NATION
BALTIMORE — Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is abandoning her re-election bid, dogged by critics who questioned whether she was fit to lead a city still reeling from a black man's mysterious death from injuries received while in police custody.
The mayor of this majority black city, still 15 months away from election day, said at a news conference Friday that she wanted to focus on governing, not campaigning. Rawlings-Blake said she wanted to guide the city through a difficult time and pointed to her achievements: ethics reforms to combat fraud, reducing the city's $100 million budget deficit by half, adding 12,000 jobs and demolishing more than 3,000 vacant structures.
Her five years in office have been marred in the months since Freddie Gray's death, however. In April, the day of Gray's funeral, rioters smashed windows, set fires and caused millions of dollars in damage. In the aftermath, the head of an already troubled police department was fired, with one of his deputies tapped to restore trust in the community.
SCHAUMBURG, Ill. — The CEO of Office Depot apologized Friday to a suburban Chicago woman who said the company discriminated against her religious beliefs when its employees told her that making copies of an anti-abortion prayer violated company policy.Maria Goldstein, who is Roman Catholic, asked the Office Depot in Schaumburg last month to make 500 copies of “A Prayer for Planned Parenthood.”The prayer was composed by the Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of the anti-abortion group Priest for Life. It calls on God to “Bring an end to the killing of children in the womb, and bring an end to the sale of their body parts. Bring conversion to all who do this, and enlightenment to all who advocate it.” The prayer also includes statistics about abortion.“We sincerely apologize to Ms. (Maria) Goldstein for her experience and our initial reaction was not at all related to her religious beliefs,” Office Depot Chairman and CEO Roland Smith, said in a statement. “We invite her to return to Office Depot if she still wishes to print the flier.”Office Depot prohibits “the copying of any type of material that advocates any form of racial or religious discrimination or the persecution of certain groups of people,” as well as copyrighted material, a spokesman said.
INDIANAPOLIS — The Subway restaurant chain said Friday it received a “serious” complaint about Jared Fogle when he was the company's spokesman but that the complaint did not imply any criminal sexual activity.The company announced in a statement that it has completed an internal investigation into whether it was alerted to concerns about Fogle, who agreed last month to plead guilty to allegations he paid for sex acts with girls as young as 16 and had received child pornography. The company has severed its ties to him.Subway's investigation included a review of more than a million online comments and interviews with past and present employees and managers with both the company and an advertising fund, the statement said.Subway spokesman Kristen McMahon said the company received the “serious” complaint in 2011 from former Florida journalist Rochelle Herman-Walrond, who says she worked with the FBI to record Fogle expressing interest in sex with minors. The company's statement said that while the complaint “expressed concerns about Mr. Fogle,” it included “nothing that implied anything about sexual behavior or criminal activity involving Mr. Fogle.” McMahon would not elaborate on the nature of the complaint.
