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Murder rates were four times as high in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Gaza than in Israel in 2012, according to a new study on homicide released last week. The findings are part of a global study on homicide by the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think tank. […] 134 people were killed in Israel in 2012, according to this database—assuming it is not including terror victims—at a rate of 1.8 murders per 100,000 people. By contrast, 312 people were killed in the PA that same year, or a staggering 7.4 murders per 100,000 people. …

A 23-year-old Chattanooga man has been charged with criminal homicide after police say he beat a 15-year-old pregnant girl and killed the baby she was carrying. Police say Justin Armour attacked the girl on Tuesday in a vacant house near 2201 East 3rd Street. She gave birth to the stillborn baby — who Armour fathered — early Wednesday morning. Medical staff believe the baby died because of trauma from the assault, according to police. The girl was five months pregnant. The girl and Armour had a history of domestic violence. The girl, who will not be identified by the Times...

Prosecutors ruled that Freddie Gray's death was a homicide. Friday morning, State attorney Marilyn Mosby announced that all six officers involved in the incident have been charged and warrants are out for their arrests. "Six officers are each facing multiple charges, including manslaughter, assault, misconduct in office and false imprisonment: Lt. Brian Rice, Sgt. Alicia White, Officer William Porter, Officer Garrett Miller, Officer Edward Nero and Officer Caesar Goodson," The Baltimore Sun reports. "Goodson, who drove the van, has been charged with second-degree murder." Mosby described how police arrested Gray on no grounds, violated police procedures by cuffing his hands...

The use of police force — against minorities and whites alike — is so poorly monitored that there is no precise accounting of how many citizens are killed by officers, much less their ethnicity or other crucial details. What official data exists suggests that the number of killings by police officers has crept upward only slowly, if at all, in recent years. Since 2009, one regular if incomplete measure, the F.B.I.’s account of justifiable homicides by police officers, ranged between 397 and 426 deaths annually before jumping to 461 in 2013, the latest reporting year. Federal experts have long acknowledged...

It was, the mayor of San Francisco said, a “shocking start” to the year for a city amid a technology boom with soaring rents and construction cranes, fashionable restaurants and gentrifying neighborhoods. In January, four young men sitting in a stolen car were gunned down in a trendy neighborhood near City Hall. Ten days later, a mother was shot dead outside her home in front of her three children. In another, a blood-spattered woman staggered into a restaurant seeking help for bullet wounds, and a man was found shot dead in an SUV outside. With the homicide count climbing to...

Thomas, above, died after being struck with one punch. On December 21st, just before Christmas, there occurred a tragic example of a one punch homicide.  It seems clear that the homicide was unintentional, as the victim agreed to be hit.   Both young men were at a party and appear to have been drinking.  From khou.com: Before the fight, the two shook hands and smoked a cigarette together, witnesses told sheriff's deputies. Thomas, who apparently hit a car that the suspect was sitting in, agreed to let Galen hit him. But Galen hit Thomas so hard that he fell backward...

Jazz already wrote the definitive take on the grisly execution-style shooting of two New York City police officers and the role that irresponsible commentary from elected leaders – particularly Mayor Bill de Blasio – might have played in that attack. Jazz is right to question the part that the mayor’s self-indulgent and unhelpful rhetoric might have played in this incident. Hours after a Staten Island grand jury’s decision to issue no-bill for the death of Eric Garner, de Blasio went on an ill-advised tear in which he impeached the NYPD based solely on his prejudices. “That should never have to...

The death of a 12-year-old Cleveland boy fatally shot by police in November has been formally ruled a homicide, according to a county autopsy report released on Friday that found he was struck once in the abdomen. Tamir Rice, who was black, was shot on Nov. 22 by a white police officer responding to a call of a suspect waving a handgun around in a Cleveland park. The weapon turned out to be a replica that typically fires plastic pellets. The sixth-grader died the next day. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's autopsy report said Rice sustained a single wound to...

