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INTERNATIONAL EDITION
GOP insiders air gripes against Gingrich Washington Post Service
• TURN TO GINGRICH, 2A
BY JIM RUTENBERG AND JEFF ZELENY New York Times Service
PHOTOS BY GRETCHEN ERTL/NEW YORK TIMES SERVICE
T-shirts display Cranston High School West’s school prayer in Cranston, R.I. A successful lawsuit from an atheist student to have the prayer removed from the school’s auditorium has roiled the heavily Roman Catholic city of Cranston.
Invocation Provocation RHODE ISLAND CITY ENRAGED OVER SCHOOL PRAYER LAWSUIT
New York Times Service
New York Times Service
CRANSTON, R.I. — She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years. A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer’s presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding that it violated the principle of government neutrality in religion. In the weeks since, residents have crowded school board meetings to demand an appeal, Jessica has received online threats and the police have escorted her at school, and Cranston, a dense city of 80,000 just south of Providence, has throbbed with raw emotion. State Rep. Peter Palumbo, a Democrat from Cranston, called Jessica “an evil little thing” on a popular talk radio show last week. Three separate florists refused to deliver her roses sent from a national atheist group. The group, the
variously, not believing in the monarchy; not liking the system’s links to the British Empire, when there is no British Empire anymore; being miffed that the honor they are being offered is one of the lower-level ones; and feeling generally opposed to the elitism of the whole thing. “Surely, there is something unlikable about a person, when old, accepting honors from a institution she attacked when young?” wrote the author Doris Lessing in 1992, turning down the chance to be a Dame of what she called the “nonexistent empire” (she accepted another title, the Companion of Honor, in 2000, saying she liked that “you’re not called anything” special.) In 2003, J.G. Ballard said he did not want a CBE because the whole thing was a “preposterous charade.” Offered an OBE by Tony Blair’s government in 2003, the poet Benjamin Zephaniah responded, “Stick it, Mr. Blair and Mrs. Queen.” David Bowie said no to a CBE in 2000 because, he explained, “I seriously don’t know what it’s for.”
LONDON — Which is cooler: to accept a knighthood from the queen, or to turn one down? In what the BBC is calling the “alternative honors list,” the British government Friday released the names of 277 people — actors, writers, musicians, politicians, scientists and others — who for reasons known mostly to themselves rejected the rarefied opportunity to become knights, dames and the like between 1951 and 1999. Included are Roald Dahl, who did not want to receive the Order of the British Empire, or OBE, in 1986; Graham Greene, who did not want to be a Commander of the British Empire, or CBE, in 1956; and Aldous Huxley, who turned down a knighthood in 1959. The list, released only after repeated Freedom of Information requests by the BBC, includes only dead nonrecipients and leaves it anyone’s guess as to why they declined their awards. But people who turned down awards in the past have given their reasons as, • TURN TO KNIGHTHOOD, 2A
ROMNEY FAILED TO DISCLOSE INCOME FROM SWISS BANK, 5A
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wrote it as a sort of moral guide and that year’s graduating class presented it as a gift. It was a year after a landmark Supreme Court ruling barring organized prayer in public schools. “Our Heavenly Father,” the prayer begins, “grant us each day the desire to do our best, to grow mentally and morally as well as physically, to be kind and helpful.” It goes on for a few more lines before concluding with “Amen.” For Jessica, who was baptized in the Catholic Church but said she stopped believing in God at age 10, the prayer was an affront. “It seemed like it was saying, every time I saw it, ‘You don’t belong here,’ ” she said during an interview. Since the ruling, the prayer has been covered with a tarp. The school board has indicated it will announce a decision on an appeal next month. A friend brought the prayer to Jessica’s attention in 2010, when she was a high school freshman. She said nothing at first, but before long someone else — a parent who remained anonymous — filed a complaint with the American Civil
BY ABBY GOODNOUGH
Britain releases partial list of those declining knighthood BY SARAH LYALL
109TH YEAR I ©2012 THE MIAMI HERALD
Romney stays on the attack in final Fla. debate
BY PAUL FARHI
Newt Gingrich’s surging candidacy seems to have united the conservative establishment — against him. With Gingrich’s win last week in South Carolina and strong prospects in Florida’s primary, conservative figures and media outlets have been amping up their attacks on a presidential candidate they deem erratic and a potential disaster for the Republican Party. Gingrich was the subject of twin hits Thursday by National Review, the bible of conservative thought founded by William F. Buckley Jr. The biweekly magazine, which has inveighed against Gingrich for weeks, published a blistering antiGingrich statement on its website by former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and a scathing commentary by former Ronald Reagan aide Elliott Abrams. “If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices,” wrote Dole, who supports former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. “Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself.” The National Review said the statement came from the Romney campaign. Dole added that Gingrich’s nomination “could result in a landslide victory for Obama . . . Democrats are not running ads against Gingrich, which is further proof they want to derail Governor Romney.” Abrams wrote that Gingrich, while in Congress in the 1980s, “spewed insulting rhetoric” at Reagan and was unhelpful in the president’s efforts to defeat communism. “Gingrich was voluble and certain in predicting that Reagan’s policies would fail, and in all of this he was dead wrong,” wrote Abrams, who was an assistant secretary of state under Reagan and President George W. Bush’s deputy national security advisor. The commentary, which was linked to on the Drudge Report, concluded that “Ronald Reagan turned out to be a far better student of history and politics than Gingrich.”
SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 2012
JESSICA AHLQUIST
Freedom From Religion Foundation, has filed a complaint with the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights. “I was amazed,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the foundation, which is based in Wisconsin and has given Jessica $13,000 from support and scholarship funds. “We haven’t seen a case like this in a long time, with this level of revilement and ostracism and stigmatizing.” The prayer, 8 feet tall, is papered onto the wall in the Cranston West auditorium, near the stage. It has hung there since 1963, when a seventh-grader • TURN TO PRAYER, 2A
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Mitt Romney, facing his greatest challenge of the campaign so far, relentlessly pressed Newt Gingrich in their final debate before the Florida primary, seeking to regain the offensive against an insurgent challenge that has shaken his claim to inevitability. On immigration, personal finances and the grand ideas that have been the trademark of Gingrich’s candidacy, Romney gave his rival no quarter Thursday night, giving prime time voice to his campaign’s all-out, round-the-clock assault on Gingrich. In a debate in which Romney could ill afford to allow Gingrich another triumphant night, he delivered sharp lines that gave him an advantage usually held by Gingrich: applause from the audience. After being accused in so many debates of pandering, this time it was Romney accusing Gingrich of playing to the crowd with his proposal for a lunar colony, which Romney said may be popular around the Kennedy Space Center in Florida but unrealistic in practice. “I spent 25 years in business,” Romney said. “If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I’d say, you’re fired.” And, clearly prepared with reams of research, he frequently turned Gingrich’s attacks back against him. When Gingrich pressed Romney for having investments in Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and with Goldman Sachs, “which is today foreclosing on Floridians,” Romney was ready with an attack of his own. “Mr. Speaker, I know that sounds like an enormous revelation, but have you checked your own investments?” he asked. “You also have • TURN TO DEBATE, 2A
Accused of atrocities, Guatemala’s former dictator remains silent BY ELISABETH MALKIN
New York Times Service
MEXICO CITY — A Guatemalan judge has orderd Efrain Rios Montt, the country’s former military dictator, to stand trial on
charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. He is accused of orchestrating the razing of Indian villages decades ago during the country’s long civil war. The ruling by Judge Carol Patri-
JOSE MIGUEL LAM/AFP-GETTY IMAGES
Retired General and former President Jose Efrain Rios Montt attends a hearing in Guatemala City over human rights abuses committed during the country’s 36-year civil war.
VIOLENCE RISES SHARPLY IN SYRIA, VEXING MONITORS, 6A
FORD POSTS BIG PROFITS BUT MISSES EXPECTATIONS, BUSINESS FRONT
cia Flores Blanco was a symbolic victory for the relatives of people killed in Guatemala’s 36-year civil war and for human rights groups, who have long argued that Rios Montt was behind much of the worst wartime violence. It came at the end of a daylong hearing Thursday in which prosecutors described mass killings, torture and rape in distant mountain villages almost 30 years ago and stressed that Rios Montt, a former general, had full command over his troops and knowledge of their actions. Nearly three hours into the prosecutors’ presentation, the judge asked Rios Montt, now 85, if he had any response. In a firm voice, he said, “I prefer to remain silent.” The judge ordered Rios Montt to be detained under house arrest. During the 17 months of Rios Montt’s rule in 1982 and 1983, the military carried out a scorchedearth campaign in the Mayan highlands as soldiers hunted down bands of leftist guerrillas. • TURN TO GUATEMALA, 4A
DJOKOVIC OUTLASTS MURRAY TO SET UP FINAL AGAINST NADAL, SPORTS FRONT
INDEX NEWS EXTRA ............3A THE AMERICAS ...........4A OPINION........................7A COMICS & PUZZLES ...6B
1/28/2012 5:03:06 AM
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