A former White House lawyer in both Bush administrations was convicted Friday of attempted murder and other charges in the beating of his wife at their Connecticut home four years ago.

John Michael Farren, 61, who also was once general counsel for Xerox Corp., was allowed to sit out his trial after he said he wouldn't be able to handle the stress of it. But he was in the courtroom Friday when the jury returned guilty verdicts on charges of attempted murder, first-degree assault and risk of injury to a child.

Prosecutors allege Farren choked Mary Margaret Farren and beat her with a metal flashlight until she lost consciousness at their multimillion dollar home in New Canaan in January 2010. She managed to flee the house with her two young daughters. The attack occurred two days after she served him with divorce papers, authorities say.

Farren disputed the seriousness of the charges. He also tried to use a mental health defense, but a judge didn't allow it. He faces up to 50 years in prison at his sentencing, set for Sept. 11.

The verdicts came on the second day of jury deliberations and followed three days of testimony in Stamford Superior Court this week. Mary Margaret Farren, who suffered broken bones in her jaw and cheek and other injuries from the attack, testified Monday.

A 98-year-old San Francisco woman said this week that she is being evicted from her apartment after 50 years, and she's never once been late paying her rent.

KRON reported that Urban Green Investments is using the 1986 Ellis Act to kick Mary Phillips out of her apartment so the company can cash in on the surging real estate market in San Francisco. The Ellis Act allows landlords to evict tenants if they are getting out of the rental business.

"I've been very happy here," Phillips explained. "I've always paid my rent, I've never been late."

Phillips, who is one of many the low-income families and seniors being evicted, has vowed to fight the eviction because she has nowhere else to go.

"I didn't sit down and cry, I just refused to believe it," she said. "They're going to have to take me out of here feet first."

"Just because of your age, don't let people push you around," she said.

According to the San Francisco Tenants Union, tenants fighting evictions done through the Ellis Act often win their cases.

The group Vanishingsf, which fights the "hyper-gentrification on San Francisco communities," has encouraged people to protest Phillips' eviction.

"Who evicts a 98 year old woman?" a post on the Vanishingsf Facebook page asked. "Feel free to let Urban Green CEO David McCloskey, who's evicting her, know what you think, ask him how he sleeps at night and if he'd put his grandmother on the streets. David@urbangreeninv.com (415) 651-4441 http://www.urbangreeninv.com."

A young Texas couple have been arrested in the murder of an 18-month-old child who was brutally abused before being stomped to death and buried under a bridge wrapped in a blanket, police said.

Joshua Beard, 20, and Alexis Botello, 17, had only been dating for a few months prior to the death of Botello's daughter, Tylea Moore, on July 4.

In an Arlington, Texas, police affidavit obtained by The Huffington Post, officers said that Beard had called the toddler a "little demon" while punching her and that he also abused Botello when she attempted to stop him.

"Botello said Beard was pushing and yelling at Tylea," the report reads. "Botello kept yelling at him to stop, that she was just a baby and didn't understand. Beard then started yelling and hitting Botello."

Nine young Palestinians were killed and 15 others injured in an overnight Israeli air raid on a Gaza Strip beach while watching the World Cup semifinal game between the Netherlands and Argentina.

The victims were sitting in a beach café in Khan Yunis when the Israeli F-16 fighter jet struck it. None of those killed had been warned, according to Gulf News sources. However, this information could not be independently verified.

After the strike, there was nothing left of the popular seaside café.

"It was a normal social occasion," a local policeman employed by the Palestinian Authority, Wael Soboh, told AFP. "The boys ate their Ramadan iftar meal here, and then began watching the match. It is not a military area."

'The issue of whether water should be a commodity or part of the commons raises the question of what kind of future we want.'
Detroit residents on Thursday launched a direct action to halt the city's mass shut-off of water to thousands of households, physically blocking a private corporation from turning off the tap.

Carrying a banner that read "Stop the Water Shut-offs," ten city residents nonviolently obstructed the entrance to Homrich Inc. - the private company that was handed a $5.6 million deal from the city to shut off water services to residences that are behind on their bills, according to the protest organizers. They were surrounded during the civil disobedience by a crowd of over 40 supporters chanting "If the water don't flow, the trucks don't go."

