Some Christmas Packages Aren't Delivered

A surge in online shopping this holiday season left stores breaking promises to deliver packages by Christmas, suggesting that retailers and shipping companies still haven't fully figured out consumers' buying patterns in the Internet era.

Companies from Amazon.com Inc. to Kohl's Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., having promised to deliver items before Dec. 25, missed some delivery target dates.

United Parcel Service Inc. determined late Tuesday that it wouldn't deliver some goods in time for Christmas, as a spike in last-minute shopping overwhelmed its system. "The volume of air packages in the UPS system did exceed capacity as demand was much greater than our forecast," a UPS spokeswoman said.

Consumers were reporting missing deliveries from FedEx as well, although a FedEx spokesman said the company wasn't experiencing significant delays.

Americans tend to go online for a bigger proportion of their Christmas shopping than for their buying during the rest of the year. This year, the trend's acceleration apparently took some stores and carriers off-guard.

When budget woes reduced the sheriff's department in one rural Oregon county to a bare-bones force, residents decided to take matters into their own hands -- creating armed patrol groups in defiance of local officials.

Their decision has raised safety concerns with the county government, which would prefer residents instead hike their own taxes to fund the hiring of trained deputies. But despite the risks, the move stands as a unique, some would say innovative, response to one of the country's most severe local budget crunches.

The government in Josephine County, where nearly 70 percent of the land is owned by the U.S. government, had long relied on federal timber subsidies to pay the bills. When the feds terminated the funds, county officials scrambled to pass a May 2012 tax levy to make up a nearly $7.5 million budget shortfall.

However, the county's residents voted against the levy, and as a result the Josephine County Sheriff's Office was gutted. The major crimes unit closed, dozens of prisoners were released from the county jail and the department reduced operations to Monday-Friday, eight hours a day.

The Sheriff's Office then issued a press release announcing their deputies would only be responding to what they deemed "life-threatening situations."

Ken Selig -- who was the longest-serving law enforcement officer in all three local agencies when he was forced to retire from the department due to cuts -- told FoxNews.com he found the sheriff's declaration unacceptable. And he felt compelled to guard his community's vulnerable members.

A D.C. officer named "Detective of the Year" in 2012 has pleaded guilty for secretly videotaping his adult stepdaughter as she changed clothes and showered.

Metropolitan Police Department detective Keith Tabron pleaded guilty in July to multiple counts of video surveillance with prurient intent. He was accused of setting up a network of surveillance cameras to spy on the young woman in the bathroom and in her bedroom.

A spokesperson for the State's Attorney's Office told WNEW that the victim was the daughter of Tabron's estranged wife and was staying at the detective's home because she had "fallen on hard times."

The woman found one of the cameras in her bathroom. After calling her cousin, another camera was discovered in her bedroom. Both cameras were wired back to Tabron's home office.The State's Attorney for Prince George's County charged Tabron with 50 counts of secretly videotaping the woman over a nine-month period.

One sister is hospitalized and another is in jail after an argument over apple fritters ended in a stabbing.

Akron police say they were called to the 900 block of Springdale Street around 11:30 p.m. Christmas night for a reported stabbing.

Investigators say one sister was in the kitchen making apple fritters when two other sisters "started to play fight" over the treat.

At one point, police say, one sister pulled the hair of the other sister.

A 20-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped on Christmas Eve in south India, media reports said on Friday, the latest in a string of sexual attacks reported in the country.

The reports of the latest assault came two days before India was due to mark the first anniversary of the death of a student who was gang-raped on a bus in an attack that shocked the nation.

The woman who was assaulted on Christmas Eve told police she was abducted by three men while sightseeing with friends in Karaikal, a port city in Puducherry, the Times of India newspaper and TV networks reported.

One of the men raped her at a secluded spot before freeing her, the Times said. She called for help but then another group of seven men attacked her as she was being escorted to a safe place, the paper said. Six of the men raped her, it added.

