The Kansas State Board of Healing Arts, the governing body that regulates the practice of medicine in the state, stripped the medical license of a woman who refused to force a mentally-ill 10 year old to give birth.

As Robin Marty reports, Dr. Ann Neuhaus became the target of domestic terror group Operation Rescue after her colleague, Dr. George Tiller, was murdered. Neuhaus assisted Tiller by providing second opinions for mental health exceptions for late-term abortions.

Operation Rescue filed a negligence complaint against Neuhaus alleging that her exams were not thorough enough to support her medical conclusions and her follow-up care was inadequate because she did not recommend counseling or hospitalization after each procedure.

• Bankruptcy could be filed as soon as Wednesday
• Stockton has $700 mln outstanding debt
• Talks with 18 creditors ended Monday without concessions (Recasts, adds comments)

Stockton, California will become the largest U.S. city to seek protection from its creditors after its leaders approved a budget on Tuesday night based on the city filing for bankruptcy.

A Chapter 9 bankruptcy by the city of nearly 300,000 in California's Central Valley, about 85 miles (135 km) east of San Francisco, could come as early as Wednesday.

Stockton's city council voted six to one in favor of the 2012-2013 budget after a contentious five-hour meeting where angry retired city workers pressed council members to reject the $155 million spending plan. It proposes eliminating retirees' medical benefits to help fill a $26 million budget deficit.

Retired police department employee Geri Ridge said she fears not being able to afford health-care insurance.

"I don't have that kind of income," said Ridge, 56, noting she is concerned a large share of her $1,895 monthly pension payment could be consumed by large insurance costs due to her history of heart attacks.

The council's vote followed three months of confidential talks between Stockton and its creditors aimed at averting bankruptcy. The negotiations ended on Monday with the city failing to win enough concessions to help close its shortfall for the fiscal year starting on July 1.

The founder of one of Singapore's richest churches has been arrested on allegations he misused at least £11.5 million in donations from his congregation of more than 30,000.

Pastor Kong Hee and four senior executives of the City Harvest Church - a Christian group registered as a charity - were arrested by Singapore's Commercial Affairs Department, a police unit set up to fight financial crime.

Officials said they were suspected of diverting at least Sg$23 million earmarked for charitable projects and spent money on a bid by the pastor's wife, Ho Yeow Sun, to launch an evangelical music career in the United States.

The church, which has affiliates in neighbouring Malaysia and other countries, is famous for services that resemble pop concerts.

Stunned residents told of their horror yesterday as a massive explosion ripped through a street, killing a toddler and leaving a father of six fighting for life. Little Jamie Heaton, two, died as the suspected gas blast demolished two terraced homes and severely damaged three others.

And last night detectives were treating his death as "suspicious" as they probed a theory that the explosion may have been caused deliberately. Jamie was the youngest of three children who lived with parents Michelle and Kenny next door to where police suspect the blast happened.

Neighbour Anthony Partington, 27, was airlifted to hospital, where he was said to be critically ill with 20% burns. He is believed to have been at home with the youngest of his six children when disaster struck at 11.15am.

For allegedly stripping a 14-year-old boy half-naked, forcing him to lay face-down in a swamp and then beating him before leaving him for dead, two NYPD officers are paying $5,000 each in reparations.

Officers Richard Danese and Thomas Elliassen of the New York Police Department will have to pay no more than $5,000 each to settle a federal lawsuit stemming from a 2007 incident that ended with Rayshawn Moreno, at the time only 14, wading alone through a dark Staten Island swamp after the authorities decided to dish out some under-the-table treatment to reprimand the teen.

Five years ago, the officers say they apprehended Moreno for allegedly throwing eggs at passing cars on Halloween night. Rather than returning the suspect to his parents, however, the cops took matters into their own hands. According to the boy, the officers placed him in their patrol car, drove him to a swamp and then stripped him of most of his clo[thes] before assaulting him and driving away.

Some 60m euro is stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber raid, after fraudsters raid dozens of banks around the world.

Sixty million euro has been stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber bank raid after fraudsters raided dozens of financial institutions around the world.

According to a joint report by software security firm McAfee and Guardian Analytics, more than 60 firms have suffered from what it has called an "insider level of understanding".