Posh lad George Osborne headed north of the Border this week to tell the Scots how lucky they are to be ruled by Westminster.

That's a bit like sending a Sunderland supporter into my native Newcastle to give a lecture in the hallowed grounds of St James' Park about the finer points of the beautiful game!

Few on the south side like or trust the Chancellor of the Exchequer so I would question the motives of those who dispatched him to the North in the expectation he would receive a rousing welcome.

It's already well known that there are more pandas in Scotland than Conservative MPs and now that the female in Edinburgh Zoo continues to show positive signs she's pregnant it looks as though the only endangered species here are the Tories.

I say 'here' because this is where I made my home a couple of years ago, and as a member of the Geordie Tribe I reckon we're close enough to hold a valid opinion on independence.

In fact I'm quite sure, following the ruthless Tory-inspired destruction of the North East's shipyards, coal and steel industries that if the vote for independence was extended 100 miles south it would be seized upon enthusiastically with both hands.

The boss class in the south has never done any favors to northerners and I expect most Scots feel exactly the same but at least they have a chance to do something about it now.

I can't believe anyone was taken in by the nonsense which came tumbling out of Osborne's mouth when he said Scots would be £2,000 better off if they voted 'no' in next year's referendum.

Like all of the figures coming out of Westminster they need to be scrutinized very closely. My man with the abacus says the sum of £2,000 is per household and would not be realized for a full 30 years; in other words Osborne is promising Scots the square root of nowt.

What a cruel world: Three yeshiva students were kidnapped, and the world isn't interested; three mothers are crying out, and the world doesn't answer. It's all because the entire world is against us; it's anti-Semitic and hates Israel. The Anti-Defamation League is already preparing a report. But the truth is, that's just the way things are: When you openly thumb your nose at the world for years on end, eventually, it thumbs its nose back.

The three mothers went all the way to Geneva. One of them went abroad for the first time in her life to go to the United Nations Human Rights Council. But the world, and the council, went on their merry ways. It's the irony of fate: About two years ago, Israel officially suspended cooperation with that council; together with the Marshall Islands, Palau and the U.S., it opposed the council's very establishment. But now, in its distress and the mothers' distress, it has turned to the council, which is indeed hostile to Israel and spends more time on it than on any other country. Suddenly, Israel needs the world.It even needs the UN, which all of a sudden isn't the worthless body Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion once termed it.

It takes considerable effrontery to demand that the world interests itself in the fate of three abducted Israelis, and considerable chutzpah to be disappointed by the fact that it has kept silent. Granted, Israel tried to move heaven and earth, and its ambassador/propagandist at the UN gave a moving speech in an effort to scrape up a few more public diplomacy points against Hamas. But once it was paying attention already, that bizarre world was more interested in the campaign of collective punishment imposed on thousands of West Bank residents after the kidnapping.

That's the way things are with the world-that's-entirely-against-us: It's more interested in the half-century-old occupation; it's more upset over the fate of three million Palestinians than the fate of three Israelis. The world has no lack of kidnapping victims, but none of them ever got the attention received by kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. With the three current kidnap victims, however, Israel no longer had a chance. Over the last two weeks, which I spent in Sweden, I didn't run across a single mention of the abduction in the media. Not one.

That's what rotten fruit looks like. The world has no reason be more interested in the fate of Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrah and Gilad Shaar than it is in the fate of their age mate Mohammed Dudin, a boy of 15 who was killed by live fire from Israeli soldiers in Dura last Friday.

It has no reason to be especially moved by the haunting words of Rachel Fraenkel, who related that her Naftali is a good boy who loves to play guitar and soccer, when Mohammed was also a good boy, who helped his father build their house during his school vacations and sold sweets to help support his family. Rachel wants to hug Naftali? Jihad, Mohammed's bereaved father, also wants to hug his son. Incidentally, nobody brought him to Geneva. He remained alone with his mourning, at the wretched house whose construction hasn't yet been finished, and perhaps never will be.

The world is a mess, as they say. In Iraq, Nigeria, Syria and even Ukraine, the situation is far crueler. Yet the complete lack of interest in the kidnapped Israelis doesn't stem from that alone. It's impossible to demand sympathy from the world when Israel ignores the world's decisions; it's impossible to demand action when Israel is perpetuating the occupation; and it's impossible to demand solidarity with the fate of Israeli victims when that same victimized Israel continues to kill, wound and arrest innocents as a matter of routine.

