BOSTON (AP) ? The former University of Alabama-Huntsville professor sentenced to life in prison for killing three of her colleagues in a shooting rampage wants to go on trial in the 1986 death of her brother in Massachusetts, her lawyer said Tuesday.
Court documents filed by Amy Bishop's lawyer say she objects to a decision by Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey to decline to prosecute her in the killing of 18-year-old Seth Bishop.
Attorney Larry Tipton says Bishop wants to prove at trial that she had a "loving and caring relationship" with her brother and that the shooting was accidental.
"She wants to use a trial to help demonstrate that she's innocent. She never intended to kill her brother," Tipton said Tuesday.
Morrissey said last week that he decided not to move forward with the murder indictment against Bishop because she has already received a sentence of life in prison without parole in the 2010 Alabama killings.
"The penalty we would seek for a first-degree murder conviction is already in place," he said.
Morrissey said the indictment would be withdrawn "without prejudice," meaning he could reinstate it if something went wrong with the Alabama sentence, though he said he considered that unlikely.
Bishop claims she accidentally shot her brother while trying to unload her father's shotgun in the family's Braintree home. Bishop's mother, who witnessed the shooting, backed up her claim.
Authorities initially ruled the shooting accidental, but the investigation was re-opened after Bishop was charged with opening fire during a faculty meeting at the university in Feb. 2010, killing three of her co-workers and wounding three others.
In court documents filed Monday, Tipton argued that inquest and grand jury proceedings that led to Amy Bishop's indictment in Seth Bishop's death were "one-sided" and tilted in favor of prosecutors. He said prosecutors would be unable to present evidence of a motive or intent by Bishop to kill her brother, while the defense would present evidence that she and her brother had a good relationship and credible evidence that she accidentally shot him.
Tipton said the shotgun has a documented history of malfunctioning and misfiring, evidence he said was discounted or ignored by authorities.
He also argues that Morrissey's plan to file a "nolle prosequi," or declaration that he does not intend to prosecute, is an "abuse of authority."
David Traub, a spokesman for Morrissey, said Bishop's filing of her objection "is legally meaningless."
MEDINAH, Illinois (Reuters) - The Ryder Cup has seen many great partnerships but never one quite like Phil Mickelson and Keegan Bradley, who have turned a May-September bromance into golf's dynamic duo. Bradley, a fiery rookie and Mickelson, the most experienced member of the American brigade making his ninth appearance at the biennial competition, have developed the type of chemistry rarely seen on a U.S. Ryder Cup team. ...
ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2012) ? The commonly held belief that men should dominate sexually can disempower both women and men, according to a new study.
Gender roles and norms play a key role in sexual behavior between men and women. It is often assumed that men should dominate women sexually. This assumption may lead to loss of both power and the ability to control sexual behavior among women and men, as well as lead to increased sexual risk-taking, such as not using a female condom. The new study, by Dr. Lisa Rosenthal from Yale University in the US, and her colleagues, is published online in Springer's journal Sex Roles.
Social dominance orientation is a measure of people's level of support for social power inequalities and hierarchy. The belief is linked to greater hostile sexism, more negative attitudes towards women's rights, a greater tolerance of sexual harassment and a greater preference for traditional gender roles. Rosenthal and team examined whether the extent to which both women and men endorse social dominance orientation explains gender dominance and dynamics in heterosexual relationships.
A total of 357 undergraduate women and 126 undergraduate men from a Northeastern US university took part in the study. Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire on a computer, next to which there was a bowl of female condoms. The researchers assessed the students' social dominance orientation, the extent to which they believed that men should dominate sexually, how confident they felt in sexual situations, as well as the number of female condoms they took away with them.
Overall, women were less likely than men to endorse the view that men should dominate sexually. The more men and women believed that social power inequalities and hierarchy were valid, the more likely they were to endorse the belief that men should dominate sexually, and the less likely they were to feel confident in sexual situations and consider using female condoms.
The authors conclude: "These findings suggest that beliefs about power may play a key role in both women's and men's attitudes to sexual behavior, and potentially their decisions to protect themselves during sexual activity. Results highlight that social dominance orientation and dynamics in heterosexual relationships do not only hurt women, but also men because they potentially decrease their sexual self-efficacy and interest in female condoms as well."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Springer Science+Business Media.
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Journal Reference:
Lisa Rosenthal, Sheri R. Levy, Valerie A. Earnshaw. Social Dominance Orientation Relates to Believing Men Should Dominate Sexually, Sexual Self-Efficacy, and Taking Free Female Condoms Among Undergraduate Women and Men. Sex Roles, 2012; DOI: 10.1007/s11199-012-0207-6
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Christine Ebersole and Leonardo DiCaprio are going to be family in the film "The Wolf of Wall Street."
Talent agency APA said Tuesday the Tony-winning Ebersole will play DiCaprio's mother in the drama. Martin Scorsese is directing the film, based on a New York stockbroker's memoir of his rise and fall.
