Russian spy chiefs have dramatically escalated an espionage row with the U.S. by publicly naming the CIA’s station chief in Moscow.

The row started earlier this week when the Russian spy agency, the FSB, paraded what it said was a CIA spy, an American called Ryan Fogle, who was arrested carrying a ‘spy kit’ – an ill-fitting wig, dark glasses and a compass. Fogle was said to be working undercover, with an official job title of third secretary in the US embassy’s political section in Moscow.

Fogle was filmed sitting in the offices of the FSB and Russia media speculated that he had been ordered to find out more about the dead Boston marathon bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who visited relatives in Chechnya and Dagestan areas of Russia last year.

The row escalated last night when the FSB publicly named another CIA operative it said was the head of the US spy network in Moscow.

Naming senior espionage officials is a serious breach of long-established protocol that the U.S. and Russia share the name of their spy network chiefs in each others embassies, and is seen by observers as a carefully-calculated snub to the U.S. by the Russian government.

An FSB spokesman named the CIA chief apparently in retaliation, after saying the U.S. had ‘crossed a red line’ by sending Fogle to spy, after the Americans were warned to stop trying to recruit Russian citizens as agents.

Observers said the voe was likely to provoke a reaction from Washington, at a delicate time when the two countries had just finalized new agreements over the sharing of intelligence in the fight against Islamic terrorism.

Ryan Fogle has since been released by the Russians and told be will be expelled from the country.

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A U.S. House of Representatives panel this morning opens the first in a series of investigative hearings in Congress on the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for extra tax scrutiny, as the political storm over the scandal shifts to Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers from both parties are expected to grill the outgoing acting head of the agency, Steven Miller, and the Treasury Department inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, about the growing scandal that threatens to eclipse President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda.

Miller was forced to resign on Wednesday, and Obama has since appeared in public twice to condemn the IRS’s actions and promise full cooperation with three congressional investigations and a Justice Department probe.

Members of the House Ways and Means Committee are expected to press Miller at the hearing about why he did not disclose the practice of targeting conservative groups after learning about it in 2012, even when he was questioned about it by members of Congress.

Republicans, who have demanded more answers and angrily accused the administration of using government powers to target political foes, also are likely to question whether other groups or donors were singled out because of their political views, and whether the White House knew of the practice.

The hearing is scheduled to start at 9 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT).

“There are still far too many unanswered questions and until we know what truly happened, we cannot fully fix what is wrong,” said Committee Chairman Dave Camp, a Republican from Michigan.

“The IRS has demonstrated a culture of cover up and has failed time and time again to be completely open and honest with the American people,” Camp said.

George, who investigated the complaints against the IRS, issued a public report earlier this week that blamed ineffective management and bureaucratic confusion at the IRS for the agency’s inappropriate targeting of conservative political groups for extra scrutiny when considering applications for tax-exempt status.

But George also could face vigorous questioning from Republicans about why he did not issue warnings about the practice earlier.

The political storm over the scandal has put Obama on the defensive at a time when he is negotiating with Republicans on a budget deal and trying to push a comprehensive immigration reform bill through Congress.

Two other committees, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, also will hold IRS hearings next week.

“COMMON SENSE”

Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Republican member of the Ways and Means panel, said Friday’s hearing will kick off a months-long investigative process. Nunes said he was suspicious of the tax agency’s motives in targeting groups with names that included “Tea Party” or “Patriot.”

“Common sense tells me it probably just wasn’t two low-level employees in Cincinnati sitting around strategizing about how to go after the Tea Party,” Nunes told reporters on Thursday.

Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the panel, said he was concerned that Republicans could turn the probe into a partisan witchhunt.

“There is a tendency to politicize. That would be a terrible mistake,” Levin told reporters. “There are people who conjecture, who are trying to make connections. If there is no basis for it, that is also a mistake.”

Camp and Levin sent the IRS a letter on Tuesday outlining the information they were seeking in the probe, including all documents relating to the targeting and any information on who knew about the practice and when they became aware of it.

The letter also asked for any other organizations singled out for their political views and the search terms used to find them, as well as all documents related to possible special reviews of groups whose missions involved Israel and all communication with the White House on the process.

Given the three congressional investigations and the Justice probe, Obama said, there was no need for a special prosecutor to look into the allegations.

“Between those investigations I think we’re going to be able to figure out exactly what happened, who was involved, what went wrong, and we’re going to be able to implement steps to fix it,” Obama said at a Rose Garden news conference on Thursday.

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A close friend of Michael Jackson who had testified in defense of the late pop king at his child sex abuse trial said on Thursday that the singer had intimidated and brainwashed him into lying about years of sexual activity with him.

“It was complete manipulation (by Jackson) and brainwashing,” choreographer Wade Robson told NBC’s “Today” show. “He would role play and train me for these (court) scenarios.”

Robson, 30, filed a creditor’s claim under seal against Jackson’s estate earlier this month alleging he had been sexually abused by the singer from age 7 to 14.

He made his claim against the singer’s estate nearly four years after Jackson’s sudden death in June 2009 from a lethal dose of surgical anesthetic propofol.

Robson, an Australian native, was a child dance prodigy and developed a friendship with Jackson, appearing in some of the singer’s music videos in the early 1990s and sleeping over at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch home in Southern California.

“From day one of the abuse, Michael told me that we loved each other and that this was love, that this was an expression of our love,” Robson said. “And he would follow that up with, ‘But if you ever tell anyone what we’re doing, both of our lives and careers will be over.’”

Jackson was tried and acquitted in 2005 on molestation charges involving another minor. Robson testified at that trial in defense of the singer and also defended him during a 1993 criminal investigation into child sex abuse allegations.

The attorney for Jackson’s estate said Robson’s claim “is outrageous and pathetic.”

“This is a young man who has testified at least twice under oath over the past 20 years and said in numerous interviews that Michael Jackson never did anything inappropriate to him or with him,” Jackson attorney Howard Weitzman said.

Robson, who has worked as a choreographer for pop singer Britney Spears, said the birth of his son two years ago triggered abuse-related nervous breakdowns and spurred him to speak out.

“For the first time in my life, I began to realize that my completely numb and unexplored feelings in relationship to what Michael did to me might be a problem,” he said.

Jackson’s estate is in the process of settling dozens of claims from creditors and others who had dealings with him during his long career.

An unrelated wrongful death suit, brought by Jackson’s family against concert promoter AEG Live, is in its third week of trial in Los Angeles.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Philip Barbara)

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A man holds a gun at the site for the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) annual meeting in Houston

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley on Thursday signed into law one of the United States’ toughest gun control measures, even as opponents vowed to overturn it.

The legislation prompted by the Newtown, Connecticut, school massacre requires handgun buyers to undergo safety training and submit fingerprints to obtain a license.

It also bans the sale of 45 types of assault weapons, which have been linked to at least 461 U.S. deaths since 2004, according to the governor’s office.

“We’ve chosen to take action by advancing the strategies that work to save lives,” O’Malley, a Democrat mentioned as a potential presidential candidate in 2016, said in a statement.

The new law also reduces magazine capacity from 20 rounds to 10 rounds. People who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility will be banned from gun ownership.