Now Israel is discovering that it's no longer the center of attention as it always was before, and that the fate of its kidnapping victims no longer stops the world in its tracks, not even in the United States. The world is sick of Israel and its insanities. Unfortunately, the world has also lost interest in what happens here. When Israel was a more just country, the world identified with its victims. It continued to do so even when Israel became less just. But now, when Israeli rejectionism is hitting new heights and its oppression of the Palestinians is returning to what it was during the very worst periods, the world has started getting tired of it all. Even the kidnapped Nigerian girls interest it more.

As the border crisis continues, the Department of Defense is requesting that additional military bases make housing facilities and land available to accommodate a continued influx of illegal alien children.

According to information provided exclusively to Breitbart through a source requesting anonymity, Major General John T. Winters has specifically requested installation support for the Department of Homeland Security to provide temporary housing to unaccompanied alien children. The request requires bases to report any facilities across the U.S. that meet the following minimum specifications: a 24,000 square foot building, 15 acres of land "level and clear," and access to utilities. The information is due to be reported by Wednesday afternoon, July 9.

When contacted by Breitbart News, Defense Department spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Thomas Crosson confirmed the new military requests. Asked precisely how many bases are needed, Lt. Col. Crosson responded:"however many is needed to provide HHS with the mutually agreed upon amount of bed space."

Currently, three facilities are being used: Naval Base Ventura County, in Port Hueneme, California; Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, in Texas; and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The California base can house 575, and is accommodating teenagers from the ages of 13 to 17. Lackland and Sill can each hold about 1,200 youth.

As the border crisis continues, the Department of Defense is requesting that additional military bases make housing facilities and land available to accommodate a continued influx of illegal alien children.

According to information provided exclusively to Breitbart through a source requesting anonymity, Major General John T. Winters has specifically requested installation support for the Department of Homeland Security to provide temporary housing to unaccompanied alien children. The request requires bases to report any facilities across the U.S. that meet the following minimum specifications: a 24,000 square foot building, 15 acres of land "level and clear," and access to utilities. The information is due to be reported by Wednesday afternoon, July 9.

A dramatic surge in numbers of sex attackers being jailed - many for historic child abuse cases - has helped to drive the prison population to a record high, the Justice Secretary said yesterday.

Chris Grayling suggested that sex offenders including paedophiles accounted for almost half of the increase in people in jail over the last year.

Police and charities have said more victims are coming forward to report sex offences following the exposure of the abuse committed by Jimmy Savile and other high profile figures.

Mr Grayling said the trend had been reflected in English and Welsh prisons, whose population has jumped by about 1,600 in the last year.

He told the Commons justice select committee that 700 of the increase was accounted for by sex offenders.

He explained that there was a range of factors for the rising numbers behind bars, but added: "The most obvious change is there's been quite a big increase in the number of sex offenders coming into our prisons, many of them historic sex abuse cases.

(Excerpted from Chapter 6: Mercenary Shopping: Stickin' it to the Matrix)

Shopping for frivolous and unnecessary items consumes way too much of most people's time and budget, while chaining the new owner of this junk to a cluttered garage, a storage unit and general sedentary misery. Still there are certain tools and entertainments we wish to procure and there are many good ways to get them other than at a store.

Again it is all about attitude. You must develop a resistance to shopping. It should be viewed as morally reprehensible. When you need to attain an item, do your research and find out where to get it at the best price, preferably - except, I would argue, in the case of electronics - used. Remember, the system has declared war on your family. Don't shop much. And fight like a mercenary of the revolutionary army when you must shop.

Barter is an ancient and excellent system which should be taken up across the land. Here, the palpable stench of their bloody fiat currency is absent. When we lived on that 20 acre place near Peace Valley, we always had a bumper strawberry crop. Everyone likes strawberries, so we traded our excess for pasture-raised poultry, eggs and honey. We also did a community-supported agriculture swap with a local dentist, whereby we exchanged a weekly run of in-season fresh vegetables from our garden for a good amount of dental work.

Most people have been trained to be timid when it comes to asking a "professional" to barter their service for your goods/services. In doing so, you are undervaluing your own efforts. It doesn't hurt to ask. Remember, be audacious.