 18, 2012
WEDNESDAY
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seat of power. Neighboring Iraq called on its citizens living in Syria to return home, as the fighting overshadowed another round of diplomatic maneuvering to end the civil war, with special envoy Kofi Annan in Moscow in an attempt to rescue his faltering peace plan. Plumes of gray smoke billowed over the Damascus skyline and helicopter gunships strafed the area, activists said — a sign the regime is growing desperate to push the rebels away
Flower children, 2012
from the heavily-guarded capital. Terrified families fled the city or said they were prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. Residents said they were packing “getaway bags” in case they had to run for their lives. Clashes were concentrated in the neighborhoods of Kfar Souseh, Nahr Aisha, Midan and Qadam — a mixture of lower- and middle-to-upper-class districts in the city’s southwest See SYRIA, Page A3
AP Photo
A Syrian refugee peers out of his family’s tent at the Al Bashabsheh Syrian refugee camp, in Ramtha, Jordan, Tuesday.
Downside to saying no to Obamacare
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• Child killed in ATV crash • Old West returns to Fort Stanton • Ash, silt from Little Bear fills Bonito Lake • Know the signs of illegal car sellers • Word of Encouragement ...
INSIDE SPORTS
Mark Wilson Photo
Emma, a student at Working Mothers Day Nursery, creates a flowery masterpiece with the help of Girl Scouts from Assumption Catholic Church during a visit sponsored by Sunrise Optimist and the Morning Garden clubs.
Despite protests, BSA reaffirms ban on gays
LOW-KEY APPROACH
LYTHAM ST. ANNES (AP) — Rory McIlroy went out to dinner a few nights ago at one of this English city’s finer restaurants. He got to enjoy his meal in relative peace, with only a handful of fans pestering him for a picture. Hard to imagine that happening in the approach to last year ’s British Open, when Rorymania was at its peak. The kid likes low key a whole lot better. - PAGE B1
TODAY’S OBITUARIES
• Gilbert Silva • Elizabeth Burnett • John Earl George • Tonita Flores • Charles Martin • Mary Pearson Smith • Charline Walton • Frances Carpenter - PAGE A6
HIGH ...96˚ LOW ....69˚
TODAY’S FORECAST
CLASSIFIEDS..........B6 COMICS.................B4 FINANCIAL .............B3 GENERAL ..............A2 HOROSCOPES ........A8 LOTTERIES ............A2 OPINION ................A4 SPORTS ................B1 WEATHER ..............A8
NEW YORK (AP) — After a confidential two-year review, the Boy Scouts of America on Tuesday emphatically reaffirmed its policy of excluding gays, angering critics who hoped that relentless protest campaigns might lead to change.
The Scouts cited support from parents as a key reason for keeping the policy and expressed hope that the prolonged debate over it might now subside. Bitter reactions from gay-rights activists suggested that
result was unlikely. The Scouts’ national spokesman, Deron Smith, told The Associated Press that an 11-member special committee, for med discreetly by top Scout leaders in 2010, came to the conclusion that the exclusion policy “is absolutely the best policy” for the 102year-old organization. Smith said the committee, comprised of professional scout executives and adult volunteers, was
WASHINGTON (AP) — For Gov. Rick Perry, saying “no” to the federal health care law could also mean turning away up to 1.3 million Texans, nearly half the uninsured people who could be newly eligible for coverage in his state. Gov. Chris Christie not only would be saying “no” to President Barack Obama, but to as many as 245,000 uninsured New Jersey residents as well. The Supreme Court’s recent ruling gave governors new flexibility to reject what some Republicans deride as “Obamacare.” But there’s a downside, too. States that reject the law’s Medicaid expansion risk leaving behind many of their low-income uninsured residents in a coverage gap already being called the new “doughnut hole” — a reference to a Medicare gap faced by seniors. Medicaid is a giant federal-state health insurance program for the poor, now
After the storm
See OBAMACARE, Page A3
Mark Wilson Photo
Standing water at the intersection of Alameda Street and Missouri Avenue reflects car lights following a thunderstorm, Monday night.
Glacier in north Greenland breaks off huge iceberg WASHINGTON (AP) — An iceberg twice the size of Manhattan tore off one of Greenland’s largest glaciers, illustrating another dramatic change to the warming island. For several years, scientists had been watching a long crack near the tip of the northerly Petermann Glacier. On Monday, NASA satellites showed it had broken completely, freeing
See BSA, Page A3
an iceberg measuring 46 square miles. A massive ice sheet covers about four -fifths of Greenland. Petermann Glacier is mostly on land, but a segment sticks out over water like a frozen tongue, and that’s where the break occurred. The same glacier spawned an iceberg twice that size two years ago. Together, the breaks made
Motorcycle accident
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Mark Wilson Photo
Emergency personnel tend to a motorcyclist injured following a Tuesday morning accident at the intersection of Southeast Main and East Hobbs streets.
a large change that’s got the attention of researchers. “It’s dramatic. It’s disturbing,” said University of Delaware professor Andreas Muenchow, who was one of the first researchers to notice the break. “We have data for 150 years and we see changes that we have not seen before.” “It’s one of the manifesta-
tions that Greenland is changing very fast,” he said. Researchers suspect global warming is to blame, but can’t prove it conclusively yet. Glaciers do calve icebergs naturally, but what’s happened in the last three years to Petermann is unprecedented, Muenchow and other scientists say. “This is not part of natural variations anymore,”
said NASA glaciologist Eric Rignot, who camped on Petermann 10 years ago.
Ohio State University ice scientist Ian Howat said there is still a chance it could be normal calving, like losing a fingernail that has grown too long, but any further loss would show it’s not natural: See ICEBERG, Page A3
RPD arrests fugitive from Colorado The Roswell Police Department arrested Matthew Espe, 32, Monday, as a fugitive from justice. Espe had outstanding warrants from Arapahoe County, Colo., which is within the Denver-Aurora metroplex. The RPD received information from the U.S. Marshal’s Of fice that Espe was living in the Roswell area and working at Domino’s Pizza, 2417 N. Main St. Espe is wanted in Ara-
pahoe County on charges ranging from sexual assault of a minor, two counts of failure to appear, two counts of failure to pay fines and one count of failure to comply with community service.
Officers apprehended Espe at his place of employment, going into the kitchen to find him. “We can’t arrest him on an out-of-state warrant, but we can arrest him as See RPD, Page A3
Matthew Espe