A Thursday evening shooting in the west side of Chicago marked a milestone for the Windy City: for the first time since 2008, the city can likely claim 500 homicides in a single year.

With still a few days to go until the new year, 40-year-old Nathaniel T. Jackson became the five-hundredth person killed in Chicago, Illinois since the start of 2012.

In 2011, the city saw only 435 homicides.

Superintendent Garry McCarthy confirmed to the Chicago Tribune late Thursday night that the passing of Mr. Jackson marked murder number 500 for the Windy City, and that no suspect had been identified by the police at that point. On Friday afternoon, though, the department issued a statement to the press reclassifying a death earlier in the week as being still under investigation. With that update, the slaying of Jackson makes him one murder shy of the 500 mark, but with a homicide rate of more than one per day, that milestone is expected to be met before 2012 comes to a close.

Discussing the grim news on Friday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said it was "an unfortunate and tragic milestone, which not only marks a needless loss of life but serves as a reminder of the damage that illegal guns and conflicts between gangs cause in our neighborhoods."

Emanuel, a former Obama administration staffer known like the president for his staunch pro-gun control stance, condemned the National Rifle Association earlier this month after the NRA's vice president asked for armed guards in every school across America.

"That is not the right answer for our society, our schools and most importantly our children," Emanuel said.

Philadelphia - Like many public schools here, University City High School is underused, underfinanced and underperforming.

Nearly 80 percent of its 11th-grade students read below grade level in statewide tests this year, while 85 percent failed to make the grade in math. Last year, about only a quarter of its students participated in precollege testing like the SAT.

Largely because of the lure of local charter schools, the school is one-quarter full, with fewer than 600 students for its nearly 2,200 seats. It needs major work on its infrastructure, including lighting and heating systems, that would cost an estimated $30 million.

Now, facing deep financial problems, the Philadelphia School District has proposed an unprecedented downsizing that would close 37 campuses by June - roughly one out of six public schools, including University City. If the sweeping plan is approved, the district says it will improve academic standards by diverting money used for maintaining crumbling buildings to hire teachers and improve classroom equipment.

The 237-school district faces a cumulative budget deficit of $1.1 billion over the next five years, after $419 million in state cuts to educational financing this year. The district's problems are compounded by the end of federal stimulus money and rising pension costs.

Even after borrowing $300 million to pay the bills for this academic year, the district faces a deficit of $27.6 million, a figure that officials say will rise sharply in coming years.

Indiana - A dog fighting investigation has led to the arrest of 18 people in Churubusco.

Last night Whitley County police raided the home of 36 year old Edward E. Smith after they received a tip of a dog fighting contest at his house.


Inside the garage, police found a bloody and injured pit bull type dog inside a fighting ring constructed of plywood.

Two other dogs were found inside the house. One was another injured and bloody pit bull type dog. The other was a younger dog that had no injuries. All three dogs were taken by the Whitley County Humane Shelter.

All 18 people are charged with a Class A misdemeanor of attending an animal fighting contest.

Source: WISE Webcast

Nine people are dead and dozens are injured after a charter bus crashed in Oregon, according to Oregon State Police.

Police have not yet indicated what caused the crash, but images from highway I-84 show icy roads. The bus crashed through a guard rail and fell down an embankment, police said.

Emergency responders trained in rope rescues were on-scene helping retrieve people from the crash back onto the highway, police said.

The crash happened about 10 miles east of Pendleton, Ore., in the Blue Mountains.

India is drafting a bill proposing 30 years' jail for rapists and possible chemical castration. It comes after a 23-year-old woman, gang-raped in New Delhi, died in hospital, drawing public attention to an epidemic of violence against women.

The victim's body was transferred from the Singapore hospital where she died on Saturday back to India for the funeral on Sunday morning. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the head of the ruling Congress Party greeted the plane carrying the body at the airport.

The private cremation ceremony was held under tight security in Delhi a few hours after the victim's body arrived in India.

The case of the medical student raped two weeks ago in the Munirka area of Delhi by a group of men has dominated the Indian public forum. The incident has provoked public outrage, condemning the police and the government for their inaction on the issue of women's safety.

In response to public uproar, India's ruling Congress Party is drafting the new legislation for submission to the Justice Verma Committee, charged with reassessing current rape laws and suggesting changing to ensure greater safety for women.

