Story here. Excerpt:

'The woman who killed two Forest Grove girls when she hit them with an SUV in October was sentenced to 3 years probation and 250 hours of community service in a courtroom packed with the victims' emotional friends and family Friday morning.

Cinthya Garcia-Cisneros, 19, was found guilty Jan. 15 on two counts of failure to perform the duties of a driver. She will be released from the Washington County Jail within 48 hours and taken into federal custody on an immigration hold. Her lawyer, Courtney Carter, said Garcia-Cisneros is in "grave danger of being deported."
...
Garcia-Cisneros testified that she heard about the deaths later and panicked. She confessed when police showed up at her door the next day.

Story here. Short version: Guilty->the convicts appeal->convictions overturned->prosecutor appeals->high court overturns the overturning and orders new trial->guilty. Net result: male convict was in Austria when this latest conviction was announced and voluntarily returned to Italy to surrender to the Italian authorities. Female convict is in the US and states she has no intention of surrendering to the Italian authorities here (e.g.: the embassy in D.C. or nearest consulate) for extradition to Italy. And there you have it. Whether the US will arrest and extradite her, I dunno. Personally, I don't know how they couldn't, but she's a photogenic young (white) woman who's "been through so much already, the poor dear...", so who knows. Excerpt:

'The judge who presided over Amanda Knox's second murder conviction says he suffered over the verdict, but that he and the jury reached agreement that she was guilty in the death of British student Meredith Kercher.
...
Nenci, another judge and six lay jurors reinstated the guilty verdicts on Thursday against Knox and Sollecito that were first handed down in 2009, sentencing Knox to 28 ½ years and Sollecito to 25 for the murder. An appeals court had acquitted the pair in 2011 and ordered them freed from prison, but Italy's supreme court threw out the acquittals and ordered a third trial, in Florence.

Lawyers for both Knox and Sollecito have said they would appeal, saying there was no proof that the two had committed the crime. Knox has said she will never willingly return to Italy to serve any sentence if the verdict is upheld.
...
A third person, Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial and is serving a 16-year sentence.
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'Rieckhoff: The suicide rate is out of control. We’re losing roughly 22 veterans per day to suicide. On my way over here today, I got another note from a military family that is struggling with a suicidal veteran. We are losing more people now to suicide than to combat.
...
Gillibrand: We are going to focus our next hearing on how many of these suicides are sexual assault-related. How many are caused by rape and sexual trauma that goes unreported because of the stigma and the fear of retaliation.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A West Virginia teenager who confessed to stabbing her best friend to death stood silently in court as she was sentenced to life in prison, refusing to apologize to the family she tore apart.

Sheila Eddy, 18, pleaded guilty to luring her classmate and one-time best friend Skylar Neese into the woods and stabbing her to death on Friday, but declined to say anything else to those inside the Morgantown courthouse, including the victim's father, David Neese.

The grief-stricken father said it was "unacceptable" that Eddy refused to address the court or say she was sorry for the July 2012 murder.
...
Skylar's aunt, Carol Michaud, also addressed the court, calling Eddy "evil," the Observer-Reporter said. "She came and acted as if she knew nothing… She stayed with us and comforted us and swore she had no idea what was going on," Michaud said, according to the paper.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A woman who was engaged to the father of a toddler found unconscious at her North Texas home earlier this month has been arrested in connection with the 2-year-old's death.

On Tuesday afternoon, Plano police arrested 25-year-old Melinda Lynn Muniz. Muniz is charged with capital murder in the death of Lillian Grace Ford.

Plano police said Muniz is the fiancee of Ford's biological father and lived at the home where the toddler was found unconscious.
...
The affidavit states that the girl's father unlocked the apartment door and officers found Muniz face down on the floor of the apartment with her mouth duct taped. She claimed she had been sexually assaulted by an unknown man.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Navy Cmdr. Valerie Overstreet wanted to start a family, but her job as a Navy pilot and the fact that she and her husband, a naval officer, were stationed in different parts of the country made it complicated.

So she decided to take advantage of a fledgling Navy program that allowed her to take a year off and return to duty without risking her career.

Three years later, she has a 2-year-old daughter and a 9-month-old son, she's back at work at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, and her promotion to captain has been confirmed.

For Overstreet, the year off gave her time to have her daughter and get started on her master's degree, and it allowed the Navy to keep an officer it considers promising without requiring her to sacrifice her family life.

Across the military services, leaders are experimenting with sabbatical programs that give valued officers and enlisted troops ­the incentive to stay in the service.'

A few days ago President Obama announced the creation of a White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. During this announcement, he offered this piece of misinformation: "It is estimated that one in five women on college campuses has been sexually assaulted during their time there."

That statistic comes in part from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence study.

There is a very serious problem with the way this study's questions are worded. Example: "When you were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to give consent, how many people ever had vaginal sex with you?" Someone who purposely gets drunk with their partner and willingly participates in a sexual encounter is counted as a rape victim!

To learn more, see Katherine Connell's National Review article.

We believe that policies on sexual assault and rape should be based on accurate facts, not fear-inducing hyperbole.