Maryland joins Connecticut and New York in expanding assault weapons bans and restricting the capacity of magazines in the aftermath of the Newtown elementary school shooting that killed 20 students and six adults in December.

Colorado approved similar measures after a gunman killed 12 people and wounded 58 in July 2012 in a movie theater.

The National Rifle Association (NRA), the powerful gun lobby, has announced plans to challenge the new state gun control laws, including those in Maryland.

Republican State Assembly Delegate Neil Parrott said last month that leading opponents of the Maryland bill planned to back an NRA lawsuit, rather than petition for a referendum.

Senate President Thomas Miller criticized the NRA. He told a news conference in Annapolis that the NRA “is going to look for a conservative, right-wing-leaning judge, rather than going to the people of the state of Maryland … because they know that if this bill went to the people, it would pass overwhelmingly.”

A Washington Post poll in February showed that Maryland residents supported O’Malley’s licensing plan. Eighty-five percent backed it, and 73 percent said they did so “strongly.”

A Maryland woman, Sue Payne, has also launched a campaign to petition the bill to a referendum, filing paperwork with the board of elections last month.

Other features of the bill include mandatory reporting of lost or stolen firearms. It also strengthens the state’s ability to regulate gun dealers and bars some violent offenders from obtaining a gun while on probation.

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Wilburn Russell, 73, displays a portrait of his son, Sergeant John M. Russell, the Army sergeant who killed five fellow soldiers in Iraq.

A U.S. Army sergeant was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Thursday for killing five fellow servicemen in a shooting spree in Iraq, one of the worst cases of violence by an American soldier against other U.S. troops.

In a deal that spared him the death penalty, Sergeant John Russell pleaded guilty last month to killing two medical staff officers and three soldiers at the Camp Liberty combat stress clinic, near Baghdad’s airport.

The military has said the 2009 shooting might have been triggered by combat stress.

Russell faced an abbreviated court-martial at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state to determine the level of his guilt, and the military judge in the case ruled on Monday that the 48-year-old Texan had killed with premeditation.

At an early morning hearing at the Pacific Northwest military base, the judge tasked with determining Russell’s sentence, Army Colonel David Conn, said Russell had been mentally ill at the time of the killings but was nevertheless responsible for his actions.

“You are not a monster,” Conn said. “But you have knowingly and deliberately done incredibly monstrous things.”

“Sergeant Russell, you have forced many to drink from a bitter cup. That cup is now before you,” Conn said, before asking Russell, who wore green military dress, to stand.

He sentenced the 48-year-old Texas native to life in confinement without the possibility of parole, a reduction in rank and a dishonorable discharge from the Army, which is accompanied by forfeiture of pay.

Emotions were high in the courtroom, which was filled with more than a dozen family members of the victims and witnesses to the attack, several of whom testified this week to the personal pain they experienced from the attack.

One woman watching cried out with relief and clapped her hands as Conn gave the sentence.

STATE OF MIND

Russell’s state of mind before, during and after the attack has been central to legal proceedings over the past year.

Conn, in ruling that the killings were premeditated, ultimately sided with prosecutors who said Russell tried to gain an early exit from the Army and then sought revenge on a mental health worker who would not help him achieve that goal.

“I have never been so aggrieved as I have been by learning the impact of Sergeant Russell’s crimes on the lives of so many,” Conn said before making his ruling, his voice flickering with emotion.

Prosecutors said Russell stole a Ford sport utility vehicle, loaded a 30-round magazine into an M16-A2 rifle, and drove roughly 40 minutes to the clinic to exact revenge. There, he smoked a cigarette, removed identification tags and the gun’s optical sight and slipped into the clinic through a back entrance.

An Army forensic science officer who analyzed the scene after the attack testified that Russell killed with the tactical precision of a trained soldier.

Defense attorneys countered that Russell’s mental health had been severely weakened by several combat tours, and that he was suicidal prior to the attack and provoked to violence by maltreatment at the hands of healthcare workers whom he sought for help.

In the final hour, filled with suicidal despair and rage, they said, he cracked.

A forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Sadoff of the University of Pennsylvania, concluded that Russell suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis at the time of the shootings and had death wishes related to his illnesses.

“My plan was to kill myself,” Russell said during his plea hearing. “I wanted the pain to stop.”

Those killed on May 11, 2009, were Major Matthew Houseal, 54; Commander Keith Springle, 52; Sergeant Christian Bueno-Galdos, 25; Specialist Jacob Barton, 20; and Private First Class Michael Yates, 19.

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U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday chose a White House budget official to lead the beleaguered Internal Revenue Service temporarily and vowed to ensure that the tax-collection agency will not single out any more groups based on their political beliefs.

Danny Werfel, the controller of the Office of Management and Budget who served as a point man on the controversial automatic spending cuts known as “sequestration,” will start in the new post on May 22.

Obama is racing to get out in front of a scandal that threatens to derail his second-term agenda as Republicans and conservative groups accuse his administration of using the levers of power to persecute political enemies.

“I think we’re going to be able to figure out exactly what happened, who was involved, what went wrong, and we’re going to be able to implement steps to fix it,” Obama said at an unrelated news conference with the Turkish prime minister.

“It is just simply unacceptable for there to even be a hint of partisanship or ideology when it comes to the application of our tax laws,” he added.

Obama has said he did not know about the actions of IRS employees who targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny as they sought tax-exempt status before the news became public last week.

Obama has faced a series of recent setbacks that could threaten his ability to pursue priorities like immigration reform and a budget deal.

Republicans have hammered the administration’s handling of a deadly militant attack last year on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, and the Justice Department has been criticized for seizing phone records of journalists from the Associated Press as part of a criminal probe into intelligence leaks.

The IRS scandal has prompted at least three congressional probes, as well as a criminal investigation by the Justice Department. Obama fired the agency’s acting director on Wednesday after an internal IRS watchdog found poor management led to an “inappropriate” focus on conservative groups.

Werfel has a track record of coolly responding to harsh questions from lawmakers. He testified multiple times this year about the damaging budget cuts that kicked in after Congress and the White House failed to reach a larger deficit reduction deal.

“The American people deserve to have the utmost confidence and trust in their government, and as we work to get to the bottom of what happened and restore confidence in the IRS, Danny has the experience and management ability necessary to lead the agency at this important time,” Obama said in a statement.

As the much-maligned agency faces withering scrutiny, IRS employees have pulled out of public events.

Lois Lerner, the head of the division that examines nonprofit claims, canceled plans to speak at a graduation ceremony for her law-school alma mater, Western New England University. The IRS softball team canceled a scheduled match with the office of Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican said on Facebook.

‘SOMETHING PROFOUNDLY UN-AMERICAN’

On Capitol Hill, the scandal seemed to rewind the clock to 2009 and 2010, when groups aligned with the conservative Tea Party movement were a frequent and vocal presence outside Congress.

At a rally that drew about 100 people from around the country, dozens of Tea Party leaders denounced the IRS and raised questions about the Obama administration’s involvement.

“There is something profoundly un-American about targeting your political opponents,” Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, told the crowd.

Tea Party leaders described how the IRS prevented them from participating in the democratic process – in some cases by delaying their applications until after elections had passed, and in other cases through intrusive questioning that prompted some to give up their organizing effort altogether.

