D
x x
MONDAY January 7, 2013
Waterloo Page A2 Church starting community meal
BCS Championship Page B1 Will the title game match the hype?
Weather Sunny today, high 32. Mostly clear tonight, low 21. Mostly sunny Tuesday, high 36.
The
Serving DeKalb County since 1871
Page A6 Auburn, Indiana
GOOD MORNING Syria’s Assad announces plan to retain power BEIRUT (AP) — A defiant Syrian President Bashar Assad rallied a chanting and cheering crowd Sunday to fight the uprising against his authoritarian rule, dismissing any chance of dialogue with “murderous criminals” that he blames for nearly two years of violence that has left 60,000 dead. In his first public speech in six months, Assad laid out terms for a peace plan that keeps himself in power, ignoring international demands to step down and pledging to continue the battle “as long as there is one terrorist left” in Syria. “What we started will not stop,” he said, standing at a lectern on stage at the regal Opera House in central Damascus — a sign by the besieged leader that he sees no need to hide or compromise even with the violent civil war closing in on his seat of power in the capital. The theater was packed with his supporters who interrupted the speech with applause, cheers and occasional fist-waving chants, including “God, Bashar and Syria!”
75 cents
kpcnews.com
Smaltz ready for first House session New legislator introduces 3 bills BY AARON ORGAN aorgan@kpcnews.net
INDIANAPOLIS — Ben Smaltz isn’t approaching his freshman year as Indiana House District 52 representative with deer-in-headlights hesitation. He’s been preparing for this challenge for years. Smaltz, a former 10-year DeKalb County Council member, has submitted three bills to the General Assembly for considera-
tion in the session that starts today — a considerable undertaking for a state legislator who’s had but two months to even learn his job. Smaltz, though, said he’s been working on these pieces of legislation to be ready when an opportunity to present them came up. Now’s the time. “I’ve had some things I’d been working on over the past couple of years, just being involved in government and being a citizen
and being involved in business,” said Smaltz. “Just things that made me go, ‘Huh.’” Smaltz will introduce a bill to extend the deadline for property owners to file homestead exemptions, giving them more time to understand and Smaltz properly complete the money-saving paperwork. Also, Smaltz has submitted a
Wall Street supports deal on ‘fiscal cliff’ for the moment
Ligonier Police Department K-9 handler Josh Halsey. “There are K9 handlers who go their whole careers without getting a bite.” Halsey has had a K-9 since 2007 and has had one bite apprehension. The Noble County Sheriff’s Department’s other K-9 handler, Deputy David Worman, said he’s had one bite apprehension in 10 years working with police dogs. Avilla Deputy Town Marshal Mike Duncan said he’s had one in six years with his K-9 partner. Auburn Police Chief Martin McCoy struggled to remember the last time his department had a police K-9 bite. McCoy and Halsey both said normally just the sight and sound of a barking police dog is enough to make people stop running. “They’re very seldom and far between,” McCoy said of bite instances. “Most of the time a barking dog will make them comply.” But when a suspect won’t listen to police commands … Lasco ended 2012 with a bite, er, bang. • At 10 p.m. Dec. 22, Ewell was called to a traffic accident at the intersection of Wolf Lake Road
NEW YORK (AP) — When lawmakers delivered a longdelayed, last-minute agreement on the budget, Wall Street celebrated. And it would be easy to think that the surge in the Dow the following day meant that investors had put their concerns about Washington’s political gridlock behind them. The Dow Jones industrial average surged on the news, but that doesn’t mean the volatility is over. In fact, there could be more turmoil in the market soon because decisions on cutting the federal budget deficit have been put off until March, when the government will reach its borrowing limit. Republicans have already said they will demand cuts to spending as a condition for extending the limit. “The uncertainty is still there, the key issues are spending cuts and entitlement reforms and, for the most part, those were not addressed,” says Terry Sandven, chief equities strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management. “This sets the stage for sharper rhetoric and increased market volatility as these discussions evolve.” The last time lawmakers tussled over the debt limit, the stock market plunged and the U.S. government lost its AAA debt rating. The Dow fell almost 7 percent in the two weeks before an agreement was reached Aug. 3, 2011. Many business leaders objected to the agreement lawmakers reached late Tuesday. The Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies, said that although it addressed some of the immediate negative consequences that the economy would have faced going over the “fiscal cliff,”
SEE BITE, PAGE A6
SEE CLIFF, PAGE A6
CHAD KLINE
Noble County Sheriff’s Department K-9 Lasco and Deputy Doug Ewell are ready for the call for assistance from local law enforcement agencies.
