“It’s not the homosexuals I hate, it’s their sinful lifestyle. That’s why I beat my own son and kicked him out of the house. No offense, son.”

ANDERSON COUNTY — On Sunday an 18-year-old man returned to his home from a gay pride parade and was assaulted by his father with a baseball bat, according to News Channel 7 coverage partner the Anderson Independent.

According to the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office, the battering took place about 1 p.m. Sunday on P Street.

During the assault, the teen’s 49-year-old father yelled, cursed, swung a bat, prayed and tried to “cast the demon of homosexuality out of him,” according to the teen’s version of events to Deputy S.C. Weymouth, the incident report states. Read more »

BOISE, Idaho — An Army soldier who espoused racist views in an Internet profile was exercising his right to free speech, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces ruled Wednesday.

Nearly eight years ago, military prosecutors charged Pfc. Jeremy T. Wilcox with making statements online that discredited the armed forces and were detrimental to good order and discipline.

Wilcox was also accused of several other charges — including violating military rules by attending a Ku Klux Klan rally and encouraging participation in extremist organizations. Those charges were resolved separately and not part of the appeal to the Washington, D.C.-based military high court. Read more »

It’s getting to be a familiar ritual. Markets panic. A bunch of G-men in dark suits interrupt their routines for an emergency meeting or a conference call to piece together a rescue plan. They announce the plan. Panic subsides. Then, a week to a couple of months later, it starts all over again. I count six such episodes since August 2007. In the early days, the Federal Reserve Board did all the work and usually made its big announcement on a Friday. Since then, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has moved to the fore, and he picked a Sunday afternoon to float his proposal for bolstering beleaguered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The basic pattern, though, remains the same: Financial tizzy. Dramatic government action. Period of reduced tizzy. Repeat. Source>>>

FORT MYERS: Fort Myers Police are mourning the loss of an officer who was shot and killed by a suspect at Main & Hendry streets in downtown Fort Myers early Friday morning.Major Doug Baker says the officer, 30-year-old Andrew Widman, responded to a domestic dispute between a man and his girlfriend in front of the pizza shop on Hendry Street at 2:03 a.m.

When Widman stepped in to break up the fight, police say Abel Arango pulled out a gun and shot Widman at point blank range in the face. Read more »

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A Dutch court punched a hole in toughened immigration restrictions, ruling an illiterate Moroccan woman cannot be required to pass a Dutch language test to join her husband in the Netherlands.

The order dismayed politicians who have sought to curb immigration from non-Western countries and they vowed Friday to fix the law to cover the loophole exposed by the Amsterdam District Court.

On the other side, the ruling was applauded by rights activists who say the government should scrap the requirement entirely, which they say is discriminatory and violates international human rights law. Read more »

MADRID, Spain - Spain’s National Court agreed Friday to review evidence in a lawsuit filed against four alleged former Nazi concentration camp guards.

A decision by the court to file charges in the case could lead to the four men’s extradition from the United States to face trial over the deaths of Spanish citizens.

The lawsuit — filed on behalf of victims’ relatives by Brussels-based rights group Equipo Nizkor — asks the court to charge the four with genocide and other crimes. It names John (Iwan) Demjanjuk, Anton Tittjung, Josias Kumpf and Johann Leprich as defendants. Read more »

The Chicago Tribune says Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich offered yesterday to send state troopers and National Guard helicopters to help patrol the streets of Chicago during a time of “out of control” crime.”I think we, those of us at state level, need to offer a helping hand, need to do something to help the mayor get his hands around this uncontrolled violence that’s taking hold of some communities in the city of Chicago,” the governor says, according to the local CBS affiliate. “We’re going to see what we could plausibly offer to the city of Chicago to be helpful to do what we can to stop the gun violence and stop the violence,” the governor adds.

The Chicago Sun-Times says Blagojevich, a Democrat, may establish an “elite tactical team” that focuses on bringing down a crime rate that has hit “epidemic proportions.” Read more »

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three genes may play a strong role in determining why some young men raised in rough neighborhoods or deprived families become violent criminals, while others do not, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

One gene called MAOA that played an especially strong role has been shown in other studies to affect antisocial behavior — and it was disturbingly common, the team at the University of North Carolina reported.

People with a particular variation of the MAOA gene called 2R were very prone to criminal and delinquent behavior, said sociology professor Guang Guo, who led the study. Read more »