A French man jailed for an alleged plot to kill Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2009 was deported to France on Saturday, a Venezuelan official said.

Frederic Laurent Bouquet's expulsion was announced via a tweet by Iris Varela, the minister for the prison system.

"Frederic Laurent Bouquet was sentenced to four years (in Venezuelan jail), after confessing to plotting against Chavez. He had an arsenal in his possession" Varela tweeted.

According to Venezuelan state-run National Radio and the state-run Venezuelan TV station, Bouquet was arrested in 2009 with three men from the Dominican Republic. He had multiple guns as well as explosives and other military gear with him, according to reports.

"This arrest is a serious blow to terrorism and to those groups that seek to drag into Venezuela scenes of blood and confrontation," Tarek El Aissami, then-interior minister, told reporters at the time.

Being hooked by a fisherman is probably up there with the worst things that could happen to a shark. But what about becoming bait for an even bigger beast as you're being hauled into the boat?

This was the fate of a poor great white in New Zealand this week.

And a spectacular photograph of the encounter, which shows Charles Darwin's survival of the fittest - or perhaps biggest - theory in action, has taken the web by storm after it was posted on Reddit.
The decent-sized shark was hooked in the waters near Kaiteriteri during a post-Christmas expedition on December 28.

San Jose fire investigators are looking through the rubble of an apartment as they try to determine what sparked a fire that killed three people and sent three others to a hospital late Saturday.

San Jose Fire Department Capt. Mary Gutierrez said that when firefighters reached the scene, shortly after 11 p.m. Saturday, they found some people trapped in the burning apartment on the second floor of the complex in the 3000 block of Bridgeport Court.

After the fire was put out, firefighters found the bodies of a man, a woman and a child.

Three other people, including a San Jose police officer on the scene who aided in a rescue during the fire, were taken to area hospitals after suffering smoke inhalation in the blaze, Gutierrez said.

Firefighters attacked the blaze and kept it from spreading to other apartments, knocking it down shortly after midnight. Fire personnel confirmed that three people inside the affected unit, identified only as a man, woman and young child, died from their injuries.

Patriarchy is alive and well in Iowa, where a court backed a dentist who fired Melissa Nelson for being a 'temptress'

Her boss found her too irresistible. He complained that if she saw his pants bulging, she was dressing inappropriately. He texted to ask how frequently she experienced orgasm. He said that, for a woman with a body like hers, not to have sex often was like having a Lamborghini in the garage and never driving it.

Then, after 10 years of employing her, he fired her. James Knight, the boss in question, is a dentist based in Fort Hood, Iowa. The employee, Melissa Nelson, is a dental assistant. She is married with one child, and is agreed by all parties to have been an exemplary employee. Indeed, she seems to have tolerated more for the sake of her job than most people have to.

We don't know the name of the 23-year-old student who was raped and killed on a city bus in Delhi.

We do know that, after getting on a bus home after watching a film with a friend, she was tortured so badly that she lost her intestines. Six people - including the bus driver - have been arrested; they have been widely denounced as "animals" on social media. It's always comforting to think - despite everything that the 20th century should have taught us - that those who commit vile acts are sub-human, are not quite like us, so we can create emotional distance from them. But it was thinking, feeling, living human men who committed this rape, however nauseating it is to accept.

The death of a woman popularly named Damini - "lightning" in Hindi - has provoked thousands to take to India's streets, furious at endemic and unchecked violence against women. Some have been met with police batons, tear gas and water cannon.

But, in the West, Damini's death has triggered a different response: a sense that this is an Indian-specific problem. "The crime has highlighted the prevalence of sex attacks in India," says the Daily Telegraph; "India tries to move beyond its rape culture," says Reuters. Again, it's comforting to think that this is someone else's problem, a particular scandal that afflicts a supposedly backward nation. It is an assumption that is as wrong as it is dangerous.

Rape and sexual violence against women are endemic everywhere. Shocked by what happened in India? Take a look at France, that prosperous bastion of European civilisation. In 1999, two then-teenagers - named only as Nina and Stephanie - were raped almost every day for six months. Young men would queue up to rape them, patiently waiting for their friends to finish in secluded basements. After a three-week trial this year, 10 of the 14 accused left the courtroom as free men; the other four were granted lenient sentences of one year at most.