National: Female veterans testified before a Senate panel yesterday about rape, sexual harassment, and the failure of military justice. As many as 19,000 are assaulted every year, but many do not report it because they fear retaliation and ridicule. Often the assailant is the victim’s superior officer. Only one of 10 cases goes to trial and one out of three convicted offenders is allowed to stay in the service.

• The Florida bartender who secretly videotaped Mitt Romney making his campaign-killing “47%” remarks revealed himself on “The Ed Show” on MSNBC last night. Scott Prouty, 38, said, “I felt I owed it to the people that couldn’t afford to be there themselves to hear what he really thought.”
• Police in central New York have shot and killed a man who yesterday went on a shooting rampage killing four people, and wounding two. It is reported to have started when the gunman walked into a barbershop and said to a customer, “Hi John, do you remember me?”, then opened fire.

Papem Curriculum Vitae: The new Pope Francis, formerly Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, is the first Jesuit and non-European pope.  He is a well-known advocate of the poor who has been admired for living simply and travelling by public bus. Based on his record, he can be expected to hold the Vatican line against birth control, gay marriage, abortion and women in the priesthood. His performance during Argentina’s “Dirty War”, during which the military junta murdered thousands of political opponents, has been questioned. He was inconclusively accused of complicity in the disappearance of two anti-government Jesuit priests he fired.

Passings: Ieng Sary, co-founder of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge and an engineer of the genocide that killed 1.7 million people, died at age 87.

• Ewald-Heinrich von Kleis, believed to be the last survivor of German military plots to kill Hitler, died in Munich at age 90. Lt. von Kleis had actually agreed to kill Hitler with a suicide bomb but the Fuhrer changed his schedule on the appointed day. As many as 5,000 people were arrested after Col. Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed attempt to kill Hitler with a bomb.  Von Kleis’s father was among members of the resistance who were executed. The younger von Kleis also was arrested, but was inexplicably released, sent to the battlefront, and lived to tell about it.

When Pigs Float: The number of dead pigs pulled from a river running through Shanghai, China has reached 6,000. Public officials say the drinking water is safe and no diseased pork has been found in local markets. Go ahead, order the ribs.

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