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THE STAR
AREA • NATION •
kpcnews.com
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2013
PATERNITY: Emancipation age is 19 in Indiana FROM PAGE A1
AP
A woman who had been hiding during the gun battle runs for cover after armed police, seen behind, enter the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, Saturday. Gunmen threw grenades and opened
fire Saturday, killing at least 22 people in an attack targeting non-Muslims at an upscale mall in Kenya’s capital that was hosting a children’s day event, a Red Cross official and witnesses said.
ATTACK: Nairobi Westgate Mall is Israeli owned FROM PAGE A1
Somalia’s Islamic extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility and said the attack was retribution for Kenyan forces’ 2011 push into Somalia. The rebels threatened more attacks. Al-Shabab said on its Twitter feed that Kenyan security officials were trying to open negotiations. “There will be no negotiations whatsoever,” al-Shabab tweeted. As night fell in Kenya’s capital, two contingents of army special forces troops moved inside the mall. Police and military surrounded the huge shopping complex as helicopters buzzed overhead. An Associated Press reporter said he saw a wounded Kenyan soldier put into an ambulance at nightfall, an indication, perhaps, of a continuing shoot-out inside. Witnesses said at least five gunmen — including at least one woman — first attacked an outdoor cafe at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, a shiny, new shopping center that includes Nike, Adidas and Bose stores. The mall’s ownership is Israeli, and security experts have long said the structure made an attractive terrorist target. The attack began shortly after noon with bursts of gunfire and grenades. Shoppers — expatriates and affluent Kenyans — fled in any direction that might be safe: into back corners of
stores, back service hallways and bank vaults. Over the next several hours, pockets of people trickled out of the mall as undercover police moved in. Some of the wounded were trundled out in shopping carts. “We started by hearing gunshots downstairs and outside. Later we heard them come inside. We took cover. Then we saw two gunmen wearing black turbans. I saw them shoot,” said Patrick Kuria, an employee at Artcaffe, the restaurant with shady outdoor seating. Frank Mugungu, an off-duty army sergeant major, said he saw four male attackers and one female attacker. “One was Somali,” he said, adding that the others were black, suggesting that they could have been Kenyan or another nationality. Al-Shabab, on its Twitter feed, said that it has many times warned Kenya’s government that failure to remove its forces from Somalia “would have severe consequences.” The group claimed that its gunmen had killed 100 people, but its assertions are often exaggerated. “The attack at #WestgateMall is just a very tiny fraction of what Muslims in Somalia experience at the hands of Kenyan invaders,” al-Shabab said. Another tweet said: “For long we have waged war against the Kenyans in our land, now
it’s time to shift the battleground and take the war to their land #Westgate.” Al-Shabab’s Twitter account was suspended shortly after its claim of responsibility and threats against Kenya. Twitter’s terms of service forbids making threats. Al-Shabab threatened in late 2011 to unleash a large-scale attack in Nairobi. Kenya has seen a regular spate of grenade attacks since then but never such a large terrorist assault. Nairobi’s mortuary superintendent, Sammy Nyongesa Jacob, said Africans, Asians and Caucasians were among the bodies brought to the mortuary. The U.S. State Department condemned “this senseless act of violence that has resulted in death and injury for many innocent men, women, and children.” In a separate statement, a White House spokeswoman said some staff at the U.S. Embassy in Kenya have been “tragically affected” by the attack. No other information was provided. “The perpetrators of this heinous act must be brought to justice, and we have offered our full support to the Kenyan Government to do so,” Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said in the statement.