A mother was sucker punched while crossing a Midwood street with her 7-year-old daughter in broad daylight, police said.

The 33-year-old mother was near the intersection of 12th Street and Elm Avenue in Midwood about 2:45 p.m. Saturday when a man approached her from behind, swung at the back of her head and knocked her to the ground, police said.

Nothing was reported stolen. The woman sustained minor injuries to her hands and knees, police said.

New figures show the number of visible minorities in Canadian prisons has increased by 75 per cent in the past decade, while the number and proportion of inmates who are Caucasian has declined significantly.

As well, Canada's prison population is now at its highest level ever, even though the crime rate has been decreasing over the past two decades. Ten years ago, the number of inmates in federal prisons was close to 12,000. It's now more than 15,000.

These are just some of the statistics expected to be examined Tuesday, when the annual report of Correctional Investigator of Canada Howard Sapers is tabled in Parliament. His report is widely expected to be a scathing indictment of federal correctional policy.

"You cannot reasonably claim to have a just society with incarceration rates like these," Sapers said Sunday in a speech he gave at a church in Toronto.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald appeared on MSNBC Thursday, one day after Edward Snowden delivered a Christmas address to television viewers in the UK and around the world from Russia. Things got heated when MSNBC anchor Kristen Welker cited critics who've accused Greenwald of "crossing a line" in his defense of Snowden. "What do you say to your critics who say you've become more of a spokesman for Edward Snowden?" she asked.

"I think that's ludicrous is what I say to that," Greenwald shot back. "Every journalist has an agenda. We're on MSNBC now, where close to 24 hours a day the agenda of President Obama and the Democratic Party are promoted, defended, glorified, the agenda of the Republican Party is undermined. That doesn't mean the people who appear on MSNBC aren't journalists, they are."

He said that every journalist has a "viewpoint" and he doesn't hide the fact that he finds Snowden's decision to expose the NSA's surveillance programs "heroic."

I think the point is not so much about MSNBC and what happens here," Welker said in defense of her employer, "but more that sometimes when you talk about Edward Snowden you do defend him, and some people wonder if that crosses a line."

"Sure, I do defend him just like people on MSNBC defend President Obama and his officials and Democratic Party leaders 24 hours a day." When Welker pushed back that "not everyone on MSNBC does that 24 hours a day," Greenwald conceded that it's "not everybody, but a lot of people do."

After comparing Snowden to figures like Chelsea Manning and Daniel Ellsberg, Greenwald said, "I absolutely do defend what Edward Snowden does and I don't pretend otherwise."

London -- They're portrayed as pickpockets who will steal British jobs. There are predictions they will beg, the unruly young ones will stir up riots, and some will even try to sell babies.

For months, Britain's tabloids have repeatedly warned of the horrors they believe will ensue after Jan. 1, when work restrictions will be lifted across the European Union for migrants from Romania and Bulgaria - two of the trading bloc's newest members. Those changes, the papers claim, will unleash a mass exodus of the poor and unemployed from the two eastern European countries to Britain.

"In January, the only thing left will be the goat," a Daily Mail headline proclaimed, referring to a remote Romanian village where, the paper claimed, everyone was preparing to move to Britain for the higher wages and generous welfare benefits.

"We're importing a crime wave from Romania and Bulgaria," another headline declared, quoting a Conservative lawmaker who told Parliament that most pickpockets on British streets hail from Romania.

The past several weeks have been very busy, and I haven't had a chance to post quite as much as I'd like to. I thought I'd throw my hat back into the ring with a short post about where Russia is today. Part of what gets me so frustrated about most mainstream media coverage of Russia is that people tend to conflate the country's condition (e.g. people drink a lot, don't make much money, and are generally miserable) with its trajectory (e.g. people are drinking more, people are making less money, and people are getting more miserable). These are, obviously, two very different things, but they're often treated as if they're interchangeable.