ONLINE CALENDAR
kpcnews.com
Info • The Star 118 W. Ninth St. Auburn, IN 46706 Auburn: (260) 925-2611 Fax: (260) 925-2625 Classifieds: (toll free) (877) 791-7877 Circulation: (toll free) (800) 717-4679
Index
•
Classifieds...............................B7-B8 Life...................................................A5 Obituaries.......................................A4 Opinion ...........................................B4 Sports.......................................B1-B3 Weather..........................................A6 TV/Comics.....................................B6 Vol. 101 No. 6
Lasco saw a larger than normal need in the final days of 2012.
Taking a bite out of crime Noble County K-9 on rare bite apprehension streak BY MATT GETTS mattg@kpcnews.net
Find out what’s going on in the area this week
SEE SMALTZ, PAGE A6
Cheers for now
K-9 Crime Fighters
Doctors: Mandela is making progress JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South African antiapartheid leader Nelson Mandela has recovered from his recent lung infection and a surgical procedure to remove gallstones, according to an announcement Sunday by President Jacob Zuma. Doctors say that Mandela, 94, has made “steady progress and that clinically, he continues to improve,” according to a statement issued by Zuma’s office. Mandela was hospitalized for nearly three weeks in December before going home on Dec. 26. Zuma’s statement said Mandela “continues to receive high care” at his home in the Houghton suburb of Johannesburg and that “his daily routine is being gradually reestablished.”
bill that speeds the processing of property tax appeals at the county government level — a process that now can takes months into years, Smaltz said. Finally, Smaltz will work to pass a bill that prohibits sex offenders from entering schools at all times, including Election Day. Currently, the state allows sex offenders inside schools to vote if they are registered to vote at that specific precinct. “We really ought to not do that. It’s just not good,” Smaltz said.
ALBION — Noble County Sheriff’s Department K-9 Lasco earned his weight in doggie treats during a recent eight-day span. Lasco, an 80-pound, 8-year-old German shepherd, made three bite apprehensions of criminal suspects in three different incidents from Dec. 22-29. Lasco’s handler, Deputy Doug Ewell, said the dog imported from Czechoslovakia had three bite apprehensions total in the previous 6 1/2 years he had been in service with the Noble County Sheriff’s Department. “I’d had zero this year,” Ewell
“There are K-9 handlers who go their whole careers without getting a bite.” Josh Halsey Ligonier Police K-9 handler
• said this week. “It had been two years since my last bite.” Bites aren’t exactly common — at least not in northeastern Indiana. “It’s kind of a rare thing,” said
Hagel likely to be nominated Pentagon head WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel is a contrarian Republican moderate and decorated Vietnam combat veteran who is likely to support a more rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. As President Barack Obama’s likely nominee for defense secretary, Hagel has another credential important to the president: a personal relationship with Obama, forged when they were in the Senate and strengthened during overseas trips they took together. Hagel, 66, has for weeks been
the front-runner for the Pentagon’s top job, four years after leaving behind a Senate career in which he carved out a reputation as an independent thinker and blunt speaker. An announcement on his nomination was expected Monday. “I do think Obama’s done a good job overall. There are a lot of things I don’t agree with him on; he knows it,” Hagel told the foreign policy website Al-Monitor last March. Wounded during the Vietnam War, Hagel backed the Iraq war, but later became a fierce and credible critic of the Bush adminis-
tration’s war policies, making routine trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. He opposed President George W. Bush’s plan to send an additional 30,000 troops into Iraq — a move that has been credited with stabilizing the chaotic country — as “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it’s carried out.” While Hagel supported the Afghanistan war resolution, over time he has become more critical of the decade-plus conflict, with its complex nation-building effort. Often seeing the Afghan war through the lens of his service in
Vietnam, Hagel has declared that militaries are “built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations.” In a radio interview this year, he spoke broadly of the need for greater diplomacy as the appropriate path in Afghanistan, noting that “the American people want out” of the war. In an October interview with the online Vietnam Magazine, Hagel said he remembers telling himself in 1968 in Vietnam, “If I ever get out of this and I’m ever in a position to influence policy, I will do everything I can to avoid needless, senseless war.”