“The IRS just keeps asking questions. Our audit has been so intrusive,” said Susan McLaughlin of the Liberty Tea Party in Liberty Township, Ohio. McLaughlin said her group had been waiting for three years to win tax-exempt status.

In the Senate, Republicans called on the IRS’s internal watchdog to investigate whether the agency had leaked the donor list of the National Organization for Marriage, a conservative group fighting gay-marriage initiatives, to a rival group.

“This is what government intimidation and harassment looks like,” Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said.

Other Republicans kept up the pressure as well.

House Speaker John Boehner accused the Obama administration of “remarkable arrogance” and said the scandal might lead to jail time for IRS officials, pointing to a law that mandates up to five years in prison for government officials found guilty of extortion or “willful oppression.”

Republican Representative Darrell Issa said he wanted to question five IRS employees who may have played key roles in the scandal as his Oversight and Government Reform Committee looks into the matter.

Others said the net should be cast wider.

“The IRS low-level employees who made these egregious decisions need to be dealt with, but we also need to find out who directed them to do it and how high up does it go?” Republican Senator Rob Portman told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan, Kim Dixon, Tabassum Zakaria, and Caren Bohan; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Jim Loney)

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How many times has a new product hit the market and you just ask yourself “Why didn’t I think of that first?” Be sure to write down and date all your crazy invention ideas.

A resident of a highly secure federal prison in Florence, Colorado claims he was the first to think of Doritos Locos Tacos – Taco Bell’s shells make out of Doritos chips.

Gary Cole filed a lawsuit yesterday in Dallas, saying that Taco Bell stole his idea. Cole is currently at a penitentiary because he delayed interstate commerce and carried “a firearm relation to a crime of violence.” According to reports, he will represent himself in court.

Cole says he sent a notarized document to his layer in 2006 which he listed nine inventions. Those inventions include body oils, “Divas and Ballers” brand hot sauce, alcohol and “Taco shells of all flavors (made of Doritos).

Cole believes the idea was likely stolen through the mail. He clams that “a check was made out to a person for a large amount by Taco Bell, Frito Lay and Pepsi Co. Inc. for an idea or invention that was submitted to them by theft and fraud.”

He also sent a Freedom of Information Act request to Taco Bell requesting all the documents related to the invention of the Dorito tacos.

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Jodi Arias, declared eligible for the death penalty a week after she was convicted of murdering an ex-boyfriend in Arizona, returned to court on Thursday for the final sentencing phase of her sensational trial.

A Maricopa County jury deliberated less than two hours on Wednesday, the start of the trial’s penalty phase, before ruling that Arias had acted with extreme cruelty in the 2008 fatal stabbing and shooting of Travis Alexander, a finding that qualified her for capital punishment.

Alexander, a 30-year-old businessman and motivational speaker with whom Arias said she was having an on-again, off-again affair, was stabbed 27 times, had his throat slashed and had been shot in the face. His body was found slumped in the shower of his Phoenix-area home.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers are slated to present additional testimony and arguments for the jury to weigh before one last round of deliberations that will determine whether Arias is sentenced to death or to life in prison.

In a development that seemed to signal tensions between Arias and members of her legal team, court documents released on Thursday disclosed that defense attorneys recently asked for permission to withdraw from the case. But Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens denied the request.

The prosecution plans to call relatives and friends of Alexander to deliver “victim impact statements” about the toll his slaying has taken on their lives. The judge denied a defense request to have those statements presented by video.

The defense, in turn, is expected to revisit its claim that Arias acted out of fear, and that her relationship with Alexander was fraught with abuse and efforts by Alexander to control her.

In arguing against the death penalty, the defense can try to establish one of several mitigating factors recognized under Arizona law, the most relevant of which would likely be a claim that Arias acted under “unusual or substantial duress.”

The jury rejected Arias’ claims of self-defense when it found her guilty last week of premeditated murder, capping a four-month trial during which the petite former waitress from California took the witness stand to testify in her own defense.

It was not certain whether she would opt to make any further statements in court before the jury renders its sentence.

SUICIDE WATCH

The reasons for Arias’ lawyers asking to step down were not immediately clear. Their motion was made during a closed hearing, and defense attorneys Kirk Nurmi and Jennifer Willmott did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It came after Arias, 32, said in a post-conviction television interview that she would prefer the death penalty to life in prison. She was placed on suicide watch in a psychiatric ward following the interview, but was returned to her jail cell on Monday.

Arias has admitted shooting Alexander and said she opened fire on him with his own pistol when he attacked her in a rage because she dropped his camera while taking snapshots of him in the shower. She said she did not remember stabbing him.

The lurid circumstances of the case, which went to trial in January and featured graphic testimony, photographs of the blood-sprayed crime scene and a sex tape, became a sensation on cable television news and unfolded in live Internet telecasts of the proceedings.

On Wednesday, prosecutors focused on details of the murder in their bid to cast the crime as especially cruel, a legal standard for aggravating factors that qualify for the death sentence.

Prosecutor Juan Martinez said Arias had repeatedly stabbed Alexander for two minutes as he tried to escape from the bathroom. She then followed the bleeding victim down a hallway and slashed his throat when he was too weak to get away.

Alexander knew he was going to die and was unable to resist his attacker at that point, Martinez said.

“Each and every time that blade went into his body, it hurt,” Martinez told the jury. “It was only death that relieved that pain. It was only death that relieved that anguish, and that is especially cruel.”

The defense argued that adrenaline would have prevented Alexander from feeling the pain of the knife blows. If he were shot in the forehead first, rendering him unconscious in seconds, he would not have suffered, Nurmi said.

During the trial, Martinez cast Arias as manipulative and prone to jealousy in previous relationships. He said she had meticulously planned to kill Alexander.

Martinez said Arias also lied after the slaying to deflect any suspicion that she had been involved in his death, leaving a voicemail on Alexander’s cellphone, sending flowers to his grandmother and telling detectives she was not at the crime scene before changing her story.

Nurmi, meanwhile, argued that Arias had snapped in the “sudden heat of passion” in the moments between a photograph she took showing Alexander alive and taking a shower, and a subsequent picture of his apparently dead body covered in blood.

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UPDATE 8 p.m.: Union County N.J. officials announced Thursday evening that Philadelphia Police apprehended Caleb Lawrence McGillvary, AKA Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker, at the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Philadelphia.

McGillvary has been charged in the murder of Clark, N.J. man Joseph Galfy Jr.

According to a news release, McGillvary will be processed in Philadelphia and returned to New Jersey. He will be lodged in the Union County Jail in Elizabeth.

“I am grateful for the overwhelming response and dedicated effort by the public and law enforcement that led to this arrest,” said Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow in a news release. “I believe that everyone is a little safer with this person off the streets.”

McGillvary received Internet fame earlier this year after he gave a lively television interview depicting how he used a hatchet to repeatedly strike a man who purposefully ran over a utility worker and also tried to beat up a woman who intervened. The video went viral. McGillvary had hitched a ride with the assailant before the incident.

ORIGINAL REPORT: Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker, who rose to Internet fame earlier this year after giving a lively interview on TV about how he used a hatchet on a man who was trying to beat up a woman, is wanted for the murder of New Jersey man, officials with the Union County Prosecutor’s Office said today.