Ebersole, who also plays a mom in the TBS comedy "Sullivan & Son," is on the big screen next in "The Big Wedding" with Robert De Niro, Amanda Seyfried and Katherine Heigl.
Ebersole is a two-time Tony winner for the Broadway musicals "Grey Gardens" and "42nd Street."
New research has found that dozens of plant-based compounds can slow the spread of many common cancers.
Can eating your vegies really help to fight cancer and other chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes?
New research has found that dozens of plant-based compounds can slow the spread of many common cancers ? including breast, skin, lung, prostate, colorectal and others ? by turning on cancer-fighting, metastasis suppressor genes.
The discovery ... gives us a mechanism to explain the observations that people on ?healthy diets? are less prone to developing cancer?
A study by Gary Meadows, a Washington State University professor and an associate dean at the college of pharmacy, published in the journal Cancer and Metastasis Reviews, has identified more than 40 plant-based compounds that help slow the progression of cancer. They include glucosinolates ? found in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and kale; lycopene ? the bright-red carotenoid found in tomatoes, watermelon, papaya and pink grapefruit; lupulone ? a flavonoid found in hops; curcumin ? found in turmeric; and pomegranate juice.
Professor Meadows used existing cancer studies to survey information on metastasis-suppressor genes, which was often buried in reports focused on other areas of cancer research.
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He said most cancer studies concentrated either on preventing cancer or treating the initial tumour but little work had been done to understand how cancer spreads to other organs ? that is, when it metastasised.
Professor Meadows said he was ?very surprised that there had been little specific research in this area and very little to specifically look at the interaction between diet and lifestyle and their effects on these genes?.
Metastasis was responsible for up to 90 per cent of cancer deaths, he said.
The chief executive of Cancer Council Australia, Ian Olver, agrees that diet has a crucial role in fighting cancer but warned against ?over-interpreting? Professor Meadows? study.
Professor Olver, who is a member of the federal government?s advisory council for Cancer Australia, said foods such as fresh fruit, vegetables and fish products were known to be rich in chemicals that could turn on tumour-suppressor genes, which might stop a cancer spreading.
?The discovery of the ability of chemicals in these foods to influence the development of cancer by turning on or off genes gives us a mechanism to explain the observations that people on ?healthy diets? are less prone to developing cancer,?? he said.
?But we have to be careful about not over-interpreting the research to construct very specific diets of particular fruits or vegetables.
?The evidence has not reached that level of detail but we can confidently recommend that fresh fruit and vegetables and foods such as fish should be eaten regularly.
?A diet which contains these foods is not only less likely to contribute to obesity but more likely to decrease the chance of developing cancer,? he said.
A cancer expert at the University of Sydney, Qihan Dong, said that ?as most of these results are from isolated cancer cells grown under non-physiological conditions, it is important to verify the findings in animals and ideally in humans.
?The amount of nutrients required to achieve these effects also needs to be carefully examined, as some levels of nutrients may not be achievable in humans.?
But the research adds yet more strength to age-old advice to eat your five a day.
Researchers at the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research last year found that eating vegetables and fruit reduced the risk of two types of colon cancer.
The lead researcher, Lin Fritschi, said the study, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, found that eating vegetables, including brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli, reduced the risk of proximal colon cancer, while total fruit and vegetable intake cut the risk of distal colon cancer.
Patients who eat plant-based diets can reverse severe coronary artery disease and significantly lower the chronic inflammation that causes heart disease, according to Dean Ornish, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California and founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute.
?In 35 years of medical research,? Professor Ornish wrote in The New York Times, ?we have seen that patients who ate mostly plant-based meals, with dishes like black bean vegetarian chilli and whole-wheat penne pasta with roasted vegetables, achieved reversal of even severe coronary artery disease.?
?The program [which included moderate exercise and stress-management techniques] also led to improved blood flow and significantly less inflammation, which matters because chronic inflammation is an underlying cause of heart disease and many forms of cancer,? said Professor Ornish, who reshaped the White House menu in 1993 at the request of Hillary Clinton and later encouraged Bill Clinton to switch to a mostly plant-based diet after he had quadruple bypass surgery.
?We found that this [plant-based] program may also slow, stop or reverse the progression of early-stage prostate cancer, as well as reverse the progression of type 2 diabetes.
?Also, we found that it changed gene expression in over 500 genes in just three months, ?turning on? genes that protect against disease and ?turning off? genes that promote breast cancer, prostate cancer, inflammation and oxidative stress.
?Your diet needs to be high in healthful carbs like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, soy products in natural, unrefined forms and some fish, like salmon,? said Professor Ornish. ?But never underestimate the power of telling people what they want to hear ? like cheeseburgers and bacon are good for you
?Consumption of both processed and unprocessed meat is associated with an increased risk of premature death as well as greater incidence of cardiovascular disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes.
?About 75 per cent of the $US2.8trillion [$2.7trillion] in annual healthcare costs in the United States is from chronic diseases that can often be reversed or prevented altogether by a healthy lifestyle,? he said.
