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    The Lookout
    • The economy added 120,000 jobs last month, and the jobless rate fell to 8.6 percent, the government said Friday morning. The news offered the latest signs that the slow recovery is continuing, and the economy is not currently in danger of falling back into a recession.

      The job gains for November did little more than keep pace with growth. But employment figures for October and September were also revised upward.

      Still, the news wasn't all good. The drop in the overall unemployment rate, down from 9 percent in October, was due in part to workers growing discouraged and dropping out of the labor force. And the average duration of joblessness rose to an all-time high of 40.9 weeks.

      President Obama has lately been pressing Congress to extend the payroll tax cut and federal jobless benefits, both of which are scheduled to expire at the end of the month. Both measures, especially the tax cut, are expected to boost hiring.

      Read More »
    • Fine (AP)

      ESPN has released recordings that suggest that Laurie Fine, the wife of former Syracuse University associate head basketball coach Bernie Fine, suspected that her husband was sexually abusing a ballboy for the team.

      Was Laurie Fine legally obligated to tell the police about her suspicions?

      No--not even if it could be proved that she was guilty of knowingly allowing sexual abuse to occur in her own home.

      Individuals rarely have a legal obligation to report a crime, including child abuse, says Deborah Epstein, a law professor and director of the Domestic Violence Clinic at Georgetown University. In New York state, where Syracuse University is located,  only people in certain professions--including most medical professionals, school officials, social workers, day care workers, and some others--have a legal obligation to report child abuse. (In California, all people are obligated to report crimes against children under 14 years old.)

      "I know everything that went on, you know," Laurie Fine says to Bobby Davis in 2002 on the recording. Davis and his stepbrother, both former Syracuse ballboys, have accused Bernie Fine of molesting them when they were children. A third accuser has also come forward, saying he was abused by Bernie Fine in 2002. (Laurie Fine told Syracuse's Post Standard that parts of the recordings are accurate but that they may have been edited. Bernie Fine has not been charged with a crime, and he denies the allegations.)

      In the recordings, Laurie Fine appears to explain why she didn't step in to stop the alleged abuse. "If it was another girl like I told you, it would be easy to step in because you know what you're up against. ... (When) it's another guy, you can't compete with that. It's just wrong, and you were a kid. You're a man now, but you were a kid then."

      To be criminally liable, Laurie Fine would have had to have participated in the alleged abuse or have tried to actively hide her husband from the law.

      New York has a "spousal privilege" law, which means the spouse of an accused person cannot be compelled to testify against him or her in court in most cases. That wouldn't be an issue in Davis's case, because the alleged abuse happened in the 1980s, well beyond the federal statute of limitations of 10 years for crimes involving the sexual abuse of children.

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    • Sullivan (Twitter)

      Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is apologizing to the teen who insulted him over Twitter last week.

      "My staff over-reacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize.  Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms," Brownback said in a statement to Yahoo! News on Monday. Brownback Communications Manager Sherriene Sontag-Jones says the governor has no plans to personally reach out to the high school student.

      Sontag-Jones contacted Emma Sullivan's principal last week and said the 18-year-old had made an inappropriate comment about the governor over Twitter. The principal asked Sullivan to submit a written apology to the governor for her comment. Sullivan told Yahoo! News Sunday night that she would not apologize.

      She wrote "Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot," to her 60 followers during Brownback's speech to high school students at the state Capitol. His staff found the comment while scouring social media sites for his name.

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    • Austin and Arielle next to the truck where they live with their father (60 Minutes)

      60 Minutes' Scott Pelley traveled to Seminole County, Florida to talk to children who are living in cars with their families. Florida is home to a third of America's homeless families, as the construction industry's collapse left many formerly working-class residents of the state to face extreme poverty for the first time. You can watch the moving 15-minute video on CBS's site.

    • Here's the latest grim measure of the toll taken by the Great Recession and its aftermath: More than one in five Americans lost at least one quarter of their available household wealth during the downturn, and lacked a financial cushion to weather the loss, a new report has found.

      Over 20 percent of Americans were defined as "economically insecure" in the period between 2008 and 2010. Back in 1986, that figure was 14.3 percent. Those who were insecure lost an average of 46.4 percent of their income in 2009.

      The report updates the Economic Security Index, created last year by Yale political science professor Jacob Hacker. The index uses three measures to determine economic insecurity: major income loss, out-of-pocket medical expenses and lack of savings. It also factors in the amounts people are forced to spend on health care costs and debts.

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    About The Lookout

    The Lookout is the Yahoo! News national affairs blog focusing on America’s most important and interesting stories.

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