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‘Don’t ask’ remains in effect: A federal appeals court has told the military it can continue its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy during an appeal of a lower court’s ruling that the law is unconstitutional. The decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will probably mean that the policy barring openly gay soldiers remains in place for months. In their order, Judges Diarmuid O’Scannlain and Stephen Trott wrote that while they were expressing no opinion on the case’s outcome, they were deferring to Congress and the military. President Obama says he wants to remove “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but his Justice Department, in accordance with tradition, defends any law signed by a president. The administration has said the military needs time to prepare for the change.

San Jose

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Abuse victim’s rampage: A man who says he was molested by a priest three decades ago was arrested last week on charges that he took revenge by severely beating the clergyman at a Jesuit retirement home earlier this year. William Lynch, 43, told people he had suffered from depression and alcoholism and had made several suicide attempts after the Rev. Jerold Lindner, 65, allegedly molested him and his younger brother on church camping trips in 1975, when they were 7 and 5. “I wanted to exorcise all of the rage and anger and bitterness he put into me. … He stole my innocence and destroyed my life,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2002. In May, he visited Lindner at the retirement home. When Lynch asked the elderly priest if he remembered him, Lindner said no, and Lynch began pummeling him, police said. In 1998, the Lynch brothers received $625,000 in a settlement with the Jesuits of the California Province. Lindner was never criminally charged, though he has been accused of abuse by at least a dozen people.

Pleasant Plains, Ark.

School board official attacks ‘fags’: A school board member resigned last week after he used his Facebook page to encourage “queers” and “fags” to kill themselves. Clint McCance announced on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 that he would resign his post on the Midland School District board after he wrote a series of posts in response to a campaign called “Wear Purple Day,” which was meant to show solidarity with gay youths in the wake a spate of suicides connected to bullying. On his personal Facebook page, McCance declared that he would disown his children if they were gay, and recommended that gay teens commit suicide. “I like that fags can’t procreate,” he continued. “I also enjoy that they often give each other AIDS and die.” In his resignation letter, McCance apologized, writing, “At no time did I want anyone to hurt themselves.”

New Orleans

Faulty cement in BP’s well: Federal investigators said last week that Halliburton, a subcontractor on BP’s Macondo oil well, knew weeks before the well’s explosion in April that the cement with which it planned to seal the well was unstable. The investigators said that repeated lab tests by Halliburton indicated that the cement mixture might lack the strength to prevent pressurized oil and gas from rising around the well’s metal casing, which has been identified as a cause of the blowout. A federal judge ordered immediate tests on the cement, while Halliburton defended its work, insisting it adjusted the formula only because of demands by BP. Eleven rig workers were killed in the blowout, which caused an estimated 4.4 million barrels of oil to flow into the Gulf of Mexico.

Hickory, N.C.

Disabled girl missing: Police said this week that they have matched a prosthetic leg discovered off a road to missing disabled 10-year-old Zahra Baker. Zahra, who lost a leg and her hearing to bone cancer, was reported missing by her parents Oct. 9, and a $1 million ransom note was discovered on her parents’ property. Zahra’s stepmother, Elisa Baker, later confessed to writing the note, and has been charged with obstruction of justice. Her father, Adam Baker, was also taken into custody, for allegedly writing bad checks and other unrelated charges. Her parents have told police they last saw Zahra in bed on the morning she disappeared. Investigators are looking into claims that Zahra was abused. “This was something for a long time that we knew was going to happen, everybody that was close to the family,” said Brittany Bentley, a relative.

Monroe, Mich.

Obama keepsake sold: Earlier this year, President Obama replied to a letter from Jennifer Cline, raising the spirits of the unemployed mother of two with his promise that “things will keep getting better.” Last week, Cline, 28, still unemployed and facing bills for treatment of two forms of skin cancer, sold Obama’s note to an autograph collector for $7,000. “This will get us through the winter,” said her husband, Jason Cline, 30. Jennifer, a former pharmacy technician, lost her job in 2007. Obama had called her three-page, handwritten letter to him, detailing her difficult job search, “inspiring.” Her husband said Cline “was broken up” over the decision to sell her presidential keepsake. “She wanted to keep it more than anybody will understand,” he said. “It made her year.”