Kai, whose real name is Caleb Lawrence McGillvary, was apparently last seen at the Patco station in Haddonfield, Camden County, N.J.

Officials with the Union County Task Force and the Clark Police Department issued an arrested warrant for McGillvary in the May 12 homicide of Clark man Joseph Galfy Jr., according to a press release.

Officials said Galfy was found inside his home May 13 after a welfare check. After a May 14 autopsy, it was determined Galfy died of blunt force trauma.

McGillvary, 23, is homeless, but has referred to himself as “homefree,” said Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romanhow in a release.

In February, McGillvary hitched a ride with a driver who then, on purpose, ran over a utility worker in California. The driver, who proclaimed to be Jesus Christ, tried to beat up a woman who intervened to help. McGillvary told a local television station he grabbed a hatchet and hit the assailant.

McGillvary was then known as Kai the Hitchhiker and the local news report with his interview went viral. He made an appearance on national media outlets including Jimmy Kimmel Live.

New Jersey officials said McGillvary cut his hair to alter his appearance and is still at-large. He is considered armed and dangerous.

Caleb Lawrence McGillvary AKA Kai the Hitchhiker. Credit Union County Prosecutor’s Office

Union County Crime Stoppers is offering a $5,000 reward for information that leads to his arrest.

McGillvary has been charged with murder and his bail has been set at $3 million.

Officials wrote: All tips are kept anonymous and may be called into (908) 654-TIPS (8477), www.uctip.org, or text UCTIP plus a message 274637.

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Sophisticated paintings indicate that Neanderthals could have matched human intelligence, analysts claim.

The discovery of “exquisite horses and outlines of bison” in a Spanish cave suggests that mankind’s poorly-regarded relations were capable of abstract thought, according to research in the science journal ‘Nature’. The artworks were thought to be a product of early humans, but new dating technologies indicate they are over 40,000 years old and may have originated from before humans lived in Europe.

This follows the recent discovery of sophisticated tools and ornaments that contradicted the primitive depiction of Neanderthals. “They could innovate on their own,” said study author Julien Riel-Salvatore of the University of Colorado Denver. “My research suggests that they were a different kind of human, but humans nonetheless.”

The Neanderthal brain was larger than man’s, although it was believed that large parts were devoted to vision and simple function, producing different thought processes. But recent discoveries have led to a new debate on the species’ capacity and even efforts to clone one for public interest purposes, This has had the support from Harvard genetics professor George Church, who claimed that “Neanderthals think differently than we do. They could even be more intelligent than us.”

Another assumption about human intelligence was challenged this week by research claiming that IQs are dropping. The well-known Flynn effect holds that IQ grows three points per decade, but researchers from Umea University, Sweden found that subjects were on average 14 points lower than counterparts from the 19th Century.

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Former England captain David Beckham announced on Thursday that he will retire from professional soccer at the end of the season. Here is a look back at the British superstar’s storied career, as well as his humanitarian efforts.

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Former England captain David Beckham announced Thursday that he will retire from professional soccer at the end of the season.

“I’m thankful to PSG for giving me the opportunity to continue but I feel now is the right time to finish my career, playing at the highest level,” the 38-year-old Paris St. Germain midfielder said in a statement.

“I want to thank all my teammates, the great managers that I had the pleasure of learning from. I also want to thank the fans who have all supported me and given me the strength to succeed.”

Beckham earned 115 caps for England, a record for an outfield player, and won the Champions League, six Premier League titles and two FA Cups with Manchester United.

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  View Slideshow

  PHOTOS: Bend it like Beckham

He also won league titles with Real Madrid in Spain, LA Galaxy in the U.S. and PSG in France.

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At least six people were killed and scores more injured when tornadoes ripped through a stretch of Texas near Dallas-Fort Worth after dark last night, destroying homes and uprooting trees, authorities said.

The twisters were the deadliest to hit the United States so far this year, and Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds said the toll could rise as rescue workers combed through houses, hampered by darkness that kept the full extent of the devastation hidden.

“I’ve got 14 people that are unaccounted for,” he told reporters.

At least three tornadoes were confirmed to have struck north-central Texas last night. The worst damage was reported in Granbury, a town about 35 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

All six of the people confirmed killed were found in Rancho Brazos, a neighborhood of around 110 mostly single family homes on the fringe of Granbury that bore the brunt of the winds, Deeds said.

“I had three different storms that came through but this is the worst one,” he said.

“Power lines were down, homes were heavily damaged to destroyed and the roads were blocked with debris.” Bulldozers were brought in to clear roads and get residents out.

Matt Zavadsky, a spokesman for MedStar Mobile Healthcare, an agency that provides ambulance service to the region, said about 100 people were injured in the Granbury twister.

There was no immediate estimate for the extent of property damage, but Sheriff’s Lieutenant Kathy Jividen said a number of homes were destroyed and trees downed.

Deeds said the houses and streets had been searched multiple times by early Thursday and the area would be secured.

“If you get caught out there you are going to go to jail,” he said. “In the morning when the sun comes out we’ll reevaluate what’s going on out there and go from there.”

Neighborhood devastated

He said a “very big percentage” of the homes in Rancho Brazos were devastated. Many had been built in the last five years.

About 90 people were cleared from the area on buses to a local school and then to relocation centers.

In Granbury, Pastor Dean Porter of Lake Granbury Christian Temple told a Dallas/Fort Worth ABC affiliate that looking out the front porch of his church at the parking lot he began to see “what looked to be a circular formation” and he ran back inside.

“Apparently what had happened from that point was that the tornado had formed over us, touched down on the opposite end of our property where there was a horse stable and some other buildings that were demolished. Just past that point there was a gas plant, I think there was a pipeline that had broke,” Porter told the affiliate, WFAA.

“This particular night is not like anything that I’ve ever seen,” Porter told the station.

Properties were damaged but no one was injured in nearby Parker County, bordering Hood County, Parker County Judge Mark Riley said.

The U.S. tornado season typically starts in the Gulf Coast states in the late winter, and then moves north with the warming weather, peaking around May and trailing off by July.

The country has seen several deadly tornadoes in recent years.

In March 2012, at least 39 people were killed in a chain of tornadoes that cut a swath of destruction from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico. The following month, at least six people died when a twister ripped through an Oklahoma town during a weekend outbreak of dozens of twisters across the Great Plains.

In May 2011, a massive tornado struck Joplin, Mo., killing 161 people and damaging or destroying 7,500 homes.

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In December, James Cleaveland made an unusual New Year’s resolution: to do all he could to keep police in the city of Keene, N.H., from issuing parking tickets.

Cleaveland and a group of friends took to the streets with pocketfuls of change and began shadowing the city’s three parking enforcement officers, stuffing coins in expired meters before they could issue $5 tickets.

They call their practice “Robin Hooding,” and in just over four months the group claims to have spared motorists more than 2,000 tickets in the city of some 23,000.

“It’s my philosophy,” said Cleaveland, 26, a member of a group called Free Keene, which subscribes to the libertarian principle of smaller government.

“I could go talk to the city council at every meeting but to me, actions speak louder than words. I can go out and try to save people and reduce the number of tickets.”

The southern New Hampshire city’s government does not share Cleaveland’s view. This month it filed suit in state court against him and five others seeking a restraining order to keep them at least 50 feet from parking enforcement officers.