The Staten Island man who took the cellphone video seen around the world of a cop killing Eric Garner with a chokehold said Thursday the grand jury was rigged. “I think they already had their minds made up,” Ramsey Orta told the Daily News a day after the panel voted not to charge Officer Daniel Pantaleo with a crime.

If you watch television and the movies, you might get the impression that a punch to the head is no big deal.  That is not true.  A punch to the head is a very serious attack.  It can disable.   It can maim.  It can kill.  The head is a vulnerable target, which is why an attacker aims for it.  I first became aware of  the deadly potential of one punch to the head in the 1970's, from a long forgotten news story.   Later, the son of a close friend killed a man with one punch.  He was eventually found...

A 10-year-old boy has been charged with criminal homicide after he brutally beat 90-year-old Helen Novak to death. Tristen Kurilla, apparently angry because the 90-year-old woman shouted at him, hooked a cane around Novak's neck and then held her down and beat her to death while she was in bed, according to prosecutors. Prosecutors said today that they have charged the child as an adult for the murder of Helen Novak, a woman who was under the care of the child's grandfather. The Associated Press reported that the incident occurred on Saturday when the boy was visiting his grandfather's house...

I am getting tired of this "they killing us" screed from African Americans. While I do not know the facts of what happened in Ferguson and I think the police are coming off as shady the fact of the matter isit isn't quite like what the left wants you to believe. First off although blacks make up 12.6% of the US population. Whites make up 72.4%. Which means there are 5.75 times more Whites in the US. Why is this important? Well black leadership and columnists are claiming they are disproportionately the victims of racial violence. Well the cold hard...

Homicide detectives were investigating Sunday the death of a 65-year-old man who was beaten by two unidentified women at a Willowbrook Metro train station. L.A. resident John Whitmore was waiting for a train at the Metro-Blue Line near Imperial Highway and South Wilmington Avenue (map) on Friday, June 13 when two black women kicked Whitmore and hit him with their hands until he collapsed, according to a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department news release.

It seems there is something in the news every day about gun violence. The recent mass shooting in Isla Vista, California, a movie theater riddled with bullets in Colorado, children and teachers gunned down at school in Connecticut, and the list goes on. While you may be seeing more and more shooting, the fact is, overall gun homicide rates have dropped dramatically over the past two decades, according to a recent study.

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On the floor of the House Wednesday, the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs featured a dialogue between Chairman Jeff Miller and Dr. Thomas Lynch, assistant deputy undersecretary for health for clinical operations at the Veterans Health Administration. Another shocking piece of information about VA hospitals was revealed during that exchange. Miller revealed he had received an email from an employee at the Los Angeles VA Medical Center in which the employee raised concerns over the status of patient wait times and the possible manipulation of records. The director of the facility responded to colleagues via email and said that the...

Veterans Affairs (VA) Department officials testified about the alleged destruction of an unofficial patient waiting list associated with the Phoenix VA health care system.

While the Obama administration has largely been able to fend off criticism from many of its looming controversies, it won’t be able to do the same with the mismanagement at the Department of Veterans Affairs given the wide scope and various reports and anecdotes of the problem, Charles Krauthammer said on Friday’s Special Report. In the past, the White House used the “stonewall playbook” of refraining from commenting on scandals by pointing to an ongoing investigations, in which there was largely no other source of outside information and allowed the administration to more feasibly control the narrative. In regards to...

An unknown number of U.S. military veterans are dead within 30 days of contracting Legionnaires' disease in a Veterans Affairs hospital in Pittsburgh. Aside from their family members, few people seem to be outraged. If that doesn't grab your attention, perhaps this will: VA officials in charge when those men were dying from a preventable illness received more than $100,000 in performance bonuses. The same bureaucrats who were paid handsomely for negligence and incompetence also refuse to answer reporters' questions about whether they've removed the deadly Legionella bacteria from hospitals that were built to heal, protect and serve those who...

Editor's note: This story is the second of two parts. A high-ranking official with Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System wanted the agency to keep quiet about a deadly Legionnaires' disease outbreak rather than warn the public, internal emails indicate. ... The email is among nearly 7,000 pages of internal VA emails and documents the Tribune-Review obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.