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NEW YORK (AP) — A slice of the New York City area mainstream — a police officer, a fire department paramedic, a rabbi, a nurse, a Boy Scout leader — used the Internet to anonymously collect and trade child pornography, federal officials said Wednesday. The six were among at least 70 men and one woman charged in a five-week operation by the Homeland Security Investigations arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Federal officials, who planned to announce the arrests a news conference later Wednesday, call it one of the largest local roundups ever of people who collect images of...

China has built an offshore oil drilling rig, numbered HD-981, specifically for the purpose invalidating other nations’ claims to seabed they thought was theirs. There is no doubt about the purpose of the rig given that a Chinese state oil company official once called it “our mobile national territory.” Its primary purpose isn’t commercial. If China can drill an oil well on some other country’s seabed, they can then claim that it was China’s territory all along. The rig is having its first outing to that purpose off the coast of Vietnam, accompanied by 86 Chinese vessels including a submarine....

Pedophile teacher abused scores as clues missed He was one of the most beloved teachers in the small world of international schools that serve the children of diplomats, well-off American expatriates and local elites. He was often the first to arrive in the morning, and the last to leave each day. He led students on class trips to exotic places, treating them to cookies and milk at bedtime. That was the public persona of William Vahey, carefully crafted over four decades until a maid cleaning his home in Nicaragua stole a 16-gigabyte memory drive. There, in photograph after photograph, was...

RUSH: "Writing in Scouting Magazine, Bryan Wendell says Scouts from Berkeley Heights [New Jersey] encountered Curry on a trail in Harriman State Park in New York. Curry, 57, had broken her ankle. 'We were hiking along, and we came to a trail intersection,' Scouter Rick Jurgens said, 'and a lady was sitting on the ground with her one leg out. "'We didn't think anything of it, but one of the guys asked if everything is OK. She said, 'No, not really. I think I broke my ankle.' She told us to keep going, but the guys refused.' Although Jurgens said...

A move is under way in the California court system to ban judges from belonging to the Boys Scouts of America because the youth organization discriminates against homosexuals. A proposed rule change by the Supreme Court Advisory Committee on The Code of Judicial Ethics would make the BSA no longer “excepted from the category of organizations that practice ‘invidious discrimination’ on the basis of sexual orientation.” Last May, the BSA’s National Council voted to allow acknowledged homosexuals to be in the program but not in leadership. It’s the ban on “gay” leaders that has prompted the California courts’ action.

California is proposing to ban members of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) from serving as judges because the Boy Scouts do not allow gay troop leaders, The Daily Caller has learned. In a move with major legal implications, The California Supreme Court Advisory Committee on The Code of Judicial Ethics has proposed to classify the Boy Scouts as practicing “invidious discrimination” against gays, which would end the group’s exemption to anti-discriminatory ethics rules and would prohibit judges from being affiliated with the group.

The Boy Scouts of America has revoked its charter agreement with a Seattle church that refused to remove a gay troop leader after the organization withdrew his membership. A Boy Scouts attorney told Rainier Beach United Methodist Church last week that it no longer could host troops under the Boy Scouts name. The church has stood by Geoff McGrath, 49, a Seattle software engineer and Eagle Scout, after his membership in the organization was revoked last month, setting off an impasse between the church and one of the country’s most popular youth organizations. …

Rainier Beach United Methodist Church celebrated Scout Sunday April 6, days after news broke that the Boy Scouts of America said it was banning a volunteer Scout leader and church member because he is gay. The Rev. Monica Corsaro, pastor of Rainier Beach, said Geoffrey McGrath will continue to serve as the leader of the church's scouting program. “I am a chartering partner with BSA … . If I take responsibility for who is hired then I also take responsibility for who is fired. Our church is thriving and happy, and we support Geoffrey,” Corsaro said. McGrath, an Eagle Scout,...

New survey numbers from Rasmussen show public opinion turning slowly against the Boy Scouts. Though most Americans still view them favorably, their numbers continue in a perennial trend of decline. The national poll taken by telephone shows 59% of Americans still view the Boy Scouts at least "somewhat" favorably, this represents a decline of six percentage points from last May and a 14 point decline from February, 2012. Twenty-eight percent view the Boy Scouts unfavorably. 

SEATTLE, WA, April 2, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) have removed a Seattle-area troop leader and banned him from the organization for going public with his homosexuality, in what is thought to be the first such case since the BSA voted to allow openly homosexual youth, but not adults, to join. Scoutmaster Geoff McGrath, 49, a former Eagle Scout and leader of Troop 98 in Rainier Beach, had his BSA membership revoked Monday after an NBC News reporter contacted the organization seeking comment for a profile the network was doing on “the first openly gay Scoutmaster...