The suit accuses Cleaveland and five others of videotaping, taunting and intimidating its parking meter personnel.

The alleged behavior includes chasing officers on bicycles, shouting insults and accusing them of stealing people’s money. One officer became so stressed that he complained of heart palpitations and began having nightmares about the group, according to court papers.

“It’s affecting the employees and it’s taking a lot of time and energy to deal with it, and so the city’s intent was to try to establish some clear boundaries and a little breathing room,” said James Duffy, a member of the Keene City Council.

“We’re not saying you can’t complain about the meters or plug them, it’s just how that’s done.”

Cleaveland has vowed to continue. He said he knows each parking attendant by name.

“I don’t follow them home or try to find them off duty,” he said. “They always use the excuse ‘I’m just doing my job.’ I always say, ‘I’m just doing my activity, too.’”

Calling card

The Free Keene movement is part of the Free State Project, a group that has sought to get 20,000 libertarians to settle in New Hampshire, a state already known for its limited government and which has no sales or income tax.

The Keene chapter’s prior actions included publicly smoking marijuana in the city’s central square to protest drug laws, and holding a protest against gun restrictions that featured a half-nude woman armed with a holstered handgun walking through downtown.

Cleaveland’s compatriot Garrett Ean, 24, said he feeds meters up to five days a week in three- to four-hour shifts during the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. period when motorists must pay to park downtown.

He said he spends less than $15 a day since some of Keene’s meters cost as little as 10 cents for 30 minutes of parking.

Like Cleaveland, he leaves a card on the windshield of each “saved” car that says: “Your Meter Expired! However we saved you from the king’s tariff! – Robin Hood & The Merry Men.”

The card leaves an address for an activists’ center and encourages motorists to send a donation.

The group sometimes receives handwritten thank-you notes in addition to donations, which are sometimes enough not only to cover the costs of feeding meters but also to allow the group to pay the activists a small amount, said Cleaveland.

City Councilor Duffy said the city, home to Keene State College, is a progressive community whose tolerance is sometimes stretched by the group’s scrutiny of even the most minor actions of local government.

“In many ways this is a progressive community and also a tolerant one, but it’s been going on long enough,” he said. “This won’t be the last issue.”

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Steven Miller, who resigned on Wednesday as the acting head of the Internal Revenue Service, said in a message to colleagues that there is a “strong and immediate need” to restore public trust in the nation’s tax agency.

Miller resigned after the IRS became embroiled in a controversy over the agency’s targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

“It is with regret that I will be departing from the IRS as my acting assignment ends in early June,” Miller said in an internal message that was released by the IRS. “This has been an incredibly difficult time for the IRS given the events of the past few days, and there is a strong and immediate need to restore public trust in the nation’s tax agency.”

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An Arizona jury found on Wednesday that Jodi Arias, a California woman convicted in a sensational trial of brutally murdering her ex-boyfriend, inflicted extreme cruelty on her victim and is thus eligible for the death penalty.

The same jury found Arias guilty last week of first-degree murder in the death of 30-year-old Travis Alexander, whose body was found slumped in the shower of his Phoenix area home five years ago. She had stabbed him 27 times, slashed his throat and shot him in the face.

The jury will next weigh additional evidence to decide whether to actually sentence Arias to death or to life in prison.

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The White House on Wednesday released 100 pages of emails detailing discussion inside the administration over last year’s deadly attacks on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

President Barack Obama has faced Republican criticism that his administration covered up details of the assault, especially after a news report last week said memos on the incident were edited to omit a CIA warning of an al Qaeda threat.

Senior administration officials told reporters at the White House the emails were released to clear up misinformation about the process. The emails were the basis for the controversial “talking points” memos that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice used when discussing the attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi.

The officials said the emails showed the talking points were based on intelligence information approved by the CIA and meant to avoid pre-judging the outcome of an FBI investigation into the September 12, 2012, attacks.

Republicans say the talking points were an attempt by the administration to portray the attacks as arising from a spontaneous protest, and not an organized terrorist assault as Obama campaigned for re-election.

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School children write letters to President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden all the time. Many of those letter writers never get a response. One Wisconsin boy got a very personal response from Vice President Biden.

A second grade student at Downtown Montessori Academy wrote a letter to Vice President Biden a few months ago suggesting that if guns shot chocolate bullets, no one would get hurt.

In true Joe Biden fashion, he responded to the 7-year-old student earlier this week with a hand-written response.

Biden agrees that the world would be safer if guns were loaded with chocolate bullets as “People love chocolate.”

The full note reads:

“Dear Myles, I am sorry it took me so very long to respond to your letter. I really like your idea. If we had guns that shot chocolate, not only would our country be safer, it would be happier. People love chocolate. You’re a good boy. Joe Biden.

There doesn’t seem to be a politician quite like Biden. Metro agrees with Vice President, you are a good boy, Myles.

Follow Mary Ann Georgantopoulos on Twitter @marygeorgant

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O.J. Simpson, the former football star famously acquitted of murder in 1995, took the witness stand in a Las Vegas courtroom on Wednesday seeking a new trial in an armed-robbery case that sent him to prison five years ago.

Simpson, 65, was called to testify in the third day of a hearing into his claims that the lawyer who served as his defense attorney mishandled the Nevada robbery case.

He was brought to court from a Nevada prison where he is serving a sentence of up to 33 years for the 2007 incident in which he and five other men stormed into a room at the Palace Station Hotel and Casino and took thousands of dollars in memorabilia from a pair of sports collectors at gunpoint.

Defense lawyers argued unsuccessfully that Simpson was only trying to retrieve his own stolen possessions and was not aware that an accomplice had brought a gun along. He was found guilty on 12 charges, including armed robbery and kidnapping.

Under questioning from his new lawyer on Wednesday, Simpson said the items in question were personal property he wanted to retrieve, and believed were exempt from a $33.5 million civil judgment against him from the deaths of his ex-wife and her friend.

Simpson appeared older, grayer and heavier after five years behind bars as he sat in the witness box.

Simpson’s current attorneys have asked a judge to throw out his 2008 conviction, saying his trial lawyer, Yale Galanter, had a conflict of interest because he knew in advance that Simpson planned to confront the sports dealers at the hotel.

They also argue that Galanter never told Simpson that prosecutors had offered a plea deal in which he would have been sentenced to two to five years in prison.

Simpson’s 43-year-old daughter, Arnelle, took the witness stand on Monday, testifying that her father had been drinking heavily during the weekend of the incident.

A separate appeal by Simpson of his conviction in the case was rejected by the Nevada Supreme Court in 2010.

Simpson, a former star NFL running back turned TV pitchman and actor, was accused of the 1994 stabbing and slashing murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

He was acquitted in 1995 after sensational proceeding dubbed the “Trial of the Century” in the press that was carried live gavel-to-gavel on U.S. television.

But a civil jury later found him liable for the deaths of his former spouse and Goldman in a wrongful death lawsuit, awarding their families $33.5 million in damages.

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Greg Karber is so fed up with Abercrombie & Fitch’s attitude of only wanting to dress pretty, skinny and cool kids that he started a campaign to donate Abercrombie & Fitch clothing to homeless people.