"The fraudsters' objective in these attacks is to siphon large amounts from high balance accounts, hence the name chosen for this research - Operation High Roller," the report said.

"If all of the attempted fraud campaigns were as successful as the Netherlands example we describe in this report, the total attempted fraud could be as high as 2bn (£1.6bn)."

Why are we told a broken system that creates vast inequality is the only choice? Spain's amazing co-op is living proof otherwise.

There is no alternative ("Tina") to capitalism?

Really? We are to believe, with Margaret Thatcher, that an economic system with endlessly repeated cycles, costly bailouts for financiers and now austerity for most people is the best human beings can do? Capitalism's recurring tendencies toward extreme and deepening inequalities of income, wealth, and political and cultural power require resignation and acceptance - because there is no alternative?

I understand why such a system's leaders would like us to believe in Tina. But why would others?

Of course, alternatives exist; they always do. Every society chooses - consciously or not, democratically or not - among alternative ways to organize the production and distribution of the goods and services that make individual and social life possible.

Modern societies have mostly chosen a capitalist organization of production. In capitalism, private owners establish enterprises and select their directors who decide what, how and where to produce and what to do with the net revenues from selling the output. This small handful of people makes all those economic decisions for the majority of people - who do most of the actual productive work. The majority must accept and live with the results of all the directorial decisions made by the major shareholders and the boards of directors they select. This latter also select their own replacements.

Capitalism thus entails and reproduces a highly undemocratic organization of production inside enterprises. Tina believers insist that no alternatives to such capitalist organizations of production exist or could work nearly so well, in terms of outputs, efficiency, and labor processes. The falsity of that claim is easily shown. Indeed, I was shown it a few weeks ago and would like to sketch it for you here.

A prisoner was left in his urine-soaked cell to die after a nurse turned away an ambulance, even though he had suffered several seizures, according to documents obtained by the Star Tribune.

Xavius Scullark-Johnson, 27, was three months away from getting out of prison when he died in June 2010. He was serving a five-month sentence for a probation violation stemming from a second-degree assault conviction. Now his mother, Olivia Scullark, is suing two nurses employed by the Minnesota Department of Corrections at the Rush City prison, as well as other medical staff and corrections officers, according to the Pioneer Press.

Scullark told The Huffington Post she filed the lawsuit because that's what her son, who suffered from schizophrenia and a seizure disorder, told her to do if he didn't make it out of the prison alive.

"My son has written me a lot of letters," Scullark said. "His seizures got worse there. He said if he doesn't get out of there, I should sue them."

Olympism is more about profiteering, exploitation, and cynicism than sport.

Helen Jefferson Lenskyj knows it well. More on her writings below.

For over a century, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) hypocritically advanced notions of peace, unity, friendship, and sport the way it's meant to be.

The Olympic Movement's Charter states:

The IOC's mission "is to promote Olympism throughout the world and to lead the Olympic Movement."

It's "to encourage and support the organisation, development and coordination of sport
and sports competitions."

It's "to oppose any political or commercial abuse of sport and athletes."

Overall, the Charter features a high-minded laundry list concealing Olympism reality. Truth and full disclosure belie deceptive hyperbole.

Lenskyj is a University of Toronto Professor of Sociology. She's studied Olympism for years. Her book "Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics and Activism" exposes its dark side, exploitive culture, disturbing corruption, hidden costs, and complicity of major media scoundrels.

Far from promoting good will, open competition, and fair play, Olympism's more about profiteering, marginalizing the poor, other disenfranchised groups, affected communities, sticking taxpayers with the bill, and providing nothing in return but hype and the illusion of amateur international sport at its best.

The FBI has rescued 79 teens held against their will and forced into prostitution from hotels, truck stops and stores during a three-day swoop on sex-trafficking rings across the country.

The sex slaves were aged between 13 and 17, although one said she had been involved in prostitution since she was just 11, authorities said.

During the sting operations across 57 U.S. cities - including Atlanta, Sacramento and Toledo, Ohio - 104 alleged pimps were arrested.

The teenagers, who are all U.S. citizens, were handcuffed and held in police custody until they could be placed with child welfare organisations.

Of those rescued in 'Operation Cross Country', 77 were girls and two were boys.