In the News

WORLD

NEW DELHI – A ban on child labor took effect Tuesday, but at roadside food stalls across New Delhi, many of the boys and girls who serve glasses of piping hot tea, wash dishes, mop floors and take out trash were not celebrating.

The children of India’s tens of millions of poor families are expected to work, and in many cases they are the sole breadwinners. The new law bans hiring children under age 14 as servants in homes or as workers in restaurants, tea shops, hotels and spas.

Despite the subcontinent’s emerging economic power, child labor remains widespread in India. Conservative estimates place the number of children covered by the new law at 256,000. All told, an estimated 13 million children work in India, many of them in hazardous industries, such as glass making, where such labor has long been banned.

Officials say the new law will help take children out of the workplace and put them in school.

Employers who violate the new child labor law face up to a year in prison and a fine of $217, and officials are promising strict enforcement.

NATION

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Army has plans to keep the current level of soldiers in Iraq through 2010, the top Army officer said Wednesday, a later date than Bush administration or Pentagon officials have mentioned thus far.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, cautioned against reading too much into the planning, saying troops levels could be adjusted to actual conditions in Iraq. He said it is easier to hold back forces scheduled to go there than to prepare and deploy units at the last minute.

Currently there are 141,000 troops in Iraq, including 120,000 Army soldiers. Those soldiers are divided among 15 Army combat brigades plus other support units.

Schoomaker said he has received no new guidance from commanders in Iraq as to when the U.S. will be able to begin reducing the number of troops there. Last year officials had hoped to be down to about 100,000 by the end of this year, but escalating violence and sectarian tensions have prompted military leaders to increase forces.

In another indication of the burden the Army expects to bear, Schoomaker said he believes the Army will need $138.8 billion in 2008, nearly $40 billion more than its planned expenditures for the 2007 budget year, which began Oct. 1. Schoomaker’s proposed figure is nearly $25 billion more than the initial amount discussed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

STATE & LOCAL

RICHMOND – A run-in between Warrenton police and campaign volunteers opposed to next month’s gay marriage referendum prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to urge the state’s police chiefs to not interfere with door-to-door political canvassing.

“The right of canvassers to enter onto private property to express their views is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution,” the ACLU of Virginia’s Kent Willis wrote Tuesday in a letter to 185 police chiefs. “This right trumps any local anti-solicitation ordinance.”

The letter stems from a Sept. 23 confrontation between a Warrenton police officer and three volunteers from the Commonwealth Coalition, an organization that is campaigning against the proposed constitutional amendment that bans gay marriages and civil unions.

The officer told the volunteers they were in violation of Warrenton’s anti-solicitation ordinance and ordered them to leave the neighborhood, Willis said.

The ACLU maintains that political canvassing that doesn’t involve asking for contributions is not solicitation.

Police Chief Connie Novak said in an interview that she has not spoken with the officer about the incident.