Another large-scale study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, has found that eating carrots and cruciferous vegetables can reduce the risk of breast cancer.
Boston University researchers tracked more than 50,000 African-American women for 12 years, in which time 1300 of them developed breast cancer? ? and 35 per cent of those were aggressive oestrogen receptor-negative (ER-negative) breast cancers.
But women who ate at least two servings of vegetables each day were 43 per cent less likely to develop ER-negative breast cancer than those who ate less than four servings of vegetables a week.
Researchers also identified certain types of vegetables ? including broccoli, cabbage, carrots and collard greens ? that appeared to cut the risk of all types of breast cancer.
The lead researcher, Deborah Boggs, told Reuters: ?It is clear that, in addition to potential protective effects against breast cancer, higher vegetable consumption can lead to many health benefits, including lower risk of cardiovascular disease.?
The 2000th US soldier to die may have been the victim of another insider attack. Overall, the conflict has grown less deadly for US troops since 2010.
By Tom A. Peter,?Correspondent / September 30, 2012
Upon landing after a helicopter rescue mission, Tech. Sgt. Jeff Hedglin, (r.) an Air Force Pararescueman, or PJ, drapes an American flag over the remains of the first of two US soldiers killed minutes earlier in an IED attack, assisted by fellow PJs, Senior Airman Robert Dieguez, center, and 1st Lt. Matthew Carlisle, in Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan.
Brennan Linsley/AP/File
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A possible insider attack has?claimed the life of America?s 2,000th soldier to die in Afghanistan. The shooting reportedly took place Saturday evening in Afghanistan?s volatile Wardak Province at a checkpoint run by the Afghan Army.
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While initial reports indicated that the incident was likely an insider attack, international military officials now say insurgent fire may have been involved. The incident left one NATO soldier presumed to be American dead, along with a civilian contractor, and three Afghan soldiers. Afghan and international military authorities are now investigating the incident.
If confirmed as an insider attack, the incident is likely to carry particular significance beyond being the 2,000th American soldier killed in the nearly 11-year conflict. Though violence has fallen here with US troops seeing consistent drops in fatalities starting last year, the war continues to claim lives and this latest spate of insider killings presents a challenge that has so far eluded US and NATO efforts to solve the problem.
?It gets at the very core of trust between coalition forces and the Afghans, and it?s very difficult to counter,? says David Barno, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who commanded US and international forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005.
Citing findings that show insurgent infiltration accounts for only a quarter of insider attacks, with personal disputes accounting for another quarter and the rest having unclear motivations, Mr. Barno says stopping the attacks will be difficult.
?You can come up with a counter-intelligence program and take a number of other measures to help find Taliban infiltrators, but if three out of four attacks are related to cultural misunderstandings, outbursts, or friction perhaps related to 11 years of exposure between the coalition and Afghans that?s much more perplexing and much more difficult to deal with,? he says.
As US forces increasingly focus on the training mission ahead of the end of their combat operations, scheduled for 2014, the insider killings present a significant threat. If the most recent American death is confirmed as a so-called green-on-blue attack where an Afghan soldier kills an American service member, such incidents will account for 53 NATO deaths this year alone, or roughly 15 percent of those killed in Afghanistan.
NATO recently introduced severely restricted joint operations with Afghan forces in an effort to address the problem. But few Afghan units are judged by NATO as ready to operate alone, leaving some international forces on the ground looking to continue joint operations as a means of wrapping up the mission. Meanwhile, the most recent incident suggests that?efforts by Afghan and NATO forces to screen the fledgling security forces for possible turncoats will require still more work.?
?The recruitment of Afghan security forces was done mostly to reach the numerical goals, not to recruit quality soldiers,? says Hilaludin Hilal, a former deputy of the Ministry of Interior. ?The very urgent and short-term solution must come from the Afghan government. They must start screening and filtering these forces and kicking out anyone who poses a threat."
At the end of 2003, the Afghan security forces numbered just 6,000 personnel. Today there are 352,000, with the force nearly doubling in size between the summer of 2009 and now.
?Insider attacks, though tragic, will not derail ISAF from achieving its mission nor will it weaken the collective resolve and bonds of our Coalition and Afghan partners,? says US Air Force Major Lori Hodge, a spokesperson for the International Security Assistance Force. ?The partnership between Afghan and Coalition forces remains very strong and together we are committed to helping the people of Afghanistan build a prosperous future.?
Fighting in Afghanistan claimed the most American lives in Afghanistan in 2010, and since then the number of Americans killed here each year has dropped. Though Afghanistan has seen an overall reduction in fighting and violence, the decrease in NATO deaths may come in part from a greater focus on training Afghan security forces and a reduction in the number of international forces here. Just this month, the last US surge troops left Afghanistan, bringing the number of American soldiers here down to 68,000.
Counts for the death toll in Afghanistan vary based on different organizational counting practices. The Associated Press count, which now logs 2,000 dead, counts those service members killed inside Afghanistan during the course of the current war. Other counts include those killed in other countries working in support of anti-terrorism operations related to Afghanistan.
