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<p>A jury on Friday found a man guilty of murder after his pit bulls mauled a woman to death in a high desert town in California where residents said they carried rocks and guns for protection against packs of dogs.</p>

On June 24, 2012, the body of Shane Todd, a young US electrical engineer, was found hanging in his Singapore apartment. The Singapore Police say it was suicide, but the Todd family believes he was murdered. -excerpt- ... Shane told his family that he was being asked to compromise US security and he feared for his life. Shane refused to do what he was being asked to do and turned in his sixty day notice at IME. Shane found a good job with a company in Virginia, and bought a ticket to fly back to the US on July 1,...

MADISON, Wis. -- Prosecutors on Friday charged a former Wisconsin sheriff's deputy suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease with shooting his wife and sister-in-law to death this month. Former Dane County Sheriff's Deputy Andrew Steele, 39, faces two counts of first-degree intentional homicide in the death of his wife, Ashlee Steele, and his sister-in-law, Kacee Tollefsbol of Lake Elmo, Minn. He would get two mandatory life sentences if he's convicted. Prosecutors have not offered a motive for the slayings. Steele's lawyer, Jessa Nicholson, said during a court hearing Friday that she plans to investigate Steele's mental stability. She appeared with Steele...

FULL TITLE: Woman butchered heavily pregnant mother-to-be with a kitchen knife and then tried to remove her baby from the womb before admitting everything to police in chilling confession A Mexican woman has confessed to stabbing an eight-months pregnant mother in the stomach with a kitchen knife so she could steal her unborn baby from the womb, according to police. In a graphic confession, Maria Rodriguez, 29, from Tepic, Mexico, told police she decided to kill Nadia Avila and remove her baby after lying to her family about being pregnant. She will now appear in court on two charges of...

FULL TITLE: Mother who beat toddler son to death may be free in just SEVEN years. So furious neighbours demand to know: 'Why wasn't she tried for murder?' A ‘despicable’ mother who battered her toddler son to death was jailed for just 11 years yesterday and could be free within seven after she avoided being tried for murder. Rosdeep Adekoya beat three-year-old Mikaeel Kular for being sick and left him to die in agony before hiding his body in a suitcase and dumping it in woods. She then told police the boy had wandered off, sparking a huge manhunt before...

Miranda Kamille Barbour, the self-proclaimed Satanist who claimed to have killed almost two dozen people, unexpectedly pleaded guilty Tuesday in a Pennsylvania court to second-degree murder in the stabbing death of a man she and her husband lured to his death through an online ad. Her husband, Elytte Randle Barbour, who'd been scheduled to testify against her at trial, also pleaded guilty. Miranda Barbour, 19, and her husband, 22, had pleaded not guilty to criminal homicide, aggravated assault and numerous other charges in the stabbing and strangling of Troy LaFerrara, 42, who was found dead in an alley in November...

A shooting suspect led police on a high speed chase through the streets of Miami and North Miami. The shooting happened at NW 7th Avenue and 95th Street. Chopper 4 over the scene spotted the body of a man slumped over in a wheelchair when a gust of wind blew a yellow tarp off of it.....

A recent story at Esquire chronicled the abortion practice of Willie Parker, an abortionist who commutes from Chicago to Mississippi to commit abortions at the state’s last abortion mill. Mississippi is devoid of any abortionists of its own who are capable of obtaining hospital admitting privileges, a requirement now mandated by law in several states. Consequently, Parker — who boasts an unusually clean record for an abortionist, and was able to obtain privileges nearby — travels to the South to fill in.Esquire calls Parker’s practice a “ministry,” playing off of the abortionist’s professed Christianity. The author chose to conclude the...

Dial MSNBC for Murder . . . The Lean Forward network is the place to go if that's the way you want to hear the death of Michael Brown described. On August 12th, NB'S Ken Shepherd noted that Chris Hayes didn't utter a peep of protest when a Missouri state senator called Brown's death an "execution-style" killing. Three days later on MSNBC, Luke Russert called Brown's death "murder" before catching himself. It's happened again. On today's Up With Steve Kornacki, guest L. Joy Williams pointedly called the Brown death "murder." Did Kornacki challenge his guest's assertion in any way? Of...

Antonio Smith, 9 years old, was assassinated the other day. He was Chicago's youngest fatal shooting victim this year. He was shot at least four times and fell in a backyard on the South Side. And when I went out there on 71st and Woodlawn less than 24 hours after he was murdered, here's what I didn't see: I didn't see protesters waving their hands in the air for network TV cameras. I didn't see the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson playing their usual roles in the political race card game.