Ask President Obama to stop politicizing the rape issue.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A year after the Pentagon opened combat jobs to female servicemembers, plans for integrating women into these jobs remain problematic, women’s advocates said this week.

The Marine Corps and the Army, which have the largest number of military occupational specialties still closed to women, have, according to critics, unclear and inconsistent approaches to integrating women fully into the forces by January 2016, the deadline set by former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Story here. Excerpt:

'An Arizona woman has been charged with attempted murder after police say she injected fecal matter into her hospitalized husband’s IV line.

Rosemary Vogel, of Sun Lakes, was arrested Thursday after a nurse caught the 65-year-old handling her husband’s IV line, which was found to contain a brown substance, police said.

A hospital lab test identified the matter in the IV line as feces, and a trace amount of the same brown substance also was found in the needle of an otherwise empty syringe found in Vogel’s purse, according to police.

When it was searched in the hospital, Vogel’s pocketbook contained a total of three syringes, including two with a clear liquid, police said.'

Article here. Well-know Canadian journalist Barbara Kay's scathing criticism is aimed at Calgary Judge Peter McIntyre, who did not take the Crown prosecution's advice of 12 years and instead awarded only 18 months for murdering her two newborn children and attempting to murder a third. Excerpt:

'Cultural observer Joseph Epstein wrote a wonderful satirical column in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks about the “Good Intentions Paving Company,” a riff on the old cliché, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

The Good Intentions Paving Company does not confine its activities to the U.S. In fact, it had one of its representatives in Calgary this week, Judge Peter McIntyre, handing a sentence of 18 months in prison and three years’ probation to Meredith Borowiec, who admitted to throwing three newborn babies, successively over several years, into dumpsters immediately after birth. (Two died, the third was rescued alive).

Article here. Excerpt:

"A six-year-old boy who went to school with a bag of Mini Cheddars in his packed lunch has been suspended for four days after teachers said it contravened its healthy eating policy.

Riley Pearson, from Colnbrook, near Slough, was excluded from Colnbrook C of E Primary School after teachers discovered the snack and called in his parents.
After a meeting with headmaster Jeremy Meek, they were sent a letter telling them Riley would be excluded from Wednesday until Monday because he had been 'continuously breaking school rules'.
...
His mother, who lives with his father, airport worker Tom Pearson, said the 3ft 9ins tall schoolboy who weighs 3st 2lbs, eats home-cooked meals and plenty of fruit and vegetables at home.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A baby boy has been infected with neonatal herpes following a Jewish ritual circumcision in New York — the third such infection in two years tied to a controversial rite that involves the direct application of the ritual circumciser’s mouth to the baby’s genitals to suction blood from the wound.

The baby was treated for a genital rash five days after he was circumcised, according to a January 28 health alert issued by New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. He is still undergoing treatment and his current condition is unclear.

The department attributed the rash to the controversial circumcision technique, known as metzitzah b’peh, or MBP, which some ultra-Orthodox mohels, or ritual circumcisers, say is an essential component of the ancient religious ritual.

Fourteen babies have contracted herpes following MBP since 2000, according to New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Two of those babies died and two more suffered brain damage.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Florida state lawmakers are proposing what has been called the “Toaster Pastry Gun Freedom Act” in an effort to protect schoolchildren from harsh punishment for fashioning their fingers or food objects into toy guns, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

The Florida proposal asserts that “simulating a firearm or weapon while playing or wearing certain clothing or accessories is not grounds for disciplinary action or referral to the criminal justice or juvenile justice system.”

Among the actions that the Florida law aims to protect is “Brandishing a partially consumed pastry or other food item to simulate a firearm or weapon.”'

---

Contrast: School rules against Md. second-grader suspended for gun-shaped Pop-Tart

Article here. Excerpt:

'Men will soon become the most disadvantaged group in the country when it comes to going to university, the head of UCAS predicts today.

Figures show that the gap between applications from women and men is rising sharply - while that between rich and poor students is narrowing.

The 15 January deadline for applications for university this autumn showed over 87,000 more women than men had applied, increasing the gap by 7,000 compared to January 2013. Women are now a third more likely than men to opt to go to university.

Meanwhile, applications from would-be students in disadvantaged areas are rising - with those from poorer families twice as likely to apply as a decade ago.
...
Professor Smithers put forward three main reasons why the number of applications from girls is soaring:

Story here. Excerpt:

'It has been in all the recent news--New Jersey Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer) has announced a bill that would create a publicly accessible registry containing all the names of individuals who have been found to have committed an act of domestic violence. Gusciora believes that a public registry would reduce the number of instances of domestic violence by repeat offenders. The registry would be similar in nature to the sex offender registry established under Megan's Law.
...
But while not diminishing the seriousness of the issue, false accusations do happen. False accusations of domestic violence can be used as revenge, as a weapon in divorces, child custody, support and visitation battles. The consequences can be devastating, ruining a life, being evicted from one's home, losing custody, heavy fines, attorney's fees, and in some cases, jail. In many cases, the question of whether domestic violence has actually occurred comes down to he said/she said, and that frequently hinges on the credibility of the accused and the accuser. ...'