ANTIQUES SHOPS

Twelve male military training instructors at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, the home of all Air Force basic training, are under investigation for seeking sexual favors from female Air Force trainees.

Six instructors have been referred to court martial on charges ranging from attempting to have a sexual relationship with a recruit to adultery and aggravated sexual assault.

The first of the court martials begins on July 16, when Sergeant Luis Walker will face several counts of aggravated sexual assault, attempted sexual assault, having an unprofessional relationship, adultery and obstructing justice. He could face life in prison.

The investigation so far has identified 31 victims of abuse by the trainers, according to General Edward Rice, the commander of Air Force training. "We are leaving no stone unturned," he said last week.

In the Air Force, women and men serve together in units, known as training flights, and they live either in separate barracks or across the hall from male trainees, with separate bathing and sleeping areas.

About 10 percent of the drill sergeants - known in the Air Force as Military Training Instructors (MITs) - are female and they command both men and women.

"I will look at whether or not we need to both hire more female MITs and whether or not we need to adjust our process to have only female MITs over female flights," Rice said at a briefing on June 28.

Not since nearly 50 women made sexual abuse allegations against instructors at the Aberdeen, Maryland, Army base in 1996, has the military faced such a sex scandal.

The Air Force says 18.9 percent of its active duty force are women, the highest of any military branch. All the services have expanded opportunities for women in recent decades.

SPARKS DEBATE

The Lackland scandal has sparked a spirited debate between those who believe it is unrealistic to expect few problems when male instructors are commanding new female recruits, and those who say the military should keep them together but do a better job of training and policing.

"Hopefully, this will cause our leadership to stop the social engineering and recognize reality," said Jeffrey Addicott, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and longtime legal adviser to the Army Special Forces. "By mixing females alongside males, the military is setting itself up for failure."

He said in most civilian jobs people work eight or more hours a day and go home, while in the military they live and work together 24 hours a day.

Separating men from women is exactly the wrong solution according to Nancy Duff Campbell, founder and co-president of the National Women's Law Center, which advocates for women in the military.

"You need to increase the numbers of women, so they are not seen as 'the other,' they are seen as part of the group. Saying that women are somehow the problem so we have to separate them out, is not the way to go," she said.

Campbell said the Marine Corps, which is the only branch of the military to have basic training segregated by gender, also has a significant number of sexual harassment complaints.

California Representative Jackie Speier has called for congressional hearings to allow women who have been victims of sexual assault and abuse in Air Force basic training to speak out to someone other than military officials.

In addition to prosecuting offenders, the military should train instructors to make clear there is zero tolerance for sexual harassment and train female recruits to ensure they can get out of situations if they occur, said Susan Pamerleau, a former vice commander of Air Force basic training.

"These young women want to make a good impression," Pamerleau, a retired Air Force major general, said of recruits. "They are taught that their instructor is in charge ... But it is important that the trainee understand what limits there are."

(Additional reporting by Lauren French; Editing by Greg McCune and Eric Beech)

ECB Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen also told La Stampa daily that Italy had made great progress in terms of improving its public finances, but had now to address the problem posed by its near-zero potential growth.

"There are several practical issues to solve to get to a (unified) European banking supervision," Asmussen was quoted as saying. "I believe that European supervision will be fully operational only during 2013."

EU leaders agreed at the end of June to set up a single banking supervisor in Europe as a pre-condition to letting the euro zone's rescue funds directly inject cash into lenders, without lending to a government first.

Asmussen said Spain, which has requested aid for its troubled banks, would likely experience a temporary increase in its public debt.

"As soon as the new mechanism is in place, the credit would be transferred. The increase in (public) debt would be temporary."

Asmussen said the ECB believed it was important to ensure that its new role as banking supervisor was clearly separated from its monetary policy mandate.

"We must make sure this is guaranteed through distinct decisional and organisational processes," he said.

Asked if Italy could continue to face the euro zone debt crisis without tapping international aid, Asmussen said: "I think Italy can manage by itself if it advances without delays on the reform path and if tackles its growth problem in a serious way."

He said some international institutions have indicated Italy's growth potential is currently close to zero.

"Italy must grow," he said. "Acting solely on the side of public finances is not enough."

Asmussen said he was worried by a growing rift between northern and southern Europe, when asked about German media describing the outcome of the latest EU summit as a defeat for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"We must ask ourselves only if Europe won. But this way of looking at things is disappearing."

(Reporting by Valentina Za; Editing by David Holmes)

Police are on high alert ahead of the London Olympics but said the latest arrest and those of a woman and five men in London earlier this week were not linked to the Games.

All seven suspects have been held on "suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism", police said.

Britain has spent millions of pounds beefing up security in preparation for the Olympics.

Security chiefs have said repeatedly that they have no information that the Olympics are being targeted, but Jonathan Evans, head of the domestic intelligence agency MI5, has said the Games present an attractive target.

In a separate operation this week police arrested seven men on suspicion of terrorism after weapons were found in a vehicle stopped on a motorway in Yorkshire, northern England.

A police source said that in that case too, there was nothing to suggest any link with the Olympics, which start on July 27.

In both cases security sources have said the suspects were linked to militant Islamism, but that it remained unclear what was planned. The London suspects were arrested when their plotting was at an early stage, the sources added.

In a sign of heightened vigilance ahead of the Games, armed police closed the M6 motorway near Birmingham, in the Midlands, for four hours on Thursday after a man was reported acting suspiciously on a coach heading to London.

It later emerged the alert was caused by a passenger using an electronic cigarette.

Security authorities have assessed the national threat level at "substantial" - meaning that an attack is a strong possibility - but that is one level lower than it has been for most of the time since the July 7, 2005 suicide bomb attacks in London which killed 52 people.

(Reporting by Tim Castle; Editing by Tim Pearce)