The narration in Karber’s video starts by saying, “Abercrombie & Fitch is a terrible company.”

The company’s CEO, Mike Jeffries, has on multiple occasions said he only wants cool kids to wear his clothes.

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” Jeffries said in a 2006 interview with Salon. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive All-American kid with the great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

Karber hit up a Goodwill in Los Angeles and scoured the racks for Abercrombie & Fitch clothing.

With as much A&F clothing as he could find he headed to Skid Row in East Los Angeles – where the largest population of homeless people in America can be found.

“It was time to do some charity,” he says in the video.

At first some of the homeless were reluctant to take the clothing.

“Perhaps they were afraid of being perceived as narcissist date rapists,” Karber says. “But pretty soon they accepted it wholeheartedly and my expedition was a huge success.”

Karber created the video in hopes that more people would join his campaign.

One person can’t clothe the homeless or transform a brand on his own, he says.

He asks the public to pitch in with these three ways:

1. Look through your closets, your friends’ closets and your neighbors’ closets for A&F clothing.
2. Give them away to your local homeless shelter.
3. Share what you’re dong on Facebook and Twitter (or Google+ if you’re actually using that.)

Karber has created the hashtag #FitchTheHomeless to spread the word.

Follow Mary Ann Georgantopoulos on Twitter @marygeorgant

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Some 900 million smartphones and tablets running Google Inc’s Android software have been activated since the platform’s inception in 2010, executives said at the company’s annual developers’ conference on Wednesday.

Google said revenue from Android, the software used by Samsung and other mobile device makers that competes with Apple Inc, is also gaining momentum. Google executives said revenue per user for Android applications developers is now 2-1/2 times its year-earlier level.

Roughly 5,500 software developers are attending this year’s “Google I/O” convention at San Francisco’s Moscone Center from Wednesday through Friday.

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Jodi Arias, the California woman convicted in a sensational trial of brutally murdering her ex-boyfriend, will face an Arizona jury on Wednesday charged with deciding if she deserves the death penalty for her crime.

Arias was found guilty a week ago of murdering 30-year-old Travis Alexander, whose body was found slumped in the shower of his Phoenix area home five years ago. She had stabbed him 27 times, slashed his throat and shot him in the face.

Arias, a petite 32-year-old former waitress, had tried unsuccessfully to convince the jury during the four-month trial that she had acted in self-defense after Alexander attacked her because she dropped his camera while taking photographs of him in the shower.

The trial, which aired evidence including a sex tape and photographs of the blood-sprayed crime scene, became a sensation on cable television news with its lurid tale of a bright, soft-spoken young woman charged with an unthinkable crime.

Jurors could have convicted Arias of a lesser crime – such as second-degree murder or manslaughter – in the killing of Alexander, an ex-boyfriend with whom she had an on-again, off-again affair, but instead found her guilty of the most serious charge possible.

Following her conviction, Arias was placed suicide watch in a psychiatric ward after she indicated in a television interview that she would prefer a death sentence to life in prison. The watch was lifted on Monday and she was returned to jail.

At the sentencing trial, the prosecution will present evidence trying to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that aggravating factors exist which merit the death penalty. The defense can also present rebuttal evidence and the decision will then be up to the jury.

In a statement last week, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said the state planned to present “evidence to prove the murder was committed in an especially heinous, cruel or depraved manner.”

Calls to defense attorney Kirk Nurmi seeking comment were not returned.

During the trial, prosecutor Juan Martinez painted a picture of Arias as manipulative and prone to jealousy in previous relationships. He said she had meticulously planned to kill Alexander, a businessman and motivational speaker.

In making his case for premeditated murder, Martinez had accused Arias of bringing the pistol used in the killing, which has not been recovered, with her from California to the scene of the crime. He said she also rented a car, removed its license plate and bought gasoline cans and fuel to conceal her journey to the Phoenix suburbs to kill Alexander.

Martinez said Arias lied after the killing to deflect any suspicion that she had been involved in his death, leaving a voicemail on Alexander’s cellphone, sending flowers to his grandmother and telling detectives she was not at the crime scene before changing her story.

Nurmi, meanwhile, argued that Arias had snapped in the “sudden heat of passion” in the moments between a photograph she took showing Alexander alive and taking a shower, and a subsequent picture of his apparently dead body covered in blood.

The sentencing trial is set to begin at 10 a.m. local time (1700 GMT)

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In his most recent visit to the United States, Prince Harry toured areas of New Jersey hit hard by Hurricane Sandy and spent time playing baseball with Harlem’s youth. In return, he received a a small doll resembling himself. That’s one way to get a royal’s attention.

During a visit with entrepreneurs during the ‘GREAT Event’ Tuesday, both Prince Harry and British Prime Minister David Cameron were presented with dolls of themselves by MakieLab, a company that makes 3-D toys and games. They graciously accepted, but were likely a little weirded out, just as we were while looking at these photographs.

Will little Prince Harry get himself into as much trouble as life-sized Prince Harry? We hope so!

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The man charged with holding three women captive and raping them over about a decade in his Cleveland home plans to plead not guilty to all charges, his attorney said on Wednesday.

The suspect, Ariel Castro, is on suicide watch in jail, said the attorney, Jaye Schlachet, in a phone interview.

Castro last week was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape. The three women kidnapped — Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight along with a 6-year old girl that Castro fathered with Berry during her captivity — escaped from his home in a working class section of Cleveland.

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U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered the FBI to open a criminal probe in a growing scandal over the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative political groups for extra tax scrutiny.

Holder’s announcement came about four hours before an inspector general’s report on the IRS portrayed the tax agency as plagued by disarray and “insufficient oversight” during its struggles to review the cases of hundreds of advocacy groups that claimed they should be tax exempt.

The audit, which drew some backlash from IRS officials, also underscored what the agency had acknowledged last Friday: that the IRS had used “inappropriate criteria” for evaluating tax-exempt groups, in part by singling out scores of conservative Tea Party and “patriot” organizations for increased scrutiny.

The report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration sharply criticized the way the IRS had screened the conservative groups, citing poor management and processing delays. The report suggested that such practices could damage public confidence in the agency.

The criteria used to target the conservative groups “gives the appearance that the IRS is not impartial in conducting its mission,” the report said. However, the report stopped short of saying the IRS actions had been politically motivated.

For President Barack Obama — who late on Tuesday said the report showed that the IRS had failed to apply the law fairly in dealing with conservative groups – the revelations have added to a sense of a White House under siege.

Republicans continue to bash the Obama administration’s handling of the attack last year on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. And on Monday, Obama’s Justice Department came under bipartisan fire for seizing phone records of journalists from the Associated Press as part of a wide-ranging criminal probe into intelligence leaks.

In Washington on Tuesday, the IRS case appeared to have the most potency, as lawmakers and administration officials alike described the symbolic and legal importance of having a non-partisan tax agency that Americans can trust.

For the IRS and the U.S. government, the stakes are particularly high in the scandal because the tax agency is playing an increasingly significant role not only in vetting the tax status of non-profit groups that dabble in politics, but also in enforcing parts of Obama’s ongoing overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system.

Some of the IRS’s conservative critics, including Republican Senator Ted Cruz, have said the current scandal is a sign that the agency shouldn’t be trusted to enforce a vast array of tax regulations related to healthcare.

