By Howard Berkes (NPR) Federal mine disaster investigators disclosed a few pieces of new information Tuesday night from their year-long look at the April 2010 deadly Upper Big Branch mine explosion. They said that: — Mine owner Massey Energy kept two sets of records that chronicled safety problems. One internal set of production reports detailed [...]

(Caller Times TX) A man died while raping a 77-year-old woman in Refugio County, a sheriff’s investigator said. Isabel Chavelo Gutierrez, 53, complained to the woman that he wasn’t feeling well and stopped having sex with her so he could rest. He then went back to fondling the woman before he rolled over and died, [...]

(SF Gate) Markus Husarek, 45, was practicing karate moves on the sidewalk at Fisherman’s Wharf when an 84-year-old man walked by, said Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a police spokesman.  Husarek grabbed the victim around the neck and threw him onto the trolley tracks, Andraychak said. The victim was treated at a hospital for pelvic fractures and [...]

By Allysia Finley (WSJ) If you want to earn big bucks and retire young, you’re better off becoming a California prison guard. The job might not sound glamorous, but a brochure from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations boasts that it “has been called ‘the greatest entry-level job in California’—and for good reason. Our [...]

(AP) Lying on his family room floor with assault weapons trained on him, shouts of “pedophile!” and “pornographer!” stinging like his fresh cuts and bruises, the Buffalo homeowner didn’t need long to figure out the reason for the early morning wake-up call from a swarm of federal agents. That new wireless router. He’d gotten fed [...]

A high-ranking Rhode Island lawmaker who criticized the Legislature by invoking the image of pot-smoking immigrants is facing drug charges in Connecticut. Police in East Haven, Conn., say East Greenwich Republican Robert Watson, the House Minority Leader, was stopped at a police checkpoint Friday and charged with possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia and driving [...]

By Ray Rivera (NY Times) The police on Saturday ratcheted up enforcement on stores and tailor shops that illegally make and sell military and police uniforms after a string of attacks by insurgents dressed as Afghan service members that have cast suspicion on the country’s security forces. In the Kohan Froshi market, a sprawling open-air [...]

By Justin Elliott (Salon) Some of the most eloquent advocates for prison reform are conservatives who find themselves behind bars Last week, disgraced former congressman Duke Cunningham wrote a letter to several media outlets from the federal penitentiary where he has resided since 2006. In it, Cunningham, a conservative Republican who pleaded guilty in a [...]

By Michelle Alexan­der (Colorlines) The U.S. Bureau of Justice estimated that as of 2008, there were over 846,000 black men in prison, making up 40.2 percent of all inmates in the system. But in a recent talk, noted author Michelle Alexander put those numbers in grave historical perspective. “More African American men are in prison [...]

By Dan Rather (Huffington Post) Jorge Castañeda, who served as foreign minister under Mexican president Felipe Calderon’s predecessor and now teaches at New York University, thinks the answer is to legalize drugs in Mexico and the United States — starting with marijuana. “Legalization of drugs doesn’t seem to me to be a terribly radical proposal,” [...]