Pope’s blunt remarks pose challenge for bishops NEW YORK (AP) — In recent years, many American bishops have drawn a harder line with parishioners on what could be considered truly Roman Catholic, adopting a more aggressive style of correction and telling abortion rights supporters to stay away from the sacrament of Communion. Liberal-minded Catholics derided the approach as tone-deaf. Church leaders said they had no choice given what was happening around them: growing secularism, increasing acceptance of gay marriage, and a broader culture they considered more and more hostile to Christianity. They felt they were following the lead of the pontiffs who elevated them. But in blunt terms, in an interview published Thursday in 16 Jesuit journals worldwide, the new pope, Francis called the church’s focus on abortion, marriage and contraception narrow and said it was driving people away. Now, the U.S. bishops face a challenge to rethink a strategy many considered essential for preserving the faith. “I don’t see how the pope’s remarks can be interpreted in any other way than arguing that the church’s rhetoric on the so-called culture war issues needs to be toned down,” said John Green, a religion
specialist at the University of Akron’s Bliss Institute of Applied Politics. “I think his language calls for less stridency on these issues.” The leadership of the American church is composed of men who were appointed by Popes John Paul II or Benedict XVI, who made a priority of defending doctrinal orthodoxy. Over the last decade or so, the bishops have been working to reassert their moral authority, in public life and over the less obedient within their flock. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops warned Catholics that voting for abortion-rights supporters could endanger their souls. Church leaders in Minnesota, Maine and elsewhere took prominent roles in opposing legal recognition for same-sex marriage in their states. Bishops censured some theologians and prompted a Vatican-directed takeover of the largest association for American nuns by bringing complaints to Rome that the sisters strayed from church teaching and paid too little attention to abortion. Terrence Tilley, a theologian at Fordham University, said Francis wasn’t silencing discussion of abortion or gay marriage, but indicating those issues should be less central, for the sake of evangelizing. But he noted that bishops
have independence to decide how they should handle local political issues. “Although Francis is sending a clear signal that he’s not a culture warrior, that doesn’t mean the bishops will follow in lockstep,” Tilley said. Few of the U.S. bishops who have commented so far on Francis’ interview indicated they planned to change. Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, head of the bishops’ religious liberty committee, said in a phone interview, “Issues do arise and we cannot always control the timing.” However, he added, “Every time I make a statement about one of these things I will certainly take another look at it and ask, ‘Does this really lead people back to the heart of the Gospel?’ “That’s what he’s asking us to do. I think that’s a fair question. “ Lori said he expected no changes in the bishops’ push for broader religious exemptions from the contraception coverage rule in the Affordable Care Act. Dozens of Catholic charities and dioceses, along with evangelical colleges and others, are suing the Obama administration over the regulation. The bishops say the provision violates the religious freedom of faith-based nonprofits and for-profit employers.
when there is some question or dispute as to who the father is, Wible said. In that instance, a mother comes in and fills out an application seeking to establish paternity. The case has to be pursued once it’s begun, Wible said, adding, “If there’s reason to believe he’s not the dad, you still have to go on through.” Most commonly, such cases that don’t end with a negotiation end with a DNA test, Morris said. Even DNA results can be disputed, Wible said. In 11 years as LaGrange County prosecutor, he had one man who had a positive test who still said, “I’m not the father.” In Noble County, 355 new child support cases were filed in 2012, Clouse said. Of those, 113 were paternity cases. Of the paternity cases, 80 required DNA testing, Clouse said. This year, Noble County has had 79 paternity cases filed so far, Clouse said. Thirty-six cases so far this year have required DNA tests. There were 127 paternity cases filed in DeKalb County in 2012, Morris said. So far in 2013, 73 have been filed.
But a key element is that paternity cases don’t just involve a child’s birth, Wible, Clouse and Morris said. Those cases continue in the system until the child is emancipated, no longer eligible to receive support through the legal system. Clouse said 1,598 cases were tagged as involving paternity in Noble County in 2012. Wible said LaGrange County has more than 1,000 active cases involving paternity. Some involve 17-year-olds, he said. The age of emancipation in Indiana is 19, but some paternity support claims can continue beyond that, said Wallace. Support requirements can continue while a child is in college. There are a variety of tools that can be used when support isn’t being paid, Wallace said. The state can go after the assets of a nonpayer of support and place liens on property. “We go after the money pretty aggressively,” Wallace said. For some cases, felony criminal charges can be filed, which can result in as much as an eight-year prison sentence, Wallace said. Paternity cases bring special challenges. “In some cases, the
woman doesn’t know who the father is. That takes a lot of work,” Wible said. Then there are cases involving parents who’ve moved from state to state, Morris said. “You get other states involved, they apply the law in that state,” she said. There are cases in which the man or woman decides to revoke the paternity affidavit after the fact, Morris said. That can have legal consequences, since lying on the affidavit is considered perjury. Another complicating issue is whether a man is treated as the child’s father, even if he is not biologically the parent. State laws recognize a man who functions as a father and is married to a child’s mother in that role, but a split can create more complications later. That’s especially true if someone else is the biological father. Paternity cases don’t get into custody issues, Morris said. Whatever else is true, paternity determination is needed, Clouse said, adding, “Society has an overriding interest that children know who their parents are and society knows who to give the rights and responsibilities for those children to.”