The IRS’s embattled acting commissioner, Steven Miller, met privately with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, apparently seeking to calm the political uproar, even as some Republicans called for his resignation.

The IRS said on Monday that Miller, then the IRS deputy commissioner, was first informed in early May 2012 that some groups seeking tax-exempt status had been “improperly identified by name” and subjected to extra scrutiny.

Lawmakers say that neither Miller nor his predecessor, Douglas Shulman, ever made them aware of the targeting.

Senator Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the tax-writing Finance Committee, said that Miller — who spent more than two decades working his way up through the IRS bureaucracy and was named acting chief six months ago — should step down.

“He basically misled me,” Hatch told reporters. “I really think it is time for him to leave.”

‘Heads need to roll’

Hatch was part of a growing Republican chorus on Capitol Hill calling for the resignations of Miller and Lois Lerner, head of the IRS tax-exempt organizations office. Lerner apologized on behalf of the agency when she revealed the targeting of conservative groups last week.

Conservative groups, particularly those that have sprung up in recent years to promote limited government and lower taxes, have long complained about mistreatment by the IRS.

On Tuesday, Miller met with Senator Max Baucus, the Democratic chairman of the Finance Committee who has promised that his panel will conduct its own investigation of the IRS case. Miller later declined to answer reporters’ questions.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell urged Obama to make all of those who knew about IRS misconduct available for questioning, and said there should be “no more stonewalling.”

“Heads need to roll today,” said Republican Representative Vern Buchanan, a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the IRS and is scheduled to hold a hearing on the scandal on Friday.

It’s unclear precisely what charges a criminal probe of the IRS could yield.

Analysts said that a federal criminal prosecution of IRS employees for allegedly violating a taxpayer’s speech rights – by delaying or rejecting a conservative group’s legitimate claim to tax-exempt status, for example – could be unprecedented and that the offense would need to be egregious.

Holder said on Monday that the FBI “is coordinating with the Justice Department to see if any laws were broken.”

He said that the actions disclosed so far “were, I think as everyone can agree, if not criminal, they were certainly outrageous and unacceptable. But we are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations.”

Despite efforts by some conservative commentators to cast the IRS troubles as something akin to the Watergate scandal of the 1970s – or to former President Richard Nixon’s use of the IRS to target his political enemies – there was no sign of White House involvement.

Obama spokesman Jay Carney said the results of independent investigations must be known “before we can jump to conclusions about what happened, whether there was a deliberate targeting of groups inappropriately and, if that’s the case, what action should be taken.”

Three years of targeting

The targeting of conservative groups began in 2010, shortly after the emergence of the conservative Tea Party movement. The movement helped Republicans gain control of the U.S. House in the 2010 elections.

Hundreds of Tea Party-inspired groups have formed in recent years, and the IRS has struggled to handle campaign finance issues dealing with such politically active organizations seeking tax-exempt status. Such groups generally can be tax-exempt as long as they do not directly support particular political candidates.

Higher-level IRS officials took part in discussions as far back as August 2011 about targeting by lower-level tax agents of Tea Party and other conservative groups, according to documents reviewed by Reuters on Monday.

The documents show the offices of the IRS’s chief counsel and deputy commissioner for services and enforcement communicated about the targeting with lower-level officials on August 4, 2011, and March 8, 2012, respectively.

The communications occurred weeks and months before Shulman, then the commissioner of the IRS, told congressional panels in late March 2012 that no groups were being targeted for extra scrutiny by the tax agency.

The IRS has been dragged reluctantly into partisan politics at a time when it is also under increasing pressure to make rulings on campaign finance issues and matters related to implementation of Obama’s 2010 healthcare overhaul.

The agency must impose an excise tax on large employers if they fail to meet certain minimum healthcare coverage requirements for employees. In addition, the IRS must provide tax credits to low- and middle-income taxpayers who seek healthcare coverage on one of the new state-based insurance exchanges.

Timothy Jost, a specialist on the healthcare overhaul who teaches law at Washington and Lee University, said the controversy has no real bearing on implementation of Obama’s healthcare laws, aside from politics.

“I just don’t see a connection, other than that I’m sure there will be efforts to make one,” Jost said.

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Lawyers seeking to overturn the murder conviction of a Honduran man who has been on Florida’s death row since 2006 presented new DNA and blood stain evidence in a Florida court on Tuesday.

Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin, 33, was convicted in the 2004 murders of his neighbors at a Seminole County trailer park. Cheryl Williams, 47, was stabbed 129 times, and her mother, Carol Bareis, 69, was stabbed twice.

Blood stain expert Barie Goetz testified Tuesday that the killer would have been splattered with blood spurting from 131 stab wounds from a 10-inch knife at close range. Goetz said the blood found on the thigh area of Aguirre’s shorts were contact stains and matched Aguirre’s claim that he found the bodies and rolled them over to check for a pulse.

“The wearer of those shorts did not inflict the injuries to Cheryl Williams,” said Goetz, a Pennsylvania-based forensic consultant. Goetz also testified that Aguirre’s bloody shoe prints at the scene indicated careful walking around the bodies.

The Innocence Project, which is dedicated to using DNA testing to exonerate those who are wrongly convicted, and Aguirre’s appellate legal team also obtained DNA analysis of some of the 150 blood stains photographed and swabbed at the crime scene but never tested.

NEW DNA EVIDENCE

The new DNA analysis concluded that eight blood stains at the crime scene matched Samantha Williams, the daughter and granddaughter of the victims, and none matched Aguirre, according to a report by the Innocence Project.

Samantha Williams had a history of mental illness, and during two mental breakdowns after Aguirre’s conviction confessed to the killings, according to the report. Witnesses also said Samantha and her mother had a heated argument before the killings, and that Samantha sent her boyfriend to her mother’s trailer the next morning, saying she had a “bad feeling” something had happened to her.

Nina Morrison, a lawyer for the Innocence Project, told Reuters that Samantha Williams has been subpoenaed to testify Wednesday.

Aguirre’s legal team is asking Judge Jessica Recksiedler to reverse the conviction based on either the new evidence, the ineffectiveness of Aguirre’s trial lawyer or actual innocence.

A spokeswoman for the Seminole County State Attorney’s office which prosecuted Aguirre would not comment on whether it would challenge the new evidence in court.

In 2006, the same year Aguirre was convicted, Milton Dedge, who spent 22 years on death row, became the first person in the Florida freed as a result of new DNA evidence. Dedge was convicted by the same prosecutor’s office as Aguirre and was represented post-conviction by a legal team which included the Innocence Project and Morrison.

Aguirre maintained his innocence from the beginning and testified on his own behalf at trial.

Aguirre said he often socialized with the Williams family, and went to their trailer at 6 a.m. on June 17, 2004 looking for a beer to help him sleep. Aguirre said he found the bodies, rolled Cheryl over to check for a pulse, and grabbed a knife near the bodies for protection in case the killer was still present.

As an illegal immigrant, Aguirre decided not to call police out of fear he would be deported back to the violent barrio in Honduras from which he had fled to America. He said he tossed his blood-smeared clothes in a bag, hid the bag on his roof and initially denied knowing anything when questioned by police. Later on that day, he told police how he had found the bodies.

