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sands of new teachers.
• The ad set to air in New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and Colorado comes as Obama and Republican Mitt Romney shadow each other while looking for votes in a closely contested race. On Thursday, the two candidates are scheduled to campaign in the same state for the third straight day, this time in Virginia, a critical battleground in the Nov. 6 election.
• Romney is to appear in suburban Washington for a veterans event, while Obama speaks to a farm bureau in Virginia Beach.
• The simultaneous visits follow an all-day duel Wednesday in Ohio, where Romney declared he can do more than Obama to improve the lives of average people. Obama scoffed that a challenger who calls half the nation "victims" was unlikely to be of much help.
• ___

• ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- It was an odd assignment for the young, pretty staffer when she was ordered to go along on a trip to Atlantic City with her boss. But the reason soon became clear.
• She said she spent much of the trip struggling to fend off the advances and kisses of 72-year-old Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez. He was persistent, she said, and eventually put his hand between her legs.
• She and another female staffer said it was part of a regular routine of office har

assment that included inappropriate touching and comments about their bodies, how they dressed and even how they were getting along with their boyfriends. They said the job included writing letters to Lopez about how much they loved their jobs -- letters Lopez complained were "insufficiently effusive," according to his official censure.
• The accusations that emerged over the summer are hardly unusual in a state capital, especially Albany, which has such a rich history of sexual misconduct by lawmakers that it has its own, unwritten Las Vegas-like code: What happens north of Bear Mountain stays there.
• But what began as a relatively modest scandal has pierced the veil of the so-called Bear Mountain Compact, unraveling in public before a state ethics committee, revealing more sexual misconduct accusations against Lopez and a secret six-figure payoff to the accusers with taxpayer money that was approved by one of the most powerful lawmakers in the state.

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