News Briefs

U.S. Chamber Builds Winning Record in Elections

Republican-leaning political organizations, including Karl Rove's American Crossroads, spent $167 million on the midterm elections and came out on the winning side of almost twice as many races as they lost.

Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS backed the victor in 23 of the 36 House and Senate races in which a winner was declared. American Action Network, which shared space with the Crossroads groups, won 14 races and lost 10. The nation's biggest business lobby, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, supported the winning candidate in 38 of 59 contests in a year dominated by voter concerns about the economy and joblessness. The groups also spent money in races that have yet to be decided.

Republican-leaning groups spent $167 million between Sept. 1 and Oct. 31 in support of their party's nominees, compared with $68 million by Democratic-leaning organizations, Federal Election Commission reports show.

Republicans won at least 60 Democratic House seats in the Nov. 2 midterms, giving them control of the chamber in January and prompting President Barack Obama to say Wednesday that voters had given him a "shellacking." Republicans narrowed the Democrats' majority in the Senate, picking up at least six seats.

In the 10 races that the Republican groups spent the most money on, the party entered the winner's circle six times, with the Senate race in Washington still too close to call. Among the winners, all Republicans: Senate candidates Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania and Mark Kirk in Illinois, and former Nevada state Senator Joe Heck in a Las Vegas-area congressional district.

Afghan Voting Fraud Probed

The Afghan attorney general's office has launched a number of criminal investigations into allegations that the country's election commission participated in fraud during parliamentary elections in September, officials said Wednesday.

Deputy Attorney General Rahmatullah Nazari said that his staff has begun investigating nine cases in which election officials, all but one of them at the Kabul headquarters of the Independent Election Commission, are accused of rigging votes. Nazari did not say whether the probes are targeting the election commissioners themselves or members of their staff.

Allegations by candidates about fraudulent activity in the elections have been pouring into the attorney general's office, Nazari said, but he added that his office is focusing only on allegations involving criminal behavior, such as bribery.

A member of the Independent Election Commission, Abdullah Ahmadzai, said that the attorney general's office does not have the authority to investigate electoral matters, unless they are referred directly by either of Afghanistan's two electoral organizations.

According to Ahmadzai, the election commission received a letter from the attorney general Tuesday seeking to investigate the cases of two candidates - one from Herat province and another from Kapisa province - who had been disqualified by the Electoral Complaints Commission, the watchdog organization that investigates voting fraud.

The attorney general's letter should have gone to the Electoral Complaints Commission, not to his organization, Ahmadzai said, adding that he was unaware of allegations of criminality involving election officials. The election commission is planning to respond to the attorney general Thursday, he said.

When it announced the preliminary results of the elections two weeks ago, the Independent Election Commission said it had invalidated 1.3 million votes - about a quarter of the total cast - because of voting irregularities.

Parent-Teacher Conference Leads to Assault and Jail Time

Wendy Lashon Battle, a mother of four, was sentenced on Wednesday to spend her weekends in jail for the next four moths for assaulting her daughter's sixth grade teacher.

Battle, whose daughter attended the Charles Drew Magnet School in Buffalo, reportedly took offense to her daughter being called a "troublemaker."

After missing a May 10th parent-teacher conference to discuss her daughter's behavior earlier this year, Battle walked into her daughter's classroom the following morning and assaulted the teacher in front of a class full of students.

Erie County Judge Thomas P. Franczyk took into account Battle's history of health and psychiatric problems when sentencing her to serve Fridays from 6:30 p.m. until Sundays at 2:30 p.m. in the Alden Correctional Facility.

Battle was also fined $375 and placed on probation for the next five years as punishment for pleading guilty to a felony attempted assault charge.

Judge Franczyk ordered that Battle's sixth-grade daughter be transferred to another school and issued orders of protection to prevent Battle front making any contact with the unnamed teacher and the magnet school's president, Principal Denis Luka.

Battle faces "straight" time behind bars if she fails to show up for her weekend sentences.