DEVELOPMENT: Family owns rental properties FROM PAGE A1
the Noble County Board of Zoning Appeals. “If we could do two or three stores a year … maybe in the long run it was good it happened this way,” Doug Jennings said. “It’s not the direction we thought it was going to take.” The original petition asked commissioners to rezone property at 11330 E. C.R. 500S to allow a village with people re-enacting 1800s life and crafts, along with related shops. The small shops would create items that were available in the 1800s, made the way the they were crafted in that time period. Eventual offerings would include jewelry, cast iron cook ware, woodworking, candle and toy and doll shops. The Christian-based effort would someday include a nondenominational church built as one would have been built in the 1800s. The plan met with opposition from some in the community, including a Realtor who submitted his opposition in writing when the plan came before the Noble County Plan Commission for recommendation. The Realtor, Bob Muller of Kendallville, has since recanted, saying that he now believes the project would be beneficial to the community as a whole and would not harm property values in the vicinity. Muller wrote a letter distributed to Noble County
the Christian-based village project, the couple said. The village shops, with demonstrators on hand, would become a good way for school children to learn about life in the 1800s. “It would be good for the kids to come out and visit,” he said. The village also would create a venue for local artisans. “It gives them a permanent venue to sell their wares,” he said. The family would not construct anything that would be an eyesore or annoyance on their property, Giving back the couple said. Doug Jennings retired “We’ve really worked from K’s Merchandise 12 hard to make this beautiful, years ago. He had been and we just want to share responsible for designing it,” Kim Jennings said. and building new stores and Gifted with a sense of product placement in the vision, Doug Jennings has stores. poster board mock-ups of “I thought I was going to what each of the individual retire,” he said. “I got bored stores would look like. fast. I got into real estate.” Painstaking in his The family now has desire that everything be numerous rental properties period-correct as much in the Fort Wayne area. He as possible, the proposed said he manages the proper- slower development pace ties himself, and he’s the one won’t bother him, Doug who responds to middle-ofJennings said. the-night calls for problems. “You have to be that Heavily involved in their way,” he said. “Otherwise, church’s food pantry, the you’re not going to get it Jenningses also have helped right. We want it to be done with LaOtto’s park and right, and we want it to be youth league facilities. successful.” Doug Jennings said he He encouraged people to works 70 hours or more per stop by and check out the week. plans the family has for the “I’m a workaholic,” he property. said. “I really enjoy giving “We want people to give back.” us a chance,” he said. “Give And that’s a big part of us the benefit of the doubt.” officials stating his new belief. The fact that much of the opposition to the project is based on what the Jenningses call incorrect information is troubling to them. “We’re hurt,” Doug Jennings said. “We’re frustrated.” Doug Jennings said his family has no intention of putting anything on their property that would be a source of trouble. “We do live here,” he said.
Health law separates potential GOP contenders MACKINAC ISLAND, Mich. (AP) — A clear divide over the health care law separates the emerging field of potential GOP candidates for the 2016 presidential race, previewing the battles ahead as they try to rebuild their party and seize the White House. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz says he will fight “with every breath” to stop President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement, even if that means shutting down parts of the federal government. It’s an approach that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush calls “quite dicey” politically for Republicans. Allied on the other side Cruz, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and others who say they are making a principled stand, willing to oppose the law at all costs. Then there are those taking what they call a pragmatic approach by accepting the law, if
grudgingly, and moving on. This group includes Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who says a shutdown would violate the public trust. “The government we have should work, so that’s why I don’t believe we should shut the government down,” Walker told reporters after speaking at a Republican conference in Michigan Saturday. The Republican-controlled House passed a short-term spending plan Friday that would continue funding government operations through mid-December while withholding money for the health law. Some GOP lawmakers also advocate holding back on increasing the nation’s borrowing limit, which could result in a first-ever default, unless the law is brought down. Obama used his weekly radio and Internet address
Saturday to scold “a faction on the far right” of the Republican Party, and he said he would not allow “anyone to harm this country’s reputation or threaten to inflict economic pain on millions of our own people, just to make an ideological point.” Less than one-quarter of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, about the same as approve of Republicans in Congress, according to recent national polls. Democrats poll slightly higher, and large majorities disapprove of the work of both. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, hosting a state Republican conference where Walker and two other 2016 prospects, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, planned to speak Saturday, said a shutdown “reflects poorly on the national political culture.”