Nearly a year after announcing that it would admit gay boys but still prohibit openly gay leaders from its ranks, the Boy Scouts of America has dismissed a gay scoutmaster. The fired leader, Geoffrey McGrath, 49, is an Eagle Scout and software engineer in Seattle who is married to his longtime companion. He helped form a troop last fall, he said, because he loves scouting and because the low-income and immigrant children in his area of south Seattle had few after-school activities. The troop is sponsored by the Rainier Beach United Methodist Church, one of hundreds of “reconciling congregations” in...

ORLANDO, Fla. (BP) -- The Walt Disney Company is playing into the hands of Boy Scouts of America by cutting donations to BSA, giving the Scouts greater public leverage to accept gay leaders, Atlanta area pastor Ernest Easley said today (March 7). Disney in February joined a growing list of companies who have cut financial support to BSA because of the Scouts' ban on openly gay leaders. Such pressure will make it easier for BSA to open Scout leadership to gay men, said Easley, pastor of Roswell Street Baptist Church and chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee. "Walt...

<p>“I was horrified,” said John Stemberger, chairman of the board of Trail Life USA, a new, rapidly-growing scouting organization that doesn’t allow openly gay members.</p> <p>Stemberger was referring to an Associated Press photograph that accompanied an in-depth story about Trail Life. The image showed a group of young boys gathered in a circle with their hands raised at an unusual angle. The AP’s original caption on the photo said they were reciting the organization’s “creed” during a meeting in North Richland Hills, Texas.</p>

The Walt Disney Company has notified the Boy Scouts of America that it will withdraw all funding from the organization beginning 2015 unless the BSA overturns its policy of not allowing openly gay members to be leaders. The entertainment company has a VoluntEARS program through which its employees carry out volunteer work in exchange for cash donations to the non-profits of their choice. However, Disney has now announced that the employees taking part in the program will no longer be able to submit the funds to the Boy Scouts, according to CNN. Disney's corporate website says that the company's employees...

The Walt Disney Company will cut funding to the Boy Scouts of America, beginning in 2015, because of a policy that bans gay adult leaders in the organisation. In December the defence and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin said it would no longer donate to the Boy Scouts, because of the same policy. Last May, the California Senate voted to revoke the organisation’s charitable status. The Boy Scouts organisation said it was “disappointed” by Disney’s decision, which will affect its ability to serve children, Deron Smith, a Boy Scouts spokesman, said in a statement on Sunday. Disney does not provide direct...

Walt Disney World has jumped on the bandwagon of businesses pulling their funding from Boy Scouts of America, as the organization still refuses to end its ban on openly LGBT adults. Charitable contributions will no longer be made to BSA or local troops as part of Walt Disney World's "Ears For You" grant program. SNIP As the straight son of a lesbian couple, Wahls has been working to reverse the BSA's policies of discrimination and exclusion. Since its inception in 2012, Scouts for Equality has succeeded in influencing seven major corporations - including Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, Major League Soccer, Merck,...

The Boy Scouts of America experienced a modest dip in membership in 2013, but not the mass exodus that some social conservatives predicted while it was considering changing its membership policy on gays. Boy Scouts membership fell by 6 percent last year, leaving it with nearly 2.5 million youth members and 960,000 adult members. Reasons for the attrition, which is slightly greater than the 4 percent losses in 2012 and similar-sized declines in several previous years, are not fully understood but are likely related to the divisive vote on admitting openly gay youths to Scouts as well as a 60...

A 17-year-old Maryland boy has become one of the first openly gay Boy Scouts to achieve the Boy Scouts of America's highest rank since the organization reversed its ban on gay youth nearly six weeks ago. Pascal Tessier, who publicly voiced his opposition to the ban on gay members, started with the group a decade ago as a Cub Scout and earned 21 merit badges before being named an Eagle Scout on Monday, said his father, Oliver Tessier, a consultant in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

An ex-scoutmaster who admitted to molesting his son’s teenage friends and fellow troop members for years at his Keswick home pleaded guilty to 36 felony sex crimes Wednesday in Albemarle County Circuit Court. David Brian Watkins, now 50, entered into an agreement with prosecutors that shields him from additional local or federal charges and calls for an active term of 30 years and five months in prison. The agreement “provides closure for … very promising young men who can now get on with their lives,” Assistant Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Darby Lowe said after the hearing. “The young men would have...

Ross Ulbricht’s last moments as a free man were noisy enough to draw a crowd. Employees at the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco library heard a crashing sound and rushed to the science fiction section, expecting to find a patron had hit the floor. Instead, they found a handful of federal agents surrounding a slender 29-year-old man with light brown hair and wearing a T-shirt and jeans. The goal of the arrest, at 3:15 p.m. on Oct. 1, 2013, was not simply to apprehend Mr. Ulbricht, but also to prevent him from performing the most mundane of tasks:...