Midday Roundup: Arkansas, Indiana governors want religious liberty law changes

Backing down? Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said this morning he wants to see changes to a religious liberty law legislators passed yesterday, after previously saying he planned to sign the bill. But it’s similar to a new law causing an uproar in Indiana, where Gov. Mike Pence is said to be reviewing modifications to assuage concerns from the gay community. The changes in Indiana would state specifically the bill could not be used by businesses to deny services to people based on sexual orientation. It’s not clear how that might affect Christians in the wedding industry who don’t want to participate in same-sex weddings. Arkansas’s best-known corporate citizen, Walmart, opposes that state’s legislation. Doug McMillon, the company’s CEO called on Hutchinson to veto a bill he said would “undermine the spirit of inclusion” in the state. Several other states, including North Carolina and Georgia, are considering similar legislation. Republican presidential hopefuls, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Dr. Ben Carson, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, have voiced support for the bills.

ISIS in retreat. Iraqi officials announced this morning they have reclaimed Tikrit from Islamic State (ISIS) fighters, delivering a major blow to the terrorist group that has until now operated mostly unopposed in large swaths of Iraq and Syria. Iraqi forces and Shiite militiamen backed by Iran have started to go through the city methodically to clear out pockets of resistance, their progress slowed by booby traps and IEDs left by the retreating terrorists. “The enemy has been defeated, and it has lost all its capabilities,” Iraqi Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghabban said today after arriving in the city. “In the coming hours, the battle will end.”During the nine months ISIS controlled the city, it massacred 1,500 air force cadets and buried many other victims in mass graves. The militants also destroyed an Assyrian church built in the eighth century.

Defense rests. Lawyers for accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev rested their defense yesterday, paving the way for closing arguments and jury deliberations in the closely watched case. The defense team only called four witnesses, whose testimony bolstered the argument that Tsarnaev’s older brother bore the brunt of the responsibility for the April 15, 2013 attack that killed three peopled and seriously injured dozens more. Defense lawyers did not try to absolve Tsarnaev of guilt in the crime, admitting during opening arguments he was responsible for participating in the attack. But they hope to convince jurors to spare his life during the sentencing phase, during which they are expected to spend much more time interviewing witnesses to testify about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s influence over his impressionable, younger brother.

A word, please. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, has requested that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appear before the panel to explain her use of private email and a personal server for official business. In a letter to Clinton’s lawyer, Gowdy said the interview was necessary because Clinton has refused to turn over her email server to a third party for review. Gowdy wants the interview scheduled before May 1, and he still plans to call Clinton to testify publicly about her actions related to the terrorist attack on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

No deal …yet. With the deadline come and gone for reaching a framework deal with Iran over its nuclear program, talks continue today. On Tuesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said there is enough progress to warrant extending the talks beyond the March 31 deadline, but that doesn't mean a deal is near. Iran reportedly has balked at earlier concessions to give up its uranium stockpile and the centrifuges that enrich it. The failure to reach a deal by the deadline could mean Congress will take a more active role in the process, moving toward increased sanctions on Iran. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News he still fears the administration is too eager to make any kind of deal—even a bad one.

Tragedy follows. Andrew Getty, grandson to American industrialist J. Paul Getty, died in Los Angeles on Tuesday. He was 47. The coroner’s office said Getty appears to have died of natural causes, although he was found in his bathroom, naked from the waist down, with what appeared to be blunt force trauma to the head. Police are questioning a woman who was at his house at the time but say they do not have reason to suspect she was involved in his death. According to a Forbes article from 2011, the Getty family story proves money can’t buy happiness. The family’s patriarch, who made his fortune buying and selling oil leases in Oklahoma around the turn of the 20th century, was at one time thought to be the world’s richest private citizen. But he lost one son to a brain tumor and another to a drug overdose. One of his grandsons was kidnapped and had his ear cut off when Getty refused to pay the ransom. Getty was not a philanthropist like his contemporaries but spent a large part of his fortune on the Getty museum in Los Angeles. “I hold that few human activities provide an individual with a greater sense of personal gratification than the assembling of a collection of art objects that appeal to him and that he feels have true and lasting beauty,”he wrote in a 1965 book on collecting.

WORLD Radio’s Jim Henry contributed to this report.