A week before Ferguson, Missouri, something else happened… From Miami, there is still no word on who shot and killed Rabbi Joseph Raksin. The Brooklyn rabbi, 60, father of six children, a leader at New York’s Crown Heights Orthodox Community, was murdered in broad daylight as he was walking to Sabbath services in the neighborhood of Miami-Dade’s Congregation Torah V’Emunah. Two suspects remain at large. The rabbi’s kin insist that the killing was a hate crime. Police refuse to name it as such. They say it was a robbery gone bad – unlikely on the Sabbath when pious Jews carry...

Ali Muhammad Brown was charged with executing two gay men in Seattle. Brown was previously prosecuted federally following an FBI probe into an Islamic group suspected of supporting jihadists overseas. This devout Muslim is also a registered sex offender for crimes against a 6-year-old girl, the same age as Aisha when Muhammad married her. He was previously prosecuted as part of a federal investigation into a sleeper cell thought by investigators to be linked to a terrorism funding organization. “One prominent member of the group is thought to have been killed waging jihad in Somalia after fleeing prosecution in the...

On Tuesday, ISIS terrorists beheaded American journalist James Foley. President Obama responded by bombing the fourth green during his long vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. He also lectured ISIS on the true meaning of Islam: “ISIL speaks for no religion…ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings….One thing we can all agree on is that a group like ISIL has no place in the 21st century.” The faculty-lounge insult approach has proved ineffective. ISIS is now threatening to kill journalist Steven Sotloff. They reportedly hold two other Americans as well. And they will undoubtedly seek to kidnap more Americans...

I never crossed paths with James Foley. I regret not having met him. A freelance reporter of great skill and courage, Foley was murdered, on camera, by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq by cutting off his head. I know "beheading" is a mellower term, but I don't think this kind of barbarism should be softened. According to the BBC:"James Foley, 40, had reported extensively across the Middle East, working for US publication GlobalPost and other media outlets including French news agency AFP." Foley had been reporting on the appalling situation in Syria when he was abducted on Nov....

In a bizarre rant on Twitter earlier today, atheist Richard Dawkins wrote that choosing not to abort a child with Down Syndrome would be "immoral." The conversation started when Dawkins tweeted that "Ireland is a civilised country except in this 1 area." The area was abortion, which until last year was illegal in all cases. A Twitter user then asked Dawkins if "994 human beings with Down's Syndrome [having been] deliberately killed before birth in England and Wales in 2012" was "civilised." Dawkins replied "yes, it is very civilised. These are fetuses, diagnosed before they have human feelings." Apparently I'm...

Northern Ireland’s leading pro-life group, Precious Life, has condemned this week's announcement by Justice Minister David Ford that a consultation on changing the abortion law will be "ready by autumn." The government is considering allowing the killing of pre-born babies suspected of being disabled and those conceived through rape or incest. “Abortion is a serious criminal offence in Northern Ireland,” said the director of Precious Life, Bernadette Smyth. “The law here protects unborn babies, and David Ford as Minister for Justice must ensure that all children are legally protected." Last December, Ford revealed he would be undertaking a consultation to...

A 3-year-old girl was killed by a stray bullet Friday after a gunman opened fire in North Baltimore's Waverly neighborhood, the latest shooting in a spike in gun violence.

While rioting and racial tension continues in Ferguson, Missouri over the controversial shooting death of Michael Brown there was a ho hum, business as usual, nothing-we-can-do-about-it attitude towards the following headline  in the Chicago Tribune regarding shooting deaths that was probably similar to others across the nation over the week end.   Three people were killed, including a 16-year-old boy, and sixteen others injured in shootings across the city between late Saturday morning and early Sunday morning, police said. The majority of the victims--and most probably the shooters--in Chicago were black; the others Hispanic.  And yet, except for grieving family...

Planned Parenthood calls abortion “a difficult decision” in many of its consent forms and fact sheets. When NARAL launched a film on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 2013, the president of the pro-choice organization called abortion “a difficult decision” women and couples face. Lawmakers use the adjective, too. “It was a difficult, difficult decision, but it was the right one,” Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores said last month in defending her choice to have an abortion at age 16. In 2005, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton described the decision to have an abortion as “one of the most fundamental,...

LA GRANGE, Texas (KXAN) – The Fayette County Sheriff’s Office, with the help of the Texas Rangers, are investigating a murder in La Grange. Randy Noviskie, Chief Deputy with the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office, said a 16-year-old boy allegedly killed a woman on Truesdale Road on Monday just before 10 a.m. After the murder, the teenager left the scene in the victim’s car but he was arrested a few hours later in Smithville. According to authorities, the teenager ran away from a juvenile detention facility last week and since then he had been involved in an auto theft spree in...