Morrison and Goetz said that DNA testing was well established when Aguirre went to trial and could have been requested by his defense lawyer.

(Editing by David Adams and Cynthia Osterman)

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“They were going to cover up the story when it happened and then it ended up going viral and they reported it all late to the police department,” Green said Tuesday.

Green’s son, whose name was withheld, was attacked by students in the high school’s library on May 7. The incident was reported to police by a student, not the school, Green said.

He was hit with a chair, fists and feet. He was hit and kicked in the head, face and back. The students then dipped into his pockets and stole his cell phone and money and then took his schoolbag, Green said.

Green also said his son had a gun pointed in his face only days earlier.

“When it happened, two days prior, there was a gun pulled in his face on school property,” Green said.

He said the school’s principal said an investigation was underway, but never heard back.

“Tuesday shows up, and next thing you know he gets jumped,” Green said.

Chester Upland School District Receiver Joseph Watkins and Deputy Police Commissioner Otis Blair did not return calls for comment.

He said his son was a victim of “Fight Week,” where Freshmen or newer students are targeted. He suffered a concussion and received about seven stitches in the back of his head.

“They laid him out,” Green said. “It was really ugly.”

The fight was one of many at the school that day.

Five students were arrested and are awaiting trial at Delaware County prison. The preliminary hearing, which was scheduled for Tuesday, was pushed back to May 25th, according to Green.

Green, who lives in Chester but works as a chef at a Philadelphia diner, said his son will be home-schooled for the rest of the year.

“The way that school is being run,” Green said, “I can’t even trust it.”

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Vermont is poised to become the third U.S. state to allow doctor-assisted suicide, after its legislature passed a bill allowing physicians to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients.

The bill passed late on Monday, and the governor has pledged to sign it into law.

Oregon and Washington state have legalized doctor-assisted suicide in voter referendums.

Vermont’s measure includes a number of safeguards. Both the patient’s primary physician and a consulting doctor must agree the patient is suffering from a terminal illness and is capable of making an informed decision to request death-inducing drugs. It also requires the patient to request the drugs twice, with 15 days separating the first and second requests.

The patients must administer the drugs to themselves.

“I am grateful that the legislature had such a thoughtful, respectful debate on this deeply personal issue,” said Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin. “We will now offer Vermonters who face terminal illness at the end of life a choice to control their destiny and avoid unnecessary suffering. I believe this is the right thing to do.”

Shumlin plans to sign the bill into law after the text is reviewed, spokeswoman Susan Allen said on Tuesday.

Vermont’s bill would only allow doctors in the state to prescribe fatal doses of drugs to Vermont residents. It would require the request for drugs to be witnessed by two disinterested people, defined as those who are not relatives or potential heirs, employees of health care facilities where the patient is being treated, nor his or her doctor.

The bill noted that since Oregon legalized suicide in 1998, some 1,050 patients have requested drugs to hasten death, and of those, 673 have taken their lives.

Similar bills to legalize physician-assisted suicide have been introduced in seven U.S. states: Connecticut, Hawaii, Kansas, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire and New Jersey, according to the Death with Dignity National Center. Bills that would specifically ban the practice have been introduced in Connecticut and Montana.

Advocates of assisted suicide say the practice can save patients of painful terminal illnesses, such as bone cancer, years of suffering. Opponents warn that measures allowing it may encourage people to take their own lives at the behest of potential heirs or because they fear they are imposing a burden on family.

Proponents of the bill, who had spent about a decade lobbying for the measure, applauded its passage.

“This is an historic day for the end of life choice movement,” said Dick Walters, president of advocacy group Patient Choices at End of Life. “This is an important step for champions of terminally ill patient autonomy rights.”

Opponents called the move a dangerous one, noting that it only requires disinterested witnesses at the time of the request but not at the time of death, when the prescription would be administered.

“The opportunity is created for the patient’s heir, or for another person who will benefit financially from the patient’s death, to administer the lethal dose to the patient without his consent,” said Margaret Dore of True Dignity Vermont.

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Cars that are’talking’ to each other to avoid crashes, will save lives but the cost of the systems will determine consumers’ acceptance of such technology.”These are definitely safer vehicles. At what cost though?” Ray LaHood told reporters at a connected-vehicle conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “To me, that’s what the bottom line’s going to be. Safety has a cost and we’re going to have to make that judgment.”

LaHood declined to estimate what the cost of the technology that allows vehicles to communicate with each other and surrounding infrastructure would need to be to attract wide adoption by consumers.

“It will be up to car manufacturers to help us figure out what the cost of all this is going to be,” LaHood, the outgoing transportation chief, said at a University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute conference.

Since last August, U.S. officials have been testing a fleet of “talking” cars in Ann Arbor that may help American drivers avoid crashes and traffic jams.

The U.S. Department of Transportation and the University of Michigan fitted almost 3,000 cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles with wireless devices that track other vehicles’ speed and location, alert drivers to congestion, or change a traffic light to green.

Vehicle-to-vehicle communication may help avoid or reduce the severity of four out of five crashes that occur when a driver is not impaired, U.S. regulators have said.

Results from the study will help the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration decide whether the technology should be mandatory. A decision on such a rule will not be made until the testing in completed in August, officials have said.

LaHood said transportation officials have been studying the first six months of data from the test, but he does not expect any conclusions for about a year. He said the technology has operated just as officials expected.

Officials in the test program said about 8 billion transmissions between vehicles and infrastructure have been sent since the test in Ann Arbor began.

The road test in Ann Arbor, a college town of nearly 28 square miles (73 square kilometers), is the largest of its kind and cost $25 million. Eight major automakers, including General Motors Co and Toyota Motor Corp, supplied the cars.

The vehicles in the test can communicate with roadside devices in 29 areas in Ann Arbor. If conditions are safe, the vehicles can change the traffic light to green or let the driver know if a light is about to change.

Connected vehicle systems use a technology similar to Wifi called dedicated short range communication, which is unlikely to be vulnerable to interference, U.S. officials said.

The cars can track other cars’ location and speed. They can also determine if a driver is braking or turning the wheel. Details such as the license number or VIN number are not shared.

The road test represents the second phase of the transportation department’s connected vehicle safety program. In a study conducted in 2011 and early 2012, the department found that nine out of 10 drivers had a “highly favorable” opinion of vehicle-to-vehicle technology. LaHood said he assumed there would be a third phase in the testing.

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What do you give the kid that has everything?

For Jaden Smith’s 15th birthday, the son of power couple Will and Jada Pinkett apparently asked for his freedom.

According to a report in british tabloid The Sun, the couple’s oldest son and young co-star of the summer blockbuster “After Earth” wants to emancipate himself from his famous family.

In an interview with Metro in April, Will and Jaden spoke about the upcoming movie and the emancipation topic came up:

Jaden, what happens when you’re 18 and Will kicks you out of the house.

J: We’ll probably work together ‘till he retires and he probably won’t retire.

W: [Laughs] No we’ve been talking about, he’s been thinking about becoming an emancipated minor.

J: Just thoughts that pop into my head.

Will Smith’s publicist, Meredith O’Sullivan, did not return a call for comment.

Read The Sun’s story, here.

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